Scott and incremental steps, Thursday

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Scott may be in a very bad place, emotionally-speaking, but that doesn't mean he doesn't recognize that he needs help. Making an appointment set up a few days ago, rough night or not, is just a first step.


Jack Leary opened a drawer and stuck the note he had just written into one of the many files within it. He took a sip from his always present mug of coffee and glanced at the clock. The office was small and tidy, containing several arm chairs, one couch and a multitude of filing cabinets. The chairs were arranged to give patients the option of how directly they would face him. Not many people chose the couch, but a few felt more comfortable with the option to lie down. A small notepad lay on the table beside Jack's chair and he took a pen out of his pocket to place on top of it.

Rising as Scott entered the room Jack offered his hand. "Hi, Scott. I'm Dr. Leary, or Jack, whichever you prefer." Another glance at the clock and he smiled. Right on time.

Scott noticed the glance at the clock and the smile and wondered, just for a moment. But he pushed the thought aside, summoning up a very slight, stiff smile as he shook Jack's hand. "Thanks for... fitting me in?" he said, and his jaw clenched a bit irritably at the rising tone to his voice. He felt generally irritable this morning, mostly at himself. It wasn't as if this appointment hadn't been made for a few days, and yet, he'd picked last night to go get drunk? Not a good start.

He kept his expression as carefully composed as he could as he looked around at the chairs, briefly at a loss. He finally picked based on keeping Jack on his right. He'd had enough of people on his blind side for a while, he thought.

Jack sat back down, noticing Scott's reaction. It had been too long since he'd had a new patient and he'd made a rookie mistake. "Thank you for coming to see me. I know it can be a little disconcerting, meeting with a stranger to talk about your life. Have you ever seen a therapist before?" His tone was casual, meant to put Scott at ease and help relax him.

"I'd... started seeing someone a couple of months back," Scott said a bit distractedly, thinking about Doctor Barnett. "I was... out of the country for a while, though, and then-" He stopped, reminding himself that Jack knew about the X-Men and had for two years. This was Nate's therapist, after all. "I was in San Diego," he said briefly. "During the earthquake, and the clean-up. It's been a while since my last session, and I hadn't been going very long in the first place."

Jack nodded encouragingly. "And what lead you to change therapists?" It was better to stick to less traumatic subjects at the beginning of a session. Especially with someone like Scott who appeared as though he didn't really want to be there. He could follow up on the events in San Diego later.

"She was... it wasn't about her," Scott said, his forehead creasing a little as he shook his head. He swallowed, and tried thinking about what he was going to say, not just letting it come out. Amazing how fast he'd forgotten that he needed to do that here. Maybe it was the hangover. "Something happened," he said after a long moment. "About... two weeks ago, now. And it's not... the sort of thing she works with people on, usually."

Jack steepled his fingers. "I can see this is difficult for you to talk about. What happened?"

Scott rubbed at his throat for a moment, gathering his thoughts. His voice, when he spoke, came out admirably level. "I have a brother, Alex. He's younger than I am. Not part of the team. A lot's... happened to him, over the years. He's been very badly hurt, and... two weeks ago-" Had it been too weeks? His heart was racing, all of a sudden. It didn't seem possible. "There were people who wanted information. That I had. From something that happened... almost four years ago, now. They threatened to kill him unless I came with them."

"That must have been very difficult for you," Jack said softly.

"Actually? No. Not at all. It was all very simple," Scott said almost doggedly. "I didn't have to even think about it. I wasn't going to let him get hurt again, not because of me." He stopped, stared fixedly at the opposite wall of the office for a moment, and then went on in an even more level voice.

"The problem was I didn't remember. I was under the influence of... a psychoactive, at the time. Four years ago, I mean. So they had to jog my memory. They tried drugs first," Scott said, "but I know how to beat sodium pentathol. It's easy, when you were raised by a telepath." The thousand-yard stare was back. "So they tried other things. They had me for around five days before the team found me. I wound up telling them some of what they wanted to know, but not everything."

"Well, with the conditions you were under, I'd say it's amazing you held off for as long as you did." Jack met and held Scott's gaze. "Situations like the one you just described are rarely simple, even if you felt that a certain course of action was the necessary one."

