Autopsy of a Mind

"I don't know…" I chanted. "But you're wrong about one thing. He's closer to my age that he is thirty-five." I didn't want to talk about the implications, so I added in my deduction. "Alicia was a couple of years older than me. And if she had a partner, it would be someone who was closer to her age. She wanted a family… she wanted love stories… and that's why she would choose someone who she could see herself in a romantic relationship with."

Sebastian furrowed his brow. 

"What are you thinking about?" I whispered. 

"I have this feeling that I know something but I just can't grasp it. I don't know what it is." He tugged at his hair harshly and I stopped him. 

"Okay, don't do this to yourself," I hissed. "We can slowly figure it out, okay?"

He patted my hand and smiled. "Well, I'll keep thinking about it. Can we go home now?" he pleaded. 

I snickered before nodding. "I'll just take a picture of this and go with you."

And I did just that. 

As we walked out of the station, the people on night duty bid us goodbye.

"How is the BTS case going for you?" I asked as we neared the car in the parking lot. 

Sebastian sighed. "They won't allow me to work outside the station and won't allow me to talk to anyone. Whatever information I had is still constant. I haven't found anything ground breaking to find the identity of this person."

He opened the passenger's side and watched me slide in. He jogged over to the other side and slid in. 

I found myself surreptitiously looking at the mirrors to see if anyone was lurking in the distance. I could see no one who stood out. But that was the problem, this guy didn't stand out. 

"Stop looking at the mirror," Sebastian said firmly. 

I jerked up, my train of thought broken by his words. I hummed. 

"This car is bullet proof. I never told you this, but I bought it with the intent that it couldn't be destroyed. Even if he comes at it with tools or fires at it, he won't be able to get to you," he assured. 

I looked at him with surprise. "I didn't know that. You should have told me earlier," I said. 

"I also asked the security guard to not allow any delivery people or anyone who doesn't live in the building to come in," he said. "I even have a list of the residents with me. No one is coming near our house ever again."

"You took a lot of effort to get this, didn't you?" I asked. 

"My dad is in the security business. He was in the military for a while and he owns his own business. He is a guest professor at universities, too. I learned from the best," he added with a light smile. 

I could hear the strain in his voice. I had never really heard him speak about his dad. We had been together for so long and he had asked me to marry him, but I had never seen his family. 

"Don't you have a good relationship with your family?" I asked. One of my motives was to find out more about him. I never pressured him into talking, so this was a good opportunity to make him speak when he was ready to open up. Another motive was to keep my thoughts away from the danger that lurked under the shadows.

"It's not like we are on bad terms, just that we don't talk to one another much," he started. I nodded at him to coax him into continuing. "My dad is a genius in his own right and my mother is a highly intelligent woman. Their genes did a wonderful job at creating a perfect specimen like me."

That comment made me smile. 

"But as a young boy, there were high expectations from me. I was way ahead of any student in school or even the teachers at the time, but it was not enough. He pushed me to be my best self. Emotions were a hindrance and had no use in the world. He didn't let my mother coddle me or do it himself. It was like living with a matron all my life."

No wonder he turned out so isolated. 

"I had never approached anyone to become friends. If I found someone interesting, I would find out everything about them and put the dots together and profile them. Once I knew who they were essentially, I didn't feel the need to talk to them or get to know them further. This was how I got interested in criminal psychology. Normal humans were… normal. Once I started, it was like I could read their minds. But it was more difficult to read the intentions of the deviants in the society as they call them." 

He shrugged. 

"And what did you find?" I asked. I wanted to unravel that beautiful mind of his. In the pursuit to comfort me, he pressed down so many of his dark thoughts and ideas. I wanted him to feel comfortable and talk about them in detail to me. I wanted to hear the raw passion oozing from his voice as he spoke about the deplorable of the society, of the grueling truth about things. 

"I found myself disconnected from them, too. They were fascinating, no doubt. They were complex creatures but just the same. I think it was then I realized that each one of us has the potential for deviance. But it is not only our circumstances that make us deviants. It is the choices we make. It is the moral dilemmas we face." He looked at me longingly before turning back to the front. 

"And I knew that my father had been strict, but it was also not his fault that I was detached from the world. I had made that choice. I had made the choice to stand at the top and look down at other humans and dissect their minds."

"But that is not all that you are, right?" I prompted. "You have so much good in you. You want society to become better and you want to help people, too." 

Sebastian shook his head. "Not as much as you. It was not only I met you that I realized that each human was unfathomable and rarely does a psychiatrist find out the essentials of a person. I can't place people into tiny boxes. It's not just statistics and science. It is also language and art and emotions." 

I shuddered a breath. 

"And has that helped you solve cases?" I asked. 

He blinked. "I can't say for sure. I see people in a new light. I am not fighting for justice or helping people to the extent you do. I don't have the same drive as you, but my thirst for knowledge increases the more I realize how unfathomable the human mind and intentions are." He suddenly grew silent. "I have a Ph.D. in the subject and I just now realized these things. Isn't that funny?" he commented. 

I begged to differ. "That is not the case," I stated. "What we learn and what we realize are two different things. We know a lot of things in theory, but never in practice do we use them. Similarly, we know a theory or a philosophy but we might never think they are true or real until one day we suddenly find a connection to it with the world."

He stared at me. "Good thing I have you. You make me realize things I didn't think I was capable of." And then he chuckled. 

"What is it?" I wanted to know. 

"I just thought about Alec. He tried so hard to become my friend and I protested. He latched himself onto me and I just let him." 

"I am surprised you kept him around!" I exclaimed. 

"Of course, I did. At first, I think I used him as a tool to communicate with the world. But when he moved across the country and we rarely spoke, he didn't fulfill the role anymore. I still consider him my friend."

"Ah, Sebastian realized that human connections are important!" I wanted to pinch his cheeks. 

I knew that they spoke on the phone or over messages. Both of them were busy with work, both excelling in their fields. Though they rarely spoke, they could meet after years and carry forward a conversation they stopped at the last time they met. 

Alec was the one who brought gossip from old classmates Sebastian didn't care for. And though Sebastian acted like he didn't care for the stories, he humored Alec and listened closely to the fates of the people he had observed. 

He matched them with the profiles he had pegged them in and was sometimes surprised by the turn of events. 

His friendship with Alec helped him grow. 

Moreover, the whole problem with him liking me had been cleared. Something about Alec taunting Sebastian to realize that he liked me. Whatever that meant. But it had been a while and Alec was working his ass off and barely had time to breathe.

We reached the apartment and we slid out.

As we went to bed, Sebastian turned to me. "The meeting with Alicia is tomorrow. Eleven-thirty in the morning. I took a half-day leave on our behalf. Don't worry about it."

I sniffed. "What would I do without you?" I whispered. 

"As little as I would be able to do without you." He kissed my nose and I bit my lip to hide the smile.