A Light Too Bright

"Nathan she will not get better without help. It sounds like you have already lost her. How can coming here make things worse? Let me help you."

"I am afraid. I am afraid if she got better she would really want to leave. If she got to really know me, she would hate me for what I have done to her."

"She might. I can't promise she won't. You have to be willing to risk, grow, change. Become a man she will want to stay with. Nathan do you really want to have someone stay with you because they are weak?"

"Why would anyone in their right mind want to stay with me?"

"Do you believe that?"

"Not in my head, but its there in my heart."

"You are not a bad person Nathan. You have to let your guard down. Let people get to know you. You will find that they will not leave. Especially if you don't push them away."

"You talk about changing. I don't know if I can."

"You are already changing, that is why you are so uncomfortable. You won't be alone. I will be there."

Nathan had no defenses left. He nodded mutely.

Cam was ruthless. "I want her to start depending on me for emotional security as quickly as possible. She has to need me, obey me. I want you to shock her, make her feel abandoned, lost. Tell her to obey me. Send her to her apartment but don't tell her why. I will get her from there."

When Cam told him that he was going to have her wait alone for two days. Nathan protested, "Two days! She won't understand."

"I need her off balance. I need her panicked."

Nathan's voice was angry. "You were always a devious, manipulative, sneaky son of bitch."

"But my motives have always been pure."

"All right, but I am going to have a private detective watch her place."

"Fine by me, but if you tell her to wait, I think that is all she will do. She sounds too shut down to do anything on her own.

"How long will she be at the clinic?"

"Once she is here I will be using medication and hypnosis to make things move along a quickly as possible. I will most likely create some sexual tension to keep her vulnerable and motivated to obey my suggestion. I can't predict how long it will take."

"You want to fuck her?"

"I don't know, but if it would help, I might. Would you object?"

Nathan looked surprised. "With you? No. Hell, Cam you know how I feel about you. I could never say no to you."

"Nathan, I know, and I always have wanted you. But it seems like you always come to me when you are in crisis. And I decided a long time ago not to take advantage of your vulnerabilities. I did that when you were with Jesus. It did nothing to help either of you. In some ways I blamed myself for a lot of your problems."

"Cam if you hadn't been there, we wouldn't have lasted as long as we did."

"That was then and this is now. You need to send her away to me. Are you ready to do this?"

"What am I going to do when she is gone?" It was a groan, wrenched from the very core of Nathan's being.

"I will have a lot of things for you to do. For instance, when is the last time you saw your eye doctor?"

Nathan looked puzzled by this sudden change of topic. "My eye doctor? I don't know. It was some time when I was in college. Before I met you."

"I want you to get your eyes checked and find out what more you can do to see better and prevent your headaches. You tend to use your vision as an excuse to stay home too much."

Nathan shrugged and nodded.

"I would like to come out and see you at your home while she is at the clinic. I want you to let me inside your head. If you are going to keep her, you will have to do it my way." My way meant hypnosis and both men knew that.

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Nathan sat in his chair in the library. Cassy was on her knees facing him, her face empty, her eyes dull.

"Child, I am sending you to a friend of mine. He is a very good man. He has agreed to help me with something. You will treat him with all the respect and obedience you give me."

Her large blue eyes lifted from the floor and found his face. They had been empty but now they grew horrified. Her lips quivered. For the briefest moment he though she was going to say something. Her right hand flinched and started to lift like she had a question. Her mouth opened and closed.

Nathan steeled himself, keeping his voice icily controlled. He almost casually spoke the words. "You will go to your apartment. You will wait there until you get a package. Open the package, read the letter inside. Follow the instructions. Go home now." He felt like he was cutting his own heart out. "Make me proud."

As she went out the door, he turned to his piano.

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Journal Entries:

<3 <3 <3 I woke up this morning and was halfway through my work out before I remembered that you had been here last night. Standing there with your little white pill, almost daring me to refuse to take it, to give up. So I let you inside my head. I wonder what you found in there puppet master? And what did you leave behind?

Today I go to the ophthalmologist. I always hated going when I was a kid. My mother and the doctor would talk to each other like I wasn't there. She would always demand he cure me, fix everything. And he would try to tell her that there was no cure. I would sit there feeling like a freak failure.

They always made me wear really thick lenses that distorted my eyes. They made me look like a fish. I hated them so much, I would smash them as soon as I got them. It was only after I was at boarding school that she let me start wearing them tinted.

