#4 I no longer believe Allison and I would have lasted.
Arcadia Home shone like polished bone in the December sun; its new white stone curves arced through the sky. Scott had been told that it had been designed in the neofuturist style, but he wasn't quite sure what that meant. To him, the main building resembled a white dove tucking its head under one wing, and the ring of auxiliary buildings could be the bird's eggs half-buried in the ground.
The end of autumn was growing close, so the grounds weren't at their best, more brown than green. Though the branches of the California buckthorn that made up the hedges, Scott could barely make out the sturdy fence surrounding the facility. By the time spring had turned to summer, you wouldn't be able to see the fences at all.
Scott found Marin Morrell waiting for him at the entrance. It would have been creepy except he had texted her that he was on his way.
"The place looks fantastic."
Her demeanor indicated her agreement without sharing any of his excitement, a mannerism she shared with her brother. "I went to school with the architect, and I worked closely with him to make sure all of Deucalion's requirements were met."
"I had no idea that he was even considering something like this, though with what he said the last time we had a chance to talk, I shouldn't be surprised. Now I'm sorry we didn't spend much time together outside of crises."
Morrell held the door open for him. "Do you have much time outside of crises?"
Scott stumbled a little bit at that jab. Unlike the gentle comments of her brother, Morrell's insights always carried a sharp edge. It made sense. She advised people by disrupting the falsehoods people had crafted so they could avoid confronting their problems, whereas Deaton's guidance worked by offering new perspectives to what a person already believed.
"I guess not."
"As I said, with his directions it didn't require many decisions on my part. The specifications he made in his will were quite exhaustive."
"So he paid for all of this?"
"Every brick of it. If Deucalion had any family, he was sufficiently estranged from them to exclude any mention of them from his estate. Every asset he possessed was liquidated and used to build Arcadia Home."
She led him up to the well-lit reception lobby which featured a smiling woman dressed not in scrubs but in normal clothes, though Scott noticed her shoes were soft rubber and she didn't wear any jewelry. There were no bars or locked doors, just open corridors leading to various parts of the facility. Thick carpeting absorbed the sound of their footfalls, leaving it quiet except for some
classical music that played over a concealed sound system. Arcadia Home felt more like an upper- range apartment building than a mental health facility.
"When will the patients arrive?"
Morrell once more smiled at him and then turned him down one particular hallway. "Most of them have already moved in. This place will not be like Eichen House. You're not going to see wheelchair-bound patients left unattended in the hallways."
"Following the best practices I could fine, we'll have three levels of care. The most common level will be out-patient. Those patients will have homes off-site, and they'll only come here for therapy sessions, occupational training, and social activities. The next level is residential; these patients will live here but can be trusted to come and go on their own recognizance. The final level is supervisory; while the patient must remain on-site, we'll try to give them as much freedom as possible while. The institution's goal is to get rid of the false binary of cured and not cured, and instead seek to reintegrate the patients into society. This excludes the Closed Ward, of course. We're at twenty-percent capacity right now."
Scott couldn't help but frown as he followed her down the hallway. Even though she never even looked in his direction, Morrell somehow sensed his displeasure.
"The Closed Ward is a necessity, Scott. There has to be a place to restrain violent and criminal supernatural creatures."
"I know ..." But he didn't have to like it.
"The supernatural world has been very unforgiving in the past to those who disrupted it. You've encountered plenty of people who would rely on execution to solve any problems."
"Sure. On the other hand, I can't forget what happened to everyone who was in the last Closed Ward."
"That tragedy was a result of the Anuk-Ite's influence on Dr. Fenris, who is doing quite well with his own recovery, by the way. I can't possibly promise that a similar catastrophe won't happen again, but we've taken every step my brother and I could think of to ensure that it doesn't."
Scott bit his lip. "I'm not doubting either of you, but ..."
