dr_robchase | [For Rahne]

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rahne sinclair

[For Rahne]

Chase wasn't sure that he'd ever be really used to the quiet of the psych office. Sure, even the clinic wasn't that busy, but there was the guarantee that if there was a sudden emergency, you would have to think on your feet and have steady hands as you operated on a person. Here, all you had was quiet. Even if there was an emergency, they took time. The mind was a complex and difficult thing to bear and Chase was still getting used to the pace, even if he knew the ins and chemical outs.

He was shuffling about the office as he put in his hours, sleeves rolled up and books being shelved away as he researched slightly more strange conditions to match the slightly strange people the Island tended to house.

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It's taken Rahne a bit of time to work up to doing this, but in the end, it's inevitable. After what happened -- and that's how she has to think about it now -- there's nothing else for her to do, and it isn't like it will be the worst thing in the world. Back home, she had Doc Samson when she needed him. Now, she'll have someone else.

She just also will need to do a whole lot more explaining.

"Ye're the doctor?" she asks, reaching the doorway, sounding a whole lot more confident than she actually feels. The things she has to say aren't easy in the slightest, and she doesn't envy the job of having to hear about them. "Are ye terribly busy?"

Chase glanced over his shoulder, slightly surprised that anyone was coming in at all. "I'm the doctor, yeah," he agreed, gesturing to the chair with a hand as he took quick steps towards the door to get it shut and to give themselves some privacy. "Have a seat, I'm all yours."

Rahne takes a deep breath, then, closing her eyes for just a moment before she crosses to the chair and sits down. This shouldn't be difficult -- in fact, it's the easy part -- but some part of her feels a slight bit hesitant all the same. She ignores it, shifting a little in her seat before she speaks again. "I was hoping to, ye know, talk."

Chase made his way back to the desk and perched on the edge closest to her as he took in her body language. "How about we start with introductions," he suggested with a small polite smile on his face. "I'm Dr. Chase, I'm here usually on Mondays, but you can probably find me here most days if it's an emergency. What's your name?"

"Rahne Sinclair," she replies, "from Scotland, originally, but been in the States for a few years. Before this place, anyway." She doesn't know why it seems important, but it does; if she's going to start getting into details, which the point of this is, she might as well get the basics out of the way first. It will all probably be important eventually. "I can do Mondays, if that's what works best for ye. Not like I've got a busy schedule around here or anything."

"So you'd like recurring appointments," he clarified before much more could be said. "And, pardon my forwardness, but usually I'm the person that people go to when there's medication involved. Have you ever been put on anything before that might impede our talks or that you might require going forward?"

"Not before, no," Rahne answers, shaking her head. She doesn't see herself needing to change that now, but she doesn't think it's her place to say so, either. "And... I think recurring would be best, aye, at least for now." She's got more than her fair share of issues, after all, and not the kind of ones that get worked out easily. "Does that work, then?"

"It works," Chase assured, grabbing a pen and piece of paper and gesturing to the desk. "All I'm writing down is what you're saying so I can look back on it later, I'm not making judgments," he promises. "What is it you wanted to start with talking about?"

"I suppose I should start with a bit of history before I get to the real serious parts?" Rahne asks, eyebrows raising. It's the closest thing to levity she's managed in what at least feels like a long damn time, and even then, it doesn't feel like it does much good. Anyway, it's the truth -- she has a feeling that jumping right in with something like 'I ate my father' wouldn't be particularly helpful. "Where I come from, and all that?"

"That'd be helpful," he agreed as he glanced up at her sinking back into the chair. "How about full name for starters, where you come from, the year, and general culture?"

"Rahne Sinclair," she answers, and it's pretty clear that with this, at least, she's just listing off facts. "From Scotland originally, then spent a good deal of time in New York, and I'd been in Colorado when I showed up here, in 2008. I -" She pauses there, well aware that even with the varied people here, her history isn't exactly a normal one. "D'ye know anything about mutants?"

Chase couldn't help a tiny subdued laugh at that, which he quieted quickly. "I know mutants, yes. I'm not the world's expert in them," he clarified swiftly, because it wasn't like he wrote books on them, but he had been with Jay long enough that he knew part of the background. "But I'm well-versed in that particular affectation of genetic alteration."

