Jean and Haller(s)

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Davey goes looking for Moira, but there's more than one brilliant redhead in the medlab, and Jim gets to deal with the surprise. They end up talking shop.



Davey rocked restlessly on his heels as he waited for the elevator to get to the MedLab. He didn't know if Moira was around or not, and he wasn't sure how to call and check, but he was determined to find out before Jim came out again. Jim had said it was okay if Davey wanted to see her more, hadn't he? He was allowed.

The elevator finally got there. He walked quickly down the corridor and to the Medlab. Hopefully she would be . . .

Davey sensed the strange mind before he saw the woman. A quick flash of Not Moira and he was stepping back, letting Jim take control again.

Keeping out a ready mental eye for new patients was Jean's standard practice, and the feeling of another psi sensing her was unmistakable, but the sudden flicker of... change was new. She got only the faintest sense of a child, an unknown child - not a student, before it vanished to be replaced by confusion.

Jean looked over and blinked, recognizing the man in the doorway, although she hadn't had a chance yet to come see him since his return. "Hello, David," she said, standing up. "Can I help you with something?"

The telepath blinked over at her, straightening from Davey's habitual slouch. I was . . . thinking about a smoke? he thought distractedly, momentarily at a loss. Then his surroundings registered. Oh. Medlab. Right. He noticed Jean there, looking at him, and her words penetrated. "Oh, Miss-- Jean," said Jim, catching himself, "um. No, I was looking for Moira. I think. Is she around?"

Jean caught the verbal slip and did her best not to smile at being called, or almost being called, 'Miss'. "No, I'm afraid she's not down here, unless she's managed to be even sneakier than usual. You might find her in her suite, though, if it's pressing."

"Oh. No, it wasn't important." He kept trying to remind himself that there wasn't much point in trying to hide from Jean; while he was prepared to admit his time with a telepath of the professor's level might have made him slightly paranoid, it was unlikely she hadn't noticed the switch. Besides, she had been at the school far longer than Jim -- as a student he'd seen her around Medlab often enough. He rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. "One of my alters just likes coming to see her sometimes," Jim said, hoping he was imagining the blush. "That's all." The fact that the intervening years had done nothing to make her any less attractive was not helping.

He wasn't entirely imagining the blush, but Jean was good at not making situations more awkward when she wanted to be. One of the advantages of working with excitable teenagers for so long. "Ah, of course. I guess my being down here must have come as a bit of a surprise, then." Which would certainly explain the sudden switch and resulting confusion. "Well, it's good to see you. I'm sorry I haven't had the chance to come by and properly welcome you."

"Don't worry about it," Jim said automatically, glad to get off the topic. "Scott was kind enough to do the welcome-wagon thing for me already. And between powers-accidents and kids accidentally chopping their toes off it's not exactly slow down here."

"Actually," Jean said, "I'd have to disagree. This month has been one of the slowest we've had in ages. But we have a pretty skewed idea of what's normal, you may have noticed." She grinned slightly.

"Yeah," Jim smiled, "when I heard that incident with with Kyle and the man from Nathan's old group characterized as 'another kidnapping' I knew we were in for an interesting semester." He put his hands in his jacket pockets for something to do with them, and noticed one was occupied by markers. Oh god, I hope he was just bringing those to draw something for Moira . . .

"Indeed. I believe the current theory is that a term without an invasion is a good term, although I've never been here for any of the invasions. And I'm really not sure if I should say that's fortunate or unfortunate." Jean assumed David would know why she hadn't been around - after all, her 'death' was hardly a secret.

"That's a record I personally wouldn't mind maintaining," Jim said. He was painfully aware he was running out of smalltalk. "So. Um. How long have you been a doctor?"

"Well, I finished my internship about six years ago, and that's when I came back here to be the school's doctor. How about you? What have you been up to in the last couple years?"

"Volunteer-counseling the mentally ill. Or trying to." Jim smiled crookedly. "Telepathy's . . . not always a guarantee. It took me a year or two to get that through my head." His laughter was a little forced. "Either way, it burned me out pretty well. I don't know how Charles does it. Professionally or emotionally."

"No, it very much isn't." Jean's smile was understanding and sympathetic. "It helps me in my work, but there are times... Charles is a phenomenon unto himself. Luckily he rarely gets obviously smug about it."

Jim laughed. "Yeah, Charles does a pretty good Siddhartha Gautama impression. The man has elevated inscrutability to an artform." He raised his eyebrows at her. "You use your telepathy for -- physical diagnostics?" he asked, his interest overcoming nearly ten years of accumulated shyness. Professional curiosity was a welcome refuge.

"To a certain degree, yes. I don't have to rely on a patient's ability to tell me how the pain feels if I can feel it with them, and after a while it became fairly easy to see how biological, particularly biochemical changes in the body affect how the brain functions."

