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There was something off about him, today.
Rya observed Danny — was it him? — closely from across the table that almost always kept them a good distance apart. She had only just arrived at Riker's Island for their session that morning, and he had hardly moved since she’d walked inside and sat down — he hadn’t even glanced up.
He wasn’t looking at her at all, actually. He usually made something of an effort at eye contact, even if it certainly wasn’t his strong suit, but there was none of that at all, today.
He was just staring down at his hands, which were wringing tightly together beneath the table; she could hear his knuckles bouncing unsteadily against the underside of it. His bangs had cast his expression into shadow, and all she could make out of his face was the uneasy twist of his mouth.
“How are you feeling today?” She asked gently — omitting his name, because she still wasn’t sure.
“Fine,” he mumbled — and then she knew with certainty that it was him.
She had spoken to most of his alters, now — Jack, Mike, Jonny — and even the ones she hadn’t, she was sure she’d be able to recognize in a heartbeat. Yitzhak, especially, wouldn’t exactly be subtle.
She could recognize Danny, though, even easier than all the others — after so many weeks she’d spent with him, since Jack had finally given up the hill he had once seemed to be dying on.
I’m asking you to be gentle, he had said.
Well . . . she was doing her best.
Rya had learned to treat Danny like — as wrong as it sounded — a frightened animal. If she moved too quickly, spoke too loudly, he would retreat immediately; he spooked easily, always on edge, never fully relaxed. He was almost childlike, but childlike in the way that an abused child is. He was soft-spoken, and polite — and always so curled in on himself, as though constantly aching to fold into the fetal position and never show his face again.
She remembered the first time she had met him — really met him — after Jack had finally taken his leave. She remembered the fear in his eyes; the silent tears that had slipped down his face that he had been so quick to wipe away. She remembered how nervously he had accepted small kindnesses from her — and how, even now, it was a hard thing for him to do.
Even now, it was hard for him to even just . . . look her in the eye.
“You seem a little down,” Rya pressed, keeping her voice soft. She leaned a little across the table, trying to catch his lowered gaze, jotting down distracted observations in the notebook in front of her. “Did something happen, Danny?”
He gave her a weak little shrug, still not looking up, or even making an attempt to. She stayed quiet, and gave him an opportunity to speak — and, eventually, he did, still staring down at the table, which quaked unsteadily from the force of his shaking hands.
“I had a bad dream,” he whispered.
Rya had long stopped believing that her heart had any more room to break, when it came to Danny; every time he looked at her with those confused, hurting eyes, it seemed to break all over again. And so she had just decided that it wasn’t breaking, but rather slowly chipping away, the more time she spent with this poor, forgotten teenager.
But even thinking that way, she was almost surprised that she still had anything left to fall away.
“What was it about?” She asked kindly, putting down her pen and giving him her full attention.
He shrugged again. His gaze flicked up towards her for a moment, then away; the table shook harder, from the trembling in his wringing hands, and the jittering of his knee as one foot beat an anxious tattoo against the linoleum floor. His expression was almost flat, but there was that same twist to his mouth, and his chin was quivering.
“Something with Adam,” he mumbled eventually, so quiet that she had to strain to hear him.
His words made her ache to the core, and she swallowed back a sigh.
When her fears about Adam — about the root of all of Danny’s different personalities, the root of his disorder and the disarray of his fragmented mind — had been confirmed, it hadn’t felt at all like a victory. It had felt like a horrendous defeat, because it made it all the more difficult to look into Danny’s face and keep her own expression from crumpling into despair for him.
What was worse, still, was that Danny didn’t even know.
He didn’t know that he was Adam.
(She so desperately wished that there was a way, any way at all, that they could get Marlin locked up — for what he had done to Danny, to Adam, to both of them. She knew that there wasn’t, but she still wished, because it was so very, very wrong that Danny was locked up, and the reason behind his state of near-disrepair wasn’t.)
“Do you want to talk about it?” Rya prompted. Danny shook his head immediately, face gone stark white as he blinked rapidly, and she nodded. “Okay,” she soothed quickly, “that’s okay.” She paused for a moment, giving them both time to breathe, then asked: “What do you want to talk about?”
Another shrug; another furtive little half-glance up at her. Rya worried at her lower lip, considering her options, then settled on something that had worked in redirection for him in the past: talking about someone other than himself (and all those broken parts of him).
“You know,” she said, “I have a son. A little boy — around Adam’s age.”
The table stilled between them. Danny glanced up, and didn’t look away this time.
“You do?”
“Yes,” Rya said, encouraged. “Ezra.”
“Who takes care of him?” Danny croaked out. He was very nearly holding eye contact, now; there was still wariness in his expression, but he wasn’t trembling, and his voice strengthened as he spoke. “When you’re with me?”
“My mom lives with us,” Rya answered, voice gentle; understanding the undertones to his question, what with what she knew about his past, and all of the men in his life who had taken such advantage of him, at such a young age. Of course, women had failed him; but it was the men he feared. “She’s with him, when I’m not.”
“Good,” Danny said in a low murmur, as his eyes went distant and faraway, his gaze clouding over. “That’s good.”
“I do work a lot,” she continued, trying to pull him back to her, “but I try to spend time with him as much as I can. He likes to go to the movies. Do you like movies?”
The corner of Danny’s mouth twitched up; that was encouraging.
