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26.2 | Started by: LondonHolmes on Oct 21, '18 23:38 |
The more time passes, the more London realizes that hes never really had any choice in the matter. Every action leads to a reaction, and he is only acting out the script that he has been handed. How else can he explain how everything just falls in place around him? It's like walking into a dream where you know what will happen, but are helpless to prevent it. Hes opened that door a hundred times, the result is always the same. Life goes on. Plans are made. Obligations are upheld. Alexander just wouldn't shut up about it. About any of it. Despite the brothers not exactly being close or having a normal sibling relationship, it unfortunately doesn't stop Alexander from trying, from telling London that he cares about him and wants to help. A futile prospect, London knows that, but for whatever reason Alexander refused to hear it. London knows this drill. Dr. Finch wants him to open up. To let him in. To start talking. He wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of breaking first, so he remained quiet, making his own observations. "Why don't you tell me why you're here?" Dr. Finch spoke first, of course he did. He thinks communication is more important than principles. His smile is infuriatingly patient. This is the third session, and London still has not managed to get him to lose his temper, much to his frustration. "Because my brother won't take no for an answer." London can't quite stop the annoyed frown. "Alexander." His smile is pleasantly and rather annoyingly neutral. "Yes." As if there was anyone else. "He's worried about you." "I'm a burden. An inconvenience. He feels guilty. He should be in this chair. Not me." London looks around the room at everything and nothing, avoiding his eyes. "But he's not. " Dr. Finch smiles softly, leaning a little closer making London move further back onto his seat, a move which didn't escape the Doctor. "You are." "And from what you told me last session, your brother has indeed been exactly where you are right now. It helped him, so he hopes it will help you..." Fixable. As if he was a broken plate, something that could just be glued together. It doesn't work like that. Life doesn't work like that. Even if he could glue himself back together again, there are shards lost. To time. To trauma. Even if he could glue himself back together again, London could never be whole. "London?" He shakes his head at the mention of his name, looking back towards Dr. Finch. "Are you okay?" He asks softly. Another well practiced lie. Letting out the breath he had been holding. This had already been going on far too long and if it wasn't for Alexander and several of his 'Men in Black' waiting outside, London would've ran from the building long ago. The easiest and fastest way out of here was to tell Finch EXACTLY what he wanted to hear. The good Doctor wasn't the only one here who could act a role. The Consulting Criminal did it every day. "Everywhere." "How did it make you feel? Thinking about that?" "I don't even know where to start." Dr Finch's words are quiet, unobtrusive. "Can I confess something to you?" |
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London doesn't look directly at him, the floor will do for now. "I'm not even sure I know how to talk about these things. How I feel. Feelings were never supposed to be part of this equation." "Many people are finding it hard to talk about their emotions. You don't have to feel awkward about that." "I don't feel awkward, I feel... Empty." "Good. You are talking about how you feel. About how you really feel. That's the only way forward." "Is it?" "Yes." "I...I'm not sure." "It's okay not to be sure." London clasps his hands in his lap, looking down at them. It isn't. It really isn't. "What will happen otherwise?" "London? "Do you need to take a break?" "Do you really care what I need?" "I do. Of course I do." "My brother pays you to care. Big difference." "I get paid to help." "So you don't care about all your patients?" "No." London steeples his fingers under his chin and leans forward slightly in his chair. Studying the Doctor in front of him. "Do I need a reason?" "Everyone has a reason, you said so yourself." "I'm concerned about your well-being. Because quite frankly, I am worried about you." He's sitting there in his chair, focused, professional. Ignorant. "I want to tell you..." "I'm sensing a 'but'." "But I keep telling myself it won't help. It won't matter." "Why would you say that?" "Because nothing really matters in the end. Good or bad, we all end up the same way. And I'll deserve it." |
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Reply by: LondonHolmes at Oct 21, '18 23:39 | |
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"I am not a nice man. It's important you and everyone else understands that. It's going to save you all a great deal of time and effort. There is not a warmer, kinder me waiting to be coaxed out into the light. I am acerbic. I can be cruel. That's who I am. I am neither proud of this, nor ashamed of it. It simply is. In my work, my nature has been an advantage far more often than it has been a hindrance." Dr Finch raised an eyebrow and crossed his right leg over his left and leaned back in his chair. London kept his focus on the wall behind the doctor. "Ah, yes, your work. You like to call yourself a Consulting Criminal. I imagine that must leave you conflicted, at a crossroads more often than not?" If only it was that simple London mused. "Yes. I commit crimes and I can solve them. Some days it's a blessing that helps distract my criminal side, I get bored, so it allows me to focus on using my brain in ways crime doesn't. It's a completely different type of adrenaline rush. Other days it's a burden, a curse, that has me wishing I was never born and fighting the urge to grab my gun and pull the trigger. So when life gets too strange, too impossible, too frightening, there is always one last hope. When all else fails..." God he had told himself this speech so many damn times, he had actually started believing it. "There's a place for people. The desperate, the terrified, the ones with nowhere else to run..." London trailed off briefly, taking his eyes from the wall to study Dr Finch, who simply kept quiet and nodded for London to continue. "My front door. If there's a queue, they join it. I feel I could live in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds and any version of reality, they'd still find me." It was the truth and he was so tired but it's all he had. It was the one thing he was truly good at and helped him feel not so... dead? London, for the first time since the session began, looked Dr Finch directly in the eyes and admitted what Alexander may or may not have already told him and if he had it appeared Finch was waiting to hear London admit it. "Yes." "When was the last time you had these thoughts?" "I'm not sure. They come and go, but... I think the last time, the most recent, I was standing on the roof of my apartment building, I don't even remember climbing up there but I do remember thinking about jumping. You know falling is just like flying except with a permanent destination. It's not the fall that kills you, it's the landing." "Have you had these kinds of thoughts often?" "Why don't you tell me how one of those thoughts get started?" "Think back, try to describe how things happens, how you felt before that thought popped into your head. They don't come from nowhere." Scratching one of the scars on his inside forearm safely hidden by his jacket, London paused, making sure it appeared to Dr Finch that he was truly trying to find an answer. "Intrusive thoughts." "Yes." "Alexander?" Of course he would bring Alexander into this. The one person he knows is connected to London and he tosses the name out there like a life-preserver. He uses the one person who could possibly and has on multiple occasions kept London alive and the one that keeps following him here (and quite a few places in between like leaving England several times to come and find him in America) and waiting outside for him as if he's afraid he wouldn't go otherwise. "Maybe he'd miss me, but he'll be better off without me." "I know from speaking to him that he would not agree with that and you know it." "He has never understood what's good for him. Like giving up on me." |
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Reply by: LondonHolmes at Oct 22, '18 08:21 | |
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"Do you tell yourself people like Alexander would be better off if they gave up on you not because it makes you a better investigator but because it's some sort of penance?" "For whatever happened in England. It has occurred to me that it might be something that you do and not even know it." "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth. The people who come to me, the desperate, the terrified, the ones with nowhere else to run, they can be helped and they know it. Just like I know I cannot. "You don't know, do you? You don't know and that terrifies you." |
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Reply by: LondonHolmes at Oct 23, '18 10:11 | |
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