Who: Alfie and Liam, later Brian When: November 2012 (Backstory) Where: A corridor / Brian's office What: Liam goes apeshit on Alfie's face / his first psych eval
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Alfie was the kind of guy known for minding his own business. For the most part he kept out of trouble and out of people’s way, mostly concerned with keeping up in his Spirit classes and keeping track of the little spirit that tended to follow him around. Life was a lot more difficult with a child...not to mention a child that’s invisible majority of the time. At the very least she had cramped some of his more intimate moments but truth be told he would rather spend time with her than anyone else. Unfortunately for all the effort he put into keeping his head down it wasn’t always meant to be.
He was wandering around one day in-between classes when Isabella, his little ghostly shadow, decided to pop up. Everything happened relatively quickly. He was walking, he sort of saw someone but then BAM Isa! After that it was a little bit more of a blur. He knew he’d run into someone and he knew that someone couldn’t have been Isa (not just because of the size of them) but he was content to mumble an incoherent one word apology and then move along.
Of course his one word mumblings were not only lacking in satisfaction but sometimes misconstrued as cold shouldering. In a way he sort of was pushing aside the person he’d run into to… after all the only thing he gleaned about them before he ignored their existence was that they were a guy.
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Liam thought he was doing all right so far as a second year. First year had been a bit of a pain, having to do all those Healing and Spirit classes. He wasn’t exactly the sort to sit on the floor for hours on end doing nothing. If he could read, sure, or listen to music, but not just sitting. And trying to connect with the Spirit world? Forget it. Unsurprisingly whatever Spirits were on the island wanted very little to do with him.
But second year was going much better. He could focus on what he was really good at. Of course he hadn’t been surprised to find that his main talents lay in the Offensive course. They had only just really started to learn how to conjure fire, and he felt a little thrill of excitement every time he managed it. He was a fucking superhero, basically. If only his parents could see him now.
Despite this however, he was already in a bad mood that day. He’d struggled to stay awake in his Earth lecture - it was all nature and Gaia and that sort of thing - and the hippy teacher had told him off. When he was thirteen he might have flipped her the bird, but after five years at The Duke of York Military Academy, you learned not to talk back to teachers, even the harmless looking ones. He’d kept his cool and apologised, but he didn’t like being shown up like that in front of his classmates.
So when someone walked into him in the middle of the corridor where there was plenty of room to pass by, and didn’t even apologise properly, he was just about ready to snap. “Hey,” he shouted after the man’s retreating back. “Watch where you’re going.” The man appeared to pay no attention to him. Before he had time to think about what he was doing, he had taken the few steps necessary to catch up to him, grab his shoulder and turn him around to face him. “I said, watch where you’re going,” he growled.
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In a world where Alfie was in-tune with the things happening around him he might have noticed that he was testing people’s nerves. This was not that world. He didn’t have time to register that he was being grabbed until it was already done but after he’d been turned to face the man all he could really muster was a level stare. Not the wisest of decisions but he wasn’t sure exactly how he should be reacting.
As far as he knew this kid was younger than him but it didn’t show through his attitude. He really thought that kids that age should stay in their respectful bubble but that was saying a lot coming from a person who hadn’t at all stayed in his bubble when he was younger. Maybe it was hypocritical of him but he would never admit it.
The aggro stranger was growling out something pretty determined and all Alfie could think about was what he’d be doing in his Spirit classes later that day. He didn’t even offer the guy the decency of being remotely worried about what was transpiring between them.
He even had the nerve to shrug. Yeah. He shrugged. That was an appropriate answer, right?
---
Liam could not believe the man just shrugged at him. He clenched his fist. No, Liam. Calm. You know what happens when you get angry. Whoever was talking was not loud enough, and his demons did not listen.
“You going to fucking apologise or what?” he snarled, shoving the man in the chest with his open palm and pushing him back. He didn’t care if the man was older, he could have been a TA for all he knew or cared.
