Plight of a Lost Soul

[Trillian]

BEN SAT IN the waiting room looking at the cover of a weekly magazine that had been printed four months ago.  The glossy picture was of a smiling woman in her early thirties who was supposed to be the newest city celebrity around, and how interesting her views were on a variety of subjects.  Looking at her Ben supposed she was vaguely familiar, but he was fairly sure she was just a newsreader.  Why were people celebrities if all they did was read stuff?  Was it because they were televised while doing it?  He supposed so, but right now at this point in time, in this waiting room, it struck him as shallow.

Kerr had dropped him off and left him to find the office while he parked the car.  There\'d been a few sessions with other doctors - normal doctors - that they\'d both sat in the sessions for, but Ben had been unable to properly share his feelings without sounding like a sociopathic freak.  The whole vampire thing couldn\'t be revealed so there was a lot he couldn\'t really talk about and they\'d picked up on his inability to share properly until either they or he got mad and Kerr had chosen not to pursue his sessions with those people.  He suspected that Kerr thought he was holding back because his sire was there, not because he couldn\'t say about the whole vampire thing.  It was quite complicated.

Kerr had made the appointment for him with someone who he could reveal all things to.  His sire had also decided that it would be too much of an influence for him to sit with Ben on the session, and with much to-ing and fro-ing with his decision on the matter, he\'d finally dropped Ben off, told him hastily that this was something he should speak about freely, told him he\'d meet him in the waiting room and to go register now.  Ben had watched him turn and disappear into the underground carpark before making his way inside and then to the lift.  He\'d reported in at the desk with who he assumed was the doctor\'s assistant and then sat and waited.  Picking up the magazine after staring so long at it\'s dog-eared cover seemed wrong, so he simply sat and was joined by a quiet Kerr ten minutes later.

It seemed there was a big yawning silence between them, one that Ben didn\'t think was uncomfortable but couldn\'t rightly call comfortable either.  It was much easier to stare at the magazine than it was to stare at Kerr and so that was what he did.  At least nobody else was in the waiting room with them.

[Uzaki]

How do you convince a demon that the dark is nothing to be afraid of? That had been the question Jonah been asking himself for the past week, and with trying found that with the particular demon seeing him verbal convincing hadn’t helped at all. Frustration over his failure had led up to drastic measures and which in turn had resulted in a collection of bruises and shallow wounds and aching muscles.

Trying to pin a demon down in a dark room. Thinking about it now the doctor found the whold idea stupid and risky seeing as the other very well might’ve killed him. Luckily he’d lasted through the struggle and in the end there had been improvement. Still, the other hadn’t been impressed with his tactis, but had after a few \'I\'m sorry, but...\' promised to come back in a few days.

After that Jonah had spent the last half hour to lick his wounds and calm his nerves with some tea and alone-time on a comfortable couch, the aftermath of the adrenaline rush leaving him a low and a little tired.

Still, the night was far from over.

Heading towards the reception area he paused in the hallway to check himself out in the mirror, double-checking there was no wounds in his face. Stunning as always doctor, he thought and winked at his reflection. Chuckling at himself and his antics he continued down the hall and came to a halt beside the reception, glancing towards the seating area.

Ahh…

“Hello and welcome.”

[Trillian]

At the sound of footsteps coming down the corridor, Ben\'s gaze drifted up and away from the glossy magazine cover and towards the empty doorway that was soon to be filled with the person Kerr had suggested he see.  With his sire in his peripheral vision in a nearby seat, Ben found himself looking at the doctor who was now greeting him warmly.

"Hi," he said in response, feeling strangely absurd and detached from the situation.  It was like living someone else\'s life.  Who would\'ve thought that as a vampire he would be suffering some kind of mental imperfection.  Was it his coping mechanism at being a different species or was Kerr closer to the truth in blaming Declan?  He didn\'t know but he\'d thought himself stronger and was disappointed in his flaws.

He didn\'t know whether he should stand and follow the doctor or not, so half shifted in his chair so that he was perched in some kind of seated limbo - ready to stand but not quite doing so.

[Uzaki]

Jonahs’ eyes shifted between the two men, a brief moment of silence where he wondered if both were to see him or... He mentally rolled his eyes at the idiocy of actually wondering over such a question instead of voicing it. Sometimes…

“Why don’t we move into the examination room? If that’s alright. ” he offered, shifting so that it was possible to pass by him “The second door on the left.”

