The preserve, Monday afternoon
Jul. 20th, 2020 01:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
betterthanaplanDr. Callahan had suggested Duke find a nice private place where he wouldn't be overheard for their first phone appointment. He hadn't felt like trying to explain to her yet about Fandom's squirrels, so he headed into the preserve with a bottle of cheap rum to find a nice remote spit of beach, where he could lean back and watch the water while he talked. It probably wasn't the most sustainable plan if he decided to do this therapy thing regularly, but taking the Rouge out into open waters was even less so, even without the whole "taking other people's home out for a joyride" aspect that came with having someone (two someones) living with him.
Maybe he'd get himself a small boat to park next to Octavia's. Just a little skiff. It was a bit more settled than he usually let himself be, but — well. It was probably about time he gave up on thinking of himself as someone who didn't settle places. He'd been in Fandom for nearly a year now, after all.
"Dr. Callahan," he said, when the bright young woman Gloria had recommended answered. "It's Duke Crocker, calling for our appointment."
"Of course, Mr. Crocker," she said. "Call me Claire. And may I call you Duke?"
"Sure," Duke said casually, rather than the somewhat desperate oh god, please that had run through his head. The Rev called him "Mr. Crocker". It was starting to send shivers down Duke's spine just hearing it. "That sounds good, uh, Claire."
"Thank you, Duke." He could hear a little amused smile in her tone. "So. What can I help you with?"
Duke leaned forward to prop his elbows on his knees. "So that's . . . kind of a long story."
"We've got a whole hour," Claire said. "This appointment is mostly about getting to know each other, building some trust. Can you start with what led you to reach out to me? You said Gloria Verrano gave you my number?"
"Yeah. Gloria's —" the closest thing to a proper mother figure Duke had ever had, even having only met her a couple of times "— a friend."
"She's a lovely woman," Claire agreed. "I'm friends with her son Ben."
"Cool. Yeah. Uh." Duke grimaced to himself. "She said you specialize in troubles?"
"Troubled individuals, yes," Claire said. "It started out helping recent arrivals adjust to life in Haven after whatever trauma led them to move. Do you know how troubles typically work?"
"They run in families," Duke said. "Show up every 30 years or so, run amok for awhile, then go away. Last time was in the 80s."
"That's how they work in Haven, yes," Claire agreed. "But Haven's special. In the outside world, troubles are active all the time. Though they tend to be rather less . . . concentrated than they are in Haven at the moment."
"So. . . ." Duke tried to process that, and failed. ". . . Wait, what?"
"Haven isn't just an ironic name, Duke," Claire said, amused. "Most of the time it's actually really accurate. People who have troubles in other places can come to Haven and find relief. Their troubles . . . 'deactivate' is a term I've heard most often for it. There are people who've devoted their lives to traveling the world, finding troubled people, and bringing them to Haven for their own safety. It's only during the cycle that troubles become active in Haven itself."
Duke pinched the bridge of his nose. "So you're telling me that while I spent a decade sailing all over the world to get away from Haven. . . ."
"Other people were finding relief by moving there, yes," Claire said. "May I ask why you felt you needed to get away?"
"For me, 'Haven' has always been an ironic name," Duke said darkly. "What do you know about my family?"
"I've . . . heard stories," Claire said carefully. "I'd rather hear it from you in your own words, though."
"That some kind of shrink trick?"
"Yes. Right along with never answering a question directly and being obnoxious on purpose."
Duke laughed. "Oh yeah, I'm familiar with that last one. Managed to talk my way out of more than one situation by making myself so irritating they let me go just to get rid of me."
"And I'd love to hear about those stories," Claire said. "Later. Let's stay on topic right now. Your family?"
Dammit.
"Crockers have . . . a reputation in Haven. A bad one."
"Mmhm?"
"We're — okay, I didn't know this until really recently, but apparently my ancestors are a bunch of serial killers."
Duke expected a silence at that. Some time spent processing the information. Claire didn't even seem to blink.
"That must've been difficult to learn."
"It was a wonderland tour," Duke said dryly. "Honestly, it shouldn't have even surprised me."
"Why not?"
Duke sighed. "Do I really have to get into this now?"
