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xp_logsAfter Jack's post:
Where we've come from.
March 10, 2000
Tomorrow?
Yeah.
So we're really going to do this?
Yeah. I guess so.
Is there anything you want to do first? Do you need to do anything?
No, I'm OK.
You always say that.
If you don't write something this isn't a dialogue.
Do you want to see your mom?
No.
Why?
It's just better.
I wish you would.
Are you okay?
Yeah.
You're not okay.
Do you want to watch Clerks?
OK.
March 15, 2000
Went outside for the first time today. It was raining. The water was cold. It ran down my neck and into my shirt, hard, big drops, pounding me in the face, and it was the first time in years I thought:
I'm alive.
My head feels so heavy, but clear. Clearer than it's been for a long time. Concentrated.
Charles asked who we want to be.
I think I want to be Jim.
August 4, 2000
I thought I heard somebody talking to me. There was no one.
The professor said it might be unstable.
Wait and see.
Breathe.
September 19, 2000
Lost time.
February 23, 2001
Went to see Dr. Allen today. Didn't talk. It was a waste of time. I'm not sick. David was sick. I'm not David but Jim is David is Jemail, we're Jim. We need to think as one person or this will get worse. It can't get worse. You dragged me into your freak show. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't want you to die I didn't want to die, but not like this. We can't undo it. We can't. But I can't be like this! I'm sorry I'm sorry do something, god please somebody do something, please god somebody help me, please let me out and make this stop
I'm sorry
I'm sorry
I'm sorry
June 5, 2001
that fuckin son of a bitch fuck him fuck him tryin that on me he has no rights this isn't his brain WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS he's going to pay i'm going to make him pay i'm going to show him who he's fuckin with
i am fucking fire
June 17, 2001
It hurts, n when I go away I cant hear or see any thing. Jack said Jim did some thing Bad to us n it was Charles fault but he wont say what. Cyndi is so mad, our arm is hurt n I have to write with the other one because it has no skin n I dont know whats going on.
Jim, where are you?
February 24, 2002
Need Charles.
The cripple piece of shit who did this to us.
He did what I asked him to do.
He knew it would do this to you.
He warned me. He warned us. I begged him anyway.
He could have said no. He could have not drawn you a fucking map and sat you on his lap to push the pedals while you steered the wheel. So why did he?
Because I asked. Because David would have gone insane if he didn't.
What are you now?
What did you do to Davey?
He's where you can't contaminate him.
You think you deserve control in here?
You're nothing. And I'll show you what that means if I have to kill us all.
Call Charles
Where we're going.
His steps galvanized the small grey birds picking at the shore into flight, fluttering with the beat of wings and the muted calls of alarm. He had started in the Medlab. Somehow he had gotten to the lake, carried by feet that moved of their own accord. Running.
Escaping.
Now the water barred him. There was nowhere left to go. The initiative that had sustained his flight bled away; his legs folded beneath him, collapsing him into the dirt. With Cyndi he had boiled a tsunami; with Jack, held back the wall of water through the sheer force of his will. Now he had neither. He was just David, unable even to reach out of his own head, and now watching as all his cards were ripped out of his grasp and thrown face-up on the table.
David Haller, nothing boy.
Another of Charles' telepathic overtures came, and once again he rejected it. Alone, alone, leave me alone! Hands rose to his face, a slow, inexorable arc of bone and scarred skin, and David's scream echoed across the water.
"You're scaring the fish."
Cain's matter-of-fact tone belied his concern, as he wandered leisurely down the path towards David, a long fishing pole balanced over one shoulder. He'd checked his email on the way out the door, then stopped by Charles' office to laugh at him without explanation, then off to the lake to fish. Only now, he found Haller -his nephew, by all accounts - collapsed on the shore screaming at the waves.
The young man's head rose slow jerkily, like a machine missing a gear. The moment of emotion had passed. David's boney frame unfolded from the crouch with all the grace of a rusted lawnchair and his hands drifted down to rest on his knees. The picture of serenity.
