Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

TODAY - It is your 135th day working as a Clinical Psychoanalyst, Second Class, for the Revachol Safety and Wellness Initiatives Ancillary Clinic. There’s a long day ahead of you, filled up with lots of back-to-back appointments, and you forgot to bring a lunch.

YOUR 3RD FLOOR OFFICE - The bright white walls were so freshly painted that the smell is your officemate. The furniture creaks, repurposed as it is from past lives in other governmental offices, but it’s sturdy. It’s reliable. The window looks out onto the heart of Jamrock, and right now the city is waking within the diffuse glow of the morning sun. Below you is horrifying poverty, deprivation the likes of which you never would’ve imagined, broken sidewalks littered with needles. Stuff like bullet holes.

But it’s good. No, it is, really! It’s great! Today is going to be a great day!

YOU - are Svala Löfgren. You are an unstoppable force, and you’ve never once met a truly immovable object.

***

KIM KITSURAGI - The Seolite man–slight in figure, middle-aged–wears the sort of vintage jacket that’s cheap here in Revachol but could go for hundreds of reál back home, if you took it to the right shop. He’s sitting in the center of your chaise lounge, right at the spot where the two cushions meet. One of his legs is loosely crossed over the other, and his folded hands rest against his uppermost knee. 

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He wants to appear comfortable. He isn’t, though.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Also, he hates you. Like, he really, really hates you. 

YOUR SMILE - You’ve been blasting him with it since he came in, and it’s definitely one of your top five. But it’s not working.

YOU - sit in your creaky chair across from him. In your hands is his file. “Well, Mr. Kitsuragi–”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Lieutenant Kitsuragi.” It’s a correction.

YOU - can’t hear any difference, but you’re undaunted. You try again. “Kitsuragi.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He gives you nothing. Either your pronunciation was better this time, or he has given up on correcting you.

MIRROR - The intensity of his hatred is a catching disease. You can feel all the tension from it pushing itself into your musculature. It’s energy– his, originally, but now it’s yours too. 

YOU - let it out as laugh, using it to build up some gusto. “So! What brings you in?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He does not meet your gusto. What he offers, instead, is a palpable absence of gusto. It is the ontological abjection of the very possibility of gusto, the gusto pale. If it were in his power to do so, he would shoot beams of concentrated anti-gusto out from his eyes so that all gusto was obliterated on sight.

YOU - tolerate, and wait.

YOUR SMILE - Still there.

KIM KITSURAGI - He gestures, loosely, towards the file you’re holding. “I was led to believe the paperwork had been sent over ahead of time.” 

YOU - “Papers smapers.” You power on. You huff out a breath and tap the folder’s cover to emphasize that it is closed. “We’re not here so I can talk with the paperwork! We’re here so I can talk with you.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Khm.”

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) – This man is, above all else, a realist. In this moment, he is resigning himself to the reality that he is going to have to say things. In here. To you. He’s not looking forward to it.

YOU - “You’re RCM, right?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Yes. I’m a detective-lieutenant in the 41st precinct. I’ve only recently transferred, however, and I was still with the 57th at the time of the, hm, incident.”

PRACTICA - See how easily he rattles off all that? You’re familiar with this type: he identifies with his career, and he’ll be comfortable as long as you let him maintain his professional veneer. This is a place where he’s supposed to let something out from beneath that professionalism, though, and he knows it. That’s the whole reason he doesn’t want to be here.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - That’s not the whole reason. There’s more to it than just that.

YOU - What?

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Dunno. It’s hard to see past just how much he truly, passionately hates you.

YOU - “The incident.” You nod. Now that he’s brought up the incident, you settle your bright smile into something more fittingly somber. “What can you tell me about it?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “It was about two months ago.” He shifts his posture as he talks, stretching out one of his shoulders. 

PERCEPTION -  As his shoulder moves, you catch a glimpse of something beneath his jacket. It's a holster, and there’s a gun in it.

KIM KITSURAGI - He's calm and collected. “There was a firefight, during which I discharged a weapon. Twice. My partner was shot in the leg, and I was concussed. There were seven deaths. I was responsible for two of them.”

YOU -  “Hmmmmmmm.” You are totally attentive right now and not thinking about how he brought his gun into therapy.

VIGILANCE- Did he let you see it on purpose? Don’t tell me it’s coincidence that he shifted like that, while he just happened to be explaining that he’s a killer.

CONFORMITY - No. It wasn’t obvious enough for it to be intentional.

GUILE - Then again, maybe he's just that good at intimidation. 

CHARM - Except, you're not going to be intimidated, are you?

PRACTICA - Just get on with it.

YOU - “Was this your first firefight?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “No, but it has been a while since the last.” His eyes shift, meaningfully, towards the ceiling and around the room. His right hand, as it’s draped over his knee, glides upwards to gesture at the space in your office. “All this is new.”

YOUR 3RD FLOOR OFFICE - He’s not talking about your office, or you. What he means is the entire set of regulations, so recently enacted by the Coalition government and funded by the Moralintern, as part of the Revachol Safety and Wellness Initiatives. Among a whole lot of other things, the Initiatives require any RCM officer who, in the line of duty, injures someone by discharging a weapon, is himself injured, or has a partner receive an injury, undergo psychological evaluation. 

That’s you, by the way–you’re the evaluator!

The hope is, maybe if more RCM officers got treatment for all the trauma they go through, what with being shot and shooting others, they’d stop killing so many innocent people in the streets. Well, guilty people too, ideally. Ideally, there would just be a whole lot fewer people getting killed in general. The Coalition has a strong anti-street-killings policy. 

And it’s great! You like your job! It’s an adventure, being here in Revachol–and not just in Revachol, but in none other than the infamous Jamrock! How many people get to do something like this? Sure, you didn’t know, when you took the job, just how much of your case load would be RCM officers, rather than other populations who are also covered by the Initiatives. And, sure, you hadn’t exactly thought through what it’d be like to work with people whose jobs involve a lot of bossing others around and responding with violence when disobeyed–and who also wouldn’t be caught dead in your office except for this new expression of Coalition oversight… But, hey! You know how it is! Live and learn!

Here’s the bright side: it gives you a chance to meet people like Mr. Kitsuragi here! 

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Who, as a reminder, hates you!

PRACTICA - What do you want to do now? He’s not going to direct things any which way, so you need to have an agenda.

YOU - “Well.” You give him a big-eyed, earnest look, without dipping into anything that’d set him off, like compassion. “That all must’ve been terrible. But I’m glad we’ve gotten this opportunity to meet.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He does not return the sentiment. 

MIRROR - You just lied to him. Do you think he can’t tell? From the first moment you felt all that hatred radiating out from him, your emotional state hasn’t been anywhere near the vicinity of glad. You can’t force either of you to be happy about sharing this time together, so you need to stop trying.

CHARM - Just stay on task. He’ll appreciate that.

YOU - open the file to a blank page intended for your notes, and you get ready with a pencil. You prompt him, again, for the deets. “What can you tell me about what happened?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “It was Martainaise.”

YOU - write down mayonnaise. “What’s that?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “The–” His thoughts shift behind his placid features. “In Martainaise. The harbor, and Wild Pines? The strike?”

MIRROR - He expects this to be some sort of joint knowledge thing. Like, he has said these words, and he thinks now you should know exactly what he’s talking about. But you don’t.

KIM KITSURAGI - “This was March 11.” He can’t believe you’re not picking up what he’s putting down. “Seven people. The massacre.”

RHETORIC - Ohhhh, did you notice that? There’s an impulse growing, like an itch…

BON TON - Don’t do it.

ÉLAN VITAL - You have to do it.

BON TON - You really don’t.

YOU - Except, you do have to do it, actually. You kinda really do. So, you do it: “The Mayonnaise March Massacre.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Martinaise.” Except, he’s not enjoying the alliteration with you. His tone is sharp. It’s a rebuke.

YOU - have been rebuked.

KIM KITSURAGI - “Also, the phasmid?” He’s still waiting for your uptake, surprised and a little confused. “It was all over the papers.”

YOU -  “I don’t really…” The words catch a little in your throat. Maybe this is something you should be embarrassed about. “I don’t follow the news?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Ah. I see.” An understanding is firming up, behind his eyes. It’s about more than just this failure of communication. “I don’t blame you.”

PERCEPTION - It’s the quickest flash, but you see it: a smile. There and then gone again, but real while it lasted. 

MIRROR - Now, that was intentional. He meant for you to see it.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - For the first time, you are more than just your role to him. 

GUILE - You were feeling vulnerable. That’s why. Tuck this observation away; it could come in handy.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - But don’t get your hopes up: he still hates you. He couldn’t not hate you, given the circumstances. But he’s not actually a hateful sort of guy, and he prefers to be kind. You’d be doing him a favor if you did something that let him feel more justified in his hatred.

YOUR 3RD FLOOR OFFICE - Tick tock goes the clock. Get this train a’rolling.

YOU - “So. It was a big deal, and this is your first time here. How familiar are you with the process?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Three appointments. You administer tests to complete an evaluation.” He likes processes. They’re intelligible for him, and talking through them is calming. But it’s not enough to take the bite out of what follows: “To see if I can be trusted with the job I’ve been working–successfully– for the past twenty years.”

YOU - “Uh–that is, actually– at least–” You’re trying to correct a slight error in what he just said, but it’s really hard. You’re far more focused on his tone of voice during that last bit. You deflate, sighing and letting your shoulders slump. “I know a lot of you police cops don’t like it, but trauma and stressor disorder can be a real kick in the pants.”

KIM KITSURAGI - That draped hand of his waves upwards, again, this time in a sign of truce. “I apologize. This is important work that you do, I know that. I am pleased that the Moralintern has seen fit to offer support like this to the RCM.”

He pauses. 

YOU - look up from your notes. Well, no. What you do is look up from the mayonnaise jar you’ve been doodling. But what matters, right now, is that you look up.

PERCEPTION - His eyes flit down to the folder you’re holding, to the notes you are theoretically writing, and then back up to you.  

PRACTICA - He wouldn’t be the first RCM officer to accuse you of being a Moralintern lackey, functioning as surveillance. 

YOU - “So, uh. Okay.” You put down your pencil, for the sake of taking this concern seriously. “My final report will go to the Inspectorate General, and of course the ICP will have access to it there. But! All my case notes are confidential. They stay locked here, in the agency, and the only other other person with any right to see them is my supervisor. That’s Seba, and he’s great.” You blink, and you course correct. “I mean, I guess, there’s always a chance, if I get things, like, totally wrong and say you’re super sane, but then you go out and murder a bunch of people? Then there’d probably be a hearing or something about it. And they’d demand to see my case notes for that hearing, probably. But that would be a lot more about me than you. And, anyway, at that point, you’d have plenty of bigger problems to deal with, like all the murder trials.”  

PRACTICA - This is reassuring information. He should be reassured by it.

KIM KITSURAGI -  If he is, he doesn’t let it show. He also doesn’t want it to show whether you correctly anticipated his line of thought or not, so he shifts the subject. “I suppose this would be even better support, if the waitlist hadn’t been so long.”

YOU - wince in agreement. “We’re really understaffed.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Khm.” This is him commiserating. “I could have used this, I think, in the immediate aftermath.”

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - Huh. Did he really just admit to the existence of even a remote possible world where your office is somewhere he’d want to be? I don’t think any of us were expecting that.

GUILE - Ohhhh, it’s a tactic! He’s too clever to try to convince you that being in the middle of a mad mayonnaise massacre (in March) had been completely hunkydory. Instead, he’ll acknowledge that he had experienced psychological turmoil, but–wouldn’t you know it, surprise surprise, what great luck–it completely cleared itself up between then and now. 

YOU - “Sneaky sneaky.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He does not reply.

THE DOODLED MAYONNAISE JAR - You’re no artist or anything, but even you know it could use some shading. Good thing you’ll have some free time coming up shortly.

YOU - “So, something we have to do today is a questionnaire. It’s just a bunch of questions about how you’re doing–you know, how you’re feeling, if you think you might wanna murder a bunch of innocent civilians, things like that. Sound good?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “It’s that unsubtle, is it?”

YOU - shrug. The test is ready for you in the folder, since this is all a standard procedure. You attach it to a clipboard that you keep in your chair’s side pocket just for this purpose. There’s a pen hanging from a chain on the clipboard, and it probably works, so you’re happy to let him find out for you. “It’s three pages, back and front. Boring stuff. Just be honest, that’s all.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He takes the clipboard from your hands with neither trepidation nor excitement. Paperwork is no stranger to an officer of the RCM.

YOU - settle back down in your seat with the file and your doodles, as he goes about reading the instructions.

THE QUESTIONNAIRE - The Toshe-Ragna Trauma and Stressor Assessment (Long) is a 108-question self-report psychological test. Each question contains a statement, and the testee responds by indicating on a scale of 1 to 5 how much they agree with that statement. 1 means complete disagreement; 5 is complete agreement.

There is a Toshe-Ragna Trauma and Stressor Assessment (Short) that is only 45 questions in total. You used it back when you were in training. It’s just as valid and reliable, so it’s a complete mystery why policy here is to use the longform version. 

It’s such a waste of time.

PERCEPTION - You watch Mr. Kitsuragi as he fills out the assessment. The sound of his pen scratching against the paper, for each answer, is lulling, and satisfyingly so. He is careful and thoughtful as he goes, reading each question thoroughly, pausing, and then supplying an answer.

THE QUESTIONNAIRE - Sometimes, people hold the clipboard in their lap so you can see what they’re answering. Mr. Kitsuragi doesn’t. He has it angled up, so he and his answers are cut off from you. For the time being, at least.

KIM KITSURAGI -  He’s about halfway through when he lets out a surprised huff. “‘I often find myself wanting to kill innocent people…’” He looks up at you, incredulous. “I thought you were joking. Does anyone ever answer with a 5?”

YOU - give him a world-weary look, like the two of you are in cahoots. “You’d be surprised.”

You’ve never had a patient answer with totally agree for that question. But you have had some answer with something other than totally disagree. Mostly, but not entirely, RCM officers who thought they were being funny. It’s a gigantic pain in the butt. So much paperwork.

KIM KITSURAGI - He answers 1. You can tell by where he positions the pen before filling in his answer.

THE QUESTIONNAIRE - Only one other thing draws your attention while he’s finishing up. He’s on the final page when he pauses for longer than he usually does on a question. Then, he flips back to the first page, checks something there, and then returns to his previous spot.

There are eight spoiler questions throughout the test, and one of them is Question 83, which is on the final page. It’s the reverse of a question that appears on the first page, Question 15. Question 83 says, I often have trouble falling asleep. Question 15 says, I do not often have trouble falling asleep. They’re called spoilers, because they can indicate if someone is spoiling the test by answering randomly or algorithmically. Not all of them are as obvious as these two. 

When people take an assessment like this, it’s not uncommon for there to be a slight discrepancy in answers between spoiler questions. It’s a long test, after all, and it’s easy to change your self-assessment as you go. But when multiple spoilers get answered inconsistently? That’s a sign of fishy business.

KIM KITSURAGI - He must have recognized that Question 83 was the reverse of Question 15, so he went back to check. It’s possible he was just confirming he had remembered the previous question correctly. But it’s also possible that he was checking his previous answer so he could ensure that he was providing consistent responses. 

YOU - Well, after all, he is a sneaky one.

ACADEME - Uh… Hey. We’ve still got a few minutes until he’s done, so maybe now’s a good chance for us to talk about something?

YOU - Okay, shoot.

ACADEME - You need to stop calling him sneaky.

YOU - What? Why? He’s being sneaky!

ACADEME - Just, think about it for a minute. What do you notice about Mr. Kitsuragi?

YOU - He’s a police cop.

ACADEME - Well, yes. But, besides that, what else have you noticed about him? 

YOU - He’s middle-aged?

ACADEME - Oh, come on. He’s Seolite, Svala. Or, as he stated on his intake papers, he’s half-Seolite. 

YOU -  Okay. And? I don’t see why that matters.

ACADEME - Yes, you do. You know better than this. There is a long-standing stereotype that Seolites are especially conniving, underhanded, or, shall we say, sneaky. This stereotype has been used to seed anti-Seolite sentiment for centuries. It has been a potent tool for oppression. For instance, persons of Seolite descent will often receive less favorable terms on loans and other financial dealings, with the stated justification being that they are a greater risk of defaulting. They can be denied housing, given the assumption that they are untrustworthy neighbors. In trials, their testimony isn’t always accepted by juries.

YOU - That’s horrible!

ACADEME -  Yes, it is. What’s even more horrible is that it’s entirely possible that Mr. Kitsuragi, in his own personal experience, has been accused of being sneaky as part of a racist attack. 

YOU - Oh no! I’m not racist, am I?

ACADEME -  Are you?

YOU - NO!!!!!!

ACADEME -  Okay, good. That means you’re at least not intentionally racist. But everyone’s susceptible to unintentional racism. So, stop calling Mr. Kitsuragi sneaky. It’s a microaggression.

PRACTICA -  We’ve never worked with a Seolite as a patient before. This is all new. We’re learning as we go.

YOU -  What if I am unintentionally racist to him in other ways???

ACADEME - Then he will be injured, and it will be your fault.

YOU - Oh no.

KIM KITSURAGI - He finishes the assessment, and he holds the clipboard out for you to take it. His eyes look tired, behind his glasses. 

YOU -  Is it racist to call him a binoclard?

PRACTICA - Do not call him a binoclard.

YOU -  I wasn’t going to!! I don’t want to!! But, now, I’ve thought about it and I’m worried it’s going to happen.

ACADEME - It wouldn’t be racist, but it would be bad in other ways.

PRACTICA -  You have never called anyone a binoclard in your life. You have never even said the word out loud. Where is this coming from? This is a non-concern.

YOU - Right. Yeah. I’m not going to call him a binoclard. That makes sense. And I won’t say he’s sneaky.

YOUR 3RD FLOOR OFFICE - You’re too rattled now to pay too much attention to the rest of the session. Don’t worry, it’s nothing important. There isn’t much time left, so it’s mostly about confirming the next appointment. Granted, you do check in with him about lifestyle factors: he says he sleeps well, exercises regularly, and eats well. Good, good, good, that’s all good. Oh, and he doesn’t think about killing himself. Good for him.

PRACTICA - Good work getting through all that, even what with how you’re all distracted right now.

KIM KITSURAGI - Soon enough, time’s up. He stands to leave, and he starts for the door.

PAPERASSERIE - You have to stop him, though. You know this. Come on, get yourself back on task. Focus!

YOU - blink hard, forcing it to happen, making yourself remember what it is you still need to do. It comes in a flash, and then you scramble to catch up with him. “Oh! Wait, Mr. Kitsuragi, one more thing!” 

KIM KITSURAGI - He stops on a centim. He pauses. And he waits.

YOU - “Uh…” You gulp, and you gather yourself. This is one of the more awkward parts of working with cops. But you’ve done it before, and you’ll do it again. “I notice you brought your gun with you here today.”

KIM KITSURAGI - An aborted move: one hand flexing towards the holster beneath his jacket. He doesn’t go through with motion, though, because he knows how it would look if he did. 

YOU - “I can’t allow firearms in here. So, next time, please remember not to bring it.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He does not like this, but he absolutely will not fight you on it.

YOU - “There’s a gym down on the first floor.” This is a spiel you have gone through before. “If it’s a workday or something and you can’t leave your gun at home, you can store it in one of the lockers down there. They’re secure, and you don’t have to pay, if you have an appointment up here. The equipment, you have to pay for! But not the lockers.”

YOUR SMILE - Understanding with just a hint of expectation.

YOU - “So… Next time. No gun, okay?”

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - You cannot imagine just how fervently he wishes you weren’t making a perfectly reasonable request right now. 

KIM KITSURAGI - “Okay.” It’s not like he has any alternative than to agree. This final interaction has left him discomfited, so there is a short pause before he turns again towards the door, to leave. But then something shifts in his demeanor, and he stops once more.

VIGILANCE - He’s between you and the exit.

KIM KITSURAGI - “By the way…” He speaks from over his shoulder. “It’s not Mister Kitsuragi.”

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Uh-oh. Wait a minute.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) -  Immediate reassessment necessary.

KIM KITSURAGI - “It’s Lieutenant.”

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Oh my God, I was wrong. We were wrong. This isn’t hatred. He doesn’t hate you.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) -  Before you stands one Detective-Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi, who has spent the last 45 minutes sitting across from a psychoanalyst whose youth belies her inexperience, who wears her naivete with a smile, and who doesn’t follow the news. This psychoanalyst–who is you, by the way–is here to assess his capacity to do his own job, and she has already microaggressed against him at least once. He has no reason to believe that you are not racist, that you aren’t predisposed to view him as untrustworthy and sinister, that your assessment will be fair. If he displeases you, you can destroy him. Not just his career, but him. He has seen no proof of your competence or ethics. 

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) -  It’s not hatred. It’s fear.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - Also, the trauma isn’t helping. He knows it’s not normal to bring a gun to therapy. He knows when and why he lied on the assessment, just not whether you’ll be able to tell. How can he be honest about anything, when you can wield that honesty like a weapon against him?

KIM KITSURAGI -  “I’ve worked very hard for that title, so please use it.”

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) -  Not just fear–embarrassment, too.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) -  It’s possible, from his perspective, that you ignored his title on purpose. You could have done so as a racist slight, maybe to belittle him, or maybe to emphasize the power you have over him. If any of that is true, it means that he just made a giant blunder by correcting you. It means the bullying worked and you successfully got under his skin.

YOU -  I wasn’t bullying him. I swear, I just forgot.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He knows that’s also a possibility. This, too, contributes to his embarrassment.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - There’s something else, too. He’s hiding something from you, something big.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) -  More than anything else, he’s terrified you’ll find out about it. 

YOU -  What, really? What is it?

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - Dunno. 

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - No clue.

OTHER-LIGHT -  You’ll learn about it eventually. Sometime. Later. And, when you do,  it will change you. Irrevocably. 

YOUR 3RD FLOOR OFFICE -  While you are standing there tongue-tied, Lt. Kitsuragi slips out and is gone.

*** 

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK – It’s another initial assessment. But your 1 o’clock appointment went long, and you didn’t have time to look over his file beforehand. He’s clearly RCM, but that’s all you know.

ANIMA – You’re hungry, by the way. You’re not feeling too bad just yet, but it is affecting your mood and concentration.

LOGIC -  This is a very foreseeable consequence of not bringing any lunch. 

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK – While you go straight to your chair, to where his file is waiting for you, he meanders. He’s leisurely about it, looking around your office space, not at all rushed. He’s a big guy. 

Once he’s made it to the middle of the room, he comes to a lurching stop. He swivels on a heel, and then he beelines over to the wall, where the best photograph is hanging.

THE BEST PHOTOGRAPH - Taimi smiles brightly, laughter creasing her eyes, as the two of you cling together with your arms interlocked. You are both wearing your graduation regalia, yours maroon and hers black, and she has lost her cap. In the background, fellow graduates stream from the doors of the Arnfinn Memorial Hall, out onto the perfectly manicured grounds.

That’s you in that photo, alright. Just look at you, with all that joy and exhilaration in that smile of yours. The camera snapped at the exact perfect moment, preserving like a miracle a feeling that you ache never to forget. Look at it long enough, and you can feel the scratch of Taimi’s regalia against your arms and smell the freesia from the hand lotion the two of you shared. You can taste the wax of your lipgloss. You can see Dad’s pride, as he snaps the photo. You can feel the delight of that day all over again.

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - “Huh!” he says, leaning in way closer than he’d have to to get a good look. “This your sister?”

YOU -  “Ha, no!” You like it when people confuse you and Taimi for sisters. You also like getting to spend a moment thinking about her and that day, because doing so always gives you some strength. “Not sisters, just friends.”

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - He’s nearly got his nose pressed up against the glass as he continues inspecting it. “You two must be really close.”

YOU - “We are.”

LOGIC -  It’s been 315 days since you last saw Taimi. Just so you know.

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - “You went to college together?”

YOU - “Yeah, and grad school! That’s our graduation.”

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - “Sure looks like a nice place.”

YOU - “Nationale Universität Königstein.” You shrug.

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - He’s still got his face ridiculously close to the photograph. He makes a clicky noise with his tongue. “But you’re not from Königstein.”

YOU - don’t think your accent is all that noticeable, but he must have picked up on it. “Yeah! I’m from Vaasa.”

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - “Vaasa, huh?” He nods. “Up near Hjemdall.”

YOU - “Uh…” There is a town, roughly eighty kilometers from where you grew up, which turned itself into a Man from Hjemdall tourist trap. They have themed street signs, themed restaurants and hotels, occasional festivals. You spent your childhood thinking it was silly nonsense. But then you left Katla, and you learned how many people have formed opinions about your culture from something that was made up by someone who never even stepped foot on the isola. It all feels different, being so far from home. “Those books are all made up.”

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - He chews on that, then he returns to inspecting the photo. “Homesickness is a hell of a thing.”

ANIMA - That’s true. It makes you sad when you think about it too long, so don’t do that. 

YOU - “But Jamrock’s really nice!”

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - He laughs. “No, it isn’t.”

YOU - “Yes, it is! It’s–”

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK – “It’s my home. Apparently. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, but, let’s be honest. It’s a shithole.” He doesn’t wait for a response after saying this, which is a good thing, since you wouldn’t have come up with one. He swivels around to face you, but one thumb comes up to gesture back at the photo, aimed specifically at Taimi. “So, are you two, like, really close?”

YOU - It is good to be back on the subject of Taimi. “Yeah!”

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - He’s looking you square in the eye. “Like– really close?”

MIRROR - This is starting to feel awkward, but why? You don’t understand.

YOU - “We’re bestest best friends.”

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - “You mean, like… Best friends, or…” Without breaking his strange stare, he does something weird with his face. He waggles his eyebrows. “Best friends?”

MIRROR - Clearly, the emphasis he’s putting in his words, along with that eyebrow thing he did, means something. But you don’t know what, and it’s hard to think with how his eyes are locked on you like that.

YOU - “I don’t…” 

You shake your head.

You don’t know what to say, and you’re embarrassed by it.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He can tell, and it disappoints him. You have no idea why. 

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - He’s done with the photo now, so it’s time for him to start heading over to the chaise lounge. He stops once more, though, at your bookshelf, taking the time to run a finger over a row of titles. It’s like he can’t move without cataloging everything he sees.

