cornerofmadness

Title: Therapy Session
author: cornerofmadness
Characters/Pairings: Malcolm
Disclaimer: Not mine, Chris Fedak and Sam Sklaver owns it
Summary: Malcolm has to remain in therapy if he plans to work for the NYPD again after the Woodsman incident and he agrees, this is the best thing for his mental health.
Rating: teen
Notes: Written for spikesgirl58's 6 word challenge for the words Racism, Descent, Nun, Strict, Dentist, & Fisherman


Malcolm stared at Dr. Ross, trying to put things in order in his head in anticipation of this therapy session. Gil had been strict with him. He had to go to therapy to continue to work as a consultant and he would be checking to be sure. Now that Gil was dating Malcolm’s mother – oh they weren’t admitting it but he knew – he was sure Gil would know if Mother wasn’t getting bills for his sessions.

Not that he was arguing about going; he took his mental health seriously most of the time at any rate. Stabbing his father, nearly killing him in those woods had triggered a descent into his own hellish mindscape. They didn’t go so far to say he had a full on psychotic break but Malcolm knew it was close. He’d been both mute and delusional for months. It hadn’t been a stretch for his lawyers to claim he had been functioning under diminished mental capacity while hunting the Woodsman with his father. They had his FBI records corroborating that since he’d nearly lost his mind then too and had been ordered into treatment. It was the reason he hadn’t faced jail time for what he’d done.

Malcolm was grateful for Dr. Ross. She was as easy to talk to as Dr. Le Deux and they had worked on his issues for even more months after his mutism ended. JT’s son would be a year old soon. Malcolm looked forward to the birthday party. The boy would be turning one about the time Malcolm would be allowed back to work at long last.

That said, as much as he liked his new therapist, he couldn’t tell her about Endicott. He couldn’t tell her that he encouraged his father to torture the Woodsman for information. His father was still in a coma from the blood loss, might never leave his vegetative state, and the Woodsman had died of his injuries so no one knew that secret. It had to stay that way. If Ross knew, well it just wouldn’t be good.

Instead he told her about the waking hallucinations of his sister as a nun in the case of the very Catholic murder and his anger about that case without delving into why. He refused to talk about how the police had treated JT as they had. He couldn’t make the racism JT and Dani, and even Gil faced about him even though it nearly got them all killed. He only hoped he understood his own privilege better and used it to help where he could.

Ross had wanted more about the cases that haunted him probably because he led her to believe that they were part of his current problems, not the fact he had cut up a human being to protect his sister or had stabbed his father instead of merely disarming him because he thought maybe Dani, his mother, and Gil were right: he was better off without him. So he elaborated on the case of the dentist who liked to please his wife. She had a fetish for teeth – probably why she married him – and making them into jewelry. He had a love of killing people so they inspired each other. He talked about his nightmares that his mother had done the same with his father – even though he knew for sure now that she hadn’t - and of how he wondered if Martin had been the one to recruit Vivian and not the other way around would they have disappeared together on a killing spree?

He talked for many sessions about the thin walls of the hospital he recovered in and the guy next door who disturbed what little rest Malcolm was capable of by loudly ranting he was the fisherman of men. The religious delusion put Malcolm too much in mind of Friar Pete and the later discovery he’d been covered in a fine mist of the man’s blood when a bullet shattered his head. Ross had him delve into his own issues, his hubris and anger that bubbled up any time he had talked a person down and someone else still resorted to violence to stop them. It had cost him his job with the FBI. He had almost unleashed his anger on Edrisa that time in the morgue. He would have attacked Marshal Ruiz if Dani hadn’t stopped him and he’d even swatted Dani’s hands, furious she had intervened. He had obeyed her though and that was another session’s worth of talking to unpack his feelings about that, about Dani in general. Malcolm wasn’t ready to face those emotions. Working on his anger and arrogance – which he hated admitting he had because that moved him one step closer to his father’s narcissism – was going to be a process, one he was ready for.

“Are you ready to talk to me today?” Ross asked finally.

He smiled slightly even as he curled his fingers around the box of tissues he’d probably need. “My dreams aren’t getting any better.”

And so it began just as it always did. He was getting better even if his dreams weren’t. He’d be back where he belonged soon enough and that’s all Malcolm wanted in this moment.