Chapter Text
It’s been a while since she felt the need to see her therapist.
She hasn’t seen him in years. Not since she left for boarding school when she was twelve. And it amazes her to see that nothing, absolutely nothing has changed in his office. Except him, of course.
Her therapist hasn’t escaped the effect of time. There’s now white hair across his temples, wrinkles she doesn’t remember seeing at the corner of his brown eyes and mouth. Lena frowns at the little, white scar on the back of his left hand.
“Gardening. A few years ago.”
Lena nods.
Everything feels the same.
Right down to the calm atmosphere. To the comfort she used to find in those few hours where she didn’t need to pretend. Where she wasn’t a Luthor first and foremost anymore. Where silence wasn’t as oppressing as it was in their manor. Here, Lena can talk or not. She can cry if she wants to or scream… And he would let her because here is a place where she is just allowed to be.
Even the carpet is the same, Lena notes distractedly, as her therapist waits patiently for her to talk. It’s the same shade of red as in her memories and with the same bizarre drawing that confused her to no end when she was a child. Lena smirks as she tries, unsuccessfully, to understand the drawing on that awful, red carpet. Some would think that now that she is twenty-four, she might have gained some more wisdom, some more understanding of the world. Some would think that something she didn’t understand as a child would now be easy to understand or explain. But after all these years, Lena still doesn’t quite get these freaking black lines that keep interlacing and breaking apart on that burgundy carpet. There are no rhymes or reasons behind the pattern and Lena is usually really good at finding meanings behind patterns.
It began with chess.
She won’t brag about it but she did beat her brother at chess when she was four. The game had been surprisingly easy for her young mind to master. All she had to do was to know the rules and follow them. A set of rules laid out with only a few allotted moves each piece can do and the player can make. From there, Lena finds it easy to deduce her opponent’s every moves and it’s even easier for her to checkmate them.
Everything obeyed to a rule and Lena thrives within them. Just like in science.
Water and oil never mix. Why? Because of relative density. Let’s take water as the reference. If a substance's relative density is less than one then it is less dense than the reference; if greater than 1 then it is denser than the reference. If the relative density is exactly 1 then the densities are equal; that is, equal volumes of the two substances have the same mass. Then a substance like oil with a relative density less than 1 will float in water. Poured into a glass, or in a bottle or even in the ocean; oil will always float above the water.
Or Newton's law of universal gravitation states that a particle attracts every other particle in the universe using a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
Her therapist clears his throat and she looks up, tongue-tied, sweat, and fear pouring out of her skin.
Technically, if all the rules of reason and science were followed and applied, Lena shouldn’t be able to see a blonde woman floating in the air, on her back, with no care whatsoever. No, no, no. Because that would be crazy and Lena is not crazy. She is a genius. She is a certified genius and that blonde woman is not making funny faces at her from behind her therapist back!
“Are you alright, Lena?”
Lena nods quickly and drops her gaze back toward the awful, red carpet with a design so confusing and chaotic that she wants to take it apart. Pull every fiber one by one and find the meaning behind it. If there is one…
Of course there is one. There is always one. She just hasn’t found it yet.
The blonde woman floats next to her and Lena flinches away, pressing her back against the upholstered armchair.
“Lena, look at me.” He asks her softly and she can’t. She squeezes her eyes shut because she will see blonde hair and blue eyes, floating above the fucking ground.
“Take a deep breath.”
“Don’t panic, Lena. Everything is alright…” The voice whispers next to her, soothing and warm, and Lena groans and shrinks away, putting her hands over her ears to muffle the sound.
“I am not crazy,” she whimpers over and over again, swaying back and forth. She knows that her behavior, right now, isn’t really helping her case but maybe if she repeats it enough or if she holds on to this truth hard enough, she might be able to convince herself of it.
Warm hands suddenly pry her hands away from her ears and Lena screams, startled, eyes wide and terrified as she stares at her therapist brown eyes, crouching before her.
“Breathe, Lena.” He whispers and she can’t because the woman is staring at her, blue eyes wide with concern and care, just behind her therapist’s back.
He frowns and looks over his shoulder. Lena waits with bated breath. He turns back toward her and she knows that he didn’t see her, the woman, the blonde woman floating in the air just behind his shoulder and Lena feels like crying.
“Focus on me,” he finally says. “Look at me in the eyes and focus on my voice. Nothing else.”
