am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.
-from The Rain by Robert Creeley
…
It took three and a half days to fully organize the office of Dr. Jonathan Crane.
The task was every inch as demeaning and arduous as he'd intended it to be. Learning the layout of the office alone had taken an hour, with all its labeled drawers and complexities, and that preliminary exploration had proven to be the most exciting part so far.
At four-thirty sharp on the first day, he returned as promised, standing like a dark, rail-thin line of ink against his office's white walls. Darcy was absorbed in double-checking her progress with the first filing cabinet; she barely heard the door open and close.
"Well?"
She looked up at the simple query, hands poised and pale over the folders. "It seems to be going pretty smoothly," she said, managing a cheerful smile as bright and artificial as the lighting overhead.
His dry lips mirrored the smile, but seemingly more out of wicked entertainment rather than the belief that she was making progress. "You are free to go at five, Ms. Crandell. But…" he trailed off, looking at his newly tidy desk and the half-completed filing cabinet, the first in a row of six. "…you may want to stay around for a while to advance to a more satisfactory point. The Asylum closes its doors for the night at eight. For most of us, anyway."
He took a few folders from a drawer and strode off in his maddeningly lordly manner. Despite her exasperation, she had enough common sense to wait until he was gone before the teeth-grinding and mental tantrums resumed.
The week progressed, and she spent unbroken stretches of time in the cramped room, alphabetizing, sorting, filing, labeling. At times, she simply wanted to throw the papers and files aside and sob like a child, but she refused to shed a tear in his domain. She was convinced that he would be able to sniff out the least physical sign of despair, and worked almost to distraction to maintain her composure even outside of his presence.
By the end of the third day, she was ready to be committed herself. She crawled home to her apartment, sick and spent. Her nights were weary and dreamless, spent only seeing white sheets of paper and Crane's indecipherable, abbreviated writing each time she closed her trembling eyes.
Dr. Crane himself was often absent from the office, spending his mornings and many of his afternoons at the Gotham City courthouse. He rarely had a sneering word for Darcy beyond that conversation on the first day; she almost felt cheated by his indifference.
It took an eternity, but by noon on the fourth day, the office was neatly in order. She had barely returned from a quiet celebratory lunch before he'd come to present her with her next project.
"Nicely done, Ms. Crandell," he said, adjusting his steely glasses to examine his carefully arranged shelves of books.
He paused to brush some dust off the nearest shelf. Darcy bristled as if struck; had he expected her to dust and mop?
"Nicely done," he repeated tonelessly, turning away from the bookshelves, "Now that you've acquainted yourself with my office, you may begin work on the charity event." He spoke as if granting her a privilege, but the last two words were carefully enunciated, as if he'd have liked to chop them up with his teeth. "The phone book, as you must have learned by now, is kept in the top left-hand drawer of my desk, and the event's overview and typical agenda can be found somewhere nearby. Both will prove useful. I will be available at twelve and four-thirty if you have need of my assistance, but I'd prefer to remain removed from this as much as possible."
Darcy stared at him. He merely nodded as if her gape were completely justified and left the room.
…
Mike Laramie paid the office a visit a week later. She was so caught up in squabbling over vinaigrette that she never even saw him enter.
"Yes. Yes, I'm sure the reduced-fat is delicious, but no—no thank you. I'd like the Italian, the Chinese Ginger, the—exactly. Just as I initially ordered. Thank you." She hurried to scribble down the price and details of her progress, still huddled over her work. "Thank you. Yes, by four p.m., please. On the twenty-first. Bye."
Sighing, she hung up the phone and ran her shaky fingers through her frail, loose dark hair. Today, to further corroborate her image of imperturbable repose, she'd taken the gamble of dispensing with the severe formality of her usual chignon and—after much laboring in front of the mirror early that morning—her hair was hanging glossy and straight to her shoulder blades. So she at least had the pretense of being totally at ease in her overwhelming new environment.
"He's managed to pin the Evening at the Courtyard on you, huh?"
Was Crane back early? Darcy's blood froze, mortified by the thought of being caught in such an empty moment. Her eyes flew up to meet his.
"Oh—Mike." Her breathing leveled but remained slightly rough.
"Sorry, Darce." Mike raised his hands, almost in surrender. "We're a little jumpy today, aren't we?"
"Sorry," she echoed vaguely, "A-a little wound-up, yeah."
He smiled, flashing like the noon sun on water. "It happens around here. It's okay."
"Mike?" She blurted, unable to stop herself.
"Yeah?"
"What happened to your eyebrow? Your left."
