Rights and So forth; Nope. Don't own anything.
Warnings; Nothing explicit is happening. This is actually really tame.
Rating; Probably PG for language.
Psychosomatic Remembrances
Part One
"So. How have you been, Mark?" Dr. Armstrong's voice is orderly and mellow. Like her office. A place for everything, everything in it's place.
"Good. Yeah. Good." Mark sat in the chair beside the desk and discreetly wiped his palms on his jeans, and then forced his fingers to lie flat.
"How was the vacation?" Dr. Armstrong asks, smiling.
"Good." He realized that was a lot of good for the space of a minute and hastens to elaborate. "I, uh, tried what you suggested; just relaxing, no late nights, no parties. Lots of quiet. Bummed around the condo a lot. Pool, you know." He didn't think his parents believed he needed the place in Florida just for relaxation, but then, they didn't really care what he got up to while there as long as it didn't result in copious property damage.
"How did your leg like swimming?"
Mark looked down at the limb in question.
It had healed almost to perfection. He was done with physical therapy, and the doctor was more or less at the 'fuck off, my surgical awesomeness has cured you, bring on the next challenge' point in their relationship. The break had been clean. Mark had the X-rays to prove it. It seemed like everyone was only too happy to tell him that he'd been lucky. So lucky. He could be maimed. He could be dead. A big cumbersome cast, and months later it came out, skinny and smelly and whole. All the x-rays looked good. He didn't even have a fierce scar to scar small children with.
If only it would stop hurting.
"It's still bothering you." Dr. Armstrong supplied when it went quiet a long time. Mark nodded, rubbing his palms on his pants again. He didn't know why Dr. Armstrong made him nervous. Maybe it was the suits. Always black, with these sets of jewelry that matched. Her pen was always poised over the notepad, and her gaze was always dipping from him as she scribbled. He never tried to read her upside down writing. He didn't think he wanted to know.
"What about the dreams? Did you have any while you were gone?"
Mark nodded.
"Can you tell me about them? Were they different?"
Mark closed his eyes and dredged back, fumbling through thoughts left greasy once passed through wakefulness. He'd known the question would come, and wished all the quiet and relaxation and borne some fruit. For months he'd tried keeping a Dream Journal on the understanding that extended documentation could sharpen clarity. It had been bullshit. He felt weird writing down his dreams, even when they were ordinary. Like a fifteen year old girl chronicling her acid trips.
"Nothing new. Same old." He rubbed the knee. It ached.
Her eyes flick down, then back up to his face. "Does it hurt now?"
He nods again. Duh.
Her abrupt change in stance sent the hairs on Mark's arm prickling, as she leaned forward and folded her hands on the desk, over the top of her notes.
"Mark," She broaches patiently "We've talked about how this pain you are experiencing is psychosomatic. Your doctors can't find any reason for it."
"My leg hurts." Mark repeats, knowing he sounds stubborn. He's heard this. It's insulting when Doctors look down their nose at him and tell him he isn't in pain, when some nights he just lies there and feels it ache. They think he just wants the painkillers, or at least one hinted at that. That getting hooked on prescription pills was sucky and how he was glad Mark wasn't going down that hole, because, clearly everything in his leg was fine.
Jesus, when had he become this guy? Catherine used to call him 'her goofy poodle'. He used to be unrelentingly good natured. Now he was just...crabby. It was seriously not right.
"I'm sure it does. We've talked about a lot of things together, but I think we can agree that you and I might not find the answers you are seeking."
"So, what? You want to get rid of me?" It came out snappier than he meant it, on the heels of insult.
"No. But I do want you to get better; there is something eating at you Mark, and I haven't been successful at getting to the core of it. Part of being a good Doctor is to know when your methods aren't working." She smiles. Probably it was a reassuring smile. Other patients had been assured by it. "I want you to go see colleague of mine," She had the business card already out, he saw. It had been tucked under her pad. She handed it to him. Cindra Thorton. There was a little butterfly next to the name. It made Mark's stomach cleanch.