Finally, he plops down on the chaise lounge with a sigh. You give him a moment, during which he slouches over his legs. His hands come up to his face. He rubs at his eyes then lets his fingers drag down his cheeks, stretching his skin downwards as he goes. He seems so deathly tired all the sudden. He’s looking at you.

He says, “I really hope I don’t hit on you.”

YOU - “Uh–”

MIRROR - This is not a good moment.

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - “If I do, just go ahead and slap me.”

YOU - “What?”

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - A demonstration: he slaps himself, hard.

YOU – “What are you–!”

VIGILANCE - Nope, no, not okay. No. Run

YOU - Instinctively, you push yourself backwards in your seat, although it does little to get you away. Your fingers tighten into fists around the edges of what you’re holding–his file–and you brandish it like a shield. “Stop!”

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - He winces. “Sorry.”

VIGILANCE - Run.

GUILE - No, you never run, because running is what prey does. There is always a better option.

CONFORMITY - Just… calm down. Don’t make a fuss. You don’t want to make a scene.

YOU - loosen your hold on the file.

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - “Oh, god. Sorry. I mean it.” He’s still wincing, and the expression looks painful. Worse than the slap, in fact. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. That was awful of me.”

GUILE - If you give any reassurance right now, all it will do is encourage future boundary-pushing.

YOU - stay silent. You don’t even smile.

MIRROR - Hey, you know who you’re reminding me of, all the sudden? The guy from this morning.

GUILE - The difference is, you’re not afraid.

VIGILANCE - Yes, you are.

LOCKBOX- No. You are not afraid.

YOU - are not afraid. 

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - “Can we just… Start over?” His expression is so pained, and his eyes pinch upwards with desperate hope. “Like, take it from the top? I will not hit on you.”

PRACTICA - Getting hit on is one of the grosser parts of your job, but violently not getting hit on is a new one.

YOU - “Yeah…” This is confusing, but at least everyone is calm. “Don’t do that.”

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - “You’re young enough to be my daughter, aren’t you?”

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - That’s the kind of thing people tend to say say when they’re on the edge of a shame spiral, but the way he asks makes it sound like a genuine question.

CONFORMITY - What are you going to do, not answer? 

YOU - “Uh–probably not? Maybe?”

YOUR 2 O’CLOCK - He scowls, inwardly, to himself.

YOU - have his file right there in your hands, and it includes his date of birth. So, you might as well check.

LOGIC - He’s 44. You’re 26. It’s close, but he is, in fact, old enough to be your father.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Change the subject.

HIS FILE - Oh, hey! While you’re here, guess what else you can find out! 

YOU - “Uh… Mist–I mean, Lieutenant Du Bois–”

HARRY DU BOIS - His attention snaps back to you, and his face breaks open into a smile. It’s radiant and encompassing. “Call me Harry.”

CHARM - You give smiles like that all the time, but how often do you get receive one?

MIRROR - It is warmth, comfort. It’s special.

ANIMA - It is nourishment.

CHARM - You have gone through confusion and come out the other side. 

YOU - “Okay, Harry.” You smile back.

YOUR SMILE - Brightness, echoed and looped; this moment, affined.

ACADEME - Okay, that was nice, but now you have to stop reveling in it. You have to acknowledge the unpleasant things. Back to business.

YOU - drop the smile and look at him all stern-like. “This has to be a violence-free zone.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Right. Right.” He accepts that, completely, taking on a more somber expression as well. He doesn’t fight you about whether hitting himself in the face counts as violence.

PRACTICA - That’s good.

YOU - haven’t given up being stern-like. “I mean it.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “On my word, as an honorable man, I understand.”

BON TON - Honorable feels a little far-fetched.

RHETORIC - Saying I understand is not the same as saying It won’t happen again. 

PRACTICA - Now seems like a good time for risk assessment.

YOU - ease back on being Missus Stern Business. “Do you do that sort of thing a lot? Hit yourself, like that?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Maybe? Who’s to say?” He chuckles, giving the impression that he thinks, first, that this is a reasonable answer and, second, that it’s funny. “Hey, that’s a mighty tall stack of folders you’ve got over there.”

PERCEPTION - He doesn’t even look over to your desk, just points in its direction. He must have noticed the stack when he was cataloging everything and just now decided to comment on it.

YOU - “Uh–yeah.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Are they all just from today?”

YOU - “Well, no…” You glance over, to the horrible pile. You’d prefer not to admit that you’re behind on your paperwork, even though you can tell he wouldn’t think less of you for it. “Just the top five.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Top five, huh?” He blinks at you while, behind his eyes, some internal calculations are working away. “When did you start–9 am? But it’s just 2! What, you’ve been doing this nonstop?”

ANIMA - There’s a pang, inside.

YOU - “Well… You know…”

PAPERASSERIE - Seba, your supervisor, has reprimanded you before about working through your lunch breaks. But then Lorraine, the scheduler, keeps filling up your calendar so you don’t have time for any breaks at all, let alone a full hour for lunch. So, what are you supposed to do?

ANIMA - You pretend you’re not hungry, that’s what.

YOU - shrug.

HARRY DU BOIS - He lets out a low sigh, commiserating. “That’s tough. That’s too much, huh? Just way too much.”

YOU - “It’s just, you know… We’re really understaffed…”

HARRY DU BOIS - Now he scoffs. “Damn capitalist fat cats won’t hire enough workers, knowing it’ll be you who pays the price for it.”

YOU - “Well…” This feels political. Politics make you uncomfortable. “We’re a public agency, actually.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Bean counters, then.” He points a lecturing finger at you and shakes his head. “There’s always someone up top, for whom you are nothing but exploitable labor.”

YOU - “Uh…”

LOGIC - I mean, is he wrong…?

MIRROR - I’m just going to come out and admit it. This guy is frikken mesmerizing.

ÉLAN VITAL - Yeah. I mean, wowza. What is with him? He somehow takes up all the oxygen in the room. No, wait, he doesn’t just take up the oxygen. It’s more like…

RHETORIC - He replaces all the oxygen with his own. You’re left spluttering and confused, unless you follow along.

OTHER-LIGHT- The world is remade through how he moves and acts. He is a point of surety around which reality can and will bend.

CHARM - Naw… He just doesn’t shy away from eye contact.

HARRY DU BOIS - He leans back in his seat on the couch, legs splayed and hands crossed atop his belly. He cuts into your thoughts. “So, this is your sixth appointment so far today. I mean, wow. Were they all first-timers? Like me?”

YOU - The idea is so terrible, it’s a relief to deny it. “Oh no, not at all. Just one other one, this morning.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Oh yeah?” There’s an intensity to his attention all the sudden, lighting up his eyes. It’s like how silently a shark swims. “When was that?”

VIGILANCE - He has no reason to care about this.

CONFORMITY - But it’s not like there’s any reason to not answer, is there? 

ACADEME - What’s happening right now is called alliance formation. It’s important to establish a good relationship when you first start working with a client. And he’s making it so easy!

YOU - “Nine o’clock. So, a while ago, now.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Huh.” He nods, and all that intensity of his turns to some new internal calculation. He’s distracted by whatever he’s thinking about. He mumbles. “Yeah, that fits.”

YOU - “Sorry, what?”

HARRY DU BOIS - He shakes his head and waves off your confusion. “So, how’d that go?”

YOU - wince, as a display. “It was awful.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Aww.” He sticks out a pouty lower lip. 

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He means it. He feels bad that you had a rough morning. He cares.

ÉLAN VITAL - Okay,  uh… Okay. Let’s not make a big deal out of it, but I need to point it out: it is nice having someone listen to you. Like, really nice. Necessary, even. No one has paid attention to you like this, like they actually care, not since you arrived in Revachol.  

ANIMA -  Yeah, this feels good. There’s warmth that you’re getting from this guy that you haven’t gotten from anyone else in so long, it’s surprising to recognize the feeling of it. You'd gone numb from the lack, but now you can feel how achingly you crave it. You have to keep it coming.

YOU - “He hated me!”

HARRY DU BOIS - He scoffs. “You’re not hateable!”

YOU - “Well, thank you!”

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - You know what? This guy, Harry? He’s pretty great. We like him. This is going very well.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - You can lean on him. He wants it. He wants to be supportive. 

ÉLAN VITAL - Yes, this is good. Just give him what he wants.

YOU - “But, no. Seriously.” You lean forward. “It was bad. I mean, he brought a gun!”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Here?” He asks, incredulous. “To therapy?”

YOU - “Yeah!”

HARRY DU BOIS - “But this is a violence-free zone!”

YOU - His incredulity is vindication, and that too feels good. “I know!!”

HARRY DU BOIS - “The nerve of some people.” He shakes his head, hamming it up a bit now. “I left mine down in the gym. I  mean, in a locker. Not just in the gym. I made sure it was locked up. With a lock.”

YOU - A strange point of emphasis, but okay. “Good!”

HARRY DU BOIS - “It only cost a reál, so why not?”

YOU - “Oh–oh, no.” It’s not your fault at all, but you still get a spike of guilt. “If you’re on your way up here, it’s free.”

HARRY DU BOIS - He frowns. “It is?”

YOU - nod.

HARRY DU BOIS - “Those scoundrels,” he growls.

YOU - “Bean counters,” you agree.

HARRY DU BOIS - He’s about to say something–

MIRROR - He’s got more questions to ask; you can see it in his eyes. 

CONFORMITY - So, let him.

PRACTICA - Oh my god, no. No! I’m going crazy here. What is even happening? Svala, what have you been saying? Don’t you have something you’re supposed to be doing?

YOU - Huh? Do I?

PRACTICA - Like, your job.

YOU - Oh, nutters!

You jolt to attention. “We don’t have all day, Harry! We’ve got to get to work!”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Oh!” He jolts with you. “Right! Yes. Your work. Not mine. The therapy stuff.”

YOU - “Exactly!” You reacquaint yourself with his file, which has been waiting patiently in your lap this whole time. You get ready to take notes.

HARRY DU BOIS -  “I really need this. The waiting list was so long!”

YOU - “I know, I’m sorry.” But, wait a minute. Why are you, the downtrodden laborer, apologizing for the conditions of your exploitation?  “Okay, no more distractions. Let’s get to it!”

HARRY DU BOIS - He takes in a deep, sturdy breath and checks his posture. Feet heavy on the floor, shoulders wide and back straight: he’s braced for impact, ready for the psychoanalyzing to commence.

YOU - Time for Business Mode. You’ve got your pencil and your notepaper. “Do you know why you’re here?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Do I!” He laughs.

YOU - had meant that as an opening for him to say more, so you give a little additional nudge: “Mmhmm.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Uh–I think, technically, I get to come here because of the whole shebang in Martinaise.”

YOU - Uh oh.

ANIMA - Your stomach drops.

YOU - That word is way too familiar. “The what?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “There was this whole thing. Bunch of hired goons, going after the local union guys. Me and my partner were right in the middle of it.”

PAPERASSERIE - Oh no, this is bad. Oh, this is really bad.

YOU - “You mean, the… the uh…” You start flipping desperately through the papers in the file you’re holding. 

PAPERASSERIE - I don’t really understand why you’re searching through his file like that. Honestly. The best explanation I can come up with is that you’re trying to find your notes from your other intake session, the one this morning, in order to confirm or disconfirm your current fears. But those notes are over where you left them, in the to-do stack on your desk, where they belong. So, what are you doing? This is pointless. What are you even trying to accomplish?

CONFORMITY - What you’re accomplishing is disguising your growing panic. Keep it up.

YOU - do so. You’re scouring over all the empty papers in Harry’s file for information you know isn’t there. “You mean… The Mayonnaise Massacre?”

HARRY DU BOIS - He squints as you. “Is that what they’re calling it?”

ANIMA - Your heart is pounding. 

PERCEPTION - It’s loud.

YOU - “I don’t… I mean, yeah? I guess?” You try not to look up from the papers. “That’s just what I’ve heard.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Huh.” He thinks about that. “I wonder why.”

YOU - “Yeah, I don’t get it, either.” 

ANIMA - Your jaw is tight. The muscles in your legs are tensing up. Your throat is dry.

CHARM - Try laughing.

YOU - Okay, you try it. Now you’re laughing.

MIRROR - What? Why? Why are you doing that?

CONFORMITY - You’re being so weird. 

PRACTICA - This is bad. This is so, so bad. I’m not wrong, am I? I really think this is bad, Svala.

ANIMA - Oh my god, none of you are helping. At all.  Am I the only one, right now, clocking how close we are to crying? And I don’t mean a little sniffle, I mean all-out ugly sobbing. It’s a pressure building up, right beneath your shoulder blades, Svala, and it is going to explode out of you, if we don’t all get things under control.

YOU - What is happening to me? Why am I like this?

GUILE - He played you. You thought he was nice and kind, and you thought he had genuine interest in you as a person. But he was pumping you for information.

CHARM - He got you to like him, and he used that to spy on his partner.

VIGILANCE - You were stupid.

PRACTICA - Completely unprofessional.

PAPERASSERIE - YOU BROKE THE RULES.

LORRAINE, THE SCHEDULER - Two floors up, in a small cramped office with no windows, Lorraine, a tired woman wearing a stale brown cardigan over an even staler brown skirt and blouse, sits at her desk. This morning, like every second Monday of the month, her desk is piled high with freshly-delivered RCM files, each for an officer who has been in an incident and now must be scheduled for an initial assessment. They come in massive batches, and files resulting from the same incident are almost always one on top of the other. She’s supposed to shuffle them up before assigning them, so that no partners are seen by the same clinician. It's an actual, explicit rule: one clinician cannot work with partnered RCM officers. But she doesn't shuffle them. There are too few open slots to begin with, and she’s not going to make her life any harder than it needs to be. Instead, she picks up one, schedules it for the first available slot she can find, and then moves on to the next. 

PAPERASSERIE - Technically, after your session with Harry is over, you should go upstairs to her office, inform her of that you have been assigned partners, and ask her to transfer one of them to a different clinician.

GUILE - But you are absolutely not going to do that. Lorraine is the most powerful person in your world. More powerful than your supervisor, who actually oversees your work, and more powerful than the Moralintern bean counters, wherever they are. She’s also way scarier than anyone else, too. There are no limits to her power over you, your schedule, and your case load. If you want to survive, you won’t pester Lorraine in her office for any reason whatsoever, let alone because she’s made a mistake that you need her to fix.

PAPERASSERIE - This isn’t the first time this has happened. It won’t be the last. 

PRACTICA - But this is the first time you’ve shared information about a patient with their partner.

YOU - I didn’t mean to!! I didn’t say anything identifying!! I didn’t know!

PRACTICA - Now you do. Now, you live with the consequences.

ANIMA - Breath is too rapid. If you hyperventilate, this will get worse.

YOU - What do I do?

CONFORMITY - Shh, shh. Calm down. Get a hold of yourself. 

MIRROR - Get out of your own head. You've been in there too long. What’s even happening right now?

YOU - look at your patient.

PERCEPTION - He’s watching you, but plainly. There’s no strain to his eyes. 

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He hasn’t picked up on what’s going on, at least not yet. He doesn’t realize you’ve figured out what he was doing, when he asked about your morning. He didn’t even think it was weird when you laughed like that. 

GUILE - There is no crisis. Not yet.

MIRROR - Keep in mind, this isn’t a you problem. This is a both of you problem. You don’t have to be the one who’s panicking.

PAPERASSERIE - First things first, confirm your suspicions.

YOU - straighten up and take a deep breath. Pencil poised over paper, you look at him all officious-like, and you ask, “Just for the sake of my records, Harry, what’s your partner’s name?”

HARRY DU BOIS - There’s a long pause. He looks first at the pencil you have in hand, then up at your newly minted officious-like gaze. He’s weighing his options. “Uh… Kim.”

YOU - narrow your eyes at him. “Kim what?”

HARRY DU BOIS - He narrows his eyes right back at you.

MIRROR - He knows you know. And you know he knows. And he knows you know he knows. And you know he knows you know he knows.  And you know he knows and you…

HARRY DU BOIS - He’s decided on a tactic: Innocent Boy Does No Wrong. “Kitsuragi. That’s K-I-T-”

YOU - “I don't need you to spell it.” You narrow your eyes at him even more. You are honest to goodness glaring, now.

HARRY DU BOIS - Innocent Boy Continues To Do No Wrong Ever. He tilts his head, takes in your glare, and then he gives you this big, lopsided grin. 

He winks.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - That wink says, it’s nothing personal. It says, this is not a big deal. It says, you can still like me.

YOU - sigh. 

ÉLAN VITAL - When you get home tonight, you’ll try calling Taimi. Maybe she’ll be awake, despite the time difference. Maybe you’ll get to talk. That will be nice, won’t it? You can swallow down how you feel right now. Ignore just how rough everything is inside, and how much worse it is now than it was before this guy let you feel, like an idiot, for that stupid moment, like you weren’t so alone after all. You can do it, so long as you think about how nice it will be, later, when you get to talk with Taimi.

PRACTICA - Do your job. Forget about the rest.

YOU - “Well,” you say, now adequately back in Business Mode. “Have you gone through this process before?”

HARRY DU BOIS - He’s still got that big grin. “No idea!”

YOU - What an odd thing to say. He knows it, too. “What do you mean?”

HARRY DU BOIS - He takes a deep breath, like a showman who’s about to bring out the tigers. “So, here’s the thing about Martinaise…”

***

ACADEME - Would you like a quick run-down on everything you learned about retrograde amnesia while in school?

YOU - Yeah, hit me.

ACADEME - Beginning run-down:

…

Run-down concluded.

YOU - Crap.

***

ANIMA - Your head is swimming. It’s taking extra effort for you to think straight. If thinking straight is, in fact, what you’re doing.

YOU - “Yowza.”

HARRY DU BOIS - He nods. He’s cool with it. It’s a little satisfying for him, actually, to watch you in real-time come to terms with his reality. “Yeah.”

YOU - “No offense, but, uh…” Where do you even start with something like this? “You are way above my pay grade.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “What do you mean?”

PRACTICA - What a question!

HARRY DU BOIS’S FILE - You’ve been taking notes. Extensive, expansive notes. They involve observations like: what and how and ????. They also include highly technical lingo, such as: wth and omg. 

YOU - “What I mean is, you need, like, an actual brain doctor!”

HARRY DU BOIS - Something occurs to him. He nods to himself and reaches into his jacket’s inner pocket. From there, he pulls out a folded piece of paper, which he then holds out for you. “Right, about that. I need you to sign this.”

YOU - take the paper from him.

THE FOLDED PAPER - It must have been sitting, folded up like that, in his pocket for at least a few weeks. You can tell from the severity of the fold lines and how soft the edges have turned. You open it up, revealing a referral request.

HARRY DU BOIS - “They said you’d need to sign it, before I could get on the waiting list.”

YOU - “My supervisor has to sign it,” you mumble, looking it over. That complicates things. There’s no doubt that he will sign it. The question is just how long it’ll take him to get to it, and how many times you can remind him about it before he gets angry. “This is for psychiatric?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Hmhm.”

YOU - do what you can to press the sheet flat, before inserting it into the file with the rest of his paperwork. “That’s good. I mean, duh. You should see a psychiatrist. Actually, you should’ve seen one, like, months ago. But I don’t think they can really help with amnesia? You need a neurologist.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Actually!” He puffs up, proud to have done something right. “One of the first people I spoke to was a theoretical neurology expert!”

YOU - perk up, given his excitement. “Oh yeah? And what’d they say?”

HARRY DU BOIS - His brow furrows; he’s thinking back. “He said maybe capitalism did this to me.”

YOU - “Uh–”

HARRY DU BOIS - “That, and neon lights.”

YOU - “I think you should see a different neurologist.”

HARRY DU BOIS - He agrees. “I’ve got an appointment set up. October 3rd.”

YOU - are shocked. “October?!”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Yeah.”

YOU - “But it’s only May!”

HARRY DU BOIS - He nods in agreement.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He is happy to show that he knows this.

YOU - “And you’ve been like this since March?!?!”

HARRY DU BOIS - He lets out an affirmative breath.

YOU - “Breezy Deleezy!” you exclaim, before you can remember yourself. “Pardon my language, but… What have you been doing for all this time?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Oh, you know…” His voice is floaty. “This and that. Uh. Cleaned out my apartment. Well, found my apartment. Then cleaned it out. Went back to work.”

PAPERASSERIE - Are you fucking kidding me.

YOU - “You’ve been out there working for two whole months with retrograde amnesia?!?!?!”

HARRY DU BOIS - His expression has gone slack, as he’s taken in your growing distress. He’s watching you, and his eyes betray a deepening incomprehension. “What else would I be doing?”

YOU - “What else?” You sputter, the question so insane you don’t even know where to start. “What else! What else?!?! Healing, is what else you should be doing! Resting and recuperating! Eating soup and wearing pajeemies! That’s what you should be doing!!”

PERCEPTION - Your voice has grown too loud. Shouty. Even you can tell. 

MIRROR - Beyond you, the room is very, very quiet.

ANIMA - Yeah, you’re not thinking straight. Your blood sugar is way too low. Your extremities are icy. 

YOU - are overwhelmed.

RHETORIC - This has been a roller coaster of a session. Roller coasters always make you throw up.

HARRY DU BOIS - He had been sitting plainly, that simple incomprehension settled on his features. Now that you have quieted, though, his expression shifts. Slowly. His face becomes liquidy and red-cheeked. 

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He feels bad. Confused and insufficient. Forgone. 

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He is used to this, to being the target of others’ outbursts. He believes he deserves it.

PRACTICA - This is bad, Svala. This is real bad. Over and over again, you have messed everything up and then made it even worse. I get that this is a lot, but you absolutely should have done better.

ANIMA - Your lungs are constrained in a cage. Each breath is a strain.

HARRY DU BOIS - He doesn’t even turn his head away, just lets the tears distort his face and then fall.

MIRROR - Do not cry. You cannot do that. Not now.

YOU - But what can I do?

LOGIC - Just take it slowly. One step at a time.

ANIMA - Calm down.

PAPERASSERIE - Follow protocol.

MIRROR - Be gentle.

ÉLAN VITAL - And make me spare.

YOU - have been gripping your pencil this entire time, so you let go of it. It slips off to the side, down into your chair, beside you. This allows you to spread out your fingertips over the top of the papers you’re holding, tracing the sensation of its texture. This allows you to breathe again–deeply, thoroughly, the way you always should. 

You regard Harry.

HARRY DU BOIS - He sniffs loudly then wipes his nose with his jacket’s sleeve. 

YOUR SMILE - Soft and penitent. A private thing.

YOU - “Sorry,” you say, plainly. You take another deep breath in before continuing. “That was really stupid and mean of me.”

MIRROR - He is blunted to apology, whether his own or others’. He offers no forgiveness, incapable as he is of comprehending it.

YOU - continue. “So. Okay. You’re a pretty complicated case. No biggie, right? And, actually, you know? You know what it means, actually, now that I think about it? That you’ve been out there working even with retrograde amnesia?”

HARRY DU BOIS - Curiosity cuts through the sorrow. He’s listening.

ÉLAN VITAL - He can take it.

YOU - “It means you must really be one tough son of a gun.”

HARRY DU BOIS - He chuckles.

ÉLAN VITAL - He’s got it.

YOU - “Now,” you say, pulling yourself back up into Business Mode. You reach down beside you to retrieve your pencil, ready to get into some honest-to-goodness notes-writing. “We’ve got a lot of paperwork to get through…”

***

YOUR 3RD FLOOR OFFICE - Just one more. You have to just make it through one more appointment, and then your day will finally be over. It’s yet another initial assessment, and Lorraine scheduled it for a time when technically you shouldn’t be on the clock, but still, you can make it. You’re sure you can.

ANIMA - You’re shaky. It’s been too long a day. But shoring up the reserves is easier now that you’re so close to getting to go home. Just one more appointment, and then it’s pajeemies and calling Taimi, and then sleep.

YOUR 6 O’CLOCK - It’s yet another RCM officer.

He strides in, gaze downcast but with a confident pace. His face is sour, like he has spent a lifetime with lemon juice getting flicked in his eye and only yesterday realized he could put a stop to it. He plops down on the couch, and he huffs out a breath.

“Right,” he says. He has the demeanor of someone who knows exactly what he’s doing, and he doesn’t wait for you to get fully situated in your chair before he starts talking. He hasn’t looked directly at you yet, not once. “I’m here because there was an incident, if that’s what we’re calling it, involving my partner. I wasn’t even there, and he isn’t even my partner anymore.”

As he talks, he pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket, along with a lighter. 

YOU - don’t want to interrupt him, but also, he can’t do that. You raise up a hand. “Uh…”

YOUR 6 O’CLOCK - He looks up, sees you and your upstretched hand. Then he sighs through his nose, packs the cigarettes back up, and returns to what he was saying.

“The shrink I’ve been seeing for, oh, I don’t know, about a year and a half now–he fucked off to Le Jardin. Closed up shop so he could go work in a bakery.” He snorts. “Imagine that. Gave up his entire fucking practice, so he could spend his days pounding baguettes.”

YOU - “Huh.” 

CONFORMITY - Maybe you should become a baker.

YOUR 6 O’CLOCK - He fidgets with his hand, because he’d wanted that cigarette. “But, hey. My goddamned ex-partner tries to off himself spectacularly, gets shot in the leg, and throws an honest-to-God improvised explosive at a psycho mercenary–why shouldn’t I get some free therapy out of it?”

YOU - smile, but you’re getting a sinking feeling.

YOUR 6 O’CLOCK - “So, here I am.” He’s staring at you, now. His eyes are boring holes into your skull like he’s hoping there’s space sufficient within it to deposit all his disappointment and anger with the world. “I’m clinically depressed, and I know I’ve some some shit like codependency fucking me up. That’s me.”

PAPERASSERIE - Lorraine never shuffles the RCM cases like she should.

YOUR 6 O’CLOCK - “And, now, I guess I’m your problem.”

YOU - Well, you think, let’s get this started.

Chapter Text

YOUR 3RD FLOOR OFFICE - It has been no more than seven days since the last time this happened, and yet here we are again: it’s Monday. 

PRACTICA - There’s good news and bad news about the day ahead of you, Svala. Which do you want first?

YOU - Oof. Hard choice.

ÉLAN VITAL - Make it a sandwich. Good news, bad news, and then good news again.

PRACTICA - But I only have the one piece of good news.

ÉLAN VITAL - Then come up with something else.

PRACTICA - I can’t just make up good news out of nowhere.

ÉLAN VITAL - SANDWICH OR NO DEAL.