Lena tries to but the woman is moving again. She is pacing behind her therapist with a frown on her face, arms crossed over her chest. Lena grimaces slightly as he squeezes her hand softly and Lena focuses back on him. “I’m not crazy,” she whispers again, trembling all over.
“Maybe I should leave…” the woman says uncertain and sorry and Lena squeezes her eyes shut.
“Don’t! Stay with me!” He orders her, holding her hands tightly and Lena opens her eyes.
The woman is gone.
Lena sweeps with anxious eyes in the office. She stands abruptly and checks every corner of the room, under her therapist’s desk, under the sofa, in between the books on his bookcase. Lena checks everywhere. Twice. Her therapist let her and she slowly calms down as the woman is nowhere to be seen. She will come back though. She always does.
“What is happening?”
Lena turns toward him, one hand still on an anthology of The Beatles, the book heavy and comforting in her hand. “I’m not crazy,” she repeats, staring him directly in the eyes.
He looks at her from his seat and doesn’t say anything. Lena fidgets on her feet. “I’m not,” she insists desperately.
He nods calmly and looks at the armchair pointedly. Lena sighs and bites her lips as she walks back toward it and sits. She hates when he does that. It’s like he knows things about herself Lena isn’t privy to and with that look in his eyes and that overwhelming patience; it makes her want to pour everything out of her chest. It makes her want to lay everything out in the open even if most of the time, she doesn’t know how because everything feels like it’s locked away, deep inside herself. Lena knows that he is trying to find meaning in her behavior. He is looking at the pattern. Patterns she can’t see because there are inside herself and Lena is blind to it.
“Something is happening but it doesn’t mean you are crazy,” he says softly, holding her gaze to get his message across. Lena nods and he smiles. “Let’s figure this out together. Tell me everything from the start.”
She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes briefly and then goes back to the day everything ran off the rails. “I… I…”
***
Lena sees her for the first time on a Friday night. She just finished a meeting with the board of Luthor Corp and all she wants is to forget the awful, awful week she just had. A whole week spent arguing about numbers and corporate politics with white, old men trying to undermine her position and stab her in the back now that she is the new CEO.
After unspeakable crimes, her brother has finally been arrested by Superman. Clark Kent of the Daily Planet exposed his deeds to the world and now, Lena is left with nothing. The family company is going down on the stock market, her mom left the board as soon as it was announced that Lena would be the one to take back the company as stated in her father’s will and the media is waiting outside her apartment building, day and night, like a shark circling their prey at the scent of blood.
Lena never shared Lex’s obsession with Kryptonians or aliens for that matter. She always was indifferent and while her brother had tried to sway her on his side multiples times; Lena never adhered to his views. All she saw was his magnanimity and his fear consuming him more and more. Lex descended into madness and Lena wasn’t able to save him.
Lena thanks Eli, her help, the son of one of her nannies when she was young who had asked for a job to pay for college. He sneaks her into the building as the swarm of photographers and reporters wait for her at the main entrance. Lena sighs and bids him goodnight as she enters her apartment and he retires back to the one just under hers.
So, really. It’s no wonder that she reaches for the bottle her friend, Jess, sent her from France. A beautiful bottle full of an unnaturally bright, green liquid and flops on her couch, heels off, hair in disarray with sweatpants and t-shirt instead of the tight dresses she has to wear every day.
After three shots of that French poison, Lena is not surprised to see a woman suddenly appear in front of her eyes with ethereal blonde hair that falls graciously around an even lovelier face, blue eyes so deep and intense like siren’s songs bewitching her away from the coast and a crinkle on her brow, severe and mighty like… like Justice personified or Wisdom or Love…
Lena suddenly feels like Charles Baudelaire or Paul Verlaine, one of those poets, cooped up in those Parisian parlors drinking absinthe and waxing poetry on the woman’s figure. And what a beautiful figure this conjured woman has! Intense, blue eyes stare at her disapprovingly with her hands on her hips, tall and imposing like a Greek goddess who suddenly broke free of a long sleep from the stone in which mere humans like her immortalizes the Gods out of love and adoration.
She stares breathless and in love as the woman, haloed in white from the lights above her, crouches in front of her. Lena frowns as she sees her muse dressed with an orange and navy striped sweater and navy tailored pants. That weren’t the clothes Lena remembered muses wore in literature…
“Are you La fée verte?” Lena asks in wonder.
“What?”
She speaks! Lena rejoices, utterly captivated by the soft intonation of her voice, the crisp and virtuous mountain air coming down from sinuous valleys and ravines, snowy forests and sharp rocks to grace mortals with a lungful of life. “The green fairy… Are you the green fairy?”
