Who: Harley and Blake What: Therapy session When: Early Sept Where: Harley's practice Rating: PG-13. Discussion of past abuse and general Scientology fuckery and coping mechanisms, Trigger warnings about sexual assault related to above discussions
Part of Harley’s job was often research. In this case, Harley had been reading, and watching videos. Research into one of her more personal clients and Scientology. The more she learned, the worse she felt. It was like any number of the worse cults she’d encountered in her dreams.
If blood sacrifices were a thing she wouldn’t be surprised.
She hoped Blake would continue to open up. Harley felt like there was a great deal of steel in the young woman, and that was probably the only reason she wasn’t more of a mess than she already was. Something to point out as a positive if necessary.
Blake had read the book Leah Remini had written about her experience with Scientology. She hadn’t yet watched the documentary show that Leah had. Blake figured that was not something she should watch until she felt a little more ready for it. Beyond that, she’d started reading things online, found blogs of people who had left Scientology sharing their stories. It was eye opening to see all the stories, to learn that she wasn’t as alone as she thought she was.
Today was a scheduled session, so she arrived at the usual time, and once she was in Harley’s office, she took a seat, making herself comfortable after giving Harley her customary donut, of course.
“I hope you don’t mind that I brought tea this morning. I didn’t have enough time to have some before I left this morning.”
“That’s okay,” Harley assured her, smiling. She picked up the donut and sniffed it like a connoisseur. This was a good donut. Top notch!
“Whatever makes you comfortable. I’ve got a feeling today is gonna be a teensy bit on the hard side.” It was probably an understatement, but Harley was having a less manic day so it was good for that.
Blake sipped her tea. It had not been the best of nights, though it also hadn’t been the worst. Blake had had dreams, though not Dream dreams, that tended to plague her now and again. Nightmares, really, that Scientologists had found her and would drag her back. They always had a slightly ambiguous ending with whether it included being handed back to her ex as well or not.
“Hard side? What makes you say that?”
Nightmares. Harley knew that pain. Both herself and Helena, and Harley was pretty sure she talked in her sleep sometimes. She didn’t really want to know what she actually said so she never asked.
“I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately, and other research. I want to find ways to address the Xenu in the room, and help you heal with that.” she’d even been looking for local support groups of ex-scientology members. Ones she was certain weren’t traps.
Harley wasn’t the only one who talked in her sleep. Helena sometimes talked in hers as well. And anything she heard Harley say in her sleep never left their room.
Blake stiffened a bit at the mention of Xenu. She didn’t like talking about Scientology, though it was mostly because she was afraid. They condition people to never talk about it, especially to psychologists. “That is far easier said than done.” Which was true for anything they talked about here, but Scientology was a very large, very horrible thing.
“I understand. It’s something that shouldn’t remain hidden forever. I just want you thinking about it a little bit. How you want to approach it. There’s a lot of conditioning you’ll need to overcome, but there’s nothing wrong with talking about it.” Harley leaned forward. “They didn’t want you to talk about it because they don’t want people to know. And they don’t want people to know because of how awful it really is.”
Blake eyed Harley, taking a slow breath. “In the time that I have been out here in the real world, I can see just how much they lied to us. It’s like they prefer to keep us ignorant. Ignorance is bliss and all of that.” Not to mention money was undoubtedly a driving factor in all of it. After all, if people left en mass, that would drive down their profits. And people had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to progress up the hierarchy to achieve perfection.
“Ignorance means you can’t question authority, and if you can’t question authority they can control you. They want money, and they want power.” Power and worship and there was probably a lot more sexual abuse going on than was readily apparent. Blake’s story wasn’t unique. “Like some other abuses of power, they’re clever enough to use loopholes to get away with it. That isn’t on you.”
“Perhaps not, but it does not stop me from wishing that I could have done more when I saw others suffering.” Blake had never reported what her ex had done to her because she’d had a friend who suffered abuse from someone within the church, and it had not gone well. She’d seen it tear her friend apart and all she had been able to do was to be there for her, but it hadn’t quite been enough.
“It’s never too late for that. Now, you can.” Harley opened her desk and pulled out a notebook. It was red and had swirly flowers on it. “Eventually, we’re going to try to find others like you. There are support groups, and there are going to be other girls and women trying to escape too. We can never undo the suffering we’ve been through, but we can learn from it, and use that learning.”
