Therapy for Tara 11/20

[master_of_fear]

Jonathan hasn't had the opportunity to set up his office at Brookhaven so he'll be seeing Tara at his home again. He makes sure the apartment is clean and then makes some tea. He's really excited, been waiting for this all week.

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[master_of_fear]

"So even from the begginning, you had unpleasant associations with guns. Unsettling memories that go back to long before your accident," he tells her with an understanding look.

"But you were still around guns yes?" he asks, "You still have other memories of them in the past, anything that strikes you as memorable is important Tara, I know you don't like talking about this stuff but... it is going to help in the long run. I hate having to put you through this but... I don't know what else to do."

He looks at her, clearly distressed.

[brambless]

Oh, gods. This is hard enough for Jonathan, seeing her upset, without hiding things from him. It's in her head, memories twisting her hands as if to remind herself that she's free, that she can move, and if she's choking on it anyway she might as well let Jonathan have it.

He can't help her if she doesn't let him.

So, letting out a low, shuddering breath, she speaks those memories, the ones fresh in her mind.

[master_of_fear]

He nods at her words, not reacting, knowing it will only hurt her if he judges. It's fascinating though, even this, a trauma Jonathan was sure was independent from any previous issues is connected. As if her father is the nexus point from which all problems originate.

"So your fear of guns is in no way a new thing. You've had this fear of them since you were young. Your fear of firearms is connected with your fear of your father. But what about after that.

After you were away from him, what was the first time you saw one when he wasn't around?" he asks.

[brambless]

"I, um... I ran away from home. After my mother died, just before I turned eighteen. Spent all my savings on a Greyhound ticket, to get just as far away as I could. California. So the next time I saw one was, um... checking my baggage, to get on the bus. My transfer in Atlanta. Um, there was a guy who was upset at having to check his gun, but... but nothing happened. Just a little yelling."

It had scared her, though, especially when the man had gotten onto her bus and sat behind her. It was a long drive, late and night, and she was tense the whole way after that display of anger, waiting for him to explode over some inconsequential detail.

[master_of_fear]

He'd known about her running away, about the time she'd spent alone before being brought back by her family.

"Just a little yelling? Did you see him again afterwards?" he asks, it seems strange that she'd remember if it was so brief an instant, "at the ticet counter or anything when you got off the bus? It just seems odd that it stuck with you if it was so brief an encounter."

[brambless]

"He sat behind me on the bus, is all," Tara replies softly. "He, um... he hit on me. When the bus stopped. I went to find the Ladies, and he..."

She has to say this. Has to tell him.

She doesn't want to. This was where it all started.

"He followed me. Right into the room, and he talked to me while I was in the stall. I thought he was going to break down the door, he was... I don't know. I don't know why he picked me. I just hid there. Until the driver honked his horn, and he left. They left."

And for about an hour after that, huddled and shuddering, sobbing into a scrap of toilet paper as she wondered what she'd do now. Stranded, far from home, her purse with her but all her other luggage on the bus, and all her money spent on that ticket.

[master_of_fear]

"is that how your family found you again? How your father brought you back home when you ran away? Or did you find some way to continue on to California?" he asks. Wondering, as always how Tara had been brought back to live in her childhood home.

[brambless]

"I didn't..." Tara shakes her head, confused. "I never went back home. My father found me when I was at university, in my second year, but... but my friends, they wouldn't let him take me."

[master_of_fear]

"And in California?" he asks, watching Tara's face, "not as many guns, but the intent behind owning one is almost always about violence towards another person. Did you run into anyone in California or was the threat enough?"

He wonders how Tara coped when she first arrived here. News casts about gang violence and every firearm meaning that the person holding it was willing to kill someone else. It must have been like hell.

"You arrived in LA I take it? Made your way South from there?"

[brambless]

"Yeah, um... Angela. She was coming back from seeing her folks, and she gave me a life, and we got talking, and she ended up inviting me to live with her, in her sharehouse, in West Hollywood. We were, um... kind of... we became lovers. On the way back. One of her housemates had a gun. Just for safety, she said, in her underwear drawer."

Tara shudders, imagining something that's been wrapped around a gun touching her most sensitive flesh.

"They were, um... they..."

She still doesn't know how to say this, still.

"I, um... I worked with them, sometimes. I got a job at the supermarket, but it didn't pay very well, and if my till was short they'd take it out of my pay packet. So when I was short, Angela... she brought me on a job."

[master_of_fear]

He'd assumed Tara had prostituted herself, she'd intimated as much back at Fandom High, but this put her experience into context.

"Did they bring the gun with them on jobs? Was it with you while you were helping Angela?" he asks. He hopes she'll react better to euphemisms, she doesn't seem to be able to say it outloud.

[brambless]

"Marie did. She said... she said she wasn't going to get into a car with a man if she didn't know she could get back out again."

Marie was quiet. Intense. Nothing like gregarious Truth, or Angela, who was flighty but easy to like. There was something about Marie that scared Tara. Like she was a loud noise, or a cruel word away from breaking.

They didn't talk, at home. Bedrooms on opposite ends of the house, and Tara was working at the supermarket during the day, and Marie's clients came mostly at night.

"So not... not often. Because usually I was just with Angela. But when it was... yeah. Sometimes. Nothing happened, though. I mean, never any violence."

[master_of_fear]

"But just knowing it was there, that was enough to bother you? To scare you. Did you ever worry about if she had to use it. Did it make you think that one of Angela's clients had one, that maybe he had it while you were with him?"

[brambless]

Tara starts to shake, her posture closing in on itself.

"I don't want to talk about this. Please, Jonathan."

Her voice is thin, thready, barely a whisper, and the scarf is so tight in her hands it has to be cutting off some of her circulation.

[master_of_fear]

"Okay Tara," he says, laying his hands on hers to stop the shaking, "We don't talk about anything you don't to. You're the one in control here. I ask you something and you don't want to answer, you don't and we don't talk about it. This is your session."

He leans back straight up in the chair, perfect posture, "what would you like to talk about instead?"

[brambless]

"I... could... Jonathan, could we just be... done? I mean, is that enough for today?"

Those memories are too raw, too frightening, too much. Too much.

There are reasons she doesn't think about or talk about those times. Opening that door...

She's going to have nightmares tonight, for sure.