Lies Based on A True Story

*On the head*

"Alright, you heard the man." Andrew holds out his arm instead of grabbing at her again. She looks even feistier than before, but the Doctor will do that to a person.

Emerson pauses on her heels briefly before barreling down the hall towards the entrance. A glance back and she sees both Andrew and Clarence tailing her.

"Hey! Stop!" One of them shouts. She rounds the last corner and ignores Mrs. Keene saying something similar from behind her desk.

Once she passes through the heavy glass doors, a desperate breath releases. "Marsh?"

The ice below her feet slows her steps. Gusts of white blur the distance. In the dying light of winter dusk, Emerson senses them both. Close.

Her arms wrap around themselves to capture the escaping warmth. Locking onto his movements and she can vaguely feel what he is doing. A familiar motion moves her arm out in sync with his. Marsh touches something cold. Metal. She lifts her wrist and realizes he's opened a car door.

"There you are." A voice behind her dulls the sensation, "Coming back inside, dollface? You'll freeze your backside off out here."

Emerson overlooks Andrew's line of sight and brushes him off completely. She walks right past him and Clarence close behind, eager to get answers from her Uncle. That man has a nerve. Family or not, he will get a mouthful from her.

Before she has a chance to barge into his office, Clarence comes up from nowhere and knocks on the door loudly. It opens a second later, her Uncle's red face greeting them. The portly man standing on the other side shuffles back to let her in, casually closing the gap as she passes. "Thank you boys, that will be all."

"Aye aye, Captain." Andrew fake salutes, causing the Administrator to wheeze in delight. He closed the door and rolled his eyes at his angry niece.

"You know that guy is one hundred percent bullshit, right?" Emerson grins wide at him, remembering what a fun-but often gullible man he could be.

"Ah, but you can't bullshit a bullshiter. That's why I like him around, I can trust Andrew." He turns quick, effectively locking Emerson in a bear hug before she could protest.

Her laugh proves infectious as he squeezes tighter. "Okay...you can put me down now. Jesus, before you crush my lungs please!"

"Such a dainty flower," he drops her two feet, about their height difference, down into a leather club chair. He takes a good look at the time on his Casio watch. "So I suppose you're here to take issue with the Doctor? What did he say this time, did he cut your session short?"

"Spare me. You know why I'm here." Emerson crosses her arms as he sits adjacent.

"Do I?" He looks at her with a genuinely concerned expression.

"Marsh. The session. The 'Doctor'."

"So it worked." His eyes glint, staring at nothing.

"What worked? You...knew about him, about this?" She shoots up, her voice raising with her.

"Oh, stop getting so agitated-sit down."

"Uncle."

"I did know. I just...we thought it would take--"

"We? You and...Marsh?"

"Emers, I can't tell you any of that. You know, plausible deniability and all."

"Don't call me that. And don't bullshit me!"

"I'm not, I know you girlie. I knew you can handle yourself, no matter what was thrown at you."

Emerson paces the length of the office, following a groove in the floor boards. Anger flows through her veins. He should have told her. They used her? If only they would have waited, if only her uncle knew the full extent of her capabilities. That she could take it away, once and for all.

Marsh could have walked out those doors on his own volition, with no one to stop him. He would have been cured. Sane. But something always stopped her from telling her Uncle the truth. Being an asylum administrator had nothing to do with it. He would always see her as his hippie sister's daughter, her mental state had no effect on his admiration. So she could see how he would feel this way about Marsh, but how could he let him live a life on the run?

"No. You don't, Uncle. I could have spared him...damnit, can't you see what you have done?" She started to shake, feeling a distant cold seep into her body. Marsh was somewhere freezing his ass off.

"Come here, let me show you something." He tries to soothe her twitching nerves, pointing at a desk monitor. "I watched it from here."

The screen is scrambled as he rewinds the session back the twenty minutes she spent with Marsh, pausing as the Doctor left the room.

Emerson shakes another chill away, "You need to erase this, all of it."

"No, Emers just watch. And listen."

Her voice comes through the speakers, beginning the session with the standard procedure. The picture is a bit grainy, but it is her and Marsh sitting...talking. A few minutes in, she notices the deviation. It plays out in front of her, the conversation always harking back to the scripted and approved questions. The answers to which also something the Doctor would approve of. She nor Marsh ever spoke those words. Their mimicked tone felt off, and they way it displays her ending the whole thing with a stunted saunter to the door was eerie. The camera shows her walking out the door, slowly closing it, and then tripping on her own feet into the hallway.

The guards found her on the floor, helped her up and tried the door. This time it immediately opens. Out walks Dr. Brodbeck, looking his usual callous self, holding all of Emerson's gear.

"You see?" Her Uncle points again closer to Marsh's veiled face. "You aside, no one will be able to say that's him."

"Me aside." She agrees with him, focusing her gaze straight into the screen.

Melting away the facade on the monitor, her eyes fell on Marsh smiling as the doctor stood in front of her frowning.

One more chill shoots up her spine and Emerson feels the need to leave. There's an immediate pressure pressing down tight on her forehead. She has to find him. Taking swift steps to the door, she looks back at the old man.

"I'll leave you to enact the rest of your plan then, Uncle. I have to go."

"Do one more thing for me Emers," he paused to let her in on the gravity of the situation.

"Find him."

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