Fear Revisited [Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow]

018

The last person Jane expected to be at the door was a sharply dressed Jonathan Crane, brandishing a boyish smile and a bottle of wine.

She gasped lightly, blinking rapidly at him to make sure she had not suddenly started hallucinating his presence - that would have been all she needed in addition to thinking about him far more than she was willing to admit.

She was torn between two very distinct reactions, each as likely as the other in her mind.

First, there was the logical response, which would have been to slam the door and barricade herself inside her apartment, putting herself out of reach of the torturous mad man he had shown himself to be.

The second was not rational or logical in the slightest, but more of an impulse; there was a part of her that wanted to wrap her arms around him and tell him that she had missed him, terribly.

Neither came to be, however, as she simply stood before him, slackjawed and staring.

"Jane?" he prompted with a quirk of his brow, seemingly attempt to reel her back to reality. She cleared her throat and shook her head slightly, as though that would make the situation less surreal.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, voice not entirely unkind as she hid partially behind the door. It was a reasonable enough question given how long had passed without a single word between them.

"I needed to see you," he answered, a far cry from the response she was anticipating.

Not that she knew exactly what she was anticipating; a number of reasons for his visit, both benign and nefarious, were already running through her mind at warp speed.

"It's almost eleven o'clock at night," she pointed out suspiciously. "Don't you have work in the morning?"

"I know it's quite late and I apologize, but I needed to see you," he said again. Jane tried to ignore how his phrasing made her heart flutter, reminding herself that all the charm he was oozing was likely nothing more than superficial.

She narrowed her eyes, hoping that would somehow give her the ability to analyze his expression for some clue as to his intentions.

"I will leave if you insist, but I'm only asking for ten minutes of your time," he requested, eyes flickering towards the inside of her apartment, just briefly, before landing back on hers in a silent plea.

She knew she should have let him go, that she should have insisted he do just that. It was precisely what any sane, rational person would do in her situation.

But a sane, rational person would not have spent weeks thinking about the man she watched torture her ex-boyfriend.

A sane, rational person would not still feel the magnetic pull of his eyes or feel the least bit swayed by the charm of his smile.

If she sent him away, she knew she would regret it instantly.

There was every chance that she would later regret allowing him to stay for even a few minutes, but at least that regret was sometime in the distant enough future.

"Ten minutes," she muttered, stepping aside to allow him entry to her apartment. Just because she felt something didn't mean she was going enough to let her guard down completely.

"Thank you," he said, stepping past her into the apartment. She was almost positive she heard a sigh of relief, but couldn't be entirely sure. She, on the other hand, was holding her breath.

He stood awkwardly in the living room, looking strangely out of place despite having been there many times before. She maintained her distance, hovering near the door just in case.