Alone with a nightmare
“Mister Aomine, would you like to say anything before I ask your friend to leave us, so I can ask you some questions?” The doctor asked.
He just shook his head, too tired for anything else. He just wanted this to end. That already was enough soul-searching for one day. As soon as Satsuki had left, he asked: “How long until I can go?”
Her smile faltered and she sighed before saying: “And here I thought you had some motivation yourself. You´re paying me, you know? If you want to go, go.”
“Sorry.” He ducked his head. “It´s just … hard stuff to remember.”
“I gathered.” The doctor nodded. “She knows next to nothing, doesn´t she?”
“Yeah.” Aomine relaxed into the seat with a deep sigh.
“Would you lose her as a friend if she knew?”
“Definitely.” He let his head roll back, looking at the ceiling. “She might kill me herself.”
“What is worse: Your guilt regarding the victim or your fear of having her find out?” The doctor´s voice had got a lot harder than when she talked to Satsuki. Not so emotional, not emphatic. More like she was asking for facts.
“Guilt.” That was an easy answer. He knew enough about himself to tell that. “I love him, still do. The more I get close to someone, the more I seem to hurt them.”
“That sounds a lot like regret. Do you regret what you did?” Huh? What kind of strange question was that? Of course he did. She seemed to give some other meaning to his furrowed brows though. “There is a difference, you know? Guilt and regret. Guilt is just feeling that you did something wrong. Regret is knowing that you did damage to someone else. It is a emphatic response while guilt is not necessarily emphatic.”
Urgh, okay. Did he have an emphatic response? That meant feeling for someone else, accepting their pain was caused by him, right? He said: “I don´t know. I know with my head that I hurt this other person. I did irreparable damage. I will never be forgiven because what I did, it cannot be forgiven. I know this person must have hurt deeply but … I try not to think about it because I fear I would kill myself and he would blame himself for that.”
“I see. We will not talk about this incident today. Talking about your feelings regarding it is still further down the road. But if you do get suicidal on the way, it is extremely important you are taken to the next psychiatric hospital for stabilization. Can I count on you to speak with your friend or even call an ambulance yourself before doing something stupid?” She asked quite matter-of-factly.
“Yeah. I would hurt those two too much if I were to kill myself.”
“Good. Before I start asking you some general questions, I have one left regarding the incident though.” She waited for his nod before she continued. “Your friend said you felt like this would have been a fitting place for you. So if a judge were to look at what happened, what criminal charges would he find you guilty of? Just so I have an impression what we´ll be dealing with.”
“Rape. Murder, I guess. Attempted murder. Ritualized rape if that is a thing, we had organized gang rapes. A lot of violence. Is there another name for rapes where you force someone into pregnancy?” He run his hands through his hair. “I never looked this shit up but I know I´d be locked away for a long time. Oh, and he was a minor. The murder was on a baby, that most likely makes it worse as well.”
“I am happy to hear you seem to have a good grasp on what you did and are not trying to deny anything. Murdering a baby is hardcore, even with the prisoners of this place. The rest is stuff I deal with everyday.” She did not seem upset though. “Except for the people involved, does anyone know about what happened?”
“His husband.” Aomine fidgeted. “Somehow the … the victim convinced him not to kill me for what happened. If I had been him, I´d have killed me. And he could, he´s an extremely capable Alpha. But I am safe as long as I never hurt the victim again.”
“You know you can say his name, right? I am not allowed to tell anyone anyway.”
“Tetsu.” Well, there he went and did it. If she wanted to sell this to the press, he was fucked. Kuroko would hate him. Kagami would kill him. But this women did not exactly seem interested in idle gossip.
“Okay, let´s call him Tetsu from now on. This is an introductory session to see if you´d like to work with me and if I´d like to work with you. In my opinion, you are right, you fit right in with my usual patients. You are a bit better, you know you did something wrong, you seem to have a bit of empathy and you have at least something to live for. That´s enough for me for now. Can you imagine talking with me again?”
“Guess so.” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Good. Now, there is a certain order for what we are about to do. First I´ll check off a lot of things, most of them questions about sexuality, but also about your past and future. Those about sexuality can be embarrassing, those about the past are normally anathema and those about the future often require a lot of thinking, so might be you can´t answer a lot of them right now. A lot of those questions will make you uneasy at least, possibly even suicidal at the worst. If you get suicidal, you need to get to a hospital. If you feel like hurting someone, you need to get away from people. So you need to talk to your friend out there who seems to live with you right now and invent some kind of sign or gestures which tells her to leave immediately. Destroying furniture can happen, hurting people cannot. If you do, talking about it afterwards takes highest priority and if this therapy makes you a danger to people, we will stop. You can drink, of course, I can´t stop that. But if you come into therapy drunk, I´ll send you away again. All of those rules clear?”
He nodded. A clear set of rules helped. It made things easier. He liked breaking them, but he also liked knowing what they were. Rules made things easier. He sometimes wished people came along with a set of rules or an instruction manual.
“Same goes for drugs of course. Also, if you ever hurt me, this is over. You can get mad, you can scream and curse at me but you cannot physically attack me. Any kind of hold is not allowed as well. If I feel that it is better for me to leave the room, you will let me go.”
So she came with a set of rules. Good. He nodded.
“Last thing: You were forced into this, I know that. But I will not treat anyone that is forced into therapy. Every prisoner, every forensic patient has the choice to be treated or not. You are the same to me. You are here because you want to get better, no matter the circumstances that brought you here. Clear?”
