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

[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."