what have you got to lose --

[slightlyoffchilt]

WHO: Chilton and OPEN!
WHERE: All Around Heropa.
WHEN: July 8th to July 30th -- just indicate what day in the header please!
WHAT: This thus includes: psychiatric sessions, dinner reservations, coffee gallivanting, whimsical meetings of any any sort.
WARNINGS: Will update if necessary.



The sweltered gasps of summer whispered heavily onto his cotton button-ups and tailored blazers. Inspiring as the warmth and light might be (what better way to flesh out the contours of darkness?), Chilton struggled with his composure in the heat. And the heat flickered in more than mere temperatured conception; there was the metaphorical heat of sparring individuals, his own psychiatrist's history of violence and Borderline Personality Disorder, the cannibalistic ghouls of his past (and future) swaying back into his (endangered?) life. The stress was remarkable, plastering itself in the crooks of his neck, in the curve of his spine. There were fleeting fantasies, when he wondered if Christine had the right idea: escape Heropa for something more remote, something more brisk. But of course, that proposition was contrary to everything he had worked for -- Frederick Chilton was now an Attending Psychiatrist at his hospital, with a fascinating flow of imPort minds to analyze. This was a system he had wanted, the structure he craved. The brief hiatus from work he had taken lasted only three days, and even that was wholly in response to Karla Sofen's physical aggression (and consequential revelation). A minor setback. But with newer patients like Billy Kaplan (General Anxiety), Tommy Shepard (Anti-Social Personality Disorder), Erwin and Levi (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), and now Godot (... in which the jury's still out), there was a cemented allure to remaining within Heropa's embrace. Not to mention his longer-standing patients, the individuals who suffered the verge of identity crises (his favorite crisis), like Doctor Connors and Kanaya. Not to mention his project with Danger, a situation that sparked new height of unethical relations. And certainly, his promised patients, the ones he was only starting to sink his fingers into their synapses...

There was no true impulse to abandon any of that. He savored every atom of that foundation.

The sun implored blistering antics against his back, and he weathered the heat graciously.

Comments

[slightlyoffchilt]

Since he was a kid. The chemical influence could have had effects on a developing brain -- but that was the sort of study for a neurologist, which was not strictly Chilton's field. He understood the biological theories, especially as they pertained to psychological disorders, but the practice, and the implicit surgical expertise -- well. He was much more a theoretical doctor. Chilton swallowed, absorbing that information, and locking it into his mind for reference.

"You do speak in ciphers, Godot," he said. It was only somewhat exasperated; as bizarre as the tendency was, the psychiatrist couldn't help but find it fascinating. It was his initial impression that Godot utilized such rhetoric so as to distance himself from his own speech, his own immediate experience. Chilton thought, perhaps, that created some sort of thought matrix -- well, Godot certainly gave the impression that he lived easily within the abstract.

And then, there was the moment of Godot's thesis.

"If I may -- to what degree do you think you can identity what has become the lie, and what is the truth of the matter?"

Chilton asked this quietly; the parallel that Godot held to Gideon's psychological state wasn't lost on the former Chief of Staff. His own itch to manipulate that, to dissect and examine and mutilate -- Chilton cleared his throat, blinking. He had to tread so very carefully. Godot was not Gideon.

"I need to know where you think you stand, within your own mind."

[beenwaitinglong]

His cup was recovered and sipped from once more, a method of getting a pause before he answered.

"I know the truth of the matter. Delusional as I may have become, I know it well."

Then his fingers moved nervously around the outside of the cup.

"I chose this mask. This path. This name, this person. It was a very deliberate decision I made. It would have been all well and good had I been able to cut ties the way I imagined I would. However..."

Godot shook his head finally. "There are things I can't sever from him. That dying, pathetic wreck of a man. As I said, I want to... recover what I can now. If possible, avoiding those things I got rid of him for in the first place."

"In short," he said finally. "There are two people sitting before you. A man and a mask. If you asked me which name is mine, I wouldn't be sure how to answer. And it was suggested to me to have a professional... sort it out."

[slightlyoffchilt]

Which was, indeed, his cue.

Chilton exhaled, his eyes kept anchored on the man before him. Identity issues. He always favored the existentialism (Chilton was more suited to philosophy than he was surgery), but working with imPorts who were born in alternative universes truly broadened the field beyond prior conception. He accepted that challenge, he thirsted for it, but the context required caution.

The mask and the man. Two identities. Did that mean two different personalities? Was there a core personality that forked? Did it ever converge again? How stable was Godot? What were his powers?

Chilton twirled the gold pen he held, before moving it to his mouth and clicking it between his teeth.

"We can discover what personality boundaries you have, Godot. The different between yourself and the symbolism of your mask -- but I need to ask, first: what exactly does that mask mean to you? What comes to mind, when you look at it?"

