Chapter dedicated to FanGirlingSoHardxx for the amazing story trailer! Thanks so much!

"How was work?" Jane asked brightly, fishing for a bite of takeout with her chopsticks.

"Uneventful," Jonathan answered dryly, "and your day?"

"Fine."

It was the same conversation which had played out countless times in the few weeks since she had made the move go Gotham City.

Her apartment no longer felt safe, despite the fact that Stephen was - so far as she knew - still receiving treatment at Arkham. He would get out eventually and obviously knew where she lived.

The very idea of him knowing where she slept at night after what he did was nauseating, and after about a week of sleepless nights, she had decided to abandon ship where the apartment was concerned.

A move to Gotham had been sensible. She had a reasonably sized apartment on the edge of the city, cutting her commute to and from work down to a manageable amount of time, and - if she was being entirely honest about her motivations - it was closer to Jonathan.

Neither had broached the subject of moving in together, the idea a nonsensical one to say the least, and they had kept their time spent together to a dull roar, seeing one another only a night or two each week.

Even in all the breathing room they had afforded one another however, the conversation had grown strained.

In the beginning, there was a decade's worth of catching up to do. There were stories to tell, memories to share, and plenty to talk about without edging into uncomfortable subject matter.

Soon, the conversation dwindled. The mundane but loaded question, "how was work?" presented an obstacle to the idea of keeping parts of Jonathan's life separate from whatever it was they were building.

His response had grown more irritated and any enthusiasm he had feigned the first handful of times the question was asked had dulled. The more time they spent with one another, the more painfully obvious it became that compartmentalizing that portion of his life was a dreadful burden for him.

There was nothing left to discuss and no smalltalk to be made, making the silences that fell over them more frequently now uncomfortable and strange.

"I heard about a man who was admitted to the asylum Wednesday after streaking on Fourteenth Street," she offered topically, forcing a light chuckle.

"I can't discuss my work with you, Jane," he reminded her, staring into the contents of his own paper carton of Chinese food.

"I know, doctor-patient confidentiality," she murmured. She knew that was not the reason he was refusing to even make comment on the subject, nor what he had meant to convey.

They returned back to their silent dinner, Jane letting out a small sigh. She'd thought she'd hidden her reaction well enough, but clearly she had not.

"Is something wrong?" he asked irritably.

"No," she lied, a kneejerk reaction that was accompanied by a false smile.

He continued to hold eye contact with her, his fascinating eyes locked on hers and putting her under a microscope. He didn't believe her for a moment, and she knew it.

"Nothing's wrong, really," she wavered a bit on her position, "I just... I don't know how this is supposed to work. We see each other, we barely speak, I go home, and we do it all again a few days later."

She bit her lip nervously as she watched her words sink in, his expression impassive and unreadable. While not intended to be hurtful, she was well aware that what she was saying had every bit of potential to be just that.

"You're unhappy?" he asked, sounding none too sure of whether he'd interpreted her words correctly.

"This just isn't exactly how I'm used to these sorts of things going," she admitted.

Her drive to keep from hurting Jonathan was quite strong, but there was too much missing from what she had always known a relationship to be - very little conversation, even less physical touching, not much of anything besides existing in the same place at the same time. The deficit was far more than she was used to.

"Perhaps that is a reflection of the sort of relationships you've pursued in the past," he suggested tersely. She had evidently struck some sort of nerve.

"It isn't exactly unreasonable to expect some sort of interaction, is it?" she clarified, brows knit as she tried to understand his obvious aggravation.

"It is when you ask about work or what I've done in my freetime, given that you expressly forbid such subjects," he spoke through a sarcastic smile.

So there was the bottom line.

She had never considered that things were tense because she had not wanted to hear about Scarecrow or anything related to him.

In all honesty, she had been blissfully adrift in the safe waters of denial. She did not think about the mask, did not ponder his extracurricular work. She put it out of mind entirely in an attempt to fall for man who then sat glaring at her on the couch.

She had no way of knowing that she was attempting to deconstruct a package deal with that request; there was never a Jonathan without a Scarecrow, not even when first they had met.

"Is that difficult for you, not being able to talk about it?" she asked in a small voice, picking at the fraying end of her sleeve.

He laughed humorlessly.

"It certainly is not a relaxing arrangement for me, to consistently censor myself for your benefit," he admitted, shaking his head.

"So, the solution is to stop speaking entirely when we're together?" she asked incredulously, completely baffled by that logic.

"That's an exaggeration, but what, precisely, would you like to converse about?" he asked, growing visibly more tense by the moment. "Should we discuss reality television, or the new coffeehouse that opened up on Vernon Street? Is plaid in or out this season, Jane? I'd be fascinated to know."

