help me get my feet back on the ground [Will]

[starchilde_lost]

[August 1, 2011]

Rachel needed help. She wasn't an idiot and she knew when she was spiraling downward and if she'd been smart she would have done this much sooner, like after Jean left and the nightmares started. Or after her brother brought her back to civilization. Or after her first trip to Rapture when she realized how good if felt to jack herself up with artificial powers and go kill things. Things that used to be people. Okay, granted, she didn't actively hunt the splicers just to kill them, but she sure as hell made herself a convenient target on more than one occasion and in the end, wasn't that the same thing?

And then there was the little girl. The proverbial punch in the gut that let her know she'd gone way, way too far.

So once she'd slept for about two days straight and made a few discrete-ish inquiries and now she was here, scared to death she was losing her mind by pieces, and hoping that Dr. Will Zimmerman was half the psychiatrist Dr. Maureen Lysinski had been.

...or at the very least doesn't run away screaming after she gives him her background - hell, if she could just get through explaining the Hound marks on her face and the phoenix-shaped death mark on her back without him bailing, she'd take that as a good sign.

Standing in the hall, Rachel almost turned around at the door, telling herself she could come back later, maybe after she got more sleep and reduced the circles under her eyes, after the bruises and cuts on her arms from the fighting down in Rapture had healed. But ultimately, she knew that was a cheat, if she didn't do it now she never would. She stood in the doorway and tapped a couple of times, clearing her suddenly-dry throat. "Dr. Zimmerman, right? Do you have a few minutes?"

Comments

[inabmovie]

"Of course," Will said, looking up. He was actually not doing much work at the moment, sitting at the desk in the office reading a textbook he was thinking of using next term. He closed the book and stood. "Come on in."

[starchilde_lost]

"Thanks." Shuffling into the room hesitantly, she slid into the chair in front of his desk, tapping her foot a little nervously.

"You... you're a psychiatrist, right? I mean, I heard someone say you were and..?"

[inabmovie]

"Yeah," Will said easily. "I am. I've been here for about a year, working with patients most of that time; before I came here I was in a private practice, specialized cases, and I've done foresenics as well." He didn't really go into too much detail about his work at the Sanctuary right off the bat, since it was too complicated to explain quickly and he wanted to focus on his patients. "You can call me Will; Dr. Zimmerman's kind of a mouthful for some people."

[starchilde_lost]

"Will it is." She extended her hand, trying to smile through her nervousness. "I'm Rachel Grey. Just Rachel is fine, too."

The forensics was interesting, she hadn't known about that. It probably meant some kind of law enforcement background which made her a little nervous, but she had to start somewhere.

"So, um, where are you from? Like back home." She was stalling, she knew it, but she didn't know how to do this. Dr. Lysinski had been easy, Rachel could call her, say she was a friend of Kitty's and that laid a whole lot of ground work right there. She had no idea about this guy.

[inabmovie]

Will reached across to shake her hand and settled in his chair again. "Back home? Near Vancouver, British Columbia," he said. "Place called Old City. Originally from Toronto." He didn't mind the questions. Most patients wanted to ask a little about him, wanting to know more about who they were talking to before they felt comfortable enough to start talking about themselves. "But I've lived a little bit here and there all over." Different foster families, different towns.

[starchilde_lost]

"Canadian, huh? I have Canadian friends." She almost actually face-palmed. That sounded so...ridiculous. Pathetic.

"Okay, that... was really stupid and I didn't come here because I wanted to know where you were from. But you probably know that." God, why was this so nerve-wracking hard? She knew what she needed, well, kinda, why was it so damn hard to ask for?

[inabmovie]

"It's okay," Will said, grinning a little at the 'Canadian friends' comment. "Everybody who comes in here always wants to ask about me first and that's fine. Some people ask because they want to make sure I didn't get my degree from a bubblegum machine, some people ask because they want to feel a little less like they're talking to a stranger, and some people ask because it's easier to ask about someone else than talk about yourself. And all that's fine."

He leaned back in his chair a little, twiddling a pen between his fingers. "Why don't you tell me a little about yourself, Rachel? Where you're from before the island, that kind of stuff."