He looked up at Dr. Armstrong. "A hypnotherapist?" He couldn't keep the incredulity and disdain from his tones.
Dr. Armstrong leaned back in her chair. "You have something against hypnotherapy?"
He didn't mention that it was probably more bullshit than the bullshit he was already forced to endure. He just looked at the little card, saying nothing.
"I think Cindra might be able to help you find the answers you're seeking, Mark. You just have to be open to it."
Hypnotherapy. It's all he can think of; goofy tv shows where hypnotized people strut around like chickens or are forced to forget things they witnessed, like murder. He jams the card in his pocket, no intention of calling some woman with a butterfly on her business card. Sure, his Dad would pick up the tab, as he had Dr. Armstrong's, but that was because he felt bad about his gimp son, and signing a check was a way of showing some parental concern from the deck of a yacht.
Mark goes home, to his apartment. It's untidy, but spartan. He doesn't know what to do now he has been chucked over by his therapist. Psychologist. Whatever Dr. Armstrong had been. Not the kind that prescribed pills.
He doesn't know what to do. Not just about therapy, or the leg that bursts into shuddering agony or low throb as the mood takes it. About any of it. Life. Job. Every thing he had thought was going to work out charmed- and hadn't things always seemed rosy for him?- had turned sideways and melted. He isn't going to call some hypnotherapist so she can tell him his leg hurts because his life is fucked. He knows that.
Mark can't run any more, but he rustles himself into work-out clothes and walks the two blocks to the closest twenty four hour gym. He's a member. When he can't sleep he comes and he lifts, and if his leg isn't acting up jump-ropes, or uses the machines. He'd gotten flabby, during recovery. He wasn't quite back to the operating condition he wanted to be.
Not mentally, either, he was forced to admit. When he was spinning in a hospital bed, his leg maybe destroyed the sensation that settled over him was of dissatisfaction, as if he'd shed some part of his skin and left unknown things pink and raw. When he wandered back into his life, there were things about it he didn't care for, and couldn't place why.
He works out until his mind is smooth and blank, until there is nothing but the burn of well used muscles. He doesn't rise to the occasion when a blonde in a sports bra strikes up a conversation and asks him out for a smoothie, which is a pity, since she was was sporting a pair of tits that were just his favorite kind; full enough to hold onto without loosing the perk. It's not that he doesn't find her attractive, because he watched her stretch out and was not unmotivated in his pants. It's just not...right, somehow.
He goes home, worn enough to dull his mind. He opens a beer and eases himself onto the couch. The hollow apartment fills with the mindless drone of television as he flicks it on then abandons the remote in his lap. There is a thumping from the floor above in protest, so Mark notches the sound down.
He lets his brain ooze. Ignores the crumpled business card on the table. Pledges to forget about going into work tomorrow and the path he cannot find and what the fuck he has against beautiful women with nice tits that want to fuck him. He watches things he isn't really interested in. Sitcom re-runs. Endless commercials for cel phones. Infomercials.
When he dipped into sleep, he doesn't know. Only that he is there, in the throng of it. Sounds thunder around him, and he knows there are horses here, and men. Each shouts and screams in the chaotic frenzy that is battle. The rattle and clang of weapons is all around him. There is a sword in his hand, and he knows the grip intimately. He knows battle. He knows this hideous mess, just as he thinks it should be more orderly, with troops formed in shapes with training. Not this melee. There is no leader shouting commands. Just a seething knot of men trying to end one and other. How many are injured by their own comrades in the frenzy? It's undisciplined.
Opponents lunge for him and he dispatches them with ease, their faces nothing but feature-less smudges that fall away. Men keep coming for him, armed in all manner of ways, but they don't daunt him. It isn't the fight that has fear blooming in his chest. It is something else. Some fervent need that lays on his chest like a granite block, and has for the last year. A need that sits on his chest at all hours, even the ones he tries to press it away.
