Changing Oneself (Entangled side story)

20, Determination, Desperation

I watched as Sang multitasked. It was something I had learned he was good at. He could focus on two different experiments at a time, and simultaneously hold an in-depth conversation with me. He'd done it plenty of times when I had been staying with him during my transition, and he had no trouble doing it now, during one of my therapy sessions.

"You haven't had any hallucinations recently, have you?" he asked me. I had just finished telling him about the memories that kept trying to resurface when I was trying things out with the vampires.

"No... not as vivid as when I first got here. I haven't seen Vanilla ever since he said goodbye in the garden," I answered from my spot at his desk, where I was curled up in his chair and slowly swiveling back and forth.

"No auditory ones?" he asked next. He adjusted his microscope as he stared down at a sample.

"No..." I answered. "Was... when I was hearing him talk to me, was that him, or my subconscious? Because his apparition acted like it was separate from my head, but at the same time, it was still... me? My head? I don't know..."

"The psyche is a complicated thing," he explained gently, "a traumatized one, even more so. And I am more of a physiology scientist, not so much a psychology one. I minored in that one, but majored in the other. I wish I could give you concrete answers, but the mind's inner workings cannot really be labelled with definitive certainty. So many things overlap, or bleed into each other."

"So it was a mixture?" I queried. Sang switched out his samples and scribbled notes onto a small notepad. He darted notes down on a separate one just a foot away.

"From what you're telling me, it seems that is the case. There are a lot of things that our mind blocks out from our waking conscious, but the knowledge is still there, buried and hidden. If your mind was able to induce amnesia from something like spending a night entirely alone, I wouldn't be surprised if it could conjure up those scenarios you described, and make them seem completely real," he replied. He was talking about the scenes the ghost-Vanilla had shown me, to reveal to me what my actions had really done to him. 

I fell silent, thinking, still swiveling absent-mindedly. I had come to terms with the fact that who I thought I was meant to be was actually just a monster. That all the things I thought were justified were actually horrifying and deluded. I didn't miss Vanilla the way I used to. But I did wish I could make things right somehow, that I could do something to help him move on from that part of our past. If I got to do that here, it was only fair that he could do it, too.

But I knew Vanilla despised me, as did his mate and his vampires. I had no idea if I could make amends without crossing paths with the other people in his life, or if I could even get close enough that Vanilla wouldn't be so bone-deep scared of me to listen.

"I don't feel that way towards him anymore," I admitted. 

"Which is a very good sign," Sang agreed, switching from his microscope to the boiling pot of something slimy and funky-smelling over on his portable stove. 

"But I... I don't think I've fully moved on, yet," I continued. "And I don't really know how to. Is it... just... time? Waiting?"

"Partially. But waiting can also make things worse. Some people grow worse over time when they think waiting for something to resolve itself is the answer," he said, stirring the pot and dropping a stick of crystallized somethings into it. The action caused a sudden roar of sizzling and popping, and Sang leaned back and covered his face with a plastic mask just in time. 

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Making an abomination, apparently," he answered, coughing as a rancid smell overtook the room. I winced and covered my nose with my shirt. "Well, that certainly... hmph, well..." he muttered to himself and scribbled more notes down on a third available stack of paper.