[starchilde_lost]

"I was born in Salem Center, New York. My parents are teachers and, um, superheroes, I guess? So am I. Back home I have powers, I travel the world and in space, fighting and trying to make the universe a better place."

She winced, blushing a little, "I know, it sounds totally lame and it's really the short-short-short version because once you factor in the time travel and alternate timelines my bio makes War and Peace look like the cliff notes of a comedy."

She took a deep breath and shifted in her seat. "Hence the reasons I'm here. Besides the PTSD I already had, I'm just not... dealing with things well. At all. Seriously not well."

[inabmovie]

"Doesn't sound lame at all," Will said. "I've worked for a while with people with all kinds of powers. It's what I did for the last couple of years before I cam here, so believe me, I don't think it's lame." He turned the pen over in his fingers. "What kinds of things are hard for you to deal with?" he asked. "Something specific, or just being here in general?"

[starchilde_lost]

This was where she wished the bookcase liked her. She could have come in with a stack of those freaky comic books and had him read up, it would be so much simpler. But she didn't and that meant she had to pick something and run with it.

"Okay, setting aside the childhood where I witnessed my kind enslaved, executed and ended up in a mutant camp, most recently... my mom left. She was here, on the island, I had her back and I woke up one morning and she was gone again." She ran a shaking hand through her hair. "And back home, not too long ago, I... survived an attack that massacred her entire family. I was dealing by hunting down the people who did it, but I can't do that here and when Jean left it all... comes crashing back again and I feel like it's all falling apart again."

She shifted nervously, she knew she should probably tell him about Rapture, about the plasmids and the little girl, but this was the best she could offer for a start.

[inabmovie]

Will got the feeling there was more to it than that, but no one ever came out and laid everything on the table all at once. It was usually too big, and they had to start somewhere. "Disappearances are pretty common on the island," Will said, "but it doesn't make it any easier. And the other things that come up, like getting sent home when you least expect it, just to come back again, make it harder."

[starchilde_lost]

Yeah, she hadn't had that one happen yet, but Nathan had mentioned it. That and the island dragging dead bodies of loved, or rather not-so-loved ones, and leaving them as presents. Fun times.

"I just- I've been making some pretty... reckless decisions lately, and I'm having nightmares, and I feel like I'm just... going through motions, waiting for something else to go wrong. I was in therapy for awhile, back home, and it helped so, here I am."

[inabmovie]

"Here you are," Will agreed. "It's a good first step and means you're farther along than you think you are. A lot of people don't recognize when they need to talk to someone, and you have, and that's good." While he talked, he pulled a blank file from the desk drawer to make some notes, unobtrusively. "What kind of reckless decisions?"

[starchilde_lost]

And here it was. Rachel shifted in her seat and ran a lightly-bruised hand through her hair before taking a deep breath.

"I was down in Rapture, down in that underwater city? I started taking those plasmid things, the ones that give you powers? And it was great, it was like I had a piece of myself back, finally. But they'd run out and I'd get more and keep on going. It was the first time I'd felt really really good since Mom left, maybe even since I arrived, I don't know."

She couldn't look at him, her eyes finding a spot on his desk and staring at it as she talked. She hadn't told anyone this part and she was worried about what he'll think.

"Towards the end, when we were all trapped down there, I ran out again. I knew those splicers, the crazy ones, might have stashes so I followed one. He attacked one of those girls and I stopped him, wasn't the first time I'd killed one of them, but... I... kinda sorta attacked the girl. She had this device that was full of that drug and we started fighting over it, I knocked her down."

[inabmovie]

Will didn't judge his patients, ever, because it never helped and usually made things worse. He didn't have to agree with something they'd done in order to help them. The underwater city had presented its own problems and there hadn't been a great answer for them. "Do you think you might have been addicted to the plasmids?" he asked, no judgement in his tone. "Sometimes the craving for things like that can override your normal judgement."

[starchilde_lost]

"I don't know." Rachel pulled her leg up, setting her heel on the chair and hugging her knee to her chest. She felt like she was under a microscope, which was somewhat true under the circumstances. The fact that she was asking for the scrutiny didn't make it any less uncomfortable.

"I just know that down there, fighting, I felt like I had control. I had part of my life back."