"Well, you're in a mood," Silas said, one lazy Sunday afternoon.

"That obvious, huh?" I asked.

Him and the Donovans had invited us and Seven-League Strider over for a long, social lunch, which mostly consisted of Chinese takeout- I'd actually really liked the sesame chicken from the place Strider ordered from, which I'd never ordered from before. I had, after having eaten my meal, excused myself from the table and the conversation, and found a nice, hydrophobic outdoor chair in the backyard to sit down in. And now, Silas was standing behind the second one, forearms on the back of it to support him as he leaned forward.

"Well, admittedly, I'm pretty perceptive," Silas admitted, tapping his forehead. "Wanna talk about it?"

I sighed.

"Yeah, might as well," I said. "It's Skinner, but... in a different way, this time."

"Oh?" Silas asked. He sat down in the chair using a particularly precarious-looking Riker maneuver, owing to the fact that the chair weighed less than him and had an unusually high back.

"I've told you before that I have the skillset of a supervillain, right?" I asked. "Robot minions, spy drones, mind control, that sort of thing? Well, I have that skillset because it was Doctor Skinner's skillset, and I was her apprentice when my abilities first awakened."

"I remember being told this during Venus' first debriefing with me, after your fight with 8-Ball," Silas said quietly.

"Mm. Well, I was also the final stepping stone on her road to mastery of control," I said. "The final piece of the puzzle to permanently reshaping who someone is. She tried to make me into someone just like her... and she succeeded. And I can't rightly say I'd swear to the lord that I wouldn't still be on her side if it weren't for the fact that I personally disliked her, on account I found out she was using me, and she thought of me as just another pliable pawn. In the time since, I've adopted a code of conduct and set of principles that would make me her enemy on moral grounds, but..." I sighed. "Well. It was recently pointed out to me that I still have more in common with her than I'd strictly like to."

"Doesn't sound fun," Silas said.

"I didn't appreciate the reminder that I am still, in ways that really do matter, the person she made me," I said.

"Do you like the person she made you?" Silas said.

"No," I said flatly. "I do not like being a person who specializes in controlling things I shouldn't, learning things I shouldn't, and creating loyal minions in vats or on workbenches. I would much rather have developed the toolkit necessary to transform into all sorts of things, and heal all sorts of injuries, and build all sorts of vehicles."

"Then why haven't you?" Silas asked.

That brought me up short.

"I'm aware that it's hard for demiurges to develop skills in fields that they don't have aptitudes for," Silas said. "But I'm also aware that you've already done so anyways. Why didn't you just... keep going? Delve deeper into transformation, and medicine, and vehicles?"

I sat with that for a bit. I was tempted to argue that it wouldn't be useful towards my bounty-hunting work, but... well, if I was better at those fields, I could've found other work. Also, being able to reattach limbs and make myself superhumanly strong would have, in fact, been quite useful for bounty hunting work.

The only real answer I had was...

"...I didn't really want to develop those skills," I admitted. "What I wanted was to be good at them. And that's... a significant difference."

"A bit, yeah. But that in itself doesn't say much about you. There're plenty of skills that I'd like to get good at, but don't like practicing enough to actually get there."

"Silas, I think there's kind of a big difference between your desire to be good at playing the guitar being paired with an indifference towards the act of playing it, and my desire to be a different sort of person but being unable to actually make that transition."

"Then elaborate."

"Part of it is that the skills are merely an expression of what I'm interested in," I said. "Robotics, information technology, applied psychology..."

"An insidiously lovely euphemism."

"The skills inform what I can productively do in response to my problems, sure, but the question of what skills I have are informed by something deeper: what I want to do, on a deeper gut level." I sighed. "I don't like that I take joy in holding power over others. That I enjoy having the ability to tie someone's volition in a knot, or that I enjoy having the ability to make an army of loyal robots, or that I enjoy having the ability to effortlessly track and locate everyone and everything in the world that isn't 'important' enough to warrant a supernatural anti-detection ward. Unfortunately, I do enjoy having all those things. I wish I didn't, and I'd love to make myself stop enjoying them, and enjoy different things instead, but alas, I am stuck with myself."

"You are aware that therapy exists, right?" Silas pointed out.

"The psychology of a demiurge is significantly different from that of a normal human," I said. "Some things are set in stone at the moment we have our breakthrough. Most of the reason I studied psychology was in the hopes that I could use it to, if not fix myself, at least understand why I'm fucked up in this particular way. I can still change in meaningful ways, of course- I'm a different person than I was as a teenager, after all. My moral compass is more solidly-formed and internally-persuasive, on account of having, you know, converted to Judaism. But... to some significant extent? I am stuck with myself, for the rest of my life. And the specific thing that bothers me about that is that it's a self shaped in no small part by Doctor Beatrice Skinner."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"And so we circle back," Silas said. "Might I point out that, perhaps, she didn't make you who you are, and you were simply already like that? It's quite likely that she would be more interested in an apprentice who was already a kindred spirit, rather than trying to make one."

"Didn't I already tell you Skinner did, in fact, try to make me act like her?" I said, annoyed.