PRACTICA - Fine, fine… Okay. First piece of good news: You don’t have any intake assessments today. 

YOU - Yes!! I hate those!

PRACTICA - I know, which is why this is the good news. You do have the second assessment sessions for all three of the Mayonnaise Boys, but that’s not so bad.

RHETORIC - We’re not calling them that. 

PRACTICA - Ready for the bad news?

YOU - Hit me.

PRACTICA - You’re going to have to start the day off by apologizing to Lt. Kitsuragi, and, despite how much you’ve been dreading this all week, you have waited literally until the last second–right now–to figure out how to go about it.

YOU - Urgh. Bleh. Ugh.

ÉLAN VITAL - And, finally…?

PRACTICA - Right. Good news again. Uh… Anyone got anything?

ANIMA - You remembered your lunch today. That’s something.

YOU - Yes!! Great! What is it?

ANIMA - A sandwich. A literal one.

YOU - Ooh, what kind?

ANIMA - Herring and mustard.

YOU - Yes!!!

ÉLAN VITAL - See? It’s the little things that make all the difference.

*** 

YOU - Game face. Strong. Confident. You take a deep breath, and you smile.

YOUR SMILE - Game. Strong. Confident.

KIM KITSURAGI - Uninvolved.

YOU - “Before we begin… I want to apologize for last time.”

KIM KITSURAGI - From the absolute nothing that crosses his face, you get the distinct impression that he wishes you wouldn’t.

YOU -  “For, you know, failing to use your proper title.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He could give lessons to a brick wall.

YOU - press on. “So… I’m sorry. Um. I just forgot.”

YOUR SMILE - Meager, narrow, fitting for an apology.

KIM KITSURAGI - “You… Forgot.”

MIRROR - There’s incredulity, like a bass note, to his words.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - Do you know how easy it would have been to avoid bringing this up? Do you have any idea how much he would have preferred that? One of his strongest skills is conceptualizing an unpleasantry as unimportant and moving on without dealing with it. But, no. You just couldn’t let it be.

ACADEME - Yeah. This is our job.

PRACTICA - Stuff like this festers, if you don’t acknowledge it. 

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - It festers, does it? Look at him; he’s festering right now, and it’s because you acknowledged it.

RHETORIC - He’s not festering. It’s wounds that fester.

MIRROR - You went and scratched at a festering wound; now, he doesn’t have much choice but to lance it.

YOU - are maintaining a lot of sincerity right now. You aren’t ducking away from his glare.

ACADEME - What you’re doing is called giving him space. It’s permission, provided through the form of attentive openness, for him to feel and respond. He can’t not take it.

KIM KITSURAGI - “Do you forget with everyone?” The question has bite. “Or is it just with me, for some reason, that you forgot?”

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - This wound that we all keep talking about? You didn’t cause it, you know.

RHETORIC - It was already there, painful and red and infected, but beneath enough layers of callus for him to make it through his days pretending everything was okay. It only hurts him, like now, when he’s forced to think about it.

GUILE - He is prepared for you to be dismissive and mealymouthed, to defend yourself at his expense. He expects it. He wants it, even, because it’ll confirm some of his worst beliefs.

CHARM - Shave off any pride. Be plain and honest.

YOU - “Well, I don’t know.” Plain. Honest. “You’re the one who corrected me on it, and I’m being a lot more careful now.”

PERCEPTION - A slight twitch in his eyebrow, an unintentional reaction. That’s all you get.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - His mind is active.

KIM KITSURAGI - “I’m the one…” He says it low, more for his own benefit than yours. His glare, which has been distanced and harsh, turns inquisitive.

MIRROR - You are observed. He’s taking in the sight of you. You are being cataloged. 

YOU - What does that mean?

ANIMA - It’s uncomfortable.

KIM KITSURAGI - A pinched sigh escapes from him, and he looks off to the side. He removes his glasses with one hand so that he can rub at his eyes with the other. “Of course.”

PERCEPTION - The dark circles under his eyes are striking. He doesn’t just look tired; he looks worn down, wearing out.

MIRROR - He can’t see you. He’s extremely vulnerable this way, but it lets him feel, for a moment, like he has some privacy.

KIM KITSURAGI -  “Of course,” he repeats, with a hint of peeve. “None of the other officers would correct you.”

YOU - I don’t understand. What does he mean? 

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He is so lonely.

YOU - Wait, right now? Why? What just happened?

LOCKBOX -

Lornie Borde was quick, far quicker than you expected. This was the end of his third and final meeting with you, and he hadn’t been quick like this during either of the previous two sessions. Before you could process what was happening, he had jumped up and crossed the room. He was fast enough that he reached the door before you even had time to stand.

He stopped, then.

It all felt intentional, the way he did it. It felt like he had thought out, ahead of time, how fast he should be, to make sure he reached the door before you. It meant he was between you and the exit. It meant you couldn’t leave, unless he chose to let you.

Your smile was great, exactly how you needed it. You couldn’t be nervous, not with a smile like that. A giggle entered into your voice, even, and you said, “Goodbye, Mr. Borde!”

He took hold of the doorknob. He curled his fingers around it, purposively, like he thought it wouldn’t open without a good caress. Keeping his hand there, he turned his shoulder so that he could take in your smile, and then he split his face open into the kind of grin that upsets you. “You know…” He said, leaning closer, leaning towards you, “I’m a Sergeant, actually.”

Not backing off, not opening the door, looking straight at you with that grin: he ran his tongue across his bottom lip.

“Ha ha ha!” You didn’t move away, didn’t cede ground, because you didn’t know what he might be willing to construe as an opening. Because running is what prey does. “Yes, you are, aren’t you!”

Your smile never faltered. It is always there for you.

YOU - are tired.

KIM KITSURAGI - “It doesn’t matter.” He has put his glasses back on. He has returned to you. “I don’t take offense easily. I appreciate the apology.”

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - Of course he takes offense easily, or at least as easily as most people. No one with that much control over their outward expression is as impervious to slights as they want to appear. The truth is, he’s just extremely skilled at letting the sharp parts of life only ever cut into his insides, in no ways except those that others cannot see. 

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Where it festers.

RHETORIC - He said he appreciates the apology. Not that he accepts it. There is no forgiveness in his words, and none is coming.

GUILE - You are a grown-up, and he will not coddle you.

MIRROR - Also, giving forgiveness would increase the intimacy between the two of you, and that would be uncomfortable for him.

VIGILANCE - We trust him.

YOU - “Thank you, Lt. Kitsuragi.”

PERCEPTION - That quick flicker of a smile.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He knows you referred to him like that on purpose. He appreciates it as the gesture that it is.

YOU - “Now.” You press your palms down on the armrests of your creaky chair, signaling that it is time for Business Mode. “Let’s get down to work. Today, what we’re supposed to do is talk about the incident.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “I see.” He can’t be disappointed, because he was expecting as much. “Let me guess, it wouldn’t suffice for me to send you a copy of the report I wrote.”

ÉLAN VITAL - Ha! Look at that! It’s Lt. Kitsuragi, being funny!

MIRROR - Are we sure?

ÉLAN VITAL - Yeah, that right there is some weapons-grade deadpan. It’s great! Enjoy it!

YOU - grin like a maniac. “Not even a little!”

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - You just won some Kitsuragi Points. Not sure what they’re good for, but you got ‘em.

KIM KITSURAGI - “Alright.” He leans back against the chaise lounge. He’s nowhere near slouching, but it at least makes him look settled. He waves a hand, somewhere between beckoning and dismissing. “Let’s get this over with.”

ACADEME - See how much a difference it makes, clearing the air? Everyone hated going through the apology, but look at the difference, now. 

MIRROR - There’s way less tension.

PAPERASSERIE - Uh – hm.

YOU - What?

PAPERASSERIE - I feel like we’ve forgotten something.

PRACTICA - Did we?

PAPERASSERIE - Well, it feels like it, but I’m drawing a blank. I guess, if it’s really that important, it’ll come back to us. So…Never mind. Sorry.

YOU - Right. Okay. You pull out your notepad and pencil from your creaky chair’s pocket. Once you have it ready, you soften from Business Mode into your Inevitably Hard Questions Voice. “So… When you think about what happened, what is it you think about?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “I think about–”

…

…

A flooded halt: no movement, no action, no thought, like a violent stasis has overcome him. His sentence, sliced in half, hangs awkwardly. 

PERCEPTION - His gaze is frozen to the left of your shoulder. While the rest of him is motionless, his brow, slowly, furrows.

PRACTICA - This is minor dissociation. 

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He is failing to process some internal data. 

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He is unsettled.

MIRROR - Don’t react, or it might set him into a panic.

YOU - stay calm, and wait.

KIM KITSURAGI - He twitches his eyes quickly to you and then away again, and he uses that motion to force himself back into agency. The spell breaks, allowing him to shift haltingly where he sits. He wants to move, now, but he knows there is nowhere for him to go. 

When he speaks, his voice is hushed and mechanical. “I think about how I am still alive.”

YOU - breathe out slowly, intentionally. 

MIRROR - Your breath sets the tempo. Your pulse, too, if subperceptible. You regulate, for both of you.

YOU - “You were afraid for your life.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Yes. It was a gunfight, and we were out-armed.”

YOU - mark, in your notes, which answers come fluidly and which don’t.  “Now, afterwards, when did the feeling you might be about to die go away?”

KIM KITSURAGI - …

…

…

His jaw firms and loosens–once, twice. Then he blinks and shakes his head. “My partner was more heavily wounded. He lost a lot of blood.”

YOU - “Right,” you say, softly, kindly, as you take your notes.

ACADEME - That wasn’t an answer to your question, so what’s the throughline? There must be, somewhere between what you asked and how he answered, a clarifying point of connection.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He’s overtaxed at the moment. He can’t recognize the explanatory spaces he’s leaving empty.

YOU - don’t make a big deal out of it. “Do you ever dream about it?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “No.”

YOU - wait, in case he wants to change his answer, or at least clarify.

KIM KITSURAGI - He doesn’t.

YOU - “It would be normal, you know, if you dreamt about it at least sometimes.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “But I don’t.”

YOU - Why don’t I believe him?

MIRROR - He answered with too much certainty and too quickly.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - You don’t know for sure, though. He could be telling the truth. 

ACADEME - But, even if so, it’s a reasonable guess that there’s something up with his dreams, something he doesn’t want you to know about.

YOU - “Do you ever feel like you’re back there in the middle of it again?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “What do you mean?”

YOU - “Like…” You try to avoid using the term flashback when you ask these questions, but every alternative is awkward. “You smell something, or you see something, or whatever, and then all the sudden you’re like, ‘Oh my god! I’m–’”

PAPERASSERIE - OH SHIT, HIS GUN.

YOU - Wait, what?

PAPERASSERIE - THAT’S WHAT WE FORGOT. WE FORGOT TO ASK ABOUT HIS GUN.

VIGILANCE - Who’s we?

PERCEPTION - We were lucky to notice it last time. With the shape of his jacket, you can’t tell what if anything is underneath it.

YOU - Oh no.

CONFORMITY - Calm down. Everyone, stay calm.

PAPERASSERIE - NO, THIS IS AN ALL CAPS SITUATION. 

PRACTICA - I AGREE.

YOU - OH GOD.

PAPERASSERIE - DID HE BRING HIS GUN? IS HE WEARING IT? RIGHT NOW? AS WE ASK ABOUT HIS TRAUMA RELATED TO A SHOOTOUT? 

YOU - OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD.

PRACTICA - ABORT NOW. REASSESS.

YOU - cough, clear your throat, swallow hard. “Uh–actually, let’s take a break.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Hm?” 

BON TON - He’s unfamiliar with therapy. For all he knows, this is normal.

YOU - “How would you say, right now, you’re feeling?”

YOUR SMILE - Pleasant and not at all panicked.

KIM KITSURAGI - He’s dismissive. “I’m fine.” 

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He’s not so sure about you, though, all of a sudden.

YOU - “Yeah?” You curl your hands around the edges of your notepad, and you keep smiling. You chuckle. “Feeling, you know… Calm? Relaxed? Happy as a clam?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He is watching you. His eyes narrow.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Either you’re annoying him to an inch of his life, or he’s amused. Not sure which.

KIM KITSURAGI - “I wouldn’t go that far.”

YOU - “Ha ha… Okay. Sure. Yeah.”

PRACTICA - Assessment complete. While he was definitely having a trauma response earlier, he’s out of it now. 

VIGILANCE - He’s not a threat.

YOU - “So, uh…” You angle your feet until only your tippy-toes make contact with the floor. “Okay. Just a minor thing I should’ve asked you about, earlier. Before we started.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He waits.

ANIMA - Your cheeks are burning. 

YOU - “Given how, last time, uh… I just need to check, you know? If, uh, you know– didyoubringyourgunwithyouagain?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He has to parse what you said, before he can answer.

PERCEPTION - You can tell when he’s managed it, by how his shoulder twitches.

MIRROR - Yeah. That means he has it. He’s carrying a deadly weapon on him, right now.

KIM KITSURAGI - He winces. “It completely slipped my mind.”

YOU - “Ha– ha ha.”

KIM KITSURAGI - Still wincing. “I know, I should have… The gym, downstairs.”

YOU - nod. Like, a lot.

KIM KITSURAGI - “I should…” He pauses to reason his way through the options. “Do you want me to…?”

YOU - “Yeah…”

CONFORMITY - Oh, this is awkward. Horrifyingly, drippingly awkward. Just, the worst. Might as well curl up and die.

YOU - “...If you don’t mind.”

GUILE - If he doesn’t mind? And what if he does mind?

VIGILANCE - But he doesn’t.

KIM KITSURAGI - Sheepish, he stands, and he makes his way out.

***

CONFORMITY - Hey, I have an idea.

PRACTICA - Stop.

CONFORMITY - No, no! It’s a great idea! Who wants to hear my great idea?

ANIMA - No.

CONFORMITY - Really? No one? No one wants to hear this great idea of mine?

BON TON - I for one would like to hear it. 

CONFORMITY - Okay, then! Here’s my idea. How about next week, we actually go through a whole session with Lt. Kitsuragi without making a giant fool out of ourselves!

PAPERASSERIE - Sigh.

CONFORMITY - Huh? Huh? Any takers?

YOU - I’m going to cry.

ÉLAN VITAL - No, you’re not. You’re fine. He’ll be back shortly.

***

KIM KITSURAGI - He returns, takes his seat again on the chaise lounge, and everything is back to normal.

MIRROR - Not quite. There’s a lot more tension in the room. It’s emanating from his neck and his left elbow. 

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He’s uncomfortable without the weight of his gun at his side.

ACADEME - You know, this is interesting. Ask him about it.

YOU - wait long enough for everything to be settled again. Then you ask, “Do you think it’s different, being in here without your gun?”

PERCEPTION - The flash of a hard glare–daggers, vicious and sharp, contained but only just–and then gone as quick as it came.

KIM KITSURAGI - He clears his throat, shifts his posture, and looks away.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He thought you were mocking him, and then he realized his error. 

EMPATHY  (AFFECTIVE) - Now, he’s embarrassed about it.

KIM KITSURAGI - “I like to be prepared, that’s all.”

YOU - “Prepared for what?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Hm.”

PRACTICA - That’s it, that’s the end. You aren’t getting anything more out of Lt. Kitsuragi today–at least, not anything clinically significant. He’s too wound up. It would take too much time to get him back to a good place for discussing the incident, actually do so, and then recuperate afterwards. This session is toast.

ACADEME - Anyway, you already have enough information. Sure, you might want to know more, but you don’t need to. So, let’s call it Fact Finding Complete, and let the poor guy rest.

CHARM - You spend the rest of your time asking about topics that will be easy for him. Stuff about his job, the daily grind of it, what he’ll be doing with the rest of his day. You learn he likes crosswords, although he doesn’t want to talk about it. You feign interest in the minutiae of his paperwork. 

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He thinks it’s a good sign, that you’re asking him about such boring topics. He thinks, or at least hopes, it means there isn’t more unpleasant work to be done.

ACADEME - He’s wrong.

***

A HERRING AND MUSTARD SANDWICH - It leaves you wishing you had a breath mint, honestly.

***

HARRY DU BOIS - His demeanor is different this time. He doesn’t look around when he enters, and his eyes are mostly downcast. He barely glances at you, and only quickly, like he’s nervous, and then he’s fidgety and uncomfortable once he’s seated. 

PRACTICA - You know the look of it: this is someone with something important he wants to reveal to you, something frightening or perhaps shameful. He just hasn’t built up the courage to be out with it yet.

YOU - “Hey, Harry,” you say.

HARRY DU BOIS - His attention rests on the knees of his pants. There’s a spot of something, and he uses a thumbnail to scrape it off. “I wasn’t exactly honest with you last week.”

YOU - “Well. Okay.” 

ACADEME - You’re not the honesty police. And besides, it’s not like anyone ever is fully honest, either with themselves or others.  

GUILE - If it turns out he was lying about the amnesia stuff, though, then you’re going to have some feelings about that. 

YOU - wait.

HARRY DU BOIS - He gets an idea, and he straightens up. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to subscribe to Mazovian industrial-realism, would you?”

YOU - have heard those words. That’s definitely true. “No, not really.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “What about entroponetic panpsychism?”

YOU - shrug.

CHARM - See, what he’s doing right now is flailing around for anything that might work as a distraction. He doesn’t want to have to say whatever it is he has decided he needs to say, so he’s picking random topics out of the air and hoping you’ll latch onto one of them. Let’s be honest: it’s a strategy that absolutely would work on you, no doubt about it, if he was even slightly in the ballpark of stuff you care about.

HARRY DU BOIS - “What about disco?”

YOU - “You mean, like, as a psychological principle?”

LOGIC - Of course he didn’t mean it like that.

HARRY DU BOIS - But now that you’ve mentioned it… He gives himself a nice moment to imagine it, then he shakes it off. “No, I meant like the music.”

YOU - Your dad went through a disco phase, in his youth. You know this, because the surviving photos are hilarious. “I dunno. Music’s not really my thing.”

HARRY DU BOIS - Horror, and then curiosity, wash over his features. “In general? As a general concept? You don’t like music?”

YOU - “Well…”

ÉLAN VITAL - Of course you like music. Who doesn’t like music? You like music quite a lot, in fact.

BON TON - What you don’t like is how mean people can be about it, when you don’t like the right kinds of music. 

YOU - “I do.” You demur. “But I don’t have good taste or anything.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Well, what music do you like?”

YOU - are uncomfortable.

BON TON - There have been too many bad experiences. Too many smirks, especially from men, which somehow are worse than outright laughter. Too many lectures. Too many times, being made to feel small.

YOU - don’t want to continue. “C’mon, Harry, you were going to say something important, weren’t you?”

HARRY DU BOIS - He deflates. He had been so excited to get to talk about music or obscure psychological theory. Or, in fact, anything except this one thing.

CHARM - You’ve disappointed him.

GUILE - This is okay. You’re actually good at staying firm in this kind of situation, using a bare state of expectation to wear another down. The smile definitely helps.

YOUR SMILE - Helpful.

PRACTICA - Of course, he doesn’t not want to tell you about–whatever it is. He could’ve avoided saying anything at all, if he really didn’t want to bring it up. All of this is just him going through the volitional hoops to get from recognizing the opportunity to say it to actually saying it.

HARRY DU BOIS - He’s not there yet. “What kind of music do you like?”

YOU - huff, and drop the smile enough to give him a look. “You just asked that.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Yeah, but I thought maybe this time you’d tell me,” he mutters, dejected. “I mean, I just want to know.”

MIRROR - You can sympathize with this, the desire to know. 

CONFORMITY - But you’re not giving into it.

YOU - “Harry…”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Fine! Fine.” He sighs and runs his hands through his hair, then leans into his palms so that they press against his forehead. His eyes are squinted shut, like he’s afraid to look at you. “Let’s not make a big deal out of this.”

PRACTICA - That’s usually what people say right before they let drop something you can’t not make a big deal out of.

YOU - prepare, but subtly, for a big deal. You get your notepad and pencil ready.

HARRY DU BOIS - A deep breath, the last internal reach for courage, and then: “I hear voices.”

YOU - “Oh.” 

VIGILANCE - Is that it? 

ACADEME - Well, okay.

YOU - “Tell me about that.”

HARRY DU BOIS - He peeks open his eyes, verifying your reaction. He was so prepared for you to be nonplussed, your thoroughly plussed response has taken him by surprise. It’s thrown him off his game. “Uh… It’s like portions of myself are split off from me, and they chime in with their perspectives. They give me advice sometimes. Tell me what to do.”

You: “Mmhmm, mmhmm.” You nod, as you listen. You jot down some notes, too, to signal that you’re taking this seriously. “And these portions of yourself – they’re all internal, right? Like, inside your head?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Same as where I am.”

YOU - “That’s a good way of putting it!” You chuckle, because everything is fine. “So, like, just to make sure I understand, can you give me an example?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Well…” He thinks. “One part just piped up to point out that there’s something shiny on the floor over there.”

He points over towards your desk.

YOU - “There is?” You look over.

HARRY DU BOIS -  “Yeah, see? Right there, by the back leg.”

PERCEPTION - Oh, hey, will you look at that! Now that you know where to look, you can see it. It’s probably easier to spot from his vantage point. That must be why we missed it until now. 

YOU - stand and go over to it, scooching down around the desk’s side to get at it. It’s a pear-shaped topaz drop earring, which you last saw weeks ago. Once you’ve gotten hold of it, you straighten back up and revel at it. “I’d thought I lost this!”

HARRY DU BOIS -  He smiles, proud and satisfied.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He wants it.

YOU - What? Why? 

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He just does. He found it, so he wants it. 

YOU - Well, it’s yours, and you want it too. You slip it into your purse, which sits on your desk.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He’s disappointed, but he’s not going to let it ruin the moment.

PERCEPTION - His ears aren’t even pierced.

YOU - return to your seat, across from him. “So, okay. A voice piped up, telling you that you could see the earring. And that’s what made you aware of the fact you could see it?”

HARRY DU BOIS - The pride from having done a good job fades out, returning him to an anticipatory discomfort about how you’re going to react to all this.  “Yeah.”

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) -  He thinks he’s crazy. He thinks you’re about to confirm it.

ACADEME - But you’re not.

YOUR SMILE - Reassuring and soft, rounded by the kindly raise in your brow.

YOU - “What you’re describing is totally normal, Harry.”

HARRY DU BOIS - That’s too surprising for him to believe, at least for now. “What, really?”

ÉLAN VITAL - Yes.

MIRROR - Completely. 

YOU - “I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard anyone describe it the way you just did, but this is just how brains work.”

YOU - I mean, right?

CONFORMITY - Right. This is such a basic and fundamental fact about human thought that no one ever thinks to mention it.

ACADEME - It’s so rudimentary, they don’t even explain it in psychology textbooks.

PRACTICA - And patients don’t bring it up, either. 

ACADEME - And it’s why the diagnostic criteria for group identity disorder is so confusing.

CONFORMITY - For everyone, not just you.

RHETORIC - It’s just how language works. People say, for example, I know logically that this is true, even when the more accurate wording would be, The logic voice is telling me this is true.

LOGIC - Don't bring me into this.

HARRY DU BOIS - He’s coming to terms with this new idea, that he isn’t fundamentally broken as a person. “Seriously? This is normal?”

YOU - “Yes! Absolutely normal.”

YOUR SMILE - Like how one normal person smiles at another normal person, when both are being normal.

HARRY DU BOIS -  “Huh!” He’s stunned, and it’s going to take work for him to reconceptualize himself to account for this new information. “I tried to talk to Kim about it once, and he acted like he didn’t even understand what I meant.”

YOU - “Not everyone has good insight into their own inner workings.”

HARRY DU BOIS -  “And then I tried to talk to Jean about it, and he called me a fucking psycho.”

YOU - tsk. “That wasn’t very nice of him.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “What about– uh–” His mind has latched onto a new idea; he’s back to feeling unsure about himself. “Sometimes, inanimate objects talk to me, too.”

YOU - take that in. “What do you mean?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “I know other people don’t hear this stuff.”

YOU - are intentionally not giving a response, until you have a better sense of what he means. “Give me an example?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Well, okay…” He looks around the room. First to your desk, then over to the window, then to the bookshelf. That’s where his attention latches. “You’ve got a book over there that’s a real asshole.”

YOU - turn so that you’re also looking at the bookshelf. “I do?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Yeah. It had some real bullshit to say last time I was here. Real patriarchal shit.” He’s scowling over at the bookshelf, but then turns back to you to clarify. “I’m a feminist, by the way.” Then right back he goes to scowling.

YOU - “Oh. Nice.” Feminism is good, right? Hopefully no one asks you to define it or anything. More pressing is the issue of the patriarchal book. “Which one is it?”

HARRY DU BOIS - He gets up and goes over to the bookshelf. He reaches towards one book then stops with his hand outstretched. “No, you shut up,” he growls, then snatches it up and brings it over. He holds it out, so you can see it.

HISTRIONIC TERRORS AND EROTIC DELUSIONS - Histrionic Terrors and Erotic Delusions, 3rd edition, by Achille Léon, is a textbook that was assigned by Dr. Hasso for his course, Psychoanalysis And The Female. It was a required text.

YOU - I hardly even remember that class, let alone that book. 

ACADEME - You didn’t miss much.

EROTIC TERRORS AND HISTRIONIC DELUSIONS - It has sat in your small, personal library since the class ended. When you moved to Revachol, you packed it up with all the others and brought it here with you. Then, when you were assigned this office, you unpacked it along with all the others. Now, it lives on your bookshelf.

YOU - But what’s it about?

ACADEME - Can’t remember.

YOU - Did I even read it?

ACADEME - I think so? 

YOU - I should at least know what it’s about.

ACADEME - If you really want, we can try–

LOCKBOX - No. It doesn’t matter. 

YOU - “It doesn’t matter.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Huh?” He’s still holding the book out for you to look at it.

YOU - notice a sharp spike of pain, behind your eye. You shake your head, quickly, to dispel it, and then try not to look at the book any more. “So, like, it talked to you?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “But I’m not going to repeat what it said.”

YOU - “Okay, well. Um. Yeah, if you’re saying that you actually heard it say things, then, yeah, that’s not normal.”

HARRY DU BOIS - He’s figured out by now that you’re not going to take the book from him, so he heads back over to return it to your shelf. By the time he plops back down on the chaise lounge across from you, he has accepted your judgment. “So, what do we do about it?”

