After The Horror

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

"When he first said he doesn't remember anything, I thought it's part of the magic." Miss Weathermay-Foxgrove admitted, looking sorrowfully at the boy on the couch. "We always try to gather as much information as we can about threats, but deep down I thought it's better this way, at least for him - easier to move on. But over time, I noticed it's not only that he forgot the experience - he seems unable to acknowledge it happened. Every time we come close to mentioning it, it's like the mists close around his mind. His body is there in the room, but his mind - "
" - Is back in Bluetspur?" James asked. It was like a spell: Beforehand, the youth watched the two adults silently but impatiently, as could be expected from a teen who was asked to be present at a discussion he has nothing to say in. Now he just stared blankly, unaware of his surroundings.
"No." The huntress shook her head. "That's something I know. Memories can haunt you worse than any ghost. I think almost every adventurer experienced this at some point. With Roddy it's different: where the memories are supposed to be, there's just a void - and that void is consuming him."
She seemed to be on the brink of tears. "M'Lady, are you alright?"
"I'm fine." Her voice expressed that she clearly wasn't. "He is the one you should worry for. It... It's my fault he's in this state in the first place. I encouraged him to use his psionics, I'm the reason he was kidnapped..."
"I'm not sure about that." James shrugged.
She raised an eyebrow.
"Well, I don't know all the details, but... I remember twenty years ago, the talk of the town was a pair of girls who decided their life's calling is to be adventurers. Every man or woman of common sense around them warned them that there's no way this would end well for them - "
" - But we didn't ask them." She smiled bitterly. "From the moment Genny and I decided, there was no way to stop us short of locking us in the highest tower - and even then we'd have probably escaped."
A moment of silence:
The boy couldn't talk, the woman was wondering what to say, and the man was busy listening.
"Do you think he'll ever... You know, get back to himself?"
James did a mental eyeroll at that question.
"M'Lady, are you the same person you were at fifteen?"
She shook her head wildly.
"We'll try our best to restore his sanity." He explained. "But this might take years. He might never be quite the same. The important thing to remember is that broken as your nephew might be, He's still here. You said it's like his brain is consumed by mists - but mist doesn't make things vanish, it just hides them. Roddy is still alive, he still thinks and feels under that cover, and he still needs his parents and aunt - perhaps more than ever."
James looked back at the boy. He seemed alert again, though a little confused. Enough talking about him, James thought. Let's hear what he has to say.
"My name is Dr. James Mousel." He stuck out his hand. "You can call me Jim. I'm here to help you."
"Yeah..." The boy scratched the nape of his neck. "Cause Mom and Aunt Laurie think I've gone nuts. I'm gonna tell you what I told them: I'm fine."
"Roddy, we talked about this yesterday!" Laurie looked into her nephew's eyes. "You agreed these memory gaps were a problem!"
He considered it for a while, then sighed. "Yeah... I think I had... It's just - "
" - Scary to admit." James nodded. "If you can't trust your own judgment, how can you trust anything else? For all you know, we could be telling you the sky is green."
Roddy nodded.
"I hope you'd learn to trust me anyways. You sound like a man I'd appreciate being trusted by."
The boy seemed encouraged by the compliment.
"Rudolph Y. Weathermay-Boritsi." He shook the doctor's hand. "You can call me Roddy."

James watched the aunt and nephew say their goodbyes. He wondered why Lady Gennifer didn't escort her son herself. Well, it *was* the full moon last night, but he wasn't sure he believed the rumours. Even if they were, the lady was a decent ruler, and James strongly believed that a monster by body doesn't have to be a monster by heart. Ezra knows this world has too many of both.
There are so many things in the Land of Mists that can break a man, James thought. Wise or foolish, brave or cowardly, it can happen to anyone. Most people convinced themselves it will never happen *to them* - he used to judge them for it, but now he understood a measure of unjustified optimism is essential for a healthy mind. Others knew how near the horrors of the world were as well as he did, even better, but grudgingly accepted this situation: There's nothing that can be done, anyway. Unjustified pessimism, equally destructive to improvement. Then there were people like the Weathermays, good men and women and non-binaries who took it upon themselves to protect those who cannot protect themselves, to risk breaking so that others may stay whole. He had all due respect for them.
But what of those already broken?
Someone had to be there for them.
And that's where James walked in.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

I have a complicated relationship with horror portrayals of mental illness, and especially with how they translate to Ravenloft mechanics, but I always prefer to be a fanfic writer than a critic and to deconstruct tropes in-story than to hate on them. And 'A guy driven mad by an eldritch horror getting therapy and realistically recovering' is a premise I had in mind for a while and had been waiting for a proper setting. So when I read LotB and saw that between victorian mental healthcare methods for gothic vibes and literal brain-sucking vampires the setting actually has one normal therapist, I knew what I was going to write.
I really hope I'd have time to continue this - I have in mind a ton of characters.
I'd just disclaim that while I have friends with mental issues and I've read a bit on the subject, I'm by no means an expert - and the conditions of some of the characters I'm about to include are plainly supernatural and won't neatly fit to real-life diagnosis. So I can't promise medical accuracy. What I do obligate to is respect, sensitivity and stereotype-breaking.
Bye!

