Chapter 135: The Doctor Who Tried to Joke in Front of His Own Evidence
The door to Skellir’s consultation room clicked shut, sealing him in with his clutter and the ghost of Edith’s perfume still clinging to his sweater. He sagged against it, the wood cool against his forehead. His hands wouldn’t stop trembling. He fumbled for the bottle of antacids on his desk, shook two into his palm, and dry-swallowed them. The chalky dust coated his throat.
“Okay,” he whispered to the empty room. “Okay, just breathe.” He moved to his chair, the wheels squeaking under his weight. The neatly typed label on his desk read ‘Dr. Skellir Anthonysson’. He stared at it until the letters blurred. He just needed a minute. An hour. To think. To scrub the image of Edith’s broken form from behind his eyes, to forget the feeling of his own pathetic arousal watching it happen. He was the healer. Not the witness. Never the cause.
He didn’t hear the door open. He only sensed the change in air pressure, the subtle shift from isolation to crowded threat. He looked up, his heart a trapped bird in his ribs.
Varek leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. Aelyth stood beside him, her luminescence muted in the clinical overhead lights, making her seem a medical illustration of something that shouldn’t exist.
“Room for a few more?” Varek asked, his voice dripping with a false, conversational warmth. He didn’t wait for an answer, strolling in and perching on the edge of the desk, right next to a model of the human ear. He picked it up, examined it. “Cozy.”
Skellir forced a laugh. It came out as a strangled cough. “House calls? I’m flattered, but my schedule is—“
“—about to be wide open,” Varek finished, setting the model down with a soft tap. His smile didn’t reach his mercury eyes. “Unless you think the medical board looks kindly on doctors who provide tongue-based therapy to anxious patients after hours. In their hospital beds. While their boyfriends hose down surf ramps.”
The joke, Skellir’s last defense, curdled in the space between them. It was stripped bare, turned into evidence.
“It wasn’t like that,” Skellir said, the protest automatic, thin as paper.
Aelyth stepped forward. Her voice was a clean, surgical instrument. “Let us establish the observed chronology. Edith Duadottir’s appointments increased in frequency by three hundred percent over the last four months. Her documented symptoms became vaguer, more somatic, coinciding with longer consultation times.”
Varek ticked points off on his fingers. “The unnecessary hospitalization for a panic attack another GP would have managed outpatient. The late-night phone call where she confessed, and I quote from memory, ‘I feel safer with you here.’ Your alteration of her chart to add ‘Borderline emotional dependency’ as a tentative diagnosis, created after that call, not before.”
“Iva,” Aelyth continued, “your nurse, mentioned to her brother Berg that she’d accidentally filed a consultation note under ‘personal correspondence’. That note detailed Edith’s ‘transference’ and your recommended ‘boundary reassessment,’ which you never enacted. It was misfiled because you’d left it in a drawer with your personal mail.”
Skellir’s skin felt two sizes too small. They had been in his files, his drawers. They knew about Iva’s innocent blunder. They had turned his own sloppy, self-justifying paperwork into a damning transcript.
“And dear Olaf,” Varek sighed, shaking his head with mock sympathy. “Kept diligently in the dark. You encouraged Edith to see his optimism as ‘emotional illiteracy’. You positioned yourself as the sole interpreter of her pain. You made her secrecy a symptom of her illness, and her illness your private domain. Neat.”
“I never meant to hurt anyone,” Skellir breathed, the words hollow even to himself. He meant them, but they sounded like a line from a bad drama.
“That’s the interesting part,” Varek said, leaning in. The friendly mask was gone, replaced by pure, delighted dissection. “You genuinely believe that. You still think you’re the good man in this story. The conscientious doctor caught in a patient’s messy feelings. That self-image is your favorite toy. You polish it every night.”
Aelyth tilted her head. “A direct choice now exists. Would you formally discharge Edith from your care, refer her to a colleague in another city, and never contact her again, in order to preserve your medical license?”
Skellir opened his mouth. Nothing came. The thought of severing that connection, of her frightened eyes looking to someone else, sparked a physical jab of panic in his gut.
Varek asked the inverse, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Or would you walk away from this, from this title, this desk, this entire identity, right now, for her? Would you be just Skellir, unemployed, for Edith?”
