Dr. Finch paused, scribbled a few words, and then looked back at him. “We don’t need--,” she began to repeat again, silenced by his hand waving dismissively.

“We can talk about it,” which earned him a long silence from her. A gentler movement as she set her notebook aside. A sort of olive branch, were it not for the fact that Richard knew how keenly her memory worked if and when he didn’t slide in to remove his mistakes after a session. It was a display; she’d make her mental notes all the same. Still. It was appreciated that she was at least. Richard sighed. “What do you want to know?” and Dr. Finch smiled kindly, relaxing back into her chair.

“We can start with just telling me about them,” she suggested. There was an open door in that sentence, waiting for Richard to step through it. “How the two of you met, what you like about them. You’ve been together for almost as long as you’ve been coming to see me,” which was a sentence that barged into Richard’s mind, not even bothering to wipe it’s feet. Tracking mud and leaving a stink with it.  

“Don’t act like you don’t know who he is,”

Finch had the decency to look sheepish as she nodded. “I didn’t want to make assumptions,” a mild defense, said more for the saying than for anything else. “Although, for the record, me knowing who he is doesn’t tell me much about why you like him,”

Fair.

“We met through Ricardo, a while ago,” timelines could be dangerous for someone as observant as Doctor Finch. “The first time I met him I thought he was obnoxious. All this…peppy boy scout energy,” the eye roll couldn’t be contained but Richard did his best to minimize it by looking over at the far wall. “He was just. He felt. Too bright, if that makes sense,”

Apparently it didn’t. Or Dr. Finch wanted an excuse to needle a bit more at that statement. “Can you explain what you mean by too bright feeling?” and. Alright, she made the mental map shift a bit to accommodate ‘bright’ as though he meant quick witted. With a question mark next to it. The request for explanation was a valid one.

“I mean. Have you ever gone,” he trailed. “Like when you leave a movie theater in the middle of the day. You go from this dark room where your eyes have adjusted and then step out into the sun—you can’t see straight and have to flinch and squint because everything’s too bright,” which didn’t help very much, but Dr. Finch adjusted the map again, plotting out a different route. And then waiting to see what he would say next. “So. So he was this sunshiny, annoying little poster boy. All blonde hair and Prince Charming smile. Like he’d stepped out of some PR manager’s wet dream. I thought he was fake and naïve and I didn’t like him very much when we first met,”

She smiled encouragingly. “And clearly that changed,” a softer nudge, one that made him snort.

“It did. After a while,” trying to parse out how much was too much to tell and how to. “I wanting to start working on trusting people,” a good mile marker, one that could offer Dr. Finch a more solid timeline to work with. Figure out the speed of the conversation with some quick mental math and. And reaching down for the clipboard again, to start writing her questions in case she misplaced any of them along the journey.  “And he wanted to hang out,” he shrugged, deliberately avoiding anything that might key her more into the fact that he wasn’t just some old friend of Ortega’s. She already had her suspicions about who he might have been in a past life—no need to give her more to work with there. “Which…was hard. Because he really was. Is that bright and shiny. I mean, he’s not perfect, but,” he bit the bullet, stinging his teeth. Spit it out onto the carpet to sit between them, smoking and volatile. “Alright,”

“Alright?” Dr. Finch echoed, curiosity and caution lacing the word.  

“I hated him when I first met him,” dredging up the past with an ancient net from depths he’d rather lie about and say didn’t exist. “It wasn’t just dislike. I hated him for how he made me feel about myself,”

To her credit, Dr. Finch didn’t immediately jump on that admission, instead her mind trying to sort into place the plethora of sources the hatred could come from. Coupled with what they’d been discussing of his ‘family life’ and ‘childhood’ she. Well, it was understandable that she’d think that.

“it wasn’t because he’s a guy,” Richard shuffled that answer out the door. “It was…. he felt shiny and clean. Fresh out of the box and worth every penny. And I’m,” he made a gesture with his hands, as though he could shuffle himself out of the door alongside Dr. Finch’s assumed homophobia. “Not. I never have been. So, I hated him for a while, so much so that,” how to say it without. The words stuck in Richard’s throat. “I got into a fight and ended up trying to hurt him,”

“A fight?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” quick and sharp. Forcing out another sigh. Ah. “But it was ugly and petty of me—not a shock I know, I’m such a friendly and open guy otherwise,” trying to mend any cut he may have made with light sarcasm. Dr. Finch’s attention stayed hard.

“And he still wanted to spend time with you afterwards?”