[Trillian]

Ben stood up, wiping his hands on his jeans as he did so, a nervous habit to rid himself of sweaty palms (though he had no such thing as a vampire) and looked at Kerr to see if his sire would rise also.  Feeling self-conscious in front of the doctor now watching them, he broke his gaze away before he had his answer and moved past the other man in order to follow his directions and take the second door on his left, where he entered and then stood in the middle of the room, hovering like a misplaced pup.

[Uzaki]

Having said hello and goodbye to the other vampire, finally asking if he were to join after the first of them had navigated past and into the examination room, Jonah turned and headed into the previously mentioned room. It looked very much like the only other examination room, simple and pale with an examination table, a desk, two chairs and some other good to have equipment stored on various shelves.
 
When inside he let the door close behind him and looked over to where the other stood, looking out of place. A moment of hesitation before the doctor closed much of the distance between them and reached out a hand in greeting.
 
"I\'m Jonaleth Mitchell, please call me Jonah." he said, offering a smile he figured was appropriately charming and reassuring. "What can I do for you today?" Wondering for what reason the other was here, was this another case of trouble with sleep? He was curious.

[Trillian]

It was natural for Ben to extend his own hand and clasp the one offered him.  The move was the right one, to bring a sense of familiarity and human-ness to the situation so that Ben could ground himself and at least settle into the room.  It wouldn\'t be right to consider the young vampire comfortable, but at least he could relax somewhat.

A pinched smile found his lips before he let it fall off his face, his gaze drifting around the room in assessment before his silvery blue gaze found Jonah once more.  It was easy to see Ben wasn\'t human just by those unnatural eyes, though many humans dismissed them as being fancy contact lenses.

"I\'m Ben," he replied before instantly chastising himself.  Of course Jonah had his full name already - Ben Samson - because the appointment had been made for him in his name.  "I..."  he looked at one of the chairs and wondered if he was going to be asked to take a seat, but the question of what Ben had come to see Jonah for hung between them with an expectant silence.  He ignored the seat and found the other man\'s face again, blurting out his problem in one simple sentence.  "I\'m not myself."

[Uzaki]

”Oh?”

The voicing of surprise at the unexpected admission. Sure the doctor should expect happenings and situations out of the ordinary after his time working at this questionable installation of a clinic, but perhaps that also was the reason he kept being surprise as cases seldom was the same or what to be expected. This was no different. The surprise he felt however wasn’t mindblowing, experience had dulled that part.

Realizing it had been several seconds from him speaking he cleared his throat, chasing whatever awkwardness might have seeded away with a smile of his own. Turning and motioning to the empty chair in front of the desk.

“Do sit down Ben.” He suggested, moving around to take a seat behind the desk. “We’ll talk then, or I’ll listen… Whatever feels best for you.”

[Trillian]

Ben watched the dull surprise register on the doctor\'s face and had a panicky moment of intense apprehension before he settled - around the same time the doctor did, doing so in his chair.  Not knowing how a stranger could help him work out what was different about him when he didn\'t know what was supposed to be the same, Ben bravely sat regardless, because of Kerr.  He wasn\'t going to dismiss the whole therapy thing, he wanted to make their relationship work and he had to at least try and find the answers to the question Kerr asked him - not out loud, but in the expression on his face every time he looked Ben\'s way.  The expression was

I don\'t know you

nothing Ben could recognise, but he didn\'t like it and wanted it to go away.

"I don\'t really know how to start," he said, wanting Jonah to give him something simple to talk about at first.  It was a complex thing, what was wrong with Ben, and he didn\'t have the usual beginning, middle or end.  He\'d noticed a brief change only after there\'d been a major one.

[Uzaki]

“It’s alright.” he started, leaning back in the chair. “Why don’t you start with telling me a little about yourself?” It was a start as good as any, and it was always good to know your patient when the matter was something that wasn’t physical. Mental. Mentality.

“So, you are a vampire, like Kerr? Are you relatives? You don’t look much like each other, except for the paleness and such...”

Jonah mentally rolled his eyes at his inability to quit voicing his thoughts before having let them register with himself first. Very professional. A ‘sorry’ rested on the tip of his tongue but never made it past his lips, which instead morphed into an apologetic smile, letting the other speak.

[Trillian]

Telling Jonah about himself left him silent and musing.  What could he say about himself apart from the fact that he merely existed?  What kind of standout information did he have?  There was nothing that he had to say about himself that he could readily share, apart from the holiday he\'d had with Kerr visiting Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

When more questions came he found himself both relieved and put out by the fact Jonah hadn\'t waited for him to come up with something himself.  After another moment\'s thought, he answered (lest Jonah add some more questions to the list).

"He\'s my sire, so we are related, in a fashion."  He tilted his head, thinking about the looking-alike thing.  "It... it doesn\'t really work the regular way."

