♦ Drive to Dolour - WiP ♦

“You need to get yourself to a better place…” he said, trying to calm Rick's tremors. “Not for me, not for Maggie, or for anyone else. You need to get help before this desperate need to prove that you deserve to be miserable turns you into a person you won't recognize anymore. If it hasn’t already.”

... said by FJ to Rick a few days after a particularly bad fight they've had which BroKE MY LiTTle HEart bRo

This is the part of the book I'm currently editing, basically the peak culmination of Kostrov Traces 2, so I decided to do a little illustration to start us off on this little journey of "Fosc tries to paint actual book scenes and hopefully doesn't fail miserably"

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Rick is very dramatic and very emotional, but this is genuinely the one scene where I absolutely do not blame him at all for having an actual mental break.

He was slowly drowning in his alcohol addiction, wasn't taking his pain meds, he was basically in some sort of fight with all of his family members, involved in Jake's terrible life situation, and all of that is merely scraping the surface. A lot of the things were going wrong and all of it primarily started when Rick somehow managed to wiggle his way out of getting proper help way back when he was first hospitalized for his mental health struggles.

He wasn't all to blame, though. He knew he had a problem, but getting help for severe mental health issues, in the mid '70s, after his daughter was nearly taken away from him already, and while actively trying to get help for a whole another child in a fairly lawless city and an even more lawless state was... not the easiest task to achieve.

Of course, the main issue was that Rick knew he cannot get help if he doesn't speak his entire truth. Opening up about his involvement with the Underground was both his death sentence and the only chance he had at getting help he needed, and he couldn't utter a word of it in fear he'd bring hell upon his family if he dares mention anything about his past. He's been the one that hunted escapees like himself down when he was under Kendle's reign, after all. He knew exactly what kind of death waits for him and his family if he reveals the Underground's secrets to the outside world.

Of course, there was no reason anyone should believe him as well. He's seen officials protect the secrecy of the Underground. He was stuck, and he couldn't exactly do anything to help himself without hurting other people along the way.

So he self-destructed. He drank and he isolated, until he couldn't do so any longer.