milliways_bar | (no subject)

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.

Crane eyed him. "In paperwork and... 'heart to heart' psychiatric sessions," was his answer. It was careful, weighted. He thought about the enormous amount of paperwork sitting in his inbox and added, dryly, "Actually, a lot of paperwork."

Puck doesn't quite believe in paperwork, its not really having caught on in the early eighteenth century-- at least as far as he knows.

"You speak with them?" he says curiously.

"Of course," he nodded. "Weekly only the five or so that are in my jurisdiction, but I talk to many, eventually. These days my five are so hopelessly lost that it's degenerated to veiled insults and simpering on their end."

Not to mention Poison Ivy's... bribes. But Jonathon didn't care much for plants.

He chuckles.

"Well, of course," he says. "Surely you don't expect to find sense in any of them?"

"Not anymore." Jonathon shrugged. "A waste of time, mostly."

Mostly.

He tilts his head to the side.

"What made you think it was a good idea in the first place?"

"The need for a job," he replied. An addiction to fear toxin doesn't pay for itself. "The city seems to have everlasting hope that they can be treated."

"Mortals hope for so many impossible things," he says with a smile. "They seem never to tire of it."

"Especially when it costs money," Jonathon agreed wearily.

The smile stays, but becomes appropriately sympathetic.

"Money is a tiresome thing; I'm glad I've little use for it. It has strange effects on mortals in large quantities."

He chuckles, thinking of the old trick of "fairy gold"-- just a lot of leaves and dirt with an illusion upon them to make them shine. Still, it's a rare mortal who isn't fooled by it.

"But not you, it would seem. Or am I wrong?"

Jonathon shrugged. "In my line of work, it seems money is a necessary evil. But I've never had any enchantment with it beyond getting enough to survive on. It's a means to an end, and little more."

Chrematophobia, he thought, almost unconsciously; fear of money.