---
Wow yeah this guy was pissed. This was the point where Alfie knew he should say something but he was a little more preoccupied wondering if Isa was around to witness any of this. Luckily in this moment she seemed to be gone for the most part… but by the time he’d ascertained that and zoned back into the scene… he had no idea what transpired.
Whatever the guy said was lost. So Alfie did what he did best, he stayed quiet. He did narrow his eyes though, questioningly. Genuinely he was confused now about what the hell the guy was on about. It was the push that brought him up to speed. Okay so this escalated quickly.
No one could ever say that Alfie was the type to back down from a fight, he wasn’t, he just didn’t want to fight a guy over what seemed like nothing. “Cool it.” was all he could think to say, his tone wasn’t aggressive or anything, just….. informative? neutral? something in that vein. Maybe the slightest bit of a kind warning.
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Liam in rage mode did not take kindly to being told to ‘cool it’ or ‘calm down’, except perhaps by someone he was close to. A total stranger doing it in that careless tone was enough to send him over the edge, and he saw red.
His fist came up and impacted with the man’s face with a sound like… well like a fist hitting someone’s face. It felt good… oh yes it felt so fucking good, and he lifted his arm to do it again.
---
Nothing about Alfie’s chosen specialty would pin him as the type to be good in a fist fight. However, if you kept powers out of it, he was actually decently capable of holding his own.
It had very little to do with anything here at Olympus and everything to do with growing up in a section of New Orleans that was prone to both rowdy drunken tourists wandering off the beaten path and seriously messed up guys looking to change for an hour. You learned how to be a little bit scrappy when you had to.
The hit to the face threw him into that zone where a bubble engulfed them and his blood started to pump faster and everything became so nice and clear. When the man’s arm rose to hit again, Alfie moved to grab it and try to twist it so he could turn him and get that arm behind the man’s back. He didn’t want to beat this stranger senseless he just wanted him to chill out.
---
Liam’s vision was clear as ever, but all his inner eye could see was a blur of red and black. His head was pounding and all he wanted to do was hit out and hit out hard. He felt the grip on his arm and wrenched it away, aiming a hard punch to the man’s stomach and kicked him hard in the knee, sending him crashing to the ground. He aimed another kick before falling to his knees on either side of the man’s waist and began pounding him around the head with his fists, every blow carrying as much strength as he could give it.
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Alfie didn’t have a great grasp on the offending arm, it was easy enough for Liam to pull it away from him. When it came to protecting himself he wasn’t half bad but he couldn’t even begin to muster the berserker mode the other man had going on from such a simple interaction. In short, his heart wasn’t really in this fight. Then again he did question if Liam had a heart to be in the fight or if he was just a big ball of aggression. A matter for another time, he had to stop letting his mind wander.
That little lapse in thought cost him. It was only a split second but it only took a split second for Liam to land a punch pretty much straight on into his stomach. It wasn’t the first time he’d been hit there but there really wasn’t any getting used to it. The feeling of your organs wishing they had legs to run somewhere else in your body and escape the impact of a blow like that was always skin crawling. His stomach did, as far as he could tell, manage to run up into his throat… but he swallowed it back down in time to react to the next hit.
He was hit in the knee, and he did go down, but not as hard as Liam probably would have liked. Before he knew it Liam was on top of him but he didn’t bother trying to stop his punches… his hands shot up to grab at his face and his thumbs found that perfect natural groove into his eyes. And then he started pressing. Hard.
---
Somewhere through the red haze of rage as his fists flailed wildly at the man’s face, Liam felt the hands on his head and the thumbs seeking his eye sockets. He roared in pain and lashed out hard at the offending arms as he thrust his head back out of reach. Now incoherent with rage, he threw himself forward with his forearm across the man’s throat, pinning him to the floor and choking him at the same time. He raised a hand, but instead of aiming another punch at the bloodied face, he put his palm close to the ear and called up some fire. They had been told that, as second years, they were never to use their powers with fire against another person until instructed to. But Liam was way past playing by the rules.
