Scott and Jim, Saturday around lunchtime

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Scott finally makes it back up to his new suite, and runs into Jim along the way. He lets him know what happened, and Jim adds his good advice to what Scott's already received from Charles. In the course of the conversation it becomes evident that while Scott might not remember his evening, he's retained a little more than he realized.


A bit of a switch from earlier this week, him carrying his own tray to the guest suite he'd claimed as his own. But Charles had insisted that he eat, after their session, and Scott, although he was neither hungry nor particularly sure if he could eat, was after all used to doing what Scott told him.

So he'd thrown himself on Dani's mercy, and she'd promptly provided him with a lunch guaranteed to be easy on the stomach. He'd give it a try, in any case.

He hadn't been spying, exactly. Spying implied full devotion of his attention, and Jim hadn't been giving it that. He'd simply been keeping his mind open, just in case. When he sensed Scott approaching the staff hallway Jim closed his book and slipped out of his room, easing the door open slow enough to give the man some warning.

"Hey," Jim said as Scott paused in front of the guestroom door. "How are you feeling?"

Scott gave a faintly unsteady smile as he opened the door. "Lousy, actually. The headache is in a league all its own. Come in and you can hear about the whole mess if you want." He wouldn't be surprised if Jim had been aware of the fact that he'd been gone all night; unannounced overnight absences were not something that he'd done, well, ever, and he'd noticed a number of concerned looks this morning already.

Jim nodded and closed his own door behind him before moving to join the headmaster. "Charles told me something urgent came up when he cancelled our meeting this morning," he confessed as they stepped into the guestroom. "But he didn't give me any details."

Scott sighed and went over to set the tray on the coffeetable before he sagged down onto the couch, rubbing at his temples. "You're not going to believe this. I apparently got jumped by a telepath last night."

Jim blinked as he lowered himself into a chair. "Don't take this the wrong way," Jim said at last, "but you have terrible luck this month. Are you all right?"

Scott gave a rattled-sounding laugh. "Yeah, tell me about it. A fucking security breach, on top of everything else..." It struck him that he hadn't answered Jim's question, and he shrugged a bit. "Not too bad, I suppose. The headache's not as bad as it was - Charles did something about that. I woke up in an alley downtown with it and a nosebleed that made it pretty damned clear that I hadn't actually gotten drunk and passed out in the alley." His hands were shaking a little as he reached for the glass on the tray. "Or done anything else I thought I'd done," he muttered, almost inaudibly.

"Someone tampered with your memories?" He had to bite back the automatic impulse to run a diagnostic scan of his own; it was a breach of etiquette at the best of times, but after what Scott had been through the intrusion would be unforgivable. Jim sat back and kept his mind to himself. Charles already took care of it. We trust Charles.

"I went into a club. I'm not... entirely sure why I did," Scott said, and wondered for a moment if that had something to do with the telepath, whoever he or she had been. "I remember having a drink, talking to someone at the bar... that's the real memory, Charles says." He swallowed the sudden surge of bile back. "I did not, however, proceed to get stinking drunk and sleep with her, thank fuck." More than waking up in the alley, or the difference between a hangover and a 'someone has punched me in the brain' headache, that alone had been enough to tell him that what he thought had happened couldn't have happened. Because he wouldn't have done that. He wouldn't have been that petty.

He loved her too much. Despite everything.

"Did they . . . disturb anything else?" Jim asked carefully, knotting his hands. "Does it look like they took anything, or was it a random incident . . ?" Privately, he was impressed Scott had realized what had happened. Most non-psis wouldn't have. Granted, Scott had years of experience working with telepaths, but it said something that he'd been able to apply it after something that dramatic.

"The false memories cover a hole of maybe a few hours, depending on how long I was out. There was some other damage, but that might have been from me fighting it." Scott gave him a ghost of a smile. "I can do that, you know, with most telepaths, if they get in my head. All these years of training from Charles..."

Jim returned the smile faintly. "Charles was always very serious about levelling the playing field in that respect, as much as it could be. I always wondered if it was some sort of compensation -- teaching non-psis how to defend against something he himself could do. Or any of the telepaths he trained, for that matter." The smile widened a touch. "It's easy to forget that he must have known what it was like to be unable to defend himself, once upon a time."

Scott's smile, weak as it was, wobbled a little more even at that. "It's the strangest feeling," he muttered, breaking eye contact with Jim. "I feel strange. Like there's..." Words failed him, just like they had with Charles.

Jim frowned, leaning forward a little. "After the contact? Was something about it -- different? I mean, different than other offensive telepathy you've encountered?"

"I just feel like there's something not right," Scott said after a moment, staring at his lunch. His hands were trembling again. "Really not right, and yet it's not connected to anything."

Jim considered this for a moment. Charles would have noticed any mental contamination, so that couldn't be it. And Scott seemed to have enough experience with psionic attack to be able to grasp and separate any unease at the fact of the event itself. That left -- something else.

