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“Mr. Harper, how have you been doing since we last talked?”
The voice was methodical and had this faux charm to it. All the doctors had it. They didn't really care, they just had an interest in keeping him alive and going. They didn't ask if he had been able to sleep at night. None of them questioned if he could stand the sight of himself in the mirror. Doctors didn't care if he wanted to claw his skin off in an act of defiance that was solely him.
All they wanted was to know if ‘it’ was working for him.
Roy looked out the window, already over the stupid appointment.
“Fine.” He responded.
The doctor hummed thoughtfully, “Good, good. Any irritation or redness? Swelling?”
Roy's eyes drifted toward the man across from him, “No.”
“That's good! Honestly aside from helping you recover from the debilitated state you were in when you were brought to us, the stump itself is fine work!” The doctor laughed as he said it.
Roy wanted to punch something. Preferably someone. How dare the doctor say his mutilation was ‘fine work’ as if he hadn't been taken, his arm stolen from him, and his life forever changed. His bow was his life and now? Now he was barely able to lift it and hold it up with his remaining arm let alone notch an arrow! Not only that but no one had looked for him! No one had realized that the one impersonating him was a clone! It was sickeningly ironic that the only person who gave a damn about him was himself. The clone had been the one to find him. To save him. Yet not even his own mentor, someone he had thought of as a father figure, had deigned to look for him.
The doctor stood and that was the sign that it was all over, “Welp that should cover everything! Just keep on doing what you're doing, and I'll see you in a month or so.”
Roy mirrored the other man and made his way towards the door. There was no need for pleasantries. All of this was a formality. A process that Oliver had set in place because he felt guilty over not having been there for Roy. He hated pity. He hated it so much. Everyone's faces had pity on them. It was maddening. Suddenly the doctor turned back to him causing him to stop.
“Oh! Roy, one more thing.” The doctor added, “I'll have my receptionist write down the contacts of some good therapists that may be able to help you throughout this.”
Roy didn't bother to hide his distaste, “Why?”
The doctor gave him another one of those phony smiles, “You need to grieve and some patients cope through harmful means. Talking can help. If you need to talk through anything, give those therapists a try!”
And then he was gone, leaving Roy to glare at his absence. He received his outgoing paperwork and stared at the few names and contacts hastily written down. There was no way in any world that he was going to go talk to some shrink. He was fine! Not having his arm sucked royally but it wasn't like he was going to go off the deep end over it! It was fine. He didn't need someone with a notepad and a chair to fix the fact that he only had one arm because the other was stolen from him and he'd never get it back.
It just… he was never gonna be the same again. He was forever stuck like this and there was no fixing it. It hurt. He didn't want to grieve his stupid arm because grieving it meant letting it go and letting it go meant accepting he was like this and he didn't want to because he was angry. He was so, so angry. Angry that they'd taken him and used him to make a clone. Angry that no one had looked for him. Angry that he no longer had his arm. Angry that he was ruined, broken beyond repair. Angry. So unbelievably angry.
It hurt. It all hurt and he was so mad at the world for failing him and he just wanted to go back to when things were fine and-
Roy glanced down at the paper and sighed. Maybe it wouldn't kill him to at least see one of the therapists so he could say he went and got nothing out of it.