The silence stretched, elastic and suffocating. The squeak of his chair. The hum of the computer. He saw both paths as abysses. To abandon her was to admit his care was conditional. To abandon his career was to admit his care was corrupt. He was paralyzed, poised perfectly between two forms of cowardice.
“I… I need to think. It’s not that simple,” he finally managed.
“It’s exquisitely simple,” Varek corrected, standing up. He loomed over the seated doctor. “The problem isn’t your desire, Skellir. It’s that you insist on calling it care. You wanted the warmth, the innocence, the adoration. You wanted to be the hero in her small, scary world. That’s desire. You just dressed it in a white coat and charged the system for it.”
He tapped the nameplate on the desk. “You used the language of healing to get what you wanted. That’s the only fact that matters. Everything else is the joke you tell yourself so you can sleep.” Varek’s gaze was a final, unsparing weight. “So tell me another one. Make me laugh.”
Skellir looked from Varek’s merciless face to Aelyth’s dispassionate record-keeping eyes. The familiar pressure to perform, to defuse, to charm, rose in his throat and died. There was no joke left. The laughter in the room was his own, echoing back at him from a past that already felt like someone else’s life.
His face went slack. All the practiced levity drained away, leaving behind something raw, terrified, and finally, quiet. “What do you want from me?” he asked, his voice stripped bare.
Varek’s smile returned, different now. It was a promise, and it held no warmth at all.
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Landspítali hospital area, Reykjavík, Iceland — staff break room and adjacent supply corridor.
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Landspítali Hospital area, Reykjavík, Iceland — staff break room and adjacent supply corridor.
Aelyth and Varek turned from Skellir's door. The doctor remained inside as they walked the bland corridor, following low voices around a corner. The staff break room existed in a state of cheerful clutter, smelling of burnt coffee and lemon disinfectant. A small refrigerator hummed against one wall. Iva Stigsdottir was there, swaying slightly on her feet as she stirred a steaming mug, staring at the swirling liquid.
“Iva,” Aelyth said, the single word a quiet statement of fact, not a question.
The young nurse jumped, sloshing tea over her hand. “Oh! You… hello again!” Her face cycled through surprise, recognition, and a flustered, automatic hospitality. She looked from Aelyth to Varek, her eyes wide and instantly seeking to please. “Can I… I mean, should I get you something? Tea? Coffee’s a bit bitter, I’m afraid, I think the filter’s old. There might be biscuits in the tin, but Berg might have eaten them, he does that when he’s on night logistics, or…”
She trailed off, her bubbly energy hitting the wall of their silent observation. She wiped her hand on her scrubs. “Is this… an official thing? Do I need to call someone?”
“No one you can call would matter,” Varek said, his voice warm, disarming. He leaned against the doorframe, effectively blocking the exit. He studied her—the genuine warmth in her eyes, the slightly scattered posture, the way her entire being radiated a desire to fix, to soothe, to include. “We just have a few questions about your boss. About the care Dr. Skellir provides.”
Iva’s shoulders relaxed a fraction. Questions about care she could handle. “Skellir’s wonderful. The patients adore him. He’s just… a bit messy sometimes.” She offered a conspiratorial smile. “I’m always tidying up. Notes in the wrong places, charts not quite finished. But his heart is always in the right place.”
“Like the note for Patient Edith Duadottir,” Aelyth stated, her tone devoid of inflection. “The one concerning transference and boundary reassessment. You found it filed with personal correspondence.”
Iva’s smile faltered. “Oh. That. Yes, that was my mistake, I must have grabbed it when I was collecting his mail to post. I refiled it. It was just… an observation of his. He’s very thoughtful about the psychological aspects.”
“He’s very thoughtful about Edith,” Varek corrected gently. “The frequent appointments. The extended consultation times. The hospitalization for a rather standard anxiety episode. You helped arrange that bed, didn’t you? Called in a favor with admissions?”
Her cheeks pinked. “Well, he was concerned. And I… I just wanted to help. I wanted Edith to be okay. I wanted Skellir to be able to help her without all the red tape. It’s all just paperwork, really.” She was babbling again, her words a stream of earnest justification.
“You wanted everyone to be okay,” Varek summarized, his head tilting. “That’s your function, isn’t it? To be the sweetness that makes the medicine go down. To fix the little messes so the big ones can keep happening unnoticed.”