"It's your hour, Duke," Claire said. "Your first one. We don't have to 'get into' anything you don't want to. But, fair warning, I will judge you for dodging the question."
"I thought that was against some therapy code or something."
"I work with troubled people. I need every trick I can get. And somehow you don't strike me as the sort who'll respond well to me being soothing and comforting."
She had him there. "Right, well. Judge away. I don't want to talk about my parents right now."
"Fine. I'm making a note of it, though. With underlines and frowny faces and notes about Freudian implications."
"I promise you, there is nothing oedipal about this."
"Mmhm." He could hear her writing. "No, yeah, I'm sure."
Duke snorted. "Right. Okay. So. Family of serial killers. You didn't sound surprised."
"I have a former client who captured and tortured her rapist within an inch of his life," Claire said. "Very little surprises me."
". . . Jesus."
"Yes. Which is not an invitation for you to try to top that, by the way. I prefer my clients to be nonviolent."
"I thought you worked with troubled people."
"Troubled people can be nonviolent." Claire's tone hardened a little. "Most of them are, actually. Troubled people are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators of it, even with their troubles active."
Duke huffed bitterly. "Right. So my luck sucks there, too."
"Are you saying you're violent, Duke?"
Duke didn't answer for a long moment. He closed his eyes, picturing Nathan, Kathy, Octavia, all being flung through the air. Picturing the rock he'd pulverized in an attempt not to hurt Octavia when they were out in the woods. Picturing the bar fight at Thanksgiving, and the urges that had run through him as power had flowed through his limbs.
Was he violent? That was precisely the problem, wasn't it.
"I don't want to be."
"Good," Claire said. "Because otherwise we'd be ending this conversation right now. And I'd be calling your local authorities."
Duke laughed, the images of his trouble acting up replaced by the imagined look on Danny's face if he had to go arrest Duke based on Duke's therapist's say so. "Yeah, don't do that. Williams has enough on his plate dealing with his super SEAL."
"I imagine so," Claire said, like she had any idea what that meant. "You said you don't want to be. Tell me more about that."
Duke sighed. "Don't suppose we can skip this topic, too?"
"No." She said it flatly, though not unkindly. "That phrasing implies that sometimes you're violent against your will, so this one I'm going to have to insist on."
"Yeah." Duke nodded. "I guess that's fair." He took a moment, breathing in and out deliberately, watching the gentle push and pull of the tide. "The Crocker trouble. Curse, really. It's . . . aggressive."
"Many troubles are."
"How many involve an almost overpowering urge to kill combined with a drug-like euphoria?"
". . . Not many," Claire said carefully. "We're circling back to that 'serial killer' thing, aren't we."
"Yeah." Duke smiled bitterly. "So. Apparently . . . whatever it was that set all these troubles up to begin with, God or some evil witch or — whatever. They decided to build in an escape clause. A 'break glass in case of emergency' kind of thing. Into my family. When we kill a troubled person, we end their trouble. For their whole family."
"That's a lot of responsibility," Claire said. Like Duke had told her he'd had to take care of an aging relative or run a school field trip or something.
"It's a lot of bullshit," Duke said.
"It doesn't sound like your family's seen it that way."
"My family's full of shit, too." Duke dug his free hand into the sand, centering his breathing again. "I didn't want anything to do with them before, and I sure as hell don't want anything to do with this, now."
"You don't want to be violent," Claire agreed. "Most troubles come with an emotional trigger. They go off when someone is frightened or angry or guilty. Do you know what yours is?"
"Blood."
"Blood isn't an emotion, Duke."
"No," Duke agreed. "No it's not. My trouble goes off when troubled blood lands on me. I . . . absorb it, and it goes right to my head. Like a nicotine patch."
"And it makes you aggressive?"
"It makes me happy. High. Like heroin." Duke smirked. "Or so I've heard. And I get — strong. I've thrown a full grown man more than thirty feet through the air after his blood hit me."
"Why?"
"What?"
"Why did you throw him?"
Duke opened and shut his mouth a few times. "Because . . . we were fighting. I didn't know I was troubled, then, we were just beating on each other — I'm not violent, but he threw the first punch."