He didn't always slip into the dream so easy. It's been slow, coming this far. At first it was just him standing, holding a blade, sensation a vague echo. Then he was on a battlefield, bodies crashing against each other, first in slow motion, then in gradually richer detail. Then he was moving through the sea as it churned around him. No matter how clear it became, purpose was always resounding through his body.
His leg hurts when he twists away from a lunge and it almost buckles under his weight. It hampers him. He would be moving with sleek ease if not for the way it hobbled him.
A horse falls before him, shrieking as the rider's hands flail. He blocks, but his body, always so strong and reliable, feels as if he is running through peanut butter, and he must, must surge through the bottleneck of people. He must find-!
Mark wakes up yelling, his leg singing in agony. He's sagged to his stomach on the couch, the beer bottle sweating on the coffee table. The call was desperate and seeking, and Mark doesn't know why, only that he hurts, from the inside out.
"Mark Waterman." Cindra Thorton has a dreamy quality to her voice, a low thrum. She takes his hand. Hers is very warm.
They go into her office, a space that is small and dim. It doesn't look as dippy as Mark thought it would. There are no wind chimes or statues of angels. Just a bowl of fancy polished rocks and a reclining leather armchair with a blanket folded across the back. He chooses to sit in the waiting-room type chair across from the desk.
They sit for a pointedly long time in silence. Cindra just looks at him. He thinks she must be fifty, with squinty glasses and a long braid going gray she hasn't bothered to dye.
"What would you like to tell me?" She asks at last.
Mark stops himself from rubbing his fingers over his eyes. He knows she's read the paperwork he meticulously filled out, asking him what he wanted to achieve through hypnosis, and so he just summarizes. "My leg hurts. Everyone says it's in my head; I broke it on a run upstate, when a hillside gave way. Too much rain. I had to wait in the ravine, in the river until someone else came along. Now it's healed and I have the dreams. And all of a sudden I keep thinking nothing is right. Nothing is the way it should be." He doesn't mean it to be rude, and he hopes the weariness of it all seeps into this woman. He can't really say how farting around at his Dad's firm now seems a purposeless exorcize because he has the feeling there should be more. It sounds too much like he looked death in the face and found himself, a useless playboy, wanting, and that is not it.
"I see you wrote 'this is not about my parents being terminally uninterested in me'."
"Everyone goes right to the Daddy and Mommy issues. This has nothing to do with them. They are people who had me. I was raised by good people who did love me, despite the paycheck they were given for my welfare. I know that. I don't want to waste time examining it."
She doesn't write anything down, but looks at him again for a long time before asking questions. Some of them are the same as Dr. Armstrong's. Who. What. Where. Why. How. He answers, trying hard not to be curt.
He isn't precisely sure how he ends up reclined in the chair with the blanket covering him. One thing led to another, and he found himself listening to her sleepy, even voice, guiding him down stairs into a deep-sleep mode. He isn't really sure that he is under, despite her prior reassurances that she would be looking for signs, except that he feels slightly sluggish. He still feels 'here' when every dramatic representation of hypnosis featured people apparently out of their skulls. He's here and doubting.
But he finds, when she asks him questions, answers bubble from the back of his mind. They don't do anything very strenuous. She familiarizes herself with him, suggest that his mind be open, that when under her care this deep sleep place be one of safety and. She asks him to find a Special Place in his mind. A place where he is safe. He pictures a riverbed in a glen, not unlike the one he spent five miserable November hours waiting in. It's greener. Lush. Colder. Icy water rushes, and above trees blot out most of the sun. An empty funeral pyre is laid on the shore. It fills his mind, almost unexpectedly, this unseen place. It is a special place, for some reason. It's enough to make him feel strangely calm when he leaves the office.
