After AnimeCon 2: Helps the Medicine Go Down

    Brian couldn’t help but frown, because it sounded like it wouldn’t be too hard for someone to do—that is, for anyone other than him. He suspected he knew in rough terms how he should act, what she wanted him to do. But, actually doing it was a high hurdle. Being really dominant with Emily, Stephanie, or even Kelly seemed to come naturally to him, because there was a certain throughline of mutual trust, love, and understanding that was easy to build confidence in their intimacy upon.

    To be violent or degrading with a partner really went against his nature in a way that soured the experience for him. Or, rather—there was some angry, aggressive part of him deep down there somewhere, but for years and years he had tensed his entire being to brace against and firmly suppress that side of him, because he hated everything about it. Brian wasn’t sure if he even could relax enough to let that ugly part of himself free even for a bit, and he was even less sure that it would be safe to do so.

    “I mean—or—?” Christine’s expression fell a bit the longer his contemplative silence dragged on. “You don’t have to, sorry. I shouldn’t have, no I shouldn’t have asked that. I’m sorry.”

    “Stop, stop,” Brian blew out a sigh. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t try. It’s just—”

    He looked away, exhaling in a heavy sigh.

    Would pretending to let that angry embittered half of him come out, while keeping his actual deep-seated issues under their same usual firm total suppression be okay? Would that be dishonest? Normally he would say no, that putting on the pretense of all of that was just part of being the dominant one or exhibiting a performance of control for his partner—but again, their situation wasn’t normal. The magic plugged them into one another on a much deeper, primal level that he wasn’t sure he could deceive. 

    “It’s not something we’ve really talked about,” Brian said. “But. I mean we did try, once, sort of, but it didn’t go well, and after that—yeah. My temper, my uh, anger, it’s something I keep a firm lid on. I mean a firm fucking lid on all of that. Because. Because I guess my dad didn’t, and the thought of being like that, or winding up like him—it really disgusts me, on a level I don’t think I can begin to explain.”

    “Okay,” Christine’s brow furrowed.

    “That’s part of, well, I think that’s why things went on the way they did between you and I—between Chloe and I,” Brian tried to explain. “Because I had that side of myself that would have pushed back, uh—reined in. Whenever I should have maybe vented, or asserted myself more, or thought I was getting riled up in that certain way, because yeah you did really know how to push all of my buttons—I walked away. I cooled off. I grabbed all of that, all of those feelings, and shoved them way way down there. And put the lid on all of that.”

    “Okay, that’s not okay,” Christine said. “That’s—yeah I think that’s what I mean. What I want. I want you to open that box, and I guess—I guess give all of that to me. Give me my just desserts. What I deserve. I think that, uh, that deep down that’s what I really want. What I need.”

    “I—” Brian had to stop and take a deep breath. “I just. I don’t think I can do that? I’m trying to think of a uh, a compromise, because this between us needs to be equitable, and it can’t just be you crossing mountains and pulling yourself through hardship on this insane proverbial journey to change into a different person. I also need to, well. Come to terms with some stuff. Stop bottling up everything. Since that’s not healthy. Just.”

    “Exactly,” Christine nodded in fervent agreement. “Exactly. It’s not healthy for you, and so. And so—”

    “I’m just not sure I can do it?” Brian admitted. “Don’t think I can release my darker half like that. Not after so long. I don’t know how bad it might be, I can’t imagine, and—I don’t want to. At all. I, uh, I took all of the parts of myself that I really can’t stand, and shoved them down there, and put a lid on it. I don’t want to let any of that out. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t even let those parts of me… be me, I guess? I don’t know how to explain it.”

    “Okay,” Christine said, trying to understand. “But…”

    “My first thought was to just pretend, because yeah maybe I could give you what you want, there,” Brian said. “But—it would be a lie. I know relationships are full of little white lies just to help uh, help smooth out some of the ups and downs that can be there from just being with a person. Just, I’m not sure it’s a lie you’ll believe, if at the same time magic fuckery is melding our minds into one another during the process.”

    “Right,” Christine said. “That… makes sense. A scary amount of sense.”

