Life! we’ve been long together

Entry tags:

Life! we’ve been long together

Who: Sheehan, Varker, Marc/Steven
Where: Sheehan's cabin
When: Generally now
Warnings: None yet, will update

Sheehan clears his entire day for this. He ensures that they have plenty of time for what they're going to do, what might happen, and what needs to come next. He tells them all to meet him in his old cabin, what he generously calls his "office" at the moment. It's a room straight out of Ashecliffe, with bookshelves lining the walls. He has a desk in the corner, a mishmash of comfortable furniture arranged in a little cluster, and a small square television covered with a sheet near the closed windows. There are a few doors, all of them except one shut, the last shining a warm light from an old kitchen.

"Sit wherever you're comfortable," he tells them. "I've made coffee and tea, and I have water for everyone."

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Marc and Steven are not tall, as individuals, which is normally a thing people associate with being able to intimidate anyone else.

Marc doesn't need that shit. Marc is intimidating because Marc is completely confident that nothing in any room he enters is capable of being the scariest thing he's ever seen. There is nothing anyone, including the Admiral, can do to Marc here on this ship that could make his top five worst moments. Guaranteed.

He's staring with intense black, bird-of-prey eyes at Sheehan, leaning against a wall, not moving. Marc's stare could drill a hole in concrete. Marc does not move to sit down.

He remembers you talking to Steven. That story about the flooded ward.

"I don't like this," he says. It's flat and quiet, and has a completely different accent than Steven uses. Something Chicagoish. "I knew I wasn't going to, and it's not changing. It's also not important. I'm setting you a realistic expectation at the top. Not going to like this. Not going to like you. If neither of us takes that personally, we'll be fine.

I'm not drinking anything here I didn't pour myself."

"I know you don't," Sheehan assures him, sitting in a chair with his hands folded. "And there's a kitchen in the side there, if you want to make yourself something."

He's quiet, thoughtful. "What else?" he wonders. "I'd like to hear your other rules. What you want out of this. What your expectations are. We haven't met, after all."

"I'm fine."

He does not want to do something as human as eating right now. Or sitting. Or emoting.

"The last time I was in therapy, I was a kid. I couldn't hurt them. I can hurt you. I don't like it, but I can.

Confidentiality, even towards Steven. Or my temp warden. My business is mine."

He has a few more, but that's a very important one.

He doubts very much that Marc could hurt him with all of his own defenses in place. He's been on this ship a very long time with people who are very interested in keeping the pacifist psychiatrist alive. He doesn't argue with Marc, though. That's not why he's hered.

"Of course. I'm a professional and I maintain strict confidentiality. All of my files are locked in a room no one else can enter and nothing comes home with me. I don't discuss clients with anyone unless they have given me their explicit consent. What else?"

He does have a notebook that he writes in, though it's his own shorthand right now, detailing Marc's rules.

Marc is self-soothing his way out of freaking the fuck out by repeated threat displays. It is making him feel better, mostly.

"Last time I did this, the treatment was merging us back into the same guy and trying to get me to admit that Steven is a delusion.

No.

When people drop acid or whatever they like to do, and see stuff, they know they're hallucinating and it's not real. They see it anyway.

I know neither of us are real, that our brain is hallucinating two people. I can still see us. I don't want Steven to die."

Edited 2026-06-15 21:56 (UTC)

He sucks in a breath, lets him finish, and then lets the words hang in the air. Not a hesitation. Sheehan is simply allowing the weight of the request take up the space it deserves.

"I don't want anyone to die, and the goal is not to merge you into one person," he assures him. "Anything else?"

Marc relaxes a fraction of an inch.

"If I say I can't answer something - it's not an I don't want to, it's an I can't. I have the memories, but talking about them isn't always a good idea.

I've got a Dancer, from John. I asked for it, because I've been ... rn."

He visibly hits a wall on being able to describe what's been happening. He cracks his knuckles to fidget, frustrated with himself. He's not sure if this one's a doesn't want to say he's been having violent PTSD episodes or a can't talk about the violent PTSD episodes.

Maybe both. It's humiliating to not be in control, and thinking about them too hard invites them back in. Both.

"I'm working hard to stay ... calm. All the time. If it slips, I panic and I try to hurt people I don't want to hurt. I snap out of it, I'm immediately... sorry. I regret it right away.

I'm already a lunatic, I don't want to be a dangerous lunatic. The Dancer's here for that, but if we hit a subject and it seems like I gotta talk ... around it... instead of about it... I'm avoiding something that might blow up in my face.

We should... get on the same page about what you already know about who I am and what this disorder is."

Edited 2026-06-16 01:55 (UTC)

He writes as Marc speaks, then puts the notebook away when he's addressed. "Of course," he says, keeping his thoughts to himself. "I don't know much about you, but I know about trauma. PTSD as it's called in it's modern form. Trauma is my specialty, both professionally and personally. Trauma and all the changes it takes in the brain, all the ways that people cope, or try to."

"Just assume I've got all of them, it'll save time."

"I can't assume that," he tells him with a small tilt in his words. "But I can probably guess as we go through. So if you don't want to merge, which again, I wouldn't recommend, then what is your goal for all this, Marc?"

"Steven doesn't know the Admiral considers him an inmate, and the last time I tried to tell him something big it went ...not so good.

He also doesn't believe me when I say I'm not some kind of fucking evil... ghost that's here to turn all his friends against him. This wouldn't be a problem if we weren't on the magical alien space garbage ship, but we are."

Also, he is being like, genuinely cruel to Marc, which hurts like hell because Marc loves Steven. Not familial, not romantic, something harder to label. Unconditional. One-sided. Steven thinks Marc is something worse than a stranger. A parasite, maybe. An intruder.