"Sorry," David said without turning to look at the speaker. "Nervous breakdown. I can have it somewhere else." Long legs pushed and straightened beneath him, the movement raining dust and fragments of dry grass. "Sorry."
"Sit down."
While Cain's tone was soft, the words were no less an order for their lack of volume. He walked over to David's side and crouched down in the dirt and grass, absently fiddling with his fishing pole. "Had yourself a hell of a time recently, ain't you?"
David's hands traveled to the dirt and curled. His fingernails darkened as dirt began to collect. The sun pressed on his face warm as a blanket. Some small piece of life rippled the lake, indistinguishable against the green.
"I pulled Jem into hell, and he's been burning ever since." He said to the soft click click of the other man's reel, "And part of me wants him to."
"Way I hear it," Cain drawled as he cast his line out over the lake, "you were a kid and had an accident. So you got voices in your head. And this whatsisname, Jim fella, he's an actual other person got caught up in the mess. Shit happens, you know. Ain't always the best, but you gotta learn to live with it."
"Jemail. Jem. That's his name." The younger man watched the line cut a lazy V in the water in response to minute adjustments of slack. "He's more than caught. Last summer when the lake burned, right before you left, we talked about having power that wasn't yours, and living past your time. I said the words, but it was Jem who was talking. I shook your hand. You took his, too. Synergy. That's what 'Jim' is." David lifted his hands, letting the dirt crumble. "Was."
"Oh, cry me a fucking river already," Cain growled, pulling in his line and casting again. "I'm sixty-seven years old. You're what, twenty? Don't try and give me shit about living past your time. Yeah, I figured I was riding off into the sunset. But you know what I did instead?" Cain glared over at Haller, shaking his head. "I wasn't fucking about to give up. I took him by the goddamn throat and I kicked his ass to Hell and back, literally. Didn't see me weeping like some damn schoolgirl who got dumped at the prom."
"What am I supposed to be fighting? Charles? Aunt Gaby? The guy who's only ever tried to make up for what he did to me, who spent almost ten years using the power that killed him to try and put my mind back together, and who my subconscious is torturing on top of murdering?" The faintest suggestion of heat rose, then ebbed again. "You said you'd done a lot you weren't proud of, but Cyttorak was something outside of you. You could fight him. I'm killing the same person a second time because Jack proves that no matter what I want, deep down I can't let go." The younger man's hand tightened into a fist. The gauze wrapped around his wounded hand crinkled, spidering white threads in the cake of dirt. "It's my brain, and I'm the only one without a fucking vote."
"Your head," Cain insisted, "you decide who stays or goes. Only reason you ain't doing that is because you're a weak-willed chickenshit." Cain snorted derisively. "Looks like you inherited that from your old man. David can't get his head together because it'd be mean to all his imaginary friends. Hell with that." Cain set down the fishing rod and pointed at the mansion. "You've been learning all the wrong goddamn lessons from those folks in there. The martyrs, the self-absorbed whiners, the ones who keep putting themselves in the shit and complaining about the smell. Either you want to change, or you don't. And if you do, then you fucking do it."
It was incredible. Today was only the latest in a series of weeks where he'd felt steadily more cored, and yet somehow in less than a minute Cain had succeeded in driving his bloodpressure through the roof. Clenching his jaw had never been his habit, but in the quiet, peaceful spring afternoon David almost cracked his back teeth.
He managed to grit, "It doesn't really work like that."
"No?" Cain asked. "Then how does it work? Chuck need to sit you down and put your broken brain back together again? I ain't an expert on crazy, but after a few years here, I'm becoming a bit of an authority on people who can't get their shit together. If you want to join the parade of people who rely on Chuck to solve their problems for them, hey, be my guest. He's in the big house up there. Can't miss him, bald guy in the chair. Likes tea."