He held the man down, ignoring his struggles, and brought his hand closer until it started to singe hair. Before he could make contact, however, there was the sound of running footsteps and hands grabbing at him, pulling him off his victim, pinning his arms to his sides. There were enough of them to keep him down no matter how much he struggled, and the flame in his hand flew out of his control and burned his palm, making him yowl with pain but thankfully starting to bring him back from the brink of insanity. When he looked down at his hands to see the burn, there was blood all over them, and suddenly he could hardly remember how it had got there.
---
His plan didn’t go exactly the way he thought it would, his opponent was far too lost in the bloodlust to even remotely be bested by someone as far separated from it as Alfie was. He wanted to defend himself but he also didn’t have nearly the skills.
The punches kept coming and he felt blood pooling up in his mouth, threatening to choke him. That’s when everything stopped and he became aware of a shift in the atmosphere. Two things had happened.
Liam had begun to summon up his fire… and Isabella had popped up. True to his nature the latter of the two issues grabbed most of his attention. It enraged him to think that Isa had to see something like this and against his better judgement (as most things were) he wondered about her. If the scene reminded her of the way she’d died, he didn’t know how, he never asked or looked into it.. but the panic all about her made him wonder for the first time. It never occurred to him that she just didn’t want to see him hurt.
The heat was building next to his face and he took the opportunity of stillness to spit all the blood in his mouth up at the man’s face. Then footsteps, muffled through the haze of his brain was trying to shut off despite his newly kindled desire to return the aggression. The weight of the other man was lifted off of him. Everything after that felt like it was eons away through an ocean. It was all over before he’d even had a chance to do anything about it, so he just closed his eyes and laid there, trying not to think of Isa watching.
---
Hours later, Liam sat in the corridor outside the psychiatrists office , hunched in his chair and staring at his hands. The Healers had treated the burn in silence, pursing their lips together as though holding back from telling him what they really thought of him. His hands had been washed, but there were still traces of blood on them. He wondered if they were afraid of him... or just angry.
He barely remembered what had happened. One minute the man had shoved past him in the corridor, the next, he was being pulled away from him by many hands, blood everywhere and his eyes stinging with pain, and now he was here. He shuddered. It had been a while since he had gotten quite so angry that he was capable of killing someone. He thought he really might have if he hadn't been stopped, which was the really worrying thing.
They had sent him here to wait, and he had gone obediently without much expectation, except for wondering whether they would expel him from the island. Since it would be his third expulsion he wouldn't really be surprised, but he was pained to find he didn't want to be kicked out. He liked it here. It was the first place he'd ever really felt like he belonged. And now...
---
Life at Olympus could never be considered normal but after being a student for ten years and a TA for six years, Brian was fully prepared for extra strange situations to occur. It was only his first year working as the school’s psychiatrist but he’d thrown himself headfirst into his work and was properly enjoying it from day one. He had been going over patient files that morning, acquainting himself with the students that he would end up having regular sessions with, and making sure everything was organised according to how he wished it. Not that the previous psychiatrist hadn’t been organised but Brian had a system that he liked to work with because it made everything, including himself, more efficient.
He had been in the middle of carefully sorting patient files in alphabetical order when he had gotten a text on his phone, saying that he was needed urgently due to an incident between two students; while the entire story was still unconfirmed, apparently a second year and a seventh year had been involved in an altercation of sorts that had turned violent. Brian sighed. He’d never been in any fights during his time as a student but he knew they were bound to happen, what with magic and other things flying around. Putting the last of the patient files away, Brian received another text, informing him that his newest patient would arrive shortly. He cleaned up the office and made sure all of his files were put away, then he went to the door and opened it. The boy sitting outside in the hall looked calm enough but Brian saw the flecks of blood on his hands, one of which was bandaged up.
“Hello there. Come on in,” he said, aiming his comment at the boy before walking back into the office while leaving the door open for the student to follow him. Taking a seat in his chair, Brian made sure he had a pad of paper and a pen handy because it was very likely that he’d need to write stuff down.
--
Liam looked up blearily, for a moment unable to register what had been said to him. After a long moment of processing, he heaved himself with some difficulty out of the chair and shuffled unceremoniously into the room. He had never been in here before but he was uninterested in either its furnishings nor its occupant.
