16 Dec 2000
Chapter five - a clinical conversation.
kumi ^_^
DISCLAIMER: All Gundam Wing characters are property of Sunrise, Bandai Visuals, Sotsu Agency, and Asahi TV. This work is not written for profit, but for entertainment purposes only.
PAIRINGS: 6x5/5x6, 13x6/6x13, some very mild 4x9
WARNING: AU/modern day San Francisco; implied yaoi will turn to yaoi and eventual lemon in later chapters
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: To Alfred Hitchock who directed the incredible film, "Vertigo."
"Dreams are the Royal Road to the unconscious."- Sigmund Freud
Treize pushed himself back from his desk and rubbed his eyes. It was after 10pm and he was still at his office. There was a take-out Thai meal in his refrigerator at home and half a dozen water deprived houseplants that were expecting his return, but he couldn't make himself go. Not yet.
He and Zechs had been meeting twice a week for the past three weeks, but the dreams had persisted. Even through the sedatives he was taking, Zechs was still waking up screaming at least three times a week and he had begun dozing off during their sessions occasionally.
Truth to be told, Treize was worried. There was something about Zechs, something just below the surface, that he couldn't see. It was a feeling, perhaps, an *oddness* that he felt he should recognize. Something that was tearing away at the blond man's soul... something that had to be found if Zechs was ever to be "healed."
He stood and stretched, pouring himself another cup of coffee from the small file cabinet next to his desk. Then he wandered over to his tape recorder and hit the play button. The session they had had the night before began playing back.
"Okay, let's put them together and see how the dream and the real event differ," he was saying.
Zechs murmured something and then spoke louder. "Real life - well, we were driving down the coast, to Oceanside. We had stayed overnight in Laguna Beach and had about a 40 minute drive to the mission. It had been a wonderful morning... we stayed in bed late..." His voice drifted off and for several seconds he said nothing. Then he cleared his throat.
"Anyway, we had gotten to San Luis Rey about 1 o'clock in the afternoon."
"Was that approximately the same time you got there in the dream?" Treize heard himself ask.
"Mmm... no... no in the dream it's earlier... before noon, I think... but the time goes by a lot faster so it's sunset when we get to the bell tower. Anyway, we got there and I told Fei I wanted to see the church first, since those were the sketches I needed to work most on. I always liked to get the work done first, so we could just enjoy the place afterwards."
"And in the dream?" Treize had asked.
"In the dream... we just end up in the church first. I'm just there - sketching - and Fei goes up and starts drenching himself in holy water."
"Which he didn't do in real life, obviously."
"No. No, while I was sketching... he was looking at his little guidebook. Then when I was done, we walked outside to the cemetery."
"Did you walk through the colonnades, like you did in the dream?"
"No - the church and the cemetery are right next to each other. The colonnades are on the opposite side of the church..."
There was a hesitation and Treize could hear Zechs sifting a little, and then muttering a soft curse. "What is it, Zechs? Something about the church? Or the cemetery?"
'There *was* something bad in the cemetery..." Zechs had said quietly. "Something dangerous, I think - or just... frightening, maybe. But I can't for the life of me remember what it was. I even remember thinking at the time that I didn't know what was making me feel that way."
"And in your dream - you feel something bad at that same spot. "
Zechs voice began to sound distracted, dreamy even. "Something bad... something waiting... "
"Waiting for Wufei?" Treize had asked. "Is the bad thing waiting for Wufei?"
"I don't know that yet," came the faint reply. "I don't know that until we get to the tower..."
"What about in real life, Zechs? What happened after you got to the cemetery and felt the bad thing?"
"We, just wandered around, looking at all the gravestones. I made some sketches of the little crosses they have there. Fei spent some time at the Indian Monument and I just watched him. I remember watching him there... and feeling so scared."
"What happened then? You said in the dream that you just found yourself in the bell tower. How did it happen really?" There was a long pause during which the only sound Treize heard was the hiss of the tape. "Zechs? Can you tell me what happened?"
"We... we left the cemetery, and walked back through the church, then outside again to the patio and the colonnades... we walked all the way down to the end of them. I remember because we were holding hands and Fei laughed at me and called me "one brave queer"... I was starting to feel a little better, and he was making me laugh."