“Surprised me too,” and at least that could be honest. “He was mad about it; it’s not like he just let me—I apologized about it, but I don’t deserve him forgiving me for it,” too quiet. Too much towards. He cleared his throat and continued before Dr. Finch could open her mouth. “I still feel that way,” an admission that drug its claws in deep through the thin barrier of his throat. “Not hating him for it, obviously but. Like. I’m not putting him on a pedestal, I know it sounds like I am. But he’s just a better person than I am and I’ve. I can’t even compare to him, you know? I wouldn’t even dream of treating myself the way he treats me,”  

There was no sign of acknowledgement from Dr. Finch. Not for a while, as she carefully wrote out her thoughts and pressed her lips thin. She knew about his issues with self-worth, so that wasn’t too surprising for her to hear about. And even though he’d been careful, some pips of recognition fired along her mental pathways. Reminding her of half caught whispers about trying to hurt himself. And worse.

“When did you first start feeling differently towards him?” she asked carefully.

Richard swallowed. “When we started hanging out together. Just us. And. I guess he was just,” the claws in his throat caught and began twisting. “He was happy to see me. And I couldn’t figure out any good reason he could have to actually want to be around me, when I kept being so rude and petty to him, but he kept. Showing up, kept expecting me to keep showing up. And we went to get coffee, nothing. Nothing big,” there was a pressure on his legs that his brain dimly recognized as his fingers gripping his thighs just above the knee. “It was just little things and it. I felt. It was nice to be around him. I felt better around him. Like I could be happy,” and that was too much. “Which I know is fucked up,” the profanity catching her attention. “Sitting here talking about how I hated him and how disgusting I am for wanting to stay with him even when I know,” Getting it out in the open how selfish it was of him not to call the whole thing off. Not to break it up and let Daniel. Let him.

“Richard.” Harsher than normal. Softening as she spoke. “There is nothing shameful or disgusting about wanting to feel happy,”

“There is if you’re ruining other people’s lives with it,”

A small pause. “What makes you think that you’re ruining his life?” quiet and measured. “Has he ever said anything to that effect?”

“No,” miserable and strained coming out of his chest. But it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t like she knew. Could only work with what he told her and he certainly wasn’t about to. To. “But if he were with someone healthy—someone who wasn’t so broken, then,”

“You are not broken, Richard,”

“Says the woman getting paid to fix me,” too bitter but he couldn’t stop it. Dr. Finch took in a slow breath, not responding for a moment. They’d been over that before; it remained a sticking point even though he could see in her thoughts that she cared. Something in him continued to rail against it and scream that it was just her job. As soon as he walked out the door and his time was up, her willingness to deal with him would be over. Which was a good thing, ha. Proved she was a professional.

Which was when she hit him with a surprise hair pin turn. Not uncharted territory by far, but certainly not a destination that had been on her map. “From what you’ve described, and what you’re saying you feel with Herald, the way your family treated you has made it very difficult for you to know that you’re worthy of love,”

Well. That wasn’t fair. Because obviously. But admitting that she was right came with the admission that of the second half of her statement. That.

He’d left his face unmonitored. And she wasn’t stopping. “When it comes to these people in your life, Ortega and,” a slight pause “Herald. You become very agitated with yourself when you describe their roles in your life, as though the affection you feel for them is a source of negativity and shame,”

The way his stomach wanted to drop into his feet was sickeningly slow. A long and hideous slip. Not a surprising one—because in what way didn’t the Farm fuck him up. It felt like acid on his tongue.

“And?” he felt Finch’s mind start to gather itself. A little bit of tension winding itself tighter and tighter.

“And I believe that it’s fairly clear those feelings stem from fear,” she said gently, setting the clipboard down on the table. Speaking slowly and clearly. A presenter giving her final speech. “The first people in your life who were meant to show you love failed you. You describe your family as hating and resenting you, and that it continued well out of childhood. It set a precedent for and confirmed your developing emotions that you were unworthy of being cared about. That you didn’t have worth. And now that you’re an adult, you have no way of reconciling it when people do care about you. There’s medical evidence that shows if the neural pathways responsible for feeling safety and happiness aren’t reinforced at an early age, that they can literally degrade. Which means experiencing those feelings later on are not only much more difficult but are uncomfortable and even distressing. It can lead to a fear response,” a slight adjustment in her mind because, oh god, ah beans, his hands were clenched too tightly and he couldn’t sit still and. “None of those things are your fault. And it isn’t your fault now that you struggle with these feelings,”

A longer silence. No remark as he tried to relax his hands, only to find crescents of skin pulled up from his palms and the beginning beads of blood. He clasped them tightly together and ignored the sting.