“The what now?”
Lena chuckles at her muse’s language, modern and abrasive, so different from the language she pictured them using. Alexandrine or Sicilian octave, a speech governed by rhyme and reason, abiding to rules only to free themselves of them by the essence itself of creation. Lena reaches for the bottle on the coffee table but stops as her muse frowns at her, lips upturned, arms crossed over her chest.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea…”
“I think… that it’s the best idea I’ve ever had!” She winks or blinks really because the woman looks at her weirdly and Lena wiggles the bottle in front of her muse’s face, the liquid sloshing inside. “It conjured you, after all.”
“What do you mean by conjured? I’m real!”
“Yeah, right! In my head…” she scoffs and shakes her heads softly but stops and squeezes her eyes shuts because the world is swaying. Lena puts the bottle back on the table blindly and leans back on her couch, eyes still firmly closed.
“What? No, no! I swear I’m real!” she insists, high-pitched and excited.
Lena opens her eyes and hums, amused and oddly entertained by this strange creature in front of her. “So, my muse…”
“Muse? What the…”
“What is it that you came here to do?” Lena asks cheekily, leaning forward. “What inspirations will you breathe into me…” she whispers with her lips millimeters away from the woman’s pink and supple ones.
The muse recoils away and scrunches her nose in distaste. “Nothing. Because one: you reek of alcohol. There is no way I’m coming near you!”
Dismayed, Lena watches her put as much distance between them as possible.
“Don’t pout!” She hisses, pointing an accusing finger at her.
Lena scowls as her muse paces relentlessly in front of her.
“And two… There is something weird going on here. Right here!” She agitates her arms helplessly in the air and Lena follows them before she has to close her eyes again in fear of passing out on her couch.
She winces as the muse claps her hands loudly in front of her. “Hey! Don’t fall asleep! We are in a crisis!”
“Are we?” Lena grumbles, suddenly tired and annoyed. “Because I’m feeling fine… Super fine, even…” Lena chucks another shot of absinthe before the woman can stop her. The liquid burns her throat and warms her inside deliciously. Her head falls back on her couch and Lena stares at the lights dancing before her eyes.
“You are a mess.”
“Tell me something new…”Lena sighs and breathes deeply, closing her eyes. She will let herself have this one night. Just one night where she doesn’t feel like the universe is crushing her shoulders waiting to see her fall and crumble.
“Why are you drinking so much?” Her muse whispers next to her, sitting on the couch at a safe distance somewhere to her right.
“Why?” Lena mutters, sad and reflective. She feels the indentations on the cushions and opens her eyes to stare directly into blue eyes. Lena smirks. “For the pleasure of your company of course!”
The woman scoffs and crosses her arms over her chest, a deep crinkle on her brow. It’s a sight Lena is now becoming accustomed to and she smiles as her muse frowns. “If you are trying to be suave, it’s not working. You have drool on your face.”
Lena pats her cheeks and face. “What? No, I don’t!”
“How many fingers…” blue eyes demands expectantly, eyebrow raised, her hand held up to prove her point.
“Two is usually enough,” she smirks and whispers lewdly. The woman narrows her eyes, confused, and Lena scotches closer. “But I’m not opposed to trying more…”
Understanding dawns on her face and her muse groans in frustration, standing up, hands on her hips and glares at her.
Lena laughs. “Are you sure you are a muse?”
“I’m not a muse!”
Lena whines and rubs the bridge of her nose. “Of all the muses in the universe I had to get the rogue one… Why can’t anything be easy?” She goes for the bottle.
“Don’t you dare have another drink!” The muse hisses.
Lena raises an eyebrow in challenge, forgoing the glass on the table, and begins to tip the bottle toward her lips with a smirk.
“Put that bottle back on the table!”
“Make me!”
Her muse lunges at her, hand outstretched and Lena inhales in surprise as a cold hand wraps around hers, more like merges with hers as they both hold on to the bottle.
Time stops.
No wonder poets loved that drink so much; Lena muses as the bottle is pried away from her hands. She falls backward on her couch and everything fades to black.
That French poison really, really was something else.
***
The second time Lena sees her, she has just woken up from a hangover.
Her shirt is wet with alcohol… well she hopes it is alcohol and her tongue feels heavy and patsy in her mouth. Her mind is still fuzzy and there is an incessant pounding in her head. Lena trudges toward the bathroom, eyes half-closed, fleeing the light as she fumbles on the floor on all four. She groans and whines feeling like she is crawling through an interminable desert in search of an oasis, or in her case, her bathtub.