"Okay."
"He — he was pissed. He wouldn't stop coming at me. And I guess his trouble activated and when his blood hit me mine did, and — and he was coming at me. So I threw him."
"So it was self-defense."
"No." Duke shook his head. "Yes? I don't know. I guess."
"Is this the only time that's happened?"
"No. I threw a woman into the wall of my diner. She was cut and I was trying to give her first aid, and when her blood hit me, I backed off. She came to check on me and I just — reacted."
"You backed off, and she came at you."
"To check on me."
"Fight or flight responses don't really care about the other person's intentions, Duke," Claire said. "It sounds like your trouble activates that response. You backed off first — flight — and then when she followed, you threw her off. Fight."
Duke didn't like how much sense that made. "It makes me happy, though. I get, like, a thrill out of it."
"Adrenaline can have that effect," Claire said. "And I imagine with the added physical strength, there's a lot of endorphins involved, too. We're giant sacks of chemical-soaked meat, Duke. Hormones are going to affect us, whether we want them to or not."
"That's possibly the most horrifying thing I've ever heard anyone say."
"Thank you." He could hear her smiling again. "Is that when you decided to get help? When you threw that woman into the wall while trying to give her first aid?"
Duke grimaced. "Um. No. That was around Halloween last year."
Claire made a noncommittal humming sound. "What changed, then? What was your tipping point?"
"My girlfriend." Duke swallowed. Seeing Octavia's bloody smile again. Her reaching for his face. "She's — she doesn't have a trouble, but mine doesn't seem to know the difference."
"How do you know she's not troubled?"
Duke huffed. "Right, so. This is the other part of why I came to you instead of finding someone local. She's from another universe."
There was a long pause on the other end. A very long one.
". . . Okay?"
"I feel like it says something that that threw you more than the serial killer thing did."
"Probably. But we're not here to talk about me. How are you dating a woman from another universe?"
"It's the island I'm living on. Fandom. It's this . . . giant hub between worlds."
". . . Huh."
"Don't go skeptic on me now, Claire."
"I'm not!" Claire insisted. "I'm — I'm a little skeptical."
"I'll text you a photo of the alien pug-birds if you don't believe me."
"Alien whats?"
Duke took a photo of a passing porg and sent it to her. Then tried to remember if phones that could text and call at the same time were a thing in 2010. "Also, I'm ten years in the future."
". . . Are there flying cars?"
Duke snorted. "Do you need a minute?"
"Maybe." He heard some rustling of paper, a couple crackles of static. ". . . Alien pug-bird. That's — apt."
"It's called a porg. They're pretty much like puffins."
"And they're from another world."
"Another galaxy, even," Duke said. "My friend's friends accidentally brought them here on a spaceship."
"You're doing this on purpose," Claire said absently. "Distracting me from your actual issues." She sighed. "And I think I'm going to let you, right now. Your friend has a spaceship?"
"And she can move things with her mind."
Claire snorted. "Please, half my clients have some form of telekinesis. None of them have spaceships."
"Another one of my friends in the actual Devil," Duke said cheerfully.
"Nope," Claire said. "No. I was raised Catholic, I am not fucking around with Devil talk. Uh uh. Let's get back to your girlfriend. What kind of world is she from?"
"It's . . . I mean, I'm hoping she's going to call and talk to you, too, so maybe she should tell it?"
"I won't tell her anything you tell me," Claire assured him. "And I won't tell you what she tells me. You can tell me your version of her story, and she'll tell me hers."
"Like you asked for my version of my trouble."
"Exactly."
"Right. Okay." Duke stretched out on the sand, staring up at the trees lining the edge of the beach opposite the water. "She's from a post-nuclear-apocalypse future. I'm assuming that's why my trouble reacts to her, because she's . . . I don't know, irradiated somehow? If I tried to follow her back to her world, I'd basically melt almost instantly."
"That's one way to avoid awkward dinners with her parents."
"She doesn't have any, but yeah, I guess. Anyway, she got stuck there for seven years last month." Claire made a little unhappy noise. "Don't ask. Interdimensional physics get weird fast. She was stuck, and it was horrible, and she came back extra traumatized. We've been trying to work through it, but —"
"But you're her boyfriend, not her therapist," Claire said bluntly.