His hand went up to his russet brow. A white scar lanced across it, leaving a thin line where no hair had grown back. The jaunty irregularity only heightened his raffish handsomeness.
"Oh, my eyebrow. A few months ago, a new patient got hold of a switchblade somehow on the ride home from court and went crazy the minute he set foot in here. Took two doctors, including me, and three guards to get it out of his hands. Long story short, he slashed open my head in the process. It's no big deal," he remarked lightly, seeing her expression, "Arkham marks everyone at some point or another. I'm lucky, actually, compared to some of the people here. Dr. Cruz got a nasty old cut on his arm from the time that Lucas tried to throw himself out a window, and Agnes still has the bruises from when one of her patients got hold of an orderly's baton. I think Ichabod here's the only one who's still unscathed…"
"Ichabod—who?"
Mike's infectious smile widened, his mischievous blue eyes alight with the answer.
"Oh, Mike. Be nice."
Ignoring her disapproval, he leaned in conspiratorially, his voice a silky, playful whisper. "Come on…you've thought of it. At least once, right? Admit it. 'Crane'…the name…the walk—"
She was still not amused. "That's just immature, Mike."
He shook his head, his expression refusing to sober, ruddy with suppressed mirth. "So, graduated from Dartmouth this spring?"
"Uh, yes." Now that the opportunity for censure had disappeared, Darcy tried to swallow her agitated nostalgia, but it lodged like a stone in her throat. She busied herself in toying nervously with the nearby computer mouse.
"And you got the internship—congrats. Knew you would. Crane's nasty, but you're irresistible. You'll do well here."
She pushed the mouse away, unable to hold herself back. "Anything else you here for besides talk, Dr. Laramie?" She forced out, unable to get the brusqueness out of her tone.
He saw the hostility in her face and eased up. "Actually, yes. Do you know where the file of one Kenneth Carr would be? I think he's suffering from—"
"I do." Damned if she didn't know every corner of the office by memory. She stood and went to the row of filing cabinets, flicking through cream-colored folders until she found the name. "Here you go." She placed the file in his outstretched hands.
The hands were something that she couldn't stop staring at. The hands that had held hers under sky, under leaves, under stars, under water. Under fireworks, during an Independence Day celebration in Hanover two years ago, where he'd given her a firework of her own to sparkle on her finger. She'd said yes and wept with happiness, but later the firework had cooled to a dull, colorless ember when she'd wrenched it off her hand and flung it away—
"—Darcy? I said thanks."
She realized she was still gripping the file tightly and let go. He watched her wavering face, and he was suddenly grave and tender and vigilant when he spoke again.
"You're taking things too seriously, Darce. Calm down."
"Maybe," she admitted in a broken voice, sagging back down into the chair, resisting the urge to bury her face in her hands while he was in front of her.
"Hair looks nice though."
"Um—thanks."
"Life's been a little rough for me, too," Mike remarked sympathetically, thumbing the file. "Arkham's getting its fingers in politics. People are starting to think that the two new patients that Icha—uh, Crane brought in from the trials are sane. And that this defendant he's testifying for at the moment, Zsasz, is sane too. Just the other night I got a call from some assistant D.A. who seemed hell-bent on getting things straight."
"Oh, he wouldn't," she breathed. Vindictively sadistic or not, Dr. Crane seemed to work as if his life depended on it—he couldn't be as corrupt as most of Gotham. Something in her wouldn't let her believe it, but whether it was out of genuine sympathy for the man or stolid refusal to believe she was working for a corrupt superior, she couldn't tell.
Mike shrugged, expression thoughtful. "I don't know for sure either. But it's bothering me that rumors like this are being spread about the Asylum's director—and its most qualified psychiatrist to boot—and I'm curious to find out why."
"I don't think he's like that, Mike. Maybe they're wrong."
His face darkened. "I know, I know; I didn't say he was. –So hey, going to this fall soiree he's set you to work on?"
"I-I don't know. I might be too busy."
"Come on," he coaxed, mischievous again, "Think of it as a chance to examine the bandwagon mentality of Gotham's elite. A psych project."
Darcy smiled despite herself, but remained firm. "I'm just an intern. I'm probably not—"
"You're not 'just an intern' if I drive you."
She looked up at him, surprised to her core. Everything in her told her to be cold and refuse her former fiancé one last chance.
"—Sure," she blurted without thinking, instantly feeling as if she'd just electrocuted herself.
"Hey, it's just a ride. Nothing else."
"I suppose." She stared up numbly, caught in the headlights of him.