"I can understand where you're coming from. With all you experienced in the previous institution, it would be easy to assume that we would act the same. On the other hand, Eichen House was built in 1910, when concepts of mental health care and incarceration were far more punitive than they are today. You'd be quite surprised were I to show you the rooms in the Closed Ward. They're no longer dingy boxes. They've been designed to make the prisoner's stay as comfortable and as stimulating as possible, all in order to promote rehabilitation. We didn't skimp because they're the 'bad guys.' The cost for them to have exterior windows while maintaining security was exorbitant, but we got it done."
"They're still cells."
"And those patients are still criminals. It's far better than what Monroe or the Calaveras would want to do to them." Morrell sounded piqued at his continued reluctance. "You have direct experience with the confluence of telluric currents centered on this location. It helps protect them from anyone who might want retribution while protecting the rest of us from them. If it continues to bother you, I can arrange a tour for later so you can see for yourself."
"No, thank you. I'm only here today because she asked to see me." He hesitated for only a moment. "Maybe some other time."
As they headed continued on their way, Scott noted the living plants lining the corridors and sloping ramps instead of stairs. Through a clear glass side door, Scott looked into a small courtyard. The gardeners must be in the process of finishing off the grounds; the dirt abound the shrubs was still loose and there was no mulch.
Morrell knocked on the door at their destination. Catching Scott's questioning glance, she gestured with her head towards the interior. "The way to make sure that you see patients as human beings is to treat them as human beings. That includes the right to privacy."
"Come in."
The director of Arcadia House opened the door and let him in. Meredith Walker was sitting at her desk over by the window. She had been typing something on her laptop, but without looking at him, she saved it and turned the machine off.
The décor was a little industrial, a little Spartan, but there were personal touches everywhere. Books on a shelf. Pictures, including one of Lydia. It didn't look resemble the old cells of Echo House at all.
"Hello, Meredith."
"Hello." She studied him intently in that strange bird-like way she had.
"You're looking well."
"Am I?"
"Considering I thought you had been killed, you're looking very well."
The tiniest of smiles twitched at the corners of her mouth. "I'm sorry I let people think that. I didn't mean to."
"How did you survive?" When Lydia had told him that Dr. Fenris had killed all the supernatural patients under the influence of the Anuk-Ite, he had mourned Meredith.
She pointed at herself. "Banshee. I heard what was coming, so I hid from him."
"Oh." Of course she would have heard it. Sometimes his own stupidity amazed Scott. He had been close friends with a Banshee for over four years now; he should have figured it out.
"You were busy. You're still busy."
Scott had never gotten used to the way she sometimes replied to things that he hadn't said out loud. He understood — no, he really didn't understood, but he accepted — that a banshee's hearing could pick up on things no one else could, but it still freaked him out. At her gesture, he took a seat on one of her chairs. Morrell had left.
"You wanted me to visit?"
"I did. And now you have."
"Is there ... is there something that you needed to warn me about?"
"Oh. Oh, no. I wanted you to see this place." "Arcadia Home?"
She nodded. "I think you needed to see it."
He looked around the room. "It's very nice ..." "You're responsible for it."
"No, I'm not. A man named Deucalion paid for this place. When he died, he left will which he made Ms. Morrell the executor of his estate and it asked her to build a new place like Eichen House, only less creepy and abusive. I didn't really know he was that rich, but it turns out he was a multimillionaire." He decided to joke with her. "Why am I the only alpha who isn't?"
Meredith's lips twitched once again. "You're more responsible than you think you are." She turned her chair around in order to face him directly.
"It's probably rude for me to come all the way here just to argue with you, but I kinda hate it when people talk like that." At Scott's words, Meredith's head tilted back and forth. "All we did — and it was as much Derek as it was me — was give Deucalion a chance, but now people act like I performed a miracle. I broke a line of mountain ash, got red eyes, and then decided not to kill him."
"That's not what Peter would have done," Meredith insisted. "That's not what Deucalion would have done before he met you."