"That must be incredibly useful," Jim said, fascinated. "I don't specialize to that degree . . . biologically, I mean. I know some basic physiological readings, but mostly I focus on the difference between a chemical disorders and legitimate psychological damage. Not that they don't sometimes come hand-in-hand, but I'm not much equipped to deal with the other." He rubbed the back of his head thoughtfully. It really was nice to be able to talk to so many other psis. He was obscurely grateful Moira had allowed herself to be talked into trimming his hair. "How do you perceive the physical pain? Is it an altered state of consciousness, like the astral plane, or is it more like a sympathetic sensitivity?"

"It can be sympathetic, but pursuing that to any great depth can be dangerous, since I need to be able to think properly to deal with the patient and too much of a sympathetic reaction would interfere greatly." Leaning back, Jean adjusted her glasses, unconsciously slipping into lecture mode. "I tend to rely much more on the patient's awareness of the pain. For instance, if you were to hurt your hand, you'd know it. You'd actually know it twice. There's the nerve reaction and the conscious thought, 'ow, that hurts'. But relying on just the thought can be problematic when you have people, for instance, Haroun, who've developed an extremely high pain tolerance. Essentially, for him, he'll receive the nerve signal saying that there's pain, but he doesn't classify it as pain until it gets much stronger than normal. In that case, there's no "ow" thought, but the nerve reaction is still there and can be sensed as long as the patient is aware of it. Depending on the type of pain and the patient it will 'feel' differently. Frequently it'll be a bright red that flashes or throbs through thoughts, but it can be anything. Simiarly, it's a good way to diagnose false pains, things which the patient is 'feeling' but have no physical source. Of course, If a patient is unaware of the pain it's a different matter."

Jim nodded, grabbing a nearby stool to take a seat. "I've seen something similar in stress reactions to a traumatic incident. Consciously, the victim may not feel affected -- but the subconscious says differently. Psychosomatic reactions, or pain, like panic-attacks, feel different . . ." He began to jog his leg absently, wondering how to put this. Verbal communication on the topic was a challenge, and he found he was rather enjoying it. "I specialize in -- I guess you'd call it the tension between the conscious and the subconscious. In regards to the psyche, anyway. The occasional dischord is normal, but sometimes something will happen, or lots of little things accumulate, and the two fall out of sync . . . it's a little like listening to a performancewhere the different parts of the orchestra are playing in different keys on the same piece. I'm good at spotting the dissonance, but less good at connecting them to the outlying symptoms." He laughed a little. "The body does weird things when it's stressed. If a patient has a migraine, I don't necessarily see that behavioral therapy might be as effective as a neurological consult."

"Oh yes, absolutely." It was wonderful to sit down and talk about this sort of thing, although truly, Jean didn't think the verbal language was the best way to explain herself. But for now she'd stick with it, it was more polite, as David had started the conversation that way. "I've had to deal with a few cases which were purely psychosomatic in nature." Paige had immediately sprung to mind, but David was not one of her doctors and even discussing the case in generics would be dangerous for the girl's confidentiality. Although... "Even a couple where purely mental issues began affecting not just the ability to control a mutation but also the mutation itself." Suddenly it hit her exactly who she was discussing this with and Jean blushed faintly. "Er... right, but you'd know that."

She actually looked embarrassed. The slip was such a relief for his holdover adolescent awkwardness that Jim actually laughed. "Yeah, I do. It can be a vicious cycle, especially where mutation is concerned. Personally, my telekinesis would go crazy every time I hit a rough patch in therapy. I'd end up using it to hurt myself or someone else whenever I had a violent episode, and because I knew it would happen I'd become even more stressed and try to bottle it up . . . which, as Charles used to say, isn't a state of mind that lends itself to healthy self-expression. Eventually he had to lock it down just so I could continue the integration." He sat back, smiling crookedly. "My powers were actually the root of my disassociation. I couldn't cope with having them, or what I'd done with them, so I just -- handed them off to other parts of me that could. I wasn't even able to use my telepathy until I was eighteen. Theoretically I'll learn to process the TK, too. Some day."

Oh, thank God, she hadn't offended him. Reaching out for something at least approaching a normal tone of voice, Jean said, "Actually, that sounds very familiar. When I came back I had no conscious control over my TK for a very long time. It would turn on in situations of extreme stress or pain but would simply repeat the action that got me out of the water, regardless of what, or who, was in the way. I had to sleep with an inhibitor for months because my dreams could trigger my powers. Regaining control was not easy, but if you want, when you feel up to it, I could try to help."

"I . . . maybe," he faltered. Suddenly there was something very interesting about the floor tiles. Maybe it was seeing Nathan use his so easily, or because he was so much better now, but her offer was tempting. More tempting than he'd ever imagined it could be after all that he'd been through. "I don't know. I never had control to lose. It got so focused, if I opened it up again and I -- repeated--" He couldn't suppress the wash of nausea. All it does is hurt. He thought of the night that still colored his dreams. Still, and always. His jaw clenched involuntarily. No. No. I don't need it. It's not worth that. I'd rather never have it again than that. Jim forced himself to take a deep breath and relax. There was no need to get worked up about something that wasn't going to happen; no one here was going to force him into anything. Charles had always been very clear on that subject. Calm.

