At length I saw these lovers fully were come
Into their torture of equilibrium;
Dreadfully had forsworn each other, and yet
They were bound each to each, and they did not forget.
-from The Equilibrists by John Crowe Ransom
…
Until the instant she opened her mouth, she'd had no idea of what she was going to say.
"Good morning."
Perfection. She knew it was and stifled her smile of relief. No partiality, no sugary intimacy—just a discreet distance that would have made even the arctic psychiatrist proud, had he been awake to sense it.
But everything about Jonathan Crane at the moment screamed insomnia. For once, he actually looked disheveled and distracted. Phone cradled in the crook of one slender shoulder, he stared at her as if she'd returned from the dead before muttering a similarly bland, emotionless response.
She turned away under the pretense of tucking a bit of loose hair behind her ear, thanking all the while whatever power it was who governed Gotham with such a loose, forgiving hand. He wasn't decided yet either. He was still trying to make sense of Friday night. At least they were on the same page.
"Yes, I'm still here," she heard him reply, "Of course. –We're ready to accept him. There are a few cells vacant in suicide watch; one of those can go to him. –Yes. We have every intention of helping him recover. Thank you. Good bye." He hung up the phone; the ensuing silence lurched through the room with all the painless subtlety of a runaway freight train. "Carmine Falcone is coming to Arkham," he said at last.
"What?" Affectations forgotten, she reeled about to face him.
"He's being committed. You'll need to write up a file for him once we take down his personal information and current condition. You know the format."
"He—he's insane?" She asked, too shocked to do anything besides ask stupid, amateurish questions.
"Quite." A faint smile hovered around the corners of his mouth as he opened a portfolio and began scribbling furiously. "The stress of his arrest must have been too much. It often happens with figures of ill-gotten prestige and power."
"So it's over?"
"What is?"
She struggled to put her hopes into words. "The oppression—the corruption."
He leafed through some of the papers, pausing only to rub at a weary, bloodshot eye. "Don't be such an idealist," he remarked, voice sharp as a slap across the face, "Of course not. Something tells me it's just beginning, in fact. Inevitably, there will be a rush to fill in the vacuum he's left behind… Oh, do me a favor and run down to Dr. Willard's office, ask him where he put the list of open cells on the third floor, will you?"
…
The arrival of a new inmate was usually discreet, an occurrence which rarely disturbed the Asylum's fragile, unspoken infrastructure. The internment of Carmine Falcone changed that. The idea of Gotham's most powerful individual dangling in a straitjacket two stories overhead set shockwaves running through the staff for twenty-four hours after his entrance.
Such was the excitement that Darcy neither had time for awkwardly formal interactions with her employer or to notice Mike's absence until Tuesday. She was far too busy getting cups of coffee for visiting reporters of varying pedigrees and booking lectures for Jonathan. Universities and organizations were experiencing a renaissance of interest in the head of Arkham now that he had Carmine Falcone for a patient. Haunted and harried as he was lately, she saw the satisfaction in the farthest corners of his expression when she mentioned a phone call from Harvard or some psychiatrists' association.
The memory of Mike Laramie returned when she dropped a sheaf of papers on the floor of the office that evening, and bent to pick them up. The carpet came close, dingy and oddly familiar. She paused, some papers in hand, the others still strewn across the floor.
He'd been here.
She stood up as if she'd knelt upon needles, heart racing. How did she know this? Everything in her struggled to recall. Mike had been sick, blind, unreasoning.
He hadn't been angry; he'd been afraid.
"What exactly are you doing?" He stood in the doorway, back from an appointment.
"Just—I was just…" She swallowed, papers clenched almost too tightly in her hands.
The phone rang; she jumped a foot and he blinked gingerly behind his polished glasses.
"Well?" She looked at him, he looked to the phone, which was poised to ring again. "Answer it. It's what I hired you for, isn't it?"
Trembling as if the thick panes separating them from the late November cold had vanished, she went to the phone and picked it up.
"Hello? Dr. Jonathan Crane's office."
"This is Rachel Dawes. –Assistant D.A. for Gotham County," the fierce, female voice prompted when Darcy did not immediately respond, "Is Dr. Crane there?"
Darcy's eyes slid to where he knelt, picking up the remaining papers. "O-one minute." She put the phone on hold and turned to him. "Rachel Dawes?" She whispered.
