"Nothing like them, that's what I said," She started to retort when he cut her off.
"No, you said that- never mind, continue," He caught himself when he realized that arguing with the patient apparently wasn't how it was supposed to be done. She shot him a look before sighing huffily and rolling her eyes.
"See, this is why you creatures aren't even worth my time," She waved her arm absent-mindedly and avoided his clairvoyant gaze. "My precious plants and I should eradicate you miserable monsters from this beautiful, natural world," she said with an intense softness in her voice as she traced one of the vines on her arms with a slender finger. He nodded slowly and glanced down at his notes, scribbling something down quickly.
"Well… So, since we aren't worth your time, you've spent all YOUR time poisoning our male doctors and playing chicken with the female ones," He summarized her recent behaviour as he pushed his glasses up. She glared back at him, her stunning beauty still evident through the furrowed brows and the pouting lips.
"I suppose this is why YOU'RE the doctor, and not me," She said, flipping her hair and crossing her arms in an indignant way. Crane was pretty sure her legs were crossed under the table, as well, but he said nothing and allowed her to continue. "I wouldn't probe people with pointless questions, trying to get into their heads. The thing is, I don't care about people," She shrugged and looked out the window behind her longingly. "I can hear my babies suffering out there; your men aren't taking very good care of them at all. They're all I care about, my children," She said, looking at him sideways. He blinked once and tilted his head slightly.
"Only plants. No man, like Dr. Young said," He said, removing his legs from the edge of the table and leaning forward slightly. At first, he thought Young was kidding; until quite recently, he thought that this obsession with plants was just an extreme case of hippy syndrome, but the more she talked about it and her very tone indicated that she meant every word she said. For some reason, this surprised him.
"You've been talking to Young behind my back?" She snapped, her hair seeming to flare up when her voice rose. "What nasty rumours has she been spreading about me, that I'm a whore, that I refused to cooperate with the other doctors?" She hissed. "That woman is evil, I hear her when she destroys life, especially my poor babies," She lamented, her tone going from angry to sorrowful. "That woman's evil."
This part especially interested Crane. Again, it was because of her tone. She didn't sound like Harley Quinn or any other female inmate in Arkham Asylum - they all seemed to complain about Dr. Young in similar fashions, all little nips at her for various reasons. However, once again, Ivy sounded different than the rest of them; her tone was more innocent, somehow cleaner and more honest. He furrowed his own brow and sat back in his chair, thinking too furiously to reply to her immediately. The pinpoint was the way she spoke of the plants. It wasn't a possessive sort of obsession, like Harley talking about her love, The Joker, and it didn't sound entertaining and thrilling, like when Edward scrawled threatening messages all over the walls of a medical examination room. No, this sounded more like a genuine concern for something extremely close and precious to Ivy - almost like the plants really WERE her children.
When he finally broke out of his brief thoughts, he leaned forward, seized the clipboard and pen from the table, and immediately jotted down his notes. "Evil, you say?" He responded in more of a mutter than a confirmation question. He looked up at her to find her legs crossed and supporting her head on her arm that rested its elbow on her leg. She glanced over at him and nodded slowly. "That's very interesting," He said, stuffing the pen into his front pocket and getting to his feet unsurely, as if he were dazed about something that happened.
"Wait, wait," She said quickly, standing up herself. Instinctively, Crane reached behind himself and grabbed the doorknob as she stood, just in case she made a move toward him. "Wait, you aren't leaving already, are you?" She asked, noticing his movement and sat back down. She looked up at him, her eyes full of a hidden longing. He looked back down at her and saw something that he seemed to have missed before… Was that remorse? He also noted that when he reached for the door, she backed down and submitted. He quirked an eyebrow and leaned his head back, his glasses sliding back up onto his nose.
"Yes, I'm afraid," He responded calmly, relaxing his position slightly. "I assure you though, we aren't through yet," He said authoritatively, remembering what their relationship was. "Yes, we have a lot to go through."
She opened her mouth and withdrew breath as if about to say something, but when nothing came out, she shut her mouth and looked away from him. "I guess… I'll let you deal with me tomorrow," She said slowly. "Only because playing with you will be twice as fun because you're playing hard-to-get," She said, biting her lower lip and glancing at him with yet another new emotion, a sort of sensual eagerness. Crane sighed softly and managed one more smile before bidding her good day and leaving the room with the fuchsia tinted windows. He reached into his pocket and pressed the record button on his voice recorder again, stopping the recorder.
"I'm done with her for today," He said to the two guards that stood on either side of the cell door. As he walked away from her cell, he brushed some loose strands of hair out of his face and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose properly. He stopped down the middle of a hallway and skimmed over his notes, but not really paying attention to them.
I'm nothing like them, I'm nothing like them, I'm nothing like them… The words imprinted themselves on the inside of his head and he realized, as he started an unsteady amble back to his office, that while he could say that, she could just as easily say that, as well.