“Was all that meant to convince me that I’m not broken?”

“It was meant to tell you that there are reasons you feel so scared and threatened by people caring about you, and that none of them are because you are unworthy of being loved,” she said, quiet and careful. Richard snorted. Full of rancid and bitter.

“Fine. So what?” there were hundreds of other questions beating at his teeth and he clenched down hard against them. What would she have to say when it wasn’t just a fight—that he’d hurt Daniel badly enough to send him to the hospital. To give him nightmares that went on to this day. That he’d lied to Ortega for years and still couldn’t find it in him to not want to. To not stop wanting to.

“So,” Dr. Finch began, drawing on her reserves of patience with a quiet sigh. “It means that for a long while, you’re going to continue feeling like you don’t deserve the things that make you happy. That you don’t deserve having anyone care about you. The good news is those pathways can be rebuilt. Those feelings can be learned again,”

Sure they could. By someone who was actually human. By someone with a functioning brain and not a malfunctioning. Someone who had had a childhood and not a programming chip, because real childhoods meant external forces. Teachers. Bus drivers. People from outside who would have treated him like a normal. Little bits and pieces. ‘The pathways can degrade’. As if they’d ever existed in the first place.  

Apparently his silence went on for too long. “This has been an intense session, Richard. How are you feeling about it?”

He pressed his lips tight. “… angry,” and an even harder and cruel sounding bark of a laugh. “Which just confirms your theory, doesn’t it? The only way I know how to react to things is by breaking down and sobbing or by getting ‘agitated’,”

Not a full break. “It does help confirm it, Richard, yes,” measured and even. Clearly not wanting to upset him any further, but not willing to. To. “I won’t lie to you. Working on this will be difficult. It might be painful and frightening,”

“And what makes it worth it? What if,” couldn’t keep looking at her, had to turn his head down to the carpet. “What if you’re wrong? What if you find out something about me and it turns out that my family was right? And that I don’t deserve to be happy,” part of him registered her movement. “What if it turns out there’s no fixing me because I really am that awful?”

“In what ways?” Finch prompted when he remained quiet. He shrugged and her brow furrowed slightly before coming to the conclusion that he wasn’t being deliberate. “Were there things like time schedules you had to keep?” giving an example and preparing her pen to make any notes about what he could offer her.

“Yeah,” Richard snorted hard and debated how he wanted to fit reality into a nicely shaped box. “They didn’t allow any deviation from it. Everything was on the schedule from how long you had to eat to when you were allowed to go to the bathroom,” the pen began moving. Quickly.

“How old were you when your parents first put you on a schedule like that?”

“As soon as they could enforce it,” Finch’s mind placed that as early, during the developmental stages of childhood. Her notes were a bit sloppier in their speed. And then they slowed, the doctor aware that her reactions were being observed.

“Did you have any free time. In the schedules your parents made you follow?”

“No,” he shook his head and fought back another bitter laugh. The idea of free time in the Farm was. Well, it felt absurd. What would he have even done with it? Watched the other Regenes go about their day? Watched the scientists or guards or trainers? Stared at the ceiling and dream of escape. And. Ah, well. Why not say so? “There was nothing I could have done even if they did give me time to myself,” Dr. Finch’s pen paused.

“We are talking about when you were a child?”

“Sure,” sort of. Childhood meant something different when the body you were using wasn’t already going through puberty while your mind was just coming to terms with shapes and the names of colors.

“Most,” Dr. Finch tried to slot that together. Richard caught the edge of needing to reread her chapters on child psychology before their next session. It wasn’t her specialty, after all. “Most children, when left alone, will play. Either with their environment or with imaginary friends. They might draw or come up with songs to occupy themselves,” the unspoken question asked if he did any of those things. Richard obligingly shook his head.

“Even if I’d had time to do anything like that, I don’t think they would have let me,” more. More deliberately slow note taking. “And before you ask, ‘playtime’,” he made air quotations “Was not part of the schedule,”

“What was part of it?” she leaned back in her chair then, a calculated gesture. Showing him that he had the floor. “When you were, let’s say, seven years old?”

“Wake up at six am,” he shrugged. “Brush your teeth, shower, go to the restroom, eat breakfast. Go,” he paused for half a second, smoothly disguised as needing a sip of water. “To class. Study and practice. Dinner, brush your teeth, go to the restroom. Go to sleep at nine at night. Rinse and repeat,” Dr. Finch finished writing a question for next session.

