Day 32: Sun Room (2nd shift)

[heraldric.livejournal.com]

After the couple glasses of water Leon managed to gulp down during breakfast, the mage felt immensely better. He was still a bit tired, but that was nothing a little lounging on one of the sofas wouldn't cure. Stretching his arms above his head, he couldn't help but wish he'd had the chance to grab one of his new doctor's coats before leaving his room that morning. Maybe they would have let him get away with wearing it. Maybe.

He grabbed an empty sofa, pulling out the journal he tried to keep on him at all times. It was nearly complete now. Just a couple more pages to go. It might not improve his spellcasting that much, but any improvement was better than none. It was getting to where it might be too dangerous for him to use spells at all, if it left him so worn out without even finishing a monster off.

Comments

[scaredy-crow.livejournal.com]

So they really didn't know each other. Well, that made things somewhat easier. Crane had never seen her there before, either, but perhaps she'd just been another doctor's patient. It may have explained why she'd never seen him...although he'd been working there for a while, so he should have at least seen her.

"Yes, I used to work there." And if GLaDOS had been right, and it wasn't a dream, then that wasn't really the case anymore. If he was perfectly honest with himself, he had gone a bit crazy. But it was a useful kind of crazy, wasn't it? After the main effects of his gas had worn off, Crane had gotten the chance to act more as Scarecrow than he ever had in his life by scaring the masses of Gotham. It had been pure fun, while providing him with some interesting observations to add to his research.

"And I'm not trying to blend in. Let's just say that a certain masked vigilante didn't care for my experiments, and I wound up incarcerated there." Among other things, but that was the best way to explain it. And there was always the chance that she had been from a different Arkham, no matter how slim the chance seemed. If she knew who he was talking about, then she would have to have been from his Arkham, and it wouldn't have made a difference. But he'd rather keep as much about his private research and fear experiments as he could secret, in case he wished to further it while he was here.

"How long were you in Arkham before being transferred here?" he asked after a moment.

[jokers-wildcard.livejournal.com]

The small, curious smile on her face faded a volume with the mention of 'a certain masked vigilante.' There wasn't a question in her mind as to who the man was referring to.

"Ahhh. So Batsy gotcha, too, huh?" Her expression changed to one of exaggerated exasperation as she let out a heavy sigh. "He oughta keep his big, pointy ears outta other people's business already. Talk about a party pooper."

She had to pause to consider his other question. For those who spent a great deal of time within the asylum walls, it was usually difficult to gage time. The nurses would never be considerate enough to give the patients calendars.

Her eyes rose up to the ceiling, as though she'd find the answer up there, and she placed a finger to her bottom lip thoughtfully. "Hmmm. I'd say I was only there a little over a month this time. I was kinda scraped up, so I had to wait til I got better 'fore I could try bustin' out."

She crossed her arms and stuck her lip out in a pout. "Not like it matters. They ended up transferrin' me over here first. They didn't even tell me 'fore they did it. Just kinda decided to drag me over while I was sleepin', I guess. Heard it happened to a lotta people here, too."

[scaredy-crow.livejournal.com]

Busting out? This time? Had he still been in Arkham, respected at Arkham, he would have had the orderlies scour the place for possible holes. As it was, he was tempted to laugh. Aside from Ra's al Ghul's men infiltrating the place and letting the inmates loose, Crane couldn't quite think of a time when anyone had escaped.

Despite her theatrics, Crane could relate to the feeling. "Yes, he really should. He just causes more trouble for everyone." Of course, if not the Bat, then who? There was always some idealist trying to play hero. They could kill the normal people, but the Batman was...horribly resilient. Especially to fire.

But while he agreed with the former statement, he found her last one odd. Really, it seemed almost like she was living in an alternate city called by the same name. It couldn't have taken them that short a time period to both catch him and transfer him somewhere else. Transfers, at least, took a few days. So why no mention of being let out of Arkham? She should have been around for it...

Perhaps it really didn't happen. It was difficult to tell anymore, and she'd even said it happened to a lot of people here. Of course, he was talking to someone in a mental institution. He had no prior knowledge of why she was here, simply that she was. Perhaps he was expecting to understand too much.

"But the last thing you remember was being in Arkham? You hadn't been let out by anyone?"

[jokers-wildcard.livejournal.com]

"Nope," she responded almost immediately. "They called lights out, an' I went to sleep. Next thing I know, I'm wakin' up here with some new nurse shovin' me around."

She remembered feeling outraged about this concept at first. Sure, she was a wanted nutso with a list of misdemeanors longer than her arm, but she had rights, dammit. They should have at least mentioned the fact they were planning to transfer her somewhere else. Though, this reminded her of something else she was told by one of the inmates here...

"Someone else said somethin' about the people here kidnappin' people from other asylums or somethin'. Don't make a whole lotta sense to me. Why would ya kidnap someone to put 'em in another asylum, ya know?" She shrugged. "But some people I talked to said they remember fallin' asleep somewhere and wakin' up here, too."

Considering the subject she was discussing, she didn't sound very alarmed. Perhaps she would have been if she were the type to sit down and mull over her situation... but that would have been crazy.

[scaredy-crow.livejournal.com]

How strange. Well, at least he was reasonably certain that either everyone in this place had the similar delusions of what they were doing before they woke up, or he hadn't dreamed anything before he woke up.

"It wouldn't make much sense," Crane agreed. "You're lucky to at least have fallen asleep, though. I was in the midst of something when I woke up, and I don't remember how or when I fell asleep. I wasn't within the asylum's walls at that time, either." He paused for a moment, then considered it couldn't hurt to tell her what had gone on.

"That's why I was wondering what you remembered before waking up here. Before the Batman caught me, I had been in on some plans for Gotham. This involved setting the inmates of Arkham loose. I was caught before this was enacted, and set loose with the rest of them. That's as far as I remember before waking up here. I don't remember being caught again, much less falling asleep."

So really, they could have feasibly just sent him here instead of back to Arkham first. But kidnapping people from within an asylum and transferring them to another without so much as a 'this is what we're doing'? It was rather unusual. Then again, if he thought back to an idea he'd pushed out of his head during his talk with GLaDOS... "I suspect they don't want other institutions to know what goes on in here, and that this is all one large experiment."