    “Yeah,” Brian said.

    “Because,” Christine continued. “With, hah, with the way I am right now? The way I’m feeling? It might wind up being me… ripping off the lid. Pulling all of that darkness out of you—because that’s what I want. Even if it’s not what you would ever want. And—that isn’t fair.”

    The idea sent a sudden chill up Brian’s spine, because he honestly hadn’t thought of it quite that way. In his mind, his repressed issues would always be some deeply personal, inviolable thing. Because they were his problems, his secrets, and the only way anyone else would ever have an inkling of them is if he explicitly told them about all of it. Which he was already struggling with.

    That might not be the case anymore now that others were directly tapping into his mind.

    “Hah,” Brian chuckled with a rueful smile. “Look at me. I was always thinking of how the magic bullshit makes you all vulnerable, and I thought I’d come to terms with it? But then, I realize, and I mean really realize that of course it means that’s gonna cut both ways? And—ughhh.”

    “So should we…?” Christine looked up at him with apprehension. “Just not?”

    “No, I mean—no that’s not fair, either,” Brian shook his head. “This stuff between us, between all of us, for it to be healthy it needs to be a compromise. We can’t back out of uh, difficult things only when I don’t like it, only when it’s not easy for me. That’s not fair, because I know just how difficult all of this has been for you girls. Working through some of these things. Opening up.”

    “So—?” Christine asked.

    “So, I think let’s start off small?” Brian proposed. “Baby steps. Don’t want to uhh, jump right into the deep end, before we can even swim. I guess ideally I’d want to only try messing around with my really dark feelings… supervised? Like, have a third party there to make sure things don’t get out of hand, or to stop us if—if I don’t know. Stephanie, maybe, since her power seems like it’d be good for monitoring all of that.”

    “Brian,” Christine took a deep breath. “It’s okay. You can just—let it all out on me. I think that your darker half, all of that? That you wouldn’t want the others to see that part of you. But, with me it’s okay. It’s completely okay, more than okay. It’s—it’s the part of you I want the most. That I want to let out, that I want you to put on me. That I deserve. That I really deserve.”

    “And again, I do get where you’re coming from, and I’m not sure I really agree,” Brian sighed. “Am I… being too reasonable? Too careful? Not wanting to just start off with—I don’t know. Facefucking you?”

    “No, I think—I don’t know, either,” Christine gave him a wincing smile. “I don’t want you to force yourself, if it’s not what you want. I mean if you know that that’s not what you’ll want. I, um. I just—I want you to want that. To let yourself want that. But, if you can’t—then, I don’t know. We’ll see. We’ll figure something out.”

    “I can pretend?” Brian offered. “Maybe it won’t make that much of a difference? You might still, I don’t know. Get enough out of it. To find it meaningful, still.”

    “No…. no,” Christine decided. “I don’t want you to have to pretend, either. I want—I want your real feelings. Your real darker half. Your real anger and rage and—everything I put into you. I want all of that back. I think I won’t be satisfied if it’s just you… going through the motions. Some of your first spanks didn’t feel real. Back in the car.”

    “They didn’t?” Brian was surprised.

    “Your first few, they weren’t,” Christine said. “Not really. I think they started off more… surprising? Then impactful in that way. But, then. Some of them definitely were real. I felt like. Some of them you really did put all of your—your something into. Some feelings. I don’t know. I can’t explain it, it’s just—silver stuff. Mirror image… observations. Of the way it felt like things went.”

    “Okay,” Brian said, taking a moment to think back and consider that.

    “So…” Christine nibbled her lip. “I think just a peek would be okay? A glimpse. Compromise is fine. To peel the lid back a teeny tiny bit, and give me… give me a little taste? Not the whole thing, it doesn’t have to be the whole thing or all of it. That would, hah, that would probably kill me? You would murder and dismember me, I imagine, because that’s what I deserve. You would have to. But, some of it? You could just give me some. Please.”

    “Murder and dismember you? Hah,” Brian rolled his eyes. “I don’t think so. I’m never going to go in that direction. I was firm on not killing you, I always—”

    “But you did kill me,” Christine said, gazing deep into his eyes. “You took a very real part of me, and—you snuffed it out.”

