London, Great Britain
11 months ago
Samantha waited in silent agitation as Dr. Matheson read her file from behind his desk. His expression was that of deep concentration. His thick black eyebrows knitted together, his small eyes squinting behind large brown rimmed glasses. Samantha didn't want to be here but she wanted to work and this was the precondition Mycroft had set. She drummed her fingers against the arm of the chair impatiently. The longer she had to wait, the more she feared she would fail the psych evaluation.
After a moment, Dr. Matheson closed over the files and turned to the computer on his desk.
"OK, Ms. Cole-"
"Samantha."
"I'm just going to ask a few questions to get us started. Is that OK?" His voice was deep and tinged with an American accent.
"Um...sure." Samantha nodded.
"How are you sleeping?"
Ah. This was familiar. She used to take these kinds of tests with the agency. It was how they monitored their agents' mental state between missions. This may not be as bad as she thought.
"Fine?" She said with a shrug.
"No frequent waking, tossing or turning, or disruptive dreams?"
"Nope." There was a few seconds of silence while the doctor typed on his keyboard.
"Do you have a regular sleep pattern?" He asked then, glancing at her from over the top of his glasses.
She thought for a moment.
"I guess," she said uncertainly, "I mean I try. I'm usually up at seven for the gym so I try to get to bed early enough. Takes me a little while to fall asleep though."
"Why is that?" His questions were strangely methodical, as if he were reciting from memory.
"I don't know," she replied truthfully, "Maybe I haven't quite settled into London yet."
"Mhm. And how often do you go to the gym?"
"Four to five times a week maybe. Why?"
"A lot of people turn to exercise to relieve stress. Are you stressed, Ms. Cole?"
Samantha was starting to pick up on the angle the psychologist was going for and decided she had to be careful with what she said to him.
"No," she said, "Just bored. I want to work."
Dr. Matheson didn't react to her response but instead continued to type.
"Have you been participating in any other extra curricular activities?" He asked.
"Umm..." She gave a small smile, "yeah. I started a cooking class with a friend."
"Do you have many friends in London?"
"No. Just the one."
"Are you currently in a relationship?"
"No."
The way Dr. Matheson glanced at her just then made her realise that she perhaps responded a little too quickly. Samantha dropped her gaze to the grey carpet, blushing hotly.
"Have you experienced any trauma over the last few years?" He asked then.
Immediately images of Paolo flashed in her mind. She could hear the heavy thwack of a baton collide against his skull, she could feel the suffocating depths of the lake he had been plunged into. Any moments of Paolo in distress replayed in her head in vivid technicolour. Moriarty's games she could deal with, torture she was numb to, losing the agency was nothing. Her weakness was the person she cared for most and she had often questioned the decisions she had made on behalf of his well-being. Would she make those decisions again? What if something happened to John? Would she be so easily compromised now as she had been back then?
"No," she decided to say. She didn't want to give away anything that could relegate her to a desk job.
The doctor frowned, straightened his glasses and leafed through her files again.
"So being a victim of manipulation, being held against your will, tortured and witnessing the imprisonment and torture of a comrade doesn't register as traumatic to you?"
Samantha inhaled slowly, choosing her next words carefully.
"It's...um...all in a day's work I guess," she said.
Matheson gave her a look, seemingly unconvinced. Samantha stared back, her defiance unwavering.
After a moment the doctor removed his glasses smoothed the grey hair that tufted from behind his ears and said, "Tell me about Moriarty."
Her body tensed. This was it. This was what would catch her out. Mycroft not once breathed a word about Moriarty to her since his capture, but Samantha was under no illusion that he wasn't curious about her relationship with him.
She glanced at the clock on the wall to her right. She still had forty minutes to kill in this session. How much of that time could she waste by stalling?
"He's locked up," she responded. Dr. Matheson paused. That was probably not the answer he was fishing for.
"And how does the make you feel?" He said.
"Relieved."
"Why?"
Samantha sighed, growing weary of the tedious questions.
"Because he can't hurt anyone anymore," she said.
"Has he hurt you?"
Samantha didn't expect the tightness in her chest that gripped her just then. She clenched her hands together, her gaze down to the side as she tried to think of a response.
"This is a safe space, Samantha," the doctor said, suddenly dropping any formality, "What you say here stays within these walls. You have complete confidentiality."
"Do you not report back to Mycroft?" Samantha asked.
"He will receive a report on your well-being which will determine you eligibility for work. The details you share will remain private."
Samantha hesitated, still reluctant to even think about the initial question.
"How has he hurt you?" he asked then.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. She knew then that her guard had been cracked.
"I guess in a lot of ways," she spoke quietly, "He uh...used me, manipulated me, blackmailed me." Tears pooled in her eyes. "Held me, kissed me, made love to me." A memory of her time with him resurfaced just then. She was back at the country house and he had just returned after disappearing for days. She met him in the hallway as he sauntered through the front door. Before she could breathe a word his mouth was on hers. She was pushed against the wall, his fingers in her hair and his other arm holding her body tightly against his. Her instinct to protest had quickly dissipated. She had never felt so desired as she did then.
"It's pathetic, isn't it?" she declared, "That after all he has done I still think about him that way."
"You've had relationships before?" Matheson queried.
"Well... I've been with other people. I've had crushes and brief romances but none I would call a relationship."
"So what makes Moriarty different?"
"It just..." she threw her hands up, searching for an answer, "felt more...real."
She realised Dr. Matheson was peering at her, not out of judgement but out of concern.
"OK," he said as scribbled something on a notepad, "I'm going to make a deal with you. I'll give Mycroft the green light to put you in field work if you see me here for an hour once a month"
"What? Why?" She snorted.
"You have issues with interpersonal relationships that you need to work on. And while you've been...coping up to now, I'd be concerned about your well-being if you don't confront this issue while you can."
Right. Samantha had always been discouraged from interpersonal relationships. Caring about someone made an agent vulnerable. Paolo was proof of that. Moriarty was the only other person she got in too deep with and it was to her detriment.
She sighed. Once a month didn't sound so bad if it meant she could work again.
"Alright," she said, "It's a deal
