Chapter Text
Maybe it's Stockholm Syndrome, maybe it's general trauma, maybe it's Maybelline, but the only person Casey feels who can even begin to understand her, is the person who kidnapped and nearly cannibalized her. As Casey sits across from Dr. Lydia Knight, fiddling with a loose thread on her sweater, words fail her. They both sit in silence, the ticking of the clock becoming increasingly deafening.
Dr. Knight is the first to speak. “Is this the first time you’ve gone to a therapy session?”
“Oh no,” Casey answers, “I’ve been loads of times. You know how it is, living with a sociopathic, narcissistic child molester. Your mental health is their first priority.”
Dr. Knight chuckles as she clicks her pen. “Do you often use sarcasm as a protective shield?”
“Sorry,” Casey mutters, removing a spare hair-tie from her wrist and beginning to fiddle with it. “I’m not trying to be difficult. I just don’t know how to start.”
“Since this is our first session, I don’t expect you to talk about anything deep and profound. I already have your chart from your social worker, and notes from your foster parents. I don’t need your life story, and…” Dr. Knight moved a box of tissues from the side-table beside her to the coffee table in the center of the room. “I have a whole stockroom full of these, if you decide otherwise.”
“Honestly,” Casey begins “I–I just miss him. I miss him so much.”
“That’s very normal,” Dr. Knight replies, as though Casey had said nothing more surprising than a comment on the thunderstorm brewing outside.
“I know that it sounds–wait, it is?” The hair tie falls from Casey’s hands onto the carpet.
“Of course. Before you went into foster care, and before you were captured by the Horde, when was the last time someone took an interest in you? Showed you a sliver of kindness? Gave you a real purpose to keep fighting, to keep going, to spark the desire to actually live?”
“Oh.” The first tear comes, sharp and fiery on her skin.
A couple blocks away, Casey’s former captor sits in a blindly bright room across from a different therapist, being asked the very same probing questions.