LOG: Haller/Betsy ~ After Essex

[x-psylocke.livejournal.com]

After this episode here. Betsy makes it home in one piece only to find out she's not really alone.



She didn't remember leaving the Brownstone or hailing a cab. Just remembered that she desperately needed her mind to remain unfocused long enough to get to her intended destination, to simply move forward toward oblivion in the hopes of doing so without any witnesses. A sharp stinging sensation in her hands brought her up short and she looked down at the rivulets of blood dripping from her cut palms. The sound of glass crinkling under her fingertips and then the rush of liquid seeping into her wound, bringing her mind into focus.

Betsy was back in her apartment in the Upper West Side, standing in front of her kitchen island. There with her was a half empty bottle to her left and a broken glass in her right hand. She stared curiously down at the shards, closing her hand over them and felt the anger finally subside into something wholly more familiar. Something desperate.

Then there was a knock on the door. Soft but deliberate, and before she even had a chance to respond to it the knob of the door she'd failed to lock was already turning.

"Hey, Betsy," Jim said quietly. He didn't wait for an invitation. Right now, he doubted it would have been given. But something had brought him here from Westchester, an unmistakable trickle of foreign emotion that had pierced even the numbness of his stunted power. As he stood there in the privacy of his room, his brush halted in mid-stroke over canvas, he'd realized who was reaching out to him -- in spite of the fact that he'd thought she would want anything but.


The door clicked quietly closed behind the telepath as his eyes traveled slowly from the bottle in one hand to the red smear of the other, then up to Betsy's. "You called?"

"Call? No, I don't think I did." Betsy looked hard at the mismatched pair of eyes studying her before self-consciously looking away. "Unless, I'm really that far gone and forgotten that I actually called you here?"

"No. Don't worry. There was no phone this time." This brought a small, lopsided smile, and Jim reached up to brush his temple. "Kind of a surprise for me, too." His eyes flickered again to the lowered hands, then back to the woman's pale face. "Betsy, you're bleeding."

A small smirk lifted her lips as she realized his meaning. Another bad habit she hadn't been able to drop. "Don't trouble yourself," Betsy said as she turned away from his concern and brought her hand under the sink, intent on cleaning herself up but remained transfixed by the blood and glass. Her other hand trailing precariously close to the small of her back, to a scar that no longer existed, at least on the outside.

A few quick strides brought him around the island and to the counter beside her. Long fingers slipped around the wrist of her stricken hand, raising it to the light gently but inexorably. He turned her hand palm-up, the welling blood bright against her palm. Her skin was cold and clammy.

"I came here to be troubled," Jim replied.

She hissed at the feeling of cold water, pouring into the wound, and instinctively tried pulling her hand back. But the firm hold Haller kept on her wrist held her in place and with that particular look he gave her, Betsy finally stilled. "I don't know why you bother," Betsy muttered back darkly. "I...I'm not what you think. I'm damaged."

Jim smiled without humor. The water that streamed into the sink was dirty-brown with dilluted blood. He reached over for the roll of papertowels. "And we're one to talk, about not being what someone thought?" he asked softly. Rough paper pressed lightly against wounded flesh, daubing up the water. "Please tell me, Betts. What happened?"

She took the papertowel from his grasp and forcibly pushed against the cut. Wincing slightly, Betsy walked away from him, holding her hand close to her chest to stave off the bleeding. But with her left, she reached for the neck of the bottle on the countertop. "I woke up from one nightmare and found myself stuck within another. " With that, she took a heavy swallow, hoping to ebb away the waves of painful frenetic thoughts rummaging through her mind.

"Betsy." One hand curved around her to push the bottle down and away from her mouth while the other rose to her opposite shoulder. Nothing more than a light touch, but undeniably there. The drinking and the tightness in her voice weren't the only signs. Now in physical contact, the turbulence in her mind was screaming to him. He'd known something was wrong after that night he'd found her at the bar, but this was different. Something in her had been torn open, and feeling the wound pressed right against his mind cut him on more levels than he'd thought possible.

She didn't want him here, but this time he wasn't leaving.

"Betsy," Jim repeated, his voice now low and steady, "what do you mean?"

She couldn't bring herself to speak, but really she didn't need to. At his touch, flashes of forcibly blocked images surged forward and Betsy visibly shook as the day's events pushed forward. When everything was laid out and in the open, the purple-haired telepath let out a low sob as she bowed forward in shock. "He came back and all I wanted to do was kill him where he stood, to watch the life seep out of his body, but I couldn't. I wanted to and I couldn't. Even if Pete hadn't shown his face....I couldn't do it."

Click, click. At the unexpected flood of information Jim felt his mind fall back to that short time they'd shared her bed, and the dreams that had sometimes followed them there. Darkness, and hands around his neck . . . incomplete nightmares, images divorced of meaning and relevance to him, and laced with old horrors he'd never known how to pursue nor felt he had a right to. Betsy had her nightmares, and he had his. It wasn't his place to pry.