YOU - “Depends. Does anything, like, tell you to hurt yourself or others?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Eh.” He’s noncommittal. “I might just be imagining all of it.”

YOU - can understand that.  “Sometimes, it’s hard to know the difference between the imagined and the perceived, yeah.”

HARRY DU BOIS -  He’s still bothered. “But am I crazy or not?”

YOU -  “I dunno. Maybe?” You’re not getting across your point. You try again. “How about we just accept that everyone’s crazy, and be okay with that?”

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) -  He’s not reassured, but he can’t find a way around your ironclad logic.

YOU - try a different tactic. “Would you be happier if books and stuff didn’t talk you to?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Well– that book?” He jabs a thumb over in the bookshelf’s direction. “Yeah, again, it can shut the fuck up. But in general? I guess not.”

YOU - “Okay, so, there you go! Just… You know. Don’t let, like, a soap dish talk you into hurting anyone. Or yourself.”

HARRY DU BOIS - A dark, meaty chuckle. “I have to be honest with you, I wasn’t expecting my therapist of all people to tell me I should just give in to being crazy.”

YOU - “Okay, sure, but I’d really like some acknowledgement on the whole ‘I won’t be talked into violence by a soap dish’ thing.”

HARRY DU BOIS - He shakes his head. “I’ve never met a violent soap dish.”

YOU - “I kinda think you’re missing my point.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “C’mon!” He joshes, with a handsome glint to his eye, “You don’t really take me for someone who’d give in to peer pressure, do you?” 

YOU - Do I?

BON TON - Well, he certainly has no problem standing out from the crowd. I mean, look at how he’s dressed.

VIGILANCE - You just know handles rejection poorly.

GUILE - Do you have any idea how easily you can manipulate this man? It wouldn’t even be hard, not for you. Want him to steal, kill, walk ten miles on his knees over broken glass? Just make him feel manly and wanted. That’s it. That’s all it’d take. Easy peasy.

YOU - “Listen,” you say, shaking off your thoughts. “If the stuff you hear gets in the way or makes life harder for you, then that’s something. But if it’s just… there? Like, in the background? I think we have bigger fish to fry.”

HARRY DU BOIS - He looks at you, skeptically, but then he gives in. He scooches down on the chaise lounge, getting comfier. “Fine. Okay. Let’s fry up a big fish, then.”

YOU - pause, to set your sights back on the plan for the day. “Honestly, I don’t think this is the big fish with you, but today we’re supposed to talk about the incident.”

HARRY DU BOIS -  He’s struck by an idea. “You should requisition Kim’s report. It’ll tell you everything.”

YOU - “Oh? Will it?” You peer a skeptical eye at him–but don’t worry, you’re just teasing. “Will it tell me all about your feelings?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Ohh… Right.” He’s acknowledging your shared context, getting ready to go through with the gushy-feely work of therapy. “All that stuff.”

YOU - “Exactly.” You ready your notepad and pencil. “So. Let’s talk about it. Walk me through your feelings the day of the massacre.”

YOUR 3RD FLOOR OFFICE - That’s exactly what he does.

It’s remarkably thorough. He tells you about locating his suspect, being subjected to a horrifying torture device–it sounds like sci-fi, you don’t really get it, but the important thing is that it apparently hurt. A lot. He tells you about the anguish he felt when he saw how much the device was affecting Lt. Kitsuragi. He describes the moment when he realized the two of them would have to intervene in the tribunal. His retelling is specific, precise, at times straightforward and at times heavy.

For instance:

HARRY DU BOIS -  “He wasn’t dead, and he was going to take me out. I could see it, in his eyes. The way he was leveling his gun at me. He was going to kill me.”

ÉLAN VITAL - Woah.

YOU - “And what were you feeling?”

HARRY DU BOIS -  He shakes his head. “I was calculating. I could’ve tried to dodge the shot, but I had almost no chance of making it. So, instead… I just let it come.”

YOU - let out a heavy breath.

HARRY DU BOIS - “Yeah.” He accepts the weight of your reaction. He feels it, too.

YOU - “Were you scared?”

HARRY DU BOIS -  “No. There wasn’t any time for that. I was down on the ground before I had a chance to panic.”

YOUR 3RD FLOOR OFFICE - And then he continues. He describes, vividly, how he had been bleeding out, while Lt. Kitsuragi kept him alive. He describes the horror as it dawned, as he saw the figure looming above Lt. Kitsuragi, and then the wave of relief when Lt. Kitsuragi reacted quickly enough to take out the threat.

YOU - are swept up in it.

HARRY DU BOIS - “Then, I was out.” He gestures: poof! “When I woke up, I was back in my room, and Kim was there, standing right over me. He said something super cool.”

YOU - need to know. “What?”

HARRY DU BOIS -  He waits, letting the anticipation build, then releases it: “Sunrise Parabellum.”

YOU - “Wow.” 

RHETORIC - You have no idea what it means.

ÉLAN VITAL - But he’s right. It is super cool.

PRACTICA - A recap. He described the incident, beginning, middle, and end, with fluidity. He presented no cognitive stutters, nor did he display hesitancy or confusion regarding his internal states. His affect, throughout, was circumstance-congruent.

ACADEME - There is no evidence of incident-related trauma.

LOGIC - This is unexpected.

ACADEME - But not inexplicable. As he describes it, the incident involved him, multiple times over, facing danger and then having the opportunity to act in order to avoid or at least mitigate that danger. Even in a moment of complete powerlessness–when a mercenary was aiming at him, preparing to fire–he still made the choice to accept the shot. This very well could have protected him from the sort of overwhelming sense of powerlessness which, according to at least some leading theorists, is a primary cause of trauma.

PRACTICA - If it weren’t for the whole everything else about him–if his response to the incident was literally the only thing that mattered–this would be a guy who didn’t need your services.

ACADEME - For all we know, maybe total amnesia protects against trauma, too.

HARRY DU BOIS - He sits before you, having finished his story, having answered questions and follow-up questions about a horrifying ordeal, and he is focused and calm. Refreshed even. He’s resting his elbows on his knees, and his chin in his hands, and there is an easy smile across his face. 

MIRROR - He has enjoyed his time here today, actually. He has enjoyed getting to share his story and having an apt listener. You, also, have enjoyed getting to be an apt listener.

YOUR SMILE - Simple, easy-going.

HARRY DU BOIS - “What about folktronic jazz?”

YOU - don’t mind showing your confusion.  “I don’t know what that is.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “It’s a music genre,” he clarifies. That smile of his becomes a grin. “So I’m guessing it’s not that, then.”

ÉLAN VITAL - He likes mysteries. He’s a detective, after all–and a real one, not the boorish kind you spend most of your time with. This means he is thrilled by puzzles. They’re what he chases after, more than anything else. And now you’ve become one.

CONFORMITY - Don’t give in.

VIGILANCE - He doesn’t get to know this, just because he wants to.

YOU - roll your eyes, friendly-like, and wave a dismissing hand. “Well, too bad, we’re out of time.”

HARRY DU BOIS - He accepts it, stands up. He shakes out his bad leg. Then, he waits so that you can lead the way to the door. 

***

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “What the hell is that?”

YOU - “Oh, that? That’s just my hypnotriptych. For hypnotherapy.”

YOUR 3RD FLOOR OFFICE - Installed into the ceiling, right above the head of the chaise lounge, are three rectangular panels positioned in a row. They display concentric shapes with intersecting lines, all of which are coordinated around a focal point in the middle of the center panel. They are electric and, when turned on, provide the illusion of movement.

Most people don’t even notice they’re there.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - He noticed them, though, because he’s staring right up at them. He’s lying down on the chaise lounge, having flopped there the moment he came in.

PRACTICA - You prefer it when people lie down, actually. It gives both of you some nice privacy and makes it easier for you to concentrate. Usually, you wait a few weeks before easing patients into it, since lying prone in an office with a stranger sitting over them can be uncomfortable. 

MIRROR - This is what he’s used to therapy being.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “Isn’t that stuff just for quacks?”

CHARM - Well, that’s not nice.

YOU - frown.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - Recognizing the faux pas, he clears his throat. “I mean, my previous guy didn’t go in for that kind of stuff.”

CHARM - Maybe that’s why he’s a baker now.

YOU - “His loss, I guess.”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “What’s it good for?”

PRACTICA - Of course he’s curious about it. He called it quackery because he’s intimidated by it.

YOU - “Oh, lots of things.” Another good thing about your patient lying down: it's easier to hide what you're doodling. “It’s good for dream work.”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - Dissatisfaction rolls through him until it comes out as a grumble. “Dreams are bullshit.”

ACADEME - Very little could make you want to know about someone’s dreams more than a comment like that.

YOU - “Do you get a lot of bad ones?”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “Everyone in the RCM gets bad dreams. We see too much shit not to.”

PRACTICA - See, how that worked? He just admitted that he gets bad dreams, but he did so in a way that let him avoid talking about himself in particular. He acknowledged a hardship while also disavowing it.

ACADEME - It’s deflection.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He can’t stand himself.

MIRROR - It’s too early on to confront this. You have to let his misery pass on by.

YOU - go hmm and draw a decisive squiggle in your notes. “So, today, I’d like to talk to you about the incident.”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - He snorts. “Incident.”

YOU - “I know, you weren’t even there. But I’d still like to hear about what it was like for you.”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “You know what you should do?” This is an idea that has just dawned on him. He raises a hand to wag a finger in the air, to punctuate his advice. “You should read the report. There are multiple–you want the one written by a Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi.”

RHETORIC - You know what? Fine. Everyone keeps going on about this amazing report, maybe you will just go ahead and requisition it.

YOU - “But that won’t tell me what it was like for you.”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “Sure. Yeah.” He lowers his hand back down, rests it atop his ribs. He shifts his weight through his shoulders and releases a hard breath through his nose. He’s staring up at the triptych as though, if he looks hard enough, he’ll find an insult to his mother hidden within its pattern. “Makes sense.”

YOU - “So…” You prompt. “What happened?”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - He’s quiet.

PERCEPTION - You watch how his chest rises and falls: too shallow on the inhale, too thick on the exhale. You see how his jaw is working: he gnaws on his lower lip.

PRACTICA - You are definitely going to use the hypnotriptych with this guy. Now’s not the right time, but whew, does he need it.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “I wasn’t fucking there, is what happened.”

YOU - vocalize, low, sympathetically.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “That fucking asshole. That–that absolute piece of fucking shit–”

YOU - Is he still talking about Lt. Kitsuragi?

LOGIC - No, that doesn’t make sense. 

JEAN VICQUARE - “He had to–just had to fucking go and–fuck.” 

His voice has become a rumble from a build up of energy. His fingertips, restive atop his torso, dig inwards against his shirt with thoughtless cruelty, until they ball up into a fist, painfully tight. And then his fingers slam outwards, flexing to straights ends. 

He snaps. 

“Fuck!”

MIRROR - He needs this. It needs to come out. Act as receptacle for the pain, so it has somewhere to go.

YOU - But I don’t know what he’s talking about.

MIRROR - Just wait. Give him a moment.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “One weekend. Just one. Fucking. Weekend.” His words are sour-edged through clenched teeth. “I leave him alone–and because he tells me to. What else was I supposed to do? He tells me to fuck off, so, I do. I fuck off. And he goes and– And he goes and he gets himself fucking shot.”

LOGIC - Oh. This is about Harry.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - That makes a lot of sense.

RHETORIC - You absolutely should not refer to him as Harry.

YOU - say, softly, “This is your ex-partner.”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - As intensely as the energy came, it evaporates. He sags into the cushions. His hand droops, lolling off the side of the chaise lounge. “I can’t even begin to tell you all the shit he’s put me through.”

PAPERASSERIE - If it’s not directly related to the incident, it’s not going to help you fill out your report.

PRACTICA - But it’s important. Let him out with it.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “The–fuck. The drinking. The jokes about offing himself–which, let’s be honest, were never really –... And then– Fuck. The number of times I peeled him off the fucking ground. All the shit I’ve gotten–I’ve taken. Covering for him. All while he’s– The fucking insults and ranting. I’m talking literally here, he’d be ranting and raving. Like a fucking lunatic. Over and over again. Every. Single. Fucking. Day. And then? And then–!!”

A horror gets stuck, underneath his tongue. He doesn’t know how to stop, but he also doesn’t know how to go on.  He lifts his head up and swivels it, so he can look at you. His eyes are hard from anger and pain, and even still, they’re pleading. 

YOU - halt your note-taking. You meet his gaze.

YOUR SMILE - Soft, permissive.

MIRROR - He rebuffs it.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - He drops his head back down, lets himself sneer upwards at the ceiling. “And then he goes and gets shot.”

YOU - He’s so angry. What is this?

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Grief.

RHETORIC - Don’t call it that. He uses words laced with responsibility, so that’s what you should do, too.

YOU -  “You feel responsible for the fact that he was injured.”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “No,” he says too quickly. He shakes his head, back and forth, mussing up his hair against the cushion in the process. "Fuck no. You don’t get it. This guy–he was a fucking time-bomb. I’m serious. I can’t tell you how long I spent, just waiting for him to–”

His face is hard. His mouth twitches. He cannot finish the sentence.

YOU - This doesn’t sound like the Harry I know.

VIGILANCE - The Harry you know is volatile and manipulative. And you only met him last week.

ACADEME - The Harry you know also has retrograde amnesia. Who knows what that does to someone’s personality?

RHETORIC - Have you noticed? Jean hasn’t mentioned it. You know Harry has amnesia, but would you, if Jean’s testimony was all you had to work with?

PRACTICA - That’s the horror, isn’t it? It’s what he can’t let out, what he’s tripping over.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He doesn’t know how to reckon with it, not even enough to put it in words.

MIRROR - What comes out, instead, is rage.

PRACTICA - Which will then collapse in upon itself, as self-recrimination.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Look: it’s about to happen.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - His body slackens again, the energy once more flagging. His breath, now, is both shallow and slow. “Fuck me, I’m such a fucking asshole. You see how it is. I’m pathetic. So fucking codependent. And I’m the bad guy who can’t even be nice to a– God fucking damn it. To my injured ex-partner.”

There’s a tremor to his lip, until he bites down on it again. 

MIRROR - He needs to cry. It’s palpable, this need. It’s corrosive.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - But he can’t do it. It’s not possible for him. He’s a pot that’s boiled to empty.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “If I weren’t so fucking depressed and codependent, you know what I’d do?”

YOU - wait, for the answer.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He doesn’t actually know.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “I’d fucking kill him, is what.”

YOU - set your pencil down, atop your notebook, where you hold it in place. “Uh.”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - He gets it. He knows what that response means. He squeezes his eyes shut and brings his hands up so that he can push his fingertips into his eye sockets. “I don’t actually mean it.”

YOU - “No, I know.”

PAPERASSERIE - Even with how obviously empty the words were, you still have to do due diligence.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He knows it. He gets it.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “I don’t. Okay? I’m not homicidal. I don’t really want to kill him. I don’t even want to see him dead. Okay? I’m happy for him, actually, with his perfect brand new partner and his–”

PERCEPTION - He has to stop applying pressure to his eyes like that. It’s starting to look painful.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He doesn’t really want to hurt Harry. But, himself?

YOU - “Jean…”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - It’s enough. The cycle repeats: the energy collapses in, onto itself. He sighs, lowers his hands, opens his eyes back up and turns his head to look at you.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He’s a hollowed out pit.

MIRROR - So you must be firm and solid enough for the both of you. 

PRACTICA - Do you remember what Lt. Kitsuragi said, this morning? The disconnected answer to your question, the one right before everything went off the rails. It was about Harry, wasn’t it?

ACADEME - It was.

PRACTICA - And, here, with Jean. Notice when he loses fluidity, when he experiences cognitive stutter. Notice the rapid shifts in affect. The rage, the pain, the rumination. This is trauma, and Harry’s at the center of it.

YOU - Isn’t it funny, that Harry’s the one who came out of it fine?

VIGILANCE - Not fine. You keep missing it. Harry’s not fine.

YOU - But he wasn’t traumatized. Not by the Mayonnaise Massacre. 

ACADEME - No. Or, at least, we have no evidence pointing in that direction.

PRACTICA - Three men, all caught up in a terrible ordeal. Two of them, overwhelmed to the point of trauma, from the work of holding up the third.

YOU - And Harry, being Harry, is the one in the middle of it.

PRACTICA - Maybe it’s a good thing, ultimately, that Lorraine assigned all three of them to us.

OTHER-LIGHT - Maybe there was no other way for it to go.

YOU - “Why don’t you sit up, Jean?” You offer, softly and kindly. He needs rest, you can tell, and he won’t get it so long as he remains in the psychoanalytic position. “I think we’ve got some other business to deal with, now, and it’ll be easier that way.”

PAPERASSERIE - It’s a lie.

GUILE - But it’s a kind one.

MIRROR - And it was a necessary one. You can tell, once he has pulled himself up to seated. Once you can feel, radiating and true, the relief that he gets from just the chance to sit, like this, with you. Like two people, together, in the space that is given.

Chapter Text

YOUR THIRD FLOOR OFFICE - The sun rises early this time of year, and so your office is already bright when you arrive. The morning air coming in through the open window is cool, not yet warm.

ANIMA - You are not enjoying the breeze.

YOU - I’m not feeling too good, am I?

ANIMA - No, you’re not. You slept poorly last night, and this morning you stepped into the shower when the water was far too hot. You got lost on your way to work–took a wrong turn and didn’t notice soon enough. It’s hard to concentrate, and your stomach is lead.

YOU - I think I'm getting sick.

ANIMA - No, that’s not it. You're experiencing something much worse than that: anxiety.

YOU - Ugh. Today’s Monday, isn’t it?

PRACTICA - Yes, it’s Monday. Mondays are always hard days, but this Monday promises special difficulties. You’ll be having your third session with each of the Dysfunctional Detective Trinity, which means the evaluation period is coming to an end.

RHETORIC - I’m still working on what to call them. I’ll keep you updated.

PRACTICA -  Morning, afternoon, or evening: given the little you’ve learned about your three detectives over the past two weeks, what portion of your day is going to be hardest?

YOU - Well, the morning. Lt. Kitsuragi comes in at 9, and he hates me.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - No, but.. Close enough, right? And that’s how he feels about you right now, before today’s session. After? Who knows.

PRACTICA - Exactly. No matter how well it goes, meeting with Lt. Kitsuragi today is going to be hard. Given what you know you have to talk to him about today, it’s going to be the kind of challenging session that even a seasoned, highly-skilled therapist would struggle with.

ÉLAN VITAL - And, sweetie? You know that’s not you.

ANIMA - You’re dreading it. 

PAPERASSERIE - You’re also behind on your paperwork. You don’t have your initial evaluations written up for Harry and Jean, and those have to be finished before they show up.

YOU - Oh no, will I have time?

LOGIC - Unclear. Maybe you can manage, if you scramble.

ANIMA - By the way, you’re bleeding from a nail cuticle.

YOU - What! Why?

ANIMA - Because you’ve been biting at it all morning.

YOU - Gross, ew. Ouch.

ÉLAN VITAL - We’ll do what we can to get you through. We always do.

YOU - But I’m not ready. I’m tired, and I’m nervous, and I don’t want to do it.

ÉLAN VITAL - We know. But you have to.

OTHER-LIGHT - Psst. Listen.

YOU - Huh?

OTHER-LIGHT - Shhh! Listen!

YOU - … What are we listening to?

OTHER-LIGHT - Time. Its passage.

YOU - You mean, the clock? 

OTHER-LIGHT - No. The clock is but an artificed shadow. Listen instead to that which casts the shadow. The true hum of things as they are, as they form and unfold and go.

YOU - Huh. Okay.

OTHER-LIGHT - You don’t have to go along with it.

YOU - I don’t understand.

OTHER-LIGHT - So, you aren’t ready for your appointment with Lt. Kitsuragi? Okay, that’s fine. Just put it off.

YOU -  What?

OTHER-LIGHT -  Do it last.

YOU - But, he’s my first appointment of the day.

OTHER-LIGHT -  So do your first appointment of the day last. Go in reverse. 

YOU - I can do that?

OTHER-LIGHT - What I’m telling you is that it all happens as it happens. Time will flow, whether you are with it or not. So, do your own thing. Go the way that will be easiest.

YOU - I don’t know, this sounds like it might be a bad idea.

OTHER-LIGHT - No. You’re wrong. We’re doing this.

YOUR THIRD FLOOR OFFICE - The sun goes down late this time of year, and so plenty of light is still streaming through your office window. 

YOU - Wait, what time is it?

YOUR THIRD FLOOR OFFICE - It’s 6:05, obviously.

YOU - No, but– I was getting out of bed at 6am. I did that already. I’m in my office, now. It’s past 8:50, I’m certain of that.

YOUR THIRD FLOOR OFFICE - No. It is 6:05, in the evening . 18:00. Keep up.

YOU - But–

PAPERASSERIE - You’re late. 

YOU - But I need to–

PAPERASSERIE - Your 6 o’clock is already here, and he’s waiting for you to collect him for his session. Go, get moving.

YOU - Oh. That’s Jean. Right? I meet with Jean at 6 on Mondays.

ÉLAN VITAL - Yes. Exactly. Go!

***

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “Huh.” He pauses to flick a finger against the friend-shaped inanimate object, before he takes a seat. “How cute.”

YOU - The what?

THE FRIEND-SHAPED INANIMATE OBJECT - It sits on the table beside the chaise lounge, next to a box of tissues, and it is angled to look out onto the room. It is made from terry cloth, with floppy limbs, floppy ears, floppy head, and a thick tummy. There is no clear indication what type of being it is meant to represent, although the length of the ears make it look vaguely rabbit-like. There are two small beads for eyes and a sewn-on smile.

YOU - I have never seen that thing before in my life.

THE FRIEND-SHAPED INANIMATE OBJECT - Yes, you have. It’s familiar by now.

YOU - No. It’s completely unfamiliar. I don’t know it.

ÉLAN VITAL - Yes, you do.

YOU - It’s scaring me.

THE FRIEND-SHAPED INANIMATE OBJECT - It’s not scary. It’s shaped like a friend. 

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “Figures, it’d end up here,” he mutters, as he sits down.

YOU - “I’m sorry, what?”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - He waves a hand, dismissively, and releases a harsh sound–a chuckle, mirthless–while he settles into a hunched posture. His forearms lean against his thighs, and his face is tilted downwards. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever. It doesn’t make a difference.”

PRACTICA - Last time, he went straight to lying down. Not this time.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He’s distracted.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - What’s distracting him is the friend-shaped inanimate object. Specifically, he's disappointed with it.

YOU - Is it his?

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Probably not? He doesn’t interact with it like he owns it. You know, like how he flicked at it, rather than pick it up.

YOU - Why is he disappointed?

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - You could try asking?

GUILE - No. That’s a bad idea. Do not do that.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - He raises his head up, enough to look at you. One eyebrow is cocked.

MIRROR - His disappointment has veered towards you.

YOU - I’m so confused. I can’t– I don’t know what to do.

PERCEPTION - Pay attention.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He’s ruminating on his disappointed thoughts, whatever they are, and it’s not going to get better the longer you let it continue.

PRACTICA - Get to work.

YOU - But I’m lost.

PERCEPTION - There’s something in your hands.

YOU - look down.

PERCEPTION - It’s a file, in a folder. It’s not just any file, but Jean’s. Sitting on the top is the preliminary evaluation, just as it should be. Even better, it’s ready to go: the entire thing is complete, all but for the final section which to be completed in session today, exactly as you need it.

YOU - Wait, it’s complete?

PERCEPTION - Yes. Except the last section.

ANIMA - Seeing it fills you with relief. 

YOU - hold onto it tight, so you can’t lose it.

PRACTICA - It’s like a script: all you have to do is follow along. So long as you have the evaluation sheet, you can’t get too lost, can you?

ANIMA - No, you can’t.

YOU - put on one of your better smiles, to get things started, and you ready your pencil. “Well, Jean. Now that we’ve had a chance to get to know each other, it’s time for us to talk about next steps.”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “Right.” His voice is dull. “Next steps.”

YOU - He sounds so upset.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Yeah, what is up with that?

PRACTICA - There’s nothing you can do about it now. Just move on. Stick with the script.

YOU - nod, because that’s what a situated and focused person would do. You check the evaluation sheet for the diagnosis. “You’ve got a lot of symptoms of depression, which, yeah, isn’t exactly a surprise for you. And there’s also a lot to process about what happened with your ex-partner.”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - He snorts, a bitter sound.

YOU - try to ignore that, too, and do the only thing that makes sense: you press on. “So… My recommendation is ongoing, weekly treatment.”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “Yeah.”

YOU - “I’d also like to refer you to psychiatric, because I think–”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “No.” He is firm, with a sharp shake of the head. “I’m not doing that.”

ACADEME - The best treatment outcomes result from a combination of medication and psychoanalysis. By rejecting psychiatric, he is undermining his chances of improvement.

PRACTICA - It is easy for someone with a long-lasting disorder, like his, to grow frustrated with psychiatric medications. He may have given up years ago on finding a medical combination that works for him. Additionally, psychiatric treatment is still highly stigmatized, especially here in Revachol. You need to talk to him more about this.

CHARM - No. Don’t. He doesn’t trust you enough for that right now.

YOU - Why not?

CHARM -  See how he reacted to the friend-shaped inanimate object? Trust me on this: you cannot push him.

PRACTICA - At least make sure he knows his options.

YOU - “Erm, you know…” You stop yourself from biting your lip. You also manage to keep yourself from scribbling shapes onto the completed evaluation form. “You were assigned to me randomly. That’s how it works, with all my patients. But, you can request a different practitioner, if you want.”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “Huh.” His eyes tick over your face, and he thinks about it. “Yeah.”

PRACTICA - That’s not what I meant.

YOU - Oh, wow. You’re right. Why did I say that?

CHARM - Please try to keep up.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “I probably should, shouldn’t I?”

MIRROR - The way he says it, with his voice so dull and bitter, feels mean.

YOU - try not to show that it hurts a little.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “Fuck it.” He sighs, agitated, having made up his mind, and he repositions himself so he’s no longer hunched over. He reaches up a hand to scratch at his neck, turning his head to look off to the side as he does so. “I’m not doing this shit all over again. No. This is fine.”

RHETORIC - By this shit, he’s referring to the process of initiating work with a new therapist. By this is fine, he means he’s agreeing to continue working with you.

YOU - Why does he have to be so mean about it?