Yeah. He had chosen this. He knew. Wasn´t like he regretted it every minute since his outburst.
“Good. I´ll give you an appointment next week, then we will start with the questions. Most likely they won´t be about the incident or your past, don´t worry. That will take time. Do you have any questions?”
“Why haven´t you asked me about my goals yet?” He drew up an eyebrow. “I thought every therapy started with that.”
“Do you already know what you want?” She tilted her head. A feminine gesture but out of place with her.
“No clue.” He scoffed. “I don´t want to feel like a monster. I don´t want to feel like I´m always on the edge of destroying people´s life. I don´t want to be a constant disappointment.” He shook his head. “Shit, I´m not good with this soul searching stuff.”
“Actually, that was pretty good for a first session. Normally my patients tell me that they can do no wrong, it´s just that nobody understands them, nobody really bothers to treat them right, they are victims themselves and only react to what others do to them.”
“Tetsu never did anything.” Aomine closed his eyes. “He wanted to save me, to love me, to give me something to live for. I took his happiness, his innocence, I fucking killed his baby. Why the fuck did I do that?” He buried his face in his hands. “For five years I´ve been asking myself the same fucking thing every night. Why? Why wasn´t I stronger? Why has no one killed me yet? Because I fucking deserve that.”
“I am not here to blame you.” She leaned forward as well. “Maybe we´ll find an answer in therapy. Maybe not. Maybe you´re just asking yourself the wrong question. We will see.”
“Wrong question?” He looked up.
“If this Tetsu seems to have forgiven you and his mate has decided not to kill you, why do you hang onto that guilt? What do you need it for?”
“To never do something like that again” He answered immediately.
“Or to never love and be hurt again.” She leaned back. “We will see. I look forward to seeing you next week.”
Huh. That was his cue to go. Hadn´t he wanted to go? Right now he did not. He wanted to know. He wanted to end this. He wanted to be done with all that pain, the questions, all of it. He wanted it out and dealt with.
She held out her hand, so he stood and shook it. It was over. He could go. She held the door open for him. Nice of her. He felt weak, standing next to her, a tall women with short-cropped blond hair and a straight spine. She wasn´t beautiful but she was haunting. Rough edges on a lovely body. That strange combination of strong and fragile was a scary thing.
“Daiki?” Satsuki looked at him with big, round, pink eyes. She was all curves, puffy cheeks, no edges at all. She was lovely and nice. She was home.
He pulled her into a hug.
First thing he did was throw out his whole pornographic collection. All videos, all his digital data and links, even his magazines. He couldn´t exactly say why, just that those bothered him. They weren´t about love, they were simply about dominating people with or without their consent. He was a bit shocked how much stuff that was. His apartment looked nearly empty without it.
He needed a hobby, something to relax that had nothing to do with abusing people. Something not porn, not whoring around, best something without alcohol. Reading wasn´t his thing, he could not play an instrument, his art was shit and more sports were just not possible. He tried video games but shooting people as a way to unwind did seem as wrong as watching people fuck each other´s brains out. It did not give off the right feeling.
So he got over himself and did the only thing sensible: He asked Satsuki. Of course she was ecstatic. He regretted asking the second she smiled. And she did exactly what he had feared most. She set him up with the most horrible thing he could think of. She enlisted him with the Hello Kitty Knitting Club.
He really didn´t know why he always got himself into shitty situations. Why did he never think things through? When you sleep with an Omega without condoms, they get pregnant. When you rape someone over and over again, they run. When you ask your sugary-pink-best friend about her idea of fun, she drags you to a pink place full of sugary nice women. So he sat between eight women ranging from thirteen to seventy-five and had knitting tools shoved into his hands. A fifty-something-year old explained basic knitting to him while trying to rub up to him.
Urgh.
Yeah, Satsuki had fun. At his expense. Why did he listen to her? He was so close to taking someone´s eye out with those damn knitting needles, preferably the women next to him. Thankfully even Satsuki seemed to notice him reaching his limits, so she came over, chatted nicely with the women until she changed seats and sat next to him herself to do her knitting. He silently did some rows until they were allowed to go. All women gushed over him, how nice he was, what a wonderful young man, so handsome, if he would come again, he was such a pleasure to look at.
He shuddered on the way home and said: “I´ll never go there again.”
“Okay.” Satsuki just smiled. “We can go to a spa next and try some cucumber masks.”
Oh god, no. No other woman crap. He needed a manly hobby. Something that kept him away from her antics, something like … riding a bike. Yeah, he could get a license. Biking sounded good, he liked leather. He was just a tad too young. So he could do that next year. This year … what could he do? What went well with bikes? Rock´n´roll? Oh, good idea! “I´ll take guitar lessons and learn to play one.”
“Oh, guitar is nice.” She smiled up at him. “That was surprisingly fast, I thought I´d get to painting your nails pink before you´d make a decision.”
“I can live without that.” He rolled his eyes.
“You could have spared yourself the knitting if you were better at listening to your heart.” She smirked up at him. “Just know, if you do sink into depression again and forget about your hobby, I´ll drag you back there. Those women are great therapy.”
“They are a menace.”
“That as well.” She grinned. “I´ll look forward to hearing you play the guitar.”
“You are a menace as well.” He nudged her with an elbow.
“That´s my job.” She got onto her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “It´s what managers are for.”
Or wives. Damn. Maybe he should marry her. She was sure to make his life a living hell. He shuddered. He was so whipped.