But now with Betsy's memories of today what had been only a white shark-smile in the dreams was replaced with a face. A face that after all those years on Muir Jim remembered well.

Dr. Essex?

In that instant the urge to become Jack was almost unbearable -- but this time not, Jim was numbly shocked to realize, to attack the woman inches away for the psychic invasion, as he and Cyndi had done all those months ago after San Diego. This time it was to protect -- and retaliate.

But there was no one to retaliate against. There was only him, and Betsy. A slow, deep breath set the impulse aside; his thoughts slowed and calmed. He stood there, whole in himself, and opened his eyes.

"Before -- July," Jim said slowly, "the professor told me something. It was when Marie-Ange got psychically attacked, and I went in to repair the damage. I saw something in her mind. I asked, and he told me. About what had happened to you. With Kwannon. I didn't . . . I didn't know how to tell you. And then we didn't have the chance." Jim shook his head but refused to let the burgeoning guilt swallow him. "This . . . has to do with that, doesn't it."

"All roads lead to and within that bloody mistake." Betsy said miserably, as she moved from the kitchen and took a seat on the sofa. Her feet curled in under her legs and her hands wrapped protectively around her body. Everything in the way she held herself spoke of her need to pull back. "So, he told you about it then? I wondered how long it'd be before someone would make you aware of what I did. What happened," she scoffed. "Marie Ange was one of many."

"Charles only told me because I asked." The other telepath hesitated for a moment, then wordlessly seated himself on the opposite end of the couch. "I asked because as soon I found the damage in Marie-Ange's mind I knew you hadn't been the one to do it. Even though it was your power." Long hands laced across his knees. "I kind of know what that's like."

"But you knew it was me," Betsy whispered. "It must've been quite shocking to you to find the base of the manipulation in Marie-Ange's mind to hold the same distinct imprint of my powers before Charles explained what he could to you." She placed her hands in her lap and looked darkly at them. "I know that what you go through is painfully similar but it is not the same. And while I am in no way diminishing what you go through. I know that you don't suffer from something that malevolently wishes for you to die. That waits for one chance to take over and smother what's left of your soul."

Muscles in Jim's forehead twitched at a sudden spike of pain, and one hand moved up to pinch the bridge of his nose as he automatically moved towards the old self-soothing methods. There was a time, and a place. But not now. Thoughts quieting again, Jim exhaled and lowered his hand.

"I didn't need the professor to tell me that you weren't the one who did that to Marie-Ange. Only why." Jim shifted his eyes from his hands to hers. "Charles told me that she's . . . still there. It is different. For you. I won't pretend that I've lived with what you've had to live with. But having something ugly and twisted inside you . . . it doesn't mean that's what you have to be. It will never be all you are. I know." Jim raised one hand, haltingly, then reached across the space between them to brush a strand of purple hair away from her eyes and behind her ear. "I know," he murmured.

Fighting her instinct to reach out, to lean into Haller's touch, Betsy feared the compulsion and pulled back from him. "Well, you don't know all of it...." She paused, feeling trapped all of a sudden. "I appreciate this, all of this, but it isn't necessary. You don't owe me anything. In fact, maybe it is better if you stay away. This is going to get ugly, rather quickly. And I don't....I don't want you involved in this."

"Crazy purple ex-supermodel ninja. Handicapped psi doesn't mean I don't sense anything. Especially when someone reaches." The crooked smile that twitched Jim's mouth faded as quickly as it had come. He slid his fingers beneath her wounded hand and picked it up again, carefully, turning the livid cuts up to the open air. The blood was drying now. He looked from her hand to her eyes. "It's not about owing. It's about things you deserve. And what I want to give."

"Jim, please," Betsy pleaded. Everything still felt too raw, too open. She wasn't in the right headspace to handle this correctly and she knew it. She closed her eyes, trying to avoid looking into those searching pair of brown and blue. Then a sharp flash of a memory cut so close beneath the darkness, surfacing so harshly that she gasped out loud. Kwannon and Essex. No, not Kwannon. Her uncut hand going to her temple, willing the images to go away.

Jim watched as more images cascaded: a hotel room in Baltimore, and the slice of cold metal. Burning in the wound, and then . . .

The cold swell of his own rage was set aside almost without a thought. Right now, Jim allowed himself to focus on only one thing: Betsy.

It was his response of last resort, but sometimes there was truly no other way. Jim stretched out to her with his telepathy, taking her mind in his own, soothing her thoughts and providing some small sense of distance. What she was experiencing now were things that couldn't be taken away, and that no one but Betsy could make right for her, and it tore at him to know there was nothing he could do to help her there, but he could do what Charles had done for David long ago when the relentless cascade of old horrors had become unbearable: be there, and offer some small respite.

"Betsy." Jim lay his hands on her shaking shoulders, matching the physical and verbal contact to reinforce the psychic. "It's okay. You're here. You're safe. You're safe."

