Another day, another shitshow, another pointless therapy session with a psychiatrist who thought that they could unriddle all the fine little points of her personality in one session. Even though this had been a never-ending cycle for the past four years, the audacity of it to remain the exact same never ceased to amaze her. She supposed it wouldn’t be quite as bad if she actually belonged in this hellhole, or if the therapy session actually helped her any, but the only thing that they all seemed fixated on was her supposed lie. Every single psychiatrist that she had been to in this insane asylum that bred sadists more often than it cured the “diseases” afflicting their patients had been trying to get her to admit that she had made up the reason that she had unleashed her power in such an awful way. The only problem with that was that Sophie hadn’t made up anything, and if it weren’t for the prick paying off one of his buddies to lie for him and say that he was there too—he wasn’t—he might be one of the people in this hellhole instead of her.

There were those who asked her why she didn’t just lie, say that she made it up in order to look like she was getting better. The simple answer was that she knew that no matter what she said, she wasn’t getting out of here anytime soon. Nathaniel’s father was remarkably wealthy, and Sophie knew what that meant: regardless of whether or not his son was guilty, he would go to the grave defending him, because painting his son as a victim instead of a perpetrator was better for the both of them. The whole thing left a sour feeling in her mouth, and the knowledge that as long as Nathaniel and his father lived, she wasn’t getting out of here by legal means. So her mind had turned to other options, but despite her intelligence, she lacked the creativity to come up with a solid plan to escape this madhouse.

She had given up on her dreams of escape years ago, and she was convinced that short of a hospital-wide riot, she wasn’t getting out of here. Ever.

Instead of fighting where she was now living, Sophie had started carving out a place for herself in her little cage. Unfortunately, that meant somewhat cooperating with the people who were handing her medication that made her feel like she had touched a live wire every single day, and the people keeping the peace. It was exhausting, and in the end, it hadn’t made a difference; there were people busting her and subjecting her to whatever they wanted to regardless of whether or not she misbehaved. So… she’d stopped behaving. At least she could have more fun this way. This did, however, attract more attention her way, which was part of the reason for this little… meeting.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m going. No need to be all pushy about it.” Sophie griped at the orderly who had nudged her towards the door that they had stopped in front of, before taking a step forward. Had she been contemplating trying to book it past the orderlies escorting her to her therapy session and do literally anything else? Yes, yes she was. It hadn’t been the first time she had done it, and she had a strong suspicion that was the reason that there were not one but two orderlies standing shoulder to shoulder behind her, waiting for her to walk into the room that waited in front of her, like an entrance to her own personal hell. In some ways, she supposed it was just that. With a sigh, she reached up and knocked twice on the door before opening it, peeking inside to make sure that there was indeed a doctor there. There was, but that wasn’t what she had noticed first.

The acrid scent of sage hit her nostrils, and she wrinkled her nose in response. She would recognize that stench any day of the week; back when her mom was into the whole ritualistic witch bull, she had smudged their entire house with sage at least once a month, and it had been a scent that carried with it both distaste and disapproval on her end. Just when she had thought this lot couldn’t get any weirder, they proved her wrong. “Are you Dr. Clausen?” She questioned with a clear voice, moving into the room and dropping into the chair that she figured they were going to be using, crossing her legs at the knee and adopting a generally bored look. She looked up at the woman, as if she were mentally assessing her, taking note of the golden cross hanging around her neck. Of course, not only was she dealing with a head shrink, but a bible banging one as well. This would be fantastic. “Well, I suppose we should get this over with. Riddle out the cause of my ‘delusion’, right?” She leveled the doctor with a look, a mixture of distaste and disinterest on her face as she waited for her to respond.

Sophie had honestly had it up to here with everybody else’s ridiculous attitude towards her. Every psychiatrist had preached at her about how she was delusional and narcissistic and she couldn’t get better until she admitted that she had blinded someone and why. Every single one of them seemed convinced that she was in the wrong. None of them would listen to her, and quite frankly, she was sick of it. So she started mouthing off, talking back, and rolling her eyes at any psychiatrist that came within ten feet of her, because she didn’t really care what they had to say anymore. If they weren’t going to give her the time of the day, then she could do the same thing to them… right? There had been a few times that she thought that maybe she should listen to them, and start to work on some other parts of her that could use a little talking out. In fact, she considered it for exactly three seconds before remembering that she was thinking about messing around with people who messed with other people’s minds for a living. That was not the kind of shit that she wanted or needed in her life. Not now, not ever.

“Mm. Viviene, huh? Are we flipping the script now?” Her lips pursed as she barely fought the urge to roll her eyes. She knew that she was being an ass, but considering all the bullshit that she had been through up until this point, she did not feel bad at all. “You going to start calling me ‘Miss de la Cruz’ too? Or am I still Sophie in this little ‘you can trust me’ exercise?” The doctor, Viviene, took a seat next to a bundle of something half burned, and Sophie was both proud and annoyed that she was right, it was sage. What the hell kind of religion was this shrink into that she wore both a cross and used burned sage? It was like some crossover between indigenous earth magic and Christianity, and Sophie was positive that at least one piece of that equation wouldn’t be down with that. Instead of asking that, however, Sophie took everything in that she could. She found that later, when she was bored or sitting in solitary, she could riddle out things a lot better than she ever could when she was in the moment. The emotions that came out in a room like this often cancelled out any hope for logical thought, that was something that usually only came out when she was alone. Or having a discussion with someone who actually was interested in it. Shockingly enough, most people were not.

“Uhm, only every shrink I’ve seen since getting tossed in here to rot?” Sophie actually rolled her eyes this time. “Turns out if you get under their skin enough, they start to tell you what they really think is wrong with you. Apparently I have delusions fueled by an intense narcissism. I’m also a pathological liar. Fascinating, isn’t it?” Sophie arched her back, shifting in the chair and draping her arms over the sides, letting them dangle uselessly on either side of the chair. “The fact that the one thing I insist on is the same damn thing every time, and that I’m telling the truth, is lost on most people.”

Sophie watched as the doctor leaned forward, trying to analyze her every move. She just wanted to talk. That was rich. “Oh, I’m sure you do.” She had no doubt in her mind that this was just another game, something designed to get her to start talking so that they would go in circles over and over again, until she either revealed something momentous or started trusting the slight woman before her. Truthfully, Sophie doubted that either would happen, but she wasn’t willing to leave it to chance. “And if I want to sit in silence for the next hour?” Everything about her tone was combative and resistant; she didn’t want to talk, and she wanted to make that clear to a doctor that said she wanted to help. Supposedly, they all wanted to help, but none of them seemed to provide her a solution to actually getting out of this hellhole. They all seemed focus on getting her to heal, on making her make peace with herself. She had blinded someone, and she knew that came with consequences, but even then there didn’t seem to be an end to her sentence, no light at the end of the tunnel. “Because I’m gonna be real honest with you doc, I don’t feel like I have anything to say to anybody anymore.” For so long she had been drowned out and shouted over, ignored and pushed to the side, and quite frankly, she was tired of speaking on command like some pet.