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

Narana was drowning.
It made no sense. She hadn't gotten anywhere near the sea in years. Other causes of suffocation could also be eliminated: She wasn't choking on blood, no pirate was strangling her... The antispetic air of the sanitarium wasn't quite fresh, but it was most definitely breathable. She had no known illnesses or allergies - not of the body, at least.
Then why was she struggling to breath? Could this wetness really be simply her own sweat? If she really was in no danger, why was her heart pounding as if she was fighting for her life?
She was drowning not in water, she knew, but in loneliness. Not oxygen she was gasping for, but company, conversation, distraction from the abyss of her own thoughts.
She wasn't alone. There were other people in the waiting room. But they were mad.
And what are you? The tiny part of her that was self-aware rolled its eyes. Sane people don't panic for no reason. Sane people don't start hearing screams whenever they see a puddle. Sane people don't think the world would end if they're left alone for five goddamn minu -
"Are you alright?" A lean, middle-aged man with sharp features was lying his hand on her shoulder.
"I'm fine." She jerked out of her chair, pushing him aside. Stand tall, confident, like the knight you hadn't been in years. The part remarked. Like a Hiregaard ought to... When they're in the light. When everyone sees. When they aren't crying and screaming behind a locked door a the top of the highest tower...

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

"So this is not your first hospitalisation." Dr. Mousel pointed out.
"No, it's not." Narana admitted. "I had been institutionalized for several months in the Liara Asylum, when I just returned."
She wondered whether he knows what she meant. The Waveprowler Disaster... She recalled. A story like that... The rumours should have spread throughout The Core. Then again, if there's one thing my family knows how to do, it's silencing rumours.
"How was it like?" The man asked. Narana was relieved. These were hard memories, but the sort of hard memories she could speak of with anger, rather than some less convinient emotions.
"Made me want to kill myself." She snored. "Even the Hell of Slaves couldn't be that bad."
The doctor wasn't shocked. Just... Mournful? Disappointed? Despaired?
"They were very into the Conditional method." She explained. "Punish crazy behaviours, reward sane ones. If you didn't respond to the treatment, or if you dared to argue with them, it meant daily torture. Eventually you learn to obey..."
"...And then you get better?" He said sarcastically.
"And then you look better." She corrected. "You stop screaming, because you realise nobody wants to listen. You stop making a mess, because you realise it'll only make people treat you like an animal. You stop showing the pain, because you realise it ain't gonna make anyone pity you. You're still dying on the inside, but who cares? As long as you don't tear apart their illusion of normalcy..."
"It's horrible." He agreed.
"You say it as if you know." She remarked. "You don't. You don't know what it's like. One day you're going through life as a free man, thinking your own thoughts, feeling your own feelings, making your own choices, your own achievements and mistakes. Even the poorest man alive has at least this, it's the one thing people can never take away from you. But the next day, they do. Suddenly someone else can dictate your life worse than any tyrant - tell you what to eat, when to wake up, when to sleep, what to do with your free time. Your wishes couldn't matter less, cause they're no longer yours. They're your brain's, and who knows what's happening inside the brain of a madwoman? The madwomen themselves, of course. But no one asks us, right? We're madwomen, after all - what could we know?"
He looked at her with... Curiosity? Could he really be interested?
"Well, I hope you won't find our institution nearly as oppressive. I've always held that an analyst's primary job is to listen to their patients." He shrugged. "May I ask... You've been burned so badly by the system that was supposed to help you. I've seen this happening, but I still can't imagine what a betrayal like this does to a person. What brings you to try again? Why do you take the risk of giving someone another chance to abuse you?"
Narana drew in a long breath.
"Because..." She hesitated, then spat it out. "I don't want to be like my grandfather. It's strange - I spent my youth idolizing him, craving to be half as brave and honourable as he is. But now, at forty, I see what I couldn't see at fourteen. I see that I don't want to live a double life, hiding my disorder as if it somehow stains my honour. I don't want to grow old running away from the shadows of my own mind. I'll take whatever help I can get, and if that's not enough... Well, at least I'll be honest about it. Narana Hiregaard - a noble, a sailor and a bit of a madwoman. Nothing to be ashamed of."
Dr. Mousel smiled. "I wish more of my patients had this positivity, Lady Narana." Then his brow wrinkled. "Wait - your grandfather. Do you mean Lord Tristen Hiregaard?"
"Don't tell a living soul." She hissed. Sir Tristen wouldn't want his secret revealed, and as cowardly as it seemed to her, it was an understandable choice - and most importantly, his choice to make.
"I wouldn't tell even a dead one." The analyst assured her. "As I said, my job is listening - and to listen, one must be silent."