Dr. Henry McCoy had never seen himself as being much of a psychologist. The talent was there, the skill was there, but the drive to become and sustain a career of dwelving into the minds of others simply wasn't.
It had been one of his numerous persuits in college. He had been at the top of his class- a genius in the subject, as he was with seemingly everything else. Henry had aced his Freudian courses over the years, published thesis upon thesis, won award upon award, all the while maintaining an underlying stigma about the father of the subject he'd mastered, believing Sigmund Freud himself to be little more then a dithering old fool.
In Henry's opinion, Frued was no more than a sick man in need of a good therapy session himself. A sick minded individual from an opressive society trying to excuse his own emotionally and sexually inhibited attractions to the concept of incest, insisting that the rest of society play along with the idea that they were just as mentally deprived as he. It was Freud's over exploitation of such a subject and the rediculous linking of sex to absolutely every human drive imaginable that had inevitabley turned the budding schoalar off of the subject of psychology entirely.
Despite the stigma that Hank so deeply deplores, he gained his degree in psychology and psychoanalitic theory. He graduated at with honors, and was handed his new degree to hang on the wall and slap on to his already extensive list of quialifications and genius-ept abilities, only to sweep the accomplishment asside, his interest - his passion for psychology as a whole, lost. It had been his drive to succeed that drove him through the courses and resulted in reaching his innitial goal.
There was no doubt he was proud of the actual work he'd put into reaching his goal of certified psychiatric counseler, and bits and peices of the realm on the mind still intrigued him. He made a daily game out of psychoanalizing his friends, his peers, his family. He was more often the 'Agony Aunt' of his social group - everyone he knew trusted him to lend advise to their problems and woes. But beyond his own beyond his use of psychology for the sake of bemusement, and the occassional tending to problems of those closest to him, the fact remained the same. Hank's interests lay elsewhere.
McCoy was a scientist, world reknowned. Science was who he was. It was his identity- his pallet for great works and discoveries that were hoped to, and often did, benifit both human and mutant kind alike. Chemistry, biology, physiology - no portion of the interworkings of the science fronteir was foreign to Henry's genius mind. He reveled in it, reveled in his work, if not necissarily the fame it brought him. It had always been his forte and had become a career he'd consumed himself in once he'd retired from the interworkings of the Xmen.
Innitially, Hank wasn't entirely sure what it was that drove him into taking on the mere concept of considering psychological counsiling with Cheyenne LeBeau so many years ago. That he even found himself considering tearing himself away from his laboratory in downtown Huston to fly clear to New York on a bi-weekly basis to psychoanalize a child was entirely beyond him.
Some time later he would come to the conclusion that it was a mass managerie of reasons that had brought him to make the bold move towards the psychological forefront that he'd shunned for so many years. For one, his good friend and colleague Remy LeBeau, the girls father, was desperate for help, as the girl was battling what Hank would later find to be one of the most severe cases of manic depression he'd ever come accross. Remy insisted that he trusted no one else to help her.
The girl herself, without a shadow of a doubt, needed help. Drastic help. Years of continual trauma in all shapes, sizes, and spectrums had taken their toll on her psyche. She internalized absolutely everything, mentally mutilating herself for what she saw as a life full of an endless series of pitfalls. It was tearing her mentality apart, plain and simple.
Equally so, was the girl was utterly fascinating. Hank had met her briefly during her innitial arrival and stay at Xavier's School for Higher Learning whilst he visiting her father Remy and his mentor, Charles Xavier. Cheyenne was Feral- a captivating creature- complex, down trodden, war worn, yet undeniabley determined to live. A siren of a subject for a psychological study, by far.
All of these factors played into Henry's unusual willingness to push aside his own misgivings about psychology and take on the task of her mental recovery. As a result, some three years ago, Dr. Henry McCoy began dwelving into the mind of Cheyenne LeBeau.
Session upon session was spent with Hank picking up the pieces of the shattered sense of being, reliving utterlly drastic and quite often unnerving highs and lows, terrors and exhilerations, loves and loathings of the daughter of one of his closest friends.
Henry soon became a means of emotional succor for Cheyenne - a being of release of the inner demon's she'd harbored for years. Cheyenne, for Henry, proved far more fascinating then he could possibley have imagined - somewhat of an obsession, really. His counsiling her led to the focus of studies of the Feral mind which in turn led to the inner workings of a new breed of Feral Psychology. For Hank, Cheyenne was the source of new psychological challanges... and, he was inevitabley convinced, one hell of a 'fixer upper' that he was more then willing to attempt to mend.
As speach therapy would have it, Hank grew to know and learn everything - every aspect- about his patient, even though just how exactly her mind worked continued to perplex him. However, despite her years of counsiling, the abundant amount of information he'd compiled about the girl, and the multitude of past wound's he'd helped her come to terms with, Henry knew something was still amiss within her mind. That there was another piece to the puzzle being hidden away for fear that the completion of the picture of her life would force her to bring the entire gruesome lot into some sort of clear perspective... And to do that, she would have to relive what she was so plainly trying to keep from admitting to.
McCoy was entirely aware that it was nightmare whispers such as these that were trully tearing her apart... the ones she feared reliving. He knew as well that helping Cheyenne to overcome the re-hashing of these old wounds would be his biggest challange as of yet, and her own biggest hurtle to overcome in her efforts to regain a healthy mind..
Time and time again she had mentioned her association with the socialpathic Feral man, known to the XMen, to the mass media, and to every govenment agency from California to Tibet as the serial killing assassin Victor Creed - Sabretooth. After three years of counsiling, the year spent with the madman Feral still remained locked away in the LeBeau girl's brain.
Her refusal to speak of it was adament. It was between her and Creed, she would say, thats all, nothing more, and the subject would be dropped.
The effort it took to hold the memories back was emense. Blatant. Almost agonizing, Henry noticed. The mentioning of the man outside of the context of his plights with the Xmen and the occassional 'good times' humor anicdote sent Cheyenne into a complete withdrawel. It would bring about a step backwords for her in her counsiling, in her confidence, in her piece of mind. The reaction startled McCoy. Healthy her harboring was not, Henry knew, but even more destructive was her backward sliding in the progress he'd so painstakingly worked to make with the girl.
In time, the subject was dropped. The threat of the nightmare whispers averted. The past terrors, highs and lows still eating away at Cheyenne LeBeau.
It came as a rather abrupt shock to Hank when the subject of Sabretooth was brought up again, not by he himself, but by his patient. Disraught, disheveled, sleepless, with her father at her heels, the early morning counsiling session went underway to a shocking decourem of a bitter cold reality check on a blackened downpour of a Saturday with Cheyenne herself speaking of Creed - ever so faintly.
She was ready, it was her time, Hank mentally marked. She was ready - had made the decision herself to be rid of her inner demons. This was her biggest step towards recovery to date.
McCoy sat back, notes at hand, sharing suprised glances with a clearlly befuttled and groggily pajama clad Remy, and hoped that his years of psychological training and, if anything, his own nerve, would guide him through the sessions to follow in the best way suited for Cheyenne's well being.... and his own as well.
Nightmare whispers, indeed. |