    Her saying it like that made him suddenly and deeply uncomfortable, incredibly self-conscious of the way he was sitting here with this ex-girlfriend in his lap. A dry ache crept up his throat and Brian was mentally reeling between what might have been brutal honesty he needed to hear and the suspicion that this sort of thing was a Chloe thing. The kind of thing Chloe would have said, simply because she knew it was the exact hurtful thing to say to get under his skin—and becoming proof that he had not completely wiped all of the ‘Chloe’ away.

     “Sorry, I just,” Christine didn’t turn her gaze away from him. “I don’t mean I didn’t deserve it. I did. I definitely did. I just think… I deserve even more than that. It wasn’t enough. My, um, my internal scales, my sense of right and wrong—they were so ridiculously skewed, back then, and you fixed that. You fixed that to the point that I know I still deserve more real punishment from you. I deserve to be an outlet for the dark feelings I put into you. There’s no other person that deserves that; just me. No one else can be the one you put all of that on. Not even yourself. It has to be me.”

    “Not entirely,” Brian deflected. “You know a lot of, uh, of all that started with how shitty my parents were to me. If—”

    “Okay, but some of it is, enough of it is,” Christine argued. “So. Please. For my sake… and for your sake. Let me have. What I deserve. Please? Even if it’s not nice—even if it’s not the sunshine and rainbows and good intentions and, and whatever all else you aspire to be. You are a great guy, Brian. But, you do have a dark side, you have dark thoughts and feelings and I know you do because I, personally, put some of them there and made all of that happen! I am the only ‘safe’ place you have to release those real feelings. So, please.”

     “You can be surprisingly persuasive,” Brian observed. “It’s… interesting to see. I thought I knew you, but then after we uh, after we exorcised all of the ‘Chloe,’ I thought maybe the meek, quiet and kinda subservient you was the real you. But, now I see that you’re more like this, actually. This is Christine. You have a lot more depth to you than I wanted to admit, and you know it would be so charming if not for—”

     “I’m persuasive here because I’m right,” Christine argued. “Or, maybe not right, I can’t know that, but because I honestly and truly believe that I’m right about this. It’s my honest conviction. About this. If you connect, you’ll see. You’ll see what I mean, how I feel. How strongly I feel about this. Just, kiss me and see?”

    “I’m so hesitant about all of this because my control over my dark side—it’s binary,” Brian explained. “I either force all of those thoughts down, completely down, or I don’t. There aren’t degrees? I don’t know that I can peel back the lid just a tiny bit and let you have a safe peek. I don’t know that it’s safe at all, and I don’t know that—that you can just open pandora’s box and be able to put all of the bad stuff back in there when you’re done and that bad stuff’s not convenient to have around, anymore. It’s either all locked away, or it’s all out. With like, no in between. No control.

    “And—and I really worry about. I don’t know. I’ve separated who I want to be and who I don’t want to be, and I don’t want to uh, to bring all of that back out into the open and let any of that be real or start to influence who I am, going forward. I think I could probably be a real selfish prick, if I let myself. Or some asshole. Or some unfeeling douche. I hate the idea of all of that, I hate it so much. And. I think that, well, being who I’ve chosen to be has been, you know. Helpful. Necessary. For the girls so far, for being the right person they needed me to be, at just the right moments.”

    “Maybe I’m just the right girl for the rest of you?” Christine suggested. “I just want you to at least please consider that. I do think you’re right, and that you’ve been great for them, and just what they needed. It’s been amazing to see. But, that’s not what I need from you. You know what I fucking need from you.”

    “Are you purposefully starting to kind of… antagonize me?” Brian asked in amusement. “Because you think it’ll make it easier for me to do this?”

    “I want to beg, and plead, and say I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry over and over again, forever,” Christine admitted. “To do that and nothing else, forever. But, all that does is make you feel worse and worse. About everything. I know how it makes you feel worse. So. I’m trying to—trying to help. If you, um, if you need me to act more like Chloe? To help you do what you need to do to me. I’ll do it.”