Marc does not want to talk about that.

"I can manage him if we can get him to calm down. I can't do it on my own, I guess, because I had a working system for thirty years and this place screwed it up. So that's the goal."

Edited 2026-06-16 17:19 (UTC)

"Okay."

He taps his pen against the notebook. "Is there anything else? I'd like to talk to Steven, too, of course. Does he know why he's here?"

"Yeah. Advice. If you think you know who the original is, don't tell Steven. It won't help, he's too stuck in the which-one-of-us-is-fake thing already."

This is something that Marc and Steven don't know about their own condition: There is no original. A pair of identical twins don't have an 'original' either.

Marc, for his part, is also so far beyond giving a shit whether or not Steven is made up that it's not even funny. He does not have the spoons, or forks, or whatever other twee pop psychology flatware metaphor people use to represent energy. Steven is better than Marc and also more fun to be. No ontology necessary.

"You mean here on the Barge, or here with you?"

He doesn't say it, but he doesn't know what an original is. The one that was born? The one that came up later? It doesn't matter.

"Here with me."

Marc shuts his eyes a moment, trying to gently pick through Steven's memories without waking him up.

"If you're asking me, I think the little -" Marc clears his throat. Do not call your brother a little shit, Marcus Spector.

He starts over. "I think the guy knows everything, but it's not nice, and it's not pleasant so he doesn't want to admit it.

If I was being objective, I've got no idea if it's a choice he made or not. A lot of times, when he doesn't like something enough, he doesn't choose to forget it, he just ... forgets it. It's part of his job on the team.

He knows I'm here. He figured out that I think we have DID. We do, I remember the split.

Varker broke the news to me that he's also an inmate, and said we should just go to you with it instead of trying to tell Steven and have him have another thing to fight me about."

"Alright. And how do you want this to go? How do you want to tell him? I told Doctor Varker that I would mediate, which means I am here for whatever you need. You know him better than I do," he explains gently.

Marc thinks: Can you either make him love me back or, if that's impossible, forget me and stop hurting me by hating me?

Marc, who has had thirty years of very thick skin, says instead: "Let him set boundaries here the same way. If I get to do it, it's only fair.

And then... I don't know. He doesn't need to like me. I don't think that's even realistic. But he does need to accept he's an inmate, or we are never going to friggin graduate."

Marc's lip curls, which is actually a pretty significant display of facial expression for him.

"I don't think he should be an inmate either, is part of where we're stuck. He's not wrong - he didn't do anything. Unless we're both being charged with the specific thing that happened before we were two people, and the last time I thought about that too hard it went... bad. Dancer had to intervene and get between me and my temp warden."

Marc nods at his Dancer, who is in a little Chicago Cubs hat and a teeny tiny black bomber jacket, doing a very Marc cool guy lean on a wall. The Dancer nods back. You are welcome. We are just two cool dudes who have this under control.

He smiles at the Dancer and nods to Marc. "Alright. Then, I think the only thing left now is to talk to Steven. Unless you have any other questions for me?"

"Yeah. Is bein' hard to read a professional thing or just a you thing?"

He sits back in the chair, taking the question seriously.

"It is both. This place, as you might have noticed, is not as professional as it should be. There are no ethics. No oversight. No board. And so I must maintain my own systems and stay accountable to myself. That means I try and stay professional."

Though it's always been a bit of an issue.

"Mm."

You're like this when talking to Steven socially, too. If a little less so. But, fine, Marc won't push, he wants to get through this fast, not become best friends.

"No kidding. Guy kills two people and we don't even have a jail to put him in."

Marc rolls his shoulders. It's fine. He'll take care of it himself. He finally sits, settles back so they don't fall down on the switch if it's messy.

"You need anything before I call Steven out?"

Sheehan would agree with that. Zero is hardly a prison.

"No, thank you," he says and takes out his notebook again. He's seen a few switches in his time, but it always gives invaluable information.

Marc leans forward, covers his face with his hands. He's embarrassed at the weird things his face does between swaps.

Here's the best side-by-side you're going to get: Marc has a military posture, has his jaw set so tight that he looks like he might crack a tooth, and when he drops his head down into his hands, it's tired but nearly expressionless. Marc has been nearly expressionless this entire time; most emotions get a minute twitch of an eyebrow, and otherwise the intense bird-of-prey stare is constant.

The same face pops back out of cover, the eyes wide and timid. Steven wears the same face open and slack. His shoulders squeeze in and together defensively. He stares around the office with open curiosity and nerves, then forces a nervous little smile at Sheehan.

"Well," he says. "Alright then."

Marc's voice was low and level, trying to be American neutral standard but with the vowels veering towards Chicago. Steven's is high, fluttery, lower class London.

(The Dancer in the corner shifts in a swirl of bandages, into a shape closer to a housecat. They jingle over and jump into Steven's lap, and he immediately scoops them up.)

"Still getting used to that. Just- just waking up wherever. Hopefully won't need to get too used to it, 'cause you're a professional that can legitimately talk some sense into him.

Hullo, Nedjem, were you good?"

This is directed to the Dancer-cat.

"I like your books, much neater than mine. How long were you here before you moved in with Arthur?"

Edited 2026-06-18 01:26 (UTC)

Sheehan takes approximately two seconds to do a switch of his own. He's a little warmer, a little friendlier, though no less walled up.

"A year. We didn't move in together until just before we got married," he explains. "And then this became my office after I stopped working in the counseling office."

He leans forward. "What sense do you want me to talk into him?"

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