"Come on in," he said as she stepped into his office.
He gave her a choice: "The couch or the chair."
She gave him a perturbed look. "What's the difference?"
"Some people like the couch because they don't have to look at me. It helps them feel less judged. On the flip side, the chair lets us speak face-to-face, and some people find my expressions of concern and understanding comforting."
She cast her eyes down for a second. "Couch. I'm not sure I can say any of this to someone's face."
He nodded in understanding. "By all means."
She sighed and stretched her body out on the leather sofa. It felt strange. She wasn't used to laying on anything comfortable. "Where should I start?"
"You scheduled this, June. Something must be on your mind."
"That's an understatement," she chuckled.
He scrawled something on his notepad. She thought it was quaint that he used real ink and paper.
"I don't know if I'm a good person or not, Dr. Robertson."
"Call me 'Jack,' remember."
"Jack. I've done a lot of bad things."
"And now you feel guilty about them?"
"I don't know. How do I know the difference between guilt, and feeling like I should feel guilty but not experiencing actual guilt?"
"If examining your past makes you feel bad about yourself because of things you've done, that's what guilt is."
"Then yeah. I guess it's guilt. It just seems so useless."
"Guilt is of no use to the people you harmed, that much is true. But it's a guidepost for your own conscience. It's telling you to change direction."
"It just makes me wonder. Do I even deserve to 'change direction'?"
"What's the alternative?"
"Keep living as I am, I guess. You can't report anything I say to the police, can you?"
"I am bound by confidentiality. The only circumstances under which I may intervene are if I believe you are an immediate danger to yourself or others, or you make a specific threat against yourself or another person. In other words: keep it vague."
She smiled. "Thanks, Doc."
"Jack."
"Jack. Sorry. You don't like 'doctor'?"
"Strictly speaking, I am not a doctor. I'm a counselor."
"Right. OK. Where was I?"
"Guilt."
"Guilt. Yeah. When I poke at the guilt, I start to get angry."
"Tell me about anger."
"I had so much taken from me. And then I went and took from others. I know that's not right. But I also wasn't given a choice."
"And you're angry that your choices were taken away from you?"
"That's just one of many things I'm angry about. Do you know much about my childhood?"
"I read your intake forms. I know the general contours. But tell me, in your own words."
She took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. "I grew up in East Chicago. My two best friends as a kid were Robert Maxwell and Mark Titus. We were thick as thieves, like they say. I was an absolute tomboy, which my parents hated. They always thought I was up to something nefarious with those boys, but it was never like they thought. We were breaking into abandoned buildings and shoplifting candy, not fooling around under our clothes. Adults draw so many conclusions they shouldn't."
"Tell me about Robert."
"Can I tell you about Mark first?"
"Please."
"I loved him, but he was angry. All the time. His parents were important people. His dad headed up the Alliance's Aerospace Design Bureau. His mom was Versad Montoya's Secretary of Commerce. His upbringing was just kind of being handed off from one nanny to the next. It might have been easier if he wasn't so smart. But he was smart enough to know neglect when I felt it. Stupid me, I thought I could fill the hole. We got married for a little bit, after high school. After the War."
"But not anymore?"
"No, I decided he had too much going on inside that he wouldn't share or do anything about. I came to the realization I couldn't fix him. He would have to fix himself."
"Did that realization lead you here? To 'fix yourself.'"
"Kind of. But I left Mark a long, long time ago. I'd like to say he's the one who made me a worse person, but it's not true. I didn't always get to make my own choices, but when I did, I chose things that were bad for me. Bad for others."
"Before we get to that, tell me about Robert."
"Do I have to?"
"Your records are quite clear that he's the central pivot of your trauma, June. If you don't want to talk about him today, that's fine. But it will be difficult to make progress if you avoid the subject."
"Progress. OK. I can do this."
"Take your time."
"I loved Robert, but differently. With Mark, it was hormones and chemistry. It was hot, if I'm being honest. He was hot. It was different with Robert. It was something subtler, maybe. I knew I could always count on him."
"And then what happened?"
"He died, as you know. I watched him bleed to death on the ground. It was so stupid and pointless."
"Wars never truly make sense."
"You can say that again. Mark pleaded with his parents to send some government officials out looking for me, and they found me. It was weird. I was with him but it was almost like I was a captive. I owed him my life, so how could I leave? Plus, I did love him. I just didn't like being thrust into this situation with him."
"What happened after that?"
"Mark... found something." She paused, then sat up for a moment to look at him. "You really can't tell anyone what I tell you? Really?"
"The only past events I am required to break confidentiality for are allegations of child abuse. In such a case, the abuser would be facing consequences, not you."