She stopped feeling sorry for herself a long time ago. Shit happens and it’s not the first time she finds herself in that exact situation. Lena is just glad she didn’t bring someone inside with her. Discretion is getting more and more expensive these days.
Lena sighs in relief when she finally reaches her cold bathroom door and pushes it wide open. It clanks against the wall. She winces at the loud sound and crawls toward the bathtub to run herself a bath. It’s a wonder she can still function and perform her few basic needs while the water fills the tub and steams the bathroom. Lena will have to remember to talk to Jess about that bottle she gave her. She disrobes quickly and immerses herself into the scalding water up to her neck, closing her eyes. Lena sighs in relief.
“You should turn off the faucet…” A voice says from behind her and Lena nearly hurts her neck as she turns around and sees her muse pointing at said faucet. “It’s going to overflow…”
Water sloshes everywhere on the bathroom floor as Lena shrieks and backs away toward the other end, as far away as she can from the deranged creature. Her muse sighs exasperatedly.
Lena turns off the faucet, not leaving the woman out of her sight. “Happy?” The blonde nods with a self-satisfied smile and Lena cups some water in her hands and splashes her face a few times before looking back up. The woman is still here, watching her curiously. Lena blinks. “I’m still drunk, aren’t I?”
“I hope not. You slept for a while.”
“What do you mean?” Lena frowns. She had no recollection of something like that happening the other night. Frankly, she didn’t remember much, everything is still fuzzy but didn’t she wake up on her couch, fully clothed? “Did we sleep together?” She finally asks, confused.
“What?”
Lena suddenly stops the lecture before it can even begin with a wave of her hand. “Because if that’s the case, you are more than welcome to what is in my fridge but then I’ll have to ask you to leave. I’ll call for Eli and he will pay you handsomely for the time here and your discretion,” she stresses with a raise of an eyebrow.
The woman before her scrunches her nose. “I’m… I’m not some…” she sputters with indignation.
“Oh please,” Lena sighs, tired and exasperated. Her bath is no longer able to keep the headache pounding behind her eyes. “There’s no shame in it. It was a win-win for both of us and could you leave me to my bath? This,” Lena says pointing to the both of them in her bathroom. “This is getting weird…”
“No!” The blonde hisses angry and exasperated. Lena shies away but she is trapped and the woman kneels next to her, a cold finger poking at her bare shoulder. “What’s weird it is me being here with you! You don’t remember what happened last night?” She asks desperately.
Lena shrugs, glad that she stopped poking her. Her one-night stand looks at her with wide, sad eyes and Lena feels sorry for the poor woman. “Sorry, maybe you weren’t that good of a…”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence!”
Lena groans frustrated. Of all the women she could pick, she had to pick the neurotic one. “Listen, I’m sorry this is happening. What do you want? Money? Fame? I can call an agent and they’ll put you on the next cover of whatever magazines you want. You certainly have the figure…” she digresses but promptly shuts up at the look on the other woman’s face.
“You are so full of yourself! Nothing happened last night! And nothing ever will! I wouldn’t touch you even with a ten-foot pole!”
“Well, now that’s just mean…” Lena frowns, she won’t say that the blonde just poke her in the shoulder a few minutes ago. Looking at her face, Lena doesn’t want to bring her ire on her more than she already did. Lena wonders, not for the first time today, just what kind of crazy shit did Jess sent her because this was just the next level.
“This is crazy…” The blonde mutters, pacing in her bathroom.
Lena huffs. “I’m glad we can agree on something. You are absolutely crazy!”
“This is your fault!” The woman hisses, pointing at her. “You did something to me!”
“Listen Miss, I don’t know you but I wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t consensual!” Lena hisses back fervently. It might not look like it but she has standards. She has honor.
“Will you just stop with the innuendos?” The woman snarls loudly.
“Will you stop screaming?” Lena snarls back and plunges her head into the water in frustration but mostly to escape the noise reverberating on the walls of her bathroom. Every sound is muffled and Lena relaxes, hoping that the woman will understand and leave her alone.
When Lena emerges, the woman is gone. No trace of her in her security cameras or in those of the lobby. No signs of a crazy woman with blonde hair and blue eyes anywhere.
Lena swears off absinthe for the rest of her life.
***
The third time she sees her, Lena is absolutely sober.
