(Untitled)

[thegooddrjones]

Who: Libby and Martha
When: Today.
Where: CES
What: Therapy.
Warnings: Flood and life trauma.

Comments

[thatlibbychick]

Libby had waited outside of the Enclosure for a minute or so after arriving, which was a minute or two later still than Martha had gotten there; finally, she figured she'd wait for her friend inside.

As it happened, not only had Martha thought along the same lines, but she'd also shown up first.

"Hey," she called out, giving a small smile and a wave to match as she made her way over to the spread. Inside, of course, she was nervous and ill at ease.

[thegooddrjones]

"Hey," Martha said quickly, and she waved to her friend as well with a larger grin. When her friend got to the blanket, Martha's eyes moved over the other woman, hoping to see that the twenty four hours of rest had proved to provide some sort of relief from what Libby had been going through.

And with those moving eyes, there was also a quick lean forward for a hug. Of course, that wasn't meant to be a sort of therapist protocol, but Libby was far more than just a patient; she was also a very good friend aboard the barge. And lord knew that Libby looked like she needed a hug, and Martha knew that she needed one. Really.

[thatlibbychick]

There was some relief to be seen, yes, a combination of her long sleep and getting to wander someplace that didn't consist of the same old walls. She didn't look quite as wracked by guilt as before.

Libby tended to hug her patients on the Barge; part of that was because she had to live with them everyday anyway and it might bring them comfort, and partly because she'd never really acted as a conventional psychologist in the first place. Standard procedure for coaxing a would-be jumper away from a cliff wasn't kissing, either, and that hadn't stopped her. So she returned the hug, tightly, without even thinking twice about it.

"Looks like you came prepared," she said lightly, keeping the smile fixed. A picnic was just about the last damn thing that would cheer her up, when everything was considered; but Martha had clearly meant well, and she wouldn't spoil it.

[thegooddrjones]

The tight hug was a squeeze, and then when they stepped back, Martha dropped down onto the blanket before she looked around at it. "Well, I figured that if it was muddy we probably should have a place to sit that wasn't the dirt, and I don't know about you, but I tend to think better with a couple of tea." Of course when the tea was enchanted with a love potion, but she wasn't going to mention that.

"It's just mint," was added after a moment. "From Christmas." Martha was going to need to put in a request to the admiral for more tea, but that was neither here nor there. "I didn't bring anything to eat though, figured if you were hungry we could go to the dining hall after." Martha may or may not have had butterflies in her stomach at the moment. Really, she was quite worried about screwing this up somehow. She really didn't want to do that.

Martha sat cross-legged, but she didn't pour the tea out just yet. Maybe she should, but it seemed like something it would be better to wait on.

see icon for how she's sitting, because I can't describe it well!

[thatlibbychick]

"Tea sounds great," she said. She was big on it, especially when she'd been trying to lay off caffeine, before she fell back on coffee to stay awake. "I doubt I'll be hungry, though, so that's fine."

She joined Martha in sitting down, keeping her posture easy, as if this happened to be any casual outing.

"You're the shrink this time around," she said, giving a tiny shrug. "Where would you like to start?"

[thegooddrjones]

Martha poured two cups of tea, and quickly placed one on the blanket in front of Libby, before she took one herself and wrapped her hands around it. Her rotation in psychology had been fairly brief, so she was uncertain how to go about doing this.

Moving to sit crosslegged, Martha looked at Libby and wondered if perhaps she should have brought a pad and pencil after all; still, hopefully she was fairly decent at remembering. Well, she was fairly decent at remembering, so it was all right.

She swallowed before she started. "Last time I saw you, before you'd gotten a little bit of sleep, you talked to me about how you'd been dreaming about your past self. Do you want to start there?" Martha knew from after the flood that Libby had been forced into therapy and that she'd done work for her family. "About what you had done for your family?"

[thatlibbychick]

Libby silently picked up her cup, blowing gently on the tea inside to cool it down. That's where she kept her eyes--on the minute swirling of the liquid--because she didn't think she could start this conversation and look into her friend's eyes at the same time

[thegooddrjones]

Martha watched Libby as she picked up her cup, and she knew that the woman was trying to find a place to begin. She waited in silence, not wanting to rush into any of this. Hasty therapy probably wouldn't work, at all really... and she didn't want to cause Libby more damage than her friend already had.

