Therapy

by Broken Phalanx

Chapter 3: Intervention

Counsel sat at his desk, contemplating the array of heavily dog-eared books he had fanned out upon the table. Five, set to the side and stacked meticulously, were catalogs for most novel publications within the last year; they were also the only to be noticeably unwrinkled. The rest were heavily worn textbooks concerning the nature of identity, narcissism, pathological lying, and adoption of alternative personas to cope with personal issues. There was also a candy wrapper being used as an ad-hoc book-mark for one of the tomes, but that was neither here nor there.

The clock above the door revealed the time was 12:45.

He tapped his desk a couple of times, deliberating, before carefully re-arranging the books to their original locations. Well, except the catalogs; those, unfortunately, had been borrowed from the local library, a towering building with an equally menacing matron. The catalogs, with a grimace, were carefully filed into the bottom drawer of his table; there was an unmistakable flinch in his hooves as the corner of one of the catalogs creased.

The Princesses, for the most part, forgave such transgressions; Hard Cover, on the other hoof, would not. She’d also spot a steam-pressed book page faster than a forensics team, and a new book, though considered passable, would still nevertheless earn her ire.

Counsel, on a less problematic occasion, would’ve reflected upon the efficacy of the Book/Friendship Princess’ pork-barrel politics towards libraries, but this was neither the time nor the place.

He popped a sugar cube into his mouth for moral support and glanced at the clock one last time with a wry grin.

Today, he felt, was going to be interesting; he was just wishing it wouldn’t be.

* * * * * * * * * *

“Come on, Twilight!”

“No! There’s no way he doesn’t know, Spike!”

“And you think not going is going to solve it? The jig may be up, or it may not; you said he looked like he believed you.”

“Nopony could possibly miss that.”

A moment passed in silence as Spike considered this; he, personally, felt there was no way a pony could’ve missed a slip-up two-hundred and fifty years in the making, but at this point he found himself trying to convince Twilight of the opposite. Debate wasn’t exactly his strong point; he found having to consider the nuances of other paradigms an anomaly in his adult life, since, for whatever reason, even the most irate of individuals tended to become quite complacent when he was around. Maybe it was his grin; few things can resist a winning personality, after all.

“You know,” Spike finally said, “I could just drag you there, and the illusion would absolutely be shattered. I won’t,” he added quickly, as Twilight looked at him angrily, “because that’s not right. So, instead, I’ll just point out that you Pinkie Promised, and leave it at that.”

Twilight opened her mouth to retort, closed it, opened it again a moment later, closed it again, and glowered at the ground even as her horn lit up.

“Thanks, Twilight,” Spike said, as she changed colors into her alternate guise.

She grumbled something unintelligible in response, her teleport whisking her away a few moments later.

* * * * * * * * * *

1:03 PM, and still the waiting room was deserted. Counsel pressed his hoof against his forehead for a moment, pondering if he had somehow scared off Ms. Flicker; he had been feeling rather off-kilter ever since Farasi had made the front page in multiple publications, and he probably should not have accepted this job, but he had, perhaps arrogantly, assumed that this was going to be simple. For a while, the day before, he assumed he had a grasp on the general direction Autumn Flicker’s thoughts worked. Then, with breathtaking sincerity, she had declared herself owner of something she very clearly couldn’t have written and everything had gotten horribly, horribly complicated. . .

Counsel turned around to re-enter his office.

He was mulling over his thoughts so intently he didn’t hear the initial pop of a completed teleportation spell, right behind him; the six not so subtle detonations that followed, however, immediately tailed by an explosive grunt of ire, was not so easily missed.

Counsel jerked his head around, his eyes darting across his waiting room; for a moment, he could’ve sworn there were a mass of translucent shapes tangled together in his office, but as soon as he blinked the image faded. Still, in the manner of one who has long since discarded the notion that ‘seeing is believing,’ he trotted a couple of steps closer and waved his hoof through the questionable space.

Nothing.

“Strange,” he muttered, before relaxing and turning around to reenter his office.

He reared back a moment later when he found himself face to face with Autumn Flicker.

“Sorry I’m late,” She said blandly, even as Counsel desperately tried to swallow the knot of panic that had formed in his throat. “There were a couple of problems with some of the staff . . .”

Counsel let her drone on as a sort of background noise as he busily pressed his hoof into his chest in the vague hope it would prevent his heart from popping out; frankly, it seemed like a losing battle, but eventually time turned the tide.

