The following report is extracted and summarized from personal psychotherapy notes kept by Dr. Gwen Stonecipher, Ph.D. ABPP, adjunct material from the official medical record and Fitness-For-Duty (FFD) evaluation (pursuant to 0735DPG) for Special Agent Nicole Lange.
Dear reader: Nothing in this post comes directly from The Curse of the Unholy Grail book, rather it’s a What-If exploration/short-story/addendum inspired by the line “You know, Lange, the Bureau has counselors. Maybe an appointment …?” It’s kinid of a teaser for Nikki’s emotional arc (and so too the story-immersed reader’s).
⚠️ Spoilers ahead (sort of) ⚠️
Special Agent Nicole Lange was referred for psychological consultation by ASAC Shade following a series of unusually violent incidents associated with an ongoing organized-crime investigation.
Referral concerns included acute sleep disruption, intrusive recollection, heightened vigilance, episodic anxiety, and what Lange herself characterized as concern for her own perceptual reliability.
Note: Due to the secure-compartmented clearance-levels of Agent Lange’s casework, many pseudonymous aliases are used below, e.g. ‘The Unholy Grail’, which at various times may stand in for different items, past events, or future concerns.
Nicole Lange: Patient Pre-History
At age fifteen, Nicole Lange lost both parents to a terrorist bombing on their cruise ship. Much of her burgeoning sense of self and her view of the world was irrevocably eclipsed by this trauma. Pointedly (to the context below), Nicole experienced repeated nightmares of her parents returning to life disfigured and burned.
Their grandfather, David Marshman, raised Nicole and her brother in a rural town.
Nicole abruptly stopped all interests and activities, deeming them hollow and flippant and alien (due to having to break in to cliques of strangers in this new town). Apathy to forming new social connections grew to active avoidance when she entered a period of self-harm (cutting).
In an attempt to rebuild a family life and emotional intimacy, she fixated on a father-figure, the man for whom she babysat. After his arrest (on charges of sex with a minor) and subsequent divorce, Nicole found herself at the center of scandal, controversy, and community ostracism.
In adulthood, Nicole has converted grief over her parents into a vocation … and an avoidance strategy.
At the FBI, she has worked against fascist paramilitary groups, hate-crimes, domestic terrorism, and, most recently, arms trafficking.
(All images in this report come from Nicole’s therapeutic homework, picking images from the themes explored during our sessions.)
Those twin traumas combine to support her “married to the job” rationalization. Romantic relationships simply do not feel safe, and worse pose a source of guilt. Intimacy was disdained as “a kind of narcotic, a weak-willed avoidance [of her raison d’être: seeking justice for her parents].”
Nicole Lange: ‘Unholy Grail’ Case
Some sixteen months ago, Nicole learned that the focus of her current case, Harlon Cord, had played a role in her parents’ death, providing the explosives used in the bombing. “Death on his horse.”
She did not disclose this discovery. Her SSA’s perf review only notes her usual perfectionism had morphed to obsessiveness, self-recrimination, and team friction.
Nicole Lange in the Eyes of the Dead
Roughly two months ago, Nicole arranged for a key Cord lieutenant, Edward ‘Eddie’ Main, to become a confidential informant, spurred by Cord dealings Main found unconscionable. Main was murdered that night. (Another person ‘in her care’ that she lost to Harlon Cord.)
Arriving at the death scene, Nicole found seven people killed by grisly disembowelment, “as if they died in an explosion.” (As her parents were.)
One victim, his body posed prayerfully, caused Nicole to personify the horrors of the broader scene into one subject: Nino Azagnato.
“His dead, milk-white eyes followed me … his bloody teeth snarled at me.” In a panic, she slid in a pool of blood, staining her clothes. At this point, she could see Nino as nothing but an undead, created and unleashed by Harlon Cord.
Beyond feeling like she failed protecting Main, she faulted herself for losing his crucial testimony in the Harlon Cord case. Her obsession’s goal dashed so close to the end bred desperation and redoubled obsession.
The next day, ASAC Erica Shade picked Nikki to join an interagency v-team tackling a national security aspect to the Cord case. With the stakes thus exponentially raised (in Nicole’s mind), her self-imposed pressure also rose, near to breaking.