He wants to think it's bullshit, but reserves his opinion. He doesn't know why answers flutter to his lips when he is under. That's the thing he hates about hypnosis. It isn't easy. It's not like opening a book and reading what your subconscious has written down. Sometimes he knows answers, but doesn't know why. Sometimes there are no answers, despite how he hungers for them. Yet even more times, the answers only bring more questions. He finds himself shedding silent tears unexpectedly while under. It's embarrassing.
The weeks pass. It's different. Something is happening to him, even if he isn't sure what it is.
One day Cindra takes him down stairs, more stairs than ever before. Deeper and deeper down, until his feet are heavy as stone. They go to his Special Place. He doesn't think of it as a joke anymore. She asks him to tell her about it again, even though he's described it to her a couple of times already. He does. He tells her about the trees, and the water, and the pyre.
"Who are you, when you see this place?" She asks.
What? She knows who he is.
"I am Marcus Flavius Aquila." He answers.
It terrifies him. That isn't his name!
Cindra's voice is soothing. "Why does your leg hurt?"
"I was wounded in the service of Rome. I am lamed." It's like he's speaking, but he isn't.
"Are you a Roman Soldier?"
"Yes. No." Both answers are right. Ironic. He'd secretly wanted to go into the armed forced when he was young, make a difference. His parents disapproved.
"Marcus, the time when you lived is long passed. You aren't Marcus, any more. You're Mark. You must let the pain of your leg go. You don't need it."
"No. I cannot."
"You cannot what?"
"Let the pain go."
"Why can't you let it go?"
"..." He falters, but the answer is there. "So...I'll remember."
"What do you need to remember?"
He surfaces, like something is pulling him. Not like when Cindra eases him back. It's harsh and hard because he knows there is something to remember. He just doesn't know what. Cindra smiles. These things take time. This is really excellent progress. He should be really pleased.
Which of course, precipitates a month long plateau.
He's agitated, swimming through the shapeless pictures he realizes must be memories, and not boogeymen he peopled his dream with from Braveheart and Gladiator. Memories from some other time and place, when he was named Marcus Flavius Aquila and he was a Roman Centurion. When he inhales he can smell it. Dirt. Sweat. Horse. Manure. Leather and the sweet metal and wet scent that is spilled blood, spilled gore. He knows the fingers of his sword hand are twitching atop his knee back in the real world, but he can't make that stop. He doesn't know how much he is saying out loud, only that the mumble is constant, that as he sees images, their description spills from his mouth, as he lives it half thoughts that float across his mind drip from his lips.
He isn't frightened for himself, even though his leg throbs. A centurion shouldn't be afraid. And he's not. He's faced battle before. He's afraid for him. The thing unremembered.
"What are you looking for, Marcus?" It's a voice from above, prompting as he scans the shaky, indistinct horizon. It's just over there. Not that many steps now. He just has to pass along the dirt field, the skim down the embankment.
A body slams into his. Jarring. No, a shield. There is a scream of foul breath and he wields his sword. He circles his opponent, frustrated because he doesn't have time for this.
"What are you looking for, Marcus?"
He's supporting the corpse, his sword buried into the gut. Wetness floods over her belly, hot. He shoves the corpse away. It tumbles with a cloud of dust. He jumps over it.
He can't see! There is sweat in his eyes, and the world is listing and he's trying not to panic. He skims to the top of the embankment, but there's a horrible, new feeling in his gut. It boils and sears him, and he's crying. A feeling that as much as he wants to run down and shove men away from the embankment, he won't want to know what was beyond, but he has to go anyway. Where is he, where is he?
He's scanning, searching through the bodies, through the figures, looking, heart shuddering. He can't find him. By Mithras, where is he?
It rips out of him. A scream. "Esca! ESCA?"
He's out. Shot out of hypnosis. Shuddering and his face wet. It's humiliating. His heart is frantic in his ears. He throws off the blanket because he's sweating so badly it smothers him, then claps his hands over his chest. They're shaking too, so he digs them into his flesh.
It's still in his nose. The smell of it. The adrenaline of combat sings through him and he wants to think it's all bullshit, bullshit except that he knows it's not. Something in him longs, a keen ache rent open by a name.
