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"So, Tyler, can you describe to me what you see in this picture?" Doctor Fairburn picked up a rectangular piece of paper up with two fingers from where it was tucked behind her aluminum clipboard.
The edges of the therapy room — a dedicated space and decidedly not the doctor's regular office because God forbid he catch a glimpse of her actual desk and its secrets, blurred slightly through Tyler's black left eye, a lingering effect of the damage, or maybe just exhaustion. Or maybe that bone-deep weariness that came from being perpetually watched. It wasn’t his first time in this sterile little box, but during his initial psych evaluation he’d been too furious and injured to notice the details.
Back then, Tyler had been fresh off his failed jailbreak attempt, his only attempt at freedom before the walls of his mother's deathbed closed around him forever. For the security guards who had worked day in and day out with the guards he'd broken during his break out the one attempt was more than enough. He could still taste the copper of his own teeth where they’d rattled from the force of the backup crew dragging him in. He'd been far too injured at the time to really register the room at all beyond restraints and a smear of beige. Now he saw everything.
The side table wasn’t just bolted to the floor; the screws were recessed, the edges smoothed down so even a desperate person (or a DaVinci) couldn’t pry them loose. The painting on the far wall was some generic landscape, all soft blues for the sky and blurry green grass hung just a little too far out from the white wall to be purely decorative. It was concealing something. A camera, probably. Likely audio too.
They were recording him to study him or for the doctor's security. Maybe both. It couldn't be a secret that he'd mauled his last therapist to death. They’d babyproofed the whole damn room. The glass on the window was the only real thing in here, and even that was a taunt, with its frame far too narrow for even non-Hyde Tyler to squeak through.
Doctor Fairburn cleared her throat impatiently, and Tyler realised that in his lengthy evaluation of the room he had been entirely ignoring her attempts to show him the picture card. And then, rather shockingly, she abandoned her seat in the room's only other chair (the legs seemed to disappear into the flooring like it had been placed inside the cement of the flooring before it dried) and leaned into his personal space. The urge to lunge crackled under his skin. He could almost feel the give of her throat between his teeth, the hot spill of…
No.
It would be a lot harder to manipulate staff in the future if he was fitted with a muzzle as a constant reminder of how dangerous he really was. He forced his hands to stay limp, resisting the fists they wanted to form.
Instead of continuing to hold out the cardstock in the air, Fairburn let him take it from her manicured hands. It was hard to hold it with his hands cuffed in front of him but the the chain was just long enough for him to balance the sharp edges of the picture between his fully extended fingertips. One tremor, and it would flutter to the floor, utterly beyond his reach. With his chains there was no way he would be able to pick it up. He trailed a finger over the ink almost without thinking, glad that it didn't smudge and add to the dark forest dirt that was still beneath his fingernails from the night of the blood moon.
"Please, Tyler, I have other patients." She urged, leaning back and clearly fingering the edge of the next evaluative tool attached to her clipboard, ready to pivot.
"I see, uh," Tyler took a deep breath, "Wednesday. Addams. The night of her school dance. Black dress, red paint." This time his finger stroking the edge of the paper was entirely consciously done. A mockery of a caress.
She said nothing, but when she snatched the picture back Tyler had to bite the inside of his cheek hard to swallow down the pure animalistic snarl that wanted to unfurl in his too-human mouth.
"And how about this one? What do you see here?" She whipped the second image out with more of a magician's flourish. It seemed that not growling or biting at her was already earning him some privileges. Progress, her wrist movement sung. See what happens when you behave?
Tyler swallowed as she leaned into his space again, though before she could get as close as Laurel would have, she placed the card into his outstretched fingers where they sat in his lap and sat back down across from him.
"Uh, my dad, I think," Tyler said slowly, trying his best to defocus his eyes so the paper would swim out of focus so he wouldn't have to look at it without looking like he was refusing to participate in the therapy exercise, "Angry."
"Okay!" Doctor Fairburn seemed pleased by this response somehow. She tucked her curls over her ear with a self-satisfied smile. Tyler wasn't sure if he'd gotten it right or wrong and which she hoped for. The worse off Tyler was, the better for her burgeoning psychiatry field.
When she took this one back, Tyler allowed it without comment or physical response. If the chain joining his wrists to his waists hadn't been in place he might have thrown the card back at her.
"And this one?"
Tyler looked down and very purposefully tried not to emote, just the way Wednesday wouldn't, "A needle. Like the one used on me." He didn't elaborate.
A beat. Her pen scratched the clipboard, not long enough to have written a sentence but maybe just long enough to tick a box. "Okay." This response seemed less exciting to Fairburn for some reason.
She reached for the card, and this time, Tyler let his fingers twitch. A test. She flinched. Neither of them acknowledged it.
She moved with less zeal to pick up the next picture. "Next one. Tell me what you're seeing!" She flicked this one down with significantly more distance between her fingers and his.
He stared at it in total silence until it looked like she was about to press him for a response out of the corner of her eye.
"Aren't these normally ink blots? Not photos?"