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

[glowsferatu]

"I wouldn't bore you with the mundane details of my daily life." Though there was nothing mundane about her weekend, but some parts of her life were more gruesome than she cared to talk about. She dealt with them, yes, they were par for the course to her. But did he really want to hear about how she had to reopen a healed wound to dig a bullet out of her chest? How it got in there, and the problems that followed, she would keep silent on as a point of pride. The undead don't care to advertise their near-death experiences. She certainly can't tell him how close she came to slitting the throat of the shooter.

Having something to avoid made the topic she had been reluctant on look more attractive by comparison, the lesser of two evils. Though this one had longer to ruminate, more time in her head to scream its way out.

She pressed her lips together tightly before finally taking the parcel in her hands and standing to approach his desk. "I-- When we first arrived, in Heropa, I had a project that I felt... It felt like something I needed to do." As she spoke, she held the parcel out for him to take, rattling as she moved it. "I haven't been sure what to do with it since. I just thought I should tell someone about it." And Chilton was the one she was supposed to tell things to, that was his job. She had been reluctant even to show it to Rose, despite all her time hiding in the garage as she crafted them. She was supposed to be the strong one, and after the end of the world, she didn't want Rose dragged down by how long it took her to recover.

Once he took it, she returned to her seat. When he unwraps the cloth, he'll find seven staves, each carefully and identically crafted to widen as it extends to a flat top. Along what may be seen as the front, the words "WE DO NOT FORGET" are engraved. They all seem nearly identical until he may examine the tops themselves. Each one carries a different symbol engraved on it, not artfully drawn but simple and clear.

One is a traditional smiley face, while another looks almost like a large-headed arrow whose shaft curves and snakes to the edge. One is a simple zero, crossed diagonally to distinguish it from an O, while another has the Leo symbol, but with this one Kanaya carefully painted the grooves of the carving in a dark olive. Crossed swords are featured on another, and the next one appears to have a large four-pointed star with a smaller one to the corner of it, like a sparkle. The last is a simplified carving of what looks like a birthday cake, three candles on top.

Headstones might have been more effective, but Alternians never kept graves before. She didn't know how to properly approach it in her first attempt. She just knew that each person signified by one of those staves had been important, and it was her duty to remember them, to memorialize them.

[slightlyoffchilt]

He took the parcel carefully, well attuned to the gravity of Kanaya's walk, her movements. It was evident that this was emotionally momentous for her, and he -- as her psychiatrist -- knew precisely the role he was meant to play. Kanaya was expressing this not for his benefit, but for her own; this was a truth that usually irked him, that psychiatrists were meant to play the sounding boards. Usually. It was the major thrust of why he pursued criminal psychiatry, because aside from the inherent fame (or infamy) and glamour, there was the reassurance that Chilton was unpuzzling his adversaries (as patients).

The role he played now was to listen, to guide when necessary, to shed a varied perspective onto the evidence that Kanaya was already aware of; he had less issue playing this part with imPort patients, of course, because of their unique positions. But they alone were the exceptions to his egotistical rule.

A quick, quizzical look shot her way, and Chilton gently uncovered those staves that Kanaya has so carefully wrapped. There was a certain ceremony to the movement, to the whole situation. There was an unspoken ritual about to be born, and Chilton was here to witness it, to enact within it.

He didn't know to whom each stave was for. He didn't know their personalities, what they had meant to Kanaya; he had not met most of these people. As he laid each piece in an even row along his desk, he looked up to watch her sitting there, observing this. Chilton took a deep breath -- the engraving indicated the purpose of what Kanaya had painstakingly worked upon. He didn't know if every stave referred to only imPorts or not, even if that was the pertaining assumption. Befriending the mundane locals was not high on his priorities, though those were the breed that couldn't resurrect after death.

But Chilton had seen how people reacted, when fellow imPorts returned home. It was a kind of death.

"Is memory sufficient? To keep them, with you?"

He asked it gently, which was contrary in tone to the words he spoke.

[glowsferatu]

Her expression soured immediately at the question, a scowl crossing her face as she snapped her answer at him, "Of course it isn't sufficient! But there's nothing else left. When we're gone, we don't leave corpses. We simply haunt those remaining with our memories instead. But those memories, that's the only proof. We have to bear them, we can't forget. Forgetting erases them entirely, and they deserve better."