LOGIC - You aren’t paying enough attention. You missed something.

ANIMA - Take a couple of deep breaths. Blink your eyes a few times; that’ll clear out the increasing moisture. It’s been a long day, and it’s okay that you’re feeling sensitive.

YOU - blink. Wait. Smile.

YOUR SMILE - Certainly not what you’d see on the face of someone who’s too sensitive and too easily hurt and also confused.

YOU - “In that case,” you say, moving on down the evaluation form, just like you know to do, “let’s come up with a plan for what we want to accomplish.”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “Accomplish?” 

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - It sounds funny, to him.

YOU - won’t give in to thinking it’s funny. “Yes, in our time together. What are some good goals we can work towards?”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - He has been scratching at his neck longer than he could possibly need to. It’s an empty, distracted movement. Once he’s spent enough time failing to think of an answer to your question, he puffs out his mouth with a slow, defeated breath. 

YOU - “Well. We’ll think of something, hm?" Treatment planning isn’t where your skill truly lies, but it's easy and straightforward. “When you think about how the future could be, what is it that you think about?”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - He scoffs. “The future,” he repeats, letting the words drip with irony. “You know what the future holds?”

YOU - “No, because no one can see the future. That’s not how time works.”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - He shakes his head, harsh and closed off. “I can. The future’s shit, is what it is.”

LOGIC - He doesn’t mean that literally. Just so you know: he’s not actually claiming he can see the future.

YOU - are relieved.

ÉLAN VITAL - What he’s doing is displaying a substantial lack of hope.

YOU - don’t like the sort of bleakness, not in your office. “Now, come on.”

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “Oh, sure, not for you.” He cedes the point, raising his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “You’ve got a home somewhere, don’t you? Of course you do – and I bet it’s a nice and cozy one, too, isn’t it. I bet things change all the time where you’re from – and for the better, even.”

BON TON - He doesn’t want to know about your home. What he wants is to drive a wedge between you and him. Or, actually, to highlight a wedge that you’ve known has been there all along.

YOU - tolerate the point, without comment.

JEAN VICQUEMARE -  “I just want to make it through the day.” He rubs his thumb and index finger together, looking down at them. It’s his tell that he wants a cigarette. “That’s it. Day in, day out. So long as I’m not blowing my brains out, you’re doing your job. How’s that?”

YOU - That’s depressing.

ACADEME - Yeah. You’re talking to someone with pretty severe depression. 

ÉLAN VITAL - But we’ll find something. Don’t worry. We’ll find a way to pull him out.

YOU - Under treatment goals, you write down decrease symptoms of depression, identify reasons for hope, and establish long-term goals for the future.

PAPERASSERIE - Fine. Good enough.

HARRY DU BOIS - “Oh, nothing. Just something I found.”

YOU - Wait, Harry’s here?

HARRY DU BOIS - Of course he’s here. He’s sitting across from you on the couch, and he’s holding something in his hands.

YOU - Where did Jean go?

ÉLAN VITAL - What are you talking about?

PAPERASSERIE - Jean doesn’t come until 6.

YOUR THIRD FLOOR OFFICE - It is currently 2:07. In the afternoon.

HARRY DU BOIS - The thing he’s holding is made of terry cloth, with floppy limbs, floppy ears, floppy head, and a thick tummy. He folds one of its arms in half, so that it waves at you.

YOU - wave back. 

THE FRIEND-SHAPED INANIMATE OBJECT - It does not see nor otherwise register your wave. 

YOU - So this is where it came from!

THE FRIEND-SHAPED INANIMATE OBJECT - You have never encountered this thing before.

YOU - No, but I have. Later, with Jean.

LOGIC - Oh dear, no.

ANIMA - What you’re feeling right now, Svala: don’t give in to it. Just stay focused. Stay present. 

YOU - No, actually, I feel okay right now.

ANIMA - Yes, good. That’s good. Keep telling yourself that.

HARRY DU BOIS - “I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be. Maybe a rabbit?”

YOU - “It’s friendly.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Yeah.” He has a soft voice, as he looks at it. He runs a finger over its sewn-in smile. But then he stops himself for the sake of growing careful.  “But it’s not– You know. It’s inanimate.”

YOU - “Oh, I know! I know.” You are good at showing that you understand this. You and he are both on the same page about this. Still…  “Does it talk?”

HARRY DU BOIS - He considers, turns to it. “Do you talk?”

THE FRIEND-SHAPED INANIMATE OBJECT - It does not and never will talk to you.

YOU - Why does that make me feel so lonely?

ÉLAN VITAL - Look at how friend-shaped it is.

ANIMA - You could use a friend.

HARRY DU BOIS - He’s thoughtful, as he examines it. “I think it should stay here.”

YOU - “Oh?” There’s no reason why you wouldn’t be surprised by the suggestion. “Why is that?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Because it feels lonely, and it needs a friend.”

ANIMA - A sharp chill, down your spine.

LOGIC - Just as a reminder, telepathy isn’t a thing. It never has been, and it isn’t now. You never, ever have to worry about mind-readers.

MIRROR - But it really does feel like he just read our mind.

HARRY DU BOIS - Your lack of response doesn’t bother him. He’s busy looking around your office, until he spots the end table beside the chaise lounge. It holds a box of tissues, but there is space sufficient for the friend-shaped inanimate object. He reaches over and sets it down there. At first it flops over, and so he takes a moment to reposition it until it is upright and looking out at the room.

THE FRIEND-SHAPED INANIMATE OBJECT - Being angled to look out means that it smiles towards you whenever you are sitting in your creaky chair. Like now.

ÉLAN VITAL - It is good, there. It fits. Keep it there.

YOU - Something occurs to you; there are pieces you didn’t realize were for the same puzzle, until you feel them slotting together. “Hey, did Jean happen to see you with that?”

HARRY DU BOIS - He’s mildly surprised. “Oh, you know Jean?”

YOU - “Uh…” 

PAPERASSERIE - Why? Why?! Why did you have to bring up Jean? Why are you like this?

YOU - Because when Jean was here–

ANIMA - No. Calm down. Deep breaths. Don’t panic. 

YOU - don’t feel much of anything, it seems like, so certainly you’re not panicking. “You’ve mentioned him.”

GUILE - I have no idea if that’s true or not.

YOU - hope you didn’t just lie.

HARRY DU BOIS - He clearly doesn’t put as much thought into it as you are. He’s blasé about the issue. “Well, I found it on my way to work, and I was at the precinct all morning, so… Yeah. I guess he probably did.”

GUILE - If Jean sees it in here later this evening, then he’ll know Harry comes here too.

YOU - Yeah. That must be what happened.

GUILE - What do you mean?

YOU - It’s why Jean was acting so weird. Why he was so angry with me.

GUILE - No, it’s Lt. Kitsuragi you met with already today, and you know exactly why he was angry with you. Jean won’t be here until this evening. Just make sure you remember to remove the friend-shaped inanimate object before he gets here, and everything will be fine.

YOU - Oh.

HARRY DU BOIS - Now that the friend-shaped inanimate object is securely in its new home, he relaxes, gets comfy. With an easy grin, he’s ready for whatever you’ll throw at him.

YOU - hope that you’re ready, too. “We’ve got work to do. Okay? Today, we have to talk about next steps.”

HARRY DU BOIS - His grin fades out, and his brow stitches up. It’s confusion, or maybe concern, spreading across his features. “Didn’t we just do that?”

YOU - drop your eyes down and don’t say anything. You try to think.

HARRY DU BOIS - “We did. I know we did. You said–ongoing, weekly.”

YOU - “Did I…?”

PERCEPTION - Even to your own ears, your voice sounds reedy and weak.

ANIMA - Your throat is dry.

YOU - swallow, hard, and look down at the file in you’re holding. It’s Harry’s–inexplicably, thankfully. 

HARRY DU BOIS’S FILE - The top document is the initial evaluation form, just as it should be. It’s completed, entirely, including even the last section, at the bottom, listing the patient’s treatment goals. 

PERCEPTION - It’s your handwriting throughout, no doubt about it.

YOU - glance to the clock.

YOUR THIRD FLOOR OFFICE - It’s 2:38. In the afternoon.

YOU - Why is this happening?

CONFORMITY - You just lost track of the conversation, is all. No biggie, right? These things happen.

ANIMA - Breathe. I can’t keep having to remind you about this. You have to keep up with the breathing, all on your own.

YOU - I’m trying. I really am.

HARRY DU BOIS - “No, you did. It happened, I’m sure of it. Look!” He reaches into his jacket’s inner pocket and pulls out the weathered referral form, the one he gave you two weeks ago. “You gave me this.”

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - The document is proof that what he remembers actually happened. You have worried him that he has become disconnected to reality. He needs to know that he isn’t crazy. 

PRACTICA - You have to reassure him.

CONFORMITY - And you have to be normal about it.

YOU - “Wow!” You say, digging in deep for some energy and pulling it out along with a laugh. You roll your eyes at yourself. “Total brain fart.”

YOUR SMILE - Whoopsies! 

HARRY DU BOIS - “Ha. Phew.” He rolls his eyes, too, happy to let dissipate the air of confusion in the room. He returns the referral form to his pocket.

YOU - I never got Seba to sign it.

PAPERASSERIE - Yes, you did. 

YOU - When was that?

PRACTICA - I am begging you, please–please–try to go even two minutes without dazing out. 

YOU - “Okay. Uh. So, just to recap…” You acquaint yourself with the listed goals by reading them out loud, one by one. “Uh. Maintain sobriety–from alcohol, that is.”

HARRY DU BOIS - He nods, agreeing. “Again, I promise, the speed is not a problem.”

YOU - have trouble believing that.

PAPERASSERIE - Technically, you’re supposed to screen widely for narcomania as part of the evaluation. There’s an entire section of the initial evaluation form dedicated to it, even. But Seba made you stop; you were flagging too many RCM officers, and the Initiatives don’t cover addiction recovery. So now you just cross the whole section out, like Seba told you to do.

PRACTICA - Before coming to Revachol, you had almost no experience with treating addiction. Now, you still don’t, but for completely different reasons.

YOU - “...Sure.” You allow the point, because what else are you going to do? “Then, next… Process your grief over your divorce.”

HARRY DU BOIS - His shoulders sag, and he heaves out a sigh. “Yeah.”

YOU - “And…” The third and final item in the list is long and hard to read. It must have taken a few tries to work out its wording, since there are a number of crossed out sections. “Establish a sense of self that… That is intelligible within the–inexorable?–context of history while also, uh… while also engendering potentialities that are unconstrained by the limitations of the past.”

HARRY DU BOIS - He mouths out the words as you go, nodding encouragement at the points where you hesitate. 

PAPERASSERIE - Seba’s going to hate this one.

HARRY DU BOIS - He’s satisfied, mostly. “I wish you’d let me say my piece about the proletariat, there.”

RHETORIC - No. No no no. No.

YOU - “Usually we try to keep polemics out of our therapeutic goals,” you say, with the sort of apologetic simplicity that’s hard to argue against. That concludes the list. “Well! There we go. Does this all sound like a good plan?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Yeah! Yeah…” His attention turns inwards. “Absolutely. I mean…”

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He’s bothered by something.

PRACTICA - I bet it’s important.

YOU - wait, for whatever is about to come.

HARRY DU BOIS - He’s working, internally, searching, but he’s coming up empty. “I don’t know,” he says, as he gives up. “There’s something else.”

YOU - “But you don’t know what it might be?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “It’s… I can just feel it.” He balls up his hands, holds them out, as though he has caught onto something palpable even if it can’t be seen. “Something’s wrong.”

ACADEME - We could make some guesses at what it could be.

PRACTICA - But we won’t.

HARRY DU BOIS - “It’s like… It’s like…” Now his fingers stretch open, and his palms face up, and he pulls his hands back towards himself. 

RHETORIC - The movement is expressive. He may not know what words to use, but he has found the feeling and form of it.  It’s longing. Yearning. Unrequited dreams and the soft ache of need. Or–I don’t know, actually. I’m guessing.

HARRY DU BOIS - “Something’s…” There’s real flair to his tone. “Missing.”

YOU - Any help here?

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - Uh, nope.

MIRROR - Sorry.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Whatever it is, it’s BIG.

YOU - “Something,” you say, trying to match the weight of his tone. “But what?”

HARRY DU BOIS - His hands are still close by him, still enacting a physicality like want. “I don’t know, I don’t know. I can just feel it.” He squints his eyes tightly shut, raising his chin up to the ceiling, working as hard as he might to locate the whatever-it-is. “I can’t say I know all the depths of my soul, but I can feel it. It’s like there’s a piece of it missing. Of my soul! And it's missing!”

CONFORMITY - The man with retrograde amnesia is surprised he feels like he’s lost a part of himself.

MIRROR - Quiet. This clearly matters to him, a lot.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - It really, really does.

YOU - “Okay, well…” You can’t write find a missing piece of soul as a treatment goal, so you’ve got a bit of a puzzle on your hands. “We can definitely try to figure out what it is.”

HARRY DU BOIS - The truth underlying his display of passion is not undermined by how quickly he lets go of it. “Do you think Kim likes me?”

YOU - “Huh?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Kim,” he says, as if you don’t know who he meant. His hands drop down, and he starts wringing them together like he’s anxious. “Think he likes me?”

PAPERASSERIE - You know, right? You know you cannot answer this question. Please tell me you know this. 

MIRROR - Just reflect back; give nothing in return but what he himself provides.

YOU - “Well,” you say, carefully, “what do you think?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Eh.”

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He’s dissatisfied with his own perspective on the question. This is something that he has thought about before.

HARRY DU BOIS - “He likes working with me. We make a good team. But does he like me?”

YOU - still careful, still precisely reflective. “It’s important to you that he likes you.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Yeah, but, I mean, like… Does he like me? I mean, like me, like–” He is stressing from the need to express himself clearly, until, suddenly, he isn’t. It comes on like a blink; a shift, a backwards jerk of the head; a scowl across his features. “–I mean, like, in a totally masculine, pussy-loving way.”

YOU - “What?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “What?”

YOU - “What?”

HARRY DU BOIS - He stares at you.

YOU - “Uh.”

HARRY DU BOIS - With an audible sigh, he deflates. “God, I miss my ex.”

YOU - still don’t know what to write down for this fourth supposed treatment goal. And you’re far happier staying focused on that than try to make sense of whatever just happened. “So. Maybe we can put something like, you want to identify additional long-term therapeutic goals?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Sure.” He’s still deflated, likely still entertaining whatever confused thoughts he has about his ex. His voice wilts. “I guess.”

MIRROR - That’s not at all what he wanted. 

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - But he’s given up now on the attempt to express himself.

*** 

OUTSIDE SÉBASTIEN LEVEQUE’S FIFTH FLOOR OFFICE - You have to wait over half an hour for Seba to show up. But that’s okay. You scarf down a couple of hard-boiled eggs and finish up the two evaluations you need. You even manage, albeit hastily, to rewrite Lt. Kitsuragi’s evaluation, as well.

***

VIGILANCE - WATCH OUT!

ANIMA - What! Panic!? 

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant pulls a handkerchief from his jacket’s inner pocket.

VIGILANCE - Oh. Nevermind.

ANIMA - Shh, shh. Everything’s fine.

PERCEPTION - Wow, okay. Let’s take a moment. First: Lt. Kitsuragi wears his holster under his right arm, so he wasn’t even reaching to the correct side of his body. Second: Right before doing this, he took his glasses off. What do you think he’s going to do without his glasses? Third: He doesn’t have his gun on him right now. He made that so very clear to us, and quite deftly, before stepping foot into the room. 

VIGILANCE - My bad.

ANIMA - I said, everything’s fine. Calm down. Deep breaths, Svala. Deep breaths.

YOU - I know, I know. I’m trying. 

KIM KITSURAGI - He uses the handkerchief to clean his glasses. Once he is satisfied, he returns the glasses to his face and the handkerchief to his pocket. Then, he looks towards you with precision, like he’s seeking some piece of confirmation. He receives it. “You must have nicked yourself.”

YOU - look at him, and then around. “Huh?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He gestures towards you but angled down. “Or a paper cut. A bad one.”

YOU - look down.

PERCEPTION - There is a streak of red running across the top paper in the file you’re holding. It’s Lt. Kitsuragi’s file, and the top paper is your completed initial evaluation. The red is blood. 

ANIMA - You’re still bleeding from your thumb’s cuticle. It isn’t that bad, but you should have attended to it ten minutes ago, before you invited Lt. Kitsuragi in. 

PAPERASSERIE - The evaluation form is ruined. You’re going to have to rewrite the whole thing.

BON TON - He doesn’t actually think you nicked yourself or got a paper cut, by the way. He knows exactly what kind of wound this is. He’s being polite.

KIM KITSURAGI - “Do you need a bandage?”

YOU - Do I?

ANIMA - It’d be good to have one, yeah.

GUILE - You’ve picked up on this about Lt. Kitsuragi before: when you are vulnerable, he feels more secure. You’ll be better off if you can start out this session with him feeling as secure as possible, right? Let him help you by getting you a bandage.

YOU - But I don’t want to feel any more vulnerable than I already do.

CONFORMITY - Yeah, and just imagine how it would go: Does he have one on him, or would he have to ask if you have a first aid kit? Would he go down to the gym and ask there? What if he came back empty-handed? Or, even worse, what if he does find one to give you? You’d have to accept it, and then peel off the layers of packaging, and line it up on your finger, and make sure the adhesive stuck. And then? On top of all that? While Lt. Kitsuragi just sat there and watched you? You’d have to deal with the trash. Awkward, awkward, awkward.

ANIMA - Put that way, it does sound like a lot.

LOGIC - Okay, but if you don’t get a bandage, what’s your plan for dealing with the blood?

YOU - emit a small laugh, which brings a smile along with it. “Oh! Silly me. I didn’t even notice. Thanks, but I’m fine.” Around your words, you bring the edge of your thumb to your mouth and suck to clean away the blood.

CONFORMITY - Out of every conceivable option available to you, how is that what you chose?

YOU - I don’t know! 

RHETORIC - You look like a confused vampire.

KIM KITSURAGI - “Are you sure?”

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He’s a skeptical man.

YOU - “Uh-huh!” You lower your thumb, and you don’t look down to check on it, because that’s not what someone who is entirely on top of the Bleeding From A Cuticle Situation would do. 

YOUR SMILE - Very competent and unbothered with the state of things.

KIM KITSURAGI - Again: he’s a skeptical man.

LOGIC - Tissues. You have tissues. Right there, on the end table beside the couch. 

KIM KITSURAGI - He realizes this right at the same time. Stretching over, he plucks a tissue out from the top of the box and then holds it out for you. “Here.”

YOU - “Um.”

ANIMA - Being offered a tissue–your own tissue, by the way, from your own office–doesn’t have to make you want to cry. 

YOU - But it is about to make me cry, isn’t it?

ANIMA - Yeah. It is.

GUILE - You absolutely cannot cry. He responds well to vulnerability, not emotions.

ÉLAN VITAL - Just take the tissue from him, already.

YOU - take it. And then, while wrapping it around your thumb, you check the damage.

ANIMA - It’s fine. The stakes here were never about your physical well-being. 

BON TON - We do not forget to say thank you.

YOU - “Thank you,” you say.

KIM KITSURAGI - He nods, satisfied if unimpressed.

YOU - are off to a bad start, but what is there to do but go on? The evaluation that you are holding may be ruined, but its information is still good. That’s enough. “So, Lt. Kitsuragi. Today, we have to talk about our next steps.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He doesn’t follow. “What do you mean?”

YOU - “Well. Now that we’ve gotten through the evaluation stage, it’s time to work out a treatment plan.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Treatment plan?” His voice goes airy, as he repeats this key phrase.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He’s working out the implications of what you’re saying, and he doesn’t like what he’s coming up with.

YOU - “It’s nothing fancy,” you say, trying to be reassuring. “Mostly, we just have to list out what our therapeutic goals are, and that’s something you get to decide on.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “So.” The airy quality to his voice is gone, and now his words thicker and darker. He is focused on nothing in the middle distance. A finality has settled upon him. “You’re saying I have failed.”

YOU - “Huh?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He doesn’t respond. 

PERCEPTION - Almost nothing about him changes, as always, but you detect an increase in the strain at the corners of his eyes. 

YOU - “I mean, there isn’t really passing or failing…” You lie, but only a little, to try to assuage what fears you anticipate. “It’s not that kind of evaluation. You know?”

KIM KITSURAGI - Either he doesn’t hear you, or he doesn’t care. His attention is cold and restrained. “How do I appeal?”

YOU - “Appeal?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “There must be an appeals process.”

PAPERASSERIE - He may be a kind man, but he will protect himself at your expense. With no hesitation.

YOU - hold up a hand–the non-bleedy one. “Now, hold on.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He’s about to say something.

YOU - cut him off. “I said hold on–”

KIM KITSURAGI - “No.” He cuts you off, in turn. “You listen to me.”

GUILE - He expects to be obeyed.

PRACTICA - He needs to feel a sense of control right now, and he’ll panic if he doesn’t get it. 

MIRROR - He projects, outward, what he needs internally.

GUILE - Catering to a display of authority is never your favorite thing to do, but you won’t benefit from fighting against it in this moment.

ÉLAN VITAL - And it’s what he needs.

YOU - close your mouth, showing that you don’t intend to interrupt again, and you lean back a ways in your seat. You cede the floor.

KIM KITSURAGI - His breathing comes through his nose, controlled and intentional. 

YOU - wait, attentively.

KIM KITSURAGI - Satisfied that you will not interrupt again, for now, he speaks. “I do not believe your evaluation has been sufficient. I will appeal.”

YOU - continue to wait, attentively.

KIM KITSURAGI - He has said his piece, and now he’s done.

YOU - That’s it? That’s what he wanted the floor to say?

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - Yeah.

YOU - Well, fine. “You don’t even know what my evaluation is.”

KIM KITSURAGI - That was not an acceptable response; he snaps. “I am a good cop. If you are saying–”

YOU - “I’m not saying–”

KIM KITSURAGI - He refuses the interruption. “You are saying I am unfit for my job. You are wrong.”

ÉLAN VITAL - You don’t like it when people talk over you and don’t listen.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Neither does he. Neither does anyone.

MIRROR - You want to set your face into a glare, but pull back from that impulse. Any energy you contribute to the room will fuel his anger.

CHARM - No, what you want to do is put on one of your best smiles and tell him he’s right, but don’t do that either. He distrusts fawning implicitly.

PRACTICA - All three weeks so far, you’ve been handling Lt. Kitsuragi with kid gloves. Have you noticed? Over and over again, whenever he makes you nervous, you have held back your clinical judgments. Did you notice, even today, you skipped right to treatment planning? You’re supposed to start by sharing your recommendation and the diagnosis, if you’ve made an official one. But you didn’t do that, because it felt easier in the moment to skip over it. This is the result. 

ACADEME - Of course he reacted strongly: you have to give him the What Now.

PRACTICA - Yes. That’s exactly what you need to do. Give him the What Now. 

ÉLAN VITAL - You can do it. Stay strong. 

YOU - set your face neutrally. You regard the file in your hands enough to close it up and pack it away in your chair’s side pocket. Once your hands are free, you cross your arms around your front. You are very firmly in Business Mode. “Okay, Lt. Kitsuragi,” you say, “I’m going to give you the What Now.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “The what?”

YOU - “Now.” 

MIRROR - That one syllable, with all the certainty it contains, means that, as of now, you have the floor. 

KIM KITSURAGI - He doesn’t fight it.

YOU - “I have no doubt you are good at your job. You’re kind of like a model police cop, aren’t you? Everything about you, you know, just screams upstanding professional. Diligent. Uncorrupt. You even like the paperwork, and who can say that? In your deepest deep heart, that’s who you are, isn’t it? You’re a good police officer.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He is wary, but he listens.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He was comfortable when he thought you saw him as diminished and flawed, even if he hated it, because he knows how to handle that better than esteem. But he can’t reject what you’re saying as empty flattery, because your tone is too harsh for that. You’re forcing him to take your words as they are.

YOU - “And, honestly? You know what, Lt. Kitsuragi? If I needed a police cop for some reason? You can bet your best sweetcone I’d hope it’d be you I dealt with instead of, like, just about anyone else from the RCM I’ve worked with. So, you wanna know what it’s really like, when someone fails their evaluation?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He provides nothing.

YOU - “What happens is, I meet with them the three times, and then at the end of the third session, they go away and I am really happy I’ll never have to see them again. I write up my report, and I say they’re creepy and scary or whatever, and then that report gets sent to the Inspectorate General, and then they–they do whatever they do with it. Okay?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He is silent.

MIRROR - Call his expression a death stare.

YOU - prompt, again, intentionally. “Okay?”

LOGIC - Hey, since you have your arms crossed, some blood from your thumb might be seeping from the tissue and onto your shirt.

YOU - ignore that, and wait.

KIM KITSURAGI - “Okay.”

YOU - “Okay,” you repeat, decisively. But that’s not the end of the What Now. “So. Next order of business.”

KIM KITSURAGI - The death stare remains, except: a quirk to the lips, on one side.

YOU - don’t death stare back at him, but you do something close. The stare you give is a challenge. “Wanna tell me how you’ve been sleeping lately?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He doesn’t.

YOU - “Or what it felt like, leaving your gun down in the gym before you came up here?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He flinches.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He really doesn’t like that he just did that.

YOU - “Or how about how you lied on the questionnaire? Hmm?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He isn’t one to answer rhetorical questions.

ACADEME - That one was just a guess, but it worked.

YOU - are fine letting the implications sink in. You’ve made your point. “How bad a situation do you want to be in before you accept some assistance?”

KIM KITSURAGI - A small, halting movement: he shakes his head.

RHETORIC - It’s hardly communicative at all. 

ACADEME - There’s one final Now to What. It’s the big one.

YOU - “You know what happens to good police cops who don’t accept help?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He knows. How couldn’t he know? But he’s not going to make your point for you. He’s not going to participate as a rhetorical device on your behalf.

YOU - “They don’t stay good.”

KIM KITSURAGI - His nostrils flare.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - This is not hypothetical for him. He has witnessed this, intimately.

YOU - know it.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He will see you differently, after this.

YOU - How?

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Dunno. Just differently.

KIM KITSURAGI - There’s a subtle shift in his posture.

MIRROR – it’s a test, to see if you’ll cut him off before he has even started to respond. 

YOU - don’t.

