(A/N Please review, I'd love some feedback on this. Was going to be just a one-shot but now I think I'll add a few more chapters if people want!
~Forrest~)
The Two Doctors
"I want us to talk about your past- Before you came to Arkham." I say, studying his face for any sign of emotion. For a second I think I see a flicker of annoyance across his face, but in an instant it's gone, replaced with the same calm, appraising look he always has during our sessions; As if he were the professional, and I the patient. It's one of the joys of trying to psychoanalyze a trained psychiatrist. Not only do I know he's mentally taking note of everything I do and say, he's also perfected that infuriating expressionless mask, more effective than the badly stitched burlap sack with raggedly cut eyeholes of his that they keep in the director's office, locked up somewhere, out of harm's way.
He knows exactly what little emotional indicators I'm looking for, and he knows how to hide them, so that I can only guess what strange thoughts are trapped behind those cold eyes.
That's all I've been doing over the past couple of months, pure guesswork.
Building a sketchy picture of his life using the few scraps of information from his file and the even fewer cryptic answers or statements I'd managed to drag from him during our meetings together. These were in almost every instance completely unhelpful 'clues' that sent me off on a wild goose chase, searching for an event that did not happen, or people who did not exist.
I've since learned to take everything he says with a pinch of salt. It isn't that he deliberately lies, rather that his hints have empty meanings. Or maybe I read too much into them. That is always possible.
"My childhood again?" He enquires with a slightly resigned smile, snapping me back to the present.
"No." I shuffle through the papers on my desk, searching for my pencil. I like to take notes during these meetings as much as possible, even though he makes that difficult by giving me very little to remark on.
"I've finally given up on that. I'm talking about your time spent at Gotham University. You were a teacher there for a few years, right?" He inclines his head, giving me the briefest of nods. But at least it's an answer.
On some days he says nothing at all, it's just me sitting across from him, talking, talking, talking. Asking and asking, and getting nothing in response. At least he's never refused to see me. Never protested when he's brought up the long stairs to the plain white room with four identical walls, sporting as its only furniture a water cooler in the corner, that always has a full tank but never seems to have any cups no matter how many times I talk to the cleaners, a slightly wilted pot plant which barely survives on the few rays of sunlight which sneak in through the small, square window near the ceiling, and a grey chipboard table with a rickety chair on either side, one for me, one for him.
I never conduct patient interviews in my office. In a way it seems too personal there, with the photo frames on my desk, the postcards from friends and relatives pinned to my board, the little calendar with pictures from fairy tales and the stack of storybooks in the corner on the shelf.
My secret pleasure for those dull days when nothing's happening, when nobody's scheduled in and I'm just waiting for something to happen. Then those books come in handy.
"You were fired from your position- As a psychology teacher- In 1995." I read the facts off the report in front of me, before glancing up at him again, hoping for a response. Still nothing.
"I already know all of this…" He says with a hint of sarcasm in his tone, smirking as he gestures towards my report on his past, laid open on the desk. I quickly cover the notes on his mental state of wellbeing with the vague statement from the university on his time there. Although he is most likely fully aware of his condition, it often distresses patients to see themselves labelled in such emotionless, clinical words, their minds laid bare on a single piece of A4 paper.
Not that it would distress him, probably. I've started to believe nothing bothers him in the slightest.
I ignore his remark, pressing on.
"I want to know why you were fired." I say calmly, watching his face.
He appears thoughtful almost, rather than guarded and cautious as I thought he'd be. There are a number of suspicious 'incidents' that crop up on his file, and mostly he refuses to talk about them, becoming closed off if I even mention the years he spent at school, or with his grandmother, and since she's long dead we can't find anybody else who knew her at the time.
Not that I have much time to look, I guess.
"It explains why on the letter from the university. Or was I not supposed to read that?" He asks, raising an eyebrow. I don't say anything, playing the mute role that he normally fills, pretending to study the letter like I don't already know what it says.
"It says a student was injured during one of your demonstrations, it doesn't say how." I stare directly in his eyes, wishing I could see something there, something other than the cold indifference that I'm used to, yet nevertheless always disappoints me.
"Does it matter?" He leans back in the chair, already bored with the discussion.