Then he finally breathed, deeply, trying very, very, hard to keep in mind that this pony, despite having terrified the living daylights out of him, was still a patient, and as such, probably didn’t need to deal with an irate doctor in what should be a safe haven for discussion. Even though, just this once, it would’ve been thoroughly justified.

“Yes, yes, let’s get our appointment started,” Counsel said with a small laugh, hoping that by doing so he could expel his irritation; it was successful, for the most part.

The door clicked behind them.

All was silent in the waiting room for a few moments, before, as one, half a dozen elite Royal guards, wearing their easily recognizable armor, popped into existence; one of them in particular was sweating, having only been a couple of inches from the doctor’s investigative hoof sweep.

“Wasn’t she supposed to tell us before she went to these things?” muttered the youngest of the Starbursts, one of only two Unicorns; she looked slightly out of breath from having maintained the invisibility sphere.

“Watch yer mouth, newbie” replied an older Pegasus in a vaguely Trottish accent, before stretching out her wings with a quiet popping noise. “The princess does as is her wont, an’ we’re the best because we’re the ones who can pick up the slack.”

“Lieutenant Torch Light, ma’am. We’ve got problems,” breathed the other Unicorn, as he stared intently at one of the upper corners of the waiting room.

The other five Starbursts followed his gaze; a camera stared merrily back at them, winking with its red recording light.

“Oh pudding.”

* * * * * * * * * *

“So. . . if you don’t mind me asking, where did your guards go today? I was really beginning to feel an honest to goodness bond with them,” Counsel said, jokingly, as an icebreaker. It was utterly failed, if Autumn Flicker’s expression were anything to go by.

“They. . . are elsewhere,” she replied, shortly, her eyes looking somewhat shifty. “They can’t accompany me everywhere, after all.”

“Ah, yes, I suppose that’s true;” he said cheerfully; he knew this was another terrible lie, but at least this time it was easy to parse from the truth, if only by body language. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, and it may have slipped my mind entirely last time, but has anything happened recently? Any particular reason you’ve decided to visit, in other words?”

“My friend recommended I come around. He’s overreacting, but I promised, so I might as well humor him,” she said, pursing her lips.

“Ah, yes, now I remember. This . . . friend,” Counsel murmured, “Is he a colt-friend-” The explosive coughing followed by gagging killed the rest of that line of thought.

“Sooooooo. . . I’m assuming that’s not the case, then.”

“Absolutely not! He’s my little brother!”

“Ah, well then,” Counsel replied with a chuckle, “The gene pool thanks you.” Then, in a far more somber voice, once Autumn no longer looked on the verge of choking on her own tongue, he asked, “Ms. Flicker, although you appear to be quite well protected by your, ahem, occasionally present guards, do you feel particularly safe within your domicile?”

“Eh, not really. I mean, it’s essentially on a weekly basis that the research teams stumble across something that should’ve remained undisturbed, or a spell will go hay-wire. But its home,” she replied, without a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

Counsel continued to stare at her, an eyebrow raised in genuine amazement; slowly, upon his notepad he scribbled a short message to himself.

Namely, that Ms. Flicker, despite potentially being some variety of nobility, might’ve had less of a grasp on social nuances and metaphors than the average duck. And that perhaps one of her recent misadventures had resulted in substantial damage to the self-preservation portion of her brain, if she was willing to continue living in a place where horrors were regularly summoned.

The expression didn’t go unnoticed for long, however, before Autumn tilted her head and asked, “That was what you were asking about, right?”

“Ahem, sorry, no,” Counsel said, delicately, having never really been forced to make the metaphor more blatant. “Erm, I suppose another way of parsing the question would be, uh, do you find yourself in any intentionally constructed danger due to the machinations of a house guests or servants or what have you?”

“What? No! If somepony tried to hurt me, they’d have some difficulty considering my servants; and if they somehow bypassed my guard, well, then they’d have a real problem on their hooves, since then they’d be facing me.” Autumn squinted at Counsel for a moment before asking, a bit testily, “Why didn’t you say it like that the first time?”

“I suppose it’s for the same reason why open heart surgery doesn’t typically start with striking the barrel with an axe, ma’am,” Counsel said in reply, perhaps letting a touch of his own frustration color his words, though he quickly tried to recover by adding in a far more humored tone, “Subtlety works to varying degrees, and not every pony admits home issues, or lack thereof, so directly. It’s a societal thing, I suppose.”

