“I don’t hear her complaining,” I said, lifting an eyebrow.
“That’s because you keep using her legs as earmuffs.”
Wren
This was not the powerful, confident Sebastian Mederos I had graduated with. This was not the man who was helping my daughter work through her issues.
The man sitting in my office was a broken and wretched version of my colleague. He was unshaven, unkept, disinterested, and distant. He slumped, his hands shoved under his arms, his rich brown eyes glassy with emotions he didn’t want to feel, and his salt and pepper hair a mess from running his hand through it.
Lily looked like hell too, though she wasn’t here for the session. She was just here to make sure Bastian was. She leaned against the back wall of the small office I kept in Center City, near CHoP.
“Normally,” I said, “I specialize in trauma for children.” I sat back in my own chair. “But, Bastian, for you, I’ll see you as patient-therapist.”
“Oh, well, don’t go out of your way.”
There was a little snap to his words, but not a lot. He was angry, though. I could see that from his posture. I was sure he wished he had more venom than what he had just tried to spit at me.
I opted for the ‘ignore the rancor’ path. “It’s not out of my way, Bastian. Not at all. Your life has been turned upside down, and you need help.”
“I don’t actually. This,” he gestured to himself, “is all part of the grieving process. But I get that you haven’t really ever had to go through this, so…”
I held up my hand. “You want to have a pissing contest? You want to talk about the shriveled painful limb I cart around every day after watching my aunt die in front of me?” I raised an eyebrow and put my hand back down. “Bastian. I’m here to help you. We don’t have to talk at all if that’s what you want for now. We don’t explore anything, we don’t have to delve into your psyche or come up with coping mechanisms. Right now, the only purpose of these sessions is to give you a reason to get out of bed, out of the apartment, once a week.”
“Fuck you,” he grumbled.
“We’ll talk about expectations at the end of the session,” I said, ignoring his words.
“Why is she in here?” he groused, jerking his thumb at Lily.
“Lily Haden is a friend. She’s concerned about you since the moment you found out that your wife and children were murdered.”
He flinched at the word.
“Would you like to start there?”
Leaning forward, he stared at me. “I don’t want to start anywhere. Everything is ended. Do you get that? My wife and children were slaughtered, no one has any idea by who, and the day after I put them in the ground and she—” his finger stabbed out at Lily “—finally released my house, it burned to the fucking ground.”
“You didn’t lose anything though,” Lily sniped. “I had everything moved to storage. The restorers were coming in that day to start the cleaning.”
He slammed a hand on the table. “It was my house! It was where I lived, where I measured how tall my children were! It was where I kissed my…k-kissed my wife g-goodbye…w-where…”
He choked on the words, and collapsed into himself. I hated to do it, but this was what I needed to see in him. The vulnerability. The real state of his mind. The sobs, the tears, the gasps at the gaping holes in his life. I needed a blueprint of what I had to help him patch, repair, and fill.
Victoria, his wife, and the two children, Elliot and Claire, were never going to be fixable. He was going to have to chain them off—so he couldn’t fall in but he could still feel and see them.
The house was a house. I had suspicions about that, but I kept my mouth shut. I waited for him to calm down a bit. There was no reason to rush this. It was easy to see this wasn’t going to be solved in a day.
I leaned forward. “Sebastian? I want you to think very hard on the question I’m about to ask you. I don’t even need an answer before I see you again.”
He didn’t object. That was encouraging.
“Would you have really been able to sleep under the same roof where such a horrible crime was committed against your family?”
Ellie had told me, time and again, that when Mister Passyunk had her, and had her in the bedroom, she could never sleep. She could barely sleep in the room she was held in. There were too many horrible things flashing against her mind in every corner.
I suspected Bastian would have the same problem—he’d been the only one who could identify his wife and kids—they were both only children with no extended family. The images of his dead wife and two dead children would haunt him forever.
The question clearly took him by surprise. He’d just wanted his normal back and there was no normal now. He hadn’t realized getting back into that house wouldn’t have been normal.
Bastian was looking for something that didn’t exist anymore.
Weren’t we all?
Tapping together some papers I stacked on my desk, I decided I’d tortured him enough for the day. “Like I said, I don’t need an answer to anything today, Doctor Mederos. This is not going to be an easy or quick journey. I’m here for you, and Lily will be in charge of the investigation as long as it takes.” I let out a deep sigh. “Have they installed the stone yet?”
“Yesterday.” he barely breathed the word.
“Did you visit?”
“No.”
“Then before I see you again, I would like it if you went to see the stone,” I said. I put a card on the desk and pushed it toward him. “I don’t want you driving yet, you’re not stable enough. Use that car service and I will pay the bill for you.”
He growled, “You or your boyfriends?”
“Personal attacks will not be tolerated,” I snapped. “It’s my account, that I set up for my very seriously traumatized daughter to get around without fear of being attacked again. You know that as she’s your patient. I’m offering you the same, because you are also traumatized. Don’t be an asshole about it.”
