milliways_bar | (no subject)

"It's a shame."

He smiles. "Lucky you to end up here again."

"Mm, yes, lucky me," he agreed, a bit innocently, rubbing his index finger against his forehead. The dull roaring of his headache was down to a soft tapping on his skull.

Puck raises an eyebrow.

Crane is still smirking, though it's more of a lip-quirk now. "There's a board meeting tomorrow," he said by way of explanation. Maybe. "Pity I can't miss it."

He smiles.

"Send Mistress Ivy in your place?"

"Oh, she'd love that. Hold them all for ransom and cover them in vines..." Jonathon wouldn't have minded terribly. In fact, he might have been proud.

Puck laughs softly, sharp like shattering glass.

"Wouldn't that be a pretty sight."

He glanced at Puck, eyes narrowing for just a fraction of a second at that laugh before he smiled compliantly. "And pathetic," he said, thinking of all the shouted bribes.

Puck smiles, appearing not to notice Jonathon's narrowed eyes.

"But think of the greenery," he says. "It'd make the most fascinating table arrangement. Centerpiece at dinner parties, if you like."

"Point," he chuckled. "And since the vines would eat their captives... no need to water."

Puck tilts his head to the side.

"Your world is a very strange one, Jonathon Crane," he says thoughtfully.

Crane smiled, just a tad darkly. "Strange and populated by too many brilliant criminals," he agreed. They were threatening to fill Arkham, and would already if they didn't keep finding ways of breaking out.

"But... I suspect your world isn't the definition of normality, either," he added. What was normal, anyway? As man and psychiatrist, he shied from that word.

"No, that it isn't," Puck agrees with a grin. "But not so far removed from what you know as you might think. Most mortals tell tales of my kind."

Jonathon tilted his head. He'd thought, but... "I suspect coming from abnormal ards must help newcomers here. It certainly did with myself."

He wondered if newcomers ever had nervous breakdowns.

He smiles.

"It takes a certain type to come to the end of all things without being destroyed. I think, perhaps, that is why the path is only open to some."

"Fate wouldn't take kindly to all its pawns being mentally shattered," he mused, almost to himself, a slender finger tracing his lips before he looked back to Puck.

Not that he really believed in fate.

"Plus," he remarked, in a lighter tone, "the bar getting too crowded could bring about some awfully terrible social situations."

Puck chuckles.

"Fate doesn't care overmuch for her playthings," he replies. "And besides, 'terrible social situations' we already have in plenty."

"I might have guessed," Crane said, with that same lightness, his eyes scanning Puck's face. He had a nagging, trained feeling about that remark, but absolved not to go too deeply; he was out of session, after all.

"Culture clash, social clash, everything in one mixed-up bundle."

"You sound as though you've made quite the study of it already," Puck says with a grin.

Jonathon smiled, a tad eerily. "Well, in Arkham it's usually personality clash. Although our... strangest patients tend to be somewhat comfortable with each other." Which he found to be constantly irritating, although fascinating in its own right.

"Birds of a feather, sweet, do nest together," he says, in the tone of someone reciting a nursery rhyme. "No matter how strange they may be."

"Or fight it out, to the death, when they don't agree," Crane responded, that eerie sort of smile still about him.

"I'm sure you wouldn't let them," Puck says, voice nearly a purr-- but not quite. "Not when they're in your care."

Hm, no, of course not. In the same way he hadn't driven a good third to insanity.

"The orderlies and guards tend to get a little touchy about that," Jonathon remarked, answering and not answering at the same time. "So would the board, now I think of it, as we'd lose a great deal of governmental funding."

He shrugged his thin shoulders lightly. "Not that we get a lot of it to begin with."

Puck shrugs delicately in return.

And where does Jonathon Crane enter into the care of his little mad ones?

He looks terribly innocent. The hint of smile is hardly visible.