dr_robchase | (no subject)

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By now, six years and counting, Chase should have been ready for whatever he had to come up against. He should have been expecting the worst and thought -- stupidly, stupidly thought -- that whatever this place had for him, it couldn't be worse than what he'd already lived through. It was bad enough to see both your parents leave you again (whether by death or disappearance), bad enough to have a near-death experience, to constantly lose everyone you ever loved, but the one thing this place had never done was take him back to the harrowing moments he had growing up.

At least, not until today.

He'd been downstairs, in Gwen's old room, trying to figure out whether they could shift the space around. One moment, it was the spare room with its dusty floors and the empty bed. He blinked, only closed his eyes for a second, but when he opened them, he knew that smell. He knew the feeling of being closed in, and he swore he could even smell the faint aroma of gin in the air. Chase felt a sick lurching in his stomach.

"No," he begged, terrified that he was right back to where it all started.

What if, behind this door, his mother was drinking herself into a stupor. What if his father has left for months? What if he finds his baby sister, what if -- what if what if. Chase slams both palms against the door, feeling a stricken with panic as memories filter back and he remembers, all too well, the begging and the shouting and the pleading he did to get out of this room. The books were the same, the leather armchair still had the cigar burn in the arm, and the carpet had that same old musty smell from too many glasses of scotch and gin spilled on it.

"Let me out!" he shouted, his voice catching. "Let me out of here! Let me..." he trails off, a weak and frustrated exhalation of 'Mum, please' on his breath before he slams his palms harder against the locked door, struggling with the antiquated copper knob.

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"That doesn't mean I'm happy about what's happened to spur it," the Doctor said. In perfect honesty, he'd believe the lack of repression when he saw it--it was something harder to fix than just saying so.

Maybe if he hadn't been inside the room, it would've been different. If he had walked into it, he could have seen that it wasn't a trick to make him think that he was back there. "It could be worse, too, couldn't it." He wasn't joking, but admitting this quietly. "One of my parents could've been here with it."

"Yes," the Doctor said solemnly, softly. "It could have been a lot worse. Rob..."

He had been going to say he was sorry, but he had no idea how, or how to keep it from sounding patronising or ridiculous.

Chase managed a soft smile, keeping his head bowed against the Doctor's. "I never talk about my sister," he said, keeping his eyes fixated on middle distance. "It's hard. She's so much younger than me that we were never really close, but, this room, it reminded me of her."

"You don't have to talk about her now if you don't want to," the Doctor said, giving Chase a faintly concerned and wary look. "I don't mind, you shouldn't feel you have to."

Maybe he was just too used to repression from Chase that this seemed worrisome.

Chase shrugged, because if he didn't talk about it now, he felt like it had the chance to get buried deep down and he wouldn't bring it up again, simply because he didn't feel like it. "She's a lot younger than me. When I was fifteen, she was only two. My parents and their last-ditch attempt to save the marriage."

Clearly they were going to talk, and the Doctor needed to sit down, so he manoeuvred them towards the chair where he could perch on the arm. "It didn't work. But there's more to it, isn't there. More to her."

Chase stared forward into space, the guilt gnawing at him even though he knew that he'd done nothing to be guilty for. "She grew up in Mum's footsteps," was all he could say about it. "Blamed me for it."

"Not very fair," said the Doctor, though he knew Chase would have internalized that entirely, would have been completely shattered by it. "Self-determination, we make our own selves. Not without some influence, but still."

Chase gave the Doctor a slight shrug. "Yeah, well, what part of my life was fair?" he pointed out. His childhood, right up until he was sixteen, had been one horror after another. He didn't know how to get away from that or if he just had to accept it. "I never really saw her. She stayed with an Aunt when I moved away, but maybe I should've stayed."

The Doctor gave him a look. "And did what, exactly?" he said, simply. He'd have crossed his arms over his chest if he could.

"Honestly? Kept every bottle I could out of the house so she never got a chance to start," he said. "I screwed up with my Mum, I shouldn't have led my sister down that same path by not paying attention."

The Doctor looked intensely sceptical. "You honestly think that would have worked in the long run? For either of them?" Hadn't Chase read any stories as a kid about kids with alcoholic parents swapping their vodka for water, and how effectual that was?

Well, maybe he hadn't, considering Chase.

"At least I would've tried with my sister," he pointed out. "I just left, Doctor. I left her and I cared about myself. I was selfish for the first time in my life and look what happened," he said.

"Yeah, you got out and made something of your life instead of being slotted as an enabler for the rest of your days. Rob..."

The Doctor sighed. "I can understand why you think you should have tried. But there honestly very well was nothing you could do without hurting yourself as well as them."

"I feel guilty being the only one who got out," Chase said, bowing his head down lower as he stared at his palms in his lap, wishing that he could make that feeling somehow just go away. "What would you have done, if you were in my shoes?"

The Doctor gave Chase a long look, even if Chase wasn't looking at him. He lifted both brows. "I would have run," he said. "You know that. Terrible of me, but I would."

"So, at least we're peas in a pod when it comes to that." And the proof of Chase's cowardice was evident from one singular look at the passport. The day he ran from Australia was the last time he went back home. He returned, but never for anything other than frivolous trips to surf. It was easy to ignore his past if he buried himself in something else. "Can't run here, though."

The Doctor wouldn't have called it cowardice. Not him. He would have called it good sense. He sat for a moment, then said, "That's why you need to sit down with someone, really."

"I know," Chase admitted after a long moment. It was hard to say it, and it was harder to know that he was a little bit in trouble because of his past. "And I suppose House doesn't count?"

The Doctor merely gave him a look that implied that this was too ridiculous a question to even ask. "House will just tell you you're being stupid," he said, "in even nastier a way than that, possibly involving the word 'retarded' and definitely involving fucking as an adjective. No. He doesn't count."

"Fine, not House," Chase said with a roll of his eyes, even though he felt like at least House knew the whole story. He wouldn't have to explain, in depth, his whole history. There was a sort of convenience and relief in that, but he didn't want to say that aloud.

"House already has an opinion about things," said the Doctor, "and he's probably one of the worst choices for therapists on this island to begin with, unless you need your arse kicked into quitting something stupid." He lifted a brow at Chase, nearly daring him to disagree.

"He did get me to stop drinking as much as I was," Chase said, but mostly because he knew a part of him was still spoiling for a fight. "No, you're right. I'm sorry. I should talk to Will or Wanda. I'll try and make an appointment the next time I'm in the office."

"See 'arse kicked into quitting something stupid'," the Doctor said, not particularly offended or taking the bait. He knew Chase too well for that. Instead, he added, "If you don't make an appointment, I'll book one for you, you know. I'm that kind of sneaky."