Erik gave a sharp, quick tug on the noose as Charcot struggled to turn to see his face. He was behind the doctor and he knew that if Charcot saw him, he'd be recognized, and that would be a problem. "Listen to me," he said, in a slightly less threatening tone. "I don't want to hurt you. But I need your help."
"What do you want?" Charcot asked again, as he tried to pull the rope from his neck.
"Information," Erik replied. "One of my…friends, has some sort of issue. I need to know how to help her."
"Why don't you bring her to the clinic?"
"That's not an option," Erik snarled as he adjusted his grip on the Punjab lasso.
"I can't help your friend if I don't know what's wrong with her," Charcot answered.
"She can't come in. It isn't possible," he snapped, jerking the noose. The doctor gasped, and clawed at his throat. Erik let out a heavy sigh. This was not working out the way he planned All he wanted was some way to help Mia. And since choking Charcot so far was no good, maybe he could try asking nicely. After all, what was the worst that could happen? Erik was already holding the man hostage. "Please help me. All I want is whatever information you can offer on how to help her."
Charcot sighed. "I don't have a choice do I?"
"No," Erik responded honestly.
After a moment of tense silence, Charcot asked, "Your 'friend', what kind of 'issue' does she have?"
Erik took a deep breath. "I don't know what it would be called, but there's…I don't really know how to explain it, but there's two of her."
"You mean she has a twin?"
"No!" Erik snapped. "I'm not a simpleton! I'm fully aware of what twins are. What I mean is that there are two halves that she switches between." Erik noticed Charcot's brow furrowed, as if he was deep in thought. "One is quiet, shy, and defensive, the other is much more aggressive and has a tendency to become violent. Each half even answers to a different name."
The doctor nodded. "I'm familiar with it. Every so often we have a patient arrive that suffers from the same phenomenon. It's a form of hysteria, where when stressed, the mind switches to another self. One of my students works with it almost exclusively for his thesis. He refers to it as dissociation."
Finally Erik had a name for Mia's mysterious condition. "What causes it?" he demanded.
"Well a deficiency of the mind isn't as easy to study as a disease of the body. There's no bacteria that causes these conditions like there are for a physical sickness. There's a lot of speculation on what actually causes it."
Erik growled. "Well how do I fix it?"
"The mind is a very fragile thing," Charcot replied. "If proper care is not taken, it can be damaged beyond repair…"
"I'll be careful. Just tell me what I need to do."
"Reducing stress can make the transitions between the selves less common." Well that's not going to work, Erik thought to himself. Between the Phantom and the bastard she's married to, she has nothing but stress. "But that's not a permanent cure."
"How do I fix it for good?!" Erik roared, yanking on the lasso, pulling Charcot a step backwards.
"You can't!" the doctor gasped. "It's not a bodily illness. There is no amount of bed rest that will, as you so crudely put, 'fix it'! There are ways to lessen the symptoms of dissociation, but it's nearly impossible to eliminate entirely."
"THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING!"
"Well...there is something…"
"What?!" Erik all but screamed, pulling on the lasso again.
"Hyp…hypnotism," Charcot barely squeaked out.
Erik allowed some slack in the rope against the doctor's neck, allowing him to breathe somewhat regularly again at the sound of something he was very familiar with. "How?!"
"If done properly, hypnotism can sometimes be used to bring out a different self." Well that explains why Mia changed to Amelia when I hypnotized her on the roof, Erik realized. I just didn't know what I was doing. "And if careful, hypnotism can be key to combining the different personalities into one unified self."
"That's it?!" Erik cried. "All of that and all I have to do is hypnotize her?"
"It's not that simple. If the utmost caution isn't taken, memories can be lost, or the wrong self can be given full control, or the mind can be permanently damaged. And it is impossible to hypnotize someone who isn't willing."
"I'm fully aware of that," Erik snapped. He had learned that when Christine had failed to fall under his spell when they performed Don Juan Triumphant. "But I've hypnotized her before, and I'm certain I can do it again."
Charcot began to struggle again. "I implore you not to try to interfere. What your friend needs is professional help. You can destroy her mind. It's not an overnight process."
