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The familiar feeling of being ripped apart in two different directions hits Malcolm as he listens to his father’s voice. The warring inner voices of his logical, pragmatic profiler’s mind and that desperate boy who wants to believe his father still can be redeemed. That fucking, tortuous hope flares as Martin exclaims he is escaping for their family. The profiler in him mockingly refutes that logic as narcissistic gaslighting… how exactly is a free Martin Whitly in the world good for the rest of their family? Not in any world based on reality.
‘He just feels powerless to help you and Ains in there…you know it drives him nuts to not be in control.’ Malcolm the son whispers. ‘We NEED to get him back—so they’re safe, he’s safe. They are going to fucking KILL DAD.’ Malcolm has no doubt THEY…law enforcement…the world… would happily prefer The Surgeon gone for good.
This is how it always goes… Malcolm trying to see the good in killers while recognizing their nature intimately… he was raised by a man with two natures after all. The paradox of how one person can be a loving family man and compassionate doctor… and a merciless psychopath who enjoys inflicting pain. Is this what it’s like to be a wild predator? A lion can lovingly care for its pride while enjoy playing with its prey? Is that one of the ancient traits that flips on in some people?
‘Or you simply recognize yourself, my boy? It takes one to know one, as the saying goes?’ not-real Martin chuckles in his cardigan, eyes dancing.
It always stings when his teammates stare at him in worried bewilderment, this time as he pleads his father’s case as a possible victim. ‘Why? Why do you torture yourself, Malcolm? Isn’t it better if he’s dead and gone?’ Their eyes say. ‘…what is wrong with you—-?’ They believe in him now. But they also know enough to worry that he teeters on the abyss. His mother just looks at him with sad, knowing eyes—worried as always.
How to explain that he feels the weight of his father on his soul? His father’s sins…and also the father who loves him? Martin Whitly once was his whole world…the person who was supposed to teach him who to be. Finding out his father even considered murdering him was a staggering betrayal. ‘But he couldn’t do it…’ the son in his heart had cried out in joy. ‘He loves you! That is stronger than his mental illness!’
Malcolm the son is loyal to the bone; his family is his everything. He wants to protect them, keep them safe. Damn him, he can’t stop loving Martin. Wanting his love, enjoying the collaboration and talks… feeling at home. Wanting to believe that the father he loves is stronger, can be saved, kept safe from the predator.
Because Malcolm is not delusional. The pragmatic, clever part of him…the profiler, knows. Dr. Martin Whitley is and will always forever now be a psychopath. An addict, who thrives on the control and adrenaline of inflicting pain and death. Playing God. Malcolm is his father’s keeper… he feels the responsibility deep in his bones. His inheritance is protecting the world from Martin Whitly… and protecting his father from the world, because he loves him too much to silently let them put him down, like a rabid dog. His stubborn hope clings to the possibility that his father’s disease could be managed, and his good prevail.
As Martin tries to abandon the mission to apprehend the Woodsman, as he tries to flee… Malcolm re-acknowledges a truth he’s always known—Martin Whitly has a skewed moral compass as a psychopath. A normal repentant person who never assume that he deserved freedom after 20 odd years of fairly comfortable captivity in exchange for 23 lives. 23 people brutally tortured and murdered before their time. That is not justice. That is not atonement.
Malcolm feels a flare of guilt as his father angrily points out that his son made him act on his urges…handed him his drug, sabotaging him. Unfortunately, Malcolm never questioned that his father was still a predator too dangerous for this world. You can’t just decide not to have a fucked up brain, can’t 12 steps away a disease. Unflip those gateway switches that started flipping somewhere in his father’s development, his past, the making of him. You can’t unring a bell, can’t undo a murder. Malcolm just desperately hopes you can muffle the reverberations and pad it against new strikes.
His hopes… his desperate Faith in his father is dealt a death blow when he realizes that Martin Whitly has decided to kill him. Raw shock, agony, and terror impales him as he instinctively feels like prey. It’s breathtaking betrayal—why is he so fucking surprised? God, he knows why, but that doesn’t help him process it any better. It’s his second worse nightmare come to life.
His first worst nightmare comes to life when he realizes that he’s stabbed his father. Nono ononononono screams his mind…Malcolm feels numb and feels rising horrified terror that confirms his darkest, deepest fears…‘We’re the same,’ his father repeats again… the unsaid ‘you’re a murderous predator too, MY boy.’ there as always.
Malcolm can’t stop staring as his father collapses off the knife, bleeding out on the ground. The red is a shock against his pale father and the washed out clearing. Everything that fragilely holds the Bright creature that is Malcolm together breaks.
The look of horror on Dani’s face just makes his soul hemorrhage faster. He feels flayed alive in front of her, all the darkness exposed. He desperately wants her embrace, her comfort. Say I’m still your friend, Dani, still that me. He numbly manages to gasp out, ‘D-ddad decided to k-kill mmme…’ sounding like he is ten again. He feels as utterly lost as that ten year old again. No worse, because he has no Faith at all right now. Has he really, finally killed someone? Worst of all, has he really, actually killed his own father? Is this what finally becoming a monster feels like?
Malcolm Bright…Malcolm Whitley’s mind decides to check out, escaping from this agony.