Five Years of Madness, Twelve Years of Angst
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Summary: How does a psychiatrist deal with twelve years of issues, crammed into five years of life? Junior goes in for a little therapy, and his therapist regrets it whole-heartedly.
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Disclaimer: We don't own 'em. If we did, there'd have been more 'shippiness and random Sunny Wong appearances.
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"Good morning, Junior," an elderly gentleman sporting a good deal of tweed and even some elbow patches (two of them, to be exact) greeted from his position behind a large mahogany desk. "I'm Dr. Stephen Phillips, and you've been referred to me by your school counselors."
"Yes, I know," the white-haired preteen said tonelessly as he shuffled reluctantly into the room. Surely, this was the most embarrassing and annoying thing he'd ever had to do…
The elderly man beamed kindly at the boy and rose from his desk.
"Now, do you have any idea why you're here, young man?"
"No," Junior replied, shutting the office door. "Why?"
"Well, it seems as though they were a little concerned about you," Dr. Phillips replied as he led the boy over to the navy and green plaid sofa pushed along one wall. "They tell me that you rarely smile, never laugh, and spend most of your time alone at school."
"I spend time with Anita."
"Ah! Anita! Is this your favorite young lady-friend?"
"She's my only young lady-friend," Junior replied cautiously.
Dr. Phillips hesitated, pen poised over his notebook.
"And so…you have several lady-friends who aren't as young?" he asked, alarm bells already going off in his head.
"Yes, several," Junior replied. "There's Michelle, and Maggie, and Nenene, and Yomiko, and Nancy. She's also my mother."
"Your mother! Tell me about your mother, Junior," Dr. Phillips requested, inwardly thanking his lucky stars that they were finally nearing a subject he could talk about. "Particularly, I would like to know why you call your mother by her first name at such a young age."
"I'm not very close to my mother," Junior admitted. "I only met her recently, when we were trying to save the world from being destroyed and reformatted by the people who raised me."
"I…see," Dr. Phillips said slowly, quickly jotting on the first line of the blank page, Has rebellious tendencies.
Then he looked up at the boy and smiled.
"Now, why don't you tell me how you came to be separated from your mother in your infancy?"
Junior thought carefully about this, trying to recall exactly how this had gone, and which bits were simply the result of watching old science fiction movies too long and too late.
"Well…from what I understand, after my mother and father's plan to destroy the world using a clone of Beethoven to write a song that would make all the men kill themselves and leave my father all the women to himself failed miserably, foiled by a girl who magically used paper to do her bidding, my mother was captured by a library."
Multiple delusions, the scratching of pencil on paper said. Lives in a state of constant delusion, and very clearly believes them entirely.
"A library, you say? Now, what would a library want with your mother? Did she have an overdue book?"
"Possibly," Junior replied, "but I don't think that was why they captured her. She could walk through walls. It's a dangerous talent, and she's passed it onto me, but since the library were the ones who gave it to her, they have only themselves to blame."
Dr. Phillips looked blank.
"Pardon me?"
"Did I say something odd?"
"Oh…not at all," Dr Phillips assured him vaguely. "Now, would you tell me which library this was?"
"The British Library. The ones who almost took over the world a while back."
"Hmm. I'm afraid I don't follow the papers much," Dr. Phillips admitted, surreptitiously scribbling, Severe delusions. Possible drug therapy required. "Now, Junior, I am rather curious as to how, if your mother was captured by a library, you came to be raised by people who were trying to take over…oh, the same people, I suppose."
"Yes," the boy confirmed, looking down at his hands, folded in his lap.
"Now, then, Junior, would you kindly explain how you came to be separated from your mother, if this library that captured her also raised you?"
"My mother ran away with Yomiko from the mental hospital the library put her in."
"Er…your mother ran away with one of your older lady-friends?"
"Yes; Yomiko and my mother are very close. They lived alone together in a library for five years."
"And…is this a different library than the one who raised you?"
"Yes."
"I must say, Junior, all your – " Dr. Phillips paused, searching for the right word. " – experiences seem to be very…bibliocentric." He beamed inwardly at his own cleverness in coining this term. "Were you by any chance beaten with a massive book as a young child?"
"No," he replied. "Although, there was much discussion about it being my destiny to be the container for seven books that would enable a dead man to rule the world."
"I…see. A dead man tried to shove several books into you so that he could take over the world?"
"No," Junior said, beginning to get slightly annoyed with the doctor's inability to grasp what seemed to him fairly simple. "He was dead. And he was the books."
"He was dead, and at the same time, the books. So, he was a bunch of dead books," Dr. Phillips surmised flatly.
"Yes," Junior confirmed.
Again, the scratching of pencil against paper filled the office.
Junior seems to have a great deal of difficulty discerning fantasy from reality, or even developing a single cohesive delusion. If he cannot learn to organize his thoughts more clearly, this could prove a very difficult case indeed. So much the luckier I am paid by the hour.
Then he smiled a little tentatively up at his patient.
"Now, Junior, tell me about your childhood."
"I don't remember it very clearly. It seems as though much of it was spent in a glass case."
"Ah! So you felt very smothered, and yet constantly scrutinized, in your childhood," Dr. Phillips paraphrased, brightening at the fact that he was, once again, on more sturdy footing than women passing through walls and flinging lethal paper, and evil libraries trying to use a boy as an immensely squishy bookshelf.
"No," Junior said, shaking his head slowly. "I mean that I spent my infancy in a glass case."