The response this time was a thoughtful nod.

Counsel cleared his throat after a moment passed in peaceable silence; personal preferences aside, there was still more ground to cover, more things that needed to be raised, and still so much time remaining before time was up.

“So,” he began, “You mentioned a brother. . .”

“Yes. He’s adopted, but at heart he’s just as much a pony as you or I.”

“Oh? Is he griffon?”

“Oh, he’s-” her face froze for a moment, flicking between a variety of expressions so quickly that Counsel hardly believed his eyes, before finally concluding, lamely, with, “-a griffon, yes.”

“Oh?” Counsel said, hiding his mounting distrust with a cheerful demeanor of his own. “So, that’s a brother. So, what about paren-”

“Passed away.”

“-other siblin-” Counsel tried to say, before being interrupted again.

“Him as well.”

“-childre-”

At that point Autumn Flicker froze and stared at Counsel with an unreadable expression.

“. . . my condolences, Ms. Flicker. I’m sorry if I’ve violated any boundaries or stepped on your feelings; it wasn’t intentional, though I know it hardly makes up for it,” Counsel said, mentally berating himself; while, he knew, she hadn’t given him a great deal to work with, needling her like this was not only unprofessional, it was also bordering on malicious. “My deepest, most sincere of apologies.”

She nodded mutely.

The room went quiet.

“Would you,” Counsel finally said, grasping at the one real nugget of knowledge he had about Autumn Flicker that didn’t likely involve some lie, “would you like to talk about some more literature you’ve read? I’ve been brushing up on some of the more recent releases, personally.”

One step forward, two steps back; of course, here, now, perhaps taking a step backward would be for the best. There were better places to stick one’s hoof than in a mine-field.

* * * * * * * * * *

There was a hospital, once.

Starburst sat in her bed, looking vaguely miffed; stitches, bandages, dressing, the whole nine yards had been applied to her hind-leg, and one of the doctors had put a wrapping around her eye to staunch and treat the wound on her cheek. They said she was lucky, considering how the cuts had gone to the bone yet hadn’t taken her eye or limb, but at the moment she found herself just wanting to go back on duty.

She sighed in frustration; Captain of the Royal Guard, and seriously wounded within five months as such. Of course, it wasn’t really her fault; she had been quite safely out of charging range when the engineers had finally smoked the Griffon anarchists out of the domicile, but then Greenhorn advanced early, the anarchists came swirling out of the smoke like some sort of avenging demons, and she had tried to keep Greenhorn from getting killed and everything else had turned into a blur except for the pain.

It wasn’t the claws that had surprised her; everypony who had even a few weeks of training in the guard knew how to avoid being gutted by those talons, or at least know how to stay out of range of the things. It was the modified wing-blades; they were supposedly purpose built to work only for ponies, yet this most recent altercation had revealed at least one case of them being jury-rigged to fit the more bulky form of a Griffon.

And then there was the problem of how the anarchists had gotten them; getting a decent pair of civvie wing-blades was an exercise in futility, and the wing-blades in question seemed, upon greater inspection, to have originally been Guard weaponry.

Of course, if the prisoner was cooperative Starburst might’ve discovered useful information, but thus far the only surviving anarchist had proven unwilling to talk. Most of the legal interrogation techniques had already been tried, up to and including probing the Griffon’s mind; futile, unfortunately, since the anarchist’s mind was closed like a steel trap.

“Where is she?”

It was common knowledge amongst ponies that the royalty possessed what is commonly known as the Royal Canterlot voice; it’s when something is said with such magnitude, such irrepressible volume, that little stands in the way of its will.

What was not common knowledge was that the royal Canterlot voice was a pale imitation of another voice, far quieter yet by equal measure less resistible; it was a tone that brooked no argument, an intonation that reality itself would surrender to rather than resist. It was, in essence, the voice of a parent, so immeasurably angry than even their burning fury ran cold, if only because there was no way to truly communicate such intense wrath in mere shouting. It was a voice that hinted at hurricanes and volcanic eruptions, of hungry nights and agonized hooves. It didn’t need volume, as any being that heard it would silence itself rather than stand in its way.

It was Twilight’s voice at the moment.

Starburst grimaced; this was neither the time nor the place she needed to see her mother, and at the moment she didn’t particularly feel up to arguing.