Sliding the notebook across the desk, Harley smiled. “But I don’t think you’re ready for that yet, doll. So in the meantime, I want you to keep a journal. Put your worries and your fears in there, write down when you have moments of doubt. Write letters to yourself, your friends, letters to your parents or even Adam. You don’t have to show me or anyone else unless you want to. Might make it easier to explain things, but this is mostly for you to get your thoughts out.”
If she’d met Helena years ago, she might have given her her notebook, rather than try to explain things.
It was unfortunately too late to help some, Blake knew that, but it didn’t lessen the feeling of wishing she’d done something earlier to help. While it would have only made everything worse for her, it was also something that could have released her sooner from the bonds of Scientology. But what was done could not be undone, so she’d simply have to deal with it.
Looking at the notebook, Blake pressed her lips together. She understood the intent, that perhaps it was something to put her thoughts into while she wasn’t quite ready to say it outloud. She nodded a bit, taking the notebook in her hand and setting it in her lap.
“Thank you. It may help make sense of the shit in my head.” It tended to be overwhelming at times.
Harley wasn’t one to believe that things happened for a reason. Sometimes things were senseless, as much as it hurt to admit that.
She couldn’t resist, and grinned at Blake. “Be the monkey, fling it at the wall until something sticks.”
She got up from behind her desk, grabbing a chair so she could be more personable with Blake. “How have you been since our last session?”
“That sounds like something Sun would do,” she responded. Sun was a monkey faunus after all. And he could be annoying as well. At the question, Blake took a breath. “Last night wasn’t a good night. I didn’t have any Dream-dreams. Just that recurring nightmare of Scientologists finding me and dragging me back there.”
Harley wrinkled her nose at the thought. But hey, she’d brought it up first! “Do you have a safety net? Someone you could call, or text? Maybe we should invest in an emergency pager. Something you just press a button on and it alerts police. Or even just me.”
Harley would murder people for Blake, it was a look that flashed in her eyes.
“Maybe the emergency pager. They most likely would take any phone I had away. They are known for stalking and harassing people who leave.” Blake took a slow breath. “Though if they do that, I have the upper hand. When I had the option to either stay or leave Scientology, they said if I left I had to sign this affidavit thing that basically said they weren’t responsible for anything I suffered while there. It’s probably one of those things to make it so they can’t be sued by people who sign it. I didn’t sign it. I snuck out in the middle of the night and never looked back.”
So that meant that if the opportunity ever came up, charges could be pressed. Though Blake would have to be strong enough to take the absolute decimation of her character that would happen.
She nodded. “I’ll get ya a pager, and I’ll program in 911, my number, an’ anyone else you want.” Her eyes glinted as she leaned forward. “That’s something we can use, if we get a chance. If there’s any proof of illegal activity, maybe we can nail ‘em to the wall an’ help other girls who weren’t able to escape.”
“Okay,” she said with a nod. There were a few other numbers she wanted on it. Yang and Ruby for certain. Blake still wasn’t certain about Weiss. She doubted that she would be so willing to drop everything and come help her currently. They were still basically strangers in this world. “It will not be easy to take them down. They have a lot of money and power behind them.” Which was probably the only reason that Scientology even still existed currently. Otherwise law enforcement and the government would have taken it down already.
“We’ll have to see, doll.” Harley leaned back, crossing her legs and rubbing her fingers along her knee. “I think, no matter what happens, or how hard it gets, you’ll come out stronger for it, and better for it. “Ain’t no such thing as too big to fail no more.”
“I am less certain of that. They will destroy anyone and everyone associated with what we do against them. They will take our deepest, darkest secrets and make them public knowledge, anything it takes to slander and discredit us and get us to stop. I for one don’t want any of my crap to come to public light. It’s hard enough just talking about it with you, Yang, Ruby and Logan.” Blake was scared by that. Understandably so after everything she’d gone through.
There was only one secret that could well and truly scare Harley, and that was her daughter and the father finding her. But there were things Harley could do. People she’d kill to protect her.