"Well…I'll be seeing you around this madhouse, won't I?"
"You will, I suppose." She relaxed a little, enough to loosen her shoulders out of their tense knots as he turned to go.
"Ms. Crandell?"
She nearly toppled out of the chair. Dr. Crane stood in the doorway—he had so seamlessly made himself a part of his office that there was no way of telling how long he'd been standing there. His cool, heavy-lidded disapproval didn't flicker for an instant when Mike turned to face him and condemned himself as an accomplice.
"Dr. Laramie."
"Hi, Jonathan. I was just picking up Carr's file, like you asked. Trial get out early?"
Mike might as well have not spoken for all the effect his merry remark had on Crane's pale, fine-boned face.
"You of all people should be above petty fraternization. Both of you have work to attend to." His clear, resonant voice put ice to shame, but Darcy could tell that something external to the situation was bothering him beneath his frozen demeanor. The fastidious appearance was not so fastidious, the long fingers that gripped the briefcase were white at the knuckles, the brilliant blue eyes were dull and seemed to see through both of them. She knew Mike, trained doctor as he was, didn't see it. He wouldn't have deigned to see it.
"Yes, work," Mike agreed undauntedly, folder falling to his side. "Have an appointment with Dan Murray in ten minutes or so. See you both later." He left, taking the office's last vestiges of warmth with him.
Like a chagrined child, Darcy found herself avoiding Crane's gaze. But his distant attitude remained; instead of rebuking her any further, he gathered up some new papers from his inbox and placed them soundlessly in his briefcase. His movements were so guarded and careful that she didn't notice the sadness in them until the door closed behind him once more.
…
"He's already asked you out?" Sheila's voice rose in a sharp yelp. "What is he thinking, doing something like that? I never thought—when is it? The twenty-first? That's only—let's see—five days away, but I'll see if I can get myself assigned to cover it."
"Oh, god. Sheila, the last thing I want is a story on it in the Times. I don't even know why I said yes."
Darcy frowned at the pot of discouragingly tepid tomato soup sitting on the antediluvian stovetop, then moved the phone to a more comfortable spot so she could stir with one hand.
"I'm so surprised you two are back together," Sheila muttered, mostly to herself. Darcy could almost see her friend pacing her apartment floor in vigorous obsession.
"Look, it's nothing. Even he said so."
"'Nothing'? Ha! Look, I would know. I've been covering stuff about him in my column for months—Dr. Mike Laramie is one of the most eligible bachelors in Gotham City. He might even be picked as the new director of the Asylum next year. He's done a lot for Arkham and the Narrows in two years: raised funding and awareness, met with the CEOs of several—"
"I get it. Thank you, Sheila. My question is—is it okay? To be doing this?"
She might as well have been asking if the sky were blue.
"Yes! It's darling. Totally acceptable. Oh, and speaking of eligible bachelors—you must have heard by now—Darce, Bruce Wayne's back."
"You're kidding." The spoon fell into the lukewarm soup with a plop. "The Bruce Wayne?"
"None other."
"I can't believe it."
"Believe it."
"Do you remember when all the papers were going on about how he'd left Princeton and disappeared after showing up at the trial—god, I forget the name of the man who killed his parents. But do you remember? We cut out all his pictures from the newspaper and were convinced that we'd be the ones to find—"
"Be the ones to find him! Yes! And I beat you in a race to the park to see who would marry him! We were seventeen, right? Were we lacking in maturity or what?" Sheila's delighted laughter filled her ears. "So, is there any chance that you could invite him to this event you're planning? You know, for his grand return to society?" A note of girlish hope entered her voice.
"Probably not." Darcy fumbled around in the soup to retrieve the lost spoon. "There's this entire outline and rigid guest list I'm supposed to follow. Crane insisted upon it. Ugh. He is a sick man. There is a fine line between devotion to one's work and addiction—he was still in the Asylum today when I left at six."
"Doesn't matter what he does," Sheila replied dismissively, "You're going on a date with Laramie and, like it or not, I will be coming over there three hours beforehand to help you prep. You couldn't do your own hair to save your life, Darce. And you do have a dress, right?"
…
Author's Note
First of all, congrats to The Nth Degree, Mizamour, Codie, hornofgondor2, and Jumana (who also gets a special tiara for being a new reviewer)! You five reviewed first. Let the crazy Cillian dreams commence (except in the case of Eccentric Banshee; I think she and I agree that she's had quite enough Cillian already)!