Unbelievably, the mention of Charles made his head actually throb with the pressure of the blood suddenly being hammered through his veins. Had Cyndi still been present she would have said 'Issues, thy name is Daddy,' although since Cyndi didn't know words like 'thy' only in spirit.
His mind was in shreds. His friend was dying, and an aspect of himself was trying its best to make his last remaining hours agony. And now he was sitting here on what was possibly the worst day of a life that seemed to be contrived only of new and hideous ways to top itself and being abused and that was enough.
The red and white bobber dipped in the water as David rose again. Wind rustled the branches above them, touching their clothes, their hair; black and red moved. Across the lake some hidden bird called. Bweeeet bweetbweetbweet . . .
Cyndi held fire. Jack held force.
And the fist that slammed to full extension an inch from Cain's face drove both.
The punch was a surprise. The telekinetic force behind it even more so, as Cain found himself knocked almost thirty feet through the air before he impacted the lake shore, digging a trench almost half the length of a football field before coming to a stop.
Quietly, he sat up, exhaling slowly. In the distance he could see Haller - no, David - standing at the shore, a small corona of flame fading around him.
And the only thing Cain could think to do was smile.
"That's more like it..."
David stared at his still outstretched fist like an alien landscape. He hadn't quite realized he was swinging at Cain, but as the blanket of heat around him dissipated he was acutely aware of a certain rawness to his exposed skin. The gauze around his hand was oddly shriveled.
He looked at Cain, laying half-swallowed in lips of dirt, and all he could get out was "How?"
Then his eyes widened as he remembered Charles' words to him in the Medlab, almost unregistered at the time.
"You're healing, David."
Covered in wet dirt and shreds of grass, Cain stomped back over to David, looking down at his nephew. He stood there for a moment, then reached down and picked up his fishing pole, slowly winding the line in. As the bobber approached the shore, it jerked once, provoking a smile from Cain.
"Hey," he said cheerfully, as if he hadn't just been punched across the entire shore, "a bite."
David, standing in the middle of a ring of grass that was noticeably browner than it had been before, stared at him.
"You have deep psychological problems," he said.
"Says the boy whose brain's run by committee," Cain remarked, reeling in the line until he held up a wriggling fish. Frowning, he gingerly unhooked his catch and tossed it back to the lake, muttering something almost like 'too damn small'.
David watched the ripples in the lake die. Healing. The infection had been introduced long ago. Jemail was like a failed organ transplant, and Jack had responded like any immune system would: rejection. The psychic inhibitors Charles had imposed to act as immuno-suppressants were gone; he knew now they had only ever served to buy time.
Sometimes the only way to close a wound was to excise the damage.
So that's what I have to do.
"There's somewhere I have to be," David said. The last ripples from the released fish sloshed gently at the shore as the young man turned back to the mansion and paused. "Thanks."
"Yep," Cain remarked simply, casting his line out into the lake again.
David shook his head, smiling faintly. "I have no good rolemodels," he murmured.
Maybe, he thought as he started walking back towards the mansion. Mistakes had been made. By him, too. Even so, now it was time to apply the lessons.
And the end.
It had been a long day. At this point, it had been a long day, a long week, several very long months that were all part of the longest year on record. The email waiting for her when she'd gotten back from Mass, stunning and horrifying in its implications as it was, hit Lorna as just yet another thing and for several minutes all she could do was hang her head back and cover her eyes. Her best friend had gone spectacularly crazy and crazier, it seemed, than was even apparent. Special.
Given that this was David--David, being after all, David even when he was everyone else--Lorna knew there would be hiding, trying to run until the problem was covered over by something else. So she went to his room and knocked on the door. The trouble with the alters was that they had no substance of their own. She could have sensed David. But the rest were as insubstantial as mist. She rather hoped that Jack was home. It would be nice to punch him.
The knock jarred the gauze from his hands; falling from nerveless fingers, it hit the floor and rolled, streaming white behind it. He tried to shoot to his feet and hit his knee hard against the coffee table. If the resulting bang hadn't been enough to dispel the illusion of an empty room the curse of pain that followed stomped it to pieces.