She laid back down. "No, it's nothing like that. But he found this thing. It was after the Oolians showed up. He joined this new archaeology department they helped form. You know, they brought all this new technology to us, and there was just so much we could do with it. He ended up finding this thing up on the coast of Newfoundland. It was excavated, and tagging everything was well underway. But Mark got impatient. He went there at night, by himself, trying to mess with something he heard about down there. And then he disappeared. He was gone for like, three months. We thought he fell off a cliff and into the ocean. We thought he was dead."
"But he came back."
"Yeah. And he was different. It had been a few months for me, but a couple of years for him. And he was wearing this uniform unlike anything I'd ever seen. Flashy and kind of... fascist, for lack of a better word. But I was so happy to see him, I didn't really care what had happened. Not in any detail. I was just glad to have him back. And that's when he pulled me into what he'd been doing."
"And what was that?"
"You'll think I'm crazy for this, but... time travel. What happened was, when he touched something at that dig site, he sent a signal across time to particular people who were monitoring for just such an event. They were hoping for someone else to turn up, according to Mark, but they were satisfied to get him instead. Then he talked them into recruiting me, too."
"Recruiting you for what, exactly?"
"Cross-time black ops, I guess is the best way to describe it. They wanted to change the future by changing the past. I'm supposed to be smarter than this, but I got taken in really quickly. They had me convinced they were on to something."
"Fanatics are very skilled at recruiting people to their cause. You shouldn't blame yourself."
"But I do. I really just wanted to be with Mark, which was stupid. I should have been my own person. I had just missed him so much, and Robert was gone, so I really didn't have anybody. My parents died in the War. So he was really all I had. It turned out I was really good at this kind of work. They'd drop me somewhere with some subtle weaponry. I would be briefed on who I was going after. Most of the time, it was just taking out a single person, or a group of people. Sometimes, you had to make it look like natural causes. Sometimes, you'd stage an accident. In some cases, we had to disappear the person altogether, which just meant tagging them with a temporal transponder and timeshifting them to... well, nowhere."
Jack spoke without any judgment nor hint that he disbelieved her. "That must have been difficult for you, to hurt people like that."
"That's the thing, though. It wasn't. I was so fucked up by the War and by Mark I just didn't care who I hurt. I hate to get completely open about it, but... I told Mark to be rough with me. Like, so rough it even scared him. I wanted to feel. But I didn't want to feel. I don't know if that makes sense."
"What it sounds like to me is that you were deeply traumatized and trying to find ways to process your pain, and you used what was available to you, and what you knew how to do."
"Yeah, I guess that's a charitable way of putting it. I say I left Mark, but in a real sense, he left me. He couldn't do the temporal assassinations anymore. He felt like it wasn't paying off and these people were just bullshitting us. He wanted me to come with him. But I thought he was weak. I called him weak. I told him he didn't have the balls to do what needed doing. I told him he was a coward with no vision. I said all kinds of horrible things, honestly. And then he fucked me one more time, and I swear to God I never saw him so angry and so desperate to hurt me, and I loved the way he hurt me that time... and then he was gone. I really threw myself into the job after that. I couldn't give a shit about anything anymore."
"You went through a lot. What changed? Why did you quit?"
"It's a cliche, I guess, but I got tired of hating myself. I got tired of avoiding mirrors just to avoid looking at my own reflection. I realized Mark was right. These people were scumbags. Liars. I don't know what they were really doing. It wasn't what they said, though. The future never got better. So, I quit. I wanted to find Mark, to apologize, but he was... gone."
"Gone where?"
"I have no idea. Nobody had seen him in years by the time I went looking. And I no longer had the ability to scan timelines and look for him that way. I was just stuck without him. I'd accumulated enough money from my 'job' that I never have to worry about income. It's pretty easy to gin up huge sums of money when you're zipping across time, it turns out. So, all I have now is time and all this shit on my conscience."
"What do you want to get out of these sessions, June?"
"I don't know."
"I'd like you to think for a moment and try to come up with an answer."
June sighed. She hated being pressed like this, even if it was the right thing to do. After several moments, she gave a response: "I guess I want forgiveness."
"From whom?"
"Well, not you. I know that's not your job. The people I hurt are dead. They can't forgive me. I don't think I could face any of their relatives, either. How would I even explain it? 'Sorry, I killed your uncle to prevent an apocalypse.' They'd call me crazy rather than hear me out."
"Who does that leave, then?"
"Just myself. How am I supposed to do that, though?"
"Acknowledge that all the things that happened to you, happened. Acknowledge that you did all the things you say you did. Take responsibility for your mistakes. Look at yourself in the mirror and say, 'I forgive you.'"
"That's... corny as hell."
"Human psychology is not as difficult to crack as you might think. Here's what I want you to do: for the next two weeks, at least once a day, I want you to go to your mirror, look yourself in the eyes, and say, 'I forgive you.'"
"Come on. Really?"
"That's your homework."
"I can't believe I'm paying for this."
Jack smiled. "Let me know when it starts to work."