xp_logs | LOG: [Scott, Haller] What next

Scott talks to Haller for the first time since San Diego. It goes . . . about as well as could be expected.

White.

Paper. White paper. That's what he was looking at. The thought stuttered, uncertain and delayed. Jim blinked slowly, taking in the contrast of the yellow pencil against the pink scars of the hand poised above the clipboard. How long had he been sitting here, just staring? Eyes trained on blank paper, hand ready, nothing coming and no one driving. Blank-out.

It was a minute before he realized what had brought him back was a knock.

"Come in," Jim said, then suffered a moment of uncertainty wondering who had. His voice sounded distant, hollow, like all the depth had been carved out of it. He didn't even try determining who was at the door. His powers were so stressed he wouldn't even have been able to sense Moira standing right next to him. Stretching out wasn't even an option.

The door was opening. Oh. Right. Someone. Someone is checking on us. One of the doctors, maybe. Jim put the clipboard down and turned himself to face the door, lowering his long legs over the side of the bed to place both feet flat on the floor. It's rude to show to soles of your feet, ran the disconnected thought. Attention isn't. Attention is polite. He straightened up and tried to give it.

Scott stepped in. He was in civilian clothes for the first time in... well, he really didn't want to put a number to how many days he'd been in his leathers. He closed the door carefully behind him, then offered the man sitting on the bed a slight, careful smile.

"Hey," he said. "How are you feeling?"

Jim stared at him blankly. Over the past few days his world had contracted to Charles, Moira and Amelia. The introduction of another person seemed unreal. Something like panic tugged at him through the fog. What's he doing here? An exasperated voice replied, You emailed him, remember? His mismatched eyes automatically went to the open laptop sitting on the bedside chair. God. At least pretend to get it together.

The telepath clasped his hands in his lap, fingers rubbing restlessly across the burn scars. Ground in the physical. "I'm fine," Jim said. The cast to Scott's smile pulled faintly at old memories of other small, impersonal rooms. Rote response took over. "How are you?"

Scott's smile softened into something a little quizzical and ever so slightly pained. "Worried," he said, and found a chair, sitting down on the edge of it.

"I'm okay." Sitting in isolation with a week's worth of stubble and clothes you haven't changed in two days. "Physically. I'm okay." Jim squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, willing himself to get the words out. Have to say it. Have to. Have to. He said, in a voice so level it surprised even him after all those years of disassociating inner life from outer, "I'm in full regression."

Scott, after a moment, nodded slowly. "You needed to talk to me," he said. 'I'm sorry' was definitely not the appropriate response to what Jim had said. Even if it was the first thing that had popped into his mind. "What can I do to help?"

Help? The thought was repeated on several levels with varying degrees of incredulity, disdain, and hopelessness. That's why we're here, isn't it?Saint-Fucking-Xavier tried to help.

"I resign," Jim managed. "From the team. I resign. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have put myself in that position. Or the team. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have, I . . ." His hands twisted in his lap. "I thought they were gone."

Scott didn't answer for a moment. "If this is what you think you need to do right now," he finally said, "then of course. But," he went on more steadily, "I don't want to hear any apologies for having been there in the first place. Do you have any idea how many lives you helped save last week?"

"Helped," Jim echoed. He felt the press of the wave again in his mind, the wall of water churning against wings of fire. "That's why. I wanted to help, because it was too big. So I tore it up. What Charles did for us. Because the power was there." His power, pure and whole, spilling, surging, an ocean of light. "It . . ." Across from him the other man blurred. Jim pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes as his voice cracked, "It felt so good . . ."

I couldn't hold it.

"I can't even imagine how it felt," Scott said softly. "I know what it felt like to see what the three of you did, but only the three of you know what it was like from the inside." It was an odd thing to say, he thought as it came out of his mouth, but he thought it was the right thing to say. Some sort of facile 'Oh, yes, of course it felt good, too bad about the consequences' would have been obscene.

"It was . . ." Stop crying. Stop. The thought brought a spike of physical pain. Jim's jaw spasmed behind his hands. He was not going to do this in front of Scott. No.

Cry away, Jemmy. The whole team's already seen you go fucking looney toons and get into a screaming catfight with the human wrecking ball. It's not as if you've got any manhood left to lose. In another corner of his mind irritation thrummed. 'Catfight'? Oh my god, I don't even wanna hear it. What did you do? I'm so not taking crap from the guy whose big accomplishment was sucker-punching two people who were already like, hemorrhaging.

