Returning Patient: Chloe Black

Kait

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"Uh... Amber had some trouble understanding why we had to leave. She didn't know any of that was going on. But we're still close. I was always closer with her than he was. She's a big reader, and we get to spend a lot of time hanging out with each other and our books. Also..."

Chloe hesitated, realizing that she had never told Valli about the addiction that came with her power. At the time, she thought she was slowly nibbling at people's souls. She had been scared to talk to anyone else about it because she was afraid that they would make her stop and that she would die. Thankfully for her and Amber, that isn't how her power worked at all. It was still a necessity for them, though - they needed to drain strength or they would get sick, and maybe even die. She felt like some kind of addict.

"Well, she inherited the power I had when I came here, which is something I never talked to you a lot about. But it's a pretty big deal that she was able to talk with me about it. It has some side effects that are hard to talk about. So I think she trusts me a lot."

She was already deciding how to tell Valli she didn't want to discuss her powers much more. He didn't ask yet, but she wanted to be ready.
 

Romi

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It was an obvious issue that she was avoiding - something she wasn't comfortable talking to him about, even after their long history. It didn't bode well that there was some kind of secret, and if someone had asked Valli ahead of time, he'd have said that no such secret existed.

"You can always talk to me about anything," Valli said. "The confidentiality extends to things you share about your daughter as well," he added as an afterthought.

But it was obvious she wasn't jumping to share any more information about it, and Valli wasn't going to push. That wasn't what they were talking about anyway.

"It's good that she trusts you. The mechanics of it.." That she aged so fast, in other words, "don't give a lot of time for you to build a relationship, so these early years are that much more important." He wasn't a child therapist, not by a lot, but she probably needed one.

"It might also be worthwhile to find a therapist who has experience with children to help her through it. It's a lot for a child to process, and having someone she could talk to would probably be ideal."

 

Kait

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"That... would probably be good." She nodded a little. "The closest thing I had to people with parenting advice was, you remember the Rosales, right? A few of them are dads, it turns out."

There was a pause. That 'you can always talk to me about anything' comment was starting to get to her. She almost felt like she had wronged him in some way.

"By the way, the main side effect with our powers is addiction. Or maybe dependence is a better word. We have to drain strength from people every once in a while or we'll feel awful. It might even kill us to stopped. But I think we have it under control, so, there's... not much more to say about it." There was actually quite a bit more, but Chloe had so many other things to work through here.

"In any case, I'm sure you want to ask about my relationship with Pandora. You saw us in the simulation. And I did mention that I practically belong to her right now." She didn't phrase it that way last time, but it was the reality. That's what being bound to someone's will meant in this context.
 

Romi

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It would be impressive for Valli not to know who the Rosales were, although he did his best to avoid knowing too much. But there was a lot to parse, and Valli let it pass, focusing on other things.

"People having to use their powers to maintain their strength is relatively normal. While it can be alarming from a mundane perspective, it's simply a fact of life for many non-humans. Vampires must drink blood, wendigos must eat flesh... for the most part. Addiction can be a struggle, but it has to be treated like an addition to food- it's important to live, and should only be considered an issue if it starts interfering in day to day life."

Food addictions were some of the worst, because there was no way to go cold turkey. Someone could cut themselves off from drugs, but they couldn't cut themselves off from food.

"Yes," Valli admitted. "I have to admit it was weighing on my mind. That sort of dynamic is rarely healthy, and generally raises several red flags. It creates a situation where the power dynamic is inherently inbalanced, and while things might be perfectly fine now, it means that if anything does go wrong - if the balance of power shifts at all - things could end poorly."

She didn't have the power to leave. She didn't have the power to run. "How are you feeling about it, after the fact?"

 

Kait

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Chloe was silent for a good while.

"I trust her," is how she decided to answer that question. "If she wanted, she could do a lot of bad things to me, yes. But in a sense, that's not really anything new about our relationship."

She thought about what she said, and made a face. "...that sounds bad. Let me, uh, give you some context on that." Chloe took a moment trying to think of a delicate way to talk about it. It felt wrong talking to Valli about this openly. "When, uh, when we're... intimate, she... ok, I'll just say it. We do weird BDSM stuff. She ties me up and hurts me because I actually like that, and we were already doing that before we had this arrangement. And - you know I'd have to trust her a lot, to let her do that to me."
 

Romi

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Valli had accidentally wandered into uncharted territory. What was appropriate here? People were supposed to be able to share anything with him, but he couldn't help but admit that this had likely steered into off topic and too much information territory.

"Please don't feel obligated to explain things to me like that," Valli said instead, carefully redirecting. "I'm familiar with the general idea of healthy and consensual bdsm. It's something that requires a lot of trust, and in a healthy relationship means that the submissive partner is the one who truly has the most power."

In theory, that was how it was supposed to work. It didn't always, but... well, it was supposed to.

"Perhaps you're uncomfortable that bedroom play has suddenly become more prominent in your normal life. It's extremely common for people to feel that the self they are in a relationship is different from the self they are any other time."

 

Kait

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"N-no, that's... not something that's going on," Chloe told him. "The only point i was trying to make was that I trust her a lot. And she's respected it if I... you know, tell her i don't want to do something. So even if she has magical power over me now, we can work around it."

Even as she said this, Chloe recalled that they didn't have a safe word, and that probably wasn't good. There were a lot of things about this relationship that could make it become very unhealthy at any moment - if it wasn't currently as healthy as Chloe felt it was. And just how trustworthy were her feelings here? Pandora was generally the one with all the control in the bedroom, and both Chloe amd Valli knew that wasn't how bdsm was supposed to work. Yet Chloe made no effort to change that.

"But yes, she could definitely... turn this into something horrible for me, if she wanted to. And I wouldn't be able to stop her. That is kind of scary..."
 

Romi

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Valli frowned at the mention of it being scary. It wasn't supposed to be scary, but it was anyway. Pandora had all the control. Magically she had all the control, and most likely physically she had all the control. Chloe herself was many things, but compared to a full strength demon?

"It might be worth speaking to her about directly. That while you trust her, you're uncomfortable with your lack of options." The trick was how to present that to her without coming across as insulting, like Chloe was implying she'd do just that.

"Focusing the conversation on your own feelings would be best." Chloe'd already heard the I-statements lecture at least once.

 

Kait

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She frowned. Valli was assuming that Pandora was her main reason to be afraid. That would be the obvious thing. Maybe that would have been the more sensible thing to be afraid of.

"She's already on board with, with relinquishing control over me." She said. "I actually think she would prefer it, because she has to go out of her way to respect my free will sometimes right now. It's on me that we're still doing this. But doing things this way keeps me safer from - from a lot of the things my father could do to me. Or that his friends could do. So I'm too scared to call it off."

And now that she had taken the opportunity to talk about it, she came to a realization: "Do you think I'm hurting my relationship with Pandora?"
 

Romi

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Hm. The entire situation was... complex, to say the least. Magic tended to make relationship problems tricky. If someone was supernaturally compelled to do something, they could hardly be talked out of it. Similarly, someones opinions of things could be effected. Even though he'd grown up on the island, often Valli struggled with it, simply because there were so many options. Therapy could only go so far.

"It's impossible to say for sure if it is or not," Valli said. "But situations where there is a large power gap that isn't compensated for tend to degrade the relationship overall. In this sort of situation, the more communication, the better. Be clear about your feelings. About how you feel about the situation. Communication is the most important part of a relationship by far."

 
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