His eyes grew cold, but he rose and set the papers aside, extending his hand for the phone. "Good evening, Ms. Dawes. How are you doing?
A crackling rant, audible even to Darcy from where she stood, interrupted his insipid greeting.
"Yes, he's here. It would be irresponsible of me to let a patient run rampant about Gotham, wouldn't it? Especially one in his condit—of course, I evaluated Mr. Falcone myself. He is decidedly unstable. Yes, I am familiar with Dr. Stacia Lehmann. –She is welcome to come examine Mr. Falcone whenever she chooses, but preferably a week from now. Understandably, we're quite busy at the moment. I myself—"
He paused as the woman's strident voice cut him short yet again. He took a deep breath, pushed his glasses up his nose, and mutely handed Darcy the recovered papers.
"You? Come here? I would be more than willing to see you here maybe on Thursday or Friday, Ms. Dawes—but now? Just give me a moment to check my agenda, please." Putting the phone on hold once more, he turned to her.
"It's nearly six, Ms. Crandell. I think it's time for you to go home."
Ms. Crandell. Somehow she'd known. The formality had never left. He could kiss her mouth, pull her to him, clasp her hands in his all he wanted, but the distance had never truly left his sloe-colored eyes. She turned her back on him, tugging at the papers, painful tears threatening to fall.
She'd thought she'd been right.
"Why should I, Dr. Crane?" She turned it against him without really thinking, blinking the rising grief away.
"Darcy." The word came from the back of his throat, as if he were afraid to say it. "Please. Go home."
She stood, gathered her things, and left, trying not to wonder whether he'd meant it or was simply trying to get rid of her, get rid of the shared memories sticking in the backs of their minds.
…
People with absent maternal attachments are often alienated, isolated, suspicious, and withdrawn.
The cursor blinked vacantly, waiting for her to continue. The trill of the phone finally reached her buzzing ears. With a groan, she sat back from the laptop, pushed aside the massive textbooks blocking her hand's path, and picked up the receiver.
"Hello?" Her voice sounded as it should have after such a prolonged sit in furious silence in front of the laptop.
"Hel-lo, darling. How are you?"
"Mom?"
"Who else? You didn't return my call on Friday night. I was worried, naturally."
"I was—um, out late. Sorry."
"Just glad you didn't get into any trouble." A nervous beat. "Right?"
Oh, no, Mommy. Just slept with my boss. And yes, he is thirty-one—I'm still twenty-four, if you're wondering. And now he's giving me a bit of the cold shoulder. So I'm not exactly his girlfriend, just the office whore. That's all. "No, Mom. No trouble."
"So what're you up to?"
"My application."
"Still working on that darn thing?"
"I was—" Hmm, passed out? "—busy."
"Oh, I just remembered, Darce. I ran into Andrew and Olivia Laramie the other night at the country club. They were visiting from upstate. It got me to wondering: how is that boy?"
'He's dead, Darcy. I killed him.'
"He's—he's—dead," she replied bluntly, not understanding herself.
Silence on the other end.
"Oh, my God. Mom—I have to call you back. I'm dizzy. I have to lie down."
"Darce, honey…did you just—"
Darcy hung up, viciously, angrily. Hands tearing at her head, her hair.
The darkness had killed Mike. Hot tears and frozen veins refused to lie to her. He was dead. He'd been poisoned when she saw him, delusional. He'd died there, on the floor of Jonathan's office.
Who had killed him? A wraith. A skeleton. Something terrible and unthinkable. Hands that had grasped her, pushed her down into the floor and made her forget who she was. A voice, worn to the bone and known to her. She had to remember. Nothing was more important.
She didn't sleep that night, fearing her own shadow.
…
Morning found her in a tangled mass of sheets, her lack of sleep grating against the back of her eyes like a file. Nearly crying with the simple, infant frustration of a night without rest, she stood and went to her window.
Everything was so different, but nothing had changed. Cars flashed by in the asphalt shallows as storefronts opened their eyes and the trains rattled along the city's spine. Her ghost gazed out at her from the sunlit glass, hollow and ready to disappear at the slightest provocation. She heaved a sigh and condensation hid her reflection, hooding it like a shroud.