    “But, you’re not Chloe,” Brian countered. “So—”

    “I’m a sad sorry mess that just wants to sob and cry and give up on everything,” Christine stared up at him. “Or, I was until you kissed me just now. Then I could, well, I could see more clearly. I was more grounded. I can act like Chloe, if it will help bring out your darker half so that you can use and abuse me—that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. It’s the same one you’re making every time you take big huge parts of you and just… suppress them down into a box and keep the lid on it. It’s the same.”

    “I wouldn’t say big huge parts,” Brian sighed. “Maybe just—”

    “We won’t know,” Christine said. “We won’t know until we open the box and find out.”

    “Maybe I just don’t want to use and abuse you?” Brian argued. “I made a promise that I wouldn’t, in fact. I swore over Chloe’s grave that I’d take good care of you. Right before we filled it in.”

     “Okay. I can understand that,” Christine said. “That’s—that’s a very Brian thing for you to do. I guess. But, what does taking good care of me mean? I need my absolution—I need to pay for what I’ve done to you, for the darkness I put into you. For all that I contributed to the dark side you have to lock away. I’m never going to feel redeemed if I’m just some housemaid or personal assistant you treat with dignity and respect for some set amount of time. Not even if it’s years. That will never redeem me, Brian.”

    “How am I going to feel about it afterwards, if I just intentionally mistreat you?!” Brian argued. “I just. Try to see things from my perspective again. The things I think you want me to do to you, the way you want me to take things out on you aren’t things I’m okay with doing. Dredging up all of sorts of anger and hate that I’ve basically by now mostly left behind—that doesn’t help me. The best thing to do would be to put all of that behind us, for good.”

    “Okay,” Christine surprised him. “I do agree. You’re right about that, when you see it from that perspective. Just—my perspective isn’t wrong, either. They’re just. In conflict. What you need and what I need. Now we know? Hah. Now, we know. What to do about it, then? I don’t know. It’s late, anyways. Really late.”

    “I’m not saying that we shouldn’t—” Brian sighed. “Listen. I am willing to compromise. I always have been. Just, I need your help figuring out a safe way to go about this. Something that isn’t too far, some way we can—bridge between our perspectives, a bit.”

    “Fuck my face,” Christine said. “Facefuck me. Please. I want you to, I’m willing—I consent. I want you to be rough. I’ll enjoy it, even if I don’t? Just in that different way, that will maybe satisfy even more. I want—I want you to do to me what I always did to you. Want you to use me to get off. You can do it just this once, after who knows how many times I basically did that to you. Please.”

    “That’s—ugh,” Brian let out a laugh of dismay, shaking his head. “I just keep coming back to thinking, like—two wrongs don’t make a right. You know? Hurting you just because you hurt me, that doesn’t—”

    “Okay,” Christine stopped him. “It’s okay. I understand. I’m trying to understand. I don’t want you to do it if you’re not okay with it, and I don’t want you to just pretend to do it, either. I want—well. We can compromise. What’s the smallest amount of abuse you’re willing to heap on me? I guess? Something that’s, I don’t know. Stupid and trivial to you, or just petty. Something petty. And, we can work from there, maybe. So that I get what I need, I help you in the way that I need to help you, and you help me in the way that I need.”

    “Us making out was fine, that seemed like it was helping you just with that,” Brian said. “No abuse or anything negative necessary.”

    “It did help,” Christine glowered. “Because—because I was spiraling. I’m not spiraling, anymore. Not right now. Now, I need abuse.”

    “No, I mean—maybe we can just make out, and let the magic take over, and see where that leads us?” Brian suggested. “Maybe what you need isn’t abuse. Maybe a deeper connection will help… level you out, a bit more.”

    “Maybe,” Christine said. “Maybe it will just connect us. Maybe it will make you understand, really understand why and how and how much I need to take the lid off that dark part of you and take away all of the weight that I put there.”

    “It is getting real late,” Brian murmured, blinking heavy eyelids.