"I'm not gay," He says when he can summon breath and the will to make words. They sound strangely sullen. Defensive.
Cindra just looks at him.
"I'm not!"
"I didn't say you were, Mark. You were on a battlefield. You could be searching for a comrade. A brother. A father."
He can't stay. He can't stay and be with a past centuries dead that creeps up on him. He makes to get up, but Cindra holds up a hand.
"Just rest a minute."
He doesn't want to, but he realizes his knees are like liquid. He doesn't slide back into the embrace of the chair, but holds his hands behind the neck of his down turned head.
"Emotions from past lives can be difficult. Sometimes when we die, we have regrets or feelings we don't shed from one life to the next, so we bring them with us. We might not even know they are there, until something reminds us of them." He can feel her eyes on his leg, "I think Marcus Flavius Aquila had a wounded leg, and when you broke yours, that same leg, some chain to the past came to the surface."
He rubbed his knee. It didn't hurt now. All during the session it ached in a back burner way, but now lay silent.
"It's important for you to know that you are safe, that Esca is safe. That these are long past memories that you can let go."
"Let go?"
"Yes. You are not Marcus anymore. Marcus' life came to an end. It's alright to let those feelings pass, and move on with your life here and now."
He lays in bed that night, reflecting. His leg didn't hurt. Could a name have chased away pain? Had it all truly been in his head? Was this person all in his head too? Some phantom he was making up?
He rolled. Esca. The name was strange, and though he wracked his brain and demanded that hidden part divest itself of its secrets about the foreign name, no image came to his mind's eye. He couldn't form a face to match the name.
And he knew it was a male. The name could have been ambiguous, but Mark knew it was a man he had been desperately seeking. A fierce and loyal one. Small. Yes. Small, but deadly. Someone who made something tender bend in Marcus that was defiantly not platonic. Within, Mark knew Marcus was frantic for someone who lived inside his heart the way a lover did.
Marcus was a big gay dope.
"You're Marcus." Mark reminds himself in the dark.
It was strange to think about. He'd never been into men. Not even as a curiosity. He'd been in enough locker rooms to know the sight of a male nude body did nothing for him. He liked girls. He slept with girls and never imagined they were men.
He tried an appraising look at the men on the street when he was driving home from his appointment. The tinted windows maintained his dignity, but try as he might he didn't feel anything. Could he be gay in one life and straight in the next? Maybe since it was a part of your DNA, you flipped back and forth as genetics commanded. Fuck, it was all so confusing.
Another roll, onto his stomach and he groaned into his pillow. If someone had told him months ago that past lives were real, that he would be believing in them, he might have laughed in their face. He pulled a pillow over his head to block out the world and tried to sleep.
"Let it go." He orders himself.
When he slept he had a regular dream. He was insanely glad for it.
It was freer, somehow. He found himself moving through the apartment of a Saturday with actual goals in mind for the day instead of distractions to edge him through it. He put all the weirdness into a little box in his brain and set it aside. He paid bills. He cleaned. He answered email. He went grocery shopping.
"You certainly sound better," said Catherine on the phone at mid-day. "You were getting pretty maudlin there. Are you still in therapy?"
"Yeah. New therapist. It's good. It's different. At first I didn't want to go, but I'm glad I did."
"That's great Mark. Do you think you'll be up to come to my birthday thing? I'd really love it if you can, but if you can't, I'll understand."
Mark always wants to oblige her. She's always been there for him, after all. "Where is it this year?"
"Skiing. Aspen."
Mark's hesitation had Catherine rushing to fill the void.
"You don't have to skii. I mean, some of the kids don't. Just come. Relax. There will be drinking and dancing and hot coco around the fire. All the best stuff. Heated pool, spa- you could get a massage for the leg and a facial since you have also been looking haggard."