He sat in the chair opposite and slumped into it, feeling tired and drained and most of all that he didn’t want to be here. He rubbed anxiously at the dressing on his hand covering the burn. It hurt, but the pain at least seemed to wake him up a little. He put a hand over his eyes briefly and pinched the bridge of his nose.
---
The poor boy looked tired, worn out. His slow shuffle across the floor was hesitant, unsure. Brian’s gentle grey-blue eyes glanced at the dressing on the boy’s hand for a moment, noticing the way in which he was scratching anxiously at it; Brian didn’t have a complete understanding of what had happened between him and the other student, but it would help to have the files from the Healers. As if someone had read his mind, a woman knocked on the open door and Brian ushered her in, taking the file from her outstretched hand with a smile before listening to her leave and the sound of the door shutting behind her. He opened the file and skimmed it, then returned his attention to the young student. “Mr Cokely. I’m Brian Moore. I understand you had an altercation with another student. Would you like to tell me about it?” His tone of voice was kind and relaxed, not agitated or overly antagonistic, and he had a positive expression on his face which included an encouraging smile on his lips.
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Liam glanced up at the man, his expression settling into a deep frown. “No,” he said after a minute. He shifted awkwardly in his seat, crossed his arms over his chest and tried to look nonchalant. It wasn’t the first time someone had wanted to ‘talk’ about his behaviour. It didn’t matter how hard he tried to explain it, his parents, teachers, anyone who’d ever bothered to listen had written him off as just being a violent personality who had to be strictly disciplined to keep under control. He didn’t see any point in talking to any more such people when the same conclusions would inevitably be drawn.
---
Brian wasn’t the slightest bit deterred from the student’s response and looked at him calmly, while the boy shifted around in the chair and crossed his arms over his chest. Brian fiddled with the pen in his hand as it hovered over his pad of paper, not writing anything yet; some patients were more difficult than others and it seemed like Liam was going to be one of the more difficult ones at the beginning. His gaze glanced down at his file which was still open on his lap, then he closed it and placed it on the desk. “If you don’t tell me what happened, then how am I supposed to help you?” he asked, raising an eyebrow curiously at him.
--
Liam felt another flush of anger. People always said they wanted to help. It never lasted, though. Not when they saw who he really was and what he was capable of. He grit his teeth against the shout that threatened to come out. He had never had two episodes in one day before but there was always a first time for everything. “I don’t need help,” he growled, even as tension in his arms made him hunch up even more. “I just got pissed. He pissed me off. Shit happens.” He glared up at him. “Are you kicking me out? Because there’s no point in me sitting here waiting around for it if you’re just going to do it anyway.”
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The anger was radiating off the boy but Brian merely lifted his eyebrow slightly, feeling no fear about the situation despite what had happened with him and the other student earlier, and he was determined to not show any unnecessary emotions either. He lightly tapped his pen against the surface of his pad of paper and fixed a serious gaze on him. “No, Mr Cokely. I am not kicking you out. Until I understand what is going on, I cannot and will not give the Dean a recommendation about what needs to be done. I would hope that we can talk like normal adults and work through this problem together but to do that, I need you to work with me here.” He tilted his head to the side. “Can we do that?”
--
Liam hesitated, feeling the anger die a little in his chest. He had expected to be thrown out immediately, and a little spark of hope dared to appear. He uncrossed his arms, slowly. “Okay,” he said, resisting the urge to rub at his face with his bloody hands and sleeves. “Fine, I guess.”
---
It seemed that his words had made progress with the student, because his demeanour changed somewhat and he looked like he was planning to pay more attention, or at least maybe be attentive enough for them to talk through the whole situation. When the boy vocally agreed with his statements, Brian smiled kindly at him and turned his pen around in his hand, facing the point of it towards the pad of paper. “Alright. Would you please tell me what happened? However is easiest for you, Mr Cokely.”
--
Liam grimaced again and looked down at his hands. What had happened? He remembered the man shoving past him, and then... it was all a bit of a blur.