    “Yeah,” Christine said. “We can stop here, if you want. I’m… not sure we’re getting anywhere, anymore. It’s fine—we knew this might take a while.”

    “Let’s say I do let out some of my darker urges on you,” Brian proposed. “A little bit. To be fair, can that also mean that you accept some of my love? Genuinely let me in, accept positive feelings of, you know. Admiration, mutual appreciation. That would be a good compromise.”

    Christine pouted.

    “You… you weren’t supposed to think of it like that,” Christine complained. “I don’t want any of that. I don’t fucking deserve any of that.”

    “Just like I don’t think you deserve abuse,” Brian nodded. “But, I do think you genuinely need some love. So—a perfect compromise.”

    “How much can you abuse me, then?” Christine demanded. “Can you really hurt me? It has to be… enough, it has to really matter. It has to count, at least. This can’t just be—it has to be at least you fucking my face.”

    “You keep circling back to that,” Brian chuckled. “Are you just… into that?”

    “No, I mean—maybe?” Christine began to fluster. “It just, it makes sense. Considering what I always did to you—since I would just grind on your face to get myself off. And not do anything about getting you off. It’s fair. It’s the bare minimum of what you should be doing to pay me back for everything I’ve done to you, it’s a start. The rest we can work on from there.”

    “I don’t think it’s quite the same,” Brian mused. “You, uh. Christine, you sucked on my dick just a little bit, waaaay way back when we first started dating? You’ve never given a serious blowjob, I don’t think. Let alone working up to stuff like facefucking. You would just choke and gag. I’m saying it wouldn’t work the way you think it would.”

    “I can choke and gag,” Christine shrugged. “That’s fine. That’s what I deserve. It’s not supposed to be nice for me, it’s—”

    “But I’m saying it wouldn’t be nice for me, either,” Brian said. “Putting you through extreme discomfort would like, fast track me to losing any kind of boner. Because; I’m not into that.”

    “Oh,” Christine frowned. “Oh. That does make sense. Well, shit. Then, I don’t even know. What do we do?”

    “What I wanted to do is pretend the time with Chloe never even happened,” Brian said. “Clean slate, fresh start. I get to know Christine, we start up a brand new relationship from there. But, you’re not going to be able to do that?”

    “No,” Christine shook her head. “Not after everything I’ve done to you, I can’t. I’m sorry.”

    “Okay,” Brian said. “Then… how long has it been since we’ve had sex?”

    “Sex?” Christine asked. “Like, sex, sex? Not counting like—other things? Just penetration? Intercourse?”

    “Yeah, that,” Brian laughed.

    “...It’s been a while,” Christine admitted, thinking back. “I guess a long while.”

    “Have you… been with other guys, then?” Brian asked with reluctance.

    “No,” Christine answered in a quiet voice.

    “I guess that’s surprising,” Brian said.

    “It is, and it isn’t,” Christine bobbed her head in acknowledgement. “I thought about it. Sometimes a lot. Because it would have been one of the best ways to hurt you. But, it also would have thrown the game, I think it would have been an easy excuse for you to cut your losses and move on. Which I couldn’t allow. I needed you to be bogged down in commitments that you wouldn’t be able to escape from, before I went there.”

    “Alright, alright,” Brian sighed. “I… don’t think I want to hear it.”

    “I think you do need to hear it,” Christine said. “I think it will help your dark side come out.”

    “And I still think that’s probably the last thing either of us need,” Brian said. “I mean—Christine, we just went through all of that ordeal to put your darker half away for good. Dredging up mine is probably—”

    “Did you know I corrupted your Skygrim save file?” Christine recalled. “Since I knew you had almost a hundred hours put into it, that it was starting to become your refuge from all the stress you were dealing with. One of the posts on the Radfem Nibblr I was on mentioned how to ruin a character’s saves for her boyfriend, so. Yeah. It was easy.”

    “Well,” Brian said, steeling his nerves. “I mean. At least now I know what happened, there.”

    “You had a box of sentimental stuff from when you were younger in the storage closet—I took it out to the dumpster one day, while you were at work,” Christine admitted. “Because I was mad at you. Childhood toys from way back when, little knick knacks from your grandmother. Photos. Just stuff you might have been attached to.”

