I come bearing fic! How I Became the Vampires' Therapist Author: Mr Teller Words: 2,577 Characters: Armand/Amadeo/Andrei Rating: If you're old enough to read the books, you're old enough to read this. Summary: If anyone needs therapy, it's a vampire. Notes: Set before Queen of the Damned, and alters the storyline afterward.
I don’t know how to even explain to myself that one of my clients is older than it is possible to be. A part of me, the grad student part, wants to write a paper analysing the psychological baseline for Them and get funding in order to provide adequate and informed services to help Them—because, my god, do They need help. I know, however, that this would only hurt in the long run, and people wouldn’t understand, and so I keep my notes hidden in a fire-proof box, and the only people with whom I talk about it are my rabbits, Dorian and Zim. I can’t even talk about it to myself without saying Them. I can’t really… I don’t think I want to attach all the prejudices that come with saying aloud—even writing—the name we call Them, or even the epithets. Since this is my private account, however, and because he is a—well, a being—I will give a name; but let us do it in the course of the story, for a name can change, over five centuries of life. That session where we began to actually explore his past is where I will begin. ‘How early do you want to go? How far back do you remember? Some people remember toddler years, some don’t…’ ‘I remember vividly what it was like. Have you ever been to Russia, Doctor?’ ‘No.’ ‘I was born there, Andrei, in sight of the ruined Santa Sofia… but we only have an hour, Doctor.’ ‘It’s fine, remember you can take as long as you like.’ ‘My story cannot be told in an hour.’ ‘No one’s can.’ ‘Coming back every week, for only an hour… it will take ten years to even come to when I was turned by my Master. No, I will not do it this way. I must tell you all at once or I will not have the strength to tell you at all.’ I didn’t know what to say, then. At that point he hadn’t really told me he was a… that he was what he was. It was our first session, just after I’d set up a practise with a bunch of other senior therapists. He offered a lot of money, without needing insurance to cover it, and they didn’t want to turn him down because they weren’t taking new patients. So they gave him to me—after all, I had no patients to speak of, and I was the new blood. I needed breaking in—how better than with an eccentric millionaire who demanded a therapist in the middle of the night? Perhaps if I’d been older, I would have been less inclined to do what I did next. ‘Tell you what,’ I said, ‘screw the time limit. Let’s spend the next few nights just telling me your life story, okay?’ I was almost too eager for this, my hands itching to make notes. ‘Perhaps…’ he trailed off, pacing. At the time I couldn’t figure out how a fifteen-year-old kid could have so much going on that it would take more than a hundred hours to tell. It took the rest of the week. Hour after hour he would speak, railing sometimes, or almost incoherent with his synaesthetic descriptions of people, sound and image. He was extremely religious—I had never even heard of someone as religious as he was, who was still so articulate and educated. He was also very unstable, seeming completely detached from his life. It was obvious why, with the abuse he’d suffered as a child—and blocked out—and the way he was ripped from his loving rescuer—his Master—by a cult. Between instalments, I typed up my notes and cross-referenced them with earlier notes, and made pages of diagnoses and symptom lists. It was hard to untangle it all. This eccentric billionaire kid was far, far older than I’d thought. Ain’t that always the way, though? Nothing is what it seems. Months passed after that, and I pried into every little event. I opened up the box—as we are trained to do, of course—and examined every little trinket inside. We turned them over, together, and he was so unaware of what it all meant. At first he protested my conclusions, said they were modern, so modern, too modern. It was infuriating, how he first insisted and justified everything by saying I was from a different time, I didn’t understand… I did understand, damn it. I am capable of a paradigm shift! No matter what time period, I would argue right back, no matter what time you’re in, rape and violence and abduction are always traumatic and they are always harmful to the victim’s well-being as a person. Sometimes I thought he wouldn’t come back the next night—yes, the next night, for he grew used to our little all-night sessions, and took up my whole work week after a time—but inevitably, by habit or by loneliness, he would be sitting outside the building when I drove up, and we would go up to his penthouse apartment and talk. It was a long while before he began to really open up, and I finally got to the subject of this Master of his. He spoke so beautifully, and the parts of his life he’d spent with this Master were not just healthy but so brilliant, so shining with love, that I admit I got a little verklempt in places. You just didn’t come across that kind of thing often enough to get used to it—even as a therapist. He wouldn’t tell me his Master’s name, and laughed when I asked him gently about whether this was a Master in the sense of sexual games of power. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, in his blank little voice, ‘I do not know.’ That was another thing—his utter detachment. I was working on that first, though it was having to cope with his nature as a predator that made it difficult. I couldn’t, you see, I couldn’t just classify him as a serial murderer just because he had to kill to live. That would be unfair. He was a predator and his prey just happened to be my species. There was a certain detachment allowed, but after a while I figured out that he was even more detached and cold than usual. It happens sometimes, especially to cult victims—really good brainwashing and calculated torture, such that he described? Oh yeah, it sticks. It sticks hard. Years passed, though it didn’t seem like years; I studied, I went to lectures, I wrote to colleagues that specialised in counselling battered children and cult victims. I first broached the subject of names in one of our later sessions, because he seemed not to realise how wrong the cult had been, and how deep their hooks still went inside him. ‘Why do you still go by Armand, even though you left the cult? Why not go back to Amadeo, or Andrei?’ The response was immediate, one of his extremely vehement outbursts. His eyes sparked with fire and I could see his fangs when he yelled at me, his voice raised and almost tearful. ‘No!’ he protested, rising from his chair to… it wasn’t quite pacing, more like agitated flitting, ‘They are dead now, dead!’ ‘Why not Amadeo?’ I pressed, wanting him to realise, ‘The cult that took you from your Master, they took your name and tried to take away your sense of self by so doing. You realise that, don’t you?’ ‘I am not Amadeo anymore. I am not,’ he insisted, sounding like the stubborn child he looked, sullen and obstinate. He almost stamped his foot as he glared at me. ‘I think you are. Listen to me, calm down and try to listen. Think about what you’re saying. You’ve told me what these people did: that they burned your home and killed your family, and made you watch, and laughed at your distress. They tortured you. Why embrace the name they forced upon you, and not the one that was given to you by the one you loved, that loved you?’ ‘Because—because—too long! It has been too long! I cannot go back, not after what they did! Not after what I did!’ he rounded on me, his voice almost a little scream—I was used to it by now, though it was still frightening, ‘Don’t you understand, you stupid, blind thing! Weren’t you listening when I told you!’ ‘I was.’ ‘I am a monster! I am a monster, why do you not see!’ He had begun to bleed—no, to weep, but his tears were tinted with blood. ‘You’re not a monster, Amadeo—’ ‘Don’t call me that!’ he interrupted, with the kind of fury that only comes from deep-seated pain, ‘Don’t! He died! He was killed that flame-choked night!’ ‘Amadeo,’ I said firmly, ‘ Listen to me. You are not a monster. You are distressed, you’re hurt, you’re full of old wounds that never healed right—and you came to me, you called for help from me to heal them. I have to reopen them first, and you did that with me; now you have to let me stitch you up, Amadeo. You need to calm down, please. Calm down and stop punishing yourself for the wrongs others did to you.’ Oh, that night. I don’t know why his tirades didn’t frighten me—perhaps I grew up too well, never being taught to fear for my personal safety when people railed and ranted. Perhaps it was just the fact that at that point I had known him for almost a year and a half. Perhaps I’m just stupid. I have no idea, but I never tried to make him calm down when his rants got a little out of hand. He never got close to me, or threatened me with his little fangs. Really, his emotions were just… wild, child-like. He needed to let them out, since he reacted to trauma by burying it deeply and forgetting. I did not give up. The hardest was to slowly work each remaining hook, each festering cult-implanted thought, out of his