Cam, Cassy will arrive at the clinic today. Please call me and let me know that she got there OK.

<3 <3 <3 I wrote the letter you asked for yesterday. I understand you have rules to follow but that does not mean you can't tell me if she is doing OK. And anyway, since when have you ever followed anyone's fucking rules.

<3 <3 <3 What the hell, why are you telling me to read this sex stuff? I know how to fuck a woman.

<3 <3 <3 Yea, I read all the stuff, even the oral sex instructions. It always seemed to me that it was demeaning for a man to do that. I always let Jesus do all the cunt licking. He couldn't get enough pussy.

<3 <3 <3 Do I think she enjoyed sex with me? Yes, I do. I mean she wasn't driven wild with excitement, not screaming orgasms but she is quiet. Some women are quiet, right? Fuck, I feel like such an ass.

How come she hasn't written me back? Tell her I miss her.

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Nathan sat in his chair looking up at Cam. "What is it you want to talk to me about that you couldn't use the phone for?"

"Several things, first, Nathan you know that I think that Cassy's symptoms are from some kind of childhood trauma."

"Yes."

"I really can't go into detail about what I have learned from her in session but I felt it was important for you to know that I have found out that Cassy has been very severely physically abused as a small child. I am not sure but I think her case was in the news. If I am right, her parents were on trial for killing some of her siblings. Most of the news focus was on the children that died but I remember that there was a girl still that survived. I will give you the links to the news articles."

"Christ, Cam that is hard to get my head around."

"It would explain her repressed memories. It is a survival mechanism to forget. The trouble is, it is not really forgetting. The memories are still there. They can come up at times."

"The other thing I want to talk to you about is Jesus is coming to town. I spoke to him on the phone yesterday."

Nathan frowned, "What does that have to do with me?"

"Nothing, if thats how you want it. I just wanted you to know."

Nathan could not resist. "How has he been?"

"He is much the same. He has been embracing the biker thing a bit much, he has a few more tattoos. I think he misses you, but I also think he understands that what you guys had is over. I really think you guys could be friends, if you wanted to."

"Friends? I have never been much good at friendships."

"Time to learn. Speaking of learning, might as well let me inside your head for a while, as long as I drove out here."

Nathan looked up and shrugged, "Might as well."

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Journal Entry:

I read those links that you gave me to the Brasky thing. Its beyond comprehension. Do you really think she could be that little girl? How could someone do something like that? How could someone live through something like that?

I will see you tonight. I plan on picking her up around 8:00. I want to keep her overnight and bring her back in the morning. I have reservations at a nice hotel, neutral ground. No rules, just exploring each other like you said.

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Nathan called Cam's cell phone. "Hey I am her to pick up my girl, first date jitters and all."

"Nathan, Cassy had a real rough day. I need to talk with you. Come up to the front door."

Nathan stood in the den, his face concerned. "She attacked someone?" His voice was disbelieving.

"She has a lot to deal with in a very short amount of time. She just learned that she had siblings that had died and that her parents were the ones that killed them. Its normal for her to have a lot of anger. Windy pushed her at just the wrong, or maybe just the right time, and she just blew up. She has been emotionally all over the place since then. Right now she is just barely managing to hold it together, and is very hyper."

Cam continued. "Seeing you will be good, but I don't think it is a good idea for her to leave the clinic. Stay here with her. Don't try to talk about the future, just tell her you love her. Make love to her. With the amount of adrenaline in her system and the suggestions I have been feeding her, she will be very receptive and responsive. Practice your home work. The girl upstairs is not the same girl you sent to me. I think you will like the change, but you better be good enough for her."

Nathan looked at Cam quizzically. "You sound like you want her for yourself."

"I always fall in love with my patients. Its a weakness of mine."

Cam led him up some stairs and to a door and knocked. Almost instantly she yanked the door open. They stood for an eternity drinking in each other with their eyes. It was like they had been apart a lifetime rather than just a few days. Her face was alive, flushed, her eyes sparkling like he had never seen before.

Cam laughed and said something but Nathan could not hear his words. Cassy squeaked and backed into the room. Suddenly uncertain, she knelt.

Cam touched him and whispered in his ear. "She doesn't know what to do. Tell her what to do."

If you have not read "Finding Home", you will find in there what happens next.

Thank you for reading this and please leave me feedback, either public or private.

xantu