    “Fuck,” Brian tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling.

    That one hurt, a lot.

    It actually had him reeling for a moment.

    “Your mother actually used to message you?” Christine said. “Every other month or so, on social media. Just to reach out. Judy Douglas, right? I knew your real issues were with your dad and stepmom and not her, so I gleefully deleted them whenever they popped up. To make you feel alone, to make it so that you felt like maybe she never even thought about you. I pruned a lot of your messages from everyone, especially in the last six months. So that no one could ever get through to you.”

    “I think you had told me that already,” Brian let out another long sigh. “Or, maybe Emily brought it up?”

    “Oh—and it might not matter ‘til you get a phone back again, but I disabled your ping notifications for when people try to um, to summon you by username. In your account settings everywhere. So, all of those were going unseen, unless you happened to be checking the chat and actually there to catch it, actually reading through everything.”

    “Okay,” Brian said, unfazed at this point.

    “I used to just laze around all day, doing fuck all except for like, an hour before you came home?” Christine remembered. “Then I’d scroll through the anti-men Nibblr, just hunting for juicy things to be mad at you about. Because, I knew you’d be tired from your shifts and not really in the right frame of mind to argue with me.”

    “I could definitely tell,” Brian said with a wry smile. “Yeah.”

    “It was all just to hurt you,” Christine stared up at him in frustration. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Doesn’t that make you want to push back? Now that you know? Don’t you want to stand up for yourself, Brian? Or at least do something?!”

    “I did,” Brian murmured, looking down into her eyes with a distraught expression. “Like you said—I took all of those parts of you, and I snuffed them out. Murdered them. Somehow turned you into a pitiful creature who craves being abused, instead of delighting in her abuse of others. Maybe it was something my subconscious put on you, maybe deep down I thought this was your just desserts. I wish it wasn’t. I don’t want this for you—watching you suffer like this, it honestly really tears me up inside. I can’t stand it seeing it.”

    “No—no,” Christine said, her expression going from stunned belief to confusion and then to despair as her eyes grew wet. “Y-you shouldn’t feel any fucking sympathy for me. Not after everything I’ve done! You—Brian. You should hate me. Hate. Me. I know you do, because you have to. I know you have to h-have, have all of this hate buried deep down inside of you—and you NEED to let it out! You need to let it all out on me, Brian.”

    “And then what?” Brian shook his head. “What’s the point? I won’t feel any better by hurting you.”

    “Y-you will, though!” Christine pleaded. “Please, if you can just—try. Believe me. You’ll feel so much better. Because I deserve it. I know you hate me, because you have to hate me, and, and—a-all of this, this ah, this lovey dovey nonsense, none of that can go anywhere until you just admit that you hate me,  and take it all out, t-take ALL of that out on me! So that we can move past it, move on, and—”

    “Christine,” Brian sighed. “I’ve already moved on. I’m already way past all of that. You hurt me, yeah. A lot. Then, you broke up with me—that hurt too, God only knows why, but it was also a relief. I mostly just felt real empty. Then, I went to AnimeCon, and—and everything happened. The girls helped me get over you. Hell, even all the bullshit with running into you, and the stuff you tried to pull on us, that really helped me move on. So. We really just don’t need to go back and dig up past feelings, and—and honestly, it’s starting to feel weird that you have such a fixation on uh, helping me vent out my dark side.”

    “It is weird,” Christine said. “Yeah. It’s bizarre. Even crazy? Chloe never thought about your feelings at all, except as little levers with which to control you or hold things over your head—leverage—or build into her certain narratives. But, I do care. A lot. Right now it’s everything to me. I do have a fixation on bringing out your darker half, because—because I am a mirror.”

    “So, what—it’s because of your charm thing?” Brian frowned. “Makes you want to obsess?”