"It may be residual emotion from the original memory," Jim said slowly. "Bad memories don't just disappear. If they could be lifted out that easily a patient could be cured simply by erasing the incident from his mind. The emotions behind them need to be dealt with and purged, too. Can you think of any reason why the situation might have struck you as . . . wrong? Not just invasive?"

"Well, it's not as if I've had a great week," Scott said a bit helplessly. "And really... when I came to, I felt sick, yes, but then again, someone had apparently just hacked out a piece of my memory and left me unconscious in an alley." He looked down at his hands, turning them over, palms-up, and then back. "I went to the medlab first. All kinds of tests."

Jim shook his head. "Trust your instincts, Scott. Sometimes your subconscious knows more than you can consciously admit to yourself. Or someone else allows you to, for that matter."

Scott made a monosyllabic noise that might have been agreement or resignation. "Amelia wouldn't let me shower until she was done running tests," he said, and wondered again at how twitchy that had made him. "She can be surpassingly annoying at times, have you had the chance to notice that? There I was lying in the gutter all night and she wouldn't let me shower. If I hadn't known she'd have teleported me straight back into the medlab whether I was wearing clothes or not I would have gone ahead and done it anyway, I swear."

"She's very . . . exact." Jim wasn't sure it was the best idea to let the topic drop, but there was no use forcing Scott to relive something he clearly didn't want to talk about -- especially not after what he'd already been through today. He sighed and made a mental note to conferr with Charles later. "Was there any physical trauma, or just the psychic? Are you hurt?"

"I've got a few bruises, nothing to suggest I was in a fight or anything. At least not a serious one, anyway." Scott's reply was almost conversational, but he was rubbing hard at the scars on the side of his face, hard enough to bruise - and completely unaware that he was doing it.

The nervous tick was one Jim had noticed before, particularly since he had a similar habit with the burnscars on his hand. It was displacement activity. Something about this subject was setting off the other man's stress reactions. "If this is making you uncomfortable," Jim said, smiling a little, "all you have to do is say. We can drop it. I respect the right of an individual to keep the unpleasant details between himself and his own head."

"Is it supposed to make me comfortable?" Scott asked a bit quizzically. "I don't think there's much comfortable about this whole situation. I could hear Lee grinding his teeth at me all the way upstairs. Nothing like having to reset all my accesses..."

Jim gave a self-deprecating laugh. "Sorry. I know that's pretty weak, considering what you've gone through. I'm just trying not to unintentionally make a bad situation worse. I've had some bad luck with that lately. Maybe we should talk about something safe, like, um . . ." he sought for a topic that could not possibly spiral into inflammatory, "light bulbs?" Not emotionally dissociating from the issue too much, are we, Haller? Coward.

"Light bulbs... I haven't got the faintest idea what we'd talk about when it comes to light bulbs." Scott sighed and picked at his food. "How much I wish one would go on over my head and explain all this?"

"It might still do," Jim said after a moment. "Like I said, when it comes to the mind things don't just disappear. Maybe the memory is lost, but if it left traces . . . something might trigger an echo. Even something completely unrelated. That's what would happen to me, back when I was still trying to process the original trauma. Your subconscious wants to put things back together. It'll help you if it can. Try and listen to it."

Scott shifted a little in his seat, his shoulders tensing. "I don't know if I want to put it back together," he said a bit hollowly. "I'm a little afraid of what I might find."

Jim's eyes flicked up at that. "I understand that sentiment," he said quietly, "but . . . be careful. The wound we don't debride, festers. Don't do that to yourself. Not on top of everything else."

"This is nuts." Scott rubbed at the back of his neck, shaking a little. "This whole thing. I don't think I've even processed that it happened yet. Just got back here, saw Amelia, saw Charles..."

Jim's mouth quirked. "Which was very responsible of you. But you can afford to slow down, now. You've gotten all your obligations out of the way, right?"

Scott swallowed. "Obligations?" he said a bit hoarsely. "... wait, no. Right. I did, didn't I?" He hadn't... what hadn't he done? "You know I can't even manage complete sentences in my own head?"

"It's okay. It's understandable." I wish he didn't remind me so much of me. It was a bizarre thought, but true -- and Jim didn't think it was only attributable to the after-effects of the attack. He felt an unexpected surge of protectiveness. "You've done everything you can do," the telepath said firmly. "Don't force yourself, but don't feel like you have to hold back for responsibility's sake, either. You've been through a lot. The only thing you need to worry about now is recovering."

"I have this feeling like something happened, or almost happened, and I almost wasn't here." Scott's voice was a bit wild, and he was staring straight at the opposite wall, not at Jim. "Like I dodged a bullet or something. And I feel guilty... why do I feel guilty?"

"It's okay," Jim said soothingly, catching the edge in his voice. He smiled lopsidedly. "I know it's scary to know you did something but not what, and to feel the effects anyway. Like I said, don't try to force it. It'll come when it's ready." I have to believe that, too.

Scott sank his head into his hands, still shaking. "I was fine," he said numbly. "I was fine, I was doing what I had to do, I was fine..."