Scott's jaw twitched, a flash of shame crossing his face before he wrestled his expression back to the composed mask. "Situations like this... it's supposed to take weeks," he said, more stiffly, his jaw going tight again in stubborn rejection of Jack's first comment. "But my mutation runs on sunlight, and they kept me in the dark. I was... sick, hallucinating."

"I can't even imagine what that must have been like." Jack shifted slightly in his chair, picking his next words carefully. "It looked like you felt something right there and then pushed it away."

It took him a moment to remember that the man was trained to notice these things, and wasn't a telepath. "Well," Scott said very carefully, "I don't look back on telling them what they wanted with any sort of particular pride. Especially since I should have known it wasn't Marie... wasn't one of my teammates, asking me questions like that. I let them trick me," Scott said, and if he was looking a little white around the lips, his expression was still like stone and his voice was utterly level. "I didn't do it again."

It didn't go unnoticed that Scott still didn't talk about or allow himself to experience what he was feeling. Jack momentarily debated taking the safe route and skirting around the issue, but decided that it was too important to ignore. "What did it feel like? To be manipulated like that?"

Scott's jaw tightened even further. "I'm not sure. I wanted so much to believe it was her. I hadn't... things had been very bad, up to that point. She was... kind, at first." His voice was hollow for a moment. "I thought it would be over."

Jack made a mental note to find out more about Marie later. "But it wasn't," he said very simply.

"No." Scott's hands twitched restlessly, and he wrapped them around the arms of the chair. "It just got worse. They actually made me think I was going to die, once. Put me in this enclosed space, filled it up with water. It didn't work, I didn't tell them. So they just went back to what they'd been doing before." One hand went up almost instinctively, rubbing at the electrical burns on his shoulder. "I think," he said very steadily, "that it all makes sense, in retrospect. They'd break me down physically and then try to mess with my head. If it didn't work, they'd go back to trying to break me down physically, then try again. Textbook stuff. I wish knowing that had helped more."

"Why would knowing that help? Knowledge wouldn't have stopped the events from happening or them from affecting you."

Scott's expression changed subtly, some unreadable emotion showing through. "If you know how the magic trick works," he said, and his voice sounded tired suddenly, "aren't you supposed to be less amazed? If you know how the... interrogation technique is meant to work, you shouldn't fall for it, either."

"If I know that a knife piercing my skin should cause pain, does that make it hurt less if someone stabs me?" Jack countered.

"Mind over matter?" Scott countered right back, but sounded unconvinced by his own cliche. "I lost it. I don't see any point in dancing around the subject," he said abruptly. "I didn't expect them to come for me. I gave up."

"You lost it...?" Jack said in a questioning tone as he repeated Scott's words.

"I lost it. I traded myself for Alex because I had faith Charles and the team could find me, and when it took longer than I expected, I lost it." He couldn't quite keep his expression steady, and his breathing was just a little too rapid. "I thought... I actually thought they'd left me there."

"You felt abandoned by those you thought you could always rely on." Jack carefully observed Scott's face for his reaction.

A tremor crossed Scott's features. "I felt alone," he said, and bit his lip, hard. His voice wasn't nearly as steady as he went on. "Alone in the dark." He rubbed at the scars on the side of his face. "I don't like the dark."

Jack leaned ever so slightly towards Scott. "Why won't you let yourself feel whatever it is that's just there below the surface? I see that something is there, but you seem intent on keeping it from coming out."

"Because I don't know if I can handle it, if it does?" Scott's voice cracked again and he looked away, still rubbing at the scars, even more doggedly this time. "One of my teammates, yesterday... I lost it at him. I don't even know what I did. Next thing I knew he had my arms pinned behind my back telling me to start dealing with reality..."

"Control is important to you. I wonder how much it scared you that you lost control with this teammate of yours," Jack said, his voice coming out slow and steady.

"I can't lose control like that. I can't. If I do, I can't do my job. The team doesn't trust me..." Scott swallowed past the raw feeling in his throat and looked up at Jack, his jaw clenched. "I have to be able to handle this. That's why I'm here."

