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It was one of those old crush dreams. And I could tell it was a dream. It had Weiss in it and she was wearing her old Beacon era outfit so I knew it was fake. That it wasn't real. It put the dream in that odd category of semi-lucid.

I was dealing with the Boarbatusk in Ports' old classroom. I was using my old sword. I felt small as I fought it.

"Save that kid!" Weiss shouted down at me. It was disorientating like she was shouting through molasses. "Jaune, save him."

I turned away from where she was alone in the seats calling to me. There was this kid down in the pit with me. I couldn't make out his face. It was that kind of dream. Colors blurred and I slew the professor's Boarbatusk.

Instead of dissolving into ash it turned into a matted mess of worms and centipedes. They overran the kid who called out something as a centipede slid over his wrists and locked tight.

I took a step forward but my legs got wrapped up by one of the Grimm worms. It wrapped over my flesh and the slime it left behind stung me.

A centipede wrapped around both my wrists and locked tight. It looked at me. It made a smug, Grimm face at me.

I tried to scream as the bugs ran over my body.

I woke up trying to scream but it only came out as a meek groan. I couldn't move and my wrists and legs still burned where the bugs had touched me.

I was awake enough to know what I was going through. Sleep paralysis, they called it. I drooled on myself a little and couldn't shut my mouth as I lay in the cot they'd stuck me in.

I waited and eventually I was able to move again. I sat up. An orderly came by in the hospital. They had to check on us every thirty minutes just in case one of us tried to commit suicide. That was the kind of ward I was stuck in. It seriously sucked.

I stood up, tired of being watched from the doorway when the nurses came by. They hadn't taken my armor or my huntsman clothes. That told me that they wanted me to be comfortable. Just so long as I wasn't dangerous.

I was still dangerous. I had my gods damn semblance. Nothing could take that from me.

I striped the clothes off and hung it all next to the sink as I stepped into the in suite shower and washed myself down. I felt fucking disgusting and my dream had left me shaking. My wrists and legs burned still.

Sleep didn't even hit the same anymore.

I couldn't trust it. I couldn't trust in my mind while I rested. I wasn't allowed to rest. It fucking sucked. Plus they took my weed from me and I hadn't had the chance to talk to a doctor who could prescribe something real for me.

All I had was reality. Cold and sober even in the hot shower. At least Neo could bust me out anytime I wanted, basically. They'd taken my scroll too so I couldn't call her but she'd be around. I might just take her up on it, too.

They had me locked in this place. This hospital had us under watch from the doorways at all times even through the night so my rest wouldn't have been restful even if I didn't have the nightmares.

I scrubbed at my eyes hard and thought about the people I was doing this for. Ruby. Weiss. Yang. Blake. My old friends. I had to give this a try otherwise I was a coward. Otherwise I wanted to be sick.

I picked at the inside of my ear as I stood in the shower. I could feel things crawling around beneath my skin. The shower water pounded against the ground and with it came the whispering sound of Mother's voice.

"Come to me… lend me your strength…"

I shuddered.

"I have a favor to ask you, child. Run. Run away."

I wanted to slam my head into the shower tile wall. I hosed myself off with the little soaps they'd provided me and tried to relax as best as I could. It wasn't working so great. I wanted to hurt myself. I wanted to smoke. I wanted to die. I wanted to see my friends.

My feelings were all bottled and mixed up into a hue of utter nothingness.

It was still fairly late and I was sure I wouldn't get any more sleep tonight. Nothing good would happen to my thoughts if I did. That was when she got me. While I was sleeping I was vulnerable to her.

I was so fucking unsafe and had been for a long time. A month or more. Ever since that day I'd murdered my own friends, nothing had gone my way. The things I'd learned about myself only dragged me down.

I hated it. I hated being alive. For the thousandth time I cursed Merlot who'd doomed me to this existence without a care in the world. My creator… I would make him pay. He would suffer for bringing me into this world and dooming me to be tortured so. I could feel her fingers on the surface of my mind.

They were surgical and touched me so gently but they were there, digging deep into my thoughts like tentacles. It would feel so good to give in to them. It could be everything I ever wanted.

"Mr. Arc? Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," I called out to the nurse outside of the bathroom. "I'm the same as I've always been," I whispered in a quieter tone.

