Martin stammered something unintelligible as the man strode in and down the hall, blinking. He didn't even have time to let Dr. Paderborn know she had a visitor. He didn't look like family... but it didn't matter, because Dr. Paderborn knew he was coming when he was blocks away.
She had Cocaine in her thoughts more than one might think. The connection they had shared in the late 19th century had been an intense, intimate one (for how many could say they had shared Morphine's bed?) however brief, however fleeting before the shadow of her beloved Heroin, her brother-self, came into both Coke and Morphine's lives.
When their brother had come to her door as Cocaine had before him, she had seen the light in Cocaine's dark eyes change: something stronger, a need for something beyond what she could hope to ever give. She was not a woman who suffered anger, but for a fleeting moment, she wanted so terribly to rip her claws into Coke, beg him to stay in her arms. But he did not. How could she blame him? Staring into Heroin's eyes that first evening, it was as if a fire were ignited within her: she knew what her dreams meant; she had seen her male counterpart in them for over a decade. Any anger she could possibly feel melted instantaneously away; the sea within her was quiet.
Morphine had watched the two of them, under the roof of her house in Pennsylvania, and the three of them were, for some time, inseparable. Yet, Cocaine had eyes only for her brother ever since his tall, thin silhouette had entered their doorway.
She had been at peace with it. She was at peace being in Heroin's presence - in seeing the pleasure he took in Cocaine, she had been pleased.
She only wanted the best for her brothers. She had stayed by Heroin's side no matter, always drifting around him, near him, within the same cities, within the same states. There was nothing to render their bond.
And now, as she straightened the books in her small, private library in the office at the back of the clinic - a right turn from the small hall leading from the waiting room, she took pause, and she smiled coldly, quietly. She had been Viola Bliss on their first meeting; she had many masks, so many masks - Bliss, Viola Bliss, Mae Seturner, Phaedra Paderborn. But no matter the mask the monster wore, she was still a monster.
And she was monstrously pleased to feel Cocaine enter her clinic. She turned from the book shelf as the door to her office opened, absently sliding a copy of Keats's work back into its place.