Laramie dead. It was impossible. She remembered him easily enough; surely he lived still, somewhere, with the same effortlessness. That showhorse stride. He always knew he was being watched, and he'd let that knowledge govern him. The spark of greeting in his Mediterranean eyes. Crisp but approachable, professional yet informal. A doctor who insisted he was 'just Mike,' when everything in him aspired, strained to be more.
She cried again, genuinely sorry, even though every feminist sense urged for a righteous apathy. He'd been a tyrant. A ruthless climber. But he didn't deserve death.
She dressed hurriedly, combing back frizzing hair into a ponytail and rubbing the sleep and sadness out from under her eyes. Yesterday didn't matter; Jonathan would know.
…
Darcy had held her position as an intern at Arkham for over three months. Up until the bizarre mishap the week before, she hadn't missed a day of work. September, October, November. The Asylum was still frightening, but no longer a stranger. She'd long since come to know its quirks and perversions, and did not fear them any more than was reasonable.
But she had never seen it in such a state of utter, decapitated turmoil as it was in today, and it was indeed frightening.
She knew something was wrong when police stopped her at the doorway leading into the lobby.
"Hey, I work here."
"Are you a doctor?" One of the cops asked her, frowning down his aquiline nose at her from his intimidating height—easily six feet, she decided.
"N-no. But I'm interning for—"
"It's okay, Ramsey," a familiar basso voice thundered, "I know this girl."
Darcy smiled even before she turned to see Ingram behind her. "Thanks."
He gestured for her to follow, but his face was grim as they entered the Asylum. "Why'd you come to work?" He asked. "Don't you watch the news? Read the Times?"
"Not today," she admitted, "I was in a bit of a hurry."
"It's a madhouse in here," he growled.
Darcy almost laughed before she realized it wasn't a joke. She swallowed the offending sound and looked around her.
Things did seem out of control. Wide-eyed doctors were speaking to police officers as other officers ushered clamorous reporters and camera men out of the building. Something small and dark soared out of the lobby and into the morning on webbed wings.
"Holy—" It took her a moment to realize what the little blur was. "Ingram, was that a bat?"
"Didn't see it. Who knows what it is, anyway. We're falling apart at the seams."
Looking at the deserted offices sliding by reminded Darcy of her purpose. "Look, I need to talk to Jon—Dr. Crane. Where is he? It's urgent."
Ingram's eyes were flat and told her nothing. "You don't want to talk to him right now, little girl."
"I need to," she pressed, "It's important, Ingram."
"Nothing is important enough anymore."
"Look, do you know where Laramie is?" She couldn't help the new fierceness in her voice.
"No. No one does," he replied, looking at her with a confused twist to his hard mouth.
"Exactly. I think I know what's going on, Ingram. Let me talk to Dr. Crane."
The enormous man shook his head slowly, but said, "All right. But I'm coming with you. I don't trust people 'round here anymore."
"Thanks," she said sincerely, "Where is he?"
"On the fourth floor—maximum security."
With a patient in the midst of this chaos? That man would cling to his schedule if the world were coming to an end. She felt another smile tug at her mouth and allowed it to emerge. She was going to him.
The elevator climbed slowly upwards, and she was first to exit when they arrived on the fourth story. Her heels clicked in the hallways, the harsh rapport dauntless and unanswered. She was going to him and everything would be right again.
"Here we are," Ingram announced. He knocked on one of the cell doors. "Dr. Crane? Someone to see you."
No response. Ingram paused, key halfway to the door. "You sure you want to do this?"
"Yes," she replied. Things would be better.
Her world fell to pieces when she saw patient, psychiatrist, one and the same, locked inside.
Logic and madness stared out at her from the same pair of limpid blue eyes.
Author's Note
Thanks to all the lovely reviewers who took the time to separate fork from mouth (I know it's hard!) and leave me a few nice words over the long Thanksgiving weekend. I recently realized this story has suffered a sudden spate of short chapters, so I hope this long one made for a good read. Let me know what you think and, of course, stay tuned for Chapter 18, in which all shall inevitably be revealed. Poor Darcy.
The first 10 reviewers will receive a special appreciation from Jonathan Crane himself in next week's note.
I hope those of you who get the LA Times saw the fabulous article on Cillian Murphy in last week's Calendar section. And everyone, simply everyone, must go catch him in Breakfast on Pluto.
Ginger snaps and piping-hot hot chocolate for everyone,
Blodeuedd