"But it's what they should have done." Scott sighed. "I mean, am I the only person who was raised to believe that killing other people to get what you want isn't right?"
She chuckled.
"What's so funny?"
"Lydia told me that not all monsters do monstrous things."
He shrugged. "What you do isn't determined by who you are. You always have a choice." Meredith looked away at that, wincing slightly.
"I'm ... I'm sorry, but it's true. One day, you'll get out of here ..."
"No, I won't."
"Meredith. You already seem better—"
"That's not it," she said fiercely. "I shouldn't leave."
"Is this about the Dead Pool?" Scott took a deep breath. "You did that, and I'm not going to say that it doesn't matter. But it's not the only thing that matters. It can't be the only thing that matters."
"That list isn't what matters." She blinked at him. "But the Walcotts matter. DeMarco Montana matters. Carrie Hudson matters. I can go on. I can tell you lots of things about the people on that list who didn't make it. All those things matter to me."
Scott licked his lips. He didn't know what to say.
"The person who made all that death happen shouldn't be able to act like she didn't." "Guilt isn't useful."
"Oh." Her hands fluttered. "It's not simple guilt. I hear them."
"What?"
"I hear them. I hear what they could have been, all the things they could have done which I stopped them from doing. I know what I have to do to make up for it. I have to help."
"You do help!" He exclaimed. "You did help. You helped us save Lydia from the nogitsune. You helped Lydia save herself from Valack. You helped me."
Meredith nodded in agreement, but it didn't seem to change her mind.
"No matter what you did, you deserve to get better. You deserve a chance to live the same life everyone else gets. I'm not saying that you can't keep helping, or that you should pretend those people didn't die because of what you did, but the worst and most useless burden of all is what might have been. I don't care what you heard about their lives; you can't pay for what didn't happen."
She eyed him, a little angrily. "Don't you try?" "What? What do you mean by that?"
"I heard what happened at Oak Creek. Don't you carry the weight of what might have been around with you?" A look of shame passed over her face, quickly dispelled before she once again fixed him with her gaze. "You can't tell me that she doesn't sit behind your eyes when you look at what the world can do. You can't tell me you don't dream of the life you could have had with her."
"You're wrong," Scott snapped. Meredith had ripped the bandage off a wound that had never healed and it still stung. She was wrong. She was very wrong, but he had to admit that she was also a little bit right. He would never forget Allison, never forget the way they had felt together. He would never forget the way she died, how he had been running through tunnels while she had been fighting for her and Isaac's life. Never forget how he had listened to her heart stop.
But what Meredith was looking for was a reason to punish herself and that wasn't fair to her and it wasn't really fair to the people whose lives she had caused to end. If Scott had tried to become responsible for everything he thought Allison would have done and she never got a chance to do, it would be a horrible crime. It'd be a form of emotional cannibalism. He would power his life through her wasted potential, consuming the echo of what would have been, should have been, Allison's alone.
Those deaths would have been for nothing. Given the benefit of time passed, Scott could admit the truth to himself. Allison and he weren't a destined romance, if for no other reason then they wouldn't have stayed together. In the end, her duty to her family and her Code would have clashed with what he wanted out of his life, which even today was a desire not to spend the rest of his years in turmoil and danger. In the end, her need to feel strong would have clashed with his need to protect her from the necessity of being strong. In the end, the entire horror and miscommunication about Victoria's death would have lingered like a specter over their relationship. He would have loved her — he would always love her — and she would have felt something for him, whatever it was, but they could not have made something that would last out of it.
"The present and the future come from the past," he said instead of what he could have said, "but
they're not ruled by it. You may think you need to stay locked away in this place for penance, but I think you should at least try to be open to the idea of a life outside of these walls."
"They're very nice walls." It was all she said.
He nodded and then they talked about what she might need to make her room a little better. It wouldn't do for him to push her into doing what he felt she should.
Nothing good ever came of that.