You, Doctor Martin, walk
from breakfast to madness.
-from You, Doctor Martin by Anne Sexton
…
The new patient was a wreck, even by Arkham's high standards of shattered sanity.
His pale, colorless eyes slid from side to side, their whites mottled and bloodshot from sleepless nights and frequent doses of sedatives too numerous to name. Straitjacketed as he was, he still twitched and trembled with the familiar electric fear, his nostrils flaring and contracting in equine panic. The veins in his neck were dark and distended with blood.
Jonathan Crane entered the room and seated himself across from the patient with a thin smile. The other man stiffened as if he'd pulled out a weapon instead. A surprisingly wise reflex.
The man was clearly weak, vacillating. Malleable. Sliding in and out of reality like a snake. In a single ironic phrase, he was exactly what the doctor had ordered.
Joseph L. Atherton may have murdered his wife and her parents last month, but whatever homicidal strength had possessed him in August had long since vanished. He was no longer the lethal maniac that the dark-suited prosecuting lawyers had made him out to be. Just a senseless, pitiful thing, suffering from anxiety and an unusually severe personality disorder, but bereft of humanity and the refuge that the possession of such a quality would offer under normal circumstances.
He was truly insane, unlike the ruffians that Jonathan had been—bribed into was the only real way to describe it, despite the unsavory connotations—breaking his back for in the courts during recent weeks.
As he settled himself, Jonathan felt the hard outline of the panic button under the table press against his kneecap, but ignored it. He had never felt any urge to use the button. Nor, he was pleased to note, had he even entertained the notion once in his career. A psychiatrist who fled his own patient was no doctor at all.
'Don't be afraid.' He hadn't been afraid since a warm day in spring, nineteen years ago.
Even if he had been able to feel fright anymore, Jonathan knew he had no need to fear even the most volatile of his patients. Given time and proper psychiatric treatment, any inmate could become docile and compliant. Jonathan had browbeaten a number of hardened criminals into respectful terror in his time, even before he'd been given the chemical means to do so.
The magnificent thing about professional psychiatry, he'd decided long ago in some anonymous lecture hall, was that one could tear apart the mind of a patient in the laughable name of science.
His wasn't a method promoted by any of the books or the studies, but it worked well for him. Even before he'd set foot in medical school, he'd cultivated his own secret ideals and rules and techniques, born of his own devising and arcane, radical knowledge gleaned from his books. He knew that his way was far better suited to him than anything his teachers could have provided. Even if it hadn't been superior to begin with, no dull professor's teachings could replicate the immense gratification he felt every time he sat down with his patients. By diverging from the beaten path, he was realizing his own power—the authority of intelligence mentioned by an irate science teacher to a principal years ago.
It had taken years to perfect and cultivate his games, but it was more than worth the wait. And now, the munificent League of Shadows was providing him with the material resources necessary to unleash his admittedly unusual approach to psychiatry and give it physical substance. His time was almost come.
But it would have to wait a little while longer; at the moment, Dr. Jonathan Crane was with a patient.
"Good morning, Mr. Atherton. Welcome to Arkham. How are we feeling?"
The man wet sallow lips, his tapping foot's nervous percussion slowing so he could respond. His taut, pallid skin stretched over the frail skull beneath. "G-good."
"How did you find breakfast?" He eyed Atherton over his glassed with stifled hunger.
Establishing a relationship was always a nice option with the weak ones. Jonathan had seen a hundred cases like Atherton's before. They were the ones who wouldn't lunge at the throat of anything that moved if they had a fleeting instant outside their straitjackets. The pathetic ones who entered the asylum with terrified eyes and mute panic. While Jonathan was confident of his ability when it came to handling those who were marked by fury, he preferred the fear. The fear drew him to those who felt it like the smell of blood.
The frightened patients would not doubt the friendship of a psychiatrist, whose powers in a mental hospital verged on the divine. No, they would never realize the darker intentions of such a friend until it was too late. Until the toxin swam in their veins and manipulated their minds in ways Jonathan had only dreamed of.
"Was all right."
"Good. Good. Is there anything you would like to talk about, Mr. Atherton? Before we begin?" He kept his tone lilting, expectant.
Emotions flickered like a slideshow across the vulnerable, moonlike face. Jonathan liked this transparency about his patients. They were possessed by a sordid, childlike honesty that pervaded everything they said and did. After all, there was no reason to hide anything here, in the heart of the city's seething lunacies and folly. It was such a benefit to his research.
And if they did lie to him—well, he'd proved to himself that such deceit was always short-lived in the face of careful and intensive therapy.
"No." Atherton's mouth sounded full of dust. He shook his head slowly, as if it pained him.
"Then we should probably get started."
"Y-yeah."
At first, Jonathan's questions were simple. Innocuous, really.
But then he stopped holding himself back. Slipped on his mask and—
…
An hour later, he returned to his office to transcribe the notes he'd made during the session onto his computer. He was barely able to suppress the thrilling, reckless excitement that was still throbbing in his bones. Playing at being God was giddy work.