Then chunks of the stone wall leading to her private hospital room peeled away like paper, and the high pitched keening noise of instantly ionized rock grew swiftly in volume before suddenly ceasing. An Alicorn with burning mane and tail stood before Starburst’s bed, steam rising from her, for the moment, red eyes.

“Hi, mom,” Starburst said, wide-eyed; of all the mental images she had of her mother, this wasn’t what Starburst had been prepared for.

The eyes, bloodshot with red irises, Starburst distantly noted, glanced at the bandages before becoming utterly occluded by the steam.

“Who did this to you?” Twilight said, in that same voice from earlier.

“I’m pretty sure it’s for the best if you don’t know right now; we don’t want anyone dead, mom,” Starburst said in reply; she would’ve been more startled in her ability to maintain her professional demeanor in the face of a living inferno, if it weren’t for Twilight’s reply.

“Anyone?” Twilight murmured, before her horn pulsed for a moment, like a magical alternative to echolocation. “The Griffon who’s cuffed to their gurney, isn’t it?”

“Mom, seriously, you shouldn’t-”

The Alicorn turned and exited the room, the walls reconstructing behind her with only a slightly scorched surface on the stone as any evidence she was ever there.

“Oh cripes,” Starburst muttered, as she gingerly dragged herself off the bed and onto her legs; it had been a few days, but there were limits on what even modern medical magic could do. Thankfully, her legs didn’t give out.

It hurt to walk. It hurt to blink. It hurt to breathe.

Distantly, Starburst heard various doctors trying to stop her, but it was all background noise, meaningless in all regards. All there was, was a series of doors. And finally just one. Through the red mist of pain, a hoof she recognized as her open wrenched it open just as Twilight’s horn light lit up.

What followed were several seconds of gibbering followed by minutes of sobbing, as Starburst stared, in shock, at both her mother and the now weeping Griffon.

“What did you do?” Starburst muttered in a whisper, before breathing deeply, locking eyes with her familiar, lavender, mother, and repeating in rising volume and anger, “What did you do?!”

“Nothing even close to what I wanted to do.”

“What you wan— are you insane?! We’re not torturers! And how are we going to get info out of him now?!”

“I imagine he’ll be incredibly cooperative in a few moments, Starburst.”

Doctors and some patients were beginning to stare from around the doorway at the arguing mares.

“You don’t get it, do you? You obviously don’t! This is my job; you’ve just stepped all over everything I swore to uphold! You couldn’t even trust me to do my own job! You just. . . you just. . . what did you cast on him?”

“An empathetic bond spell. Nothing more. He’ll live.”

Starburst stared first at sobbing Griffon, then back at Twilight, mouth agape; for a moment, Starburst felt a flash of fear towards the Alicorn, parent or not. A part of that must’ve shown through her eyes; Twilight looked almost like she had been struck. The sobbing from the Griffon redoubled in that moment, but neither pony particularly noticed or cared.

Finally, Starburst asked, “Who’s emotions is he feeling, mom?”

There wasn’t an answer; Twilight had teleported away.

* * * * * * * * * *

“. . . und meiner meinung ist-”

Somewhere in the last few minutes, between her rapid pace and alternating between about five languages and, in Counsel’s approximation, maybe 12 dialects, Counsel had finally surrendered any attempt at following along or interjecting and merely felt a more and more dumbfounded expression grow on his face. Eventually, Autumn noticed the look of utter confusion on his face, and slowly wound down her speaking before finally stopping.

“I’m sorry,” Counsel said, when he noticed the lull in the outpouring of speech, “but would you mind taking that from the top? I, er, lost track when you started speaking in other tongues.”

“It probably wasn’t important anyway,” Autumn said, simply; it was clear, however, that she was preoccupied with something.

“Well,” Counsel said, not quite sure how to follow up on that. His mind groped around for something to continue with, before finally, it came up with something suitably psychological.

From within his desk he withdrew a small stack of inkblot pictures.

Autumn glanced at the abstract images for a moment before saying, “Aren’t those things obsolete? There are spells that do the same thing, but more effectively.”

“I imagine there must be,” Counsel replied cheerfully, “But seeing as how I can’t really cast spells, it doesn’t mean much for us at all.”

Besides, it’s one thing to peek inside another’s head and something else entirely to quite literally live a patient’s entire lifetime in the span of a second. That sort of thing has led to more than one complication; doctors would occasionally rise from the trances thinking they were their patients, and nothing short of royal intervention could reverse such an alteration.

