The Five Stages of Being John Doe

Chapter Four: Depression

"Mom?" New John asked. "You think she'll disappear from our lives like Mom did, even if we get together?" This was an entirely new course of conversation; even Cripple John looked like he was in new territory here.

None of the Johns here had much thoughts on their mother when any of them were in control. Their dad was all they ever had or could remember having, so they didn't think to discuss her at all in the Personality Room. How would they even deal with something like this? She was gone forever, so the point was moot, right? "Listen, man, I don't know what you're thinking about, but Sera ain't like Mom, okay?" Cripple John hopped in on his own, leaning in over the table a bit. "We fucked up on a galactic scale and she still came back for us. I'm sure there's nothing we can do as a couple that'd make her hate us. "I mean, shit, man, we fought her in an actual, physical fight! And she kicked our ass! She can handle us just fine, you're selling her short—"

"Mom left us and we had no answer for it," King John spoke up, "and if we let Sera into our lives any more, she'll only ruin John on her way out. Everyone we've ever known, everyone we've ever cared about goes away in the end. Father is our last resort, the only one we can turn to now. Mom is gone. Dead. Missing. Out in fucking Veracruise, I don't care where she is. I don't have to. All I know is that we've got all we need, and we're safe where we are if we don't let anything change."

Joker John was silent. He was slowly rocking himself into place as he did the calculus in his head over and over again. Was he trying to rationalize John having feelings for Sera as the entirety of the point of his existence as a personality? Or did he question as to why John would do that if he didn't have any feelings of that nature for her at all? Friends could just be really good friends, after all, so what made him, as Joker John, any different now?

This was getting too far off track now. If he could keep convincing them over time, he would do it. New John turned to speak again, but King John cut him off. "I know the real reason you're doing this, you know?"

That caught him off-guard. "Really? And what's that?"

The menace turned his gaze on everyone before speaking slowly, "Because if John becomes a fully self-actualized person on his own, we wouldn't need to exist anymore. Our problems would be solved, and then we'd disappear. We only exist because of flaws in John's life, in his character, in what makes him a being. So what would happen if the only point to our existence was removed? We, boys, we would be removed. Probably absorbed into this asshole, since he's the one holding the Stick."

Everyone turned around at each other, now vaguely aware of a new-found mortality they hadn't even considered. "That isn't true, right?!" New Bostin John asked, his leg now shaking as he tapped the floor.

"I don't know. It might be. But the thing is is that we wouldn't just be 'removed' in that case, would we? We'd all become part of that new John. Not here, trying to bargain for control over him as more and more of us show up here, but rather within him as parts of him as a whole. No more fighting, no more arguing, no more painful memories and hurtful actions. We would be John, and he would be us." New John sat down with them, even though he was under no obligation to do so by order of The Talking Stick. "Isn't that we all want here? Even you guys want it, in your own way. We want John to be better. Wouldn't he be better served by us just becoming a part of him, instead of some useless metaphor floating around in his abstract self?"

Cripple John lowered his head a bit, thinking it over before mumbling, "You think that John'll really let us in, that we'll be him and he'll be us if we really take a chance on Sera?"

Without pause New John nodded as his voice fell soft. "If we do everything we need to do to make John feel better about himself and get him mentally and emotionally healthy, then yes. Absolutely. He'll still have problems we can't solve, but if we work together, our boy'll be John and only John for the first time in his entire life. And we'll be there, not just right beside him, but as him, too."