Chapter 3
“Hey,” said Robbie. “Whenever you want me out of your hair, just let me know. I can be out of here in no time.”
“You want to leave?” Vance asked. “Is it my cooking?”
“It’s not that,” said Robbie. “You’ve been nice. Really nice.” Nicer than Robbie deserved. “But I don’t want to burden you.”
“No problem. We’re friends. You’ve always stood by me at my worst moments.”
“Yeah, but you…it’s different.” Vance was a good guy who’d had some bad luck. Even with his father…he used to beat Vance, Robbie knew. And he’d attacked Vance. Vance had killed him in self-defense. Robbie wasn’t exactly going to cry over the guy’s grave.
That hardly compared to six hundred and fourteen innocent people.
“Robbie, remember when I went to prison? You came to break me out?"
Robbie nodded. "You wouldn't let us."
"I believed in the system. I thought it would be better to face some punishment, because I had, however accidentally, killed my father. It wasn’t an entirely bad experience, and after I was released, I felt less haunted by guilt.I thought they would do something like that with you. Something proportionate, which might actually help you deal with what happened." Vance shook his head. "Not..whatever the hell they did to you!”
“I told you, I did it to myself.”
“They shouldn’t have let you do this to yourself.”
—
“So, I noticed the kitchen looks different,” said Robbie.
“How?”
“Knife block’s gone.”
“Yeah.” Vance rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, I…what you told me about the Penance suit, and what I saw…I don’t really know what to do or say. I just don’t want you getting hurt anymore.”
“Right. No trusting me with sharp objects.” It was meant to be a joke, but it just came out like Robbie was complaining. Like he was mad at his best friend for trying to protect him.
He used to know how to be funny.
Vance looked at Robbie. “I didn’t mean to be insulting. I just…”
“Forget it,” said Robbie. “Let’s watch TV.”
—
He was just going to look for the bathroom, he told himself, as he got up in the middle of the night. Maybe look around the kitchen, and see if he wanted a snack.
Maybe look around one or two other place.
The bathroom had disposable safety razors, and no spare blades. It had a water glass that could probably be broken.
Not that Robbie would do that. If he started smashing Vance’s things so he’d have something to cut with, that would mean he needed it, and Doc Samson was right about it being an addiction to endorphins.
And all of his efforts to do penance would have been just self-indulgence.
There were some things in the kitchen that a determined person could use to hurt themselves. Robbie made a mental note. The knives were all missing.
It turned out they were on the shelf on the top of the hall closet.
No sign of the Penance armor, but at least he’d found knives.
He took one knife, a long, slim, sharp-looking one, and held it.
Then he put it back.
There, he was in control. He just wanted to know he could find a knife.. He didn’t need to use it.
Besides, Vance would feel weird if he knew that Robbie had cut himself in Vance’s place, with Vance’s knives, while Vance was sleeping.
And it’s not like Robbie deserved to feel better.
Robbie put everything back exactly the way he found it, and went back to the couch.
—
He stayed on the couch for most of the next three days.
In the morning, he'd get up and shower, and put on some of his new clothes. He'd get breakfast, and then go back to the couch. He'd borrow Vance's laptop to look up information on work he could do.
It turned out no one had designed a job for someone who wanted to do something helpful, but probably shouldn't interact with the public, definitely wouldn't pass a background check, and barely finished high school.
He was going to be mooching off Vance until the day he died.
Robbie would take naps in the middle of the day, as much for something to do as anything else. He would clean up a bit, and make sure that he fed Niels, and cleaned the litter box. He'd turn on the TV.
Then he'd go back on the internet, and look up "Robbie Baldwin" and "Speedball", to see what people really thought of him.
That would usually end up with him curled up on the couch, crying his eyes out, and wishing he was dead. Then it would be close to time for Vance to come home, so Robbie would wash his face, try to look okay, and act as well as possible so he didn’t worry Vance.
—
"Hey," said Vance. "Put on your shoes. We've got an appointment today."
"Yeah?" Robbie bent down and started looking for his shoes.
“A psychiatrist. Dr. Nathan Reed.”
Robbie paused. "How could you afford that?"
"Donyell."
"Donyell? But he has the foundation! He's supposed to spend the victims of the Stamford Incident, not...me."
"It's not his foundation's money, it's his own money."
Robbie shook his head. "But he could have spent it to help someone more deserving."
"Look, at this point it's too late to cancel," said Vance. "It's either go, or waste Donyell's money. What are you going to do?"