KIM KITSURAGI - Recognizing this, he opens up. Not much–just enough for a question. “What if I refuse?”

ANIMA - That response, even after having given the What Now, threatens to defeat you. Honestly, it makes you just so, so sad. 

YOU - release your arms from around your front, let them flop downwards onto your lap. The tissue nearly falls off your thumb. “Lt. Kitsuragi–”

KIM KITSURAGI - He raises up a hand to stop you. It’s a firm gesture, but it’s diplomatic. “I like to understand my situation. My options. What if I refuse?”

YOU - sigh. 

PAPERASSERIE - What he is asking isn’t a matter of forms and policy. Your job imbues you with the Coalition’s authority, but the Initiatives that created your position are still so new as to be untested. 

BON TON - A lieutenant is high up enough in the RCM that his refusal could, very easily, become a big deal. It could be politics. Or worse.

LOGIC - You aren’t sure what that or worse could be.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - But he is. He knows.

MIRROR - You are both working through to the same conclusions. Except, his are firmer and clearer than yours. 

YOU - work with what you’ve got. “Do you want to find out?”

KIM KITSURAGI - With a calculating silence, he accepts the point.

YOU - “There isn’t an appeals process. Not really.” It’s easier to talk about this plainly, now that he has the What Now. “But you can meet with my supervisor. If you want. And, you can get them to switch you to a different therapist.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “No.” He’s quick to say it, but that does not diminish the appraisal behind it. “I will stay with you.”

YOU - Honestly, I’m surprised.

GUILE - He trusts you.

YOU - Hm, no, I don’t buy it.

GUILE - Okay, how about… He distrusts unknown others more than he distrusts you.

YOU - Yeah. That sounds about right.

YOUR THIRD FLOOR OFFICE - Silence takes residence, welcomed as a guest. Behind his quiet features, his mind ticks away. Behind your soft smile, you sustain the effort of staying unscattered. Time passes, and both of you maintain your presences. Both of you simply be.

KIM KITSURAGI - “I don’t want to be here.”

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Honesty. A peace offering, of sorts. 

YOU - “I get that.”

MIRROR - This honesty, in return, is sufficient.

KIM KITSURAGI - “I will come.” It is decisive, said and thus made fact. “But only under duress.”

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - This is how he sees it: he’s a victim of bureaucratic circumstance; you are a hurdle that has been put in his way.

MIRROR - There’s a certain kind of pain that makes duress requisite for care.

CHARM - It’s hurtful, sitting across from someone who doesn’t like you, who won’t like you, who needs to not like you because the alternative is to him unacceptable. 

PRACTICA - You are not sure what person you’ll have to be, to work with this closed-off man. You are not sure if you can successfully become her.

YOU - glance over to the end table, beside the chaise lounge, looking for something–for a friendly face, a sewn-on smile, anything. There’s nothing there, though, besides the tissue box. You are alone, across from Lt. Kitsuragi.

ÉLAN VITAL - But you suck it up. You keep going. As always, as you can, to the best of our capacities. Because what’s the alternative?

YOU - give Lt. Kitsuragi your smile, even if he doesn’t think he wants it, and you pull his file back out of your chair’s pocket. It’s time to give the treatment plan another go.

***

OTHER-LIGHT - You’re welcome.

Chapter Text

YOUR THIRD FLOOR OFFICE - It’s Monday again. It’s Monday again. It’s Monday again. 

YOU - How are there so many Mondays and so few Saturdays or Sundays?

ÉLAN VITAL - I know it’s hard to keep track of these things. There are Saturdays and Sundays, sometimes. I promise.

PAPERASSERIE - Your Monday schedule is well established by now, and it’s not going to be subject to change any time soon. Lorraine, the scheduler, can’t force more initial assessments on you when your day is already full up. No more evaluations, not on Mondays. 

PRACTICA - Now, you actually get to focus on your patients, on your work with them.

YOU - Yes! That’s the part of this job I like!

PRACTICA - Yes, it is. So, let’s get to work. Every patient deserves your full attention. For now, let’s put focus on Lt. Kitsuragi.

YOU - He’s a tough nut, that’s for sure.

PRACTICA - There are a number of factors that make working with him difficult.

CHARM - Here’s an obvious one: he doesn’t want to be here. He’s not open to suggestion, and he has an invested interest in not enjoying your company.

CONFORMITY - He also actively dislikes having attention on him. He recoils from being the star of the show, but who else is going to have the spotlight in therapy?

BON TON - He’s so carefully styled, though. Fastidious and constructed. He may be uncomfortable with attention, but he is prepared for it. There are incredibly few cracks in his self-presentation.

VIGILANCE - He can’t let his sense of control slip even a bit, or else he shuts down.

RHETORIC - Have you noticed, also, how he describes things? Specifically, I mean his internal states and attitudes. He will say, I like this, or I don’t like this, or This is good, or This is bad. Anything more nuanced is rare enough to get written into your notes.

ACADEME - How shall we conceptualize a man like Lt. Kitsuragi?

YOU - He’s so, so guarded. I want to explore his relationship with his subconscious. Maybe he doesn’t have a good connection to it?

ACADEME - That could account for much of what we have covered. The limited capacity for self-description could indicate a lack of the conceptual–perceptual-linguistic tools that permit experiential access to subconsciously-constructed emotions and drives–the Selbstwahrnehmungsapparat, to use the term popularized by the Gottwaldian psychoanalyst, Karin Saller.

YOU - Oh, yeah. Selbstwahrnehmungsapparat. Duh, that.

ACADEME - Additionally, an individual who maintains such control over himself may be acting from fear of that which cannot be controlled within the subconscious. And a conscious fear of being seen by others may indicate a more substantial fear of that which they might see.

OTHER-LIGHT - He has been bullied and abandoned and shamed. He has been ridiculed and scarred. There are those who would rob from him what is most core and beloved. A jewel abandoned to the depths at least cannot be stolen.

YOU - Okay. Sure.

PRACTICA - Our preliminary goal with Lt. Kitsuragi, then, can be to explore his level of awareness of and comfort with his subconscious.

ACADEME - From a Stopplebeinian perspective, the analytic exploration of the subconscious requires four interrelated preconditions: emotional security, physical comfort, interpersonal permission, and internal permeability. 

PRACTICA - The hypnotriptych, usually, helps establish these preconditions. The ritual of lying on the couch, the steady presence of a permissive therapist, the hypnotic movement within the triptych itself… All of this can work to increase the permeability of conscious awareness. It facilitates meaningful self-exploration.

YOU - try, once, to get Lt. Kitsuragi to use it.

KIM KITSURAGI - He does not outright refuse, although he wants to. At your recommendation, he lies down on his back. He’s corpse-like rather than comfortable, with stiff shoulders and stiff legs and rigid musculature. His lips are pursed in a tight line. He does not let the hypnotriptych’s gyrations wash over him with anything less than visceral distaste.

PERCEPTION - Small whorls of light dance, as subtle reflections, on the lenses of his glasses.

KIM KITSURAGI - “No.” Only a single shred of patience led to him trying this to begin with, and it frays almost immediately. He rejects the experience with full force, pulling himself up to sitting, swinging his legs around. “I’m not doing this.”

YOU - weren’t expecting much better, but you’re disappointed all the same. “That’s okay. It’s not for everyone.”

YOUR SMILE - Kind, unassuming.

PRACTICA - There’s no such thing as failure, in psychoanalysis. There is only ever new opportunities for discovery.

YOU - flip the hypnotriptych off and take a therapeutic stance. “What was it like? Looking up at it?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He scowls, unimpressed and verging towards annoyance. “It was nothing.”

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - It’s possible, sure, that it didn’t affect him at all. But with that reaction like that? I’m positive it did.

ACADEME - So, he’s not ready for the hypnotriptych. That’s okay. There are even gentler ways to tap into the subconscious. One is free association, or encouraging the patient to say whatever comes into his mind without judgment.

MIRROR - Here’s the problem: Lt. Kitsuragi is really comfortable with silence. Who do you think would crack first from boredom, you or him?

YOU - Ugh, me.

ANIMA - No question.

MIRROR - Free association is too passive a methodology for a patient like him.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He expects you to be the active one. He is waiting for you to bring about the comfort he needs to open up.

YOU - But I can’t do that! I can’t make him be comfortable.

ACADEME - It’s the paradox of interpersonal permissibility: the more explicitly you work to establish comfort and trust, the less successfully you can actually do so. Nothing inspires distrust so much as telling someone, go ahead and let down your guard. 

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Now might be a good time for a reminder that he’s aching. He’s suffering, in there, even if it’s all locked up.

OTHER-WORLD - He has so many terrible dreams. 

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He tells you as much. Or, at least, he tries to.

KIM KITSURAGI - At the start of a session, looking weighed down and exhausted, he sighs. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

YOU - offer sub-linguistic noises, sympathetic and unobtrusive. 

KIM KITSURAGI - “I had a bad dream.” His voice is level, unimpressed with himself. “A work dream.”

YOU - perk up.

ANIMA - You could go feral. You want to pounce and sink in your teeth, you could tear him to pieces to get to that good, meaty stuff, his dreamworlds.

GUILE - But you can’t.

YOU - I can’t?

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Your interest is dangerous.

RHETORIC - He is the pillbug that curls up upon being prodded.

GUILE - You have to pull back, hold it all inside, for now. Be bland and beige.

YOU - do the best you can. No fuss, no intensity. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He doesn’t respond. He is waiting for something.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - The only communicative scripts he has for divulging his secrets involve being forced into it. He can’t share the dream with you, unless you push him for it. He is waiting for you to pry it out of him, to wheedle and hound. 

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - And yet he will resist any attempt you make to do so, and forcefully. Try to pull it out of him, and he’ll yank back so hard it hurts.

ACADEME - This is a boundary test. Can he toe the line without receiving injury?

GUILE - You can’t even ask, no matter how politely or sweetly. Not now, at least. Not so long as it feels like he’s craving it.

YOU - do what you have to. You take a big breath, and you make your smile something boring. “Well. Shall we get started for the day?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He glances towards you, pauses for a heartbeat, and then assents. 

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He is relieved that you didn’t press him for details. He’s disappointed, too.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - And he very dearly doesn’t want you to know about either feeling.

YOU - do, though. It’s almost enough to undo your own disappointment over not getting a dream.

OTHER-WORLD - Almost.

*** 

YOU - get a really clever idea, one day, while you’re trying to do some guided word association.

ACADEME - Guided word association is a technique similar to free association. This version of it goes in rounds: you say a word to which the patient responds with whatever comes first to mind in response; then, you repeat the patient’s word, to which the patient then freely responds again. The goal is to wear down the constructive force of consciousness so that subconscious associations come out. The faster the process goes, the freer the subconscious response. 

KIM KITSURAGI - There is not a single round where he doesn’t very obviously think through his response with full conscious consideration. He offers his most recent precisely-selected response: “Case.”

YOU - “Case.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Hm. Detective.”

YOU - are bored out of your mind. “Detective.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Lieutenant.”

YOU - “Lieutenant.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Detective.”

YOU - “Detective.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Lieutenant.” 

YOU - glare at him.

KIM KITSURAGI - He notices.

YOU - “You’re cheating.”

KIM KITSURAGI - The accusation is met with a satisfied glint in his eye.

MIRROR - That glint tells you two things. First, that he denies the accusation. Second, that if there’s an accusation of cheating being levelled against him, then that must mean he’s winning.

CHARM - So, he’s competitive, is he? Let’s see what we can do with this.

***

YOU - It takes a whole day of walking from one bookstore to another, but you successfully find what you want.

ANIMA - You’re so pleased with yourself, you grin the whole way back home.

ÉLAN VITAL - See? This is a Saturday. They do happen.

***

YOU - “We’re not going to do therapy today,” you tell Lt. Kitsuragi, two days later.

KIM KITSURAGI - He wonders, does that mean he gets to leave?

YOU - “No, because, instead…” You’re so excited, you finally get to reveal to him the box. “We’re going to play a game!”

KIM KITSURAGI - “A game." He offers the enthusiasm of a sea slug.

YOU - “It’s a good one!”

KIM KITSURAGI - He eyes the box suspiciously.

THE MASTER OF YARN, AKA THE WINDING THREAD - A turn-based storytelling game for ages 8+, originally sold in Vaasa as The Winding Thread and then rebranded to The Master of Yarn when translated for foreign audiences. The game consists of a pack of cards, each of which represents a story element–either a kind of Person, Action, Object, or Location. Players are dealt hands at the beginning of the game and, each turn, each player plays a card that functions to advance the story. There are limitations to which cards can be played relative to others: each card has a depiction of a thread moving across it, from left to right, and a card can only be played if the placement of thread along its left corresponds to the placement of thread along the right of the most recently played card. Certain cards, called Resolution Cards, show the thread coming to a knot rather than continuing on. To win the game, a player must play a Resolution Card as the final card in their hand.

Upon release, The Master of Yarn, AKA The Winding Thread, was applauded for its visual design, as it features ornate illustrations from renowned children’s artist, Urho Pitkänen. What did not receive many accolades was its gameplay, although it remains popular with children throughout Katla and Mundi.

KIM KITSURAGI - “Is this really the best use of our time?”

YOU - “Oh, no, not at all!” 

YOUR SMILE - Brightly unrepentant.

PRACTICA - Alright, Svala. Your plan is now enacted. Would you care to explain your reasoning?

YOU - Well, if we’re playing a game, then that means he won’t feel like he’s the center of attention…

CONFORMITY - It’s a distraction.

YOU - And, it’s a game, so it has rules, right? Maybe that will give him a sense of control?

VIGILANCE - A facade of such, at least.

YOU - Oh! And don’t forget! Stories are about feelings and intentions and what-not!

MIRROR - So, it’s a form of communicative practice.

YOU - And maybe a little revealing, too?

ACADEME - The Stopplebein Conjecture proposes that, provided the four preconditions for psychoanalytic exploration of the subconscious have been met, the most therapeutically-relevant portions of the subconscious will inevitably rise to the surface. As he famously put it, “The need will out.” Granted, the shift in ethical mores regarding human experimentation during the latter half of his career meant he never produced evidence for this hypothesis. But many psychoanalysts, professionally undeterred by empirical insufficiency, still accept the conjecture as a guiding principle.

YOU - Yeah, okay. Also, maybe it’ll be fun! Wouldn’t it be nice, to get to have a little fun?

ÉLAN VITAL - It always is.

KIM KITSURAGI - “I’m not imaginative.” He’s dismissive, once he has come to understand the nature of the game. “I don’t have a head for stories.”

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - I don’t buy it.

RHETORIC - Being unimaginative is, itself, a story that he tells.

YOU - “That’s not a problem! It’s a lot more about strategy than anything, really.”

KIM KISTURAGI - He has his doubts.

YOU - “Come on!” You are not going to back down. You have energy and interest, and a winning argument: “Do you think it’ll be worse than anything we normally do?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He can’t deny the point. “Alright. Fine.”

YOU - are so happy for a plan to work, you could cheer. Actually, you might as well do so: “Ya-hoo!”

MIRROR - I can’t deny, that’s one way to keep spirits up.

***

YOUR THIRD FLOOR OFFICE - The only surface on which to play is the floor, and so you push your creaky chair out of the way, and both of you sit down. Lt. Kitsuragi sits with his back against the chaise lounge’s leg, while you sit across from him, criss-cross-apple-sauce.

YOU - shuffle, deal, and go first to show what a turn is like. You set down The Child. “There was a boy, and he was eight years old.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He takes his time, examining his cards and organizing them in his hand. Then, he sets down The House. “He lived in a house.”

YOU - “Who did he live with?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He wasn’t expecting an inquisition. “His family.”

YOU - “What were they like?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Don’t you have to put down a card to advance the story?”

YOU - “No, you can ask as many follow-ups as you want. So, what’s his family like?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He’s annoyed; this is capitulation. “They’re all extremely happy, and they love him very much.”

YOU - tsk, while sorting through your options for your turn. “Happy families don’t lead to very interesting stories.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “What would you prefer?” His tone jabs with irritation. “That he is an orphan? Shall we say his parents were murdered as suspected communists when he was two? Is that what you want?”

YOU - stop fiddling with your cards, and you focus on him.

ACADEME - In Vaasa, approximately .3% of the population loses both parents before reaching adulthood. Accurate data are harder to acquire in Revachol, but estimates for those who were born 40 - 60 years ago range from 8% to 30%. 

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He will reject you, if you treat him as an object of pity.

GUILE - He is challenging you, to see how you react.

MIRROR - He cannot trust you, if you cannot take this in stride.

PRACTICA - You told him this isn’t a therapy game, and he is testing whether you’re honest about that.

YOU - blink, simply, slowly, and you accept it. “Is that how you want the story to go?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “No.”

YOU - “Then… Okay. The boy lives with his perfect and happy family.” You nod, decisively, to show that the matter is resolved. Then you put down Run Away. “But then he ran away.”

KIM  KITSURAGI - “Why would he do that?”

YOU - “Because his home was boring and he wanted an adventure.”

KIM KITSURAGI - A scoff, quick, through his nose. “How juvie of him.”

YOU - “What,” you challenge, “you’re saying you never want some adventure?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “I’ve had adventure. Which is why I am now here, having to play this game.”

YOU - chortle. 

LOGIC - He’s clever.

KIM KITSURAGI - He sets down The Knapsack. “He brought with him his knapsack.”

YOU - “Ooh! Good one!” You tap at the card. “If you have another object card, you can set it down now, too. Because it’s in the knapsack. If you don’t, then either one of us can determine what the knapsack holds, whenever we want.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He considers, developing his sense of the game around this new information. He sets down The Rope. “The knapsack contains rope.”

YOU - “Now, why did the boy bring rope on his adventure?”

KIM KITSURAGI - The game is exasperating. “Because that was a card I had.”

YOU - wait, expectantly.

KIM KITSURAGI - He sighs, pushes himself to be creative. “Because he intends to climb up a tall tower. Can I say that, or do I need to have a tower card for that?”

YOU - “No, but if I had a tower card, I could play it now before taking my turn. Actually, now that I think about it, that’s probably a house rule, so we don’t have to play that way.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “No, that’s fine.” He re-organizes his hand, while you take your turn.

THE MASTER OF YARN, AKA THE WINDING THREAD - The game continues. The young boy must travel along a road through a dark forest in order to reach the tower he intends to climb. Along the way, he encounters hardships and mysteries: he is attacked by a woodnought. And then he’s attacked by another woodnought. And then he’s attacked by a third woodnought.

YOU - ended up with lot of Woodnought cards in your hand.

KIM KITSURAGI - “This forest is too dangerous for an eight year old,” he mutters.

THE MASTER OF YARN, AKA THE WINDING THREAD - While gameplay emphasizes imaginative collaboration, there is room for strategizing. The Knapsack is not the only card that allows you to play more than one card in a turn. 

LOGIC - Hey, along with too many woodnoughts, you actually have a lucky combination: The Sorcerer, who you can say lives in the tower, which you would be able to play with The Hidden Wealth and The Peon. That would be three cards down in a single turn.

YOU - Ooh!

GUILE - But you know you can’t do that. Men don’t like you when you’re successful.

YOU - That is a good point… 

LOGIC - Another option is to put down The Key, which you can say the boy finds along the road as he walks. Just one card, nothing special.

GUILE - That’s acceptable. Go that route.

YOU - are disappointed, but you accept it. You pick The Key out from your hand, preparing to set it down. 

KIM KITSURAGI - He clears his throat.

YOU - glance up.

KIM KITSURAGI - He’s been watching you. 

PERCEPTION - Closer than you would have expected.

KIM KITSURAGI - “Go with your first choice.”

YOU - “Hm?” You’re still holding The Key, halfway removed from your hand.

KIM KITSURAGI - Slight creases at the corners of his eyes, as he narrows them. “Don’t play stupid.”

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - You’re not good at hiding your thoughts when you’re not trying. It must have been plain on your face, what you were reasoning through.

YOU - But he doesn’t know, right? He’s just guessing. 

KIM KITSURAGI - He shifts; it’s a shake of the head, subtle but intentional.

YOU - bring The Key back to your hand. Sheepish, yet still satisfied by the result, you play The Sorcerer instead.

KIM KITSURAGI - His attention remains on you even after you’ve finished your turn, long enough for you to be certain that he has just formed a judgment. About you. But then the moment passes, and he returns to the game.

THE MASTER OF YARN, AKA THE WINDING THREAD - The boy arrives at the tower, at which point he is confronted by the sorcerer–Toppo, as you name him. Through numerous rounds, Toppo’s tragic backstory is revealed, including the concerns about legal liability that have led to him sealing his tower off from wandering children who want to climb it in search of his treasure. He sends the peon to turn the boy back, but the boy distracts him with the help of a friendly linnswain. 

KIM KITSURAGI - “I don’t know what this is,” he says, as he sets down The Linnswain.

YOU - “What, a linnswain? It’s a naked man who lives near streams in the forest.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Khm.”

YOU - “Well, not a man. More like, a nymph? I think? Are there man nymphs? I don't think that's the right word. Anyway, if you give him meat, he’ll teach you how to play the flute.”

KIM KITSURAGI - coughs.

YOU - “It’s just a folklore thing.” You shrug. “Don’t you have linnswains in your stories, here in Revachol?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “It’s your turn,” he says, ignoring the question. 

YOU - don’t know why he’s so grumpy about this, when he was fine with the woodnoughts. But oh well. 

THE MASTER OF YARN, AKA THE WINDING THREAD - End game has arrived. Lt. Kitsuragi has two cards, and you are down to your final one. It’s your turn.

LOGIC - What you have left is Finding The Secret Third Option, which is a Resolution Card. If you play it, then you win the game. 

GUILE - He doesn’t know what you have in your hand, and you can be more careful than you were before. If you pretend what you have isn’t currently playable, then you can pull two more cards from the deck. This will likely give Lt. Kitsuragi the win.

YOU - Neither of these options feels good. What should I do?

PRACTICA - What would yield the best therapeutic results?

GUILE - You need Lt. Kitsuragi to like you.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - No, you need him to trust you.

LOGIC - You said this wasn’t a therapy game. So, you should just play the game.

YOU - But I don’t even know how to play this card! I hate Finding The Secret Third Option! It’s the worst.

MIRROR - Little lamb, don’t you see? You and he can be a team.

YOU - scowl, thinking through this, and then you shoot him a look. “I need help.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Hm?”

YOU - “I have a Resolution Card, but I can’t come up with a way to play it.”

KIM KITSURAGI - There are circumstances in which he would cackle in your face, gloat with satisfaction, and enjoy withholding assistance so that he could win. But this was never going to be one of those circumstances: this game has not caught his interest that substantially, and he does not like you well enough. “Let me see.”

YOU - show him Finding The Secret Third Option. “But I can’t figure out how to make it fit. We haven’t set up any sort of choice point with two options for our boy, so what could the secret third option even be?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “That’s easy enough, right?” His gentle smile, kind and helpful. “There is a treasure at the top of the tower. We’ve established that. So, either we can climb the tower without Toppo noticing, or we can try to overpower him and enter the tower using the key we found.”

RHETORIC - Notice the pronoun. We.  

ANIMA - That’s satisfying.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - His creativity is so bright, so clever, when the spotlight is off him, when there’s a puzzle he wants to solve.

YOU - “We’re an eight year old boy, and he’s a sorcerer. What chance do we have of overpowering him?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Well…” He tilts his head, to concede a point. “We did defeat all those woodnoughts…”

YOU - grin, because that’s funny. “Okay. We have it. Those are our two options. Now, we need the secret third one…”

KIM KITSURAGI - He waits, allowing you to come up with something.

YOU - aren’t clever or bright or creative or anything. “We could try asking nicely for it?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “What, the treasure?”

YOU - feel silly. “I mean, it’s something.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Okay.” He allows it; he was never going to fight you on it, especially not if it would embarrass you. “Okay, we ask Toppo nicely to give us the treasure.”

YOU - “But why would he give it to us?”

LOGIC - Technically, this is still your card. It is incumbent upon you to make it fit coherently into the story. You’re on the spot to find the answer, not him.

KIM KITSURAGI - But he’s thinking through it, all the same. He’s finding an answer, for you. “Because he’s tired of being all by himself out in a tower.”

LOGIC - Toppo doesn’t live alone. This was established: he lives with the peon.

PRACTICA - Shh.

YOU - “...Huh.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “And he feels sorry for the boy,” he continues. “Life’s hard enough as it is.”

LOGIC - No. The boy doesn’t have a hard life. He had a boringly happy home, remember?

PRACTICA - Shh!

KIM KITSURAGI - “So… Why not?”

YOU - “Yeah. Why not!” You nod, and you smile. You tap the card, where it sits, as the end of the winding thread, emphasizing how it fits in its spot. “That makes sense.”

ACADEME - As they say, the need will out.

***

KIM KITSURAGI - “Are you sure this isn’t a therapy game?”

YOU - “Why?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “It just feels like a therapy game.”

YOU - huff. “Are you saying you don’t like it?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “No, I–” He stops, reconsiders. “Yes, actually. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

YOU - blow a raspberry at him, and he allows himself a laugh.

***

KIM KITSURAGI - He looks at you. He appraises you.

YOUR THIRD FLOOR OFFICE - This appointment has only just started. 

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - There is a muted quality to him today, something more than his general taciturn nature. There is weight and muck in his bones.

YOU - Should I ask what’s wrong?

MIRROR - No. Wait. 

KIM KITSURAGI - He is still looking at you.

MIRROR - There is a tipping point coming. The pressure is high. 

YOU - let him see. Whatever it is that he sees.

KIM KITSURAGI - “I dreamed last night that I killed my partner.”

PERCEPTION - His voice is soft; you have to process the words to understand them. And still, he keeps looking at you, straight at you, unwavering.

YOU - “... Oh.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “It wasn’t on purpose.”

YOU - stay silent, stay observed. You let him see you, seeing him.

KIM KITSURAGI - “It’s never on purpose.” He sighs, and now he breaks the stare. He looks off. “But it’s always horrible.”

YOU - breathe out heavily, intentionally. “I can imagine that’d be really upsetting.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He hears you, but he will not answer you.

PRACTICA - It’s not time yet. He won’t give you anything more.

KIM KITSURAGI - With a shift in his posture, he displaces his thoughts. He relents to something bearable. “Let’s play that stupid game of yours.”

