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One way or another, he would subject Bane to the toxin before their makeshift fiefdom’s clearly numbered days were through.
Crane knew himself well enough to understand that it was not purely scientific curiosity driving the quasi-suicidal impulse, a poor academic though it might make of him. He’d leafed through his own possible motives with the casual interest he might one of the psychology journals he’d stocked up on before mail service from the mainland was cut off, along with everything else.
Leverage, if he were to insist on his own mind for strategy, for contingency. One never knew when next the winds would change, what hat they’d have to don and allegiances they’d have to profess. We plant and sow, but only the good Lord gives the harvest, he had heard repeatedly as a boy, and loath as he was to recall the decrepit drawl, the best wisdom oft came from one’s enemies. Should Bane decide to turn on him, should the League’s progressive implosion since the death of Ra’s Al-Ghul accelerate, should the military or a miracle or the Batman (dare to dream, just where had he been?) show up – he would require the upper hand through the targeting of a weak spot.
Resentment through experience offered a less flattering reason for the burning desire. He understood most humans carried the base impulse to sling stones at a Goliath and emerge victorious, driven not the will of any God, but the will of the ego, by the pageantry of defeating that which incited primal fear – that which is bigger and stronger. Bane was more cunning by far than the schoolyard bullies of yore he had been made to endure, and more competent than the ruffians he’d had to neutralize during his stint in the drug trade. But a bully was a bully, highfalutin speeches notwithstanding, and muscle memory and scar tissue had bred in him an instinctive antipathy towards the burly. The axe forgets but the stump remembers; hence why it’s better and more fun besides to strike first.
Fun; the third possible motive. In the ensuing ruckus of the fall of Gotham (not that it ever stood, but who was he to deny himself an opportunity to tip the hat to Poe?), although Judge Crane had risen to the occasion, the Scarecrow had found unfortunately scant opportunities to stalk and strike. Inflicting fear with the bang of a gavel had its charms. But like taking a new lover while still longing for the old one, the magic just wasn’t quite there.
What a sight it would make, Crane thought more than once, to see several hundred pounds of mercenary writhe and quail before him. (He’d writhed above him once, keened a bit towards the end, but that had been but the purchase of some short-term insurance and the scratching of a mutual itch between allies, and nothing more.)
And wouldn’t it be hysterical to hear the thundering reverberations of such a skilled orator be reduced to screams of abject terror? He often reminded his people’s court that Bane has no authority here, but what greater delight could be wrung from making that statement literal – from making fear the true equalizer by inflicting it on a false one?
He'd assured the League his stores had been destroyed in the wake of their revolution, a half-lie, of course. He’d managed to salvage enough to be safe, enough that it could be replicated when the time was right. And the possibilities promised were just too tempting to resist.
Administering the toxin was easy enough; as was ever the case for anyone who made it big in this city, the mask was the key.
He knew the man’s hideouts; knew where he slept. Knew that the cannisters resting at the back of that skull held the analgesic gas piped into his lungs to keep those old injuries this side of tolerable. (Bitterly, Jonathan rather felt he could have used one of those in his adolescent years. Ah, well – this would be the next best thing.)
He also knew just which of their lackeys were corruptible, and which were easily cowed; a small slip of the hand into a tray scheduled for night-time delivery, and it wasn’t even his head that’d roll when the smoke cleared.
As for what would happen when Bane inevitably put two and two together; well, that could be finagled later. Right now, standing over the hulking man’s prone, shaking form, donning the sackcloth once more, it was all about drinking in the moment.
And what a moment it was; huddled over himself, that filtered voice whimpered and wailed and pleaded – not for mercy, for like himself, Bane had never known any. No, what he murmured over and over was not an ode to his tormentor, but a refrain of despair.
“Talia,” he pleaded, once-powerful hands now outstretched as if in plea – as if to hold a limp frame. “My love, I beg you- ”
Talia, he said, and Talia, he repeated. A woman’s name - easy enough to guess the rest, before the endearments started pouring forth amidst the simulated grief. The Scarecrow tilted his head; a mockery of sympathy. Feeling audacious, he even petted his head.
“It’s such a shame she had to go the way she did, isn’t it? All that intellect, that conviction, that stubborn resolve…gone in a flash of fire and smoke, buried under debris.”
(He had felt no love for Rachel Dawes, of that he was certain, but her convulsions under the toxin’s influence were a kind of kiss - and there was something close to grief to be found in one’s beautiful nemesis dying at a hand that wasn’t one’s own.)
Bane agreed by way of a wail, which made him sputter a laugh at the sheer incongruity of his state with his persona.
It wasn’t defeat Bane feared, nor was it betrayal, plague or even his own naked vulnerability. It was something far simpler - something that Crane was almost sure he himself had abandoned to his solitary, miserable youth - give or take a flash of red hair and a snarl of determination that swore he would only ever be alone.
Heartache.