"Metaphorically speaking," Dr. Phillips finished.
"No."
"R-right, then. So…tell me about your childhood. After the glass case."
"I lived with a lady."
"Ah. Another of your lady-friends? Which one was this, then?"
"No, it wasn't. This lady told me she hated me because I reminded her of all the evil things she had done."
Dr. Phillips considered this for a moment.
"Are you sure this wasn't your mother?"
Junior looked up, quite astonished.
"Why?"
"Oh, no reason. So, tell me more about this lady that was not your mother," Dr. Phillips requested, pencil hovering over his notepad, certain that he would need it soon. "I suppose she can fly, or turns into a werewolf at the light of the full moon, or some such thing?"
"No; I believe Mr. Joker would have noticed that."
Dr. Phillips looked up at the boy sharply.
"And this…Mr. Joker spent many full moons with this lady you lived with?"
"Yes, Mr. Joker came to visit Wendy a lot in the middle of the night. He would always say he was there for a booty call. I never understood why exactly he would arrive at such late hours, looking for infants' footwear. Maybe she had some of my old ones left over, and in good condition, since I outgrew them in an hour or so, thanks to the artificial growth serum. Maybe that's why he needed them – to study."
"Er, yes," Dr. Phillips agreed, eyes shifting nervously from side to side. "Perhaps."
Exposure to deviant sexual activities possibly a root cause of issues, the pencil against the notepad said.
"Now, tell me, Junior, have you ever had…er, feelings for a young lady? This Anita girl you mentioned, perhaps?"
Junior looked mildly confused.
"Don't girls only fall in love with other girls?"
Dr. Phillips blinked.
"Er…not generally," he admitted. "There are cases, of course, but generally it is believed that a man will be attracted to a woman, and vice versa."
"Oh; does that mean you're evil?" Junior asked disinterestedly.
"Er…what?" Dr. Phillips asked flatly.
"Well, all the men that like women and women that like men that I've heard about are evil. My father wanted to destroy the world, and my mother wanted to help him. And Mr. Joker tried to put Mr. Gentleman inside me, and Wendy tried to help him."
"I…see. So, from this, you have surmised that all men and women who engage in…er…activities of an intimate nature with one another, are evil. Was there, by any chance, a church involved in your childhood?"
"No," Junior replied briefly.
"Very well," Dr. Phillips said. "Now, Junior, tell me more about your father."
"He was a fifteenth-century Zen master who wrote poetry about eating octopus and watching women bathing."
"Oh, so your father can time travel, can he? Well, your mother can walk through walls, that lady you know can use paper as a lethal weapon, that other lady you know can fly – "
"No, she can't. I told you that."
"Right," Dr. Phillips sighed. "Either way, we have a woman who can walk through walls, you claim that you can walk through walls, you were raised in a glass case by a library, I suppose time travel wouldn't be beyond these people you know."
"My father can't time-travel," Junior said in something remarkably like an under-developed scoff. "That's ridiculous. My father was a clone, who fathered me with the clone of 1940's spy, Mata Hari. Of course, it was the second clone, since he killed the first one for falling in love with Yomiko."
Dr. Phillips nearly dropped his pencil in shock.
"Now, hold on," he requested, holding up one hand. "You didn't mention the part about your mother being a clone of Mata Hari."
"You didn't ask," Junior said with a barely perceptible shrug.
"Ugh," Dr. Phillips groaned, although he did not write it down.
Rather, the next words to appear on the page of his notebook, which was filling up rather quickly, were,
I have the uneasy sensation that this one is something of a smart-ass when he wants to be.
"So, basically, your parents were both clones of important people who have been dead for years?"
"Yes. They were both I-Jin, also created by the British Library."
"And…they created your mother and father, and raised you to be a bookshelf?"
"Yes," Junior confirmed, a small part of his mind wondering if the people from the British Library would have been more reluctant to follow the Gentleman Revival project if they had heard it described in such ridiculous terms as his being "raised to be a bookshelf". Mr. Joker aside, of course. That guy was just a little off.
"Goodness; libraries are certainly more active in the world of illegal human experimentation than they were in my childhood," Dr. Phillips laughed lamely.
Junior did not laugh.
"Oh, hold on," he said thoughtfully. "I got something wrong. The British Library didn't create my parents. A Chinese organization called Dokusensha stole I-Jin cell samples from the British Museum and used them to build my parents, who then turned against them."
"I see," Dr. Phillips sighed.
I'm having a bit of trouble keeping up with the train of this patient's delusions. Perhaps drawing up a map would help. However, I cannot honestly say that, despite the outrageous nature of the claims Junior is making, that he has contradicted himself. They do remain more or less consistent, which would eliminate psychopathy as possibility. He does not see pink bunnies everywhere. If he did, no doubt they would be working for an evil library, trying to take over the world with a book, and have the ability to kill grown men with a carrot.
Then he looked up.
"So, Junior, why do you think it is that all of this keeps happening to you?"
"Because I was born to be a central component of the Gentleman Revival Project."
Dr. Phillips sighed.
"Well, I suppose the question to consider is, now that all of this has happened to you, what do you want now?"
Junior carefully considered this for a moment.
"Well, there is something I've always wanted to do…"
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End Notes: This is intended as the first of a multi-chapter epic about Junior overcoming the dark shadows of his past to become a more fully-realized individual.
Why, you ask? Well, so did he. Many, many times.
Please stay tuned for the next installment