He'd been stupid, that was certain. It had been so long since anything this bad had happened, he'd thought he'd got it under control, or grown out of it or something. And this time it had gone far too far, with nothing and nobody to bring him out of it until it was too late.
“I… I’m not sure,” he said truthfully after a minute. “He pushed me, and I was angry, and then… the next thing I knew there were people pulling me off him.” He flinched. This wasn’t quite true, he could remember hitting the man, over and over again, but as usual it was like watching himself through a window, as though he hadn’t actually been there other than as an observer.
---
Brian listened patiently to Liam as he talked, writing now and then on the pad of paper that was on his lap. While most people would automatically show a sympathetic expression, Brian attempted to refrain from doing that because some people considered that to be seriously patronising and it would never do any good to patronise his patients. He still couldn’t prevent his eyebrows raising slightly as the boy described what had happened, and he wrote something else down before asking, “Do you know why he pushed you? Did you ask him?” He assumed that the boy had asked him because most people tended to do that, unless they were scared stiff and Liam didn’t seem to be one of those people, but Brian thought he would check anyway.
--
Liam shook his head slowly. “I… no, I didn’t… I guess he just wasn’t looking where he was going,” he muttered. It seemed ridiculous now. “But he didn’t apologise or anything,” he added quickly, as though this justified having beaten him to a bloody pulp. He turned away again, turning his hands over and over in his lap. “It wasn’t a push, really, he just bumped me. It just… it pissed me off, okay? Things make me angry sometimes. I can’t… I can’t help it.”
---
The pen danced across the pad of paper again while the boy talked, Brian taking notes the whole time. It seemed like a simple misunderstanding between Liam and the older student that had been blown out of proportion completely, or that was his initial analysis at least. Obviously the boy sitting in the chair had some anger issues but nothing that couldn’t be worked through gradually, and that was what Brian hoped would help Liam eventually. “Would it have made a difference if the other student had apologised?” he asked.
--
He shrugged and didn’t look back up. “”Maybe,” he muttered, his accent slipping back into New York as he tried to remain stoic. “Dunno. Sometimes it just… something happens and I just lose it, and it doesn’t matter what anyone says.” His lips twisted into a bitter expression. “My father says I just need discipline. Hasn’t worked so far.”
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“And you don’t know why it happens?” Brian asked, wanting to be in possession of all the facts. Treatment wasn’t the same for everybody, and he would need to make a decision on how to work with Liam to combat the issues he was having. He raised his eyebrows at Liam’s comment about his father. “I highly doubt that this is solely a discipline issue. Mental discipline perhaps, but that is something that requires much more finesse than I suspect you mean. But if you are willing to work on it, then I am more then willing to help you, Liam.” He wrote something on his pad of paper. “What do you think would be a good first step to improve?”
--
Liam glanced up for the first time in several minutes with an incredulous expression. “You can’t stop it,” he said, as though this was the most obvious thing in the world. “You don’t think I’ve tried? I’ve hurt people - not just strangers, people I care about…”
He shuddered. He remembered vividly the sound of glass smashing against the wall, and realising he had almost killed his first girlfriend with an ashtray.
“I didn’t mean it,” he said, low and defeated. “I didn’t want to hurt him. I don’t even remember what happened, I was just… he was there, and then my hands were covered in blood and I… I was going to burn him.” He felt a sick twist of horror in the pit of his stomach as though the reality of this had only just occurred to him. “I was going to burn his face. Who does that? That… that’s not normal...”
---
“I didn’t say stop it. I said improve,” Brian replied, without missing a beat. “I believe you have tried but this is obviously something bigger than just a mild anger management issue. I believe you, Mr Cokely, when you say that you didn’t want to hurt anybody, and that is a very important and positive place to start.”
He sat up straighter in his chair, placing his pen and pad of paper on the desk before fixing all of his attention on Liam. “The question is, do you really want to try and work through this issue? I am willing to help you as long as it takes, but you need to really want to work through this. I’m not saying that it will be easy or that we will see progress overnight but if you really want it, then it can be done.”