    “My whole charm thing centers around self-reflection,” Christine looked up at him with glistening eyes. “It’s the, well. It’s the whole point of it. It forces me to see, really see the truth of myself. Even if it’s dark and ugly. When you connect into my mirror and become a part of, of this silver magic mess, what do you think my mirror does, Brian? You look deep into the mirror, and the mirror looks deep back into you. The silver bullshit bared all of the ugly truths of Chloe, allowing me to start holding myself accountable—allowing me to be me. Christine. The real me. When you put yourself up to the mirror and what’s going to happen is it’s going to reveal the truth of you, even the bits you want to repress.”

    “Fuck,” Brian said.

    “Yeah,” Christine agreed. “So, you can keep being your best Brian around the other girls, maybe that’s what’s best for them. Pushing down all of your darker instincts and just trying to be a really great guy. You are a great guy, mostly, better than I ever imagined was even possible. But, what I need is all of you, the good and the dark—whether you like that or not, I need the whole real you that I see, because I am a mirror, because that’s what the magic made of me. Not even just the magic—the circumstances, our issues, everything has made it this way. I need to be the one you let your dark side out on.”

* * *

    “...Fine,” Brian finally said.

    Christine was still sitting upright upon Brian’s lap, but after talking back and forth for so long her stiff posture was forgotten and she had allowed herself to become comfortable there. With this one word from him, uttered in a tone she had never heard him speak before—that comfort evaporated. There wasn’t emphasis on the word, he didn’t stress any part of that single lone syllable, but everything about the way it was delivered was different, and in a way that made a self-conscious silver shiver travel up the back of her neck.

    Something within him had changed, and because within that certain connection they shared her sensitivity spiked. The reflective synesthesia gripped her now with dread and terror, because removing the lid from this pandora’s box was more than just Brian’s earth opening up to reveal a chasm, or some unlit depths of a valley of repressed feelings. It was more like the end of an eclipse, with the entire world that was her concept of Brian moving out of the way to reveal a cosmic horror of pain and hate beyond the scope of her imagining.

    What have I done. What have I done to him. What is this. What IS this?!

    The bright planet Brian she had felt encompassing everything shifted out of position to reveal a black hole of gibbering pain, hysterical rage, and blind, violent madness that almost made Christine involuntarily wet herself. She had asked for this because she thought she knew it, but it was unknowable until it loomed so enormous and threatening within her mirror that she froze up, to terrified to even recoil back. The raw hurt Brian had locked away flooded out to fill every nook and crevice of the reflection, the teeth of rage seized her heart and then shook in a frenzy like a rabid hound ripping flesh ragged, and loneliness flavored with all-too-familiar despair ate away at her psyche like acid.

    “I’m sorry,” Christine squeaked out, barely able to breathe. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

    She knew that Brian had never in his life felt more alone than he had when he was living with her, but experiencing the depth of that misery firsthand when he released his stranglehold on it felt as though she was being doused with corrosive and helplessly watching meat sizzle into mush and slip off of her bones. She knew it would be bad, she knew she was uniquely positioned to be the one to feel how bad, but nothing could have prepared her for feeling all of this.

    At the forefront of her mind were the platitudes about the fury of a patient man, the anger of a gentle man—rousing this amount of animosity up out of such a person as Brian all at once seemed like a terrible mistake. There was no heat in Brian’s anger, because that’s not what his temperament was like. His anger ran cold, such a deep, chilling cold that it burned, it was the ice of a heart freezing over from abuse and neglect, and the simple fact that he had hidden all of this so deeply away had kept the pink flame, the red star, and the rush of blue waters from completely thawing out that permafrost way down there within him.

    Stephanie CANNOT be allowed to come into direct contact with… with THIS, not with her empathy, Christine knew, her body still stiff and unresponsive with abject terror. She has helped. A lot. Her nature is so good for him. I can see how it’s not as… SEVERE around the edges where they’ve all touched upon him. But, but THIS?! I hate to say it, but he was right to hide THIS much away from everyone. This all at once like this, this would be too much—it needs reflected upon. Then doled out to her in sessions small enough for her to digest in her flames bit by bit. Not just her, either. Emily’s water can carry some of it away, Kelly’s starfall can—I don’t even fucking know. We’ll need Rebecca, too. All of us. Maybe even more than that. I didn’t realize things were THIS bad.