It’s the middle of the week and Lena hasn’t indulged herself in sweet forgetfulness. She can’t. Too much lies on her shoulders and she has to be absolutely clear-headed for this. Investors are cutting all ties with Luthor Corp every day and if Lena doesn’t find a solution rapidly, she might as well be the CEO of a bankrupt company.
No Luthor can escape the encompassing shadow of their last name and Lena is thrown in the dark, alone and forlorn, desperate for the light, any kind of light that would show her the way or at least tell her that everything she is doing isn’t in vain. That she is doing something good even when she has the feeling of being pulled back into the dark. There are choices she needs to make. Lena has to choose which subsidiaries she has to close to stay afloat for a little bit longer… The board was very clear about which ones she should close and which ones she should focus on.
Lena sighs, closing her eyes for a bit. She is now a businesswoman and Luthor Corp has to make money, somehow… Even if, some have to lose their job in the process.
“You should eat, you know… You've been at it for hours.”
Lena screams and scrambles away from the voice whispering behind her ear. She puts the table in between them and stares at the woman she thought had been a figment of her imagination. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“Finally!” The woman whoops. “Hi! I’m…” She moves closer. Lena steps back. The woman shrugs, pausing slightly and frowns. “Wait… I don’t know…”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Well, I was hoping we could figure it out together… Because I don’t understand it either…”
“This is a dream, right?" Lena mutters, looking all around her, trying to regulate her breathing. “I’m dreaming. I’ve been working too much, maybe I took too many pills for that headache this morning… or I’m hallucinating because I’ve haven’t eaten since lunch…” Lena touches the table but the smooth mahogany feels real to her.
“You should absolutely eat but this is not a hallucination. I’m here… Listen…” she continues, coming closer.
“Don’t come any closer!” Lena shouts, hands held up protectively in front of her.
“Alright… I- I am sorry,” the blonde says quietly, looking sad.
Lena shakes her head. She can’t have Stockholm syndrome. Not now. “I will ask you to leave this apartment. I won’t call the police, I won’t file a claim… just please leave…”
“I can’t… I tried…” she whispers apologetically. “But every time I tried to leave I'd find myself back here… with you.”
“You are crazy,” Lena states, absolutely certain now. “I’m calling security.” She runs toward the electronic pad near her door. “Eli, please there is someone in my apartment and she won’t leave…”
“I’m coming right away, Boss.”
“Please…” The blonde whispers but Lena watches her impassively as Eli comes in seconds later.
“Thank god! You are here,” Lena exclaims as soon as he steps into the apartment and hides behind his back, glaring at the woman who stands frozen near the table.
“Where is the intruder?” Eli asks quietly, sweeping the open living room quickly with his eyes, a gun in his hand.
“What do you mean?” Lena hisses quietly, looking furtively at the shocked woman, and then she grabs Eli’s arm and squeezes it tightly, pointing toward the mahogany table where she has been working all night. “She is right here!”
“What?” The Intruder and Eli say at the same time.
He looks at where she is pointing with a frown while the blonde comes closer. Eli does not see her and Lena whimpers in fear.
“What is happening?” The woman says confused and stops just before her bodyguard. She waves a hand in front of his face and looks back at her. “He can’t see me?”
“Can’t you… Don’t you see her? She is right here!” Lena whispers, tugging desperately on his arm.
Eli looks at her helpless. “I see nothing Lena… Are you… Are you alright?”
She is not crazy. The woman is here, still waving her hand in front of Eli’s eyes without him knowing it. It happened to her, a few times when she was stressed to hear voices. Her mind never stops and sometimes it is hard to know what is real and what isn’t. That’s why from a young age, she always found comfort in rules and hard facts. Something in which her thoughts could be canalized into something tangible and true and not into all of those thoughts and questions that don’t have answers, not into worlds she could get lost into and never come back. But this… This is something else completely.
“Uh… Do you… do you want me to call a doctor?” Eli asks softly. “Are you feeling faint? I can check the rooms if you want but I don’t see anything…”
“No, thank you. I’m sorry,” Lena whispers, eyes wide and unseeing. “That… That would be all. I haven’t eaten that must be why…”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Eli. Thank you.”
“Very well. Have a good night, Boss!” He says and closes the door behind him. Lena hears a faint thud and she knows that if she opens her door she will find him just outside, standing guard.
This is crazy, Lena thinks, suddenly exhausted. She bypasses the blonde without a thought and flops on her couch, head in her hands. She is haunted by a ghost.
