Revelations 1 (R, M, H)

Richard woke up a few minutes before six thirty. It took him a moment to remember why he was there, and why Aubrey was next to him. Neither of them had moved from the position they’d fallen asleep in, with his arm around her stomach. God, I fucked up last night. He just laid in bed where he was for a while, thinking. He brushed her long hair to one side and kissed Aubrey on the neck.

He turned the other way and got out of bed, heading for the bathroom. He got in the shower and turned the temperature up, letting the heat melt the thoughts raging through his head at him. He’d managed to hurt her again, despite his best efforts. He needed to make it up to her somehow, because she deserved better than him.

He got out of the shower and moved from the bathroom to his closet to get dressed. As he was pulling his shirt on, he heard the front door slam behind him. So Aubrey’s mad at me. She probably wants some space.

The day before, Hazel had come to ask him for help. His stepsister’s curse was supposed to reactivate each morning, and he’d been up for a while now. Today she hadn’t shown up. He was worried that it might’ve gotten somehow worse, that maybe no one had come to get him because they couldn’t. So before heading for breakfast, He decided to stop by the Arrow Cottage in case they needed him.

When he knocked on the door of the Arrow Cottage, there was no response. The glass and bronze door was silent and still. After waiting for an annoyingly long time, he decided to check on them a different way. He got the new black phone out of his pocket and sent a message.

Hey, is everything alright? Do you still need me today?

For some reason his phone didn’t allow group chats or copy/pasting, so he typed it out to Hazel then Helena separately. Almost instantaneously, he got an error message back from his message to Helena.

Message Could Not Be Sent. Recipient is Out of Range.

That was worrying. Why would Helena be out of range? How could Helena be out of range?He hadn’t seen a cell tower anywhere, and he’d assumed that the phones were running off the same magic as the bar. He was starting to panic when he got another text from Hazel. It read:

Hey, sorry we didn’t warn you. Ms.Turner left a note this morning that she was finishing a side project from yesterday and we didn’t need to check on her. She said she couldn't say what it was until after she finished. I’d be out there now talking to you about it, but I’m kind of still getting dressed for later. I’ll pick you up at your house at one, would you mind dressing up a bit? Also, I’d appreciate if you hung out in your house for a while, I don’t want you to see my outfit until we leave.

He sent back That sounds good, thanks for the heads up and went over to the dining hall. Whatever Helena was up to, she didn’t need him. After how he messed up last night, it would be good to have one person he cared about that he wasn’t able to hurt. He was a little curious about what Hazel had said, but he had higher priorities.

He went into the dining hall. Genet wasn’t there this morning. Seated at the moment was Luna and Felicia at the far middle table together, while Dr.Petrov was sitting by herself in the corner. With what happened last night, he could use her help.

He sat down in front of her as she was sipping from a red smoothie. He still wasn’t sure how to feel about Dr.Petrov’s transformation. It wasn’t that she wasn’t hot. Of course she was hot. But it felt wrong for him to see her that way. If her clothes had grown with her, that might have made it easier.

But she was still his therapist, and with how confusing as his feelings had become he needed her more than ever. “Hey Dr.Petrov? I know it's pretty early in the day, but is this a good time to talk?”

She put down her smoothie. “Of course. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to check on you yesterday. Why don’t you get some oatmeal and tell me about how you’re taking this?”

After he came back, he used the bowl to give him time, trying to figure out where to start. “I feel guilty” He answered. “I either will hurt or have hurt everyone here. I wish I could make a deal with Genet for her to give everyone else the option to go home.”

He saw Dr.Petrov’s forehead crease. “You’re worried about hurting us.?” He nodded. “I’m not saying you can’t have a reason to feel guilty, or that you don’t have a reason to feel worried. But being worried about hurting us means you’re probably going to be more careful. Does it feel like you’re trying to be careful?”

He hung his head. “I am now. But I’m not sure what happened yesterday. I just keep making bone headed mistakes and leading Aubrey on, when it’s still not safe for her to be around me.”

“Is she not safe because of how you’ve told me she’s treated herself in the past, or is it something new?”

“It’s still that.” He explained to her everything that happened after she’d watched him leave yesterday morning, ending in Aubrey slamming the door this morning.

“It seems like you may be being a bit too hard on both you and her.” She told him gently.

“On both of us?”

“A lot of what you keep referring to as serious mistakes are just times when you were enjoying the moment with someone you care about. You’re allowed to do that, even if you’re worried about how they’ll respond. You aren’t responsible for the actions of others.

Then on the other side, as much as you want her to take it easier on herself, she may not know how. Has she told you why she does what you’ve been worried about?”

He sighed. “No. I can barely get her to acknowledge it’s happening except in an emergency. She always just says she’s doing what anyone would do or deflects to something I did for her.”

Dr.Petrov thought about what he said. “It’s possible then that she doesn’t know how to fix it, or even if it’s happening. I know how much effort you put in last time, and how frustrated people became when you started neglecting your other obligations. But most of those obligations are suspended while you’re here on the island, so this could be a good time to heal your relationship with Aubrey.”

“But what about when we go back?” He tried to argue. “She has a life without me now. I’m going to fail her again if she stays with me. Once we get off the island, she can go back to her life teaching like she’d always wanted. I can’t let her risk that for me.”

Richard saw something in his therapist’s eyes change. “I shouldn’t ignore it, but I need to come back to what you said about failing her later. Do you remember when your friend Felicia asked about what it meant to be eliminated?”

He tried to remember, but there was so much that happened last night. “I’m sorry, I don’t think that I do.”

Dr.Petrov took a deep breath. “Before Genet let us wake up, she made us watch dozens of scenes. People that rejected being with the master that had been assigned to them, said that they could never be together. For that, they were eliminated.”

“What does that mean?” Richard asked. He was even more stressed than before he’d sat down with his therapist.

“They were twisted until they were no longer recognizable. Sometimes they became someone new, without the memories of the person they were. Sometimes it was obvious they knew who they were, but their body had been morphed into a state where it didn’t really matter.

If she can’t have a life with you, she may not have a life to go back to.”

Richard felt his eyes watering. He felt more foolish than ever. “So you’re saying that the only way to protect her is to be with her? That’s what I’ve always wanted. It feels too good to be true”

“Every once in a while, the good thing to do gets to be the easy thing to do.”

He rubbed his forehead. “God. I wish I had known this last night. I made her so upset, and I don’t know how to apologize and tell her I changed my mind so quickly. Plus I’ve got whatever Hazel had planned for today at the same time. I don’t know what to do…”

Dr.Petrov put her left hand over his and said to him quietly. “It’s important to remember that you’ve got both time and help. You don’t need to solve this today, you just need to make sure you keep trying each week. The others could face the same fate if you don't give them a chance either. For today, I can check on Aubrey. I’ll see how she’s feeling, and see if I can make things easier for you when you talk to her. I’ve wanted to get to know the others anyways, this’ll just give me a chance to meet Aubrey. How does it sound for me to visit her after lunch once I do something else I planned for the morning?

“I can’t thank you enough Doctor. I don’t know what would’ve happened if you weren’t here.” And so he finished his breakfast and went back home, reading to kill time as Hazel had asked him to. He got one of the roast chicken breasts at lunch and went back to his room, trying to stay out of Hazel’s way. At twelve fifty nine, he heard her familiar four beat knock, and opened the door.

It was Hazel, but as he had never seen before. His breath was taken away as he saw her in the outfit she’d wanted him to see.

“Hey.” She said, looking a bit nervous. “Are you ready to go?”