I could get through this. I was a hunter damnit. That meant something to me.

Does it?

The voice questioning me was my own. And it had a good point. All my dreams about being a hunter were fake. It was as fake as my name. It was given to me by an alien goddess.

She was working her way into me. She was breaking me down. I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep it up. It felt like water against a rock. Eventually it would erode. Except the rock was my mind. It was my psyche pit against hers.

"Can I get you anything Mr. Arc?"

"Something to help me relax and sleep?" I asked back.

"Just a moment." The male nurse walked away. He came back and placed a pill on a counter. "It's Clonazepam, just let it dissolve under your tongue. It should help with anxiety and sleep."

"Thanks," I breathed.

I stepped out of the shower and dried off. I savored the rough feel of the towel against my skin. The cloth was low quality and boy it felt good. I took the pill and let it dissolve under my tongue. It was incredibly sweet to the taste. I swallowed.

I immediately felt a little more relaxed but it was a bit more relaxed about being mind raped. There was only so much the drugs could do, surely. I was in it for real and I was in deep.

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"So tell me about what brings you in here Mr. Arc." My counselor was a woman. Middling height with brown hair and green eyes. She looked trustworthy. A strong jaw and high cheek bones made her classically good looking, too. She was maybe fifty, maybe a bit older. She didn't have the good looks of a hunter, though.

Dr. Caulbaugh was her name. And after a short introduction I was supposed to share with her my deepest darkest secrets. It was necessary for this thing to work.

"The general didn't tell you anything?" I asked. We were locked alone in a room. If I so chose I could rip her in half. Probably not a good sign that I was thinking like that. But I was.

"No, he didn't. It's up to you what you share with me. But the more honest you can be the better we can make things for you." She smiled at me and picked a pen at the corner of her mouth. An actual pen as opposed to a data pad.

"And you work with hunters?" I asked.

"Primarily. My background is in trauma victims. The overlap, I think, would surprise you."

"Not really." As far as trauma went, hunters had to be up there. Between killing people and watching their friends die day in and day out there was a lot of trauma to be had. I maybe knew a thing or two about that. I nodded and flushed out my half cape in the chair. I swept it behind me."That's why you lot let me keep my armor and clothes."

"Hunters are more comfortable in their wear. And armor isn't exactly a threat." She smiled again, trying to disarm me. That's the real reason she let me keep my cloak, armor, and clothes. That's the real reason I wasn't in a gown.

I kept nodding anyway.

"Please, tell me about yourself, Mr. Arc."

"My father was a test tube and my 'mother,'" I gave the word quotation marks. "Was an incubator. I was created in a laboratory by a scientist named Merlot from the genetic material of a woman named Salem. My other mother."

"You're serious?" Her jaw dropped a little. It shouldn't have been outside the range of possibility. Especially in a technophilic place like Atlas.

I nodded again.

"Okay." She started writing.

"I'm biologically twenty but I'm chronologically three or four."

"Oh my gods." She swore a little. She seemed a little shocked. I had been too, though. So there was that.

"Yeah. I joined Beacon academy when I was 'seventeen.' I was there when the academy went down. My partner was killed in the action. Her name was Pyrrha."

"Okay." She murmured while scrawling at her clipboard.

"I killed for the first time maybe nine months after that. I just ripped this bandit in half."

"How many people have you killed?"

"I've lost count. Maybe a hundred. Maybe more," I confessed. "A lot of people."

"Okay. Alright." She kept writing frantically. "You're very young to have such a high body count."

"You've met other four year olds with a higher body count than me?" I laughed.

"N-no." She mumbled. She picked the pen at the corner of her mouth. A nervous habit, maybe.

"Sorry. Bad joke."

"No, please go on."

"I was there when Haven was attacked. A month ago or so. Not sure if you heard about it."

"I hadn't…"

"I'm sure some details are classified. But while I was there my Mother, Salem, took control over my mind. She made me kill two of my friends."

"You mean, like with a semblance?"

"Kinda," I shrugged. "I bet details about my Mother are classified above top secret. I'm sure I can't share much with you."

"That's alright."

"And ever since then I've had tactile, visual, and auditory hallucinations. I hear her voice. I see shadows. I feel bugs crawling around in my face and in my eyes."

"I see. I see. Then what happened after Haven?"