"Are you implying that I'm stupid?" She gave him a disgusted look, the point of his sarcastic outburst being driven home quite painfully.

"I am implying nothing. What I am saying is that it seems you have mistaken me for someone with interest in the mundane and trivial. Where you got that impression, I'll never know," he corrected her, his high and mighty professor's attitude bubbling to the surface.

"Do you honestly have no idea what it means to be someone's boyfriend?" she spoke in frustration before her tongue could catch the slip.

He let loose another short, derisive laugh, one eyebrow cocked high as he looked at her in a way that could only be described as disbelief.

"Boyfriend," he repeated the word as though it were the most childish thing he had ever heard. "Perhaps, if you are so set in the run of the mill flowers, chocolates, hearts idea of the word boyfriend, you should be spending your time in the company of someone else."

Her stomach felt sick, as though she'd taken a punch to it. He had a unique ability to speak to her in such a way that it made her feel smaller than a literal speck of dust, and he seemed well aware of that power.

"That isn't fair. I'm not asking you to be someone else, I'm asking you to-"

"That is exactly what you are doing," he interrupted. "You want to select only the parts of me you deem loveable and completely deny the existence of anything else, lest you discover there was never anything redeemable to begin with. You are engaging in a textbook example of splitting."

She opened her mouth to refute the accusation, but found it too dry to speak. For just a split second, it was easy to see beneath the haughty attitude he wore so viciously in that moment to something else that lay just underneath.

That something was the broken boy-turned-man who had never been fully accepted. Not by his family, not by his peers, and - though she had never meant to add herself to the list - not by her.

She couldn't even deny the truth in his statement, as even she could see it was exactly what she had done.

Her mask of anger softened slowly as a beat of silence passed, regret taking up residence in her features.

"I didn't mean to make you feel that way," she finally spoke, her voice much more timid than she would have liked it to be.

He did not respond, instead merely adjusting his glasses and averting his gaze from hers.

She reached out to take his hand, which he examined with wide eyes. It was the wrong moment to touch him, she knew, but she supposed all the harm that could have been done had already come to pass.

"I take it back," she announced cryptically.

"Specificity," he prompted warily.

"I take it back. It wasn't fair to ask in the first place," she spoke the words despite knowing how insane they were in all reality.

"If I only want part of who you are, then I guess that really isn't wanting you at all." She gave his hand a squeeze as she continued, slowly. "So, show me. Let me in."

He looked like a small animal caught in oncoming headlights, completely blindsided by what she had said. Perhaps he had expected her to defend her position, instead. She couldn't be sure.

"You don't know what you're asking for, Jane," he dismissed her apology, tearing his hand from hers as he stood and made his way to the window, looking down at the city below.

Not the reaction she'd been expecting.

"The least you could do is let me try," she insisted, attempting to be gentle regardless of how his mercurial shifts frustrated her.

"So that you can feel better about yourself, having given it your best effort when you decide it's too much?" he scoffed without looking at her, his eyes still trained on the skyline outside the window.

Take the high road, she mentally chided herself, forcing herself up from the couch to where he stood at the window. She wrapped her arms around his thin waist.

"So that I can show you that you're wrong about how I feel," she coaxed.

She felt his body tense against her touch for a long moment before he relaxed ever so slightly into her hold. She could feel the severity of his sharp, bony form digging into her, but she refused to let go.

"Suddenly you're so sure that you want to see? You're aware that there is no way to undo that, once it is done," he reminded her ominously, turning in her arms to look down at her with scrutinizing eyes. She could tell he did not completely trust her.

She had all of the alarms and sirens blaring in her head that signaled a dangerous situation; she knew the that she was experiencing the last moment at which she could have walked away unscathed, turned away without looking back, but her mind was made up.

"At least let me try. I owe you that," she pleaded softly with him, paralyzed momentarily by the fear of what was coming out of her own mouth; when had she become the sort of person who would compromise so much for him, willingly?

She was sure she used to be the sort of person who would have turned away from something she knew was so deeply wrong, once upon a time.

He thought it over for a long moment as he stared down at her before speaking as though his tongue were leaden and difficult to order around.

"Tomorrow night. You can meet me at the asylum at nine o'clock sharp," he begrudgingly agreed. "We'll see what you think of me, then."

Woo! My inspiration is back. Between re-reading Year One Batman Scarecrow and the beautiful trailer made for the story, my fire has been relit. I can't seem to figure out how to share the trailer as my chapter media, but go give it a look here: I'm so honored for this gift!

Thank you all for each and every read, vote, and comment. Let know what you think!