Kanaya, having those memories, bore the responsibility to remember. It would be a nightmare for a solipsist, that the only meaning your life would have in the City or Heropa was what remained in the minds of other people. Worse still when it wasn't merely an existential death for many of those Kanaya memorialized, but they were either dead or doomed in their native worlds as well. She was the only one carrying them on now, her obligation to the dead.

[slightlyoffchilt]

"Is this just the beginning of a project, then?" He asked, gently, coaching her into deeper thought and expression. Kanaya's anger, her personal agony, was evident. Chilton had noted how she tended to internalize emotions, how she took on the burdens that might have rightfully belonged to others. It was uncommon, to see those personality traits in someone so youthful.

But they seemed so solidified in her persona now, and willingly so -- as if she would not dare sacrifice the individual that all those missing and dead people once knew. As if she herself was some monument to their eternal despair.

Chilton leaned back in his chair, smiling at her.

"It might be good to prolong some sort of project. I sense that you won't be finished mourning any time soon."

[glowsferatu]

"This was the whole of it, actually," she answered, hands folded in her lap as she stared down, studying the carpet. That she hadn't done more made the whole of it now feel inadequate, like another to list in her long string of failures. She should have continued, but she lost heart. Putting more on the burden made it too heavy, even when she was supposed to be able to take it.

That was how it always seemed to go with her burdens, she'd keep adding to them until they'd toppled over and crushed her beneath them. Maybe the restraint was better for her, but it still left her feeling like she should have done more. "I intended to give one of them to someone very important to one of the individuals memorialized. But a week later, he returned, in full possession of his memories of the City. It was hardly a month after that they were both gone."

It made the whole thing feel pointless. She wouldn't dare hope any of them might return, but it had still happened. Archer wasn't the only one to return from the City, that same week saw others return as well. John Watson, Lust... Not to mention the countless others who didn't remember the City. Was it really fair of her to carry her memories of Billy when he's here again, but doesn't remember her, doesn't remember being her roommate, doesn't remember trying to talk her down in his own naive, inadequate way when she was set on tearing herself apart.

And this was how it could be for any of them. She didn't dare hope that they might come back, but just knowing the scope of possibilities their situation faced her with ripped the heart from the meaning of her attempt. The emotional turmoil of losing so many seemed like it was all for nothing, just empty emotional turmoil that she wasted her time with, but had no power to release herself from.

[slightlyoffchilt]

Chilton blinked, taking note of her reaction -- the downcast glance, the adherent stare into the carpet. His eyebrows rose, his mouth edged towards his chin; he observed this expressions of self-berating.

"It's a fine, heartfelt gesture," he said, and quickly. But it was likely that she'd think his words were only meant to comfort her, which indeed they were. His voice offered hollow reassurance, dutiful and nearly immediate.

"Your coping mechanism -- making these monuments, intending to give them to others, that all enables the memory of your lost companions." Now this angle sounded more sincere. He could latch onto the rationality, the explanation. He could convey to his patient what the meaning of her actions were, how they could impact her continual existence. It was, essentially, where a psychiatrist of his own caliber could treat.

Chilton was not, as he would say in his own words, merely a therapist.

"That immortality is meaningful, Kanaya," he offered. His gaze flickered to her forehead, as if wondering how her neurons would seize that opinion. He thought about (with the mild agony that anticipation brought) of her MRIs and her bodily samples. Her behavior, her need to memorialize, was just as fascinating as those what ifs that speckled his treatment of her.

[glowsferatu]

"What kind of meaning can it have? There is no memory it enables, whether anyone else even knew of them or not. Were I to present them to any random person, native or imPort, they would see no significance in them. What they stand for, who they represent, and everything those people meant, it can't be reduced so easily." Which was the excuse, her rationalization for keeping it to herself. They've sat buried in her dresser since January, because she knew letting anyone see them would only leave herself bare, let them through her defenses. Never let them see you suffer, that's the rule.

Even telling Chilton was well beyond what she was comfortable with, but she was supposed to. That was the purpose behind their relationship, to help understand what exactly was wrong with her, since she had always known there was something. She needed to be honest with him. But even then, even with him having been in the City, he didn't know the names. Not from her, at least.

"All it leaves to me is a millstone. Seven millstones, and to openly discuss them would only cause inconvenience to those hearing it." Her gaze flicked back up to him, making plain her assumptions of how he might feel about it. But at least he was being paid.