Lancelot & Therapy, the only OTP that matters
They had been sitting in silence for what seemed like forever.
The elegant woman sitting in front of him hadn’t moved an inch and her gaze was searing a hole straight for him.
The tension made him want to crawl into his shirt, like a turtle shell. As that was not a possibility, he fiddled with his new prosthetic - he was slowly learning how to get around with it, but still had a cane because he was unstable.
He didn’t understand why he was here: he didn’t need to talk to anyone - there was nothing to talk about. These psychologist’s appointments were wholly unnecessary, in his opinion.
Plus, the woman made him feel uneasy.
She moved for the first time that day to look at her watch. She sighed.
“So. I was going to wait until you were ready to speak by yourself or until you self combusted, but this is counter productive and, frankly, I’m getting bored.”
She put her notepad to the side. “And since you don’t look like you’re going to make a sound for the next 40 minutes, I’m gonna play a game. It’s called ‘Kaze’s first impressions’.”
She leaned forward and deposited her elbows on her knees.
Her eyes were so intense. Lancelot wondered if he could render that intensity on paper. His thoughts were interrupted as the psychologist began laying facts at his feet as though they were gospel.
“I look at you and I can see it in your face - the pain. You’re trying to hide it, but it’s fairly plain. Not because you don’t know how to hide it well, but because you’ve been doing it for so long, it’s become normal.”
Lancelot raised his head. He did not like this game.
“I see the hurt and the dark circles beneath your eyes. They tell a story of long sleepless nights - an effort to keep the nightmares at bay. They come for you anyway. In the daytime, when you least expect them. Now, you’re constantly on edge because you never know when one is going to take your waking mind hostage.”
She took a pause, letting her words sink in. She was beginning to grate on his nerves, telling him things about himself that were, frankly, none of her business.
“And beyond your face, there’s a boy in your eyes that knows he has been wronged. There is a voice in your head that is telling you that you don’t need this. That everything is business as usual. But from what I can tell, Lancelot, your life has been anything but normal -”
“It did not kill me,” he blurted out, slightly in anger. She didn’t know him or anything about his life.
She smiled a little, victorious. “Ah. It speaks.”
Lancelot’s face felt it was on fire.
“There is nothing to speak of,” he continued in a low tone, slightly ashamed at his outburst. “It simply is.”
Kaze sat back in her chair. “What is the ‘it’ you refer to?”
Lancelot did his best not to roll his eyes at her, but he was so tired, the motion was executed before he could stop it. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Ask me questions like you haven’t a whole file about me and what happened.”
She nodded. “Fair enough,” she smiled again. It was sharp, but with no malice, Lancelot observed. “I’ll be blunt, then. It is what I am best at.”
She took her notepad again and scratched a few things down.
“You’re an abuse survivor,” she let the sentence sink in, “You are right, it did not kill you. But, it sure as hell did not leave you whole.”
She gestured to his leg for emphasis. “Not only physically, but emotionally and psychologically.”
Lancelot leveled his best blank look at her. The same he always gave to anyone trying to extirpate information from him.
Kaze sighed. They were getting nowhere. “Look, Lancelot, I’m here to help. But if you don’t want to talk about that. We don’t have to.”
This broke his façade a little, a frown etching his fine features. “We… we don’t?”
“Nah, we can talk about whatever you want. Hell, we can talk about nothing at all if you want. I even have a cupboard full of games, because frankly staring at each other is starting to be boring.”
The tension in his stance seemed to ease ever so slightly. “I don’t know any games.”
“That’s fine. I can show you.”
She opened the cabinet in question and let Lancelot look over to pick one.
He glanced over at her every once in a while when he thought she wasn’t looking, like he was measuring her up.
This was not going to be easy. But Kaze was nothing if not a woman who enjoyed a challenge.