Laurie and Haller log

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When: Saturday 29th July 2006. Time: 1:00pm
Who: Laurie Collins, Jim Haller
What Happens: Laurie brings Haller some food after she realises she hasn't seen him eating lately. They talk, and Laurie finds out a new facit of her powers.



Laurie paused outside Mr Haller's door, knocking firmly as she balanced the tray that held vegetable soup, a large bread roll and some water on it. She hadn't seen him come up to the kitchen at all while she'd been working there, or been there for the meals. She wanted to make sure he ate something, as it wasn't good for someone to go without food for too long. She just hoped he wasn't angry about her coming down to see him.

"Mr Haller? Are you in? I brought some soup."

Jim looked up from his copy of . . . what was he even reading? Nothing on the page was registering. He stared down at the page; minimalist and lyrical passages. The Tao Te Ching. Right, because he'd needed something that could help him . . . center. And he hadn't been able to hold onto coherent thoughts for very long, so he'd chosen something simple. Well, he thought distantly, it was a nice try.

. . . "Mr. Haller?"

The kids. It was one of the kids. I didn't want visitors. His more practical side, still functioning somehow through all this, said, If they don't hear from you they'll worry. With the exception of the email to Scott and Ororo, he hadn't emailed or posted for days. If I talk to one, she can tell the others I'm . . . 'All right' was probably going too far. He settled for 'alive.'

Jim looked down at himself, trying to assess the situation. Clothes didn't look too rumpled, and Moira had all but kicked him into the shower this morning. The scraggly beginnings of a beard were unavoidable; shaving meant looking at himself in the mirror, and there wasn't anything to be done for that. Still, he was presentable. Mostly.

She said soup. I can hang on long enough for soup delivery. Right. I can do that.

Okay.

"Yeah," Jim called, closing the book and turning to face the door. He ran a hand through his hair belatedly, aware he probably should have combed it after the shower. "I . . . come in."

Laurie turned the doorknob and through a serious of manuvers, managed to open the door and move herself into the room without slopping any of the soup over the bowl. She looked up with triumph and then noticed Jim for the first time. Wow, it was amazing how spending a few days in doors made you look like death. She hoped he was okay, maybe she should have brought him more food?

Moving forward, she set the tray down and looked at him closely. "Mr Haller? I think maybe you should get out of this room. You're not looking so good. When was the last time you ate?"

"Laurie," Jim said after hesitating a split-second too long, "hi." He followed the tray as it was set down on his bedside table and then remembered to bring his eyes back up to her face. Her question caught up with him a moment later. "Um . . . this morning?" Trays got brought to him on a regular basis, he knew. It was just that he wasn't normally hungry when they were. He'd gotten into the habit of simply piling the previously uneaten meal onto the plate of the next so it wasn't quite so obvious he'd skipped one. It made Moira worry.

Laurie eyed him for a second, unconvinced. He didn't exactly seem to be with it at this current moment, the hesitation on her name an obvious pointer. Maybe she'd stay long enough to make sure he took a few bites. It wasn't being disrespectful when you were doing something good for the person, was it?

"Well, morning was awhile ago, so how about you tuck into this and I'll clean up a bit in here? If you don't mind, that is?" Laurie replied, tone a bit hesitant.

She wasn't very good at being bossy, in fact it was pretty damn far from her nature to be so. But Jim looked like he could use some taking charge of and she wasn't about to leave him to his own devices when it looked as though that meant descending into a bag lady style existence.

For a long moment Jim said nothing, taking in the expression on the girl's face. It was the same look Scott had worn, and . . . Betsy. No. Resigned or not, he wasn't going to do that to one of the kids. To turn the supported into the supporter was tantamount to a betrayal of trust. Bad enough to turn on the team -- he wasn't going to undermine this, too.

And so, barely even realizing it, a consensus was reached.

With an almost imperceptible straightening of posture, the telepath rolled the table and tray closer and broke the breadroll in half. He dipped it into the vegetable soup, which it emerged from bearing something that was probably a type of cabbage. When Jim looked up to nod at Laurie, something like focus had returned to his mismatched eyes.