--
Liam’s hands were shaking. He felt conflicted, on the one hand he wanted to be as far away from this office as he could possibly be - on the other, no one ever in his life had acknowledged that he had a problem that could be worked on in some way other than stricter rules and harsh words. His father had once told him if he kept going the way he was he would end up dead or in prison by his mid twenties.
“I can try,” he said, after a moment’s pained silence while he tried to clear the lump in his throat. “If you really think… I want to change, it… it’s just… no one’s ever thought I could.”
---
Brian’s facial expression softened a little when Liam spoke after a moment of silence, pleased that he was willing to try and work on the anger issues. He clasped his hands in front of him, leaning forward as Liam was talking. “I do think so. And I believe that you can change,” he said, encouragingly. “We can work on it together, at your pace. We don’t have to rush through anything. The whole point is for you to feel relaxed and comfortable about having sessions together, about working on this.” He picked up his pad of paper again and wrote down some details, feeling like he had enough to give Naomi an initial assessment. “How often would you like to meet?”
--
Liam felt a little flicker of hope grow as Brian assured him that it was possible to get a hold on whatever was wrong with him, that he didn’t have to be this way forever. At the question though he felt a familiar twist of anger, and he grit his teeth. “I don’t know,” he snapped, freezing up a little. “How am I meant to know? I don’t even know what’s wrong with me.”
---
The snappy tone that Liam suddenly employed didn’t phase Brian in the slightest and he turned his chair back towards the desk for a moment, fishing out his calendar from a drawer; even though he could use his laptop, it wasn’t on at that moment and he also enjoyed using an old-fashioned calendar. “You aren’t meant to know,” he reassured, flipping the calendar open to the relevant month. “Its more of what you feel the most comfortable with right now. I know it will take time so if you feel like you would like more frequent sessions to start off, then we can work with that. If you would prefer less frequent sessions, that is alright too. The whole point is to work at a speed that makes you the most comfortable and at ease about the entire process, rather than make you uncomfortable and thus hinder our progress.” He glanced down at the calendar again. “So what would you prefer right now?”
--
Liam shifted uncomfortably into the back of his chair, trying to keep a lid on the anger that was threatening to rise. “I dunno, whatever,” he muttered. After years of being told what to do when it came to his rage, being asked what he wanted to do seemed like some kind of test, and he wasn’t happy with it. Why didn’t the man just give him his sentence, or whatever? What would happen if he said he didn’t want any of it? Except that he did, he just wasn’t convinced it would work. What could the man even do? Talking had never worked. Convincing him that ‘there was nothing to be angry about’ had certainly never worked.
“Once a week?” he suggested finally, when no answer seemed to be forthcoming. That seemed reasonable. And if he hated it, he reasoned, he could always not show up.
---
Brian nodded once Liam offered up his suggestion, and checked his calendar for days and time slots that he had free once a week. “How about Monday, late afternoon, or Thursday, just after lunch?” he asked, having a timetable handy of the various classes for the students, so that he could work his sessions around all of the schedules of both teachers and students. He could count himself lucky that he enjoyed being so organised.
--
Liam shrugged again. He was getting really tired of all these questions. “Monday’s fine,” he mumbled. He wondered if he was going to be allowed out of this room, ever. “So… but… the guy…” he said, rubbing once again at his bloodied knuckles. “Am… am I getting punished, or what?”
---
“Alright, Monday afternoons it is,” Brian replied and wrote down a note on his pad of paper to start preparing a session plan later. When Liam asked him whether there was going to be a punishment, Brian raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. “In my personal opinion, reprimanding you would only make this situation that you have worse. I will be submitting an official report to the Dean, and we can go from there. But for now, try not to get into more fights.” He cracked a small smile, trying to make light of the current atmosphere.
--
Liam paused. “Oh,” he said, as though he couldn’t care less one way or the other, though secretly he was relieved. “Okay.” Privately though, he thought that ‘not getting into anymore fights’ was a lot easier said than done.