AN: So I know I always start by thanking everyone for the reviews, but seriously, thanks! I've got over a hundred reviews, and I don't even have ten chapters yet. That is awesome. All of you are awesome. Thanks for the reviews!

And while I'm at it, thanks for reading this in general, whether or not you comment!

Bruce lay on the carpet, trying to remember exactly how he'd gotten there.

It seemed one second he'd been walking to the bedroom, half-fantasizing about his bed and its satin sheets, and the next thing he knew, he was laying sideways on the carpet, staring at entry way wall of the newly rebuilt manor. To end up like this with no knowledge of it meant he'd probably fallen asleep mid-step, a bad sign if ever there was one, but the carpet was soft enough that it was hard to be concerned for his health. It occurred to him on some level that sleeping on a floor would make for a lot of stiffness and pain when he woke up, which would hinder Batman tonight, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

He closed his eyes and waited for sleep to come. It shouldn't take long.

"Master Wayne?" He heard concern in the voice.

He sighed. "Hello, Alfred." So much for sleep. This was going to lead to one of those lectures on caring for himself before he cared for the city. Well, not a lecture, not really. Alfred didn't lecture, so much as he implied.

"May I ask what you're doing?"

"I'm…enjoying the carpet."

"Enjoying the carpet?" The worry was mostly gone from his voice now, replaced with that dry, fantastically British tone.

"Yes. It's soft."

"I see. Personally, I would try the rug in the master bedroom. It's entirely wool. The one you're taking in is a blend. Not as soft."

He would have smiled, but that would take energy. "I'll keep that in mind the next time I stop to appreciate the furnishings. Thanks."

"Are you sure you're all right?"

All right? He could have slapped her for asking such an idiotic question. He would have, but he didn't feel like being thrown in a straitjacket so soon after he'd been let out of the restraints. Honestly, though. All he'd been through in the past day, and Leland had the gall to ask if he was all right? He'd never asked such stupid questions when he was a psychiatrist, of that he was sure. He'd have forced himself to commit ritualistic suicide if he'd ever been that much of a moron.

"Jonathan?"

Ah. He'd forgotten to answer. "Would you be all right, in my position?"

Her smile faltered, almost imperceptibly, before going back to normal. Leland hated it when he answered in the form of a question, which barely counted as an answer at all, as far as she was concerned. Which was why he did it as much as possible.

"I…" She tapped her fingers against the file on her desk, softly. "I would feel nervous. Do you feel that way?"

Nervous? The Joker was going to kill him and her best guess was nervous? Unbelievable. "No." Which wasn't a lie, really—not that he cared about lying to her—because nervous couldn't begin to cover it. Terrified would have been better, but he wasn't actually sure if there was a word in the English language to convey this level of fear. It was like being on fear toxin without the fun little hallucinations.

Leland made that throat clearing sound which indicated she was holding in a sigh. She did that a lot during his sessions, he'd noticed. She did it back when they worked together as well, but less then. "Jonathan, I know that you're unhappy to be here."

Unhappy? And here he'd thought nervous was an understatement. Jesus Christ, where had this woman been when they were handing out brains? He'd have to be insane not to be unhappy in this situation. He'd have to actually belong in a place like this, to be satisfied with life at the moment.

"And I can't blame you if, given recent events, you're not in the mood to hear what I have to say right now. But I want you to know that I want to help you, and if you want to talk to me about anything, I'll listen. All right?"

He supposed he'd have to respond to that, inane as it was. "All right."

"Okay." She marked something down on her notepad, looked back up. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine."

"With all due respect, Master Wayne, you don't look it."

"Do I ever?" he asked, thinking of the scars and bruises covering his body at any given moment. Still, this was the first time Alfred had ever found him nearly unconscious on the floor. "I'm just tired."

"There's tired, and then there's exhausted. When did you last sleep?"

"Well…" He realized that he didn't really know. Definitely not last night, and not today. After the inmates had been subdued and the staff freed, he'd had to check the bombs to make sure they weren't wired to anything. Taking the Joker's word would have been idiotic. Though the clown had been honest for once, which actually annoyed Batman far more than it should have. Yes, it was better for everyone involved, but it also made the entire incident a waste of his time.