"Do me a favor and leave this area, okay?" Jim said, indicating the space between his bed and the wall. "It's my personal chaos." The floor was strewn with haphazard drifts of loose paper, subject of his latest artistic endeavors. Their location had less to do with strategic location and more to do with the fact that was simply where he dropped them when he was done. Many of the pieces were only half-finished -- or, at least, only half-finished in regards to his own style. Davey had been venting his frustrations in unguarded moments, and rightfully so. Two weeks down here and still the only toy he would allow was Patch, for the moment mercifully buried beneath the pillow of his bed. Even Charles told him that wasn't wise . . . but no, Jim has his pride, Jack would sneer.

But that's irrelevant right now, Jim thought as he took a bite of the bread, taking care to lean over the bowl so as not to slop too much of the soup. Right now, all we need to worry about is lunch.

Laurie smiled, bending down to pick up a pile of clean clothes that had been placed near where she was standing. She'd just put these things away and leave the stuff by his bed then, and considering he was now eating the soup, she'd consider that a win for the day.

"I think I can manage to keep my neat and tidy tendencies to a dull roar enough to leave that section alone." Laurie replied as she worked. "Although, have you been getting outside at all? It's not healthy to be in a dark room all alone. You could get all sorts of weird wasting diseases, or go all pale and Goth looking and I've never heard of a Goth school councillor...I suppose that'd be kinda cool. You could join a band, or wear a black beret and go on about the meaninglessness of existence."

Laurie liked to talk as she worked, talking aways made chores go faster and seem less like work then without it.

Jim smiled slightly at the voice of protest in the back of his mind. Oh my god, don't you dare. If you try I swear I'm retaliating with another tattoo. "I don't think I could pull off the Gothic look. With my build I think the most I can hope for is 'black umbrella.' And it's okay. I'm not too worried about the wasting diseases. Moira and Amelia would be pretty upset if I broke myself again so soon after spraining my brain. If it comes to that, though, apparently there's already the greenhouse."

"The one that Miss Munroe looks after? It's really nice. I've only seen it once though, when Forge gave me the whole grand tour with my mobile phone. That's before I got this thing." Laurie replied, running her fingers over the air-scrubber she was wearing. "I was kinda nervous about the whole new school thing and I guess it must have turned my powers on. People get kinda weird when thier body is all one way and they're feeling completely different. Once term starts up and all, they'll be doing powers classes though and I'm hoping I won't need this for very much longer. Did it take you long to learn to control yours, Mr Haller?"

Laurie smoothed down the clothes she'd placed in a nearby drawer and started picking up some of the art supplies stewn about on the floor. It wasn't that anything was dirty, just that there was no real order to anything that had been placed down. It made the room look messy, and somewhat dangerous for the toes of the unwary.

Jim's eyes followed her over the soupbowl as she cleaned. "Telepathy . . . not sure. I was using it for a long time before Charles showed me anything like finesse. Wasn't really a normal manifestation -- I couldn't keep track of time back then so well. The telekinesis . . ." He gave her another half-smile. "Remember how I said I used to mess up the room's feng shui? Some of us are slow learners. I'm still kind of there." He stared into the bowl and murmured, half to himself, "Again."

"Again?" Laurie asked, pausing as she slotted crayons into the container they'd been left half hanging out of. She wasn't entirely sure she'd understood what he meant by 'again'. Surely once you learnt how to control your powers, they didn't just up and become uncontrollable.

Jim lifted another hunk of bread, studying it intently. "I had some problems when I was younger. I didn't have the control I should have. When I got sick a few years ago it got so bad the professor had to shut off my telekinesis so I wouldn't hurt anyone. Like a psychic version of your air-scrubber, basically. It helped, but there was no off-switch, so I never really learned to use the power right." Bread into soup. "That's what I'll be doing now, I guess."

"Does that mean you'll be coming to the Powers classes with the rest of us then?" Laurie asked, placing the now full box of crayons on a shelf and picking up a small drift of socks by the door. None of them matched...how was that possible? It always seemed to happen though, any time socks were left in a pile they almost magically ceased to match any of the other socks in the pile. She'd just have to place them in a neat row and hope that she found their mates somewhere else in the room.

A smile twitched Jim's mouth as he lifted the sopping bread. "Maybe. Although it can get a little messy, so it might be better to limit the amount of people I can potentially concuss. We'll see." He gestured to her with his free hand. "What about you? How's that going?"

"So-so. It's getting so I can tell when it's on but I don't have much chance to practice, since powers classes haven't started yet. Wouldn't really be ethical of me to randomly turn the scrubber off to see how I was doing at control." Laurie replied, leaning against one of the benches for a moment.

