[s]lap me in the face.

[&Ismirshalen]

Feeling something wet splat onto his cheek [thankfully not the one with the hand mark] Izzy turned his head in the direction it came to see a very agitated girl. Mable. A wave of despair rolled over him at the sight. Her golden eyes smoldered at him, and he was ashamed to see that her anger was directed at him. His eyebrows drew together and his mouth turned down into a frown, and he looked at the floor, gritting his teeth. He hadn't meant to make her angry. But she was in favor of the doctor, and seeing him attack the guy obviously had a negative effect on their relationship. How could everything in his life become so complicated in the span of two days? So complicated that the word complicated was an understatement.

The heat of anger still pulsed through his veins, but now shame was added into the mix. How did that man know exactly what buttons to press to throw him off the wall? It was as if Ismirshalen were a puppet, and Dr. DeVrais was the puppeteer. Just pulling the strings. It made the brunet even angrier, and under his flesh his blood roiled. When he looked at his hands, they were shaking. Either that was due to an overload of caffeine, how angry he was, or both. His short temper was one of his extreme disadvantages [or advantages] in any fight. The Frenchman had turned it into a very obvious disadvantage.

Finally he looked up with his blazing blue eyes, up and at the man he hated, who was speaking to the guard that had addressed him with a smug look on his face. Repulsed, Izzy kept his mouth shut tight, but not because the man had told him to. No, it was because he didn’t want to worsen his fate. Letting out his anger in front of these guards, guards who were many ranks above himself, was not a good idea. It would worsen his punishment. Unless, of course, they had already planned on throwing him out.

"Murder?" the guard asked, looking surprised. He turned his attention to Izzy. "What is your name?"

"…Linnaeus," he replied after a pause, having had to bite his tongue at first to keep from shouting it out. Anger wouldn’t help anything. Be calm, be calm. Pssh, like telling a pig to start flying to Alaska.

The guard looked back at DeVrais, and Ismirshalen made a point of looking away from DeVrais. In a desperate attempt to keep his hands from shaking, he clenched his fists, and those shook too, but it wasn’t as noticeable. He bit his lip. All in the name of keeping his job. Wait… did he even want this job anymore? He'd have more luck working in a meat-packing plant.

"What do you think is the best course of action to take with Mr. Linnaeus, Dr. DeVrais?" the guard asked the pale man. "After all, you are the one with knowledge of this field."

Ismirshalen felt his blood freeze as he listened to the guard talk. He hadn't realized that the therapists in the building were basically the only authority around here. So many things he should have known. Ah, how stupid he was.

"I'm fine," Ismirshalen hissed, unable to just sit there and be subjected to whatever crazy punishments DeVrais could think up. "I'm bloody fine, you needn't bother." After a moment of self assessment, Izzy decided that he might as well have kept his mouth shut. He sounded like he belonged in a psyche ward.

…And was he smiling?! Frightened at this sudden discovery, Ismirshalen reached up with his hands and tried to pull it down. Under the cover of his fingers, the corner of his mouth twitched spastically. Ducking his head, the man covered his face, feeling suddenly despaired. What the bloody Hell was wrong with him? It was as if he was having an emotional breakdown.

[VinnNAY]

The man who had just beaten the snot out of Vincent was now trembling like a kicked dog. Vincent usually liked being in control but now it just seemed unfair and pathetic. Like defeating a game with your character being an extremely high level and having no purpose afterwards. After being asked what to do with the man, all he could do for awhile is examine him with his plastered grin and lean on something to keep himself from falling down.

“Well…” Vincent started, meandering towards the pulsating guard slowly. Slowly, in fear sudden movements might alarm the beastlike guard and for fear of just falling over. He managed to grab the guard’s pained face with strong, but gentle grip, for him to look him straight in the black eyes (or at least try to make him look at him). “You are fine?” Vincent questioned, gripping him slightly harder. By then Vincent’s smug face was replaced with a new concerned one. “Do you not know what you did? Just now?” He let go of him and stepped back, curling his sleeve back to reveal some very raw flesh. It didn’t take a genius to realize his dark sleeve was suspiciously darker. And damper. “Can I not be concerned? You are troubled, Monsieur.”

His job was to make people less like the British. Why not make the British less like the British? And he wasn’t about to give him an option because saying ‘would you like to be less British’, is not very comforting. “I am a very good therapist,” Vincent smiled genuinely and stepped forward so that only the deranged Ismirshalen could hear. “I know a lot about Mlle. Mable you might like to know.” He added quietly and smiled larger this time.

[&Ismirshalen]

From the cover of his arms, Ismirshalen closed his eyes, trying to slow his breathing, trying to keep an annoying sob from bursting out of his chest. Now was not a good time to lose it. Not in front of this guy. No. Maybe in his room when he was off his shift, maybe once he sat in front of the TV on a punched out couch and tried unsuccessfully to immerse himself in some stupid 'reality TV show' that sucked ass. He felt embarrassed, angry, and despaired all at once. It was a bad combination. He felt pathetic, like a whining little teenager, even though he knew he wasn’t one. No matter how hard he tried to appear to be one.