Otherwise things would be rather incestuous.

[Uzaki]

“I suppose not.”

Jonah nodded, a sire and a fledgling, and made no further attempts to pry into whatever kind of relationship they might have. Vampires were vampires and those he’d spoken to seemed to be very close knitted to those of their own kind which they socialized with, be it family of blood or not.

Fair enough.

“I know something of vampires, Ben, worry not.” He let the other know, had there been any doubt that he didn’t, and smiled once more. The smiles seemed to come easy enough. “So, when you said you’re not yourself… Can you try to explain to me, and don’t worry about how it will sound. Use examples if it\'ll help, memories maybe…”

Silencing he wet his lips, continuing to watch the other, and let his words sink in. Feelings, emotions, such things were hard to describe and put into words and he knew first hand how hard it could be to communicate an experience to someone. Most of all a stranger knowing almost nothing about you.

[Trillian]

He was finally asked about what he\'d meant when he\'d uttered his initial explanation.  He figured that would come, for how could this man know the differences unless he knew the background?

"I\'m not a bad person," he began, sure in himself that at least he\'d never used to be.  "But I did bad things and... "

He had to pause while he thought about how to phrase the feeling of it.

"... it was like..."

what was it like?

"...when I was doing it, I felt like..."

what was it like?

He shook his head.  "After I did it, I hated myself.  Even while I was doing... bad things... I kind of woke up to myself and stopped it, and sometimes I would leave but sometimes I would... be not myself again."

He looked at Jonah now with a frankness that was mostly a plea.

"I\'ve not been a vampire for very long.  Just over a year, really.  I\'ve never wanted to hurt anyone and I\'ve learned how I can survive not hurting anyone - thanks to Kerr - but I went out of my way to make someone suffer and be scared of me, and I did it again and again even though I hated it.  It doesn\'t make sense."

He had to tell Jonah Kerr\'s idea, in order to debunk his sire\'s theory.

"Kerr thinks it\'s because of--"

Oh God I can\'t say his name I can\'t I can\'t

"--another vampire I used to be with."

[Uzaki]

Jonah listened carefully, absentmindedly scratching his chin. Nails dragging over the light stubble grown since yesterday morning, the sound echoing loudly in his right ear as he mulled over what was just said.

Doing bad things. When he was younger he’d also done some bad things, stealing, bullying, but he wondered if it could compare to whatever the other labeled as ‘bad things’. Maybe it didn’t matter though, he mused, as what was ‘bad things’ really depended on who you asked.

“Sometimes we do things we can’t explain, for many different reasons.” This was such a large thing to try and grab and hold. “There may be reasons like love, jealousy, hate, vengeance, insanity. Some people do what they do simply because they can, or maybe to push their limits, because it tickles their senses or sedates their minds.”

Really, why do people ever do the things they do?

“Of course other people influence you, some people more than others, some toward good and others toward evil, but in the end you are the one responsible for your own actions…” …and the one having to live with them. He paused, lowering the hand from his face and leant forward. The leather of his chair gave an awkward squeak.

“I don’t believe you’re a bad person either Ben. You’re young, still growing into the person you will become… How are things now?” he questioned, realizing he’d drawled for far too long. “How are you dealing with this?”

Are you dealing with this?

[Trillian]

When at first Jonah began to speak, Ben listened attentively, but as the other continued down the road of being responsible for his actions, Ben\'s gaze drifted to a medical poster on the wall and he wondered if he\'d come to the right place after all.

How are things now, Ben? His mind repeated Jonah\'s question to him tauntingly.  Well, now I look at my sire and know that he doesn\'t trust me.  He\'s paranoid I\'ll turn into the demented creature that he used to live with for many centuries and only recently escaped.  You see, Kerr and I were both prisoners for a very long time - he was a man blind to the bars on his cage and I was a man caging myself in my obsession so that the life I led wasn\'t really much of a life at all until it was over and I became something else.

He stared at Jonah for a long stretch of time, hearing the fingertips raking across the stubble of the other man\'s chin clearly, and also the muted ticking of the clock in a room in the offices next door (if they were offices, he wasn\'t sure).  He couldn\'t hear Kerr in the waiting room, or the rifling of magazines, and he didn\'t know if his sire would be able to hear them speaking.  At the very least Kerr would feel residue of Ben\'s angst.

"Right now I\'m fighting the urge to slice into you with that letter opener."

His gaze travelled down to the tool in question, sitting not-so-harmlessly on a bundle of envelopes that it had opened to reveal the letters inside not so long ago.  It wasn\'t that strong an urge, really, but Ben was getting desperate enough to share the reality of his growing concern.