A/N: Been a while, huh?

Disclaimer: I own nothing, all Doublefine and the like, yadda yadda yadda.

Rating: I'll set it to T, just in case. Might be some gore and swearing later, who knows.

Spoilers: Up till the end of the game just to be safe.

Summary: There was something inherently wrong in seeing the acrobat bound by a straightjacket.

Pairings: Raz x Lili will be the strongest, probably, with some light Sasha x Milla in the background for the most part… I'm not really a romance writer but it's kinda hard to write Psychonauts without traces of those two pairings slipping in, huh?

Author's note of doom! Feel free to skip: Alright, so, lemme try to explain how this'll work. It'll likely be a, er, oneshot/drabble "series" if you will – vignettes to use literary terms. Short little things, not necessarily linear or with any central conflict. Hence the chance for character studies and the like. Hopefully I'll stick with it long enough to build up an overall plot of some kind, but who knows! Anyway, if you have any suggestions for situations you'd like to see or something, if you mention it I just might consider it. Anyway, yeah, that's that!

But when Fate destines one to ruin it begins by blinding the eyes of his understanding. - James Baillie Fraser

Statistically speaking, it's no surprise that Razputin Aquato went insane.

In fact, it's more surprising that it took fourteen years for insanity to catch up with him. He was, after all, a telepath – a psychic ability that was notorious for its high rate of mental breakdowns – and a powerful one at that. His psychic abilities, being as extensive as they were at such a young age, must have been a huge burden on his mind. Plus, his experiences at Whispering Rock had exposed him to numerous insane minds, and, well, you know what they say: "If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

So, statistically, it shouldn't have been a surprise. Statistically, it shouldn't have been a shock. That didn't stop Milla from breaking down into tears or Lili from setting fire to the poor messenger. And even though everyone should have expected it, everyone should have prepared, it's still a serious blow to the Psychonauts - such raw potential now worthless.

They know better than to leave that potential unchecked, however.

"Only the best," they say. Bureaucrats are bureaucrats; ever word has another meaning. Only the most secure. "He'll be comfortable." He'll be watched. "Everything will be fine." We'll make absolutely certain of it.

The place they took him was called Steady Saint's Institute for the Mentally Unstable, a place far enough from prying eyes but close enough to Psychonauts H.Q. that in the unlikely chance that there was a… complication, teams could be quickly dispatched. Being a government and more importantly a 'Nauts facility, it was filled with criminals, psychics, and a mixture of the two. Said patient base caused it to have high security and access to technologies that could keep powerful psychics in check. So logically they'd send the recently-discharged and highly unstable Agent Aquato there – you know, incase his mind had warped into the dangerous sort.

Just in case. The 'Nauts had always been big on being absolutely certain, being absolutely sure – a certainty that some criticized as edging dangerously close to paranoia.

Such paranoia had made it so regulations that restricted Agent Nein and Agent Vodello's involvement in the diagnosis or transportation of Agent Aquato to Saint's (as it was more commonly called), but they had been allowed to visit. Well, not really – he was still too unstable, they said, and so visitors could only observe.

But even observation through the one-way mirror into the boy's new cell took too much out of the agents, so that they could hardly stand to stay long. It was little, almost indescribable things that were the worst – the way his wine-colored hair fell over his forehead in a unusual manner, the shivers and feverish glances to people who weren't there, or the wild look in those green eyes. And besides, there was something just plain wrong about seeing the prodigy suppressed by the bulky helmet that controlled psychic ability. There was something inherently wrong in seeing the acrobat bound by a straightjacket.

And yet, everyone knew it wasn't going to change any time soon.