A/N: Not incredibly proud of this chapter, eek. Hoping I'll get into the swing of this in the next few. Oh well. Hey, actual dialogue! Remember to R&R – every time you don't review, Loboto makes puppy soup. Do you want that? No. No you don't.

Disclaimers: see first chapter.


When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane – Herman Hesse

Sasha is the first one to visit him.

It takes them little over a month to determine he's not dangerous, to find just the right amount of power for his Psychic Suppressor Device (such a fancy name for such an ugly helmet), a month to find a cell that's nice and isolated. Everyone knew the Psychonauts weren't exactly in their prime, but… a month?

It's lucky, then, that Sasha the sort who could wait a month. It helped him, even – he hid behind statistics for a while, toyed with denial, but after a month he even begun to accept it. Now he's calm, mentally prepared, the usual stoicism as the orderly leads him down the corridors to where he can visit.

Prepared or not, it doesn't stop his stomach from clenching as he enters the room and actually sees him there huddled in the corner. The bulky Psychic Suppressor helmet was traded in for a more discrete strip of purplish material that encircles the boy's head, right where his goggles should have been, the straitjacket strangely baggy around his small frame. They closed the door behind the German and the inmate looked up slightly, then away. Sasha prepared himself, took a deep breath, and-

"…Sasha?" The boy did a double take and turned fully to face the taller man. "S-sasha!"

"Razputin," he answered a little hesitantly as Raz began to move closer. "How… are you feeling?"

"Well, they think I'm crazy." Cue trademarked grin. "Trying to convince me I'm in an asylum. Can't be!" Sasha watched him, trying to think, now clinging to that grim hope that just maybe… Raz mistook it for interest. "I've been to an asylum, remember? Not enough rats here. Too much light. So it can't be!"

There was that confidence in the voice that warms Sasha Nein as he takes a seat. His mind was still occupied when the boy began to speak again.

"Besides, I'm not crazy. Trying to convince me I'm in an asylum and I'm not even crazy! Ha!" He chuckled, voice taking on a slightly crazed edge that causes the cold 'Naut to frown slightly. Raz's laughter began to slow, began to fade, and he looked up at his mentor with a darkening face. "…Right? Right, Sasha?"

"Razptu-" He tried to speak but suddenly Raz began to babble, a frenzied spark in his eyes.

"Right! Of course not. They try to convince me I'm crazy, ha ha, that I'm paranoid, but no! Can't be." He looked away and shuddered slightly. "I've seen paranoid, seen their minds and no no, I'm not crazy. They try to make me think I'm paranoid, trying to make a milkman out of me… Ha ha…."

He glanced up at Sasha, who had leaned forward and placed his hand on his chin in concern.

"Razputin…" After saying it so many times today, the name still leaves a strange taste on his tongue. "Can you… What do you remember?"

The inmate looked up at him, terrified, before slipping into an uneasy grin. "What… What do you mean, Sa- I mean, err, uh, Agent Nein?" He frowned. "I remember plenty of things. You know – Whispering Rock, sure, the circus, missions-"

"You know what I mean." Sasha said, giving a slight sigh. Raz frowned again and looked away.

"I remember… mmm…" he took a deep breath and closed his eyes, "Just a usual mission. We had to sneak into a warehouse, I went first – I was always best at that stuff…" He looked up and Sasha gave him an encouraging nod. "It was easy, real easy. Acrobatics did it just fine, and… then it… didn't go so well. Went south, and they…"

He was beginning to shake, eyes closed tight as he was straining to remember. Without knowing it, Sasha leaned forward slightly, spouting off the occasional "Yes? Yes?" as the boy kept speaking.

"Separated us – tried to… get info… a-and…" His shaking had become more and more pronounced and he was now staring dumbly into space, eyes darting around as if watching something that wasn't there. Sasha wanted to push, wanted to try just a little harder – because maybe, just maybe, if Raz could locate what had… left him like this, he could conquer it. But the shaking had become so bad and the orderly was moving toward the room. Too far, Nein, something in the back of his mind warned. Too far indeed, he answered.

"Razputin," he said, trying to wake the boy. He placed a hand on his shoulder and shook him. "Razputin!"

He snapped out of it, shaking his head as if to shake off the lurking thoughts. "I… I'm sorry, I can't."

"It's alright." He pushed his sunglasses further up his nose and stood, not meeting the boy's eyes. He paused as if to speak and Raz stared up at him expectantly, but he couldn't. Just like Raz could not face what had happened, he could not face the fact that his protégé was just too far gone.

As he began to walk away, he heard the desperate cries of the inmate.

"Agent Nein, this is just s dream, right?" A stream of nervous laughter echoed in the cell, "I'm not crazy, right?

"Agent Nein?" Sasha kept walking. "Agent Nein? Agent Nein! Sasha! Sasha!

"Don't leave me here, Sasha. Please, Sasha. Sasha!" The cries began to die down the further away he got.

And as soon as Agent Nein was outside the asylum, he lit a cigarette and began to smoke with shaking hands.