There was a nod when she started speaking, and Martha was able to stop the sigh of relief from slipping past her lips with the first words. And then she listened, focusing upon what her friend was sharing with her. Mentally she took notes, reminding herself to ask about things later, to see if there was something more deeply helpful than just what Libby was sharing on the surface.

The words weren't the only thing that Martha was taking note of; there was also posture, and Libby's face as each word was formed. When she mentioned wanting to be like her mother, Martha nodded. "What was she like? Your mum?"

[thatlibbychick]

"She was brilliant," she answered, a little smile playing about her lips in spite of the mood. Her gaze remained focused on her cup. "She was a skilled neurosurgeon, and I'm almost certain that's why my father wanted her. He used her and threw her away, even long before he filed for divorce; she was, for all intents and purposes, a single mother. But she was very sweet and loving and nurturing, and was parent enough for the both of them."

The next silence was particularly uncomfortable for Libby. "What...what I did to people's psyches, he wanted her to do to their brains, and he lied up and down about the reason for it. She thought she was on the verge of a revolutionary new treatment for the mentally ill, but she was just making them worse. Unknowingly," she added, in a rush.

[thegooddrjones]

Martha listened and nodded, smiling at the mention of what a gentle woman Libby' mother had been. Clever doctors where something that Martha nearly always liked, and she could see herself liking Libby's mother very easily.

"Libby, what did she do to their brains?"

[thatlibbychick]

"I don't know, exactly," she admitted. "I wanted to follow her career path, but it only took a year of med school for me to know I couldn't hack it. She either cut or burned out small parts of their brains...I think she split some into separate hemispheres, too, as if they were severe epileptics. She wanted to come up with a surgical quick-fix, a single procedure to replace therapy and pills...and they led her to think she was on the road to making that happen. They made a fool of her, and I truly hope she died without ever putting that, or what she was really doing, together."

[thegooddrjones]

Martha nodded, and one had moved out to touch Libby, but she didn't quite. At least not yet. She did take a little of a breath before she did lean over and place her hand upon her friends. "Libby, tell me about the things you did. I want you to know that I won't judge you for it, cause I know that you wouldn't do them again. Ever. But I think it's important to talk about."

[thatlibbychick]

Libby bit her lower lip and put down her cup before her hands had a chance to betray her. "I've never served as a standard clinical psychologist. I have my degree in it, but the last therapy sessions I held before I arrived here were during my training." She reached up to cover her eyes, disengaging Martha's hand in the process.

"I 'reeducated' people. I filled their heads with whatever I was directed to...I broke them down and stripped away their self-preservation instinct before sending them off to be tested." She gave a little half-hysterical laugh. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you the reason why."

[thegooddrjones]

Martha considered for a moment, catching the word 'standard' there. She had suspected that Libby had been doing not-standard things, and nodded before her hand was disengaged by Libby's quick movement to her eyes. Her hand was quickly put in her lap, but she leaned forward a bit as the woman spoke with her face covered.

There was a quick swallow before there was that little laugh. At it, she reached over again, and her hand settled firmly on Libby's shoulder. A reassuring squeeze before she spoke again. "I would Libby. Tell me the reason why."

[thatlibbychick]

"I was priming them to manifest psychic phenomena," she replied, voice cracking with that edge of hysteria. "That's what they had my mother doing, in her own way...but she didn't know. She thought she was working towards some greater good."

She kept her eyes covered, because under her hands they'd finally begun to water. "I used to tell myself that I had done those things because I believed the same lie, but I know now that I really recognized the truth all along. I just couldn't live with it, so I forced the lie on myself until..." She slumped her shoulders. "Until the truth was buried deep enough in my unconscious to continue my job, I guess."

[thegooddrjones]

Martha did believe that. She'd seen many things with the Doctor, and she'd seen humans doing worse things when she was working with Torchwood. There were times when she did think that the worse monsters were humans. But at the same time, she couldn't fault some of the things they did. There was a quick movement when there was that cracking, and she squeezed Libby's shoulder again, hoping to reassure her.

"Libby, it's not your fault. You're a therapist and you know better than anyone how people tell themselves lies. It sounds to me, given everything you've told me, that you didn't have any other option than to believe that lie. I don't think your family would have let you do otherwise."