The car that pulled up in front of Karl could have been a diplomat's vehicle: larger than usual for New York, sleek and long, black – back windows all blacked out, too. The driver was wearing an impeccable black suit and white gloves. He turned in his seat to consider the man whom he'd just driven up to, and Karl felt himself automatically hunch his shoulders further. After a moment, the driver jerked his head over his shoulder – get in.
This is such a bad idea, he'd told himself on the walk over to the street corner, from the shitty little apartment that he'd had to move into after the lawyers had sent him their bills. Next stop: homelessness. So he reached out and pulled the car door open anyway – the interior was dark, such a contrast to the sunny day that he couldn't see inside until he slipped in – just as he hadn't hesitated in showing up for this appointment, because even if it was a bad idea, he was drowning debt, he had no job, no medical license, and whoever it was had offered him ten thou just to meet.
In cash.
He closed the door more slowly as he got a look at the man he was meeting with – unless this was just another employee like the driver. But he didn't think so. This guy was portly, past middle-age – more grey in his hair than black – with sallow, drooping skin. But his suit looked expensive – certainly better than the one Karl was wearing.
"Mr. Lykos," the man drawled, the subtle but unmistakable emphasis on the Mr. His voice was deep, and more than faintly intimidating.
Karl grit his teeth. "And you are, Mr...?"
"Not really important," the man shrugged, and then, "Jay, drive." So smoothly that Karl could barely feel it, the car began to move, sliding back into traffic. He glanced out the windows, and then back at his potential benefactor, his own uneasiness growing. There was something wrongabout the man, something he couldn't quite put his finger on, but which a decade of experience as a psychiatrist told him he'd be unwise to ignore.
"The cash is beside you," his benefactor said, waving a hand at the door – or rather, a compartment in the door. Karl prodded at it for about half a minute before he finally managed to figure out the catch that released it – his benefactor was smirking at him – and pulled out a wallet: stuffed with fifties.
No logo on the wallet, or anything else besides the bills. Karl put it in his inside jacket pocket, just in case he ended up having to run away as fast as he could. Although if he was going to do that... he probably shouldn't have gotten in the car in the first place. They'd pulled out of traffic and were now on the freeway. He could incapacitate the man he was sitting with easily enough, but there was opaque glass between him and the driver...
"I find myself in need of a psychiatrist," his benefactor said. The smirk had dropped.
"I'm gonna have to disappoint you, then," Karl said quietly. Dully. The words of board's ruling echoed in his mind. Unfit... by gross breach of ethics, medical law... negligence...
"One without some certain, hmm, ethical qualms."
Karl eyed him. "Is this some kind of secret government program? I may be – " he fumbled for a term, gave up, tried again, "I won't be part of some sort of..."
The smirk returned. "No. I'm your patient, so don't worry about it being against anyone's will. I just need someone who can keep his mouth shut, and who better than somebody who doesn't have a board to report to, doesn't have a shred of credibility to stand on in the media, and, oh, who doesn't have any other source of income?"
Something was very off.
The man had shifted as he'd talked – gesturing while he did so; a gregarious personality – but his tone had changed. It didn't at all fit his deep, heavy voice – more than that, his body language didn't fit his body. Symptoms, perhaps? But that wasn't it – or at least not entirely it.
His benefactor leaned back, fixing Karl in return with a searching stare, and that was when Karl figured it out. The seat cushions weren't moving, weren't flattening or creaking or apparently at all affected by the weight of a two-hundred pound man sitting on them.
Mutant? There were whispers... Somebody... changed, like Karl himself? But that didn't seem right, either. The smile, the flow of words – they were familiar. But who? Karl didn't have many friends – certainly none that could turn incorporeal, or mess with people's heads – not any more than the old-fashioned ways of messing with people's heads, that was – and yet...
The car made a left-hand turn and passed a billboard advertising the latest Starkphone Nova, and suddenly it came to him. The smirk, the patter – that wasn't anyone he knew. That was from the endless repeats of the interviews shown constantly on every channel for the last three weeks, ones that he'd been watching until he'd had to sell his computer monitor, hoping, hoping – but apparently just because New York got invaded by aliens, that wasn't any reason for the medical board to postpone his hearing. New York was all the way over on the East Coast, after all.
If anyone had the technology to pull off life-like holograms...
"Tony Stark?" he blurted, not quite believing it.
His benefactor stared at him. Karl's heart pounded in his ears. Had he guessed completely wrong?
"Ah, crap," the man capitulated, just as Karl was beginning to worry about his own blood pressure. He leaned forward, and Karl shrank back, but needlessly; before the man's hand – before Stark's hand got anywhere near him, it vanished into thin air, leaving him looking at a cut-off wrist that ended in a blank circle. Stark's eyes weren't focused on Karl, or the back seat – he was looking at something else entirely. And then as he leaned back again the hologram rippled, and suddenly it was Tony Stark sitting there, in the almost-convincing but certainly not very real flesh, wearing a perfectly tailored pair of jeans that had seen better days and a shirt from some sort of – apparently – death metal band. "How'd you know?" His real voice was higher than whomever he'd been emulating.