Nicole Lange in a Threatening New World
After investigating a Cord-associated site in the desert, Nicole went to leave for the night when a pack of coyotes chased prey into her midst, where the animals turned on her, forcing her to discharge her weapon.
Her breaking point reached, Nicole came to a church in the city and begged the priest to allow her to spend the night. “Only sanctified ground will do.” He stayed with her, answering questions about the nature of evil and whether demons could inhabit the living.
This is the point at which ASAC Shade referred Nicole for counseling.
Nicole Lange and Her Patron Spirit
Nicole spent four days coordinating with a case consultant, codenamed The Bishop.
Afterward, she appeared completely self-assured and confident — in herself and in the case (distinctions between them blurring).
The prior air of cortisol and adrenaline supplanted by … something sanguine.
I’d never been in the presence of someone so powerfully feminine. Surely, the man trying to elbow her aside will rightly lose his forearm.
(Of the image, “Man or woman, you want her, you crave her, this anointed one emerging from the oily black, bearing within her the spirit of your salvation.”)
Nicole began using spiritual metaphors of “rebirth” and “the unveiled self” and speaking of a “destiny”, deflecting how she defined these terms.
Of her obvious euphoria, she explained it as “harmony with my patron spirit.” Hiding a substance abuse disorder? Next session to pick up there.
Nicole Lange’s Bitter Taste of Failure
Nicole played a major role in stopping Cord’s smuggling of nearly fifty kidnapped foreign nationals (for purposes she veiled behind the metaphor of “tributes to undead princes and the Unholy Grail”, meaning I don’t have the clearance to know the details.)
Intercepting agents were successful in rescuing two of three trucks of kidnap victims, but a third made its way into criminal hands.
Nicole suffered a major relapse, in her mood and confidence, becoming “feral” with an anxiety that “threatened to eat me from the inside”. When her success was less than total, Nicole fixated on the part that failed, whipped it up into “an uncontrollable appetite for blood,” and a compulsion to “slaughter all the rats.”
Honestly, I could not have detected this angst in our session had she not told me. She had regained her aplomb. It is hard to imagine so mighty a woman could crack the way she described. She would not admit to prior drug use, but I felt she described the effects of acute withdrawal — will discuss next session.
The ‘Dhampir’ in Exile
Nicole had missed two sessions due to work emergencies, including an ambush that led to the hospitalization of her partner, Will Barrett.
During this time, she also had a major falling-out with The Bishop (after the consultant had grown to also be a friend and mentor to her).
Another FBI agent, Katherine Tate, leveled accusations of unwelcome sexual advances against Nicole.
The Office of Professional Responsibility then contacted me to pivot our sessions toward establishing Fitness-for-Duty (FFD), due to Nicole’s potential involvement in recent homicides.
Between this and my suspicions of drug use, our session had to change from being therapeutic to evaluative, and in that light, my opinion was that Special Agent Lange should be suspended from duty for an indefinite future pending psychological treatment. She is right to question whether her hunt for monsters is turning her into one.
As I relayed this opinion, Nicole said, “I believe hypnotherapy will solve all our problems,” and — I don’t know why I agreed to this — we attempted hypnosis that very session. Something about the way she looked into my eyes, hers a swirling maelstrom of power yet emptiness, sweeping me in. I need to guard again countertransference, and who will hypnotize whom.
Edit: Now, at last, I understand. I know the importance of her mission and know the impossibility of any hand-off or delay. OPR is wrong, Tate is wrong, maybe they’re even in the pocket of the enemy. My duty — sacred duty — is to protect Nicole Lange. She’d fiercely refuse protection, no doubt, … but this is what friends step up to do.
I counseled her that her stress comes from trying to destroy the Unholy Grail. Better that she should take it, use it, put it to the purpose to which only she can be trusted to do. Wise Nicole knows this, inside, needing only validation that it’s right.
Edit: I just learned OPR suspended Nicole, despite my verbal assurance that she posed no threat to herself nor to the Bureau nor to the rule of law. This would devastate Nicole; the anchor of her identity is being an agent of justice, an upholder of what’s right. Stripped of that, her ‘dhampir‘ duality (justice vs. vengeance) will teeter off balance. It has confirmed her worst fear: she has fallen into monstrousness. Nicole has not returned my texts to set up an emergency session.