“A pretty full schedule,” meant to be an agreement. “Were you allowed to have friends over?”

“No,” and he could see the questions being loaded like bullets. Rapid fire. All aimed at him.

“Do you feel you had many friends?”

“I wasn’t allowed to have any friends,”

He stopped her before she could continue, picking a select few from the lineup. “We didn’t celebrate holidays. Or birthdays,” her thoughts turned. He followed right along, momentum more than an urge to reveal information driving him. “Punishments were regularly enforced. And no,” one she hadn’t been thinking of, but added a nice sarcastic flair. “Mommy didn’t ever hug me,”

Dr. Finch gave him half A Look that slid into something else. Fitting something in. He couldn’t see where. “Were you being facetious? Or did your parents never hold you as a child?”

The snort finally broke out. “No. God, no,” shaking his head and looking at the ground. Just in time to hear the pen back to its quick scribbling. “Skin to skin contact was grounds for,” a longer pause between the two of them, Dr. Finch’s mind scrambling but needing to let him finish. Forcing herself not to complete the thought for him in case it went somewhere she wasn’t expecting. Somewhere she was dreading. “Nothing good,” he ended lamely. Too close for comfort. Let her scrabble, for a moment.  

His hands twisted over themselves, palms sliding over palms over the backs of his hands. Dr. Finch’s mind offered up a revelation for her own notes. It was an unkind one. Humans, especially children, needed touch. Things didn’t develop correctly when it was denied.

“Were you feel like you were close with either of your parents?” careful treading.

“No. As far as I’m concerned, I didn’t have a father,” which Finch noted as perhaps leading to his resentment towards authority figures. “And I hate my mother. I hated her then, too, but I didn’t know how to articulate it,”

“Did things change as you got older?” For better or worse. Her voice was quieter now. The things she knew about him, that she was allowed to remember about him, were surface level even for a therapist. He was out of the closet. He had trust and self-esteem issues. Alcohol abuse that he allowed her to think was slightly worse than it really was. She knew he struggled with suicidal thoughts from time to time. And she knew he knew Ricardo, a connection she had theories on but had never tacked down for certain. The chance to ask questions about his formative years was a rare one, in her mind.

Richard’s mouth moved without him telling it to. The half lie easy. “I ran away once. When I was a teenager. Spent some time on my own and got to experience…anything outside of their world. Made friends, even. Even though I was terrible at it,” he bit his lower lip, harder than he intended to. “I felt like I. Like I was learning who I was as a person for the first time. And then they found me, and dragged me back,” voice cracking despite his attempts to keep it level. Eyes still trained on the ground by her feet. “And things were a lot worse after that,”

She didn’t ask how, although she wanted to.

She didn’t ask for examples of how he was punished, but her mind was creative enough to offer up plenty of options.

Instead she asked, setting her notepad to her side, “Do you ever have contact with your family now?”

“No. They,” he took in a shuddering breath. One that signaled either he finish up or start crying. “They keep trying to contact me. To find me. They still want me to come back,” he clenched his teeth and couldn’t make himself relax his jaw. “And I refuse to,”

She didn’t say that that may have been for the best, because that wasn’t her professional opinion. Her professional opinion was:

“I think that’s enough for today, Richard. Let me get you another tissue,”

-

Daniel’s hand carried the weight of the world and brought all of it down on Richard’s shoulder.

Every cell in his body urged him forward. She was right there for goodness sake. Vulnerable. Weak. If not for Daniel’s hand, pinning him straight through to the core of the earth, it would have been too easy. To reach out with his hand. Reach out with his mind. And rip her apart, damn the consequences. Who needed revenge when she could be dead? So what if they always claimed it would kill him too? It wouldn’t be worst lie ever told. Certainly not by their standards. And if it was true?

If it was true.

That burying his hands deep into her brain and pulling would kill him too? Would. It would. Would it? Be so terrible? At least then Ricardo would have something tangible to…and Danny could mourn and then move on with his life. Could take care of. The idea of Edith waiting for him to come home, without ever recognizing that he wouldn’t, came with barbed wire that caught in his throat and dragged downward.

But still. But. Dogs could get new owners. Friends and lovers could find someone new to help heal the wounds. Move on to something better and only hurt when someone else brushed over whatever dark stain Richard would leave behind when the blood was cleared away. It would only hurt on those winter days and only in his knee. Daniel’s hand lightened. Fell away. Words. Saying something that Richard’s mind refused to register despite the eerie emptiness over taking it. He felt cold. In his hands and feet. His throat was dry and the dryness threatened to crack and bleed into his mouth, coating his tongue and staining his teeth and

“Do you want me to move her?” Daniel repeated loudly, slow and just a little impatient. Not directed at him. The Rat King was focused on the rapidly approaching fighting outside, allowing Richard a moment or two to remember how to speak.