Lorna sighed and pushed the door open, letting herself in. "Hello?" She was hoping for a Haller--any Haller. She didn't know if she could quite deal with the stranger with the familiar face. She very much wasn't equipped to deal with the sight that greeted her. Gasping, she'd taken three steps back again before the whole scene registered.
There were dark spots on his jeans. The source was more obvious through the thinner cloth of the tanktop. Blood, soaking through. The gauze that wound around the right side of his face covered eye and cheek, but the skin creeping across his chin revealed a patch too pink for his dusky skin.
Lorna. The person he'd least wanted to be confronting after what had been revealed. Had feared ever since the first time she'd ever brought him lunch back when they were still distant enough that she would knock. Panic -- but no escape. Nothing to be done.
Moving clumsily, the young man fished a packet of cigarettes out of the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt. He couldn't manipulate the package; he shook one out onto his palm as best he could.
"Don't worry," Jemail told her as he pocketed the package, cigarette held clumsily in a left hand thick with bandages, "you're not going to be seeing it much longer."
"You gave me a cigarette. In the dream." It was possibly the most inane thing she could have said. Lorna scrubbed her hands on her jeans and took a deep breath. As Jack had said, she already knew "Jim." She just hadn't known. "What's happening?"
The young man withdrew his lighter and snapped it into flame. When he drew breath the cigarette burned down. He could taste it. Smell it. But it wasn't real. Sensory hallucinations, telepathy inflicted on . . . himself. Air being moved by telekinesis. Cyndi's telekinesis -- David's telekinesis. All of David. All his powers working as one, playing out the fantasy for himself and everyone else.
He took a drag. Almost too slightly to be noticed, the fingers that drew the cigarette away from his lips shook.
"We cheated for a while, but only one could stay. That's how it was always going to go down." Jemail fixed his gaze on the cigarette held in his afflicted hand. "I know. I didn't say goodbye, but since I skipped on hello anyway I figured why not two for two."
"And so you're graphically falling apart instead? My God, is there anything about you and David that isn't actually made of Drama?" He was freaking her out. Just standing there, just the reality of him. A parasite in her best friend's head; half of who her best friend was. Like Malice--someone dead and gone but persistent. If she hadn't killed Malice, would they have come to this? Two people with one body and soul?
"Astral voodoo. It's . . ." Jemail struggled for the metaphor. "Like a vine. Those ones that grow into trees. They can choke them. You tear them off and save the tree, but you can't get it all. Pieces get left behind. The vine dies." The tightness in his jaw as he paused showed the casual tone for the lie it was. "'I have a mindworm' doesn't exactly slide easy into a conversation."
"You're bleeding!" Lorna pointed out somewhat hysterically, proving she either wasn't listening or wasn't processing.
Jemail stared at the bandaged hand, the neurotic wrappings he'd begun to apply after Jack's revelation. Not to staunch the blood, because it couldn't. To hide the only thing he had left to hide. Back in San Diego Kurt had asked: 'Haller?', and Jack had made his promise.
"They really think that's you, don't they? That's fine. Now that we're out of the cripple's convenient little cage again we'll show them exactly what you are. That's what you wanted, right? No more hiding."
It wasn't the DID he'd meant. David had never wanted to hide this. The secrecy, the shame -- that had been Jemail. All Jemail.
Jemail lowered his cigarette, and the tense line of his shoulders collapsed. "Lorna, I'm sorry," he whispered.
She could feel herself shaking, felt the trembling from her hands through her shoulders and down her spine. She curled her fingers to fists and put her back against the wall, seeking strength in rigidity. When she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper for the same reason. Not that it mattered--he was a projection. Just in her head. "You've been lying to me about who you are for an entire year. I never asked. I never pushed. And you let me believe..." Lorna bit her lip. "You gave me a cigarette in the dream. And then Jim lied to my face."
"Don't be too hard on the kid. That one was a collaborative effort."
