Chapter 76 Time Fractured By Trauma
The next day, Dr. Voss arrives.
I know it’s her before I even see her, because a blood guard knocks once and announces that she is waiting for me. I roll my eyes so hard it almost hurts. I slept on the couch in the library trying to take my mind off things with a book.
Of course, she’s here. Of course, Darius decided that after everything, after the blood, the bite, the accusations, the real emergency is what’s going on inside my head.
I consider not looking up.
I consider pretending I’m asleep. Or dead. Dead would probably get me out of at least one session.
But Darius is still recovering, and I don’t trust myself to sit alone with my thoughts for another hour, so I go. The blood guard escorts me to the part of the house where she is waiting.
The room is deliberately soft. I saw construction works and it turns out they were renovating and making one of the bedrooms into a therapist's office. It still smelt of fresh paint. Neutral walls. No weapons. No sharp corners. A chair for me, a chair for her, angled, not across like an interrogation, not beside like an ally. Somewhere in between.
She’s already there when I walk in.
She doesn’t stand. Doesn’t bow. Doesn’t look impressed or afraid or curious.
She just looks… present.
That alone irritates me.
I drop into the chair opposite her and cross my arms. “Let’s get this over with.”
She nods once, as if I’ve said something reasonable. “That’s fair.”
I blink.
That’s not what I expected.
Nowadays people either bristle or try to soften me. She does neither.
She opens a thin folder, then closes it again without looking inside. “Before we start,” she says, “I want to be clear about something.”
I wait, already braced.
“I’m not here to make you relive the lab.”
My shoulders tense anyway.
She notices. Of course she does.
“I’m not going to ask you to recount it,” she continues calmly. “Not today. Not unless you choose to.”
I stare at her, suspicious. “Then what’s the point?”
She tilts her head slightly, considering me. “Let me ask you something instead.”
Here it comes, I think. The inevitable how did it make you feel?
She says, “What do you want control over right now, your body, your memories, or your choices?”
The question lands wrong.
Not bad. Just… sideways.
I open my mouth, then close it.
No one has ever asked me that.
People tell me what I should control. My temper. My beast. My reactions. My strength. My mouth.
No one has ever asked what I want control over.
“I….” I stop, frown. “What kind of question is that?”
She smiles faintly. Not patronizing. Not amused. Just… acknowledging. “The kind that tells me where you are.”
“I want control over all of it,” I snap. “Isn’t that obvious?”
“Maybe,” she says. “But you can’t start everywhere at once.”
I lean back, studying her. “You think you know where I should start?”
“No,” she says easily. “I think you do. You just haven’t been given permission to say it yet.”
That makes something in my chest twist uncomfortably.
I look away.
Silence stretches, but she doesn’t rush to fill it. She waits like she has nowhere else to be.
Finally, I mutter, “My choices.”
Her eyebrows lift slightly. “Why?”
Because if I don’t choose, people choose for me. Because if I hesitate, someone steps in front of me. Because if I stay still, someone else bleeds.
I don’t say any of that.
“I’m tired of reacting,” I say instead. “Everything feels like it’s already happened before I even realize what I’m doing.”
She nods. “That makes sense.”
I scoff. “You’re supposed to argue with me.”
“No,” she says. “I’m supposed to explain.”
She folds her hands loosely in her lap. “Trauma fractures time.”
I frown. “What does that even mean?”
“It means,” she says, “that your mind stopped experiencing events in a straight line. Past, present, future, they blurred. In moments of extreme threat, your brain prioritizes survival over continuity.”
I shift in my seat, unease creeping in. “So?”
“So,” she continues, “parts of you learned to act before thought. To disconnect sensation from action. To step outside yourself when staying inside would’ve broken you.”
My jaw tightens. “You’re saying I checked out.”
“I’m saying you adapted.”
I shake my head. “It feels like weakness.”
“That’s because you’re judging a survival response as if it were a character flaw.”
The words hit harder than I expected.
She leans forward slightly, not invading, just closer. “Your mind didn’t erase memories to lie to you, Lyra.”
My breath stutters at the sound of my name.
“It erased them,” she says gently, “to keep you alive.”
Something inside me recoils.
“No,” I say immediately. “If I were stronger, I would’ve remembered. I should’ve…”
“You were a child,” she interrupts softly.
The word slices through me.
“I–I,” I tried to argue.
“You were still a child,” she repeats, unyielding. “And your brain did exactly what it was designed to do under unbearable threat.”
I stare at my hands. They’re clenched into fists I don’t remember making.
“You dissociated,” she continues. “Not because you failed, but because staying present would’ve destroyed you.”
I swallow hard.
Dissociation.
That word made it sound like I was damaged. Like I was something broken.
“You’re telling me,” I say slowly, “that me not remembering all the things my father did to me was… protection?”
“Yes.”
The certainty in her voice unnerves me more than doubt would have.
“But I hate it,” I admit quietly. “I hate not knowing what I’ve lost. I hate feeling like parts of me made decisions without me.”
She nods. “Of course you do. Protection mechanisms don’t ask permission. They act.”
I look up at her sharply. “Then how do I stop it?”
“You don’t stop it,” she says. “You thank it. And then you teach your mind that it doesn’t have to do that anymore.”
I laugh, sharp and humorless. “That’s it? Just tell my brain it’s safe?”
“No,” she says. “You show it. Slowly. Through choice.”
Choice.
The word echoes.
“When you dissociated,” she explains, “you lost agency in exchange for survival. Now, we reverse that. Not by forcing memories back, but by grounding you in the present. Giving you control where you asked for it.”
I sit with that, my beast stirring restlessly inside me.
“So I’m not… broken,” I say, the question slipping out before I can stop it.
She meets my gaze. “No. You’re patterned.”
That almost makes me smile.
Almost.
I don’t trust her. Not really. Trust doesn’t come easily when your own mind has felt like an unreliable ally.
But I listen.
And for the first time since the bite, since the whispers, since the word lucky burned itself into me, I consider the possibility that what I’ve been calling weakness was actually the reason I’m still standing.
Not luck.
Protection.
And maybe, just maybe, something I can learn to guide instead of fear.