Nicole Lange’s Depression
Amid the mounting stress, Nicole engaged in a torrid night of passion with Special Agent Will Barrett, only to learn that his attraction was to the darkest parts of her, the parts that may have brought her career to ruin. And I told her, while her eyes were open to jackals like Barret, she might open them wider and see those people right in front of her who worship her.
Nicole is uncertain that she is the author of her own life story. “The dead call the shots, doctor, in so many more ways than one.”
An unexpected challenge arose, a “Golem” (she declined to clarify) that she was forced to tackle alone. She felt abandoned by all senior staff (“Vampire princes,” she called them.) To her, events were set in motion as if from some inevitable “prophecy” without reason, without concern with whether she would survive them or not.
Nicole has nightmares of a church, pews filled with mirrors, in each her corrupt, depraved self cracks the glass to come and consume her.
Edit: One of the ‘tieflings’ (meaning, I surmise, a DOD operative with dubious morality) had come to feel like a sister to Nicole. Lange now alludes to having been required to cause the death of this ‘sister’. The guilt in her eyes as she questions am I good or am I evil? — I came to wonder could she have killed the operative herself?
I know I have to report this to Shade, to OPR, to a dozen review teams — I know my duty! — but, oh God, this is spiraling out of control. And I realize now, too, that all of Nikki’s ‘metaphors’ have become altogether too literal in her mind, adrift in dissociative phenomena perhaps to the point of justifying and doing horrible acts.
And yet … When she took my arm in her hands and sweetly kissed my wrist, it was like my heart only beat for her. I had pledged to protect her before, but I renewed that vow there, on my knees, in front her.
That night, I destroyed all my clinical notes suggestive of any psychological distress or derangement. I sent my official FFD: Special Agent Nicole Lange is psychologically fit, ready for duty, fully capable and morally clear. God help me.
Nicole Lange’s Crisis of Identity
She texted me this image, Von Stuck’s The Fall of the Damned plus the briefest of explanations: her family is far from innocent.
Revelations concerning Lange’s family history appear to have aggravated an already pronounced fear that her violent impulses are not acquired adaptations but expressions of an authentic self.
Did her family do something to make them targets of Harlon Cord, rather than mere random victims? To Nicole, the question was like falling into an open grave.
The ghost she’d been killing herself for, toiling to win justice for, that ghost had been nothing but smoke and mirrors and manipulative lies.
Nicole’s conflict and confusion made me weep for her. I longed to comfort her in any and every way, but she didn’t return my texts or answer my calls. Set her phone out-of-service.
That night, my husband caught me masturbating to Nicole’s picture again. We fought. Naive and callow boy, he left to a hotel. Whatever. Yes, I know I’m obsessed with this woman … but I’m overjoyed to be.
Nicole Leaves the FBI
There was one final picture Nicole sent me, a last therapy homework image. I knew what it meant even though the text-message had no words.
Nicole Lange chose to leave the FBI. To leave me.
I won’t be able to have her. Wow, listen to that, like there’s anyone in the world who can have her. She is a goddess.
But I can delight in this much: it also means the ghosts no longer whisper to her, no longer dictate how she moves and what she does.
It means her potential and her dreams should take her to new and bigger places, grander ambitions, and more consequential endeavors.
I don’t know what to make of this, ending her text with “–M”, which made me think she accepted the job of James Bond’s boss. Or more to the point, that she’s leaving it all behind, her job, her lover, even her name — gone is Nicole, survived only by ‘M’.
Not proud of this, but I begged to see her one last time. At a hotel bar (where upstairs I’d happened to book a room). She did show, but only to say goodbye and to thank me for my support. And assure me the world was safe from The Unholy Grail.
I wished her luck on her new adventures, and she dried my tears with a caress that made me dizzy, … and then alone. That limerence, that juvenile crush, I realized its time had run itself out.
I’ve actually sought therapy of my own now, which my husband is happy to hear. Maybe, if I re-find the woman I was, maybe then he’ll take me back.
Nicole Lange: Unholy Grail Full Story
To learn Special Agent Lange’s full story, see The Curse of the Unholy Grail.
Beyond Dr. Gwen Stonecipher’s opinions, see what others have had to say.
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