“If what he said is true,” said ghost says, sitting next to her on the couch. “Then you are the only one who can help me!”
“You are not real,” Lena whispers, shaking her head desperately.
“What? Of course I’m real,” The blonde laughs and pokes her on the shoulder.
Lena flinches away, feeling the cold finger on her skin and presses her head against her knees. “This isn’t real. It’s only in my head. It’s only in my head.”
“Lena…” the voice whispers sad and confused, a cold hand rubbing her back gently.
“Don’t touch me!” Lena snarls with tears in her eyes. She ignores the broken look in the woman’s eyes as the blonde jerks her hand away, pressing it to her chest.
“I’m sorry… I won’t… I won’t do it again,” she swears quietly.
Lena clenches her jaw and flees toward the table and grabs her laptop, still powered up from earlier. She types a name on the browser and grabs her phone as soon as the number appears before her eyes.
“Hi… Dr. Luke Perec? It’s Lena Luthor. I… Yes, I’m… I’m sorry to be calling so late but I was hoping we could fix an appointment?” Lena says trying to sound assured and unafraid as the blue-eyed woman observes her from her couch. “Tomorrow morning? Yes. That’s perfect… Thank you,” Lena whispers in relief and watches the ghost leave her couch and walk to the window, looking outside with a frown on her face.
Lena sits back on her couch and observes her quietly. They stay still and confused, the ghost throws her a few shy glances at her, and Lena thinks that this night might just be the weirdest night she ever spent while being sober. She watches with fear and a bit of fascination as the ghost smile at her and decides to experiment in her living room the limits of her own body now that she knows she is a ghost.
She watches her walk through walls a few times and gets stuck in her mahogany table when Lena suddenly laughs at the ridiculous view in front of her.
The ghost grins happily and Lena scowls, trying to hide her smile against her hand.
She isn’t sure the woman in her apartment is in fact a ghost because she can touch things, Lena watched her bring her a blanket from her bedroom to lay it on her trembling body. She watched her make a cup of tea and bring it to the coffee table, next to her, smiling hesitantly before rushing away.
Lena isn’t sure what to think anymore.
“Lena! Look what I can do!” The woman suddenly exclaims, laughing loudly while she floats in the air before her eyes, and Lena calls it a night.
She wraps herself into her blanket and squeezes her eyes shut.
She will handle this in the morning.
This is just too crazy.
***
“Is she here right now?” Dr. Perec asks quietly.
Lena nods, watching the ghost from the corner of her eyes.
“Do you know what she wants?”
The ghost perks up. “Help. Please, I just need help. I’m not here to hurt you, Lena. I swear.”
“Is she talking right now?”
“Yes.”
“What is she saying?”
Lena inhales suddenly as the woman stands before her with pleading eyes. “She… She wants help.”
“With what?”
“My memories…” The blonde exclaims. “They are gone.”
“Her memories are gone,” Lena whispers as the woman smiles widely at her, nodding her head excitingly.
“And what do you want Lena?” He asks catching her eyes and nods encouragingly as Lena clams up. “Lena? Focus on me. What do you want?”
“I want her gone,” Lena whispers, trying hard to ignore the sharp inhale of breath from the woman next to her, the sadness in her eyes as she backs away slowly toward the wall.
Her therapist nods. “From how I see it. The only way would be to understand why she is here. Why she appeared to you at this moment in time. There is always an explanation, Lena.”
She nods gratefully, releasing a breath and he smiles while jostling a note on his desk.
“We will see each other next week and we will figure this out. In the meantime, here is your prescription. They will quiet the voice when it gets too loud.”
“Thank you,” Lena says relieved as he walks her back to the door where Eli is waiting for her, on the other side.
He suddenly stops her before opening the door. “Don’t let the voice make you do things you wouldn’t do, alright?”
“What?” The voice exclaims indignantly. “I wouldn’t do anything to harm her!”
Lena ignores it.
“We will work on it together. If something happens… Anything, give me a call. Understood?”
“Yes,” Lena whispers and shakes his hand with a smile.
***
“Do you feel better?” The voice asks her full of concern, standing before her in her living room.
Lena watches her from the couch and doesn’t answer.
“He helped you, right?” The voice continues with hope. “Like we can figure this out together… like he said?”
Lena looks at the pill in her hand.
“Lena?” The voice calls her, vulnerable and afraid.
She swallows it and closes her eyes. She waits and waits.
When she opens her eyes, Lena breathes again.
The ghost is gone.