It wasn’t all negative, though; several outdated notions of consciousness had been either updated or tossed aside as obsolete, and the idea that personal willpower was essentially a non-issue in decision making had been effectively sundered.

It had all worked out for the best, anyway. So it was alright. Really.

Hopefully.

“So,” Counsel said, clearing his throat as well as his mind, “here’s the exercise; I’ll show you these inkblots, and I want you to say the first word that comes to mind. Is that alright with you?”

Autumn nodded her assent.

“Good, good,” Counsel murmured, before his hoof flicked up to reveal a blot that looked a great deal like Celestia’s cutie-mark.

Autumn stared at the picture for a few seconds before she said, in a tone that dripped with sarcasm, “Celestia. No, wait, Luna.”

“It’s supposed to be an exercise in subconscious association,” Counsel said with a chuckle as he quickly shuffled the picture back into the stack, the lack of an honorific to either Princess being mentally noted for later thought. “Not insightful responses. So, please, just the first word that comes to mind.”

His hoof revealed another picture; this one was a conglomerated mass of sparkles.

“Memories.”

Fire.

“Anger.”

Something crown-like.

“Duty.”

A pony.

“Protected.”

Celestia’s mark, yet again.

“Worry.”

She blinked a couple of times after replying with that, before her eyes flicked towards the office clock and she muttered, “I’ve got to leave.”

“Ms. Flicker . . .” Counsel began, slowly, thinking over his words even as the other pony rose. “Ms. Flicker, please, wait.”

“It’s time for me to leave; I’m only signed up for eleven appointmen-”

“Ms. Flicker. Please. If I were a money grubber, I’d be charging by the second; please, I’m just a bit curious about something, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“I don’t want to talk about family right now, Dr. Counsel.”

“May I ask about something besides, that, then?”

“. . . go right ahead.”

“Ms. Flicker. You . . . have servants, correct? And an adopted brother who, while very much loving and concerned, seems can only visit once in a while. But, er, do you have anypony you can regularly talk to just . . . just as an equal?”

Counsel was rewarded by a moment of contemplation on Autumn Flicker’s part, before she winked out of existence with her teleport spell. He sat back in his chair with a sigh, brow furrowed; there was frustration there, but it wasn’t really directed towards anypony.

“How little did we actually manage to cover today?” Counsel asked himself, before he sighed again and muttered, “The instant I think I’m understanding her, she reveals more baggage. And I still don’t know what was up with that lie the first day; every other fib has been blatantly obvious . . .”

He groaned before he cupped his face in his hooves; even if he knew the answers to his questions, it would still probably only be scratching the surface in a quagmire of neuroses.

Perhaps a walk would make him feel better; he rolled out of his chair lazily, opened the door to his waiting room, and promptly grimaced.

“Well, she forgot her book,” he murmured to himself while in the shadow of the enormous tome. Then he glanced about his office, and noticed something was missing.

The corner had been expertly plastered up to the extent where, if one didn’t know where to look, it would’ve appeared entirely natural.

“Where’s my security camera?”

Author's Note:

Told you not all her problems were related to immortality. Just a lot of them.

Dunno if I did this well; I was shooting for a strained relationship that Twilight had a part in over-stepping, even if it was well-intentioned. Of course, it was hurting a being with the pain that individual caused in the first place, and not one iota more, but still.

Also, I'm pretty sure I took the idea of wing-blades from someone, but at this point I don't really know who came up with it. If you happen to be reading this, mystery person, please, I'm not trying to be a bastard; I just think the idea is really damn cool.

Expect the next chapter to take a bit more than a week; school is a difficult thing to deal with, and I got to memorize some stuff from a lot of my classes.

Comments

[DarthSylar12]

I am loving this story so far. Even taking out the references to kilala97's characters you have really made the superman impression (as in I believe your characters and their situation.) I eagerly await more of the story. I get the feeling that Twilight's issues go far deeper than the mere glimpses we have seen and is fitting that a character of her type and age would have more problems. Expecting great things
Darthsylar12

[Broken Phalanx]

4955987

I'm glad that I've managed to hook you! I hope that you find the ensuing chapters enjoyable as well.

[Unbreakable]

Seems pretty good read. Keep doing the good work.

[Broken Phalanx]

4956713
. . .
Damnit. How'd I miss that guy?
*does all the facepalms*

Thanks for telling me that; I would've done this entire thing without remembering that guy. Cripes.