Jack walked through the open door. Something in the way he placed his steps carried the weight of a decision. Making his way to the wall farthest from Lorna he settled in to lean, grey eyes fixed on Jemail.
"Jack, wait!" Betsy called out from the hallway. She crossed the doorway focused on her target. "Damn it, I am not following you like a damn lap dog...." Taking in the scene, Jack at Jemail's side, Lorna holed up behind her by the door.
"After all, it's hard to be honest when you got someone standing behind you twisting your arm behind your back," Jack finished.
Betsy's shoulders dropped, stopping dead in her tracks. "Are you actually dripping?"
"I think it's technically more ooze," Cyndi observed, coming up behind her. Her tone was flip, but her eyes lingered on Jemail. From the doorway Davey wrapped his hands around the frame and peered around the corner, pale-faced. The girl gravitated towards the sofa, and for once she didn't sprawl. She sat calmly, hands palms-down on the cushion. Her head turned to the woman standing by the door. "Lorna," she said, her normally exaggerated cadences softened, "you still with us?"
Lorna glanced at Cyndi, a little wide-eyed and fraying about the edges. "I should go." Her gaze tracked from the girl to the man to the boy in the doorway then finally back to the dark bandaged man in the center of all this. "I...have...should go."
"Lorna," Betsy turned away, her eyes still on Jemail. "We should talk. No, we need to talk."
"Later." Lorna edged to the door, avoiding all eyes. She watched the floor.
Betsy moved swiftly to Lorna's side, pulling her deeper into the room. "It's not as bad as it looks," she said fiercely. "I would be frightened as you are this very moment and you have every right to be. And normally I would not ask this of you but you cannot leave them like this." She bent her head lower, speaking directly in Lorna's ear. "They'll take it personally. It's never been hard for any one of them to think themselves an abomination and sadly for you each one of them looks to you as if you were Queen. You can't leave," she whispered. "Not without breaking them in the process."
"I'm not..." Lorna took a breath, focused on the woman in front of her. "I'm not scared. It's not them. I...can't do this. I need to go. You're here. He'll...they'll listen to you." Grey eyes, blue eyes, green eyes...she didn't have to see them to know they were on her, all with that preternatural calm that said they were--no matter what they looked like--products of the same mind. "They lied to me," she said softly, despairing, "but that's not the problem. I don't want to make things worse."
"Please stay." The youngest alter slipped around the doorframe and joined the women. His skin was still ashen, but the set to his jaw carried more years than the face that held it. He met Lorna's gaze, but it was Betsy, standing beside him, whose hand he reached out to.
"David's always witness," the boy said to them. "Now he needs somebody else to see him."
Jack's taut posture never loosened, but there was suddenly there was an air of attentiveness around him. Cyndi remained seated, her expressive face for once inscrutable. In the back of the room, just steps from Jack, Jemail stood alone.
"Will you?" asked Cyndi.
Grey, blue, green--all drawn from the same thought. What kind of friend would she be if she could not be a friend now? If she let her own memories punish the four...two..one... Lorna trembled in place then bowed her head slowly. "Fine. We'll talk."
Davey looked up to the woman whose hand he held. "Betsy?"
"You lot can work this out without me," Betsy said, reflecting on the texture of Davey's hand. Soft but it wasn't really there, was it? She still reassuringly squeezed his fingers, rubbing her thumb over his palm. Yes, this would be better done by Lorna. They all felt comfortable around her and Lorna could help fit the pieces and make it make sense. Though her friend never acknowledged this ability, she had a distinct knack for making things whole, mutation aside. Betsy released Davey's hand an attempt to expedite her exit. "This will go farther without another voice clogging up the process. I'll go find David while you all chat."
The newcomer's presence was revealed only by the soft click of metal in metal.
"I'm here," David said, voice quiet in the crowded silence. Blue eyes took in the room as the young man closed the door behind him: Jemail and Jack in the back, Cyndi on the couch, Lorna and Davey in the center, and Betsy, frozen half in flight.