Azina Zelle – Sorry, this is going to be short because I received your review (my seventieth on this story!!! AWESOME!) right before I posted this chapter. Ha! A honeymoon with Crane! There's an oxymoron if I ever saw one. Please keep reading!
Codie – Yeah, you have a point…she is so much safer in the office than out 'in the field' with Crane.
Dot – Thanks! I'm glad I made the idea of working for Crane something so realistically terrible that I made a lot of my die-hard 'Craniac' fans cringe instead of swoon. Please keep reading; I love hearing from you!
Dr. E. Vance – Chapter 6 is heeere! Hope you liked. Tasteless Breathing was a work of art and I'm honored to have you reading my story. Can we expect any more poetry from you in the future?? (hopeful grin)
Eccentric Banshee – Yay! Another long, scrumptious review! Where to begin… You've made a very perceptive point: part of Jonathan is still a child, beneath that rime of frost. Even his evil is rooted in that childishness, for it was in childhood that his desire for revenge was triggered. I would love to psychoanalyze the man, but something in me suspects I'd end up being mentally dissected, not him. He is a truly scary villain, and the scariest part is how he uses his mind (and yours) against you. You're quite brave to hug him—I too have a brother, and, like you, know the innate danger of embracing any male, let alone Crane. :-D Talking lotion bottle? Hmm, the human subconscious is funny thing, no? By the way, I'm delighted you noticed how hard I've worked on grammar! I think I toil over making my stories grammatically perfect almost more than I toil over writing them. (accepts scented candles and cookies with wide eyes) Again, thanks!
hornofgondor2 – So glad you're continuing to r/r! Enjoy your Cillian dream. ;-)
Jumana – 'Arrogant git,' LOL! That he is. And the torture shall continue, I promise. :-D
Karina of Darkness – Cillian in closet…there's a nice thought, one of the best I've heard since I began this story. (scurries over to peep inside her closet) Darn. He must be hiding in one of my Steve Maddens. I'll keep looking, though. ;-) Thanks for being such a faithful reviewer!
Mizamour – Stay tuned! And let me know when you update your lovely fic!!
Rachel – (trips over own feet to welcome Rachel) Hurrah!! If I haven't said it a gazillion times before, your reviews rock my world! You mix thought-provoking reflections with constructive, considerate feedback…The Harry Potter comparisons and thoughts on Mary-Sueism were especially delish. Thanks so, so much for continuing to read—I appreciated hearing from you immensely.
rokudenashi – Thanks for reviewing. When will we be seeing more of Of Shared Brilliance? 'Tis a brilliant fic. :-) Hugs!
SpadesJade – Yay! Another SJ Cranefic! (dances) I concur—interning blows! I made my dad pay for my shopping spree the other week… Karma's going to get us eventually, I hope you realize. ;-) Well, I've got you on Author Alert, so I'll be sure to review your Cranefic when it arrives.
The Nth Degree – Yes, Crane is a bit of a sadist, feeding on the discomfort and pain of others like the psychological leech he is. (A very sexy leech, I might add!) Why do we love him so?? Those eyes… Anyway, loved Solitude. Please do a million more Cranefics, I'll read them all! Bach lovers unite!!
Tigger-180 – Yay! New reader! I'd love to keep hearing more from you!!
VampireNaomi – I'm glad Darcy has your consent to go a-courtin'. My readers' approval was something I knew she needed to get from the instant I had the idea for this story. It's good to receive your affirmation that my goal has been reached so far. As for keeping Crane in character, thank my long-suffering editor. If not for her, Crane would probably be running around singing Renaissance ballads and making daisy-chains for his lady-love. Suffice to say, I'm lucky to have my editor around—and so are you readers, for that matter. ;-)
Winged Seraph – I know I'd be uncomfortable in Darcy's shoes: stuck in a madhouse, working under Crane, cleaning an office, dealing with my ex-fiancé…bleah! I'm happy to know you're still enjoying this story, despite the trials and tribulations of our lovely heroine. :-)
Again, thanks to all of you for making my busy little life so bright and happy. I checked my Stats the other day and discovered that a whopping 24 members had this story on their favorites and 19 others had it on their alerts! Did that ever make me smile. So, if you're one of those wonderful people and you're reading this now and you haven't left me a review yet, know that I have a very cool 'you-review-me-I'll-review-you' policy and would love to hear from you. Even random thoughts are welcome!
Crane's back for Chapter 7! Hmm, I seem to have a nice 2:1 ratio going for Darcy:Jonathan chapters, don't I?
Ciao, babes (and, to be politically correct, guys …though why a guy would read mush like this is beyond me)!
Blodeuedd