I've seen the face of my affliction, of my reality

[cruelwonder]

Who: Dr. John Seward (doctor_seward) and Alice Liddell (cruelwonder)
When: February 18th, 2012
Where: St. Teresa's Sanitarium
Summary: Alice goes for a second session of therapy. Seward's powers make themselves known. Bad Stuff happens.
Warnings: Spoilers for Alice: Madness Returns, mentions of torture and gore.


It had been two months since Jack's torture at the hands of Black Mask and his release. He'd done very little beyond staying at home, going to work, and seeing a few friends, and it worried Alice. Worse, every time she saw him, she was reminded of that night in the hospital with him curled next to her, looking broken and haunted. Since then, she'd wanted to kill Black Mask for what he did to Jack, for what he put all of them through. She wanted revenge. And, just like that, he had died in his cell. He'd barely been in the asylum for two months.

She didn't want to see the cell they put him in. She didn't want to be inside the Sanitarium at all. She knew for certain that she'd see it warp and twist before her very eyes, her madness taking over, if she walked its halls now. She couldn't. She asked for Dr. Seward to walk with her in the gardens instead to give them privacy and space. She didn't want to feel trapped inside of a place she had no intentions of returning to.

Dr. Seward had done his best to make her feel comfortable (despite the awkward memory of the TV broadcast months before). She trusted him more than she trusted any other doctor in the city outside of Daedalus Yumeno as Jack's physician.

As they wandered the gardens, she pulled her dark pea coat tighter around herself. She didn't mind the cold too much; she'd had to go out in less back in London during their dreadful winters. "Do you think it's right, Doctor, to want someone dead for all the pain they've caused others?" she asked. "He was a cruel man. What he did to Jack was unthinkable. And yet I can't help but feel as though he deserved far worse than what he received."

She wondered if Bumby deserved worse than his own fate.

Comments

[cruelwonder]

"And what woman in their sanest mind would ever touch such a foul and wretched creature like that man?" she nearly spat in turn. The idea of anyone wanting to pursue a man so scarred, so vicious and horrible in almost everything he did was enough to make her nearly ill. "Who would care for a man who has not one caring bone in his body? He tormented a boy to death and back multiple times! Jack's even told me that he's done it before to other people, to at least twenty others in this city alone. Who would ever condone such a damning thing? Who could love a man who does that?"

Perhaps she was being difficult. Perhaps she didn't understand. But in her mind, he was just as foul and corrupt as the people who preyed on children and other innocents, taking advantage of their weaknesses to horde profits and pain for themselves. She never wanted to see it happen again to anyone...least of all the man she came to care for.

"And the reason? It was all because he looked similar to that other man...Bruce Wayne. What sort of excuse can that possibly be?" She glanced away, balling her hands into fists under her arms where they were crossed. To kill a man is no happy deed no matter their wrong... Oh, if only he knew. Now, instead, she wondered if she had been kinder to Bumby with how he met his end. It was so quick, hardly any time to feel pain at all. Perhaps... No. No, she didn't wish or condone torment on anyone, least of all her enemies. Even if they deserved it.

After a considering pause, she finally nodded. "If he'll allow it. It's not my place to say. If he was visiting the Phantomhive Manor, perhaps, then I could ask you there and he could sit with me. That might be easier for you."

Almost done with finals! So steady tags from now on, I swear!

[doctor_seward]

The doctor is stunned unto silence, for he'd been unprepared for the rancor behind her words. He had been about to counter against the verbal attack but instead he made himself give pause, for he sensed she was very much upset about this, and rightly she should be. Seward does mean well, but perhaps he did not have a full grasp of the history behind Jack's condition. And what sort of physician would he be if he did not have knowledge in its entirety? For, as his Professor had once said, it was better to trust knowledge than one's own memory.

Seward did sympathize. His anger for Lucy's misfortune had had time to turn unto sorrow, but there was a marked difference in that Jack had come back to Alice alive. If but barely.

His gaze falters and he looks to the ground, trying in his own way to console her but in a way he knew from experience. Perhaps it was not altogether what she'd have wanted to hear...

"Miss Liddell: There is no denying how cruel a man he was. Nor how vile. And such a being is more monster than man...But even so, if he'd been rightfully punished would the sting to your words vanish? Would the hurt diminish? True, closure has power to make us aright again, but so does forgiveness...I cannot ask that of you, but if not doing so compromises your chances at happiness..."

"Bruce Wayne? I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the name, but by mistake...Truly, it cannot be he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?"

An astounding coincidence, really. He'd not have considered that. Certainly, wouldn't Jack's mannerisms given him away that he was someone else altogether? And there was a matter of age...But maybe that hadn't mattered to a man like Black Mask.

"I'd be happy to," Seward nods compliantly, absently wringing his hands together. The tension in the air was beginning to get thick, this much he could tell. It was as if there was a shift in their surroundings as well as perspective.