Even stripped of his suit, wearing the orange jumpsuits of the other patients, his hair unruly, skin pale from the lack of natural sunlight and dark circles under his eyes from sleepless nights, he still commands the same authority I remember from the one time I met him before he was arrested, when he was interviewing me for a position at the Asylum.
He met a lot of prospective candidates, I doubt he'd remember me from that, and he's never brought it up.
But there's still that slight, irksome feeling that he's the one in charge, that he's pulling the strings and orchestrating this entire meeting.
I shake off the feeling, dragging my eyes away from his gaze.
"Yes it matters. It'll help me understand you better as a person."
He laughs at that. It's short and abruptly cut off, and completely devoid of humour, but it shocks me. He's never laughed in a session before. Smiled, yes. Patronised me, yes. But this cynical, dark laughter is new.
Perhaps we're finally getting somewhere.
"Dr. Moore, whatever you think, whatever you've read about in your little books, about people like me, people who are not normal, it doesn't matter. It doesn't change the fact that a person like you can never, ever understand a person like me." As he says this he leans forward slightly, his glare holding me across the table, and for a moment I'm paralysed.
"You're wrong." I manage to spit out after a few seconds have passed.
"Am I?" He looks at me questioningly, almost menacingly. I can actually feel my hands shaking, as I press them against the arms of the chair to quell it. It isn't fair that one person should be able to command so much authority, so much fear even whilst they are in a position of weakness.
It is fear. He controls our mind through our fear, and he always will.
"I can understand you. If you'll let me. I thought that was the point of these meetings," He cuts me off before I can continue.
"Of course. The "If you'll let me." trick. I should've seen that coming." He looks amused still, and I curse inwardly. Though I'd half-forgotten it, in one of the most basic chapters of my textbook, it teaches you about gaining the patients trust by letting them believe they are choosing to let you help them.
I choose my next words carefully, trying to forget every sentence I ever memorised to pass those stupid exams.
"I'm trying to help you. I don't want to see anybody locked up in this place for the rest of their life, not even you."
"Not even me? Wow." He rolls his eyes, glancing up at the ceiling almost as if he wishes he could escape the boring confinements of this stuffy room.
He looks back at me, the movement of his head jerky and sudden.
Then he leans across the table, and watches me intently.
"What do you fear?" He asks at last, all traces of a smile gone, but at last I can see something in his eyes, and what I can see is not good. It's the burning desire to know, to experiment, to hurt, to manipulate my mind for his research.
"I thought I was running this meeting?" I remark sharply, regretting the words as soon as they leave my mouth.
"Perhaps, then, you're not as in control as you thought?"
Our eyes are staring into each other's, my brown into his blue, it's like a battle of wills, and I'll lose.
I look away, and he leans back in his chair, satisfied.
"You're telling the truth, you do want to help me get better. You mean well."
I frown. He never compliments me. This just means he's not finished.
"Of course, that also means you're stupid. They'll never let me out. Surely you know that?"
I do. But I wanted him to have hope.
"It doesn't matter. We should get back to our discussion." I feel worn out. I really need that second cup of coffee, and I'm pleasantly surprised to discover we're almost done for today. Unfortunately that means I need to turn the conversation to the voice in his head.
"Have you been hearing him recently?" I ask, as indifferently as possible, as if I were asking whether he got a haircut, or went anywhere nice.
The smile fades, and quiet disapproval remains.
In the opinions of my superiors here, these are the most important questions I ask in these sessions. The questions about how he feels now. In a way, maybe they are. But they're not the ones that interest me. I want to know about his past, about what made him how he is now, and what it means for his future.
"The new medication you gave me seems to be working." He says at last, and by the slight slump of his shoulders I can tell he doesn't appreciate this. At last he's given something away in his body language. I'm desperate to take a note about it, but I don't want to let him know I've seen something.
"I only hear him in my dreams… When I let my guard down."
I nod. It's also the longest gap between medications, so it's only natural that the voice in his head should crop up when he's sleeping.
"In time, it will fade, and then we'll take you off for a while, and see if he's gone altogether."
I don't like referring to it as a 'him' though I know that in a way Scarecrow is as real as the man sitting before me, if perhaps not as dominant.