Mark shifted his weight. Actually, the leg hadn't made nary a peep. Not all day. Without being premature, he was pleased. "Wait. Haggard?"
"Do you prefer broodsomely worn?"
"Gee, how you flatter."
"Telling it like it is, babe, and you are wiped. I know you did your monk retreat solitary confinement thing in Miami a while back, but maybe this could be a 'Pampercation'?"
"Who's coming to this birthday thing?"
"Oh, everyone!" She was happy to spout off not only the guest list, but some gossip relating to persons on it. He liked hearing her steady enthusiasm, even if the words blurred a bit. A lot of the people he only saw once a year at Catherine's parties, even though he'd gone to the same prep school and college as they had. Some of them were part of a social circle that cycled through Catherine's life. She liked people, and people liked her. People liked Mark, too. They always remembered his name, were always happy to see him. Catherine once told him it was because he was 'obscenely likeable'.
She moves on. Chattering Catherine, and all he has to do is make a few noises of assent or disbelief and she's happy. It's what he wants, in a way. Something normal. Something simple. However, Catherine has been a friend since childhood, never a romantic interest and she knows him, even though she can be a bit garrulous .
"So...When are we going to talk, Mark?" Sober tones redirect his attention.
"Aren't we talking? I've heard about half the population of New York by now."
"Really talk. About, like, important stuff."
"I seem to remember quite a bit about your ex-fiance, there. And my monkish- and I'm sure this isn't a word- broodsomeness."
"The stuff that is making you broody." She waits him out.
Mark sighs. "It's...complicated. And it's weird."
"This is why you need friends. To make it simple and accept the weird."
"This is weirder than usual."
He doesn't tell her. He will, just, not now. The things running around his head are too loony for him to take seriously, and he can't imagine having to try to say them, especially the 'Hey, guess what I may have been this Roman gay guy with a lot of issues once, but not any more, clearly, except for this guy I am totally hung up on from that life and the fact that he had issues is giving me some issues' part. Catherine wouldn't make fun, he was pretty sure of that much. Still. He could hardly tell her he was missing some dude from beyond the grave; it wasn't something he was comfortable with. She'd ask him if he was gay, and he'd say no, like he'd been saying no to himself, but she'd have doubts, because, how could she not?. He had doubts.
He didn't go back to see Cindra the following week. Or the next. Neither did he have any more dreams that awoke him alert and seeking. The pain in his leg didn't come back either, even when he tried jogging on it one morning. He'd missed this morning constitution. Sure, he kept in shape in the gym, but running was different. You were actually going somewhere, blowing the clouds from your head, letting your feet take over. He didn't even hold a grudge with the running path that had landed him in this mess, though he was sticking with city streets and pedestrian parks.
However, none of it left his mind. The issue has simply moved from his unconscious, where it loomed uncontrolled in dreams, into his conscious. He tried to shove it aside, not to think about who the man he was hung up on was, and what regrets Marcus may have had, but it would pop in. While he was reading the ingredients on a prepackaged smoothie. As he banged out mind-numbing reports at work. As he fell asleep. He would try to picture this person, trying to fit him into molds, to figure out what the regret was. He'd shove it viciously way when he realized he was trying to paint some picture. It always came back. Esca. Someone calling to him across death and time. No. Not calling. Someone tearing at him with fingernails.
It frightened him. Because whoever this person was, he didn't have psychic X-man powers to break into Mark's brain. Esca wasn't doing anything. Esca was dead a thousand years or more. It was Mark himself who wanted something of this man, whatever part of him was Marcus, which was as good as himself, because wasn't he him?
He redoubled his efforts not to think about it. In a month, distractions aside, things were good. His leg didn't bloom into pain. He didn't dream. He was cured. He didn't resent his job, he loved his job! It made lots of money. He didn't want to screw men, he picked up women and took them home where he forgot about stuff as long as there were two bodies tangled in the sheets. He was good. He was happy.
In retrospect you should never think stupid shit like that. It just tempts the fates to fuck with you.