The entire session had been captured on tape by the security cameras that diligently surveyed each room in the Asylum, but Jonathan had little reason to worry. Most of the lower-ranking guards of Arkham had been surprisingly willing to stay quiet about what they saw from the safety of the surveillance room for paltry sums of money, and his secrets were safe with them. Only that saint Valencia seemed aloof to the age-old monetary lure, but as long as the man's duties kept him far from where the tapes were kept, Jonathan couldn't care less.
He recorded notes of falsified observances, progress, prescriptions, and optimism for Atherton's recovery in a file that was easily accessible to any of the Arkham staff. His other, far more detailed observations he kept for himself, password-protected and securely locked away.
Finishing his two reports, he glanced at his schedule and found he had a fortuitous thirty-minute time opening before his next appointment. Half an hour seemed long enough to select an intern. He took the twelve applications from a filing cabinet and paged through them, mouth twisting with impatient distaste.
Through the interviews he'd anonymously conducted, he had been able to truly examine the candidates. And, as usual, he hadn't particularly enjoyed the results of his examination.
All of them were seedlings of the overconfident breed of idiots who had gleefully taken up the ancient and glorious post of Jonathan Crane's tormenters upon his respective arrivals at college and medical school. The usual self-centered college grads, only a few years younger than himself and fresh from prestigious liberal arts schools, convinced that their parents' money trumped all of the complications their extravagant and carefree lives would provide.
Disgusted, Jonathan resisted the base and rather unprofessional urge to send all twelve portfolios through the nearby shredder.
Every year, the same thing. He'd hire another mindless, bootlicking intern to fetch his coffee and make phone calls. The only small pleasure to be sapped from the entire affair was found in giving them a few good—but, sadly, always insipid—scares before they frolicked off to medical school.
Well, there was another small joy to be found, albeit even more fleeting: asking the bright-eyed young men and women his perennial "nature of evil" question. In their arrogance, they believed that they had to provide an answer, however preposterous, to the question many experienced doctors had struggled with for ages. They didn't even pause to consider that there was no true answer.
No, they just barreled on ahead like irreverent freight trains, each coming up with a more implausible answer than the last. It was often all he could do just to keep from chortling aloud as they gibbered on about psychosis and the results of recent studies.
Who was it that had foiled his fun this year? Intrigued, he riffled through the papers until he came to the name that matched his tantalizingly vague memory.
Ah, her. She'd been the only one to actually admit her ignorance. First step in the right direction, in his opinion.
Curious, he tried to recall the interview in question. Despite its appealing originality, the memory was three days old and beginning to stale. But he did remember a dark, austere appearance and awkward silence after awkward silence. There was barely concealed frustration on her part; the usual fiendish delight on his. It had been a difficult Monday for him, if he recalled correctly, and he'd been particularly insensitive and brutal behind his mask of secrecy.
She'd left flustered and clearly dismayed, but not before giving him a slight flash of a fire that had otherwise been stifled during the half-hour interview.
'Arkham is a far cry from a high school in New Hampshire, you must realize,' he'd said, unable to rein in his scorn.
If she'd been like any of the other sycophants applying for the job, she would have submitted without a word, but instead, she'd snapped back, 'I am quite aware of the contrast.' As if her chance at the internship hadn't been on the line.
The memory of one defiant woman became another. Dark hair became light; gawky height became petite, fragile. A severe, effortless beauty became mere plainness. Intense dark eyes softened, weakened to a gentle brown. Different yet similar.
Suppressing a groan, he took his glasses off and ground the flats of his palms into his tight-shut eyes, as if it would take the thoughts away, the once-dormant thoughts that now rose to beat at the door of his consciousness.
Amy.
He was stronger now, he knew it. Those thoughts were solidly confined to a corner of his mind that he seldom cared to frequent. He had no desire to return to a time when he'd been prisoner to a loveless family and a scapegoat scarecrow to his peers. To a place where every day had been gray and sunless and full of pain. He didn't want to remember being weak.
Years had gone by and he'd expelled his frailties from himself, one at a time, never allowing himself to feel their loss. He'd almost forgotten the day when Amy Lancaster had sworn before her insensitive employer to help him, to save the nervous, gawky child he'd been.
Jonathan skimmed the application without really pausing to examine it, knowing he was merely buying himself time to think. Then he surveyed the other applications with a feline contempt. Perhaps—yes. Perhaps—
A knock at the door cut his meticulous thought process short.
"Enter," he called, stopping himself from barking the word in annoyance. Barely—the order still tasted of impatience as he spoke it.
The man who entered then also wore the immaculate white coat of an Arkham doctor, but his didn't hang loose on a gaunt frame as Jonathan's did. The garment fit neatly and without wrinkle over broad shoulders and a lean but muscular body, in a way that such an unappealing and symbolically bleak article of clothing should have been unable to do.
Jonathan's eyes narrowed, almost imperceptibly. He donned his glasses once more to disguise the instinctive movement.
"Good morning, Dr. Laramie." He slowly shepherded the papers before him into a pile, placing hers on top, looking up at the ruddy-haired psychiatrist with a fiercely territorial silence.
"Morning, Jonathan," Mike Laramie replied affably, shutting the door behind him. "How was Atherton?"