"Sure, but you also told me that Skinner did this to you before she gained the ability to use mad science to produce permanent changes to someone's psyche," Silas said. "Also, do bear in mind that I've been a psychic since before you were a hole in your father's condom. And I know pretty damn well that it's hard to make people change. But it's a lot easier to make them think they've changed, and that the way they already were is actually a new thing. Memory, you see, is an unreliable thing."

I sighed.

"Well, I mean, when you put it like that, yes, I kind of already was an arrogant, self-absorbed fucktrumpet before Skinner got her hands on me," I said. "But also, I can't help but note that this doesn't make me feel much better."

"Because I'm not done yet," Silas said. "You see, it's not just you who's wrong here, thinking that Skinner made you. Skinner was wrong, too, in thinking that you were close enough to her to be useful. You have, in the time since she tutored you, fought her tooth and fucking nail on multiple occasions, because, well, she can eat shit and die."

"So, what, I'm just her but less sociopathic?" I asked.

"It's not a great place to start the Hero's Journey, but it is a place, and you did start, several years ago," Silas said. "These days, you're just a standard-issue, run-of-the-mill flawed hero. You really, truly do not have anything to worry about, I assure you. Especially if you do, in fact, still intend to retire after this job and live a quiet, boring life where nobody shoots at you. You're not a danger to anyone. You're just sometimes a bit of a dickhead, which, I can assure you, is true of literally everyone who has ever and will ever live."

"This isn't exactly a strong argument against me being self-absorbed, but I'm not entirely concerned with being a danger to others," I said.

"Then what are you concerned about?" Silas asked.

"The, hopefully, many decades to come," I said. "I'm only, like, twenty five, Silas. And while yes, I've taken some bad injuries that would typically shorten my lifespan, as well as developed some bad habits that might also do the same, I'm also a mad science cyborg whose girlfriend is capable of permanently transforming people in very useful ways. So let's split the difference and assume that I'll die when I'm, like, eighty or so. I have a lot of life left to go, and I'm worried about how much of it is going to be tainted by the worst few years of my life."

"You have fifty five years to figure out how to live with it," Silas said with a shrug. "Don't need to sort it all out today."

I grunted, noncommittally.

"...Alright, alright," Silas said. "Out with it."

"You're apparently a good enough psychic to see through my shielding-"

"I'm actually not," Silas said. "Your shielding is very good. It's just that my own psychic implants have trained me to be very good at reading people. Body language is a language, after all- we acquire it through comprehensible input, and I've had decades of it to learn from."

"Oh. Well, then..." I sighed. "I'll turn the shielding off, because I'd like you to take a deep scan of my mind, of who I am, and tell me, just... what do you see? What kind of person am I really, from your standpoint?"

"A kind of person who needs a therapist more than a rabbi," Silas said dryly as I prepared to turn off my shielding. "But, since the rabbi is here..."

"Wait, you're a rabbi?" I turned off the psychic shield, since he'd agreed to help me.

"Yep," Silas said. "Which... alright, I'm already aware from just the scanning I've done so far that your grasp on your own goddamn religion is actually specious at best, even compared to the typical non-practicing Jew who merely grew up with practicing parents, so: no, being a rabbi does not mean that I am actually a sort of priest. I basically just have a doctorate in Being Jewish, and am a certified subject-matter expert. This does render me eligible to act as a sort of priest, in the sense of leading group worship activities, but I don't actually do that, so." He shrugged. "Instead, I just spent some time working in a kosher slaughterhouse after receiving my smicha, to ensure that everything was being done to spec."

"So you were a kOSHA inspector."

"Nicky sent me that tumblr post too, yes."

"Goddamnit."

Silas chuckled.

"Anyhow," Silas continued. "Having looked through your brain... I see some things that worry me, but I also see some things that give me hope. I see a young woman with very particular desires who understands those desires and how to channel and fulfill them in a healthy, pro-social- or at least non-antisocial- way. You will, for the rest of your life, be engaged with that work, and never complete it... but you aren't obligated to complete it, only to not abandon it. And in that regard..." He shrugged, then reached over and affectionately tousled my hair. "I believe in you, kid."

"Thanks, Dad," I said, grinning. "Oh, by the way, how's Akane's new special sauce treating you?"

"Well, I'm not getting serious arthritis anytime soon, that's for sure," Silas said, nodding seriously. "I'm fifty three years old, that was a serious worry. Hell, I was thinking about making myself some prosthetic hands- my hands have been starting to act up, recently. But, well... that's gone."

"And now you just have to never let anyone who isn't also supernatural get too acquainted with your body," I said. "Which, uh. Actually, you probably don't see a regular doctor very often anyways, do you?"

"Nope, and I don't do the horizontal happy dance either," Silas said. "I'm fine. Got any plans for New Year's, next week?"

"Not really. It'll just be another Saturday night for me, which means... basically just a light extension of Shabbat. We might watch the ball drop in Time's Square, though. God knows why. You?"

Silas shrugged. "Pretty much the same, yeah. Right, well." He got up, grunting. "See you around, kid."