". . . Yeah. And I can't fix her."
"That sounds like a story," Claire said.
"We were all forced to tell the truth a little while ago." Duke shook his head. "And no, I can't explain how that works. But it turns out I have a compulsive need to try to fix everyone around me and I'm working on that."
". . . Good."
"Anyway. Tavi . . . she hit a low point. Managed to hurt herself. I wasn't careful enough, and the blood got on me, and I —"
"Threw her?"
Duke swallowed hard. "Yeah. And — she liked it."
"Well shit."
"She, uh. Set me off on purpose. And when I wouldn't — when I controlled myself, she kept going until I couldn't anymore."
"Are you both okay?" Claire asked. "Physically, I mean. Did you get checked out?"
"Yeah, Lucifer got her looked at the next day."
"Duke."
"I'm fine, my trouble doesn't hurt me." A snarl entered Duke's tone as he echoed back her words. "Physically, I mean."
"Right." Claire sighed. "Okay. It sounds like we're going to have our work cut out for us, here. So. What do you want to do?"
Duke blinked. "What do you mean?"
"Why are you in therapy, Duke? What are you trying to get out of this experience?"
"I want to be better," Duke said. "I want to be okay."
"Okay with what? Okay with hurting people? Okay with deciding which troubled people live and which die?"
"No!" Duke jerked upright again. "Jesus, of course not!"
"Then tell me. Specifically. What do you want?"
"I want control."
"Over what?"
"My trouble! What else?!"
"Your girlfriend?" Claire said. "This weird island you live on? The little alien porg-birds? Everything?"
"No," Duke insisted. "That's not — I just want to control me."
"Well alright," Claire said. "We'll circle back to that — you're not going to be able to control everything about yourself, either — but that sounds like a good place to start to me. Does this time work for you every week?"
". . . What?"
"You called me because you thought you needed therapy. Congratulations, you were right. So let's figure out our schedule and get started."
Duke pulled his knees in, wrapping his free arm around them. ". . . Right. Yeah. Okay."
[Establishy. That Duke went into the preserve is fine for broadcast, the phone call not so much. And I . . . seriously doubt I'm going to write out future sessions, BUT I GUESS WE'LL SEE.]
Maybe he'd get himself a small boat to park next to Octavia's. Just a little skiff. It was a bit more settled than he usually let himself be, but — well. It was probably about time he gave up on thinking of himself as someone who didn't settle places. He'd been in Fandom for nearly a year now, after all.
"Dr. Callahan," he said, when the bright young woman Gloria had recommended answered. "It's Duke Crocker, calling for our appointment."
"Of course, Mr. Crocker," she said. "Call me Claire. And may I call you Duke?"
"Sure," Duke said casually, rather than the somewhat desperate oh god, please that had run through his head. The Rev called him "Mr. Crocker". It was starting to send shivers down Duke's spine just hearing it. "That sounds good, uh, Claire."
"Thank you, Duke." He could hear a little amused smile in her tone. "So. What can I help you with?"
Duke leaned forward to prop his elbows on his knees. "So that's . . . kind of a long story."
"We've got a whole hour," Claire said. "This appointment is mostly about getting to know each other, building some trust. Can you start with what led you to reach out to me? You said Gloria Verrano gave you my number?"
"Yeah. Gloria's —" the closest thing to a proper mother figure Duke had ever had, even having only met her a couple of times "— a friend."
"She's a lovely woman," Claire agreed. "I'm friends with her son Ben."
"Cool. Yeah. Uh." Duke grimaced to himself. "She said you specialize in troubles?"
"Troubled individuals, yes," Claire said. "It started out helping recent arrivals adjust to life in Haven after whatever trauma led them to move. Do you know how troubles typically work?"
"They run in families," Duke said. "Show up every 30 years or so, run amok for awhile, then go away. Last time was in the 80s."
"That's how they work in Haven, yes," Claire agreed. "But Haven's special. In the outside world, troubles are active all the time. Though they tend to be rather less . . . concentrated than they are in Haven at the moment."