"Good, you're doing fine," Treize heard himself murmur soothingly. He winced at his obvious clinical tone and made a mental note to himself to work on that.
"Now, how did you get from the colonnade to the bell tower?"
"I was looking across the quadrangle, at the big pepper tree in the middle, and Fei gave a start... and just took off running."
"Where was he going?"
"Back towards the church, down the colonnades again. I called to him, but he didn't answer me. Just kept running... so I ran after him."
"Did you catch up to him before you got to the bell tower?"
"N-no... I was still trying to catch up when we got to the church. I remember running down the main aisle, seeing him going through the door that leads to the stairs. I was trying *so* hard to reach him, but he was a very fast runner... I didn't catch up to him until we were at the top."
"Okay," Treize had murmured, "now I want you to take things very slowly and tell me exactly what happened when you reached the tower."
The blond's voice was quavering as he talked. "I saw him standing right in front of me, at the head of the stairs... I called his name, but... it was like he wasn't hearing me."
"And that's different from the dream, where he was laughing and saying he wanted to stay there," Treize said.
"Yeah," came the soft voiced reply. "He never laughed... not when we were really there. But finally he did turn around and look at me. But then he started walking towards me, saying things like, "No! Don't do it! Stay away!" Another long pause filled the tape. And the next thing I knew, I was sitting on the floor, in the corner of the room, and people were staring at me..."
"Hmm," Treize had murmured, "I have to say, Zechs, that it sounds quite possible that between the time Wufei was speaking to you, and the time you found yourself sitting on the floor, you had a seizure. Now, the seizures you've had since childhood are what we call 'absence seizures.' They don't produce the full-scale muscle contractions that many epileptic seizures do -"
"Don't call me that!" Zechs had said loudly. "Don't call me that again! I'm not a freak, so don't call me one!"
"Zechs," Treize had replied firmly, "having epilepsy doesn't make you a freak. It's a neurological problem that's treatable with anti-seizure medication."
"I'm not epileptic..." Zechs had said in a quieter tone. "I'm *not*..."
"Listen Zechs - I was trying to tell you that absence seizures do *not* involve large muscle movements. The person having the seizure stays in one place, simply staring. There may be fine muscle movements - rhythmic blinking, chewing movements, or something like that, but they're *small*. If you were having a seizure, you would *not* be likely to move across a room and push someone from a window. You'd be more like a statue."
"So you're saying it wasn't me," Zechs said at last. "Just what the police told me..."
"I'm trying to explain why some of the strangeness of the day may have happened, and why it couldn't have happened the way it did in your dreams. But there are some parallels between the two that we can explore."
"You mean the bad feeling I had in the cemetery?"
"That, and Wufei's strange behavior in the colonnade, and moments later in the bell tower."
There was a sound of soft laughter from the tape and Zechs said, "You sound more like a detective than a therapist."
"Do I?" Treize had answered, his voice surprised. "Well... I don't mean to. We can focus on something else if you'd like."
"No, it's fine," Zechs had said, his voice sounding a bit lazy. "They *are* what's bothering me, after all... But... how do find out about that when I can't remember anything?"
There was a long pause, and Treize remembered struggling with what he was about to say. "I was thinking, if you agreed, of possibly hypnotizing you." I
Several moments went by in silence and Treize could almost see Zechs's face as he contemplated the idea. "So..." he said slowly. "I might remember things under hypnosis that I wouldn't ordinarily?"
"Perhaps," Treize said, his voice cautious. "But it would have to be done very carefully. There's a real danger of creating false memories if the hypnotist isn't careful. Would you be willing to do it?"
Zechs had stared at him then, frowning thoughtfully. At last he had said, "All right. I'll do it."
"Excellent. We'll give it a try at our next session."
Treize reached over and turned off the tape player. That session would be tomorrow. He had arranged for a colleague of his, an expert in the field of hypnosis, to perform the induction and handle the questions. He would watch through a one-way mirror.
Now he stood and stared out at the lights of the city "Well, Zechs... let's hope that some of those secrets you have will come out of hiding tomorrow..." The he switched his desk lamp off, reached for his coat, and headed home."
End of Chapter 5
(:./kumiko/rr5)
