Log: Haller, Betsy ~ The Quarry

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This takes place shortly after this log.



Betsy stood over her sink with a dishcloth in her hand. She placed the glass into the strainer and picked up a plate to dry off. A slight rattling caught her attention as she noticed the glass in the strainer shaking, then Betsy looked down at her hands. She was shaking, her hands clenched in fists. The plate lying on the floor in pieces. "Jim?" Betsy whispered, reverently. She ran toward the door, grabbed her jacket and keys off the hook and closed the door with a loud bang.

******

Cracks like gunshots that showered rocks and debris. This was Cain's place, but Cain was gone. White dust choked eyes, nose, throat. It made no difference. He was beyond seeing. There was only the crack of his mind on rock. Over, and over, and over.

Jean had tried to teach him restraint. Now he wanted no control. None.

Break it all.

The wind wiping past as she brought her long coat closer around her body and looked down at the edge of the quarry, feeling her heart sink. She climbed through the dust cover, her hand above her face, keeping the bits of rock from hitting her. He was moving with such anger and hate. Betsy watched as Haller rained destruction, breaking himself piece by piece.

Dust and rocks roiled in sourceless currents as his arm jerked back and forth, fingers clawed. Physical crutches that were graceless. Skill-less. As blinding as his hate for the man responsible may have been, it was only a distant echo of the rage he felt at himself.

After all the things he'd been through and all the things that had been done to him there shouldn't have been any trust left to betray.

His hand drew back again, and this time the crash of rock mingled with Jack's scream.

And then she /felt/ it. The clear division between them all and Betsy forced back the shudder as she stepped forward. "Jack!" But the vessel continued delving into his wealth of rage, Betsy moved toward him. She brought her hand up to his arm and tightened as another cloud of dust surrounded them both. "Jack, please!"

The touch was like a needle in his arm. Jack whirled on her. There was a jerk from the intruder at the movement, but the grip didn't falter. He snarled--

The haze swirled around the building surge of power, chasing it from the form that had been just a silhouette. His power tugged at her hair and clothing like rippling wind, and he knew her.

The sustaining rage faltered with shock. The grey of his eyes dimmed, replaced by blue and brown, and the snarl that twisted his mouth fell away.

"Betsy," Jim whispered.

"Jim?" Betsy heaved, moving a step closer. "You're a sight for sore eyes, mentally-speaking, I mean. Are you all there? You're not going to rip a hole through me just for the hell of it?" Betsy eyed him carefully even though her eyes lit up the longer she studied him. She knew she was staring at the man she cared greatly for and for the moment, she was safe. Thankfully.

Jim looked down at the hand still around his arm. Firm. Grounding. He realized it was freezing, and he was covered in sweat. Finding a jacket had been the last thing on Jack's mind. Behind them rocks continued to roll and settle, smaller ones pocking off the side of the cliff as they fell.

Breathe.

"I was going through some boxes," Jim said softly. "Of my medical and custody records. Moira sent them from Muir when I got here. He's my father. The professor. He's my father."

"You asked him then?" Silence. "And he didn't deny it?" Betsy moved closer, wrapping her arms around him from behind. "I don't know what's more disturbing that," she murmured into his neck. "Or...you do know that would make Cain your uncle." She shuddered again. "Sort of ironic really since we are here of all places. And mildly disturbing." Betsy peered over his shoulder and tightened her hold on him, "Feeling less destructive now, I hope. All your friends calmed down then?"

"My uncle," Jim repeated in a hollow voice. "My aunt is my mother, Charles is my father, and Cain is my uncle." He stood in the rubble of the quarry, Betsy's unflinching arms circling his waist as her warm body pressed against his sweat-soaked back, and was at a total loss.

Jim said, "We need to sit."

Betsy pulled back slightly, twining her hand within his, keeping her contact constant. "All right, sitting is good." She waited a moment for him to get his breathing under control, watching the rivulets of sweat fall off his brow. "I'm sorry, luv. It's a shitty thing."

"I love your sense of British understatement." Jim pinched the bridge of his nose. The ache in his head was less now; the blind rage that had been tearing at it had been interrupted, calmed. It was temporary. He still felt it tugging beneath the surface like an undertow. Jim raised his head to stare at the broken cliff.

"He asked me to forgive him," he said. "But I can't stop thinking about what he did to us."

"I was in my apartment and all of a sudden - I saw you, patches and all. You were so angry and I felt it ripping through me. I felt it and you were all so broken."

He stared at her. His thoughts went back to last December, standing in front of his easel as blind need reached through the numbness, sharp and sudden like a hand grasping his sleeve. Desperate, pleading. He wondered, Was that what we felt like to her?

Jim looked away. "I'm sorry," he said, and it was all he could think of.

"God," Betsy said. "Don't be." She brought her other hand up to his face and forced him to look at her. "I'm still here and we both know whatever we are, it's together. You mean something to me, Jim. And if it requires a trip here every so often, I don't mind." She removed her hand, stood, and took a step back, looking up at the sky and laughing forcibly. "Besides, we both know I'm not the perfect image of sanity at my best times."

Mismatched eyes followed her retreat, wide with shock. Betsy's physical separation only underscored what she'd let slip, not lessened it. It was impossible to let this slide as the body-language and the false laugh said she wanted it to. These words, or the ones she'd uttered to him weeks before, now replaying in his mind.

"You're always spinning me about, making me, breaking me, helping me, and I have no way to block you."

Somehow their relationship really had come to mean something to Betsy -- and in that moment of connection Jim was terrified for her, because there was only one place this could lead.

Close someone in a room full of broken glass and they were going to bleed.

As badly as he'd taken the revelation, Jim understood with painful clarity exactly what had driven Charles to Gaby that night. The physical aspect was the least of it. What he'd needed was the affirmation, and what it implied. I know what you are, and I still choose you.

A small thing, and the world between grace and damnation.

The son needed it just as much as the father had. And looking at Betsy standing in the settling dust, her eyes resolutely fixed on the sky, Jim realized it was also something she needed to give.

Jim rose shakily, feeling weak and drained. "'Not so bad by comparison'," he said with a faint, sad smile. "The foundation of our relationship." He drew his hands over his face, feeling the skin slick with a sheen of dust. "I don't know what to do, Betts."

"We'll do what we always do," Betsy whispered, looking back at him with a soft smile. She brought her hand back to his and squeezed. "We'll survive. And have sex, of course. Sex with you would be even better. But sex, nonetheless."

Jim choked. Not on the dust.

"You really have a talent for comfort."