- IC CONTACT POST FOR MASKORMENACE -

[slightlyoffchilt]

"Hello.

You've reached the direct line of Doctor Frederick Chilton. As I am not available at the moment, you might assume I'm quite busy with something pressing. State your name and business, and I will return your call."

Comments

[slightlyoffchilt]

Yes, I had kept up with that saga. [Confounding to his own agenda, Yomiel had been courted as a patient. And while Chilton favored the obviously psychotic, for self-promoting reasons, he required some bit of control over the individual, some leash.]

I recall that the imPort in question found it all quite amusing. Our collective public image was tarnished for months. [Irritating for a medical professional.] Do you find that others, those like Yomiel, often prey upon you?

[dragony]

No more than the average, I would hope, but it stacks for me. Yomiel only picked me because of the physical proximity. The other one...

... I made a gamble with someone I shouldn't have. Not that I could have known it, back then.

[ She tries to shrug, "looking" to the side with a closed eye. ] But it wasn't until after Yomiel's confession that I realized what he had done while controlling my body—what the other had done, before—wasn't something I had done.

For a long time, I worried that it was my power, my empathy, that was the root of my violent actions... but it wasn't ever me, at all. So, if I haven't done anything like that yet, I'm not worried about it happening in the future.

There isn't any catalyst worse than what I've already survived.

[slightlyoffchilt]

You mentioned a gamble. [He wasn't about to let that go, tantalizing as it was.] One that you evidently had learned from. As clearly your capabilities as a survivalist is something of a learned process.

[Her sideways glance, accomplished with only one eye, was enough to insinuate the hint. Chilton wanted to know the trauma -- after all, that was what he favored to use in his treatments.]

[dragony]

A game, with stakes, to be specific. [ His assessment bleeds too close to compliment, so she reroutes. ] A variation of hide and seek, if I remember right. I had one day to "go to ground," to borrow vernacular, and if that person could get something to me in the two days that followed, they won. If not, I won. The prize was a favor.

It was pretty sketchy back then, too, but I was a lot more reckless those days.

[slightlyoffchilt]

Youth often provokes recklessness. What is more essential is that you did not repeat the same mistake.

[But how interesting. The sort of individual who would invite such a game seemed both whimsical and confident -- and while Ruka hadn't elaborated the precise favor, it was obvious she regretted her involvement. His gaze slid to her eyepatch.]

But back to your relationships. Are you thinking that you would prefer to refine coping mechanisms, or begin tearing down the walls put up?

[dragony]

[ She finds it easier to speak when she's not looking at Chilton; even if he's engaging her back, replying and prodding, the illusion of solitude helps. For that reason, she misses the way his attention refocuses on that miniature mask.

Still, a reply takes time to come for that question. ]

The former, I think. I should think the other option too volatile, considering... the people on the other side of those walls don't realize they're there. What's being held back.

[slightlyoffchilt]

Coping is the more sensible choice. [Said Chilton, aware that infusing his personal bias was not something a more orthodox psychiatrist might be inclined to do. But if Ruka was interested in someone tame and inefficient, she wouldn't have come to him, now would she have?] It is about adaptation -- that will be the reoccurring theme.

What is it that you do, already? To protect yourself. I don't want to regurgitate what you have already tried.