Iva blinked. The analysis was too sharp, too clean. It sliced through her cheerful clutter. “I… that’s not…”
“By constantly cleaning up the consequences,” Varek continued, his voice taking on a mentor-like cadence, “you become the reason he never faces them. Your kindness is the grease in the machine of his carelessness. You enable the very dysfunction you think you’re mending.”
Iva looked as if he’d slapped her with a cold, wet cloth. Her bright eyes glistened, wounded. The truth, presented not as an accusation but as a simple mechanical fact, was something she couldn’t laugh off or tidy away. “That’s a horrible thing to say,” she whispered.
“It’s an observable dynamic,” Aelyth amended. “Consider a larger scale. The Terran Diplomatic Challenge, Season Four. If your team’s innate kindness, your urge to include and repair, was weaponized against you. Used to create trust where none should exist. What would you do?”
Iva wiped at her eye with the back of her hand, a childlike gesture. “I… I suppose I might trust the wrong person first,” she admitted, her voice small. “That’s on me. But then I’d try to fix it. To repair the harm. To understand their side, maybe they had a reason…”
“And if the harm was irrevocable?” Varek pressed, moving a single step into the room. The space felt smaller. The hum of the fridge was louder. “If the betrayal was the point, not a mistake? What if your biscuits and apologies just made you a more delicious target?”
Her smile, that ever-present sunbeam, didn’t just fade. It dissolved. Something behind her eyes shifted, a first tiny fracture in a lifetime of unquestioned optimism. Caution, cold and unfamiliar, seeped into her expression. She looked from one to the other, truly seeing them for the first time—not as odd officials, but as entities that operated on a logic that rendered her entire worldview quaint and dangerous.
Varek saw the shift. He recognized the vulnerable, raw space it created. He closed the remaining distance between them. “Your need to fix is its own kind of hunger, Iva,” he murmured, his voice dropping, intimate. “A sweet, wet hunger to be needed. To be the good girl who makes the bad feelings go away.”
His hand came up, not to strike, but to cradle her cheek. His thumb stroked the apple of her cheek. She froze, a startled bird. Her breath hitched.
“You’re shaking,” he observed, a smile touching his lips. “Is it fear? Or is it excitement, finally meeting someone who won’t let you hide behind the tea tin?”
Aelyth moved then, a silent glide. She came up behind Iva, her cool hands resting on the nurse’s shoulders. Iva jolted at the dual contact, pinned between them. Aelyth’s lips brushed the shell of her ear. “Your physiological response indicates elevated arousal. Heart rate accelerating. Pupils dilated. You are intrigued by the removal of the repair option.”
“I… I don’t…” Iva’s protest died as Varek’s thumb traced her lower lip.
“You do,” he insisted softly. “You’re desperate to know what happens when you’re not allowed to fix it. When you just have to feel it.” He leaned in, his breath warm. “Let’s find out.”
He kissed her. It wasn’t gentle. It was consuming, a takeover. Iva made a muffled sound against his mouth, her hands fluttering before landing tentatively on his arms.
Aelyth’s hands slid down from Iva’s shoulders, over the front of her scrubs top. With efficient pressure, she squeezed Iva’s breasts through the fabric. Iva gasped into Varek’s mouth, her back arching into Aelyth’s touch.
Varek broke the kiss, his own breathing slightly quickened. “See? No repairs needed. Just reaction.” He hooked his fingers into the V-neck of her scrub top and pulled. The cheap fabric tore with a ripping sound, exposing her lace-covered breasts. He shoved the cups down. “Look at you. Hard already. Starved for a real problem you can’t solve with a smile.”
He bent his head, taking one nipple into his mouth, sucking hard. Iva cried out, her head falling back against Aelyth’s shoulder. Her hips made a small, involuntary circle.
Aelyth’s hands were at the drawstring of Iva’s scrub pants, loosening them, pushing them down over her hips. Iva stepped out of them, helped by Varek’s guiding hands, until she stood in only her torn top and socks, goosebumps rising on her skin. The cool air of the break room kissed her exposed flesh.
“Oh God,” Iva whimpered, her cheeks flaming, her eyes wide with a mix of terror and overwhelming excitement.
“No gods here, sweetheart,” Varek grunted, unbuckling his own trousers. “Just cause and effect.” He freed his cock, thick and urgent. “You spent so long cleaning up other people’s messes. Now you’re going to be one.”