To say nothing of the damage her wife could do to someone. But she understood Blake’s hesitation. “Just be prepared, a lot of the time these things kinda… happen whether you want them to or not. But the people that matter they’ll always be there.”
“I don’t want anyone to get hurt because of it. And there are things best kept from the light.” Blake knew she didn’t want her things becoming public knowledge. And if it was something that gained any sort of national news coverage, her parents, if they were even alive and even cared, would see it. And she definitely didn’t want them to know.
Harley stopped pushing, nodding her head. Everyone had their secrets and the things they’d done that were horrible. There were parts of her past she wasn’t proud of, so she could respect that. She also knew that her own feelings about that were greatly exaggerated, and it was likely the same for Blake. “Have you tried your calming techniques?”
There were times to push and times not to. Blake could take some pushing on some topics. Scientology wasn’t one that she could take much on, at least currently. With time it would get easier as the emotional knots were loosened and undone. “I have, yes. It can be difficult to remember them in the moment, but I try. I’ve also started making them part of my routine before going to sleep, in hopes of relaxing and maybe thwarting some nightmares.”
“Does it help?” Some was better than not at all, and Harley knew that well. With Blake, her technique tended to be one that focused more on guiding Blake in the right direction and giving her the tools and desire to deal with it herself. It made for slow going, sometimes, but Blake was more like a cat than she realized. You can’t herd a cat.
And she couldn’t wait to see her kitty ears.
“Sometimes I think it does.” It was really difficult to tell, though. Blake wasn’t always easy to get calmed down, but she still tried to do it before she went to bed in hopes that she could at least thwart the normal nightmares sometimes. There was no thwarting her Dream-dreams, so she would simply need to take that for what it was and deal with whatever came from it.
“Have you tried not sleeping alone?” Logan was actually pretty cuddly, Harley knew that from personal experience, and she knew him well enough to think he’d just scoot over if one of his kids crawled into bed with him. And make no mistakes, Blake was one of his kids. And there was always Blake’s other friends. The girls from her dreams.
“No, I’m not ready for that yet. I don’t exactly react well to others being in the same bed I am.” Blake’s body language changed, and she curled up on herself a bit. Her shoulders slumped and her head lowered. Yeah, he ex had done quite the number on her in that respect, and she didn’t know if she’d ever be comfortable sharing a bed with someone else.
“I understand,” Harley replied, kindly. “It took me awhile before I was able to sleep next to someone. Not sex, just sleeping. I tried approaching it as a nice long hug, and that worked eventually.” But she had gotten even more past that though, and it was pretty obvious. She didn’t exactly hide her sexuality. “That doesn’t make you a bad person.”
She shifted in her seat, rubbing her chin. “Did he ever make you feel like you had no choice?”
Blake nodded a bit. She tended to feel bad about how skittish she was about touch and people being in her personal bubble. Women didn’t trip her as badly, but she still got really uncomfortable if someone she didn’t know got too close. She hoped it would get better as time went on, but she wasn’t going to hedge her bets just yet.
“Yes. All the time. Especially after my parents left Scientology, I didn’t really have anyone else, so his family took me in. That was when it really started to get bad. Before...before it was mostly just physical and verbal abuse. But when I was living with him...that’s when he started...forcing himself on me.” Blake lifted her feet off of the floor, setting them on her chair and pulling her knees tightly against her chest.
“He pulled you into his bubble, and it didn’t matter what you wanted, or if you were in the mood. All that mattered was his pleasure and his needs. And because he believed you belonged to him, there was nothing wrong with him taking what he considered his. He knew you didn’t know enough to say it was wrong, and weren’t strong enough to stop him. He had complete power over you, when a relationship is supposed to be equal.”
Harley reached over, squeezing Blake’s arm. “And you’re going to feel like you deserved it, like you’d wanted it. You’ll second guess yourself and question your memory. And I can tell you that what he did was wrong, that you’re a victim and you deserve so much better. But you’re not always going to believe it. It’ll take time to come to terms with it and believe in yourself and in the goodness of others.”
She was speaking lucidly and with the authority of someone who’d been there. “Being with someone, even just holding someone, can be as magical as they say, but only if its mutual and shared. But you’re not doing something wrong if you’re not ready for that. If it comes up, and it might eventually, you need to assert yourself. No one wants to think you’re into it when you’re really not, and a genuinely good person won’t force the issue if they know its an issue. But they have to know its an issue.”