“Movies are fun,” he mumbled. “I used to go with my friends, sometimes. To the cinema.”
“Yeah?”
“Mhm.” Danny nodded, brightening a little more, his eyes lighting up; no longer so deadened of a look, as his face regained a bit of color. “Me, Jonny, n’ Mike saw Jaws the day it came out.”
“Oh, wow,” Rya said, jotting down some notes in her journal, wondering to herself how it must’ve looked to the packed theater; for a teenage boy to be sitting alone, talking to voices only he could hear. Or perhaps he was only talking to them in his head; that would be more plausible, given that, surely, the seats beside him would’ve had to be filled by people who were their own; and, surely, anyone would recognize such behavior as something to get help about. Not that, she considered, people tended to care much about helping anyone but themselves. “I saw that at a drive-in theater, a couple years back. Great camera work.”
Danny nodded eagerly. “I like movies,” he said earnestly, and Rya tapped her pen thoughtfully against the edge of the table.
“What else do you like?”
Danny tilted his head slightly, hugging his arms over his chest in a self-soothing gesture.
“I like to paint,” he murmured, and she nodded; she had, of course, known that already. She had his paintings in the folder under her notebook, tucked away for when she needed to reference them, or ask him about them. They had, after all, been what had made the pieces click together in her mind; the pieces of Danny, from Ariana to Jack . . . to Adam.
“Have you always liked to paint?” She asked him, even though she already knew the answer.
“Since I was a kid,” Danny said. “Adam never could. Couldn’t even draw a stick figure. But my mom’s always said I’ve got talent.”
He paused; to her dismay, his gaze clouded over once more as he added quietly, “Marlin never liked when I did art, though.”
“How did that make you feel?” Rya probed gently, her gaze searching his face intently. Danny’s hazy eyes had dropped back down to the table; his fingers were tapping anxiously against the sleeve of his gray prison sweater, one thumb digging into the crease of his elbow as he curled in on himself.
“He didn’t like when I did anything, really,” he mumbled, “so it was never any different.”
He fell quiet again, after that, and despite Rya’s best attempts to get him to open back up, he was just . . . shut down. And she decided that, if he wanted to be, it was fine to be done for the day. There were many hard things he would have to do, soon; today, he could take a break.
“Do you want to be done, Danny?” Rya asked him softly, after almost half an hour of gently trying to pry him back open, after he had clammed himself up so tight.
Across from her, Danny was still curled in on himself like the child he had never gotten to be, picking at his sleeve, pale and withdrawn. He nodded, not looking at her, gaze fixed on anything but her — even as he whispered, barely audible, “m’ sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she soothed, pushing back her own frustrated disappointment; in herself, more than in him, even though she didn’t ought to be either. Yes, it was difficult, maneuvering conversation with him — but sometimes, like today, it was impossible. And yet — “It’s okay, Danny. We have time.”
(Not enough; not nearly enough.
Not with the trial fast approaching, and the reality that, sooner rather than later, she would need to tell him the truth about his condition. If she had it her way, it would take many more months before she finally told him; but, she knew, given their circumstances . . . it would have to be soon.
But there was enough time for her to give him this comfort, now.
At least this comfort, he didn’t have to succumb to one of his alters to accept.)
“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” Rya prompted, as he stood slowly from his chair. He glanced up at her a couple times; his mouth opened and closed, but he didn’t say anything. She knew him well enough by now to know that there was something he wasn’t asking for — so she asked, for him.
“Do you need anything from me?”
Danny nodded jerkily. Rya felt her heart chip off a little more.
She considered him, standing in front of her, looking so very stiff and so very, very scared; every part of his body language was screaming that he would spook if she even raised a hand towards him, but some part of her — call it a mother’s intuition — was telling her what he was asking for, even though he wasn’t.
“Do you need a hug, Danny?” Rya whispered.
Danny said nothing, but he shuffled forward, tentatively, hands twitching where they were curled around himself in his own self-soothing. Rya glanced towards the door; she knew she wasn’t technically supposed to be doing this, but, well . . . given that she had been treating him without incident for weeks, and the guards had gone somewhat lax outside . . .
She let him move close enough for her to touch, and — then and only then — she did too. Slowly, very, very slowly, she reached her arms around him, and embraced him gently.
Danny was shivering minutely, and he did not open his arms, keeping them wrapped tight around his chest; but that was okay. She squeezed him softly, carefully, and she both heard and felt his warm breath shudder against her ear; and then after only a moment, she drew away, leaving one palm resting atop his slim, trembling shoulder.
“Are you okay?” Rya asked quietly, her light eyes catching his dark ones.
Danny nodded, his gaze shining with the determination to meet hers, as he raised his quivering chin.
“Thank you, Rya,” he croaked out. “For — all this. Helping me. And — y’know.” He gestured a hand uncertainly without unwrapping his arms from around his middle, and she gave him a soft smile.
(When was the last time, she wondered, that he had been hugged by someone who wasn’t himself?
I’m asking you to be gentle, Jack had said.
And she was doing her best.
God knew Danny deserved it.)
“Of course, Danny,” she told him. She gave his shoulder one more little squeeze before letting go, and watching as he turned and walked to the door, knocked, and was escorted away with cuffs back on his wrists.
Not for much longer, she thought — if there was anything she could do about it.
She would not let that boy rot in prison.
She would not leave him alone.
Not when he already had been — for far, far too long.