    “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Christine found herself whimpering. “I’m sorry—”

    But, it was way too late for apologies now.

* * *

    Letting loose his strangling grip over all of the hurt and anger was incredibly liberating, but even that he had to do in stages that took deep breaths and had to build up into a kind of horrible momentum. It honestly felt great not crushing all of that down to the very bottom of his psyche, because the constant strain of always doing that in the back of his mind now going slack and getting a chance to breathe for the first time in countless years was amazing. Also, it felt hideous, because all of the vicious disgusting abominable thoughts and feelings he hated burbled up from within him to the forefront of everything.

    Not being able to find that box of stuff from my childhood was just an ANNOYANCE before, because I thought it’d just been misplaced and would turn up at some point, Brian seethed with intense vitriol. But, no. Now I know it’s GONE. The little keepsakes from my grandmother’s desk that got passed to me when she died. The toys and stuff from when I was really little. All of the early childhood photos and memories I kept safe in that album—gone. Forever. All of that stuff was completely irreplaceable.

    Brian’s total suppression of his darker half would have been something he would have had a lot of trouble easing up on—until he heard Chloe admit to what she’d done with that box. It became a focal point, a chink in the armor around his heart, and letting himself feel rage from there began to unravel everything else. Because of the life he’d led he was a deeply sentimental person, and hearing that she’d tossed away those things so precious to him on some cruel whim really wound up driving him to the brink.

    If I’d known back then—if I’d found out? Brian thought. Our relationship would have been done right there. Funny how some trinkets from the past would do that when so many other things I just kept letting slide and dealing with. No, I’m mad. I’m genuinely fucking mad.

    He was a little afraid of what he might do to her right now, but also it was like he was discovering that he didn’t care about what might happen at all.

    Chloe sitting here in his lap had gone stiff with fear and was babbling out excuses because she was still tapped in enough to feel all of this happen, and that was maybe a little validating. She had definitely been right in that she was one of the main architects of his suffering, and so Brian was happy in a bitter way to have her witness on that magical level the full extent of what she had put him through. At the same time, however, having her here in his personal space irritated him, and he wanted nothing more than to shove her off to the side on the couch just to get her the fuck off of him.

    But, do I want to HURT her? With a grim set to his jaw, Brian started asking himself the important questions. I think… I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. I’m not really even THINKING, right now I’m so fucking angry.

    To his surprise and relief, though his unleashed pain felt like it could expand outward into any number of insane cruelties, their reach did feel and define certain limits. Like Actress had said, his connection with the girls was through specific magical apertures, and raw hate wasn’t something that could transmit in its purest form simply because he did love and care for her. Not pure hate that is—Brian definitely understood that he had a love-hate relationship with Chloe.

    No, not Chloe. CHRISTINE, Brian reminded himself. She’s not Chloe, anymore. She really isn’t. She IS the person who hurt me, who bent over backwards to try to fuck me over at every possible turn—but also, she ISN’T. She’s grown past that. My head knows that, and I guess it takes doing THIS for my heart to really start to catch up to that fact.

    Being bonded into one another like this didn’t transmit pure hate, but it did fill her mirror with love-hate. That intimate sort of anger and disappointment, that reflective sharing of the pain she had put him through so that she could understand what she had done, and to Brian’s annoyance—it really opened up that part of himself that was set on disciplining her in all of the ways she had been asking for. Feeling that mental thread unkink itself from the chokehold he’d had it in for all of these years made him realize he had never really punished Chloe, that she had needed a firm hand all along, and that maybe a huge swath of all of this suffering he’d gone through could have been avoided if he had just done something, anything, when her actions went that far out of line.

    Never let myself even really consider it, did I? Brian thought, grieving for how naive he had been. Because of how things had been with my dad. I just knee-jerk thought that ALL punishment must be bad and evil, and that I must never allow myself to become like him. An abuser. But, I think maybe a bit of correction, or at the VERY LEAST standing up for myself and having more of a firm stance with her could have avoided most of the misery there with Chloe. How fucking sad is that?

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