Jack leaned back in his chair. "Tell me more about that. About what you expect to happen here."

"I thought-" Scott stumbled over his words, taken aback by the question, and for a moment his expression was almost unguarded as he met Jack's eyes. "I need to figure out how to get past this. It's like I'm..." He trailed off, shifting in the chair. "When I think too hard about it," he said more raggedly, "I blank out. I sat alone in a room yesterday, after, and just stared, for hours... I don't want to do that." There was a trace of desperation in his words. "It scares me." It was the reason he'd gone to Harry's, in the end. At least getting drunk had been doing something.

"I'm going to be honest with you, Scott, because you strike me as a man who appreciates honesty. I think we can work to figure that out here, figure out ways of helping you deal with what you've been through and what you are going through now. But I need you to understand a few things if we're going to do that. First, you can't come in here and recite the facts as though you are at a debriefing. For what we do here to work..." Jack gestured around the room with one hand. "...you have to be willing to delve beneath the surface of what happened and get at what's going on inside you." Jack paused for a moment. "Second, this is a process that takes time. The results probably won't be immediate or even quick."

Scott was silent for a minute or two. "No quick fix," he said, almost inaudibly. "I figured that... " The rest, though. Scott closed his eyes, trying to find a way past the knotted tension that he'd been trying so hard to hold up as a defensive shield thus far.

"I am scared," he said, going back to what had slipped through. "So scared..." His expression twisted, and he rubbed shaky hands over his face, his breath catching in his chest. "Jean... my wife. She left, this week. She had to - she was there when they rescued me, and she's telepathic and she nearly killed the people who were questioning me. It's... she's had a really hard year, too," Scott struggled to explain without getting into that can of worms, "and she hadn't really been recovered fully..." His voice broke, and he looked away, his jaw trembling. "I'm sleeping alone again," he said, his voice shaking, "and I woke up this morning and I felt so alone... I don't know what to do."

"It is perfectly natural to feel scared. In fact, I'd be more worried if you weren't," Jack said softly. "But let me ask you something…you are sleeping alone, that's true. But are you really alone?"

Scott looked up at him. "Everyone keeps reminding me they're there," he said, his voice very soft and uncertain. "But... I feel like I'm not me anymore. It feels like... they're reaching out to Scott, and there's just... I don't know what's left here." He laughed, a harsh sound for all of its softness. "It sounds stupid. Melodramatic, at least."

"Not at all. What you've been through could be described as a life altering experience. Maybe you aren't the Scott you were before. But can't people reach out to the Scott you are now?"

"I'm just afraid they won't like what they see if they look too close." Scott's shoulders were slumped, his voice dull with fatigue and something else, something more complicated. "Some of them understood, or said they did, about me letting some of that information slip. I'm not sure they all will. I'm supposed to lead them, and I keep developing cracks in the foundation. It's not confidence-inspiring."

"So you assume that because you have flaws, you are not worthy of their care or devotion?" Jack shook his head. "I find that hard to believe."

"I've always wondered if I'm what they need me to be, really." He shrugged, and if the gesture was apathetic, the tension in his posture was anything but. "Maybe I shouldn't worry about that right this second, but I've slipped before. I know how hard it is to get your balance back."

Jack nodded as he processed what Scott had told him. "And what happens when you slip?"

"People get hurt. I..." Scott shook his head slightly, rubbing at his eye. "You do damage to yourself every time you slip," he said hoarsely. "To their faith in you. And you never really get it all back. I guess I'm afraid... they all know what happened to me, more or less. That they'll think I'm too broken to lead them anymore."

"Do you? Because I think what you're feeling has more to do with your self-evaluation rather than what others think about you." Jack looked Scott directly in the eye as he spoke.

Scott gazed back at him, trying not to flinch under that steady regard. "Maybe I'm afraid too," he managed to say. "I... gave up. I've never given up before. Not when I thought Jean was dead, not when I thought that nothing I could ever do was ever going to stop the people I loved or my students from getting hurt... I've fallen, but it's never been for long. I always get back up." His expression distant, distressed, he swallowed visibly, his eyes straying away from Jack's. "I always get back up."