head. This took another year and a half, and my god, did he make my philosophy courses pay for themselves! I wasn’t used to being confronted with someone that had a truly Classical education, and every time we started close to the abuses others put him through—not to mention what he put himself through—in the name of the Lord, he would get out the big guns. It took absolutely forever. I wanted to scream and give up in frustration so many times; but I didn’t. I spoke to colleagues and asked their advice—I even contacted someone in the Orthodox church, and that was the real key to the puzzle. I didn’t have any footing in Christianity, I was a pagan for gods’ sake—so I had no real high ground to stand on, in my patient’s eyes. Still, I managed to make some convincing arguments right back; and he was at a point where he was listening to things, actually thinking them over instead of rejecting them simply because they were change. After four years, four years of me spending night after night with him, listening, talking, arguing, occasionally even scolding, I figured he was ready to start talking about moving on with his life. I opened the subject of Master (he’d never told me Master’s name), and almost immediately he surmised my intent. ‘You’re going to tell me I should find him, that I should find closure.’ I didn’t answer, letting him answer himself. He’d cut his hair tonight, I noticed, cut it like one of the scene kids. It didn’t suit him very well, made him look so much younger; however, he’d been cutting his hair differently for the past couple of weeks, dressing differently—it felt like he was expressing his artistry more, which was good. I was jarred from my musing with his next words. ‘I think you’re right. I’ve been thinking about that as well.’ I couldn’t help myself; I leapt from my chair and hugged him tight. He seemed surprised, almost awkward, so I let go quickly, smiling like an idiot. ‘I’m so proud of you!’ and I meant it. He looked a little embarrassed, then unsure. ‘I don’t know…’ he said, turning away and going to look out the window, playing with the rings on his hands, ‘I don’t want him to hate me. I wonder why he didn’t come find me, but then I didn’t try to find him either.’ He sighed, giving a half-smile and shaking his head. He was so much more expressive now, his emotions more in sync with his gestures and expressions. He spoke with his hands now, which drew attention to the beautiful rings he was always wearing. ‘But I’ve already gone over these thoughts, we have gone over them. I think nothing more can be solved by talking to you.’ I told him I agreed, and asked if he had specific plans to find Master, if I could help. He shook his head. ‘I’ve received a call from a… a mutual friend.’ A quirk of lips, a wry little smile. ‘Lestat, you recall?’ I nodded, unable to hide the return smirk. ‘I remember him.’ Oh, how I remembered him. ‘I think he’s called my Master too. He’s a… a meddling bastard, is Lestat. He may think it a great joke to toss us together unawares and watch… but, I don’t know. ‘I know that you have helped me… stitch myself up, as you put it. For this, I’m grateful. I will…’ he stifled a laugh, ‘I will recommend you to my friends, though perhaps you would rather not?’ ‘If you think they would benefit, I’d be happy to help them.’ ‘And you need your fees to pay the rent.’ I shrugged, knowing he was only teasing me. I found I was getting a little choked up. He was leaving, and I realised I’d gotten really attached to him. He was still my patient, but he’d been my patient for five days a week, for four years. I was going to miss him. ‘I will write you,’ he said as I stood to leave, ‘I will come to see you. I will…’ he laughed, ‘I will bring Master to see you. Perhaps I will send a photograph or two?’ I hugged him again. I got word from him a week later, that he’d found his Master and spoken to him at length, and underneath his letter was one penned in a different hand, and signed with the name he’d never told me, the name of his Master. That letter was effusive, and flattering, and to this day I carry them wherever I go. There have been other letters, of course, but those first were the best ones. I had helped someone, someone that I don’t think anyone else would have helped. It doesn’t matter now, why I decided to listen, why I decided to keep listening even after things got weird. It doesn’t. It changed the whole course of my career, though; I still don’t know how to explain my specialisation to other colleagues, or to my family or friends. My new client is a soft-spoken Creole gentleman, and already we’re thinking of convincing his primary lover to come to a few sessions.