“I don’t know what I want,” thin and reedy, a voice from somewhere dark inside him. The helmet changed the tone, increasing the confident reverb, but Richard knew how it sounded in his heart—scratched and ragged, dripping with ice water fear and hatred. Shivering on the gurney after a. It also wasn’t true. He just wanted this to be over. Couldn’t kill her and couldn’t stop wanting to see her dead.  Couldn’t bring himself to look at Daniel.

An increasingly difficult feat once Daniel moved in front of him. His chest blocked the view of Regina completely.

“It wouldn’t make her right,” the words pushed themselves into Richard’s ears and stood on the doorstep of his brain, pounding loudly on the locked door. A few knelt down to shout through the mail slot. It took a great deal of effort to not shout back that he wasn’t home. “She would deserve it, Richard,” the air currents faltered, leaving Daniel’s thoughts spiraling and struggling in the stillness. Beating on, nonetheless. “After everything that she’s done to you. Allowed to happen to you and the people like you? Killing her would not make you a monster,” not advocating for the murder but making it clear. He wouldn’t stop it from happening. No last minute dragging Richard away or shouting about how he shouldn’t compromise that last part of himself. He had never killed before and neither had Richard.

“I want the,” mumbled, dragging their feet and nearly tripping over one another on their way out between his lips. “I want her to be held responsible,” he tried to swallow around the lump forming in his throat and nearly choked. “I--,” he wanted the world to see how evil she was. How disturbed. To see the things she had created and be repulsed. And even as he admitted it to himself, he had to admit it was a fantasy. What he could have was suffering. He could make her live each and every day in agony and the knowledge that he had done it to her. That she had been put into a place of torment by her own. Richard almost had to take a step back, smacked in the face by the surge of anger from Daniel’s mind.

“Do you want her to have a chance to defend herself?” Nausea clawed its way up and threatened to twist his throat into knots again. Richard swallowed hard against the need to vomit.

“No,” half a whisper, distorted by the modulator. Half terrible growl. Daniel visibly shuddered at the sound but his mind kicked away the fear of it.

“Do you want people to be inspired by the things she did? To agree with her and side against you? Because those people exist Richie, and I know you know that. We both know there are people who will see what she’s done and say to themselves that they could do it better. Smarter. Who want to learn what her work can teach them,” voice clear but cracking at the edges. “People who are going to look at the man that I love and agree with her that you’re not a person,” pain slipping through where the cracks were wide enough. Fear and anger and Daniel floating forward to put his hands on either side of the helmet, forehead touching the face plate and eyes sliding shut. “You didn’t deserve what she did to you. And you don’t deserve what will happen if,” voice trailing into silence. The gust was gone, leaving behind only broken tree branches and the taste of bile in Richard’s mouth.

If.

If he didn’t do something now. Left unspoken. Danny pulled in a breath with a sound that threatened to break Richard’s heart.

“Killing her won’t fix me,” without power or heat to it. Needing to get the words out of his mouth in any case. There was no fixing something like him. He might be able to mend. With time and patience and no small amount of blunt force super glue. To be repaired to some state of functionality, so long as the given definition of function was loose. Daniel didn’t dignify that with a response. He wasn’t so naïve as to think that it could. Or would. And both of them knew he wasn’t suggesting it. “And it won’t erase the things that she’s done,”

“No. It won’t.” an easy agreement. And the thoughts spinning through Daniel’s mind added on: but it might stop her from making them worse. “You told me once,” a darker cloud began obscuring some of Daniel’s thoughts. Easy enough to break through if Richard had had the drive to. He didn’t. “That if you wanted to, you could reach into someone’s mind and,” a hard pause and Daniel pulled his head back and way from the helmet, eyes opening to stare hard into the blank visor. “And damage them.” Not a question. Not asking for confirmation to the theory that Richard suddenly had access to. “I don’t know if it would be better than just ending her,” Daniel admitted with no small amount of hesitation.

It wouldn’t be better. For a person like Regina, losing control of her mind would be a fate worse than death.

Daniel’s hands left the helmet and fell back onto his shoulders. Richard could feel the internal conflict. Felt it echoed in the hollow valleys and canyons in his own chest. There was a crash outside; judging from the volume barely a block away. Outside, Boris was getting anxious.