Chapter Text
Session No. 5
The office was the same. The light was softer than usual today. It was an overcast day, the windows veiled in gray. A plastic turtle on the windowsill stood between flower pots, one leaf almost touching its shell.
Alice had arrived early and had managed to pour herself some water. She didn't open her notebook.
The door opened without a knock.
Hermes came in. His clothes were simple: gray jeans and a gray T-shirt, neutral, as if he didn't want to signal anything. He nodded and sat down, but didn't lean back. He held himself upright, his hands resting on his knees, fingers intertwined too tightly.
"Before we begin," Alice said calmly, "it is important for me to ask how you lived through this week."
He answered almost immediately.
"Fine."
"Then I want to start by clarifying something," Alice said evenly. "I have been thinking a lot about what you told me last time."
He became alert, but nodded.
"You used the word 'blackmail' several times," she continued. "And it is important for me to unpack that. Not emotionally. Logically."
Hermes smirked at the corner of his mouth.
"I love being logically dissected."
"The god of the sun," Alice said evenly, "can't be forced into sex in the literal sense. Do you agree?"
He thought about it. Then he nodded slowly.
"Honestly… yes. If he had not wanted it, nothing would have happened."
"Then," she continued gently, "you didn't 'break' him. You made an offer. Manipulative, dirty, but still an offer. And he accepted it."
Hermes exhaled sharply, as if a hook had been pulled out of him.
"Thank you," he said, unexpectedly serious. "Because that part has always irritated me. As if I had… I don't know… raped the sun."
Alice allowed herself a brief, almost imperceptible smile.
"Then let us remove the false guilt," she said. "And look at the real responsibility."
He tensed.
"Now that is more interesting," he muttered.
"You began the relationship with deception," Alice said. "With the use of intimacy as a tool. And you continued it by reinforcing the same dynamic."
She paused.
"And now you call it love."
Hermes leaned back and looked at the ceiling.
"What if that is exactly what love is?" he asked. "Pathetic, crooked, but… ours."
"Then I have a question for you," Alice said. "If we remove deception, power, the game of who blinds whom, what remains?"
He was silent for a long time.
"Just us," he finally said.
"And what do you think about that?"
Hermes thought. His fingers loosened.
"I…" he huffed softly. "I would feel like nobody. Without the game."
Alice nodded.
"That is the key point, Hermes. Not 'I forced him.' But 'I chose a bond in which I am seen only through pain, light, and drama.'"
He lowered his gaze.
"We are similar," he said quietly. "One father. One source. We both orbit it, just in different ways."
"And that makes the bond especially sticky," Alice said. "Because it is not about choice. It is about repetition. And everything in it feels very familiar and close to you."
Hermes smiled without joy.
"Great. So I am neither a victim nor a monster. I am just… continuing a family tradition."
"Exactly," Alice said. "And the good news is that traditions don't have to be continued."
He looked up.
"Are you suggesting that I should leave him?"
"No," Alice answered immediately. "I want you to stop calling it love until you test what remains without codependence."
The pause hung heavy, but honest.
"Until the next session," she said, "I ask you to do one exercise. When he is near, ask yourself not 'do I love him,' but 'what am I getting right now? Reflection? Power? Pain? Warmth?'"
Hermes nodded slowly.
"That will be unpleasant."
"Yes," she agreed. "But it will be yours."
The session ended with almost no movement.
Hermes stood up and stopped by the door.
"Doc," he said. "If it turns out that without all this crap I still love him, then what?"
Alice looked at him directly.
"Then it will be love," she said. "Not a myth."
"And if without him… there is nothing there?" he said quietly.
Alice looked at him for a long time.
"Then we will get acquainted," she said.
He nodded and left.
Alice remained seated, not moving. Then she shifted her gaze to the windowsill, to the plastic turtle, and for the first time in several sessions allowed herself to exhale. She wrote in the file:
"The patient is not a victim. And not an aggressor. The patient is a participant in a stable mythologized codependency. Deconstruction of the concept of 'love' has begun. Risk is high, but insight is present."