One hand slid up to cup her face, his fingers dark against the frightening whiteness of her face. #Please, babe,# he sent, #stay with me.#

There. Betsy felt the reinforcing of her dark and damaged roots from within. Slowly, she heard the soft murmur of Jim's comforting words, the haze dissipating, and slowly the shaking subsided. Opening pale eyes, she found herself clutching onto Haller's strength and enclosed in a deep embrace. She held on for dear life as her mind shifted back into the present and thankfully let go.

Jim exhaled slowly again, the self-monitoring so automatic it was barely conscious. He wanted to kiss her, but he knew on no uncertain terms that intimate was absolutely the last place this could go. Especially with what he had just seen in her mind. She was already in his mind and in his arms. If that was enough for her . . . that was more than enough for him.

"Will you have to see him again?" Jim asked after a long moment. He retracted his telepathic presence slightly as he did; she'd calmed enough on her own that it wasn't needed, and he couldn't and wouldn't be another addiction. Nonetheless, he allowed a faint link to remain -- continued confirmation of his presence. For the time being, at least.

Betsy shuddered at the thought. "I don't know," she finally said. "I don't know if I can without..." Everything seemed to grow fuzzy again and insisted on staying grounded. Betsy focused her attention to the man holding her. The scratchy feel of stubble against her cheek. And then there was the light smell of paint on his neck, Betsy pulled back to see a light patch just above his collar line. If only she could forget at least for a little while. And then she sensed the slight sensation of want underlying Haller's concern for her. Betsy blinked slowly and carefully leaned into a soft kiss. Affirmation.

Jim would have liked to believe that his unwillingness to break off the kiss was shock or the selfless desire not to make her feel like she was being rejected, but the plain fact of the matter was: it had been a long time. And as much as he'd tried to convince himself otherwise, both as alters and as himself, he was still the farthest thing from over her. He took her kiss and let his mouth work over hers in response, almost against his will.

Jim found himself really loathing timing.

"Um," Jim said as the kiss finally broke off for the simple necessity of breathing, "This, this isn't a good idea. Not right now." He narrowly avoided a physical cringe even as he said it. I hate my life I hate my life I hate my life.

"Right," Betsy said with a shake of her head. "Sorry, I didn't mean to..." She looked up at him and felt herself withdrawing, pulling her hands away from around him. "Probably shouldn't have done that. I...not thinking correctly," Betsy finally managed. Sitting down, she looked lost in her thoughts again, getting enveloped by something else completely.

"No! I, I mean, I . . ." Jim pinched the bridge of his nose. There was a considerable part of his mind, carefully compartmentalized away from her, that was going Oh god please don't blow this dammit dammit dammit! "Okay. I can literally see the cliche forming as it leaves my mouth, but this -- it's not you. If you ever wanted to . . . if we were going to be together again, there are things. I need to tell you. Because I don't want what happened after San Diego to happen again."

Jim took her hand again, heedless of her unresponsiveness. "I want you," he said, and let the truth of that bleed into the link that still remained. "I'm just . . . I don't want to start anything without you knowing if you want me."

Those three words, startled Betsy out of her reverie. I want you. She stared at him, slightly puzzled. Then she felt his warm caress just out of reach and she looked up at him again. A decision crossing over her face. Betsy nodded jerkily at him and held out her other hand for him to join her back on the sofa.

Jim took an abortive step forward, almost in spite of himself, then hesitated at her gesture. "Wait. Your hand is still -- hang on." Jim hastily turned to the kitchen, and the first aid kit under the sink. The one she'd been reaching for before he distracted her, he realized belatedly, but Betsy hadn't been the only one distracted at the time. Now wasn't much better. Now he was afraid. No . . . frankly, he was terrified. If he told her everything, told her that thing no one but Charles and Moira knew . . .

But that was a worry for later. And even long odds of her being with him again after that were better than none.

Jim extracted the plastic case from beneath the sink and took it to the couch, sitting himself beside her, close enough for their knees to touch. "Okay. Let's get you cleaned up."

"Okay," Betsy murmured, already feeling the day's event wearing her down. She leaned her head softly against his shoulder, turning her right hand toward him and let him work. Her eyes felt heavy even now and she felt the bits of tension from him but chose to focus on his breathing instead. It calmed and soothed her to the point she felt 'safe' enough to close her eyes without fear of what could possibly happen just beyond her sight.

#Sleep, babe.# The sending was gentle, barely on the edge of consciousness. Jim lay her bandaged hand down and circled one arm around her shoulders. He settled deeper into the couch and leaned over to press his lips to her hair.

I'll be here.

Comments

[x-viento.livejournal.com]

Aww... they're so cute and screwed up. *pinches cheeks*

(But! I reallyreally liked this, yes. How Tap manages to sound so consistantly masculine, the world may never know. Very good job, darlings.)