Softening his gaze and his tone Jack said, "What changed here? Or did anything? Each time we fall it makes it harder to rise, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. And you know what I see? I see a man who is struggling to get back up."

"You see a man who wants someone to put him into a nice, restful coma, so that he can wake up somewhere down the line into a life that makes sense again," Scott said with a sudden, erratic flare of bitter anger.

Jack wanted to smile at the outburst of emotion, even though it was negative. It was encouraging that Scott had finally let something he had been holding bottled up inside out into the open. He kept his expression steady though, as he imagined Scott would misinterpret the smile. He was silent as he waited for Scott to continue.

He wasn't disappointed. "It's not fair." Scott was breathing faster, harsher, the anger still bubbling up inside him. "Any other time... every other time, I'd be killing myself trying to get back to status quo. Only even if it did exist anymore, none of them would believe it does. I can never fix this. I can never go back to the way it was. The way I was." His voice cracked. "I hate this, I hate this so much."

"Life is not fair," was the gentle reply. "A lesson I'm afraid you've learned too often." Jack sighed before he continued. "It is okay to hate this, Scott. You went through something that changed you and you aren't the same person you were. But that doesn't mean we can't get you to a place where you will be comfortable again. Happy even, though that may be harder for you to imagine right now."

"Impossible to imagine," Scott said, then gave a short, harsh bark of laughter. "Or maybe not. I'm here, aren't I? I don't know if I'm here because I really do believe deep down that this can get better, or because getting professional help is the logical thing to do after being tortured." He almost snarled the last word, not at Jack but at himself; he needed to learn to call a spade a spade. Self-applied euphemisms didn't hide anything.

Jack nodded, Scott's words proving to him that there would indeed be a second session. "Perhaps a little of both? Hope and logic are not a bad mix of things to feel."

The anger was burning itself out, almost as quickly as it had bubbled up in the first place. "All I know is that I can't just... go on. Not like this," Scott said, his voice tight and weary. "I can't, and I don't want to. I used to think I wasn't happy... with my life, I mean. Now I'm looking back on what I thought was being unhappy and I just want to laugh."

"Maybe one day your view of the present will change too. But the important thing is that you are going on. I think you do want to change otherwise you wouldn't be here. It will not always be like this. Some days it will be, some it may be worse, but we can try and make most of them better," Jack said.

"I think at this point, I'm willing to take the chance on the 'worse', if there's any chance at all of 'better'." Scott slouched in the chair for the first time since he'd sat down, his shoulders sagging.

Jack smiled supportively. "A chance is all I'm asking you to give it."

Scott found himself nodding. "All right," he said tiredly. This did feel... not like a fun and happy thing to do, but like something that might help. Somehow. Eventually. "This sounds... realistic, to me," he said. It wasn't the best word, but it was the only one he could think of to cover what he meant. "You're not making any promises, and I respect that. I don't want to hear anyone promising me anything right now."

"I can understand that. It is probably hard for you to believe the promises being offered to you at this point. And even more frustrating when people promise things they have no control over."

Scott nodded again, more tightly, then folded his hands together. They were a little unsteady again. "So... how do we do this? I just... show up on a regular basis, and we talk?" He managed a tiny, brittle smile. "I thought of asking Nate, what you and he do, but I didn't figure that would be an appropriate question."

"We talk. I listen. Every now and again we hopefully figure out some of the things that are bothering you. I recommend we meet once a week, but we can always do more or less depending on your schedule. I know how rapidly it can change." Jack thought for a moment before continuing. "If you want to ask Nate about what he does here, I don't think that would be a problem. However, just like I won't talk about you with him, I won't talk about him with you." Pulling out a PDA, Jack scanned it quickly and looked back up at Scott. "Same time next week?"

Scott nodded. "That'll work," he said, his voice subdued again. "I think my schedule's... going to be more stable than usual, for a while at least." He couldn't lead the team like this. That wasn't even a question. He nodded again, more jerkily. "Same time next week," he echoed.

(OOC: Many thanks to Avital for socking Jack!)