He leaned forward and slammed his hand on my desk. “They’re dead! They’re all dead. They were slaughtered in my house, on our bed, in our room! I am going to be as much of an asshole as I please! I am going to find the sons of bitches who did this and I am g-going to r-rip their…”
The sobs took him again, and he collapsed on to the floor, falling from the chair. Lily took a step forward, but I held up my hand and walked around the desk to where the pitiful wailing of a lost soul sliced through the air.
Sebastian was curled on his side, shaking, shivering, trying desperately to breathe. I knelt down next to him, and put a hand on his arm.
“They’re dead… They’re dead. Everything I had, everything I loved. All gone. I don’t even have the home we made…”
I looked up at Lily, who took a deep breath. She looked like she was about to say something, but I held her off with a shake of my head.
“Bastian, where are you staying?”
“A friend’s couch.” He hiccupped.
“Would it help if you had a place that was yours? An apartment or something like that?” I knew it would, but I couldn’t force that decision on him. “You could put up some of the things that Detective Haden put in storage. Some of the pictures…”
Looking up at me, he was able to catch his breath. A bit. I grabbed an elbow and helped him sit up, leaning against the front of my desk. His eyes were so liquid and tired, and I could just feel the emotions running through him.
“I’m…lost,” he said, earnestly. “I don’t know where to start, or to pick up, or end.” His eyes shot to mine, and he held me there. “I have wanted the end. I have tried to figure out how to end. I don’t know how to do anything right now, except be angry, and empty and hateful and sad.”
“This isn’t an end. Not yet,” I said. “There is new normal you have to find. You cannot try to be who you were before. Your heart and mind won’t let you. This grief, the righteous anger you feel, is all normal. It’s all overw
helming. It’s all important in helping you find a new direction.”
“I’m not ready…”
“I don’t expect you to be. Not yet. You’re raw, you’re tired. You need to mourn. You need a private space to mourn. You can’t do that on couches and spare rooms.”
He looked at me, and canted his head. “I have nothing…”
“If I had a place for you, will you take it?”
“I…”
“Obligation free. No strings. A place for you to mourn in private, to hide if you need to.”
Sniffling, he shook his head. “Do you do this for all your patients?”
I shrugged. “Most of my patients still wipe their nose on their sleeve.”
He laughed, and thunked his head back to stare at the ceiling. “I will pay rent. The insurance company from the fire said I have a year of rent on the policy.”
“Let me just clear it with the owner.”
I stood and walked into the hall, just past Lily. She touched my elbow as I passed by.
“Lincoln’s old place?”
“Makes sense. He didn’t want to get rid of it, and this is a perfect use for it.”
She nodded. “I agree. I hope he does.”
A wicked grin crossed my face. “I have my ways.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I’m sure you do.”
I stood watching the small moving crew as they worked to get Sebastian’s stuff into the house. There wasn’t a lot. It was mostly personal effects, pictures, clothes, the toys.
Bastian was going through the motions. It wasn’t much but it was better than what had been happening earlier in the week. He seemed relieved to have a place of his own to grieve and just be a mess.
Lincoln had easily agreed to the arrangement. He was actually rather pleased someone was going to use the place for a while. He’d even had Vance’s old room converted into a gym with a punching bag. That was something I could see Bastian using a lot.
He’d also had the twins’ old room quickly repainted beige, and removed all signs that they were ever set up in there. If Bastian wanted to set up the room with his children’s things, that was his decision, but we both agreed it was better to not have that blatant reminder there.
Bastian walked over to Lily and me standing and watching the moving crew. He still had sweats on, and his hands were shoved deep in his pockets, the hoodie up and covering his head. But he was fully present, if doing terribly.
“Can’t you just make a house call for my appointments?” he asked.
“No, Bastian. We have to get out of the house once in a while,” I answered. “This is a better place for you, but it can’t be the only place.”
“Shit,” he grumbled. “And you’re sure this is okay with Lincoln?”
“I told you it was,” I answered. “When you’re ready to try going back to work, even part time, we’ll set up the sunroom downstairs as your temporary office. I expect that you’ll eventually want to go back to seeing patients, and while I can push you to visit me in the office, I can’t push you to use yours .”
“I’m not ready—”
“I said when, I didn’t give a time frame. We’re all aware you need time for this.”
He nodded and headed back into the townhouse. He wouldn’t give us a goodbye or a get lost, yet, but walking away clued us in that he was done talking and we were dismissed.
Lily huffed. “Fuck.”
“Yeah, that’s a summation of this.” I shook my head. “All this guidance I’m giving him…I feel like I’m leading him around by the nose. It all feels like empty platitudes and bullshit.”
“Is it?”
“No, it’s eight years of school, and six years of practice. It’s all proven psychology. It just doesn’t feel right this time. Not with him.” My gaze landed on the window of the master bedroom, and a quick flash of the night that Fischer and I let Lincoln into our lives. I shook it off. I didn’t need dirty thoughts at that moment.
I also hoped someone changed the mattress.
“Lily?”
She stared at the moving van. “Yeah?”