"I'll go," said Robbie. "Just tying my shoes."
—
The office was more formal than Robbie was used to. It had a couch, with a little pillow on one end.
Robbie was not going to lie down on it.
“Mr. Baldwin?” Dr. Reed looked at Robbie. His face was hard to read.
He didn’t look horrified the way most people did when they discovered that they were in the room with that Robbie Baldwin.
“I’ve spoken to your friends,” said Dr. Reed. “I understand you’ve been through some difficult experiences.”
“You could say that.” Robbie explained the whole thing about the Stamford, about the Penance suit, being on the Thunderbolts, Doc Samson helping him, how Moonstone had drugged him until he couldn’t remember his own name, and how, after the battle, he’d ended up on Vance’s couch with no idea what to do with himself.
Dr. Reed’s face was impassive. He took notes.
Finally, when Robbie finished, Dr. Reed spoke. “I’m impressed by your resilience, and how well you’ve coped with all of this.”
“How well?”
Dr. Reed nodded. “You made some unhealthy choices in extreme circumstances. However it sounds like, even then, you made some good progress with a supportive therapist. And when you were pushed back into your most traumatized state, due to being drugged and brainwashed, you still managed to build interpersonal connections, find a remarkable level of inner strength, free yourself, and get to people who could help you. The fact that you walked in here willingly, and you’ve managed to find people to help you, says a lot.”
"Maybe I shouldn’t let them help me, though,” said Robbie. "It feels like I shouldn't. I mean after everything I did, it feels...wrong letting people be nice to me. Like an insult to everyone... who died.” It was very hard to not say everyone I killed.
"I can understand that," said Dr. Reed.
"You can?"
"Yes. I don't agree, but I understand why it would feel that way. It can be tempting, when dealing with guilt, to deny yourself. However, it doesn't help you solve problems or undo the damage done.” Dr. Reed leaned back. “What you have right now is a choice. You can decide to refuse help. You can deny yourself everything you don’t think you deserve. Eventually, your friends will stop trying. Your mental health will deteriorate. You might die. Or, once again, you might fall into the hands of a dishonest person who is exploiting you for your powers, when you are too ill to protect yourself from them. But you will be spared the shame of accepting help you don’t think you deserve.”
He drummed his fingers together. “The other option, is to keep doing what you did to get yourself here. Fight through the self-hatred, the guilt, and the shame, and accept that what you feel you deserve is not that important. Be peppered to face all of the pain you’ve been struggling to deal with. Accept that you’re going to need help to get healthy again. And in the end, emerge stronger, better able to make smart choices, and choose what you want to do.”
Robbie looked down at his hands, and picked a scab. He didn't like this. He didn't want to be a burden on his friends. It wasn’t fair, after what he’d done, for him to receive help.
But he'd tried being Penance, and that hadn't done much good either.
—
“How did it go?” Vance asked.
Robbie shrugged. “Okay, I guess.” He felt the prescription in his pocket.
“Drugs?” Robbie asked.
“Anti-depressants. They should help you function better.”
Robbie squirmed in his chair.
“What are you thinking?” Dr. Reed asked.
“Giving me happy pills. It seems…” Like a monstrous injustice. Disgusting. Obscene. A slap in the face of everyone who lost a loved one at Stamford. Children had died in agony because of Robbie, and now he was being asked to drug his bad feelings away. “Wrong.”
“Anti-depressants aren’t happy pills. I wouldn’t prescribe them if they were. These are to help you function. You crashed hard after you gave up the suit, didn’t you? Everything became more difficult? More stagnant? It became harder to stave off the despair?”
Robbie looked away.
“Self-harm is an unhealthy coping mechanism, but it is a coping mechanism. It was there for you when you had nothing else. It’s costly to give up something like that when you don’t have many healthy ways to cope. The anti-depressants are to help you while you learn better ways to deal with your feelings. They’ll help you stay functional enough that you can find something worthwhile to do.”
“I…don’t know what I can do. I want to do something useful, to help people somehow, but I can’t think of anything I could do. The only thing I ever really learned how to do was heroics, and I screwed that up so bad…”. Robbie swallowed hard.
Dr. Reed nodded. “We can discuss that more next session. That is, if you’ve decided to come back.”
Robbie pulled the prescription out of his pocket. “I should go to the pharmacy. Dr. Reed wrote me a prescription. And he recommend I see him twice a week.”
Vance nodded. “No problem. I’ll take care of it.”