karla sofen / moonstone (![]() ![]() @ 2014-11-17 22:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | !type: log, character: jemma simmons, character: karla sofen |
Who: Karla Sofen and Jemma Simmons
What: Jemma's very bad horrible no-good therapy session.
When: 17 November, afternoon
Where: Karla's office on the Upper East Side
Warnings: Supervillain at work doing supervillainous things.
Apparently whatever security vetting the Avengers and Stark had to put Karla through had proven insufficient to discover her HYDRA ties. For this, Karla was grateful; apart from not going to jail, it meant that she was seeing a distinct uptick in her business from Stark and its allies. While she refused to become dependent, financially or otherwise, on Stark, she would gladly take their money and their secrets.
The young lady talking to her now, Jemma Simmons, was an interesting case. Karla didn't have a complete handle on her problems yet, but the themes that would give her control of this particular asset were already on display. She was worried, frightened, angry--emotions directed not just outward, but, Karla suspected, inwardly toward her team and colleagues as well.
Karla was taking notes as Jemma spoke, distilling Jemma's words into key phrases and words. Jemma paused to draw a breath and didn't start again immediately, so Karla looked up from her notepad to offer a reassuring, if crooked, smile. "Do go on, Dr. Simmons."
“...and I realise I’m babbling about the intricacies of neural pathway regeneration and that wasn’t what I had meant to discuss,” Jemma finished in the fading edges of her exhalation, capping off her statement with a guilty duck of her head. In her lap, she had been wringing her hands in telling, nervous fashion.
In all honesty, Jemma didn’t quite know how she had gotten to be here. What had begun as an initial inquiry to a SHIELD-vetted therapist for Fitz somehow progressed to an in-person meeting and then a general, anxiety-fuelled explication that somehow unspooled itself into her thoughts on Fitz’s rehabilitative prospects and how she was subjecting Fitz to her (Raina’s) experimental treatments in hopes of a speedier recovery. “Sorry, this is not...I am not well-versed in this. I have always taken quite a bit of pride and joy in scientific experimentation and research, but when one’s test subject is one’s...well, best friend, it’s quite a bit more difficult to maintain clinical distance, as I am certain you are aware.”
Karla nodded, writing down a few more words. "In my discipline, it's not good practice to advise one's friends because of the possibilities: transference, and so on. All manifestations of being too close to the patient. But in the physical sciences, it's different. The scientific knowledge you've pulled together to develop this treatment works regardless of whether the patient is your friend or someone you don't know at all. And he's got other medical and therapeutic assistance, doesn't he? You're not also responsible for evaluating your own work?"
The concern in Karla's voice was real. She knew that other HYDRA groups were working to infiltrate SHIELD, that some of them might be privy to that scientific data. Apart from wanting Jemma to succeed, to be happier, it was to HYDRA's advantage to wring every useful bit of intelligence from the situation.
“Ah,” Jemma began, then paused, wondering how best to word her answer, feeling the hot flush of guilt rise up in her throat as it always did when she thought about her actions. “I guess you could say it’s a double blind study of sorts.” Her lower lip caught between her teeth. “I know you are bound by doctor-patient confidentiality, but technically I’m not your patient, so I don’t really…” know how much I can say without incriminating myself.
The flush did not go unnoticed. Karla underlined a word she'd already written and set her pen aside.
"If you need that confidentiality, we can arrange for it--but you don't have to say anything you're not comfortable with. I can tell that you're under a lot of stress, which, if it were my best friend," Karla paused there, considering the idea of a best friend and discarding it before assembling the right answer, "well, I'd be worried sick too. Particularly if I felt responsible for delivering a cure, to the extent that the damage, the changes, to your friend can even be cured. It's a very complicated situation and complicated, difficult feelings are normal. But it sounds to me as though you're doing the best you can under the circumstances." Karla gave Jemma a reassuring smile. "You're only human, Doctor Simmons. Sometimes in research you have to make hard calls. It's okay to feel how you feel about it."
Hard calls. Yes, this was most certainly that. By increments, Jemma felt the tension leave her body as she settled slightly more into the chair, breath slipping from her lips in a quiet sigh. “Brain damage can’t really be cured or repaired. The brain is such a...a miraculous organ that what often seems like a remarkable comeback is really just the brain adapting to its new situation, learning new neural pathways, making new connections. That happens over years. So that’s the conventional knowledge: brain damage cannot be repaired.” Unbidden, she smiled mirthlessly. “I could feel him slipping away from me, inch by inch. No one else seems to -- it’s, we all have a lot on our plate these days, it’s difficult to worry about something you can’t fix when there are many things you can but...for all my education and vaunted prodigy, I couldn’t fix this. So, I made the hard call. I reached out to someone, someone not very good, but someone who has the real potential to help. And I know I crossed a line, but I’m not sure that if I had the chance to do it over again, I wouldn’t make the same choice.”
Bingo. Karla nodded again. She understood Jemma's statement all too well.
"When the life--or quality of life--of someone we care about deeply is on the line, it's no surprise that we turn to experimental treatments. My own father died of cancer when I was a teenager. I would have done anything to save him, even if the treatment had been risky or dangerous." Karla pushed the notebook aside as well. "Obviously you won't know how much you've helped your friend until you've had a chance to observe outcomes. But as far as the attempt goes: don't blame yourself. Sometimes you have to take risks, to make hard choices, to do things you wouldn't otherwise to achieve your goals."