*** 

THE MASTER OF YARN, AKA THE WINDING THREAD - The story produced this time is a strange one without clear plot: a wise elder sneaks into a castle and relies on the court jester to stay hidden; there is a scheme to poison the tyrannical king’s wine, but ultimately, the wise elder doesn’t go through with it. He goes home, and the tyranny continues. Lt. Kitsuragi wins, handily.

***

KIM KITSURAGI - He’s familiar to you, now. You know him, now, and you know when he is tired and haggard, when he has to expend energy to appear as calm and collected as he always does.

YOU - It’s time, isn’t it?

PRACTICA - What do you mean?

YOU - I’m going to ask. About his dreams. Now’s the time for me to do it.

PRACTICA - You can’t know if he’s ready for it or not.

YOU - No, I feel it. It’s time.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - What? No, you don’t. You don’t feel that.

MIRROR - It’s at best a fifty/fifty shot. You really do not have any assurance that he’s ready for it.

YOU - But I do! I do know!

ACADEME - You have to be careful.

PRACTICA - This is dangerous. It’s unwise.

YOU - No! I’m doing it.

YOU - “You had a bad dream last night, didn’t you?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He sighs. “I wish it weren’t obvious.”

ANIMA - Your pulse quickens; your breath sticks to your lungs.

YOU - hide that down. Soft and gently, you ask. “Will you tell me about it?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He acts like he didn’t hear you. But he did. “I’ve had bad dreams all my life. I’m used to them. But these recent ones…” He winces.

YOU - “They’re especially bad.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “They’re vivid.” He emphasizes, through tone and with gesture. “So much detail, and so…”

PERCEPTION - A shiver rolls through him, although he stifles it.

YOU - “You should tell me about them.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He’s skeptical.

YOU - scoot forward in a seat, imploring. “Right now, you have the entire burden of holding onto these dreams. Right? They’re all cramped up, inside your head, and it takes a lot of work for dreams to stay bottled up like that. But, if you share them with me? Then I can hold onto them, along with you! It’s less of a burden–and, don’t worry, I absolutely can shoulder it.”

KIM KITSURAGI - A scowl grows as you talk. “I’m not sure I follow the metaphor.”

YOU - “No, I wasn’t speaking metaphorically…” But that’s beside the point. You refocus. “What do you stand to lose, Lt. Kitsuragi?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He looks off to the side.

PERCEPTION - But it’s odd, how he does it.

PERCEPTION - Seriously, it’s noticeably odd.

YOU - How so?

PERCEPTION - It just is.

YOU - Hrm. I need more than that.

PERCEPTION - Okay, fine. Let me work through this.

...

Right, so. Usually, when he looks off to the side, he looks towards the window, to his right. And, usually, it’s his eyes that start the turn, his head following along. This time, he looked to the left, and his eyes weren’t leading the movement. And then the movement came to a halt, as if intentionally. It’s like he was looking for something, at first, but then stopped himself before he found it.

YOU - But what does it mean?

PERCEPTION - I don’t know. Let me think about it. I’ll get back to you.

YOU - put on your sixth best smile.

YOUR SMILE - Soft and yielding; welcoming; the helping hand, outstretched.

YOU - “C’mon. Tell me what it was about.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He never would have shared anything this painful or tender with you, not at any point before now. Not when you met, not two weeks ago, not this very morning when he first sat down.

MIRROR - What makes you think, now, suddenly, that something is different?

KIM KITSURAGI - His mouth opens; he wets his lips. He wavers.

OTHER-LIGHT - Is it determined, somehow, within the recesses of his neurology, or from the totality of Elysium writ large, what next will occur? Is this an inevitability unwinding, or an accident, unscripted? 

ANIMA - We’re on tenterhooks.

KIM KITSURAGI - “We were back in Martinaise…”

YOU - suck in a relieved breath.

PRACTICA - Well, I’ll be.

KIM KITSURAGI - He has started now, and it will be easier for him to continue.

YOU - close your eyes, satisfied to listen, and you let yourself feel.

***

OTHER-WORLD - 

You do not want to give him your gun. Absolutely no good can come from giving him your gun. But his hand is outstretched, his pink and splotchy fingers are waiting for it. He expects it. His expression is determined and clear, and the Hardie Boys are all watching. 

He says it’s for a demonstration, but what sort of demonstration involves a gun? Indoors? In front of the hostile and inebriated local toughs? You had thought you could account for his unconventional techniques, his way of interviewing suspects, but this makes no sense. It’s dangerous. 

There is absolutely no way you are going to give him your gun.

“Be careful,” you say, as you unholster your gun and hand it over to him. “It’s loaded.” 

Why? Why have you done this? Something is wrong with you, you are sick, you are confused. You felt the action happening. You were aware of it as it happened, and you are aware now of the consequences, of the fact that it really did just happen, that you now do not have your gun, and instead he does. You are trapped here, internally, watching this happen.

He hoists the gun up, displaying it for all to see, and then–

You are a pounding heart and breathless lungs, you are cold shock, you are panic. You hear, “What are you doing?” That is your voice, your words. You must have said them.

People are watching. Titus Hardie is watching. Everyone is watching. They don’t yet see, not the way that you do.

“We’ll solve this case. Look at me. Don’t worry.” You know that you are saying these word. They feel like yours. You look at your partner–your desperate, sad, and extremely ill temporary partner–and you feel the panic give out, collapse, fall far away, down below where you are, where it won’t interfere as you act and speak. You are calm, perfectly calm, unyieldingly calm, and you force him to look you in the eye. “This demonstration is not helping. At all.”

The Hardie Boys heckle. They are a chorus of fools. You will yourself to ignore them, and you will him to do so, as well.

“These are my thoughts,” he says around the barrel of your gun. “This is my head.”

“What in the name of mother-fuck–”

“What the fuck is he saying?”

“Some insane shit.”

“Nothing.” You grit your teeth within; you hold yourself together without. You know your partner–don’t you?--you know that he trusts you–doesn’t he? He always listens to you. “Give me the gun.”

He doesn’t listen to you.

He rambles. What you hear is five seconds, which is a timeline, a short one, far too short. You hear Titus get serious, you hear him say, “The cop is really threatening to off himself,” and you are shot up with rage, directed at him, misdirected for all its potency.

“No, that is not what is happening.” You turn back to your partner. You will make him hear you. You will make him listen. You have control over this course of events. “This show is unnecessary. Give me my gun. Now.”

He doesn’t listen to you.

You cannot make him listen.

You have no control.

You are paralysis, you are the bad thoughts, you are the one who gave him the gun. You are witness, in the sidelines, you are screaming with no capacity to make sound. There is a countdown that you can feel, that you know he feels, and when it reaches zero–

You jolt. You are awake. The taste of blood coats your tongue.

***

YOU - shudder, and you return, and you work to situate yourself. You feel at the edges of your seat. You press your fingertips against the notepad you are holding. You work to process it all.

KIM KITSURAGI - He sits silently. Awkwardly. His lips are pursed tightly closed, now that he is done. 

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He does not know what he is supposed to do. He doesn’t know how he is supposed to be.

YOU - “Thank you.” It feels strange to hear your voice now. You are solemn. “For sharing that with me.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He says nothing. He isn’t look at you.

ANIMA - The taste of blood will go away with time. It’s illusory, and you know this. 

ÉLAN VITAL - It’s just as you told him: you can shoulder this burden.

PERCEPTION - His breathing is regular. It’s slowing.

YOU - “What does it feel like, now, having shared that with me?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He shifts. He looks younger when he’s vulnerable. “Not great.”

YOU - “No… I wouldn’t think so.”

MIRROR - This space is his space. This time is his time. He needs it to be quiet and unchallenging. So, that is what you mold it to be.

YOUR THIRD FLOOR OFFICE - Down three storeys, beneath your window, Jamrock is alive and raucous. But that is all so far away. It cannot interfere, not here. You are insulated from all of it, the two of you.  Together.

YOU - “Did any of that actually happen? I mean, when you were really there.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “No.” The answer comes fast, and then the qualifications follow. “He did borrow my gun once, but that was… That was different. We did meet with those men–the Hardie Boys–several times. It was tense, but…”

YOU - “But not like that.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “No, not like that.”

OTHER-WORLD - Does he still taste the blood, too?

LOGIC - Why would he be the one to taste blood?

PRACTICA - That’s a good question.

KIM KITSURAGI - “So…” His voice is small. His eyes seek you out, quickly, uncertainly, and then they turn away again. “...What does it mean?”

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He was afraid to ask; he is even more afraid of how you might answer.

YOU - “You mean, the dream?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Of course, the dream.”

YOU - “Well…”

ACADEME - A dream is only meaningful within a broader context. You are not in a position to provide an interpretation, given how little you know about his more common dreams, how he normally feels about them, and what symbolic import he is predisposed to find in them. There is nothing you can say.

YOU - “I don’t really know.”

KIM KITSURAGI - His lips, somehow, purse together even more tightly than they were before.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He is disappointed and uncomfortable. Asking for your opinion required stepping out onto a limb, and he is starting to regret taking the risk.

PRACTICA - You have to give him something. You can’t let him feel like this has been in vain.

MIRROR - Bring him to you.

YOU - “But I can tell you what it doesn’t mean.” You pause long enough to set your sights on him firmly. You are full of confidence and unguarded. You make sure he is listening. “It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.”

KIM KITSURAGI - A reaction of any sort would indicate that he needed to hear that.

YOU - “And, it also doesn’t mean that you’re a bad partner.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He looks off–to the left, again, in that strange way. He says like a sigh, “I know you’re right.”

YOU - are glad to hear it.

YOUR SMILE - Stability and comfort; an invitation and a gift.

YOU - “So, you said you have dreams like this a lot?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Yes.” It is easier for him to approach this topic abstractly, like a set of objective facts that are separate from himself. “Always in Martinaise. Always with– Always, I kill him. Although, it’s never been the same way twice.”

YOUR SMILE - disappears into a frown.

LOGIC - There’s a big problem with what he just said.

YOU - “Lt. Kitsuragi…” You let him see your frown. You let your confusion present itself. “You realize you didn’t kill him, right?”

KIM KITSURAGI - He doesn’t realize that, no.

YOU - “He took the gun. He shot himself. That’s not on you.”

LOGIC - There’s no way for him to deny your point. What you are laying out is indisputable fact, and he is a smart man. 

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - And yet, all the same, he finds the capacity to doubt.

KIM KITSURAGI - “But it feels like I did it.”

LOGIC - Another indisputable fact.

YOU - “Yeah…” You write this down in your notes: responsibility–big time. Then, as you continue to think about it, you underline the point and draw curlicues around it. “That’s probably important… We’re probably going to have to unpack that.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Hm.”

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He accepts that you’re right. There might even be some relief, below the acceptance, although all of his thoughts are hazy right now. They are all being filtered through the remnants of his dream and the experience of sharing it, of what you have just said and what it might mean. It’s a lot.

YOU - “But that’s all for us to work out some other time.” You bring your smile back and you sit up tall in your creaky chair. You regard him brightly. “For now, what matters is, I’m really glad you shared that with me. Honest. I’m really, really grateful.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Yes. Well…” He clears his throat, and he wants to be ready to move on.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - But he feels it. Your sincerity, that is, with your gratitude. He might not understand it, no, but he feels it.

PRACTICA - And that, ultimately, is what makes all the difference.

***

PERCEPTION - Hey! I figured it out.

YOU - You figured what out?

PERCEPTION - Remember, the puzzle? About how Lt Kitsuragi turned his head in a weird way. You know, to the left. He’s done that a couple of times now, actually.

YOU - Oh, right! That! Honestly, I wasn’t expecting any results.

PERCEPTION - No, no. Actually, it’s pretty simple. You see, there aren’t that many things to the left of him that he could have been interested in. Your bookshelf is over there, but it’s nothing but a collection of stuffy books no one cares about. Other than that, there’s only one other thing he could have been turning to look at before stopping himself.

YOU - And that is…?

PERCEPTION - The end table. You know, beside the chaise lounge. The one where you keep tissues, and where the friend-shaped inanimate object lives.

YOU - Oh, right… Right.

PERCEPTION - So, he was probably looking towards that.

YOU - Well, okay. Yeah, I guess. Okay.

Chapter Text

YOUR THIRD FLOOR OFFICE - Sometimes, on days with clear skies, when the timing is right, you can look out your window and see the Coalition's aerostatics patrolling the sky.

YOU - wave up to them.

ÉLAN VITAL - Even if they aren't looking down at you, it still feels good to say hi.

***

HARRY DU BOIS - He wets his lips, eyes downcast, as he prepares to speak…

MIRROR - The air is thick.

ANIMA - You brace yourself.

YOU - Please not Dora, please not Dora, please not Dora…

HARRY DU BOIS - "So, I had that dream again…"

YOU - In a display of incredible professional maturity, you don't groan audibly right in his face.

***

YOU - If I have to hear one more time about Harry's Dora Dream, I'm going to explode.

ACADEME - Yeah, it's bad.

PRACTICA - He needs to process his feelings about his ex, and that means he also has to make sense of this recurring nightmare. It's a challenge figuring out how to even start.

RHETORIC - Ooh, boy! You know what that means! It's time for some dream analysis!

LOGIC - Ugh.

RHETORIC - No, no, it'll be great! Trust me.

YOU - Fine. Where do we start?

ACADEME - The Sublimation Triad is a rudimentary but at times useful tool for preliminary dream analysis. Designed by Easton Gardner, it represents the three central anxieties that are most often repressed subconsciously. An individual who suffers from the repression of one of these three central anxieties is more likely to have dreams featuring the other two anxieties in its place. Thus the dream acts as camouflage, functioning to hide from the conscious mind even in sleep what the subconscious finds most distressing. A dream is best analyzed, on this model, by what it lacks.

Now, Svala, do you remember the three axes of the Triad?

YOU - Let’s see… Death’s one of them, I know that.

ACADEME - Yes. Death, both literally and symbolically. Death is thematically connected to loneliness, destruction, and change. Next?

YOU - Next is, well, s-e-x.

ACADEME - Yes. Sex is a creative, pleasure-seeking drive, and it is thematically connected to nature, creativity, and production. 

PRACTICA - We’ve gone through this so many times. You don’t have to spell out the word.  I know you know you’ve discussed sex with patients before. Plenty of times! You can hardly be a psychoanalyst if you’re not comfortable thinking about sex.

YOU - Talking about it with a patient is fine. It's just thinking about it abstractly like this that worries me. Like, what if it gets stuck here, in my thoughts?

LOCKBOX - That won’t happen.

ÉLAN VITAL - I promise, it’s okay. 

ANIMA - You’re doing fine.

ACADEME - Now, the third and final central anxiety?

YOU - This is the one that always trips me up. Uh. Is it rage?

ACADEME - No, you’re thinking of Ademsen's Affective Quadrangle.

YOU - Planning?

ACADEME - That’s from The Agential Pyramid.

YOU - Solitude?

ACADEME - Now you’re thinking of The Grief Star.

YOU - There are just way too many psychology shapes.

ACADEME - It’s Self. That’s the third axis of the Sublimation Triad: self, or the neurologically-constructed illusion of a coherent focus of agency and subjectivity.

YOU - Oh, right! I never understand that one.

ÉLAN VITAL - It’s you, sweetie.

YOU - Huh?

ÉLAN VITAL - You are the focus of agency for us. Of our subjective experience. You are the self.

YOU - Oh, I am?

ACADEME - No time for that now. We have identified the full triad. Death, Sex, and Self. Pale, World, Particularity. Destruction, Production, Maintenance. Change, Desire, Will. So, to use the triad, you should begin by determining which of these themes are present within the dream and which aren’t.

YOU - What if someone has a dream with all three themes present?

ACADEME - Then they’ve had a pretty exciting dream.

YOU - What if they have a dream with none of those themes present?

ACADEME - Then they’re completely unhinged. That, or well-adjusted.

RHETORIC - Enough preamble, let’s get to the good stuff. Within Harry’s Dora Dream, does death appear as a theme?

YOU - No, no one dies.

RHETORIC - Wrong. The dream is oversaturated with death, in fact. The relationship ends, and Dora leaves never to be seen again. That’s death. Next up: Is sex thematically present?

YOU - Oh, yes! Yes, it is! He always thinks about smooching her in the dream! And sometimes he even does it!

RHETORIC - Wrong again. A kiss need not be a sexual act. Notice, as well, that in the instances of the dream where Harry kisses her, the kiss is entirely unsatisfying. 

YOU - Yeah, but…

RHETORIC - That kiss is thematically linked to death far more than sex. 

YOU - Hm.

RHETORIC - It’s symbolic death.

LOGIC - You’re just making things up.

RHETORIC - Yes! Thank you! Now: what about Self?

YOU - I’m tired of guessing. 

RHETORIC - Aw, please?

YOU - You’ll just say I’m wrong.

RHETORIC - It doesn’t work if you don’t play along.

YOU - Fine. Okay. Yes, the dream is entirely about the nature of his self. She tells him what kind of person he is, and sometimes he agrees with her, and sometimes he disagrees.

RHETORIC - Makes sense.

YOU - What, really? You’re not going to fight me?

RHETORIC - No, no. I think you’re right. But…

LOGIC - Oh, here we go.

RHETORIC - This theme isn’t a source of distress in the dream, is it? The dream includes Self thematically, but not as a distressing theme, especially compared to the distress he feels about her leaving. This means it's possible that Harry–who, let us recall, is an amnesiac–is repressing distress about his identity.

LOGIC - Sure, sure. If there's nothing related to self-identity, then this indicates repressed anxiety about self-identity. But if self-identity is present thematically, then of course that means he has repressed anxiety about self-identity.

RHETORIC - I didn't make the rules, friendo. I only play the game.

LOGIC - So I’m a guthead for wanting my theories falsifiable?

ACADEME - We're not endorsing this theory, at least not yet. We have a — potential, hypothetical, uncertain — interpretation of Harry’s dream. Presupposing the sublimation triad, we can conclude that the Dora dream functions to protect Harry from repressed distress related to sex, either literally or metaphorically. It might also function to protect him from repressed distress related to his identity. 

YOU - Self and s-e-x. 

RHETORIC - It does make sense, doesn’t it?

LOGIC - Oh, we think the amnesiac who's obsessed with his ex has issues related to self and sex? That's nothing but what we were already inclined to believe. We haven’t actually learned anything.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) -  No, but maybe we’ve managed to clarify some things for ourselves. Things we didn't know we knew. Maybe we've identified something we might be able to help Harry come to realize, himself.

PRACTICA - That is, after all, what we do.

***

HARRY DU BOIS - "Yes. Yes! We are DOING this!"

YOU - enjoy his enthusiasm with a titter. "Most people aren't so excited for the hypnotriptych."

HARRY DU BOIS - "Are you kidding me?" This is his first time lying on the chaise lounge, looking up at it. He's starry-eyed and grinning wild. His hands wiggle in the air between him and the triptych. "This is true disco."

YOU - "It is?" You crane you neck to look up at it the same way he is, and you have to admit: you don't know what it means to be disco.

RHETORIC - Maybe it's the shapes? Maybe they remind him of a disco ball? Except, they have nothing in common with a disco ball. At all. I don't know — I've got nothing.

HARRY DU BOIS - "Are you going to hypnotize me and make me sane?"

YOU - "No!" The word comes out harsher than you meant, and you school your brow so it's not furrowed. "Sorry, uh. I mean, I'm not a hypnotist. I practice hypnotism-enhanced psychoanalysis. It's different."

HARRY DU BOIS - "What's the difference?"

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - Leave it to Harry to ask the awkward questions.

ACADEME - Few non-practitioners appreciate the difference between psychoanalytic hypnotism, which uses many psychoanalytic methods as part of hypnotic therapy, and hypnotism-enhanced psychoanalysis, which does the exact opposite.

BON TON - Regardless any apparent commonalities, psychoanalytic hypnotists and therapists who practice hypnotism-enhanced psychoanalysis know well enough to stay far away from one another. They never go to the same conferences or workshops. They don't read each others' case studies. If two cross paths, they're polite enough not to make snide comments about each other—until they're almost, but not quite, out of earshot.

YOU - "Hypnotists use the trance state to implant suggestions. I don't do that."

HARRY DU BOIS - "Yeah, but…" He blinks at you. "Can you?"

YOU - "No," you say, like a liar, with affront.

HARRY DU BOIS - "I don't know, man. If you could hypnotize me to be less miserable and better at my job, I'd jump on that opportunity."

YOU - "It wouldn't be real." You frown at him, to show you mean it. "There's no good evidence that hypnotism has long-term benefits."

HARRY DU BOIS - "But there is for psychoanalysis?"

YOU - "Uh — yeah."

RHETORIC - Like a liar.

ACADEME - Not like a liar. There is empirical justification for psychoanalysis, in general, and hypnotism-enhanced psychoanalysis, in particular. Well, kind of. Depends on who you ask. It's complicated, okay? And it's a developing field. Let's just not get into it.

HARRY DU BOIS - "So…" He's got an insistent intelligence. "What you're saying is, hypnotism has short-term benefits?"

YOU - glare at the question.

HARRY DU BOIS - "I'm just saying!" He's all innocence instantiated, even if eager. "I've got nothing against short-term benefits."

ANIMA - Of course he doesn't.

MIRROR - Don't say that.

YOU - tap your pencil against your notepad. "You want to do this, or no?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "Fine, fine! I can take a hint." He lifts his hands up, to signal truce, although they're angled to make peace with the hypnotriptych rather than you. He grins in that way of his, as he does so. "I won't question the magic."

YOU - "It's not magic." At least, you're pretty sure it isn't. "It's just a tool that helps you relax. It makes it easier for us to explore your subconscious and process difficult feelings and memories."

HARRY DU BOIS - His grin fades away, as he turns somber and thoughtful. His mouth purses, in response to some hard thought. "Hm."

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - You can guess what's on his mind.

YOU - Softly, you acknowledge it. "I don't know if it can restore memories."

HARRY DU BOIS - "Yeah…"

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He doesn't know if he'd even want that.

ACADEME - There's a bigger concern than just whether hypnotism-enhanced psychoanalysis can restore memories: one of its major risks is inducing false memories. A lot of your training was focused specifically on learning how to avoid doing this, so that you can use hypnotic trances ethically. Generally, you're confident in your training and skill—at least, with this—but working with an amnesiac complicates things. It leaves you worried.

ÉLAN VITAL - You'll be careful. You'll navigate the risk. You won't rush anything or make stupid mistakes.

YOU - will try not to, at least. "I'll go ahead and turn it on now. Okay?"

HARRY DU BOIS - Still somber, still quiet with his thoughts, he intones, "Let's boogie."

YOU - consider that. Then, you take the remote from your chair's side pocket, and you flip the switch.

YOUR THIRD FLOOR OFFICE - The overhead lights lower automatically, and the room fills with the soft whir of the hypnotriptych's gears. It's not easy to see from your current angle, but you know that the shapes on its surfaces now shift and morph in their familiar dance.

YOU - sit, patiently, and watch the process unfurl.

HARRY DU BOIS - His face smooths out, like butter warmed up. His eyes glaze. His blinking slows. His chest rises and falls, heavy and rhythmic. His jaw goes lax, hanging at an angle.

PRACTICA - He achieves trance with remarkable speed.

YOU - "How are you feeling?" Yours is a quiet, practiced voice.

HARRY DU BOIS - "Ouuohhhh…"

PRACTICA - He's deep.

YOU - close your eyes.

OTHER-WORLD - He's gone.

YOU - Gone?

OTHER-WORLD -

Gone. Gone but not to nothing.

Your stinky meat works hard to keep itself going. Blood pumps, nutrients are absorbed, fluids secrete. Always, so many fluids. You're aware of all of it, but none of it bothers you at all. Not right now.

But you are not asleep, oh no. No, this is an unfamiliar territory, Harry-boy.

This isn't right. What is this?

Wait. What is that?

Not what, but who. Who is that?

Is that… It is! Trespasser! Usurper!

GET OUT.

YOU - choke, cough. It's a fit, uncontrolled, your eyes surging open, and you press a hand to your lungs.

HARRY DU BOIS - He rouses, surprised by the sudden commotion, and leans on an elbow to look over at you.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He's concerned. About you.

ANIMA - You, too, are concerned about you.

YOU - What is happening?

PRACTICA - No idea. It was like … getting kicked out? Nothing like this has ever happened before.

OTHER-WORLD - No other mind you've explored this way has felt like this.

ACADEME - It makes no sense.

ANIMA - It was like a pressure inside your skull. Like ringing ears. All sharp angles and commotion. Like sitting at a crowded table where too many people are talking and the air is hot and foul from cigarettes.

LOCKBOX - And yet.

YOU - And yet…

LOCKBOX - There was something intimately familiar about it — wasn't there, Svala?

YOU - Oh, there was…

ANIMA - Hey. Focus. You're breathing. The cough subsides. It was a shock, but you are calming.

YOU - swallow, firmly, and take a deep breath to settle yourself fully. "Are you okay?"

HARRY DU BOIS - He nods, still leaning up on an elbow.

YOU - "What just happened?"

HARRY DU BOIS - His cheeks puff out with an exhale, and then he raises his eyebrows in a show of ignorance. "I'm just lying here…"

YOU - are still worried. "Are you sure?"

HARRY DU BOIS - Try as he might, he finds no evidence to the contrary.

YOU - "But…" It doesn't make any sense, and it is extremely hard to believe he has no insight to give. "Did you — Did you feel that?"

HARRY DU BOIS - If he were to ask about what you are referring to as that, you'd be in trouble. You wouldn't know how to answer. But thankfully, he doesn't. Instead, he affirms with his silence, with the way his eyebrows fall back down, with the thoughtful distance from which he answers. "So, I'm guessing, that's not normal."

YOU - "No."

HARRY DU BOIS - He turns his face back up, to watch the shifting of the hypnotriptych again. "Is it bad?"

ACADEME - Hard to think it wouldn't be.

CONFORMITY - Nothing that weird can be good.

VIGILANCE - It was dangerous.

MIRROR - It was overwhelming!

YOU - I should probably not try it again.

VIGILANCE - No, you shouldn't.

MIRROR - At least not until you have a better idea of what just happened.

ACADEME - And can explain what it was that just happened, even.

PRACTICA - He's pliant as a patient, and you'll find other ways to help him with his Dora dream. Put this aside.

LOGIC - That's definitely what you should do.

LOCKBOX - But you're not going to, are you?

YOU - No, I'm not.

ÉLAN VITAL - Oh, no. Sweetie, why not?

YOU - Because I need to know.

ÉLAN VITAL - Need to know what?