"So. . . ." Duke tried to process that, and failed. ". . . Wait, what?"
"Haven isn't just an ironic name, Duke," Claire said, amused. "Most of the time it's actually really accurate. People who have troubles in other places can come to Haven and find relief. Their troubles . . . 'deactivate' is a term I've heard most often for it. There are people who've devoted their lives to traveling the world, finding troubled people, and bringing them to Haven for their own safety. It's only during the cycle that troubles become active in Haven itself."
Duke pinched the bridge of his nose. "So you're telling me that while I spent a decade sailing all over the world to get away from Haven. . . ."
"Other people were finding relief by moving there, yes," Claire said. "May I ask why you felt you needed to get away?"
"For me, 'Haven' has always been an ironic name," Duke said darkly. "What do you know about my family?"
"I've . . . heard stories," Claire said carefully. "I'd rather hear it from you in your own words, though."
"That some kind of shrink trick?"
"Yes. Right along with never answering a question directly and being obnoxious on purpose."
Duke laughed. "Oh yeah, I'm familiar with that last one. Managed to talk my way out of more than one situation by making myself so irritating they let me go just to get rid of me."
"And I'd love to hear about those stories," Claire said. "Later. Let's stay on topic right now. Your family?"
Dammit.
"Crockers have . . . a reputation in Haven. A bad one."
"Mmhm?"
"We're — okay, I didn't know this until really recently, but apparently my ancestors are a bunch of serial killers."
Duke expected a silence at that. Some time spent processing the information. Claire didn't even seem to blink.
"That must've been difficult to learn."
"It was a wonderland tour," Duke said dryly. "Honestly, it shouldn't have even surprised me."
"Why not?"
Duke sighed. "Do I really have to get into this now?"
"It's your hour, Duke," Claire said. "Your first one. We don't have to 'get into' anything you don't want to. But, fair warning, I will judge you for dodging the question."
"I thought that was against some therapy code or something."
"I work with troubled people. I need every trick I can get. And somehow you don't strike me as the sort who'll respond well to me being soothing and comforting."
She had him there. "Right, well. Judge away. I don't want to talk about my parents right now."
"Fine. I'm making a note of it, though. With underlines and frowny faces and notes about Freudian implications."
"I promise you, there is nothing oedipal about this."
"Mmhm." He could hear her writing. "No, yeah, I'm sure."
Duke snorted. "Right. Okay. So. Family of serial killers. You didn't sound surprised."
"I have a former client who captured and tortured her rapist within an inch of his life," Claire said. "Very little surprises me."
". . . Jesus."
"Yes. Which is not an invitation for you to try to top that, by the way. I prefer my clients to be nonviolent."
"I thought you worked with troubled people."
"Troubled people can be nonviolent." Claire's tone hardened a little. "Most of them are, actually. Troubled people are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators of it, even with their troubles active."
Duke huffed bitterly. "Right. So my luck sucks there, too."
"Are you saying you're violent, Duke?"
Duke didn't answer for a long moment. He closed his eyes, picturing Nathan, Kathy, Octavia, all being flung through the air. Picturing the rock he'd pulverized in an attempt not to hurt Octavia when they were out in the woods. Picturing the bar fight at Thanksgiving, and the urges that had run through him as power had flowed through his limbs.
Was he violent? That was precisely the problem, wasn't it.
"I don't want to be."
"Good," Claire said. "Because otherwise we'd be ending this conversation right now. And I'd be calling your local authorities."
Duke laughed, the images of his trouble acting up replaced by the imagined look on Danny's face if he had to go arrest Duke based on Duke's therapist's say so. "Yeah, don't do that. Williams has enough on his plate dealing with his super SEAL."
"I imagine so," Claire said, like she had any idea what that meant. "You said you don't want to be. Tell me more about that."
Duke sighed. "Don't suppose we can skip this topic, too?"
"No." She said it flatly, though not unkindly. "That phrasing implies that sometimes you're violent against your will, so this one I'm going to have to insist on."
"Yeah." Duke nodded. "I guess that's fair." He took a moment, breathing in and out deliberately, watching the gentle push and pull of the tide. "The Crocker trouble. Curse, really. It's . . . aggressive."
