The Doctor Is [IN]

[ari_v_2_0]

There is, at the top of the main staircase, a heavy oak door with a frosted glass panel, like a monochrome sunset, over the frame. On the door, at eye level, is a brass nameplate. “Ariane Emory, Pysch.,” it says, in deeply engraved letters

Comments

[littlebetter]

Someone has been poked up here by his older brother, and is standing at the door frowning and waiting to be asked in rather than taking the initiative.

[littlebetter]

"She's dead." A beat. "I killed her."

[ari_v_2_0]

"Ah," Ari says, "Yes, that would do it."

She pauses for a moment, then asks: "Are the nightmares about that?"

[littlebetter]

"Sometimes." Anywhere else, he'd be opening and shutting doors, but there aren't any here he's not afraid to touch. Without that nervous gesture available to him, he looks extremely uncomfortable. "Sometimes about when I was younger. And growing up. She was--she didn't love me. Any of us."

[ari_v_2_0]

Ari nods, slow, processing that. "Yes," she says, "Yes, it makes sense that you'd be having nightmares."

She meets his eyes, her shoulders loose, not smiling, but her mouth quirked enough for it to be clear she's not frowning, either. "Would you like to have a seat and keep talking about it? Or would you like to stop for now and I can give you that dreaming exercise?"

[littlebetter]

"Better to talk now, before I don't want to," with a brief, shaken laugh. "Gawain had enough trouble getting me up here."

[ari_v_2_0]

"Okay," Ari says, and smiles, sitting back down on the couch, feet tucked up beside her, listening.

[littlebetter]

He remains standing. "I don't know how to start, I-- wanted her to love me," and he glances at her defencively. "I believed her when she lied. I did what she wanted. She told me whatever she wanted and I listened."

[ari_v_2_0]

Ari nods. "Because she was your mother," she says, in a tone that could be a question or could be a statement.

[littlebetter]

"Yes. And she didn't love me. I knew that. I thought perhaps she would if I--was good."

[ari_v_2_0]

The same tone: "But you couldn't figure out what good was."

[littlebetter]

"Nothing worked." For a moment there's a pleading note in his voice, as if Ari could tell him why, or what it was he needed to do. "I would have done everything, I tried, but she never--God, she never. --No, once. One damn day. When I was seven."

[ari_v_2_0]

"You were seven," Ari says, confirmation she's listening close.

[littlebetter]

"That's right. And she came to me and asked me if I wanted to pick flowers with her." And his hands are shaking a little. "So damned stupid. And I went out with her, and she laughed a lot and told me I should have a charm, had she ever made me a charm, and I said no, and she said she ought to make me one. And she let me eat supper in her room. She said if I could keep a secret, she'd tell me one nobody else in the world knew. And I was a damned little fool and I said I could."

[ari_v_2_0]

"And she told you," that oddly neutral tone again, both question and statement.

[littlebetter]

"Her name, the one she didn't go by. My precious secret. God, every handsome boy who came within ten miles of the castle likely knew it."