xp_logs | Angelo and Jack Leary, Tuesday afternoon

Angelo has a session with Jack, and comes to one or two important realizations (of things he kind of knew already).

Angelo was long past the days when he'd needed to be dragged to his therapy sessions, or even needed a friend to go with him. He was older and wiser these days... and anyway, he just wanted this to be over, and the only way that was even starting to happen was if he kept seeing Jack regularly.
So, he got to the man's office promptly, as usual.
Jack greeted Angelo and waited for the gray skinned young man to get situated before speaking. "It's good to see you Angelo. How has the last week been?"
"Pretty much the same", he answered with a faint crooked smile. "Not worse, anyway..."
"Not worse is an improvement," Jack said with an answering smile. "But you know I'm going to need you to tell me a bit more."
"Yeah, I know." It was just a matter of finding the words. "Been out of the suite a bit more, an' not just for this or to walk the dog. Forge came back."
"And how has that been?" Jack asked.
"It's good t'have someone else in the suite again", he answered with consideration. "I mean, Amanda was stayin' over a lot while he was away, she knows I sleep better with someone around, but... she needs her sleep too, an' she can't have been sleepin' so good in my room."
Jack nodded. "How are things between you two?"
"Me an' Amanda?" At Jack's nod of confirmation, he went on. "It's... complicated. I mean, we're together, mostly, but it's... difficult, 'cause I'm not... well. We're workin' on it."
"You're not...?" Jack said, drifting off to let Angelo fill in the blank.
"...ready, I guess", he admitted reluctantly. "I'll get there. We'll get there. But my mood's still all screwed up... I know the meds take time to work right, but I just want... to be back how I was."

"It's important that you know that," Jack said. "That there isn't just a switch to flip to go back to how things were."

Angelo nodded, looking down at his hands. "There's been times I've thought about askin' one of the telepaths t'just... take those memories. But even if they'd do it..."

"What?" Jack asked, not letting Angelo make him say the words. It was important for Angelo to say things, talk more and not have others fill in his statements for him.

"I don't know if it'd help. Just to not remember it. Maybe it would, but... I don't know." He knew what having memories taken away had done to Nathan, but he wasn't sure if that had just been because of the way it had been done.

"And how would you feel if by taking out the bad, they took out some of those good pieces too?" Jack asked gently.

"There's nothin' good from that day", Angelo said firmly. "Except from before the explosion. An' that was... just good 'cause it was normal, you know? But then there was the week after it..." That was the real problem, he knew. Maybe someone could take away the memory of the explosion and its immediate aftermath, but it hadn't stopped there.

Jack wasn't sure he agreed with Angelo, not after the look on the boy's face as he'd told of Domino saving him. But now wasn't the time to push and it was highly possible that Angelo wasn't ready to hear that yet. "And what would happen if you had a telepath take away everything painful?" Jack asked, focusing instead on following Angelo's line of reasoning.

"There'd be a lot of holes", was the answer, with a sudden wry smile as his hand dipped towards his pocket in search of a cigarette before he realized what he was doing and made himself stop. No smoking in the office. "I never actually asked any of them to do it."

"Sometimes it can be helpful to run through a hypothetical - what it would change for your life, what it wouldn't. Just to see what it would be like if you did make that choice," Jack said.

"I don't know, though", he said quietly. "Because like I said, there's the whole week after, an' if they took that too... I know what it did to Nathan that his uncle screwed with his memories. An' I don't know if it'd be any better if it got done carefully."

"Then let's look at something really simple and small. If you lost the last week, where would you stand with Amanda?" Jack asked, raising an eyebrow.

That had been possibly the best choice of question to turn him even further against the idea, when he started to think about it. "...in a lot more of a complicated place than it already is", he conceded. "'Cause she'd remember, I guess. An' then that'd hurt her..."

"And what about you? Would you rather remember or forget that part?"

"That part, I'd remember. It was pretty much the best part of that whole week in Tel Aviv."

"And what if then you couldn't pick to remember one part and forget another? If you either had to remember all of it or none of it?" Jack asked, his voice low and gentle.

"Then I guess it'd have to be all of it." His own voice was tired, but accepting the point. "Doesn't mean I have to like it."

"No, you don't," Jack agreed. "But by realizing that, you can begin to move forward."

That got a faint still-tired smile. "I know it's gonna get better. I just... I was doin' okay, you know? I really was."

"Unfortunately, that's how life tends to be - ups and downs, never very constant." Jack's hands pantomimed a rollercoaster as he spoke.

"Sure seems to be that way for mine", he agreed wryly.

"It's part of your path," Jack said simply. "But I don't think you'd give up the other parts to just have a constant state of 'okay'."

"...no", Angelo said slowly. "No, you know what? I really wouldn't."