Erik pulled the lasso from the man's neck. "It's the only option we have." Now free, the doctor whirled around to see his attacker's face, but Erik punched him in the jaw, knocking him out, before he got a good look. "Thank you for your assistance," he told the unconscious man before climbing out the window and heading back to the Populaire to share his discovery with Mia.
Mia was on the verge of a meltdown. She had no idea when or if Erik was coming back, and the voice in the back of her head kept reminding her that she had to get out of here. The mirror wasn't opening, no matter how hard she tried because she couldn't find the mechanism to open it.
"Erik!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. "Erik!" She fell to her knees beside the lake. "Don't leave me here!" Mia sobbed.
The lake, the voice in her head whispered. It's your only chance.
"But whatever's in it will drown me," she argued.
You were drugged, the voice reminded her. There isn't anything in the water, you just couldn't swim under the influence of the chloroform. After all, the Phantom was able to swim in the water, why can't you?
"He…he could be back any minute now," Mia stammered. "It shouldn't…shouldn't be too much longer…"
You've been saying that since he left. Yet he is nowhere to be found. He will never return. If you don't escape now, you'll die here.
"Maybe I'll just wait a little bit more for him…"
It's your funeral…
Mia glanced at the mirror, the lake, then back at the mirror. "Gaston will come for me when he returns home, so even if Erik doesn't return, he'll rescue me."
Gaston doesn't know where you are. Raoul doesn't know where you are. You switched the letters. You're completely alone.
She wasn't sure whether it was because she was desperate to escape, or because she was desperate to silence the voice in her head, but the next thing Mia knew, she was wading out into the water. Once her feet could no longer touch the bottom, she began to swim for freedom.
As Mia quickly discovered though, she had overestimated her swimming abilities. It was much further than she had thought, and her heavy skirts were weighing her down. Mia was exhausted, but she had to make it. Just as she was about to give up and turn back, Mia saw the shore. With a burst of fresh adrenaline, she began to swim faster than ever.
Suddenly something wrapped around her ankle. "NO!" Mia screamed just before she was dragged underwater.
Erik stepped out of the boat and was very confused. He expected Mia to be sitting here waiting for him. "Mia?" he called. "Mia, where are you?" His brow furrowed. She couldn't have gotten out, right? He walked over to the mirror and noticed fingerprints all over it, but it didn't look like she had managed to open it. "Mia!" He shouted whirling back around. "Amelia?" His eyes grew wide as saucers when he looked at the lake. Surely she wouldn't have tried to swim? She knew about the siren in its waters!
He swore when he saw bubbles on the water's surface. She had tried to swim! He tore off his cape and jacket and threw them aside before diving into the water. When he thought he was getting close to where he suspected she was, he studied the surface of the water again to look for the bubbles, but he couldn't see them anywhere, which meant Mia could drown any moment now.
After diving back down, Erik felt something that felt like a hand brush against him, but he couldn't see in the murky water. He blindly reached out, and realized he had found Mia. Erik grabbed her, pulled her free from the siren, and kicked back up to the surface.
As soon as his head broke the surface, Erik gasped for air, and immediately swore when he realized that Mia was not doing the same. He got her back to the lair as quickly as possible and laid the unconscious girl flat on her back. Erik began to press on her chest, trying to push the water out of her lungs. Just as he was about to give up, Mia suddenly coughed and spit water out. Erik helped her turn onto her side and rubbed her back as she coughed up the last of the water. "What the hell were you thinking?" Erik demanded. "You could have died!"
"I know," she replied as she sat up. Erik could tell by her tone and the look in her eyes that it was Amelia, not Mia. "That's why I told Mia to do it."
Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry guys! I didn't mean to leave you guys hanging for so long. I've just been soooo busy. Between work and college orientation, I'm rarely home. But I promise you, I'm going to do whatever I can to update more often. But on a happier note, I want to give another HUGE thank you to Filhound. Like I said before, she's the one who put me on the track to find all the information about multiple personalities (scientifically it's called Dissociation Identity Disorder). While not scientifically correct any more, the information Charcot gives Erik is legitimate for the time period. Charcot did actually run the psychiatric clinic at the hospital, and the student he mentions, Pierre Janet, specialized in multiple personalities. However unlike now, Janet didn't believe that DID was caused by abuse; rather he thought it was caused by a weak mind. They did use hypnotism to try to treat it, a practice that is still used in therapy today. Read and review.
~nibblesfan