He turned her, bending her over the small, Formica-topped table. Cracked mugs rattled. He spat into his palm, slicked himself roughly, and pressed the fat head against her dripping entrance. “This is where your kindness gets you. Split open on a break room table.”
He drove into her with one brutal thrust. Iva screamed, a raw, shattered sound that echoed off the tiled walls. Her fingers scrabbled against the laminate surface. He was huge, stretching her unbearably, a burning, glorious invasion that vaporized every coherent thought.
“Fuck! Yes! Just like that!” she shrieked, the words torn from her, her etiquette annihilated. Her excitement wasn’t just over the roof; it was in orbit. “It’s so much! Don’t stop, don’t you fucking stop!”
“The good girl’s gone,” Varek growled, pounding into her, his hips slapping against her ass. “All that’s left is this greedy, wet hole begging for it.” Each thrust jolted her forward, making the table legs scrape the linoleum.
Aelyth moved in front of Iva. She had shed her lower garments, her slender, slick tendrils emerging. They shimmered with their own soft light. One tendril, glistening with sweet honey-like fluid, presented itself before Iva’s tear-streaked, open mouth.
“Open,” Aelyth commanded, her voice cool contrast to the savage heat behind Iva.
Iva obeyed without hesitation, taking the tendril into her mouth, sucking on it hungrily. The taste was floral, sweet, intoxicating. She moaned around it, the vibration earning a sharper thrust from Varek.
“That’s it, take your medicine,” Varek spat, his pace relentless, pounding her swollen cunt. “Suck on her pretty alien cock while I wreck your human pussy. You’re a fucking bridge between species now, Iva. A messy, moaning diplomatic channel.”
Another of Aelyth’s tendrils, thicker, probed between Iva’s ass cheeks, finding the tight pucker alongside Varek’s piston-driving cock. It pressed, insistent, then pushed in alongside him. The double penetration made Iva’s eyes roll back. A scream was muffled by the tendril in her mouth. Her body bowed, taking them both, impossibly, gloriously full.
“She’s clamping down like a vice,” Varek grunted, sweat dripping from his brow. “She loves being stuffed, don’t you? You love being our little experiment in compromise.”
A third tendril found Iva’s clit, wrapping around the swollen nub, pulsating. The sensation was electric, unbearable, an overload directly on her nervous system. Iva thrashed, impaled front and back, her mind dissolving into pure animal sensation. Guttural, choking sounds of pleasure-forced pain came from her throat.
“Gonna come,” Varek warned, his rhythm becoming ragged, brutal. “Gonna fill this helpful little cunt with exactly what it’s been asking for. You want my consequences, Iva? Here they come.”
He slammed home, buried to the hilt, and roared as he came. Hot jets of his release pumped into her, pulsing deep. The sensation, combined with the pulsing tendrils, tipped Iva over an edge she didn’t know existed. Her orgasm was a silent, shattering convulsion, a seizure of pure rapture that milked him dry and clamped down on Aelyth’s intruding tendril.
Aelyth, observing her own data, allowed a soft sigh as Iva’s convulsions triggered her own release. The tendril in Iva’s ass pulsed rhythmically, depositing its own unique, salty essence deep within her alongside Varek’s.
They held her there, shaking, for a long moment. Finally, Varek pulled out with a wet, obscene sound, followed by Aelyth’s slow, slick retreat. Iva collapsed onto the sticky table, a puddle of trembling limbs and mixed fluids. Her eyes were unfocused, her mouth slightly open, drool and sweet fluid on her chin.
Varek tucked himself away, his breathing steadying. He looked down at the ruined, blissed-out nurse. He bent, his whisper cutting through her euphoric haze. “Remember this feeling, Iva. The next time you want to clean up a mess, remember that some of us just like to make them. And some of you,” he patted her bare ass, “just like to be them.”
He straightened. Aelyth was already re-fastening her clothing, her bioluminescence calm. They stepped over the pool of Iva’s scrubs.
They left her there on the table in the harsh fluorescent light of the break room, the humming refrigerator her only witness. The first lesson in a curriculum that had no use for biscuits or apologies was now complete, written in the sticky evidence cooling on her skin and pooling on the table beneath her.