"Many troubles are."
"How many involve an almost overpowering urge to kill combined with a drug-like euphoria?"
". . . Not many," Claire said carefully. "We're circling back to that 'serial killer' thing, aren't we."
"Yeah." Duke smiled bitterly. "So. Apparently . . . whatever it was that set all these troubles up to begin with, God or some evil witch or — whatever. They decided to build in an escape clause. A 'break glass in case of emergency' kind of thing. Into my family. When we kill a troubled person, we end their trouble. For their whole family."
"That's a lot of responsibility," Claire said. Like Duke had told her he'd had to take care of an aging relative or run a school field trip or something.
"It's a lot of bullshit," Duke said.
"It doesn't sound like your family's seen it that way."
"My family's full of shit, too." Duke dug his free hand into the sand, centering his breathing again. "I didn't want anything to do with them before, and I sure as hell don't want anything to do with this, now."
"You don't want to be violent," Claire agreed. "Most troubles come with an emotional trigger. They go off when someone is frightened or angry or guilty. Do you know what yours is?"
"Blood."
"Blood isn't an emotion, Duke."
"No," Duke agreed. "No it's not. My trouble goes off when troubled blood lands on me. I . . . absorb it, and it goes right to my head. Like a nicotine patch."
"And it makes you aggressive?"
"It makes me happy. High. Like heroin." Duke smirked. "Or so I've heard. And I get — strong. I've thrown a full grown man more than thirty feet through the air after his blood hit me."
"Why?"
"What?"
"Why did you throw him?"
Duke opened and shut his mouth a few times. "Because . . . we were fighting. I didn't know I was troubled, then, we were just beating on each other — I'm not violent, but he threw the first punch."
"Okay."
"He — he was pissed. He wouldn't stop coming at me. And I guess his trouble activated and when his blood hit me mine did, and — and he was coming at me. So I threw him."
"So it was self-defense."
"No." Duke shook his head. "Yes? I don't know. I guess."
"Is this the only time that's happened?"
"No. I threw a woman into the wall of my diner. She was cut and I was trying to give her first aid, and when her blood hit me, I backed off. She came to check on me and I just — reacted."
"You backed off, and she came at you."
"To check on me."
"Fight or flight responses don't really care about the other person's intentions, Duke," Claire said. "It sounds like your trouble activates that response. You backed off first — flight — and then when she followed, you threw her off. Fight."
Duke didn't like how much sense that made. "It makes me happy, though. I get, like, a thrill out of it."
"Adrenaline can have that effect," Claire said. "And I imagine with the added physical strength, there's a lot of endorphins involved, too. We're giant sacks of chemical-soaked meat, Duke. Hormones are going to affect us, whether we want them to or not."
"That's possibly the most horrifying thing I've ever heard anyone say."
"Thank you." He could hear her smiling again. "Is that when you decided to get help? When you threw that woman into the wall while trying to give her first aid?"
Duke grimaced. "Um. No. That was around Halloween last year."
Claire made a noncommittal humming sound. "What changed, then? What was your tipping point?"
"My girlfriend." Duke swallowed. Seeing Octavia's bloody smile again. Her reaching for his face. "She's — she doesn't have a trouble, but mine doesn't seem to know the difference."
"How do you know she's not troubled?"
Duke huffed. "Right, so. This is the other part of why I came to you instead of finding someone local. She's from another universe."
There was a long pause on the other end. A very long one.
". . . Okay?"
"I feel like it says something that that threw you more than the serial killer thing did."
"Probably. But we're not here to talk about me. How are you dating a woman from another universe?"
"It's the island I'm living on. Fandom. It's this . . . giant hub between worlds."
". . . Huh."
"Don't go skeptic on me now, Claire."
"I'm not!" Claire insisted. "I'm — I'm a little skeptical."
"I'll text you a photo of the alien pug-birds if you don't believe me."
"Alien whats?"
Duke took a photo of a passing porg and sent it to her. Then tried to remember if phones that could text and call at the same time were a thing in 2010. "Also, I'm ten years in the future."
". . . Are there flying cars?"
Duke snorted. "Do you need a minute?"