He couldn’t hear what words were being exchanged above him. He really didn’t want to. They should just fire him. He should just quit. Quit and go back to living in his empty mansion which had been built in the middle of nowhere. Just him and his butler. Back to wandering the halls during the night with a mug of coffee in his hand, staring at the photos of his long dead family, morose and unspeaking as his footsteps echoed through the empty halls, empty but for the ghosts of those long forgotten ancestors he never knew. His parents' home, but now his.

'W'hy did I ever agree on coming here?' he asked himself, his mouth struggling to find the right expression. A smile. A frown. A grimace. Like a shape-shifter, it kept on changing. 'W'hy, w'hy, w'hy? The butler didn’t know what he was saying. I can't do this!' He wrung his hands, going down a trail of thought he didn’t want to go to, not now, it would only worsen his condition. Happy thoughts! Did he even have happy thoughts?!

Suddenly, he felt the grip of two cool fingers on his jaw, and before he could try to regain that sense of composure that he seemed to have lost a long time ago, he was forced to face the doctor. He bit his lip hard to keep his face from shifting through its endless array of emotions, and looked at the floor, unable to meet the doctor's eyes. The hand mark on his cheek simmered with his embarrassment. No no no, that man couldn’t see him like this! He felt the Frenchman's black-eyed gaze on his face. He heard him speak, but at first was unable to understand the words. Then he felt the man's grip tighten, and his focus grew slightly sharper. Drawn by the demanding quality of the therapist's words, he forced his eyes to look at what the man was trying to show him. One of his eyebrows twitched, and his gaze was one of a tortured man who appeared to be much older than the mask he wore.

"No," Ismirshalen whispered, unable and unwilling to raise his voice any higher. "I don’t need therapy. I don’t want therapy. Not with you." He tried to tear himself from Dr. DeVrais's grasp, so that he could just curl up and die where he sat. He didn’t think he would be able to endure any more of this. He was a wreck. The man's comment about Mable didn’t help, either. He felt anger spark up again inside him, once more battling with the army of emotions. How did humans even get all these emotions anyway? He wanted his cane, so he could put it through the doctor's skull, and then hightail it out of this facility. He would if he got the chance.

"Just let me go, you asshole." Insulting the man made Ismirshalen feel better, if only slightly. Even if the insult was weak and sounded as if it were coming from a wounded kitten. He threw a string of insults at the therapist, except he kept them inside his mouth and didn’t say them out loud. His mind's voice was stronger than his physical one.

[VinnNAY]

“Are you trying to upset me? I physically heal slow, like a mental wound. Like you. But unlike you, I can hear the truth. We are alike. You do not like it, but we are. Maybe we hate one the other because we hate ourselves. We could help each other.” Vincent was seriously doubting his masculinity by now.

Mable was calling all of her bug soldiers to line by now. Building an army for the war yet to begin.

Vincent saw the man unmoved by anything he was saying. And you don’t act impassive around him. He gets scary.
“Hmph, I make a deal, then. You owe me, Monsieur.” Vincent snarled, circling around him like a vulture. Totally forgetting his English by now. “You are disturb. You should be in a mental institution. And I will arrange if it need to be. But does not being a guard who went to therapy un time a day... Meanwhile a long break sound better? Better than being in a cage. Sans hope of becoming content. Ever?”

[[Henri. This is getting boring. Can we just give Izzy some narcotics and get on with the story already, S V P?? ._.]] What da fuck? Did the word needage increase suddenly or something because there IS 200 words here.

[&Ismirshalen]

[RAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!]

Ismirshalen stared down at his hands, dumbfounded, as Dr. DeVrais circled around him. Once the man had let go of him he had been able to regain some of his confidence, and therefore focus. And what the guy was saying was mad, yet he sounded very convinced. Which made the brunet doubt his judgment. He felt irritated. The guy was convinced that he needed help, and that he belonged in his own cell. This made him think about his butler. Had he thought Ismirshalen belonged in a cell, also? But he was fine. Wasn’t he? Yes, of course he was.

And the doctor was threatening to put him in one, too. But Ismirshalen would not sink that low. He allowed himself some self assurance that he was still in control when he accepted the man's 'deal'. Swallowing back the bile that rose in his throat, he made an effort to answer the man without going off his trolley. To perhaps prove that he was quite fine, thank you very much.

"I'm not like you," he said first, wanting to make that clear. The mere suggestion of him being like that frog was preposterous. Had to get that out of his system. He had to piece together the broken English, but being bilingual that didn’t take very long. It took him longer to reply this time, as he was extremely against doing this, but from all angles it appeared he had no other choice. Which bothered him a lot and made him want to strangle himself.

'Here we go,' he encouraged himself, taking a deep breath.

"…Fine. I'll do it, but you'll be bloody sorry. It's a waste of your time… W'hen do you want me at your office?" he gritted his teeth, denying to himself that he had said what he just did. He finally was able to bring his eyes up, and he threw all his hate at Dr. DeVrais's black eyes.