"I could turn into a wolf," Rahne says bluntly, grateful to not have to explain the way it worked. "Back home, that's what I was." Her hands curl into fists at her sides, fingernails pressing into her palms. She misses it, God help her, she shouldn't but she feels its absence far more keenly now that she's talking about it again. "And I suppose I don't need to tell ye that a lot of people weren't too fond of us?"

Chase nodded at that, recalling the faint sick sensation he got when Jay told him about the hateful things that people did because they didn't like mutants. "Yeah, I'm aware of the intolerance," he said quietly, a furrow to her brow. "At what age did you realize you had the ability?"

"I was about fourteen," Rahne answers, the five years that have passed since then seeming more like an eternity, another lifetime. "For most people it's then, around puberty. But when I changed, I - well, the man who raised me organized a mob to kill me. I didn't find out until a few years later that he was my biological father, too."

"And I'm guessing that the gene didn't pass through him?" Chase offered what was likely a fairly obvious deduction of the situation. "Did you mother have abilities or was it a recessive trait, if you know, obviously," he provided, because she might not.

"I never knew her," Rahne says, shaking her head, "and I don't think he really did, either, beyond what he paid for." If there's a hint of bitterness in her tone, it completely can't be helped. No matter how guilty she feels for what she did to her father, the man was an utter hypocrite. "As far as I know, though, no, and he certainly didn't. Sometimes it just happens that way. I got lucky."

Chase nodded at that, writing down the family history. "And any problems other than the mutation? Genetic diseases that might have done a number on your DNA?" he chanced.

"None," Rahne replies, shaking her head. It'd be simpler that way, she knows, but if there's any other explanation, she doesn't know it. "It's just... something that happened, and everything changed because of it."

He scribbled that down on the page and set his pen down on the desk so he could look at her, giving her full attention. "Okay, I think that's the background I need for now. What happened to make this a current problem?" he probed gently.

"Well, it's a bit complicated," Rahne starts, breath catching a little as she tries to figure out the best way to explain it. "There was this anti-mutant group called the Purifiers, they... believed that mutants were sent from the Devil, and they infiltrated a government facility, attacked, killed more students..." That isn't the point, though, and she knows it. "I found out my father was working with them, so I joined this team, X-Force, that was going to try to stop them -- not because I wanted to hurt him, mind, but because I was hoping... I could talk him out of it, that he might have some sort of feeling for me."

Chase nodded at that, pushing aside his own father issues and making sure that this was about Rahne. "And prior to the Purifiers, could you describe how you and your father best got along in the most recent days leading up to that?"

"We'd not seen each other in... years," Rahne says, frowning. She'd never had a problem with that, of course -- the man had tried to kill her -- but the subject itself is a less than pleasant one. "We never got on well, though, not even before my powers first manifested. He wasn't exactly the nicest person."

Chase nodded and looked over the paper to meet her eyes. "I definitely understand that," he noted wryly. "Not the killing part, but I have a little experience with fathers who aren't the nicest. Anyway, go on. You were talking about the Purifiers." This definitely felt like it was bound to be a doozy of a case.

Rahne's first instinct is to stop things there, ask what he's talking about, see if it could even compare, even if she hasn't got the right. Only in remembering that this her first session and she's practically talking to a stranger does she stop herself and focus on the task at hand instead, no matter how painful. "I went ahead," she explains, "before the others, hoping to talk him out of it, and got caught for my trouble. The rest of the team showed up, of course, and there was a fight, but they took me, drugged me, brainwashed me."

Chase set the papers aside and nodded slowly. "Was the drugging a one-time event or are you able to recall if that happened more than once?" It would make a difference in how he viewed her brain chemistry and whether the compound was something he had ever seen before.

"Only the once, I think, but it was enough heroin to nearly kill me," Rahne murmurs, speaking almost entirely to herself. That part, she doesn't remember much of, but it's not an easy thing to relive anyway. "We thought they had tried to kill me -- we, I mean, the rest of the team, they got me back. The Purifiers had other plans, though."

"I'm going to take it to assume that this brings the other factor into play," he said, tapping his pen lightly against the table. "The part with the brainwashing? Do you know how long it took them to implant ideas?"