"We made a mistake." The statement was flat and empty. Jim's hands lowered, and the expression on his face was just as blank. "Charles and I. It was only supposed to be the TK, because I thought if they didn't have the TK I -- I could just about handle them. We could integrate. But we got it wrong. They are the TK. When we made that separate we made them separate, too." Knuckles whitened in his lap. "We made it so I could never get better."

Three years, and he'd believed. He really had. The cessation of manifestations, the way the disconnected thoughts had lost personality and distinction -- Davey's continued existence had proven he hadn't been well, but he'd made progress. He thought.

It had been a lie.

This was so totally beyond his experience that Scott was feeling honestly at sea here. "What happens now?" he asked finally, hesitantly. "Can you... now that they're out, can you... integrate?" It was probably a stupid thing to say. His engineer's mindset at work again.

"It's . . . complicated. The professor, the professor said . . ." Jim had to stop to collect his thoughts against the ugly comments the assertion evoked. 'The professor said, the professor said' -- broken record. Focus. "Charles said I was ready to deal with them. I pulled the blocks because the, um, the circumstances. Right time. Right place. Right action. Right . . ." The thought fell off. He finished, weakly, "Right."

"If we can help... any of us, can help," Scott said, his voice rising a little on the last word, an implicit question. "Resignation or no resignation, you're one of us. You got... hurt, in the field, and when that happens, the rest of us are here for you. That's the way it is. That's the way it would be even if you weren't our friend, too."

"Here," Jim whispered. His mismatched eyes fell away from Scott to fix on the white tiles under the other man's feet, picking out the almost imperceptible grain painted into the design. Circles. All his life, circles. And now we're back. Once again, David is a patient.

"I don't know," he said. "What we'll do. Charles says stay. Because this was the right time, and the right place, and going away would be, would be self-defeating. A step back. Farther back." The painful honesty in him whispered: Running away. Realization hit, and the flatness of his tone crawled towards something approaching pain. "My job, I . . . I'm sorry. Wanda's gone, but I can't . . ."

"We'll manage. The kids will miss you," Scott said, mustering up a faint smile, "but they'll be as concerned for you as the staff. I hope you know that."

Jim nodded vaguely. I'll miss me, too. "I should probably tell them what's going on. I, um . . ." The telepath pried his hands apart and set them on his knees, gripping the rough fabric of his jeans. "Could, could you? Tell them. That I'm" Batshit insane? "down here. And all right. I'm sorry, I wouldn't ask except writing . . . it's hard to . . ." He broke off, eyes sliding closed for a moment. Breathe. Just breathe, and say it. Just like you're describing any other patient. Jim opened his eyes again and gave Scott a thin, apologetic smile. "Sometimes they come out."

"Of course," Scott said immediately. "Of course I can. I'll do that as soon as I leave the room." He tried to smile, but the expression was almost as weak as Jim's. "I'm good at that kind of post. I do it a lot."

"Thank you." Jim's head bowed, then abruptly snapped back up. "The kids," the younger man said, and there was urgency in his voice, as if he'd suddenly remembered something vital. "I would never hurt the kids. The beach was different. Cyndi was scared, and Jack wanted to . . ." Hurt me.

Jim swallowed and shook his head, the action demonstrating more feeling than he'd shown in the entire conversation. "They wouldn't hurt the kids," he repeated. "We don't do that. I wouldn't. I . . . I wouldn't."

"I know." Scott fell silent, feeling helpless. He didn't know what to say, whether there was any kind of comfort to be offered here.

Jim knew that look. It was the expression of someone at a complete loss, for whom words had faltered and finally run dry. For half his life David had evoked that expression from people, and knew that faced with someone in his condition there was no other logical response.

He hated it.

"We'll let you know," Jim said into the silence, "when I figure out what we're doing. I just . . . need some time. To figure it out." His hands curled over his knees, and his eyes once again fell away. "That's . . . that's all."

"Then you'll have it." If there was nothing else he could give Jim, he'd make sure he did everything that he could to give him that. "And anything else you need, after," Scott went on more softly.

Jim thought he only blinked, but when he looked up again the other man was gone.

Blank-out.

Slowly, Jim turned himself back around on his bed and picked up the clipboard and pencil again. His forehead creased. He could remember, dimly, saying something to Scott as he left. What had it been? Oh, right. "Thank you." Gratitude. That had been the appropriate response.

Yeah, hissed Jack from somewhere over his left shoulder as Jim settled the clipboard onto his lap, you were a good boy. Very appropriate. Very proper. An entire conversation and your marbles didn't spill even once. Someone might even have been fooled into thinking you were an actual person. If not for the part where you sobbed like a little girl, that is. But that's fine. We know that's just how you are.

Now, where were we?