Work Text:
If you had told Slishy that she would end up as the therapist to a dozen-or-so fictional characters within an online digital library, she would have laughed in your face, called you a liar, cut you to pieces, or all three, probably in that order. And yet, here she was.
It was hard to believe that she had changed so much in what was relatively so little time. She could still remember when she was the Slishy Slasher, the heartless witch who severed relationships without remorse and spent her days trying to make others miserable. Now, she spent her days trying to mend the very thing she had tried to destroy. It was funny, in a way.
And it wasn’t like there weren’t people in the Library who didn’t need help. On the contrary, it seemed like almost everyone there had something that was negatively affecting their mental health.
For example, there was Millie Moonbeam. The sessions Slishy had with the firefly revealed that she felt immense guilt for, in her own eyes, killing Meadowvalley, destroying her father, and failing her sister. Slishy had done her best to reassure Millie that what happened was completely out of her control, but that didn’t stop the firefly from experiencing intense nightmares regarding those events. Additionally, she had also told Slishy that she was worried her sister might, in some part, blame her for what happened.
Luckily for Millie, it seemed those fears were unfounded, as if Slishy’s talks with Winnie were any indication, the wist held absolutely no animosity towards her sister. Instead, her own problems lie within her trauma regarding the events of the final Meadowvalley book. According to Winnie, those events had left her with a deep-seated fear of things like oil and railway lines. Slishy had done her best to help Winnie deal with this trauma, though progress was going slowly, yet steadily.
Similar to Millie, Tellie Lectric was another patient dealing with guilt related to his past. In his case, it was related to the incident at the World Fair, and all the people who had gotten hurt because of it. Additionally, he also suffered from what seemed like minor paranoia, feeling like people were judging him behind his back. That had hit Slishy especially close to home, and she had reassured him that, despite what may have happened in the past, nobody held it against him.
Dorothy Do was another one of her more frequent patients. Despite hiding behind a facade of confidence, extended sessions eventually revealed the sailor’s deep-seated depression, which stemmed from his loneliness. The loss of those close to him had affected the sailor deeply, and he wanted nothing more than to be with them again. Additionally, his arrival into the Library had also caused him intense emotional distress. Being surrounded by twisted, empty caricatures of those he knew had dealt significant mental damage to the puppet, with him completely clamming up whenever the topic was discussed. In fact, Slishy recalled a particularly painful memory where attempting to recount the experience caused Dorothy to suffer a panic attack, with her doing her best to comfort him afterwards. Another thing that worried Slishy was Dorothy’s desire to “go back to sleep”. According to him, when he was “asleep” everything was calm and peaceful, and he desired to go back to that peace. At one point, he had even told Slishy that a part of him wished he had never “woken up” in the first place. This was incredibly concerning for her, and she had instructed him to spend time with the new friends he had made at the Library. This was to help Dorothy understand that, even if he couldn’t be with his old friends, he could still make good memories with his new ones.
As Slishy sat in her office recalling her past sessions, a tired look on her face, she noticed one of her shadow arms offering her a cigarette. Taking it and giving the arm a quiet “thank you”, she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a lighter, before using it to light up the cigarette and taking a drag of it. She knew she wasn’t supposed to smoke indoors, but she really couldn’t bring herself to care at the moment. As she allowed the smoke to exit her lungs, she reflected on all the people she’s met during her time in the Library. She swore, if it was the last thing she did, she would be there for them all, and support them as much as she could.
Just like her own friends had supported her.