LOCKBOX - You know what.

YOU - don't know what it means, that you closed your eyes and encountered a mind that felt so much like kin, familiar in ways you didn't know were possible. So different from any other mind, from the way you thought all minds, yours and everyone else's, must feel from the outside. You can't begin to understand it, and you feel the pull of some attainable reckoning. If only you can reach for it.

You spend five full ticks of the clock's second hand working to convince yourself to be reasonable and responsible, to ignore the pull of this strange and strangely personal mystery, to do what you know you should.

And you fail.

"Let's try that again."

***

YOU - The next time, you are more careful. You keep your eyes open, and you concentrate.

PRACTICA - Again, he's impressively quick to enter trance.

YOU - "How are you feeling?"

HARRY DU BOIS - His unfocused eyes take in the hypnotriptych's dance, and his voice is a soft and curling thing. "Good. Good. This is nice."

YOU - "Do you mind me being here?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "No."

OTHER-WORLD -

Yes.

YOU - There's nothing for you to do but acknowledge that. "What's wrong?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "…nothing."

OTHER-WORLD -

You are wrong. Usurper. Trespasser.

YOU - "Where are you?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "Uh… here. Right here. On the couch."

PRACTICA - You haven't established any imaginary spaces with him yet. He doesn't know what you mean.

OTHER-WORLD -

Where you don't belong.

ANIMA - Your heart works loudly in your chest. It's palpitations. Your hands feel clammy. It's hard to identify what you're feeling.

YOU - "Harry… Do you know what's going on?"

HARRY DU BOIS - He blinks, and he turns his head so that he can look at you.

PERCEPTION - Your voice was louder than you intended it to be. You disrupted his trance.

HARRY DU BOIS - "You're asking me questions."

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He doesn't understand why you interrupted the process.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - But he trusts you.

YOU - aren't sure he should. You struggle with the words. "Do you know the answers you're giving?"

HARRY DU BOIS - His eyes narrow, as he turns perceptive. He nods, slow and certain. "I know what's happening, yeah."

YOU - That should be a relief to hear, but you aren't so sure. "Are you in control of it?"

HARRY DU BOIS - His mouth flicks upwards, an effacing grin that doesn't reach his eyes. "How would I know?"

YOU - "Good point," you allow.

ANIMA - It must be apprehension. That must be what you're feeling.

YOU - "Are you comfortable with this continuing?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "Yeah." He pats his hand against the couch, beside him. "This is helpful, I think. I like this."

PRACTICA - I don't.

ACADEME - Nope.

MIRROR - This is going nowhere good.

YOU - Try as you might, you can't ignore the concerned voices entirely. "Although, I am getting a lot of resistance…"

HARRY DU BOIS - "Yeah." His voice is wistful. He turns his face back to the hypnotriptych. "Sorry about that."

ANIMA - Wait, no, this isn't apprehension. You're exhilarated.

ACADEME - This is interesting.

YOU - "No, no need for apologies." With a dispelling smile, with a decisive nod, you ready yourself. "Let's go again."

***

YOU - don't interfere with Harry's trance so quickly this time. You let him sink into it thoroughly before you speak. "Tell me how you're feeling."

HARRY DU BOIS - "Soup… Soup pa doop. Sooo-per."

OTHER-WORLD -

Uncomfortable. Angry. Okay, I guess. You don't get to know.

YOU - tilt your head, as you consider.

CHARM - It's hard to know how to focus, when there's so much to pay attention to.

PERCEPTION - But you can do it, can't you? You can bring your attention to a single component—to a thread, let's call it—and let that guide you. It's incredibly natural, in fact, once you try. It feels normal.

YOU - "What don't I get to know?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "Uhhhhh…"

OTHER-WORLD -

Get out.

ANIMA - It doesn't have the same force, this time. You can ignore it.

YOU - "I want to help."

OTHER-WORLD -

If you kill me, he dies. Okay, same here. We know better than to trust some whore.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - There's real fear, there. In all of it.

YOU - lean back in your seat, just a little. You shake your head. "I don't want to kill anyone."

OTHER-WORLD -

There could be monsters lurking, down below. I've been trying so hard. Are you prepared for what you'll discover? What if you bring back all the memories and the terrible, terrible pain? 126 days sober, and for what? I've done all that I can.

YOU - "Let's focus on right now. Right this moment." You take a deep breath, to show what you mean. "What are you feeling, right now?

OTHER-WORLD -

Safe. Vulnerable. Confused. Actually, this isn't so bad. Get out.

MIRROR - There it is—the 'not so bad' thread. That's the one to pull.

YOU - "Not so bad…" You repeat, casual, thoughtful. "That's, well—what makes you say that?"

OTHER-WORLD -

Stop listening to that one, he's deranged.

No, no, hold on. There's massive activity going on through the dopamine pathways right now. We could get used to this.

You're only going to make things worse.

CHARM - Despite the constant antagonizing threads, you haven't gotten kicked out again. Some of these threads are even on your side, or close enough. This is working.

ANIMA - You've got an urge to grin, but manage to resist it.

YOU - "See?" You respond specifically to what you want to respond to. You ignore the rest. "This is calming. Relaxing."

OTHER-WORLD -

Don't give into this, bröther. Wake up.

No, no, shh, we're going to keep the dopamine flowing.

This is so boring. If it lasts any longer, I'm going to start making things up.

Go fuck yourself.

ACADEME - Of course some part of Harry's mind wants to start making things up. Vivid, dream-like experiences are a central component to a trance state. This is exactly what we want.

YOU - "Do you want to try it? Making something up, I mean." You continue, still, with picking only the thread that interests you. "Would you like to try imagining something?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "Mmm khmmmm… Sure."

YOU - "I want you to think of something that makes you feel happy."

HARRY DU BOIS - "Like what?"

YOU - "I don't know, what do you think? Imagine a space, like a location, where you are happy and content. Where would that be?"

OTHER-WORLD -

Sheets, clean, threadbare and familiar. The gleam of the lamp, in the corner, a blanket of warm light, unburdening. Soft. Heat and softness, yielding pressure. You are held, you are holding. Her thighs are so soft.

YOU - ew.

OTHER-WORLD -

You detect, faintly, the scent of apricots. It rises, slowly. Sweet and delectable. You want more of it. You need it. You seek it, you curl yourself up, closer and closer, you pull yourself into its source, aching for it, gone mad for it, desperate for it. And you have it. It floods you, the apricots. It saturates you, chokes you, crowds up your lungs—

YOU - "Harry…"

OTHER-WORLD -

You can't breathe, you're drowning in it. Your nostrils burn and your head rings, your vision is red, the red of apricot flesh, the soft and ruddy flesh that cuddles against the stone, the core, the hard pit, the part that chips your teeth and holds its poison—

YOU - "Harry, wake up, please."

OTHER-WORLD -

Oh, the trespasser wants out? Is that what she wants? NO. We're here now, in the sick perfume. So suffocate.

HARRY DU BOIS - His throat moves, his Adam's apple bobs up and down. His air sounds constricted.

YOU - "Harry, now." You make your voice firm and insistent, because that's better than sounding scared. "Up, now. You have to come back, right now."

OTHER-WORLD -

NO, NO

YOU - "Breathe in. Feel your fingertips, feel your toes. Go ahead and wiggle them."

PERCEPTION - He's not wiggling.

YOU - "Harry? Wake up, Harry."

OTHER-WORLD -

If you kill me, he will die.

IF YOU KILL HIM, I WILL DIE.

HARRY DU BOIS - He jolts up, breathing in a snort, and, wild-eyed, he stares at you.

YOU - stare back.

HARRY DU BOIS - He catches his breath, with time. The panic eases itself away. He blinks several times, clearing up his vision.

ANIMA - Your fingers are gripping at the edge of your chair too tightly. You won't be able to move them until you ease up the tension in your shoulders, your arms. Also, you too should try catching your breath.

YOU - do that, kinda.

MIRROR - A silence has built up. The air between the two of you is charged. It may be corrosive.

YOU - "I really don't want to kill anyone."

HARRY DU BOIS - "I called you a whore, didn't I?"

YOU - "Uh…" A lot has happened between then and now, so you have to think back. But then you remember. "Yeah. You did. That happened."

HARRY DU BOIS - Scornfully, he shakes his head. "I do not condone the use of gendered slurs."

YOU - "Well, I mean…" What can you say? "At least part of you does. You know?"

HARRY DU BOIS - He looks down, at the floor.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He doesn't know how to feel this hurt.

HARRY DU BOIS - "I'm fucked up, aren't I?"

YOU - are a little too slow, responding to that.

***

ÉLAN VITAL - Surely you're not going to keep doing this.

YOU - You mean with Harry? Why wouldn't I?

VIGILANCE - This isn't right. You don't know what you're doing.

YOU - No, but, everything's fine.

ANIMA - Is it? Is it really?

MIRROR - It's not.

PERCEPTION - Hey, apricots aren't red, are they?

***

YOU - "We need to set up a staging area for you. Like, a happy place. It's some place you can imagine when we can start and end working with the hypnotriptych. You know? And so you can go there whenever things might feel like they're getting out of control."

HARRY DU BOIS - He's sitting up so the two of you can plot together. "I dig it."

YOU - "So…" You have your notepad and pencil, and you scratch a few rough lines on the page to feel productive. "What's something you find comforting?"

HARRY DU BOIS - He sets his chin in his hands, stooped over in a show of deep thought. "Pine needles."

YOU - don't find much comforting in anything related to needles. "Like… Pine trees?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "No, I mean, like—" He cuts himself off to glance at you, and then he turns away.

PERCEPTION - His face goes red like a tomato.

HARRY DU BOIS - "The smell. Pine."

ACADEME - If he's embarrassed about it, that probably means this is something with which he has very strong associations. That's good, for the sake of devising a staging area.

YOU - write that down in your notes: pine, like the smell. "You have a very strong olfactory memory, don't you?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "Do I?" It's not something he had thought about before, but he accepts the observation. "Well, maybe I do."

YOU - "Now, what does the smell of pine needles remind you of?"

HARRY DU BOIS - He looks at first like he doesn't understand the question, but then, intentionally, he makes his expression completely blank. Tension grows within his form until he's sitting there with rigid back and rigid shoulders, rigid jaw and suspicious eyes. "Nothing," he says flatly. "Nothing at all. I've never smelled pine needles before in my life."

YOU - peer at him.

HARRY DU BOIS - He peers right back at you.

YOU - "You know I don't believe you."

HARRY DU BOIS - He tsks. "Like the claimants to truth are affected by your beliefs, Svala."

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He's not backing down.

GUILE - This is ridiculous; don't let him win.

YOU - put on your most steely of steely glares.

HARRY DU BOIS - He acts like he doesn't notice.

YOU - A glare like yours communicates, clearly, that this will be at best, for him, a draw. "I'm going to note that you're being weirdly resistant about this, and then we'll move on."

HARRY DU BOIS - He's a hard bargainer, but your terms are amenable. "No problem here."

YOU - write it down in your notes, just like you said you would. You take your time to be careful and precise with your lettering. Pointedly.

HARRY DU BOIS - He watches with obstinate satisfaction.

PRACTICA - Where were we?

YOU - Oh, right! Back to work. "Let's try to focus in on a location. Where do you feel at peace?"

HARRY DU BOIS - He thinks about it, tapping his fingers against his chin, turning his face upwards to seek inspiration. He goes hmm, hmm.

MIRROR - He's trying to take the question seriously, but it's not working.

HARRY DU BOIS - The act exhausts itself. "I have just over four months of memories, tops, and none of that time has exactly been peaceful."

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - I feel like we should have seen that coming.

PRACTICA - For normal people, this would be a good time to enter trance and see what the subconscious provides. But, with Harry? You need some semblance of a happy place before we can risk hypnotism again.

YOU - "Well, let's make up a place! It doesn't have to be real. It just has to be somewhere you can at least imagine feeling happy and relaxed."

HARRY DU BOIS - Inspiration strikes, and his face lights up with a flash of certainty. "The gym."

YOU - "A gymnasium?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "Yeah. The locker rooms."

YOU - In your experience, locker rooms are damp and awkward places. "Really?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "Yeah." He nods distantly. "It smells… I guess it smells like how a home should smell."

YOU - "…Okay."

PERCEPTION - You have never encountered a locker room that in any way smells like home.

ÉLAN VITAL - Does he have any recollections of an actual home?

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - This might be the closest he's got.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - Oh, right, he was a school coach, wasn't he? You knew that.

YOU - "Locker rooms usually have a lot of other people in them," you note, to be thorough. "Would you feel at peace in a gymnasium locker room, all by yourself in there?"

HARRY DU BOIS - He considers carefully, which you appreciate. "I think so."

YOU - "Okay." You accept this, looking down at your notes to give yourself a moment to think.

PRACTICA - It's not a lot, but it's a start.

ACADEME - Is it enough? Maybe not.

VIGILANCE - You aren't listening to any of us. You shouldn't keep doing this.

YOU - No, no. C'mon… I don't want to give up.

ÉLAN VITAL - Even if you pretend the itch isn't there, we all know you'll end up scratching it eventually.

YOU - "Okay." You settle your thoughts with finality. "Let's give it a go."

YOUR THIRD FLOOR OFFICE - The two of you get set up: he lies down, and you flip on the hypnotriptych. You walk him through achieving trance.

YOU - "Alright, Harry," you say, in that careful and quiet tone of yours. "I want you to let yourself imagine being in this place where you feel comfortable. Peaceful. Happy. A gymnasium. Inside the locker room."

HARRY DU BOIS - "Hmmmmm."

YOU - "Are you imagining it?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "Ohhh. Yeah. I'm there."

YOU - "Can you describe it to me?"

OTHER-WORLD -

Personal-use lockers line the walls. Disinfectant and body odor. Steam from thousands of showers. The eternal dusk of half-burnt fluorescent lights. The wood plank of a bench, beneath you. Your own locker rests open, in front of you.

VIGILANCE - I don't like the sound of that last bit.

YOU - "What's in the locker?"

OTHER-WORLD -

Wouldn't you like to know.

CHARM - Nothing can ever be easy, can it?

YOU - "Just tell me — is it nice, looking into the locker? Or is it scary?"

OTHER-WORLD -

It's both.

YOU - "We want this to be our peaceful place. So, we don't want anything scary there. Can we close the locker? Or maybe put the scary stuff in another locker, and keep all the peaceful and happy things in the one in front of you?"

OTHER-WORLD -

You can't separate out the one from the other, can you? Just cordon off the pain and misery from everything else?

LOCKBOX - Of course you can.

OTHER-WORLD -

This wöman doesn't know anything.

ÉLAN VITAL - Disengage. This isn't going well.

YOU - ignore that. "What matters is, we want this to be a place you can imagine, where you know that you can be happy and relaxed. Can you do that, here?"

OTHER-WORLD -

This is a place of strength. Power. Honor.

So much time spent, in places like this, feeling the delicious rush from endocannabinoids after a hard, long run.

And don't forget: all the many wonderful sights to see.

YOU - "In a locker room?"

OTHER-WORLD -

No, of course not. Why would you look at anything in a locker room? We just like sports and working out a lot, okay?

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - A huge spike of anxiety, all the sudden.

MIRROR - It's confusing.

YOU - "Are we sure this is a place where you feel at peace?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "Wait."

OTHER-WORLD -

Make the walls orange. The floor orange, the ceiling orange, the bench orange, the whole world orange and smelling of pine.

YOU - write in your notes: color theory? "Pine again, huh."

OTHER-WORLD -

Terpenes, or the chemical compounds responsible for pine's distinctive smell, are common additives not only to self-care products, of which aftershave is but one example, but also cleaning supplies like disinfectant.

RHETORIC - Full circle! Now it all makes sense.

YOU - "Oh, so it's the disinfectant that smells like pine."

OTHER-WORLD -

That's what we're telling you.

HARRY DU BOIS - "I'm safe here."

YOU - "Maybe the color is a bit much?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "No." His voice is easy, uncomplicated. "I like it."

MIRROR - Right now, the atmosphere is as calm and pleasant as you could want it to be. But can we trust it to last, if he's picturing himself completely surrounded by such a bright color?

PERCEPTION - Bright and apricoty.

YOU - "I don't know," you say with a beguiling self-doubt. "Orange can be really energizing, and I don't think that's what we want for this space."

HARRY DU BOIS - "Hrm."

YOU - "Maybe… Blue?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "Oh, noooo." In the slow, muffled way of the entranced, his face curls itself inward and then into a sob. "Not bluuuuue!"

YOU - "Okay, okay—sorry!" You scribble down: what's wrong with blue?

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - No, seriously: what's wrong with blue?

PERCEPTION - We like blue.

RHETORIC - Doesn't it represent peace and reason, on this isola?

PRACTICA - It doesn't matter. He doesn't like it.

YOU - "How about green?"

HARRY DU BOIS - He has to recover from the suggestion of blue, but the time that takes allows him to grow accustomed to this alternative. The possibility of green.

OTHER-WORLD -

Green walls, green ceiling, green floor. But keep the benches orange.

PRACTICA - An acceptable compromise. This is a space with plenty of distinct, comforting features. We can work with this.

YOU - Satisfied, you accept it. You smile. "There we go."

ACADEME - It takes a lot of practice to establish a staging area as a secure and reliable tool. You have to go through many repetitions of achieving trance, entering the space, and then leaving trance again. Again and again, until it's easy.

YOU - Again and again.

OTHER-WORLD - Again and again.

PRACTICA - Harry's not bad at it. The practice goes well.

MIRROR - Although, sometimes, after breaking trance, when he sits up, his demeanor is off. He's withdrawn, concerned.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He gets lost in some distant thoughts.

HARRY DU BOIS - He denies it, though, when you ask.

***

HARRY DU BOIS - He sits across from you, face downcast, brow furrowed. He harrumphs.

YOU - There's a lot you'd like to do today, but that is all contingent on his mood. "Uh, hey, Harry."

HARRY DU BOIS - "So what if I like the scent of a fine musk?"

YOU - "Huh?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "It's absolutely normal."

YOU - flounder. "Lots of things are normal."

MIRROR - Luckily, he's not really listening to you.

MIRROR - You weren't party to the start of this conversation, whatever it was. Actually, you might not be party to it now, either.

HARRY DU BOIS - "I mean, who isn't going to be distracted by the smell of a man?"

YOU - consider. "Guys do smell sometimes, yeah."

HARRY DU BOIS - "Just…" A certain kind of tension builds up in his shoulders and hands—it's pent up drama, a deep need for bigger and more powerful expression of his feelings than language can provide. "They smell so good sometimes!"

YOU - "Well…"

HARRY DU BOIS - His attention snaps up; he's finally paying attention to you. "Haven't you ever noticed, sometimes, how much you just want to smell a guy?"

YOU - "Me?"

ANIMA - No, not you.

PRACTICA - Anyone else feeling like this is a little weird?

CONFORMITY - No, yeah. It is.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - He’s conflicted about something.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - No, not conflicted, exactly. More like wrestling with it.

YOU - “So, what you’re saying is…” You speak slowly, piecing it together as straightforwardly as you can. “You like to… smell… other men?”

HARRY DU BOIS - Something registers, and then suspicion settles over his features. He scowls. “When you put it that way, of course I don’t want to.”

LOGIC - A nice self-contradiction.

HARRY DU BOIS - His eyes, settling on you firmly, have a harsh, humorless edge. “I was making all of that up.”

YOU - “Oh.” You try. “Okay.”

HARRY DU BOIS - “And so what if I wasn’t? Huh? Can’t a guy just want to go up to another guy and smell him, without it meaning something?”

YOU - are so confused, and it makes you feel bad. “Harry, what’s going on right now?”

HARRY DU BOIS - The harshness doesn’t subside, but at least his scowl lightens up. What it lightens up into, though, is a self-satisfied resentment. He leans back appraisively and crosses his arms. “Well, Svala, I'd say what’s going on right now is that you’re shaming me for some incredibly normal and highly masculine drives.”

YOU - wither under the charge.

PRACTICA - Were you?

MIRROR - Were you??

YOU - Was I???

CONFORMITY - Incredibly normal, he says.

RHETORIC - What does any of this even mean!

CHARM - He's mad at us!

GUILE - Stop! Just stop, okay? All of you are a bunch of silly goats. So what if we have no idea what’s going on! We still know exactly how to handle a situation like this. It's not hard. We're good at this, even.

YOU - “I’m…” You bite your lip and blink rapidly. “...sorry?”

HARRY DU BOIS - He observes the apology, and then, after a judicious pause, he accepts it with a nod. Quick as a snap, his posture loosens and his mood brightens, and he claps his hands like a starting bell. "So! What've you got in store for today?"

YOU - Relieved by the shift, you let your face brighten with expectation. You test the waters by putting on a grin. "Well…!"

***

HARRY DU BOIS - He's deep, with the green walls and the steam of the showers, and the pine of the disinfectant.

MIRROR - He is at rest. We are at rest.

OTHER-LIGHT - Time moves, for now, as syrup.

PRACTICA - We've worked hard to get to this point.

YOU - He's ready?

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - Seems like it.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - Ready as he'll ever be.

OTHER-WORLD - Ready enough.

ÉLAN VITAL - Are you?

YOU - "Alright, Harry." That slow, quiet voice. You speak to guide. "This is your space. It's a space for us to work in. And if it ever gets to be too much, you just come right back to your locker room. Okay?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "Hmmm," he says, which means okay.

YOU - It wouldn't be right for you to be jittery with nerves. What kind of therapist would you be, if that's how you felt? You bite at the inside of your cheek, hard enough to feel it, and then you plunge in. "Let's talk about the Dora dream."

HARRY DU BOIS - "The dream?" His voice constricts, but he doesn't wake. "Dora?"

YOU - "Dora," you confirm. "We can imagine anything we want, right now. Just like how you imagine your locker room. So let's try imagining the dream."

HARRY DU BOIS - His jaw works, like he's chewing on something.

YOU - "Is that okay?" you check.

HARRY DU BOIS - "Okay."

PERCEPTION - He sounds young. And scared.

YOU - wait, to see if any other answers come.

OTHER-WORLD - But none do.

YOU - "Let's say you can make the dream go differently. We can change it around however we want. What would you want to happen?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "I want to scoop her up in my arms and hold her and kiss her and—and—have her again."

MIRROR - Absolutely no hesitation. He didn’t think before answering.

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - What’s with that stutter, at the end?

YOU - "Then that's how we'll imagine the dream going this time." You smile, so he can hear it, although you doubt that's how the scene will ultimately pan out. "We'll imagine that, this time, she agrees to stay with you."

HARRY DU BOIS - He gasps.

YOU - "What does she look like?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "She's beautiful. You have no idea, just how beautiful she is. Any man would want her. Her lungs glow."

PRACTICA - So she's still Dolores Dei.

YOU - "Describe the scene for me."

OTHER-WORLD -

It's Video Revachol. It's the street corner. It's her, as it's always her. Her wreath and her gown. Her luggage.

Must we? Do we have to do this? Please.

YOU - "Don't you want to know? What it would be like, for the dream to go another way?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "I… My apartment's not big enough for both of us. And she…"

OTHER-WORLD -

She hovers above the ground, where others' shoes are dirtied. She speaks and it pierces you.

YOU - "It pierces you?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "Her luggage would… Where would I put it?"

OTHER-WORLD -

You stand in the center of the floor. This is your home—it's not your home, not the apartment you know, but some other place, some other home for some other you. The carpet is brown, but it wasn't always. The air is stale, and the windows don't let in enough light. Before you is the door. Closed. Locked. You're the one who locked it.

You stare at it, and you wait for her to knock.

HARRY DU BOIS - "Oh noo…"

YOU - "What are you feeling, Harry?"

OTHER-WORLD -

Please. Don't let her knock. Don't let her in. Please, please—not this.

YOU - "How do you feel?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "She's a MASS MURDERER!"

ANIMA - An awful chill. Rising goose flesh.

CHARM - It's not the first time he's said that. It's always disturbing.

YOU - "What emotion is this, Harry?"

OTHER-WORLD -

What's going to knock at the door?

HARRY DU BOIS - He sobs, and words flood. "She's going to grind me up and eat me, then she'll shit me out—that's what I am, a piece of shit—that's why she left me—I'm nothing, no-good, I'm no man—a piece of shit, not a man—"

OTHER-WORLD -

WHAT'S GOING TO KNOCK?

PRACTICA - You want press the issue, push and keep pushing until he gives name to what he's feeling. You want to hear what he'd call it, want to get to write it in your notes.

ACADEME - You want this to go somewhere.

OTHER-WORLD - But there's something on the other side of that door, and you don't know what it is.

YOU - "Let's back out of this now." Your pulse is loud. "Okay? Release the, uh, the apartment. Watch it float away. Let's find ourselves back in your locker room…"

PRACTICA - This is the right call.

EMPATHY (AFFECTIVE) - He was terrified. That's the word you put to it: terrified.

MIRROR - Or were you the one terrified? Did you infect him with your nerves? Were you the one, perhaps, behind the door?

PRACTICA - You lost control.

YOUR THIRD FLOOR OFFICE - You list details of the his staging area, his happy place. You flesh out the locker room for him as much as you can, giving him time to release the tension and his fear. Someone's fear. You lead him out from the trance.

HARRY DU BOIS - When finally he sits up, he holds his head in his hands. He is dazed.

YOU - It's hard to come back. It's hard to know what to say. "What are you thinking?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "I have to want her."

YOU - feel surprise as incomprehension. "What?"

HARRY DU BOIS - "I'm a man, aren't I?" There is a tremor of despair in the question, or at least you think there is. There's a hopeless undercurrent. "I have to want her back."

YOU - "Harry, you were talking about how she eats you alive." You know you shouldn't debate his feelings; you know it isn't your place to convince him he's wrong about himself. But you're so far from understanding, you have no hope of responding otherwise. "You said she, well, she makes you feel like a piece of—shit."

HARRY DU BOIS - "But… If I don't want her back, then… What does that make me?"

EMPATHY (COGNITIVE) - You don't even understand the question. You don't understand whatever logical leaps got him to it.

PERCEPTION - All the same, you know this: His question is an orange one.

***

VIGILANCE - Well? Are you satisfied?

PRACTICA - Have we learned anything?

ÉLAN VITAL - Solved any deep mysteries?

YOU - No. Okay? Just no. I didn't learn anything. I don't understand anything.

LOCKBOX - And yet. Maybe there's something waiting for you. Something you didn't know you knew—something you still have the potential to realize.