After that, he'd passed the time until the morning hours by staying on Arkham's grounds, keeping a watch on the Joker. That had been uneventful, amazingly, as the Joker had fallen asleep sometime between being locked up and the time it had taken Batman to get outside. He awoke eventually, when the orderlies came to put him in the inmate uniform, and raised such a fit when they tried to remove his makeup that he'd had to be sedated. Heavily.

Two hours and enough drugs to pacify a whale later, it became clear that the Joker wasn't going anywhere, for the moment. He'd gotten home, changed clothes, and made his way to Wayne Enterprises, where he asked Lucius to contact whoever was running the madhouse and give them as much money as they could possibly use to fortify their defenses against breakouts. He doubted Arkham could ever be Joker-proofed, but he'd be damned if he wasn't going to try. After that, he'd just managed to get home, and got about five feet inside before he collapsed. Come to think of it, he didn't think he'd slept the day before last either. Maybe this was unhealthy.

"It would seem," Alfred said, from somewhere above him, "that Batman has limits after all."

He didn't bother to answer that. They both knew the butler was right, though he'd never bring himself to say it. He couldn't afford to give into those limits. Not until Gotham no longer needed him. He found his thoughts moving to Jonathan Crane, to the promise he'd made last night. In retrospect, he had no idea what he'd been thinking. And reflecting on the retrospection, he realized his incredulity was not based on the fact that he'd made a promise to a villain, but rather that he had no idea how he was going to keep it.

"Alfred, do you ever get the feeling you've gone completely insane?"

I am not insane. God, how he'd love to take that clipboard she was writing on and break it over her head. He could hardly remember the remark she'd made, though it had only been a second or so again; all Leland's platitudes tended to run together over time. But he caught the tone very well; that infuriating, soothing tone that said 'I'm humoring a crazy person.' If she did it again, he might not be able to hold back.

"You don't feel safe here, do you?" Ah, there it was; that stupid, placating tone. The urge to break things was becoming almost unbearable.

"Would you? This may have escaped your notice, but Arkham doesn't have the best track record for containing him."

She stopped tapping her fingers, which he knew meant he annoyed her. Though he wasn't sure if it was by answering with another question, or for insulting her. "Jonathan, I promise that we're doing everything we can to prevent another breakout."

How he managed to avoid rolling his eyes at that, he wasn't quite sure.

"And we've just received, as of this morning, a substantial amount of money from Wayne Enterprises to improve security on the facilities. There are guards positioned outside the Joker's cell, twenty-four hours a day, and they are trained to subdue violent patients. You've got nothing to worry about, dear."

Right. Nothing to worry about. And to think that he was meant to be the unstable one here. He wondered if she actually believed that, or if it was a lie she told herself in order to work up the courage to go to work each morning. It could be either, though it was hard to believe any doctor could be stupid enough to believe the first. But then, she'd never been the Joker's psychiatrist. "Uh-huh."

She resumed the tapping, eyes still on him, look disgustingly sympathetic. "Are you worried about more than the Joker?"

"What?"

"Batman. When he was here last night. Did he frighten you?"

Not frighten, so much as tie up. All right, so he'd been horrified. He wasn't going to admit that to her. He thought of his moment of weakness the night before, and looked down so she wouldn't see him blush. He'd begged the Batman—begged, like a dog—to protect him, and he couldn't see himself living that down anytime in the next thousand years. And when the Batman agreed, much as it hurt to admit, even to himself, he'd actually felt the briefest second of relief. As if he'd trusted him.

"And now he's trusting me to protect him," Bruce finished, pulling himself up. "All told, not one of my better moves."

He could tell Alfred disapproved, though he didn't say so. The man hardly ever outright argued Bruce's decisions, but he knew if Alfred was the one wearing the mask, things would be done differently. He respected Bruce's refusal to kill, but Bruce hadn't forgotten that Alfred stopped bandits by burning the forests down. "I would have to agree there, Master Wayne."

He considered standing, but didn't feel up to it yet. He had no idea how to explain why he'd said yes, because he wasn't sure why he'd said it to begin with. Yes, he believed that criminals deserved the same protection as everyone else, and just because a person had broken the law, they weren't necessarily beyond redemption. After all, he'd been prepared to shoot Joe Chill, and the prisoners on the ferry hadn't blown up the other boat.