"Maybe." He heard some rustling of paper, a couple crackles of static. ". . . Alien pug-bird. That's — apt."
"It's called a porg. They're pretty much like puffins."
"And they're from another world."
"Another galaxy, even," Duke said. "My friend's friends accidentally brought them here on a spaceship."
"You're doing this on purpose," Claire said absently. "Distracting me from your actual issues." She sighed. "And I think I'm going to let you, right now. Your friend has a spaceship?"
"And she can move things with her mind."
Claire snorted. "Please, half my clients have some form of telekinesis. None of them have spaceships."
"Another one of my friends in the actual Devil," Duke said cheerfully.
"Nope," Claire said. "No. I was raised Catholic, I am not fucking around with Devil talk. Uh uh. Let's get back to your girlfriend. What kind of world is she from?"
"It's . . . I mean, I'm hoping she's going to call and talk to you, too, so maybe she should tell it?"
"I won't tell her anything you tell me," Claire assured him. "And I won't tell you what she tells me. You can tell me your version of her story, and she'll tell me hers."
"Like you asked for my version of my trouble."
"Exactly."
"Right. Okay." Duke stretched out on the sand, staring up at the trees lining the edge of the beach opposite the water. "She's from a post-nuclear-apocalypse future. I'm assuming that's why my trouble reacts to her, because she's . . . I don't know, irradiated somehow? If I tried to follow her back to her world, I'd basically melt almost instantly."
"That's one way to avoid awkward dinners with her parents."
"She doesn't have any, but yeah, I guess. Anyway, she got stuck there for seven years last month." Claire made a little unhappy noise. "Don't ask. Interdimensional physics get weird fast. She was stuck, and it was horrible, and she came back extra traumatized. We've been trying to work through it, but —"
"But you're her boyfriend, not her therapist," Claire said bluntly.
". . . Yeah. And I can't fix her."
"That sounds like a story," Claire said.
"We were all forced to tell the truth a little while ago." Duke shook his head. "And no, I can't explain how that works. But it turns out I have a compulsive need to try to fix everyone around me and I'm working on that."
". . . Good."
"Anyway. Tavi . . . she hit a low point. Managed to hurt herself. I wasn't careful enough, and the blood got on me, and I —"
"Threw her?"
Duke swallowed hard. "Yeah. And — she liked it."
"Well shit."
"She, uh. Set me off on purpose. And when I wouldn't — when I controlled myself, she kept going until I couldn't anymore."
"Are you both okay?" Claire asked. "Physically, I mean. Did you get checked out?"
"Yeah, Lucifer got her looked at the next day."
"Duke."
"I'm fine, my trouble doesn't hurt me." A snarl entered Duke's tone as he echoed back her words. "Physically, I mean."
"Right." Claire sighed. "Okay. It sounds like we're going to have our work cut out for us, here. So. What do you want to do?"
Duke blinked. "What do you mean?"
"Why are you in therapy, Duke? What are you trying to get out of this experience?"
"I want to be better," Duke said. "I want to be okay."
"Okay with what? Okay with hurting people? Okay with deciding which troubled people live and which die?"
"No!" Duke jerked upright again. "Jesus, of course not!"
"Then tell me. Specifically. What do you want?"
"I want control."
"Over what?"
"My trouble! What else?!"
"Your girlfriend?" Claire said. "This weird island you live on? The little alien porg-birds? Everything?"
"No," Duke insisted. "That's not — I just want to control me."
"Well alright," Claire said. "We'll circle back to that — you're not going to be able to control everything about yourself, either — but that sounds like a good place to start to me. Does this time work for you every week?"
". . . What?"
"You called me because you thought you needed therapy. Congratulations, you were right. So let's figure out our schedule and get started."
Duke pulled his knees in, wrapping his free arm around them. ". . . Right. Yeah. Okay."
[Establishy. That Duke went into the preserve is fine for broadcast, the phone call not so much. And I . . . seriously doubt I'm going to write out future sessions, BUT I GUESS WE'LL SEE.]
no subject
Date: 2020-07-20 06:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-20 07:01 pm (UTC)Thaaaanks!
no subject
Date: 2020-07-21 12:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-21 12:38 am (UTC)