Blake listened and pressed her lips tightly together as she listened to Harley and remembered those times. They’d been so difficult, and eventually Blake had become numb to them, simply taking it because fighting made it worse. They weren’t good memories, obviously, and Blake didn’t like it when they came back to the forefront of her mind. Though she did know she’d have to think about it in order to work through the trauma and come to terms with it.
When Harley touched her arm, Blake looked up at her, pain in her eyes but she knew Harley was right, in a logical sense. Everything else in her was screaming the very opposite. It was something that she’d definitely be fighting an uphill battle there.
“So far I’ve only explicitly told one person about the whole touching issues I have. She asks before she tries to hug me.” Blake really did appreciate that. Not everyone actually asked. Blake had told Logan and Ruby a bare bones of what she’d been through, but neither of them really set off her alarms. She was comfortable around them both.
It would be like climbing a mountain, but it would be worth it in the end. “That’s good of her. Personal space is personal.”
She leaned back, giving Blake her space again. “I think it’s important to have boundaries. Maybe eventually you’ll be able to accept a hug without warning. But even then, you might kind of stiffen up sometimes. But that’s not your fault, or hers, and anyone who matters would be understanding.”
She nodded in understanding and took a slow breath. “Sometimes I wonder,” she began, then paused as she thought about how to phrase this. “Sometimes I wonder if she’s disappointed at all because I am very different from how she knows me in the dreams. Am I supposed to live up to the version of me I dream about? What if I never get there? What if I let my team down here because I’m not as confident or as skilled as my dream self is? What if I get one of them hurt or even killed because I’m not who they dream of me being?”
It was a worry of hers. She knew she was different, a lot more broken and damaged than her dream self. She wondered if the others would tire of her quirks at all.
“She might get frustrated. It’s a human thing, when something doesn’t go as you expect or want. But that don’t mean she’s going to be disappointed or angry. Maybe the dream you is in some ways the you you could be once you’ve healed more.” She waved her hand. “I don’t mean entirely. From what you’ve told me, she’s kinda damaged too. But you’re more than capable of becoming the stronger parts of her, mixed with the strong parts of you. And if your team is good people, they’ll understand. It ain’t like they’re who they dream they are either.”
She thought of Pamela. “There’s a woman I know. Lets call her Red. If she ever showed up I’d have… a hard time not jumping on her. But I’d also have to get to know who she is here first, an’ respect her boundaries. What I’d want and hope for might not happen, but that wouldn’t make me love her any less, an’ wouldn’t make me any less more likely to move heaven and earth for her. An’ maybe if I was patient enough, I’d get her an’ her me an’ Helena could all live happily ever after together. An’ maybe not. It would be worth tryin’, but I would be very careful about not pushin’ or pressurin’ her. Cuz I know what being pushed feels like and its awful. There’s just a big difference between hoping and wanting, and expecting something or demanding it.”
“Two of them might be able to understand. I’m not so certain about the third, no matter what the dreams or Yang say.” Blake was really worried about what Weiss might think of her. Would there be an argument between them here like there had been in the dreams? Would they be able to move past it if it did? Blake didn’t have the answers, and she wasn’t going to push the subject. She didn’t know if she could stand up in an argument yet without immediately yielding to what the other person was saying, regardless of what was being said.
Raised voices did not sit well with Blake currently.
“And what if I can’t be more like my dream self? Yes she has her own damage, but it’s nothing like what I have here. What if I can’t be more like what I dream of and I just fall short of what Yang expects, or wants, me to be? I don’t want to disappoint people, but it feels like that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
“I guess we’ll find out. But I’ve got faith.” Harley tapped her chest. “I feel it in here. Sometimes you just know good people when you see them. And good people aren’t going to hold you to something you can’t control. Do you feel like Yang wants you to be something? Or do you want to be that something for her? Or for yourself?”
“I don’t know. I just know that I wish I wasn’t so fucked up so maybe I could have a better relationship with my teammates. And I wouldn’t be as scared of being around people I don’t know.” Sure Blake had a bit of an aversion to people in the dreams as well, but that tended to come from keeping her faunus state of being a secret. Here, several people being around tended to make her nervous, even if they weren’t interacting with her. Which was one reason she was hesitant about that beach party Yang had suggested. She didn’t know if she’d have a good day or a bad day for it, and didn’t want to subject anyone to one of her bad days and ruin the party.