Still. This was the Scarecrow. The super criminals, as they were called, were of a different mantle than anyone else who broke the law. Jonathan Crane, to his knowledge, had never felt remorse or tried to repent for his former transgressions. He was willing to torture in the name of research, to kill for seemingly nothing more than his own amusement. Did someone like that deserve the Batman's word of protection?

But…just because he'd never made the effort to change didn't mean he couldn't. And even if he didn't—and Bruce doubted he ever could—Batman was sworn to Gotham City. All of Gotham City, even the parts of it that wore burlap sacks and rode around on a horse in a straitjacket. Besides, making sure the Joker didn't break out again meant more than protecting the Scarecrow. If anyone was incurable, it was definitely the Joker. Ensuring his continued imprisonment would save countless lives. The fact that keeping the clown locked up also meant keeping his promise was killing two birds with one stone, nothing more.

It had to be, because he couldn't afford to feel sympathy for someone who would as soon kill him as look at him. He'd underestimated the Scarecrow before, let his pity get in the way of his judgment, and he had scars to remind him never to make that mistake again.

He tried standing, and realized his legs weren't going to cooperate. With a shake of his head and a slight smile, he looked up at Alfred. "Mind helping me to my room?"

"You want to go back to your room?" Leland was trying to keep the disappointment from her voice, Jonathan could tell. She always sounded that way at the end of a session, as though she was honestly expecting him to have a breakdown in her office one of these days, and pour his heart out to her. Yeah, don't hold your breath.

"Pl—" No, he couldn't bring himself to say it, even if it would get him out of here ten minutes early. "It's just…talking still takes a lot out of me." He looked down as himself, still unnaturally thin, rolling the hems of his sleeves between his fingers, to make sure the scars were covered. Drawing attention to his emaciated form for sympathy was one thing. Allowing her to stare at the cuts; he could no more do that than he could say 'please.' It would be giving up too much, and after the weeks of mad ranting, he had nothing left to give. "And I just got back to my room this morning, and it makes me feel…secure."

That, actually, he'd been surprised to find was true when he moved back in that morning. It disgusted him; Arkham was a prison, after all, a place where people could be condescending toward him and label him 'insane' because his worldview clashed with their own, and he should absolutely not feel at home here. Yet he couldn't deny the small comfort of sitting in his cell again, where things were at least familiar. Not that it made his circumstances any better, but it did give them a solid ground to occur on. It made no sense, but sitting there, he'd felt almost safe.

He may have to leave Gotham, when he broke out. He didn't want to; he'd built his whole life here. But he couldn't risk growing fond of this place, it could prove to be a disadvantage.

He looked back up, eyes wide and harmless as he could make them. "I…would that be all right?"

"Of course." Leland's disappointment was masked, near instantaneously, and she stood, placing his file on her desk. "That's fine, Jonathan, whatever makes you more comfortable."

"Thank you." He stood as well, stepping back when she attempted to take his hand. Because he allowed some of the other patients to touch him, it seemed everyone assumed they could. It really pissed him off. Should he decide to stay in Gotham, once this mess was over, he might have to pay her a visit and show her exactly what he thought about her performance as his therapist.

"If you're feeling up to it," she said, as they walked, "and you want to talk to me about anything, before your next session, just let me know, all right? I'd be happy to hear anything you have to say."

"All right." He was zoning her out again, barely hearing the words as he mind focused on methods of escape. It wasn't going to be easy, not if security was being tightened, and especially not if the Batman was keeping his promise. But surely he wasn't. If he was watching the Joker at all, it'd be out of his own interests, not Jonathan's. And Jonathan doubted he would be watching. The Joker broke out all the time, and the Batman had never interfered before.

No, the promise between them would be broken. More than likely, it was broken already. It was only to be expected. It was the way of the world, every man for himself, and he'd be a fool to think things would be any different.

So then why did he felt let down, when he thought about it?

AN: The title refers to the trope "Two Scenes, One Dialogue," in which lines from one person's conversation in one scene carry over to a different discussion in another scene.

Jonathan's mention about feeling secure in Arkham came from the Scarecrow in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, who mentions that he regards Arkham as the only place he really feels at home and suggests that the other villains feel the same way.