Jonathon Crane's alternate personality is a tricky one. I spoke to him once, and only because I asked. Crane told me it would take a great deal of mental weakness for him to fully lose control, and let the psychopath take over. The curious thing, indeed, is that Scarecrow seems to think a lot more about people than Crane. Where he is only concerned with research, and thinks very little of socialising, or indeed other people at all, the voice in his head disagrees. To my repulsion he even appeared to flirt with me when we spoke, which Crane apologised for lately, though seemed very unaffected by.
They get on, though, somehow, but it has to stop. The 'accidental' killings are a result of Scarecrow, not Crane, and if we can shut him out, we may just be on the path to recovery.
Not that he wants to hear it.
I suppose it could be like having a sibling you are very close to, who you have never been apart from for years, and then letting them fade away. I thought of losing my own little sister and winced. I couldn't let her go, not for anything.
"Is that all?" He asks after a long drawn out silence, and I can tell from the look on his face that I'm not going to get more out of him today.
"One more thing." I say, searching for a sheet of paper on his sleeping patterns and glancing at it.
"Are you still having problems sleeping?" I look thoughtfully at the reports over the past week, which seems to feature him waking up at one AM, three AM and five AM respectively, pacing for a few minutes and falling asleep again, before finally waking at eight.
"No." He lies, his face a calm mask of deception.
"Are you sure?" I ask, not wanting to call out his lie, but not willing to let it go that easily.
"You should know, you're holding your report on my night-time behaviour right now."
I look up, and blink once. Of course, he probably saw it when it was on the table.
"Well… You are then. You're still waking up periodically through the night." I consult the report one last time, scrutinizing his calm expression.
"With all due respect, Doctor, you asked if I had any problems sleeping, not if I woke up a lot during the night. Since I don't have any complaints with my sleeping pattern as it is now, I wouldn't call it a problem." I sigh, defeated, and push the paper with the others on the desk, resting my forehead in my hands and rubbing the back of my head where it aches. I must be dehydrated, I wish they'd bring in those damn cups already.
"Are you ok?" He asks, but not as you would if you actually cared, rather in the manner of somebody asking because that is what you're supposed to do.
"I'm fine. Talking to you messes with my head." I say, and again wish I hadn't let that slip. I generally make it a rule of mine not to reveal anything personal to my patients, especially things to do with my own mentality.
"Good." He says; a tiny hint of triumph in his voice because this was his plan all along, really, to confuse me.
"Well, on that note Mr. Crane, and since I have headache, I suppose we'd better finish-"
"Doctor." He cuts through my speech, his tone abruptly cold.
"What?" I say distractedly, sitting up straight again and wincing at the persistent throbbing in my skull.
"Doctor Crane." He states calmly.
I look up at him, and I don't know what to say.
"Fine, if you insist. Doctor Crane, I think we should leave it at that today." I say tetchily, standing up and going to buzz for the door.
I feel his hand close around my wrist, and my whole body jerks instinctively, but he keeps a hold on me, I look back at him, my mouth opened slightly, though to call for help or what I don't know.
He looks almost bemused at the expression on my face, and my eyes go to his hand, yet he still doesn't let go.
"I was just going to say thank you." He says, enjoying the look of confusion I give him.
Thank you? What alternate universe have I dropped into?
"And that… I look forward to the next time I see you, Miss Moore." At that he drops my wrist, taking a step back from me. It's obvious he didn't mean to distress me in anyway. Or maybe he did. Everything he does is a hint at something, but whether he's hinting at something or nothing at all is the thing I'm never sure of.
And yet, though I should perhaps trust him since I'm encouraging him to trust me, I don't turn my back on him as I press the button, summoning the men outside who escort him back to his cell.
I watch him as he disappears complacently down the stairs, seeming to all the world as the sanest person in this building.
He confuses me, that much is true. But in a way, and though I will never admit this to anyone, I like it. I like that he is a mystery, because it keeps me interested in the case.
If I didn't know him better, I'd think that he deliberately withheld information from me, to keep the meetings going. If he'd been cooperative they could have finished weeks ago, and he would've been transferred to a more experienced psychiatrist who, knowing his diagnosis and complete psychological history, would be able to prescribe him on a better course of treatment than I.
And deep inside, in the most shameful corners of my heart, I know that the day he walks out of this horrible, dingy room for the last time, I will have lost something important to me.