"Uh, you talk a lot. And the seats..."
"Damn it." Stark drummed his fingers on his thigh, sounding vaguely disappointed and vaguely amused. "Always something overlooked..." he glanced up, and again he wasn't looking at anything in the car, not talking to Karl. "Make a note!"
"Mr. Stark," Karl said, pulling his own jacket straighter. "What do you want with me?"
"I'm going crazy." This time, Stark met his eyes dead-on. If he hadn't had plenty of experience with his own patients, Karl might have found it unnerving. "I want you to prescribe me something that will fix it." The nervous drumming increased.
Karl slumped a bit. "Mr. Stark, first off, I don't have the authority to prescribe you anything – "
"Okay, so tell me what you'd prescribe, I can take care of that part," Stark interrupted.
Karl went on as though he hadn't. "Second, even if I still had my license and could treat you, mental illness is an extremely complicated thing. If you are suffering from an affliction, you need to get a diagnosis from a qualified doctor – "
" – ergo, you – "
"I'm not a qualified doctor!" Karl snapped.
It hadn't even been a week. It hurt.
"But you were. You just were really stupid about using your patients as meals," Stark said nonchalantly. "Nothing to do with your medicalexpertise."
Karl gaped at him. "How do you know about that?"
"I'm not sure if you're aware, but my brain is sort of one-of-a-kind. I'm certainly not going to trust it to a complete fuck-wit – even if you really do some stupid things, but hey, so do I, fields of expertise, all that jazz – you pioneered cutting-edge research on schizophrenia, great peer reviews – but, yeah, fishy things in your case, and your patients aren't all that crazy. Of course, I probably have an unusual perspective," he said, sounding contemplative – for all of a second. "Anyway. You cure me, I pay you lots of money, ship you off to a cattle farm every week so you can drain a bit of life – it is life energy, right? I could probably work up a generator, but let's just say I don't have a lot of free time at the moment, booked through to Christmas, you know how it goes – and see about getting you your medical license back, though no promises on that one."
"How do you know?" Karl demanded again. The patients – half the evidence had gotten dismissed. Did Stark have something to do with that? No – the real story was too unbelievable all on its own.
"Because I'm an awesome big brother," Stark said flippantly, and it took Karl a moment to put in the capitals.
Oh. Well.
That he'd admit it so easily was really disturbing.
"So. Cure? What do you say?"
He could have his medical license back...
"I'm not qualified," Karl said instead, closing his eyes.
"Bullshit. Okay, so you're not – you're talking about what you would do, as a doctor. If you were one." Stark threw up his hands. "Not that hard!"
"Why me?" Stark must've had his pick of doctors, discrete, professional health care, anyone he wanted...
"Because you aren't going to tell anyone," Stark said, and Karl found himself swallowing nervously. The smile was actually rather intimidating now. "And there's no one who would believe you if you did."
He was right.
On all accounts.
"All right," Karl said, trying not to feel like a complete fraud. "Even ignoring the first two problems, there's a third thing. Psychiatric illnesses generally can't be slapped with pills and told to go away. There's counselling, therapy – " Stark made a face, and Karl cut off the objection heknew was coming, " – and you're not gonna get out more out of it than what you put in. The brain, the mind is a complex system."
"I don't have a lot of time," Stark said anyway, but he didn't put a lot of force into it. Mainly, he just sounded tired. Tired enough to seek help, Karl supposed – even if he was looking in the last place he should have been. "But, yeah, fine, whatever – you're the doc – uh, ex-doc – "
Karl nodded amiably, doing his utter best to ignore the barbs. "Do you have papers you want me to sign...?"
"What, you think I'm going to give you something that could be used as proof?" Stark snorted. "No. This is how it works. You get a text on your phone, weekly, biweekly, whatever. Date, time, place. This car picks you up, we chat, you get let off again. A bunch of money shows up in your account the next day. I get better, various people start pushing for a new hearing for you, a second investigation, and you get a huge bonus. I disappear – you're one of my people, so you'll be given an escape plan."
If he disappeared? Paranoia, obviously, but it was impossible to determine at such at early point if it was unwarranted or not. Stark must have – must always have had – a lot of enemies. If he was convinced that the government was secretly spying on him – well, it probably was, if anyone in government had any brains at all.
"And Karl?" Stark had stopped moving, twitching, fidgeting. "Seeing as how you're one of my people now, you should probably know that I don't take it well when my people try to betray me."
"...I get the picture."
Stark smiled – obviously faking it. "Glad to hear."
"Alright." He folded his hands in his lap. Usually – previously – he would have had a pad of paper to take notes on, but he doubted that Stark's paranoia would allow anything of the sort. But with only one 'patient', keeping track wouldn't be very hard. "Tell me about why you think you need a psychiatrist."
...
Karl Lykos is a sometime-psychiatrist, sometime-supervillain (called, I kid you not, Sauron) from the comics, and has such a WTF life, even for comics, that I do not think I could achieve both brevity and clarity summarizing it here. There are various wikis out there which attempt to do so, however.