Apprentice
Disclaimer: This is just for fun and to improve my writing skills. HELPFUL CRITICISM is appreciated, welcomed, and responded to. FLAMES will be ignored.
Chapter Three
The next session for her one time mentor was in two weeks. This gave Alondra barely any time to put her thoughts together and to convince the board that was in charge of Arkham that yes, she was fine and that yes, she could still continue on.
Part of her had wanted to snap at them, to tell them that no matter what happened, nothing short of the Joker getting out and threatening her life would cause Alondra to quit or fail at the job that she had accepted. It wasn't that hard to read the fine print scattered throughout the contract that they had given her.
Sighing, Alondra looked at the complete file of her one time mentor and one time friend. It was surprisingly hard for her to put aside the image she had of Jonathan Crane, the University teacher that went out of his way to make sure she was safe after having stumbled upon an incident between her and a few of her peers.
Perhaps that was the reason right there; pity.
No, that wasn't right; Jonathan Crane was not one to pity another person. The man might understand the situation, but he would not pity the person. No matter what happened, he would not pity anyone, such was the lesson that Alondra had learned quickly during the time that he had talked with her outside of being just a mentor but as a friend.
Shaking her head like a wet dog, Alondra rubbed her eyes and blinked a few times before going back to the file. In this job there was no time for personal feelings to get in the way, especially not when they could end up potentially dangerous. Her little known apprenticeship under Professor Crane was extremely personal and what was once the highlight of her life was now biting her in the ass in her choice of career.
She had already wasted one week thinking about what had happened in that interview room (interrogation room was more like it, really) and Alondra was all too aware of the vultures that were her co-workers that was just waiting for her to slip up, for her to make a mistake that would cost her the interaction that she would need in order to move on in life. Never in all the years of bitterly dreaming about working in Arkham did Alondra think that she would have to interview her own mentor, the one that had given her the idea, the dream of being a psychiatrist in the first place.
After it happened, Alondra had been all but sure of Jonathan being disappointed in the fact that she had been such easy prey after all that he had done for her. But now? No, now it was her job to cure him of insanity.
It would be another two weeks before they would be able to see Child again.
Two more weeks of thinking over their first conversation in six years.
Two more weeks of dealing with Joker and the other Rogues.
But most importantly, two more weeks before they could talk with Child again.
Out of all the possible therapists the Rogues were expecting Crane and Scarecrow to get, no one, not even Riddler, had expected for him to get his one time student who might as well have been his apprentice. When he had first gotten back from the interview last week, the Rogues had bombarded them with questions like "What was the therapist like? Just like the others, right?", "What'd you do? Threaten the naïve idiot?", or "Are you all right? You seem a bit…dull."
In his befuddled state of being, Crane had accidentally let it slip that his one-time student was his new psychiatrist.
It wasn't every day that an inmate of Arkham became a patient to their former student. As such, Child was a topic of interest that the Rogues kept pursuing. Though the Joker was having a field day with all the possible things he could do to Child. Before, it had never been hard to feign indifference of boredom with the Joker's elaborate schemes and death threats on the Orderlies and doctors that Arkham seemed to have an innumerable amount of. However, his plans for Child were pushing the limit of his tolerance and they all knew it.
"Perhaps I'll hang her upside down over a tall building with a detonator and make Batsy choose between the city and one silly little girl," Joker was on a roll with his many plans on the girl that Scarecrow seemed to have been attached to 'once upon a time'. There wasn't much that the onetime psychiatrist could do to him, well, not while his fear toxins were still locked up anyway. To him, baiting Scarecrow was fun, especially since it was the topic of this 'Child' that was finally making Crane pay attention to what he was saying.
This 'Child' must be fairly interesting then, if this was the type of reaction Joker could get by just threatening to kill the kid. It made him wonder what dear old Johnny boy would do if he actually went ahead with some of his threats.
For the first time in the Rogue Gallery's memories, someone that wasn't Batman was getting under Scarecrow's skin.
Running through the halls, Alondra slid around a few corners as she made her way to the scene with a few sedatives that she had managed to grab. A fight between two patients had broken out and as a doctor within Arkham's walls; it was her responsibility to provide treatment of any sort.
Rounding the last corner, she had to blink in shock (the blink was the only sign of her surprise and only to those that knew her). Joker and Crane were being separated while the other patients were being escorted back to their cell. Dashing forward, she yanked the cap off of the needle and stabbed it into the thrashing Joker's arm before injecting it. While it might sound easy, it was far from it. Five guards were having a hard time restraining the man, let alone keeping his arm still enough for her to safely sedate the Joker.
Jerking the needle out, Alondra quickly capped it before pulling out another one and repeating with Crane. This was the first time she had seen her one-time mentor and present day patient so…so determined? Furious? Her blood went cold at the mere look on his face when he noticed just who it was that had jabbed his arm with a needle full of sedatives.
"I'm doing my job," was what she wanted to say, but that would just give away the fact that the guards would know that something was up between her and Crane and they would take that as a sign that something personal was growing between them and would quickly assign Crane to another psychiatrist while giving her another patient that would, hopefully, not do her any harm until Alondra gained more experience to deal with the more violent patients.
Withdrawing the needle, she carefully capped it. Joker was already being taken to an isolation room where they had plenty of straitjackets waiting to be used. No doubt Crane would suffer the same fate. Looking at the object of her thoughts, she made sure to keep her face blank. "You and I will be talking later about this," Alondra muttered as she watched as the sedatives took affect and he was hauled off down the same hallway as the Joker. Sighing, Alondra ran a hand through her hair. First month in Arkham and already I'm dealing with fights. Lovely.