I dropped my voice. “Off the record, how the fuck did his house burn down?”
“Preliminary report says short in the wall.”
Biting my lip, I shook my head just once. “I said off the record.”
It was quiet a moment, and Lily sniffed a bit into the silence.
“Was it those Versilange things?”
“No,” she snapped. “Versilange are protectors. Laxmi, Miriam, and your daughter are protectors, not destroyers. They aren’t agents…of…”
“Of Tartarus?”
“Yes.”
“Then who did it.”
I could see her sucking on her teeth, desperate not to look at me. After a deep breath, she turned to face me.
“I ordered it,” she said.
My eyes grew wide and I just stared at her for a very long time. “Why? Ordered who?”
“Because those children were just like Benjamin. They’re more than just children. I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now.” Her stare bore into me, and I dropped my own gaze.
I nodded slowly. “I suspected. When Ellie sprouted her…” I fluttered a hand over my shoulders, “I started to think that there was more to her brother than just being a simple sibling.”
“Their blood is powerful,” she continued, folding her arms. “Very, very powerful. We could not let the Zhadanjir have it. Or hell, even touch it. I had to have it burned, and it was soaked into the wood.” She glanced down at the ground and then back to me. “It had to be done. I didn’t have a choice, I couldn’t take a chance.”
“Ordered who?” The question was whispered.
“I don’t know who did it, just that they received the order and followed it.”
Lifting an eyebrow, I considered her a moment. “And who are you that you can command things like that?”
She stared me down. Uncrossing her arms, Lily leaned into me. “A friend. And I need that friend to trust me right now that I can’t tell her any more than she already knows.”
“Lily—”
“You know how in Endgame, Doctor Strange sees all those futures, and when they’re finally in the future Tony Stark asks if this is one where they win? Doctor Strange answers, If I tell you what happens, it won’t happen.” She stabbed her finger down at the ground. “That’s where we are. Fourteen million, six hundred five. And I can’t tell you more than that.”
She turned on her heel and marched away from me.
What the actual fuck was going on here?
Wren
“Hey!” Lincoln screamed up the stairs. “Frick and Frack, get your butts in gear!”
Fischer choked on his coffee, and looked at Lincoln shocked. “What did you call them?”
“Frick and Frack?”
“I haven’t heard that since I was like four!” He chuckled. “My best friend’s mom used to call us that. We were inseparable, and we even dressed alike once in a while.”
“Did you pretend you were twins?”
“Nah, we were CEOs and we were bad ass, ruling our boardroom with iron fists!” He shook his.
“Really?” Lincoln quirked an eyebrow. “You were a little nerd?”
“You have no idea.” Fischer sighed. “I memorized all the bones in the body when I was seven.”
Lincoln chuckled. “Nerd.”
Fischer slumped in his chair. “Nerves at eight, muscles at nine, veins and arteries at ten. I could explain the Krebs cycle at twelve.”
Staring at him, Lincoln shook his head. “Okay, that’s actually pretty impressive since I only have a vague idea that Krebs cycle is a biological process and not something you take on a trail ride.”
I wiped a hand down my face. “It’s like I live with five children.” Leaning up the stairs, I called, “Two of whom are making us late for an appointment!”
“And two who love to make you cream your panties,” Lincoln whispered.
/> “Jesus, Linc,” I huffed, but his words had the desired effect. He tried to say something else, but I slapped a hand over his mouth. “No. No more. The kids have to go for their therapy. Shut up.”
He walked away laughing, grabbing a bowl from the cabinet. A moment later, the twins came down the stairs like they were a herd of wildebeests.
I motioned them out the back door where the Land Cruiser was waiting, and quickly looked back at Linc and Fischer sitting at the table. They both had wicked glints in their eyes, and I slammed the door with a huff.
They had something planned. Dirty bastards. I still couldn’t stop my own smirk. I didn’t know what on Earth led to me the point where I had two men in my bed, but I was not complaining. No way.
Tabitha and Timothy were already buckling themselves into the booster seats, and I did a quick double check.
We were all proud of how well they were doing after being pulled out of a sex trafficking ring. It had cost a lot of money, and they were worth every penny. There were still challenges in getting them physically and mentally healthy, but the four of us—me, Lincoln, Fischer, and Ellie—were all up for it.
“Mom, are we doing physical or occupational today?” Tabitha asked.
I almost crashed pulling out of the driveway, but managed to correct and stop the vehicle. I put it in park and turned around. “What did you say, Tabi?”
She looked chided and I quickly shook my head. “No, baby girl. What did you call me?”
She brightened. “Mom. I called you Mom.”
“You did!” The grin just took over. “Did you do that on purpose?”
“It just…happened.”
I reached back and grabbed her hand. “That’s awesome, Tabi! So amazing. You know what Doctor Hilbraith is going to say?”
“What?”
“You had a breakthrough! You were comfortable enough with me to call me that, and not miss or ma’am.”
She grinned, and sat up a little straighter. I turned back and grabbed my phone for just a moment.
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