Jim stared at the coffeetable for a long moment, hating this. He'd had this conversation with Charles, too many times to count. Now he found being on the other side didn't make it any easier. "It's not fair," he said, more hotly than he'd wanted to, "when you're finally getting a grip and life kicks you in the teeth again. It doesn't give a shit. It doesn't stop and it doesn't wait. And all you can do is shut up and take it." Jim stopped and closed his eyes for a heartbeat, recentering himself. Calm, and still. Everything quiet, everyone in their turn. "But -- sometimes you have to. And sometimes it forces you to deal with things you've been avoiding, or only think you've dealt with. Nothing's all bad. Not unless you let it be. Sometimes we just have to trust in that."

"I-" His teeth were chattering. What the fuck? Drink your juice, Scott. Low blood sugar. Couldn't be helping. "I don't know what to trust anymore. I don't know what to think anymore. This was such an unbelievably shitty week, and all of a sudden, boom, it got surreal on me."

Jim sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. The outburst had left him a little disjointed. She always did that. "It's -- hard when you feel like you can't trust your own mind. In your case the rest of the world isn't exactly helping." He snorted, running his hand over his face. "Even turning it off doesn't help. I've tried. The world keeps on going. Your brain, too. Sometimes the only thing you can do is just . . . let go. Or go crazy." Jim lowered the hand and gave Scott a weak smile. "Please don't go crazy. It may seem like a good idea at the time, but it's really not worth it."

Scott drained half the glass of orange juice, then wiped his mouth. "No craziness," he said. "I dabbled in that. Didn't like it. The preview was quite enough." His head really was pounding. Scott set the glass back down before he could drop it, then leaned back into the couch, his eyes closing. "My appetite's gone again," he muttered. "Lorna will be on my case."

"Just save it for later. Your appetite will come back eventually. Anyway, I swear she checks the trash." He frowned, noticing the stress lines creasing the other man's forehead and mouth. "I know I keep asking this," he said, "but is there anything I can do?"

"Hit any strange telepaths who come near me with very large books? I think that would be very neighborly of you..."

"Consider it done." Jim shook his head, sighing. "I'm at the point of seriously thinking about walking around with my shields wide open. Maybe I'll intercept a clue. I've been dealing with insanity for over a decade now, and I can safely say this place is by far and away the most incomprehensible thing I've ever seen."

Scott didn't open his eyes, but tried vainly to muster up a smile. It wobbled and faded again almost immediately. "It's not always this bad, you know. Really. And don't walk around with your shields wide open, you'll get resentful," he said - then sat bolt upright, his stomach churning. "At the headache, I mean," he said, swallowing back the surge of nausea. "I think. That'd give you a headache, right?"

Jim's forehead creased at the headmaster's jerky, stilted movements. "More like agoraphobia. I don't know how Charles deals with picking up the psychic background noise twenty-for/seven. What's wrong?" He may not have been much of a sensitive, but the signs of physical discomfort were obvious.

"No, I'm fine," Scott protested, feeling (more) sick and dizzy even as he denied it. "But you wouldn't really walk around with your shields open, would you? That was just a joke. You wouldn't be able to... things would happen, and you couldn't. Make that work. It'd all go bad."

No. Not fine. "It was a joke. I'm very attached to my shields. We stay in, and the world stays out. Everybody wins." Scott's face was almost grey. Was it psychosomatic? Telepathic surgery could be wrenching, even from Charles' deft touch -- but Jim's talents had never lain in tracing physical anomalies back to the source.

That was Jean.

"You need to rest," Jim said, reaching out to the professor as he did and receiving brief acknowledgement of the situation. He rose from his seat. "Forget food for now. Drink some water. Or tea, if you haven't already had enough of that forced on you today. Sleep. If you're still feeling like this when you wake up again, save yourself the intervention and go see Dr. Voight. Charles will be keeping an eye on you, and it's very difficult to block out telepathic nagging. Trust me."

"Yeah. I know." Scott took a deep breath, then another, and slowly the nausea started to ease. "I think lunch can definitely wait," he said, sounding a little more like himself. "And I'm supposed to check back in with Amelia later anyway. I suspect I'd find myself teleported down there willing or not if I didn't."

The telepath nodded. "Surrender to the concern. At the end of the day, it's much less stressful." I wish there was something we could do. This is so unfair. "Take it easy. If you get into really bad shape Lorna's going to wrap the bedframe around your ankles and force-feed you chicken soup."

"She would, too." Scott focused on him for a moment - it took a little more effort than it should have. "Thanks... Jim," he said, mustering up a faint smile. See? I remembered.

He hadn't expected the term of address -- had almost forgotten he'd offered it to the man after everything that had happened. Jim blinked, then returned the smile. "Don't worry about it," he said as he moved towards the door. "I just know how crappy it is to be a patient with people on you about your health all the time. If a little badgering today keeps half the school from being on your case tomorrow, then my job's done."