“We can’t change what happened, just give you tools to help you make it day to day and week to week. Give yourself outs when ya get overwhelmed. Arrange it with your friends so you always have a space to retreat to if ya need it. If they’re really your friends they’ll understand. You can’t build a relationship with your team if you don’t try.” And good or bad, Harley knew Blake had to try.
Blake would at least try, though she was skeptical of the results she’d get. Then again, she had a more pessimistic outlook on everything. “There’s several of us here from the world I dream of and Yang was wanting to do a beach party. I don’t know where I can have a safe space to retreat to at a beach and surrounded by people I barely know, Yang and Ruby excluded.”
“The car, for starters,” Harley suggested. “Depending on the beach there might be a few places. Maybe go down there with someone one day beforehand and pick out a retreat! Or just let one of them know you need to go if you need to go.”
It was asking a lot of Blake’s friends, but if they were her friends they’d understand and try to work with her. Sometimes, Harley really wished she could talk to Blake’s friends.
“That’s asking a lot of them. I’ll just let one of them know I need to go if that comes up.” Blake didn’t want to take any of them out of their lives to ‘scout out’ a beach before the party just so she could pick out her bolt holes. So Blake would just take the easy way out in that respect and just leave if she needed to leave the party.
“That’s what friends are for,” Harley pointed out. While one shouldn’t take advantage of a friend, there were still things a friend could offer to help. “But that probably would be the least disruptive.”
She thought that they might notice Blake needed to leave without her having to say anything, too.
“Still, they shouldn’t have to always conform to me. It’s more than a little selfish and not good.” While that may be a good point under normal circumstances, Blake was different just given the trauma she was dealing with. But even so, she really hated making others conform to her. She needed to conform to them sometimes. If she didn’t stretch beyond her comfort zone at times, she would never really get better.
“You’re right, and it’s good to recognize that, but you also need to recognize when they can help you. I know it ain’t easy, but you’ll find a balance. Stretching your wings for them, but knowing when you’ve reached your limit and relying on them.” Harley was proud of Blake for realizing that, and it showed on her face.
“I hate relying on others. I want to be able to rely on myself, but I can’t even do that.” Blake felt bad about living off of Logan. Sure she could buy her own food and pay for her own things thanks to her job, but she really felt like she should get her own place. She wanted to try to be independent, to have things of her own and to provide for herself. Maybe it was stupid and a bad idea for someone in her position, but it was something she really wanted.
“Blake.” Harley leaned forward again, shaking her head. “Relying on others is not a bad thing. I know you want some measure of independence, and you do have that. Probably more than a lot of other people have. Right now, you need to focus on healing, and making a nest egg.”
“You’re right, healing is more important.” It was a silly idea to try to make a move of getting her own place. Blake would just have to suck it up until she was in a mental and emotional place where she could live alone. She’d probably just take to doing more cleaning around Logan’s place, do something to give back to him somehow for his kindness.
Harley thought they’d made some good progress today. But she hoped that Blake might consider letting someone in, so she suggested just that. “I think you may want to consider letting someone in. Share some of your experiences with them. Perhaps start by directing them to resources about Scientology.”
“Yang knows a little. But I’ll probably point her towards things about Scientology first so she can better understand what I’m talking about.” Blake also had a thought to talk to Ruby, but she didn’t want Ruby to be subjected to just how fucked up people in the world could be. So she wouldn’t tell her any details about it. Just leave it at abuse happened and that would be enough to get the point across.
That would be something that Yang would appreciate. While she knew she couldn't protect her sister from all the world's horrors, she still wanted her to keep her innocence. Harley nodded. "I think that's it for today, unless there's anything else? And you know you can call or text me any time."
“No, there’s nothing else,” Blake responded. She then nodded a bit. “I know. And thank you. I know it’s not easy to deal with me.” She knew Harley did this for a living and dealt with difficult patients all the time, but she still felt like she should apologize. With that, she unfurled herself, got up and headed out with a lot on her mind.