"Maybe," Jim said again, his voice regaining a semblance of evenness. "Not now, but . . . maybe." He managed what might have passed for a smile on a good day. "Things change. Maybe this, too. Thank you for the offer."

Jean nodded. "There's no rush at all, I promise. The offer will stay open, any time you like. And, in the mean time," she went on, feeling the need for a subject change, "you've taken on the unenviable position of school counselor. How's it going?"

"Not nearly as bad as everyone kept threatening," Jim replied, accepting the shift with gratitude. Jean was obviously a woman of tact -- but then, Jim realized, she'd probably had to learn. Didn't Scott say something about falling down the stairs when he first saw her? I don't feel quite so bad anymore. "Although I almost suffocated on irony during the lecture to Eliane on keeping her pyrokinesis in check. What about you? Looking forward to the belated honeymoon -- next month, right?"

Jean managed to keep her smile below the 'blinding like the sun' level, but it was a near thing. "I think 'looking forward' might be a bit of an understatement. But yes, next month. We're trying not to tempt fate too much and haven't settled on a week within March yet, but the first chance I get I'm stealing him away and not coming back for weeks. "

Jim thought of his previous conversations with Scott. "After some of the stories I've heard, I wouldn't even tell anyone where you're going. I get the sense you might have to knock him over the head and drag him out by the leg to get him away from this place, though. He seems a little, um, wary."

"Wary with cause," Jean said, "believe me. Wary with cause. But it's all right. I'm not at all above whacking my husband unconscious and dragging him off to a cave. Or a resort in the French Alps. Whatever."

Jim covered his ears. "Stop. The less I know about where you end up the less I can reveal to your enemies. Or the student body. Whichever." He grinned at her. He was beginning to understand why this woman was good for Scott.

Jean laughed. "You say that as though they were different things. Clearly you have not been working here long enough if you haven't yet realized that our most dastardly enemies are in the fifteen and sixteen year old age bracket."

Jim laughed. "Oh, yeah . . . now that you mention it, I've been warned about Forge." As the words "indoor portable hurricane" had been involved in that story, Jim was of the opinion that Forge's continued presence in the school moved Charles another few points towards legitimate cannonization.

"Yep. He's a good kid. They're all good kids. But that doesn't mean that they're not also eeeeeevil."

The other telepath snorted helplessly. "Evil. Yeah, I think that's a pretty good summary of adolescence. It's an entitlement. Or prerequisit. One of those things that makes adults rue but endure."

"Sounds like you've got a pretty good handle on it, yeah." Jean grinned. "Wonderful, you'll fit in just fine."

Jim chuckled. "Yeah. Luckily for me, I beat the kids to the crazy. There's a kind of beauty to it, really." He rose from the stool and put his hands back in his pockets. "Well. I should probably stop bothering you now, so -- uh, wait." He frowned, remembering something he'd been meaning to ask. "Did I hear something about you heading a fieldtrip soon?"

"Yep, to DC this weekend. We'll leave early Friday and come back
sometime Sunday. I've been getting a fair amount of interest from the
kids, too. Does that hint of interest in your voice that I'm going to
pretend I heard mean I can convince you to help me heard the kids?"
Jean looked hopeful.

The younger man grinned. "I was thinking about it. I've been out in the workplace forever. Being a mutant, I mean. It was the premise of a lot of my volunteer work, and I'm a little hard to miss. That was the UK, though. I need to get back up to speed with how things are in the States." His smile went wry. "And of course, the Evil Ones could probably use a few chaperones."

"They can always use chaperones. Always. And I definitely have some
friends in DC who'd love to get their hands on you, get you talking to
some people. Assuming you don't mind my shoving you towards the
activist set. They're sometimes a bit overzealous, but they're
enthusiastically overzealous."

"I think I can handle that," Jim smiled. "I've had some experience with them before. Muir was good for that, and I've been interviewed a few times. Anyway, I never say no to meeting other professionals in the field, and I'm sure the convention will unearth a couple."

"Excellent," Jean said. "Then I'll add you to my list of
unfortunates." She smiled. "Thanks."

"No, thank you," Jim said, meaning it. "I, um . . . I enjoyed talking to you. We should do it again sometime." He winced inwardly. He couldn't help but think how lucky he was Jean was understanding.

The smile widened slightly, but it wasn't a teasing smile. "Oh, no
worries, we will. After all, you've just committed yourself to joining
me on a pair of several hours long train rides with me and the kids,
and a whole weekend of listening to politicians and lobbyists argue."

"A little boredom will do me good, I think. Especially in this place." Jim glanced up from the floortiles to smile at her. "I think I'd better quit while I'm ahead here. Send the details to my school account? I'll let Charles know I'm not going to be around for a few days."

"Will do." Jean nodded. "Good luck finding Moira."


"Thanks." And hopefully I didn't vandalize anything looking.