"But you do turn it off, right? Just to get a feel for it?"

"When I'm in my room, since I've not got anyone staying with me right now. And sometimes around people like Nathan, because he doesn't mind so much. I usually ask first though, just seems polite." Laurie replied, smiling as she remembered the training with Nathan. He'd been teaching her how to block telepaths, although she wasn't entirely sure how well she was doing. She assumed he'd tell her if she was completely hopeless.

"That's good. Powers' class is important, but it's good to experiment on your own. You may find things the teachers don't know to suggest. Your mutation's pretty unique, and everyone's different, anyway." Jim made to take another bite, then paused as he noticed what he was feeling -- or, more specifically, what he wasn't. The bread lowered as he looked up at Laurie, a faint crease to his brow. "Uh -- can I ask, is it on right now?"

"It should be. The scrubber, I mean. My power doesn't exactly turn off right now, least not deliberately." Laurie replied, looking down at the device Forge had made for her, and then pausing as she realised she couldn't hear anything. Not wanting to panic, she held the device up to her ear, maybe she'd just grown so used to the sound now she couldn't hear it anymore. She couldn't hear anything, even that close. Which meant...it wasn't on. Oh crap. "Um...don't take this the wrong way, Mr. Haller. But I think the battery ran out or something."

Jim shook his head rapidly. "No, no, I didn't mean it in the bad way. I just feel . . . different." Better. The headache that had been nagging at him for so long he'd almost stopped noticing it had left him, as had the ever-present tension in his back and neck -- and his appetite was better than it had been in days. He grinned at Laurie. "I think we may've unintentionally figured out a beneficial side-effect to your powers."

"Really?" Laurie replied, a sudden smile lighting up her face. "Because I was sort of afraid the only thing I'd ever make people feel was nauseous. Guess it's just because you don't make me nervous. I don't feel like I've got to impress you with my wondrous personality. Not that the other kids need impressing, just that I don't want them to think I'm a complete Queen of dweebtobia from the land of Idiocy. Of course, that just makes it even worse and then with the stuttering and the dropping of things and I'll just stop now."

Jim laughed. "Don't worry about it. I have a small fiefdom in Dweebtobia, so I know how it goes. I think this is actually about time the yearly harvest of Unbelievable Awkwardness starts coming in." He rubbed his stomach absently, cataloguing the physical symptoms that had eased so he could share it with Charles and Moira later. "It's a non-vicious cycle," he mused, taking a drink of water. "You're not stressed, so other people aren't stressed . . . physically, anyway. But the physical feeds back into the emotional. It's . . . nice."

Laurie nodded, taking a deep breath and trying to remain as calm as she could, to panic because the scrubber had run out of batteries would be stupid, and possibly harmful to Mr Haller. "I'm glad it's helping. Considering how many times I've been stressed or frightened, I had wondered if I'd ever see a nice use for it. I just wish I knew how to turn it off, it's hard to think happy fluffy bunny thoughts all the time."

"Tell me about it," Jim replied with just a touch of wryness. "But it's okay. My telepathy doesn't turn off either, but keeping it down's so automatic now I barely notice. Even if there's no way to stop your power entirely there are pretty good odds you'll at least be able to control the way your pheramones express without actually having to be in that emotional state. I think the professor could suggest a couple ways you could put it to good use. Me too, but maybe we'll get back to that when I'm a little less . . ." his lips quirked as he gestured to his general state of dishevelment, "Unsettling Teacher in the Basement."

Laurie giggled, noticing that he'd finished his meal. "Well, I guess I should take that back upstairs, I'll bring you down some more later though? If that's okay."

"Yeah. I think that'd be okay. And if there's any danger I'm going to be throwing things around with my brain I'll let you know so you can take the appropriate cover." Jim pressed the napkin to his mouth, pulling it clean, then smiled at her as he crumpled it onto the tray. The expression was tired, but sincere. "Thanks, Laurie," he said, and he didn't just mean for the meal.

"Glad I could help, Mr Haller." Laurie replied, picking up the tray and walking back toward the door. She paused for a moment and looked back at him. "I hope you feel better soon though, too much to do in the world to spend all your time in the one room."

"I don't know, the inside of my head is a world in itself," Jim said, but the smile stayed. One hand found the beaten cover of the Tao Te Ching again. Somehow, he thought he might actually have a chance to read it again. "But we'll see."