"Still somewhat of a closed book to me, I'm afraid." He's my patient. Inquire after him or any of my charges again and I'll rip out your throat.
"You've been working with a lot of the inmates lately. Personally, I like to stick with five or six at the most. Helps me concentrate my efforts. You're seeing—what, ten, eleven? Each day? Aren't you exhausted?"
"Not particularly."
"Well, I could take over on Atherton, if you—"
"Oh, no, no. I couldn't inconvenience you like that. I'm quite capable of handling this sort of case. Don't go out of your way."
Did that last courteous declination sound like the heartfelt order he intended it to be?
"All right, then." The other man shrugged as if it were of no consequence. As if he hadn't been angling for control of another of Jonathan's inmates, just as he had a dozen times before. "Just dropping by to remind you about the Evening at the Courtyard on the twenty-first. Got it under control?"
"Yes. Of course." His stomach coiled in chilling nausea. If there were ever something he detested above all else at the moment, it would be the planning of that accursed annual charity event for Arkham and the warped stew of corruption popularly known as the Gotham City Police Department. Gathering dust on the dark sidelines as Laramie expertly worked the crowds of rich and famous was not exactly Jonathan's ideal way of spending an evening.
"Well, that's all. Take care." There was an anxious beat as Mike waited for a similarly considerate response.
But, finding none, he was soon compelled to leave.
Jonathan glanced at the clock. Ten minutes. He looked down at the foremost application one more time. That ape Laramie may have been the one to refer her to the internship, but she seemed the most bizarre choice he'd made in years.
Picking up his phone, Jonathan dialed the number printed on the application and waited.
"Hi, this is Darcy's apartment. Leave a message and I'll call you."
Jonathan hesitated, suddenly apprehensive, as if he were making a mistake. But the well-worn and sickeningly tepid words came too easily to his lips.
"Hello, Ms. Crandell, this is Dr. Jonathan Crane of Arkham Asylum. I am calling to congratulate you on a successful interview and to inform you that you have been selected to be an intern at the Asylum for the duration of this year. I await your timely response and look forward to discussing the responsibilities and prerequisites of this position in detail…"
Author's Note
I had the pleasure of seeing Red Eye not once but twice this week. I'm not going to give anything away, but I think that Red Eye and Batman Begins were the two best movies in this summer's slough of awful sequels and cheap remakes. Cillian's got that magic touch, I suppose. Ok, ok, March of the Penguins was very cute, but come on…who's hotter, a bunch of waddling, flightless birds or a blue-eyed Irishman with a penchant for playing sexy bad guys? Anyway, onto your reviews… I'll try to put dancing images of Jonathan and Jackson aside long enough to respond in a coherent manner.
Bubbles – As pleased as I am with the general reader opinion of Darcy, it's great to know my Crane is doing well too. Thanks for reading!
Dot – It's always a great reassurance to my poor, beleaguered heart to hear from my readers that Darcy isn't a Mary Sue. Here's the chapter you wanted! Hope you enjoyed.
hornofgondor2 – Ah, the Cillian obsession. I think we all have something of a crazy love for the poor man to read (or in my case, write) this story. :-)
ILoveScarecrow – First off, I adore your screen name. It's awesome. Thanks for your kind words.
Mizamour – You definitely win the award for Longest Review this week! I promise to check out Creatures of the Night when I have a relaxed hour or two to myself. If it garners long reviews, it must be something. :-)
Morgan – Now that I really think about it, you're right: Crane does seem to be a bit of a closet 'rougher.' All those nasty suppressed emotions can't be good, heehee. I'm sure Darcy would let him, er, 'un-suppress' those feelings. Rome is the sex, by the way. I went there last summer.
Rachel – (blush) Thank you so, so much. That was like the best review I've ever received. As for your question about how Amy would be strong for Jonathan yet break before Ian Worth's rage: don't all our idols have flaws and weaknesses? I thought it would shatter Jonathan all the more to see his protector wilt in the face of fear. But that's just my byzantine reasoning, of course. Again, thank you. I hope you stay tuned—you're already one of my favorite readers.
The Nth Degree – Thanks! By the way, I really enjoyed your fic, Solitude; I highly recommend it to everyone else.
Valse De La Luna – (hugs Valse back) Thank you! I'm so glad you like the story and I hope you continue to read and review. I need fabulous writers like you to keep my whimsies grounded! ;-D
Winged Seraph – Mrs. Courtney Crandell was an absolute pleasure to create. Glad you liked her.
And for those of you (if any) who came to this story after reading my Lucky Night fic, I love you guys for reading thus far! I'll love you more if you review, however, hehehe. Hope all of you enjoy your weekend. Let's go make Red Eye the number one movie in America! Good God, I can't believe I just wrote that. I am obsessed… Crap!
Love always,
Blodeuedd
p.s. All I need are 2 more paltry reviews before I'm up to 40! Then I can brag that I received 10 for every chapter. Not true, obviously, but a cool thought. This story has garnered more reviews in a shorter amount of time than any of my other fics. Enormous thanks and hugs to everyone!