An association game.

[beenwaitinglong]

It took him yet another moment to respond as he finished off the rest of his cup of coffee. He actually seemed finished, for the moment, setting the cup down gently on the desk. "That would depend which mask you refer to."

He reached up and rested two fingers on the side of the metal apparatus on his face. "This mask," he said, "is my sight. In a very literal sense. Think of it as an extremely expensive pair of prescription lenses. Every man pays a toll to pass through hell... the price I paid to crawl back out was my eyes."

Then he leaned back in his chair again. "To everyone else, however, it resembles a mask. That was only a happy coincidence. When I chose to become this man, Godot... it was appropriate that this ugly chunk of metal serve as a literal mask. A means both to hide from the world, as well as the only means through which I can see it at all."

[slightlyoffchilt]

Chilton paused, bringing his pen to his lips as he studied his new subject. It was almost mythological, wasn't it? In more terms than merely the superheroic, he thought -- the sacrifice of eyes, well, it had a Norse touch. The dual sides, the visionary sacrifice, it was something that stressed mortality into literal immortality; or, at least, to a reprieve from death.

Godot had escaped death.

Chilton, given his circumstance, found that enticing. He had himself escaped death, in a way. While he hadn't made any bargains or had to sacrifice both his kidneys, he nevertheless was robbed of some function for the sake of survival. It wasn't by his design, but it certainly wasn't by Gideon's either.

"But the fact that you can see at all, well. That is remarkable." No one could accuse him of coddling his patients. If Godot was expecting signs of sympathy, Chilton hadn't even bothered to forge them.

"So -- what are you waiting for? You're not the same man you were, before your life-threatening experience. You never will be. But do you consider yourself something greater?"

Or something more dangerous? Chilton bit at the tip of his pen.

"You say that you're hiding. It's not just functionality, but a method of sanctuary as well."

[beenwaitinglong]

On the contrary, Chilton was probably on the right track. Godot hated sympathy. It was an automatic reflex, rarely meant with any amount of sincerity. As expected as a "bless you" after a sneeze, a please or a thank you. It was empty sentiment, one he had received so often during his recovery it now meant nothing at all.

His fingers were tightening around his cup, just barely.

"Greater? Hardly. There is nothing great about me now," he murmured. "I rose from the dead by the slimmest of margins. My body is a heap of junk. It takes a pile of pills every morning, noon, and night to keep me chugging along."

He glanced at his cup of coffee, at the black liquid swirling within.

"Those who emerge from such bodily peril are called 'survivors' for lack of anything else. To win life back from the grasp of death is meant to be its own solace. But it isn't as though even a survivor comes out unscathed. Untouched. Unruined."

[slightlyoffchilt]

Chilton exhaled quietly, maintaining the polite tension.

"All right," he said. "If you're open to the idea," began Chilton, as if he was acknowledging Godot's weight of consent in a tangible gravity. "I would suggest that we start you on a low dosage of antipsychotics."

It wasn't so extreme a measure -- or, at least, it sounded more dire when Chilton said it with a smile that it truly ought to have had.

"To stabilize your more extreme emotional drifts, I mean. Perhaps Lithium? Suitable for depression, mania -- there are significant studies that demonstrate the use of the medication for --" and the psychiatrist cleared his throat, reeling back his pitch. Perhaps overt enthusiasm wasn't the idea posture, right now.

"Your existential crisis appears unique," he finished.

[beenwaitinglong]

Antipsychotics. That was a word he wasn't expecting to hear. It was clinical, of course, but there was also a rather harsh sound to it in the psychotics part. But more medication shouldn't have been a surprise to him. Just as he took pills to hobble along his broken body, it was only natural he need them for his mind as well.

Wasn't that a morbid thought.

He didn't respond to the question of his openness on the matter, focusing instead on the last bit.

"The use of medication for what?" he asked. "And what do you mean, 'unique?'"

[slightlyoffchilt]

He tightened his smile, well aware of the delicate situation wrought before him. There was no intent to insult Godot -- quite the contrary, Chilton found him interesting. But the psychiatrist knew that few others appreciated the same framing of individuality in the way that Chilton tended to appreciate it.

"Existential crises are a normal habit of sentient awareness -- and that is not what I'm accusing you of suffering from, Mr. Godot. Not at this point," he said, couching in the words. He didn't want to necessarily immediately contradict what he had just said.

"In essence, what I detect is existentially seeded, but it isn't limited to a normal, circumstantial crisis. This isn't inspired by a midway point in your life, and while it may have at least superficially manifested with your life and death experience, I believe that in fact the experience merely triggered what you always had the potential for," said Chilton, his lengthy explanation delivered with a professional softness in his voice. He always handled his patients with a caring tone, it help to distract from his truer intent.

"I would require your consent to continue any further, of course."