Jemma's gaze softened with Karla's revelation. "Would you have lied to your father, if you knew he would not have approved of the source of his cure?" Jemma asked.
Karla's father had lied to her, exposed her to God knew what sorts of alien influences from before she was born, and generally wrecked Karla's life, not least by dying. Behind her kindly mask, Karla considered all of this, not letting her expression change in the slightest. "To save his life? Yes. Yes, I would have, and dealt with the consequences afterwards."
In a way, Jemma had witnessed examples of this many times over -- what wouldn’t Coulson do to save any one of them? How many times had he defied SHIELD’s protocol for the team or called all the times when one of them had done something rather out-of-the-box but ultimately successful ‘good thinking’? “She--this person who is helping me--she’s going to call in that favour one day, and I am going to have to pay it. The proverbial sword is hovering over my head. That’s what is keeping me up at night, when it’s not the guilt.”
Karla was careful not to pick up her pen and paper again; she'd remember what Jemma said afterwards and record it for her own purposes. But Jemma had to trust her, so Karla left her note-taking materials on her desk. "You worry you'll be asked to do something that's--" Karla started to say more than he's worth but clearly that wasn't the case, or Jemma wouldn't have cut a deal "--abhorrent to your sensibilities. Or to his."
“Yes,” Jemma confirmed, gaze falling to her hands in her lap, curled and intertwined with each other as she had just been wringing them. “Because I know I’ll be made to keep my word, and that will be the day when I’ll look at myself in the mirror and I won’t be able to recognise the person staring back at me.”
"I can help you with that, if you want." Karla gave Jemma what she hoped was an encouraging look. "Make you more able to resist the impulses you're concerned about--so you can be more of a help to your friend, and won't have to worry that whatever you do will be a burden to the friend you've gone to so much effort to help." Karla rose from her chair and went over to her desk. Opening one of the drawers, she drew out a stone on a chain: beautiful, milky white with a touch of blue. "If," Karla said, "you're willing to trust."
“I--” Jemma’s gaze immediately focused on the pendant, her mind working to classify what kind of gem it could possibly be -- far too opaque for topaz. “Sodium potassium aluminium silicate,” she muttered, then lifted her eyes to Karla, questioning. “I trust your expertise. What do I do?”
"Just focus on the stone," Karla said, letting it dangle a little from her fingers. She didn't need it, but she'd found it a helpful focus. "Dr. Simmons--Jemma--just focus on the stone for now, and relax, and let your troubles slip away."
Her mind, Jemma had always thought, was far too pragmatic and logical for hypnosis. She even went so far as to part her lips to voice her skepticism, but instead found her gaze focusing on the iridescent stone -- if only out of politeness at first. It swung almost lazily, unhurried in the heat of the room. A flood of questions formed in her mind -- weight, hardness, density, what is the science behind hypnosis -- but with each repetitious turn, they became less and less important, until there was nothing left but quiet.
Now that Jemma was in a particularly suggestible state, Karla set about her work, laying all sorts of low-level instructions that she, or in a pinch, Raina, might be able to access to get Jemma to do whatever HYDRA needed her to do on the inside of SHIELD. Or, equally useful, should Karla herself be taken, instructions that Karla could use to escape. Further, she laid some instructions for self-soothing, so Jemma would actually feel better. This last was not technically necessary, but it would serve to reassure Jemma that Karla's intentions were good and that Karla's work was having some effect.
While she was working, Karla opened her desk again and found a small box of little stones that she used as touchstones for her patients. A particularly pretty one seemed right for Jemma; she put it in Jemma's hand.
Then she set the large stone to swinging again and brought Jemma back out of it. "How do you feel?" Karla asked. "Would you like a little water? Dry mouth is a common aftereffect. It has something to do with breathing patterns."
“I…” Jemma blinked, clearing the dregs of disorientation from her mind, Dr. Sofen’s office taking shape around her once more with its cool hues bathed in the late afternoon light. “Is that all? I didn’t even feel anything.” She could have sworn she had only been attempting (and failing) to concentrate on Dr. Sofen’s pendant just a few moments ago, but her mouth was dry, horribly so, and a quick glance at the time showed that it had passed -- quite a bit of it. “Please.”
Karla rose to fetch a paper cup of water from the cooler behind her desk. Handing it to Jemma, she settled back in her chair. "How do you feel now? You did very well. You can keep the stone. It's just a memory tool for you. I know you'll probably want to examine it, but that won't make any difference when you want to use it to remember to do the right thing."
It was cool in her hand, smooth. Jemma rubbed her thumb over its glossy exterior, wetted her mouth with water, and tried to objective self-assess. She felt...fine. Truly. Suddenly it seemed so absurd to have come, even if it was supposed to be on Fitz’s behalf. She knew what she had to do, and it was important that she do it, for Fitz, for her, for the good of the team.
“I feel...okay. Clearer. If that makes sense. A bit silly for having wasted your time because I feel...fine. Really fine.” But she could remember, logically, that she had been guilt-ridden, anxious. “I guess it must have worked. I don’t know what else to say but thank you.”
The smile that blossomed on Karla's face as she came to her feet again, to take Jemma's hand, was utterly genuine. Not that Karla had doubted her powers, but it was so rewarding to know that she'd helped Jemma along with helping herself. "You're very welcome, Dr. Simmons. It's always my pleasure."