"I found my 'father's' laboratory. That's where I learned the truth about me. I had fake memories, you see. Then I came here."

"From Mistral?"

"I snuck into the country. Report me."

"I'm not going to report you."

"I was so worried you would," I said facetiously. "So what do you think, doc? Do I have PTSD?"

"Almost certainly," she was still writing very quickly. "Mr. Arc, you have quite the tale to tell."

"Do I make your list of top ten weirdest patients or what?"

"You just might." She laughed. "Have you ever tried to take your own life?"

"Just after I killed my friends at Haven I tried to kill myself."

"What happened?"

"Couldn't focus. My aura wouldn't let me." I squeezed a fist as I recalled the memory. I inhaled deeply and tried to relax like I was about to try it again now.

"I see. I want to run through some mood scales with you. Is that alright?"

"Sure." I shrugged. I had no idea what those were.

"Now I want you to tell me if you've experienced these things over the past month. If you've experienced it all of the days, most of the days, half of the days, a few of the days, or none of the days."

"Shoot."

"Feeling down, depressed or hopeless?" She asked.

"All of the days."

"Feeling like a failure, like you've let yourself down?" She went on.

"All of the days. My father classified me as a failure of an experiment, even."

"Feeling like you'd be better off dead or having thoughts of hurting yourself?" She was unrelenting.

"All of the days."

"Poor appetite or the reverse, over eating?"

"A few of the days."

"Poor sleep or the opposite, getting too much sleep?"

"All of the days."

"Which one?"

"I have nightmares from Mother. I can't sleep. I'm even afraid of sleeping. She gets me while I sleep."

She wrote notes on her clipboard. "How have you been sleeping since you arrived?"

"Poorly."

"Okay, I'll prescribe you something for that. Next scale. Moving too slow, to the point someone would have noticed or the opposite, being more fidgety than usual?"

"None of the days."

"Fear or worrying about a great many subjects?"

"All of the days."

"Well Mr. Arc…"

"What? Never had a mind controlled patient before?"

"I can't say that I have. It seems to me you don't believe I'll be able to treat you."

"That's because I'm not actually crazy. I have someone else in my head."

"I don't think you're crazy Mr. Arc. That's not what PTSD is. I'm going to get you started on some of our atypical antipsychotics. They'll help stabilize your mood and you should notice the effects immediately."

"Which one?"

"It's called Asenapine. Have you heard of it?" She asked.

"No." I shook my head. I hadn't heard of any of the medications. I was no expert. My brain was in this woman's hands. I had to just trust her.

"Well it should help stabilize you. I want to run a genetics test on you to see which medications you'll respond best to in the meantime."

"I'm willing to bet my genetics are classified."

"Because of your origin?"

"Yeah. Because of my creation."

"Well I'll see about getting through on those. In the meantime I'm keeping you on Clonazepam and Asenapine."

"And you think that'll help?"

"Well it's not an exact science but we should be able to find a medication combination that works for you," she returned.

"We'll see, doc. I'm told you're who I should talk to about being released. About getting my weapon back, too."

"You hunters are all about getting your weapons. You're not ready to leave here, Mr. Arc. I'm putting you in for a three day hold."

"Three days?"

"Three days minimum. It's my professional opinion that you need serious help. You don't need a weapon in your hands right now."

"I could be doing real serious good. I could be saving lives."

"You could also be taking them."

"That's the job. That's what hunters are for. Let alone what I am for. I was made to kill people. I think. I'm not sure."

"You mentioned your friends. What were their names?"

"Ren and Nora." She looked over her board at me, looking deadly serious.

"Unless you want there to be more like that you'll remain calm and go through the therapies I recommend."

"Very well."

"You still seem doubtful. That sort of obstinacy is counter productive to your treatment. A large part of it is your belief."

"I'm being mind controlled. There's no cure for that. And the things I am? Where I came from? That shit's permanent."

"This mind control event is where your psychosis started? It's why you resorted to marijuana?"

"Maybe. There might have been psychosis before.."

"Then let us help you Mr. Arc. This isn't forever. You'll be back out in the field. It's my firm belief that your stay here is temporary. Have faith in the treatments. I think we can make some serious progress with your psychosis."

"I agreed to this in the first place."

"Then have faith. You're not doomed, Mr. Arc."

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-WG