"Couldn't've been long," Rahne says, shaking her head. The whole ordeal is a blur to her, that part especially, but she knows her teammates. There's no way they would have waited. "A day or two, maybe. It seemed like everything was going to be fine when they brought me back -- I'd been shot in the knee, but we had someone to heal it -- but then..."

For the moment, at least, she can't continue, can't physically bring herself to say what she did, even knowing it only gets worse from here. The incident with the Purifiers is just the start of it.

Chase nodded as he looked her, settling back in his chair and wanting to give the most time that he could, not wanting to rush her along. This was a big deal and he knew that it couldn't happen all at once, sometimes. "We can talk about the rest in another session if you need time between these," he offered quietly.

"No, I can keep going," Rahne assures him, that moment all she needed to collect herself again. Besides, it isn't like there's any shortage of other things she'll be able to talk about later. This part of the story is just the beginning. "Unless ye're short on time, or think we should wait?"

"I'm not, I just wanted to make sure we weren't pushing too much at once," he assures with a nod of his head. "You were talking about the brainwashing. What did they attempt to make you do?"

"There was -- another one of the mutants," she says slowly, a distant quality to her voice. "Warren Worthington, called Angel. 'Kill the angel,' they said, 'take his wings.' Something about using them to build an army... And I did. Attacked him and brought them back."

Chase winced slightly at that, but he managed to subdue most of his reaction (which wasn't about that even so much as he was imagining Jay in a similar situation). "Well, you're sitting here talking to me now quite clearly, so I'm assuming there was a way to break the programming they did. Were they able to do it fairly quickly, at least?"

Edited 2010-01-28 14:02 (UTC)

"They didn't," Rahne corrects, already feeling her stomach sink at what has to come next. That he winces barely bothers her; it's the sort of reaction she'd expect with a situation like this. "Later, the rest of the team, they got someone to help undo it. Too late."

"I'm sorry," he said gravely and quietly, setting aside paper and pen for the moment. He didn't need those things to remember in this case and he just watched her, waiting to see if she needed more time or if they should press on. "How long ago was this?"

"I showed up here in August," she answers shakily, the weight of what's left to tell still heavy on her shoulders. "This was just before that, I... I killed my father." The last she blurts out before she can stop herself, eyes wide and nearly fearful. "Not on purpose. He had a gun, and he was standing in front of those wings, and when I saw him... I was still affected. I changed."

The implication, she hopes, is clear, because even if this is going to be a regular thing, she really doesn't want to have to spell out exactly what she did to him.

Chase nodded at that again and held her gaze as he leaned forward and watched her very, very carefully. This was definitely not his usual case, but it wasn't as far out as some of the things he'd heard and he'd witnessed some fairly hefty things. "Okay, well. Rahne," he began simply. "What it sounds like is that we'll be mainly focusing on that issue. My goal is not to get you to heal over it, but to come to terms with it. Do you object to treatments like hypnosis?"

"Not as long as ye can take me out of it," Rahne says with just a moment's hesitation, reminding herself that it isn't like being brainwashed. It's still just the beginning of the story, but it's what the whole thing centers around now, and she knows for a fact that she wouldn't be here if not for the way things ended with her father. "Anything ye need to do."

"It's not so much a suggestive state that I want to put you in, more meditative so that you calm yourself," Chase said, shifting to find his book on the subject to offer it to her. "I've had experience with this in med school and here on the Island."

Having no reason to doubt him, Rahne nods, fingers tracing over the cover of the book after she takes it from him. It sounds different enough that there shouldn't be a problem, anyway, and by now, she has to imagine that the last vestiges of whatever the Purifiers did to her have worn off. "Alright, then," she agrees. "I think that should be fine."

He nodded as he reached for her file to add that note to it, knowing that much, at least. "Do you have a support system here on the Island? People that you know that I could suggest you talk to in the event of a harrowing session?"

"I do, aye," Rahne confirms, grateful for that, if not much else. She honestly didn't know what she'd have done if she were dealing with all of this on her own. "Do ye need to make note of names, or do ye just take my word for it?"

"No, I trust you," Chase assured easily, giving her a small smile to prove that fact, even though he hasn't got much to go on in the name of trust. He doesn't need it yet. If things get bad, he can ask around. It's a small community. Better to give her his trust now.

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