David moved across the room and stopped in front of Betsy. He stopped, hesitating, his eyes on hers, and then reached out to take her hand.
"Please, babe," David whispered. The second hand moved to join the first, fingers tracing her knuckles, "stay."
Wordlessly, Davey gravitated to Lorna's side. He wrapped her in a brief hug, then pulled away.
"This is completely cracked," she said to no one in particular. Her eyes were trained at their entangled hands. "You do know that? All right, I'll stay but no good will come of it.""
Lorna's hand curled through Davey's hair, brushing back through unruly black locks--something else they all had in common--then settled on his neck, keeping him close, though for his comfort or hers she didn't know. "I don't understand exactly what we're supposed to be doing here. I just came over to see how David was after..." Mentioning the email was probably really dumb right now so Lorna just finished her sentence with a one-shouldered shrug.
David held his eyes on Betsy's for a moment longer. He squeezed her hands, then released them and stepped away. Cyndi tapped on of her heels against the side of the couch. "You came to see what the hell was going on, right? So now we gotta explain. Betts, sorry about the incoming redundancy, but I think at this point Lorna needs a little enlightening." Cyndi levered herself from the couch and brushed herself off, looking at the three men in the room. "But not from Captain Moodswing or the Wonder Twins, because no way are we getting unbiased reporting from them. Yo, Davey! Storytime!"
Davey blinked, then squirmed out of Lorna's arms and ran to the couch. He dropped to his knees and peered under the furniture while Jack watched with an impassivity that almost bordered on boredom. Jemail stood in silence, eyes trained on the floor, and across the room stood David, eyes trained on him.
"This story makes my brain hurt," Davey explained, his arm shoved up beneath the couch up to his shoulder, "I need visual aids. --Found it!" He emerged from the depths of the couch triumphantly, flourishing an old metal Voltron toy. He crossed his legs under him and looked around the room expectantly from the floor. "This is the Story of David's Brain."
To Lorna's look Cyndi just shrugged. "Dude, don't judge. I figure if we get the 10 year old to do it this explanation might actually have a shot at being understandable."
"Okay," Davey said, warming to his role, "way long ago David accidentally sucked Jem into his brain -- aw, hang on." The boy paused to detach one leg, then hefted the toy again. "Okay. Jem got sucked into the brain. There was some stuff with a coma and then Charles got us out and that's boring so I'll just say David got lots and lots of therapy, Jem helped and we got better. Jem was in our brain but he wasn't part of our brain. He was like a cranky roommate who's sometimes nice and makes dinner. David," Davey waggled the one-legged humanoid to ensure identification of the props was up to date -- "Jemail" the single leg got a wave. The boy paused to assess Lorna's comprehension so far. "With us?"
Lorna blinked, surveyed the blue lion and nodded, "Jemail is Princess Allura. Or Sven. Got it." Going with the crazy was so much easier than trying to parse the crazy.
Davey wrinkled his nose at her. "Stop thinking about it! Thinking ruins metaphors. Anyway, ummm . . ." There was a little flurry of activity as Davey hastily juggled the contents of his hands to allow him to straighten the lone lion's joints. He presented the quadrupedal result to her. "Okay. The lion can walk and do all the stuff a lion does. Like run and hunt and choke gazelles." He lifted the one-legged mecha. "Voltron's only got one leg. I mean, he can still punch things, but when I want to play something I like stuff that's got an even number of legs. David's brain did that. Except with brains, not legs." He paused for dramatic effect.
Cyndi raised a piercing-studded eyebrow. "Uh, you wanna give her a little more there?"
"Jem is the lion," Davey said, exasperated. "David is Voltron. David's brain was broken and lame."
"So totally true," Cyndi nodded.
Davey ignored her. "When David started getting more back together it was like tug-o-war. Because even if you've got powers your brain can only take so much, 'cause you know, only one person's supposed to be in there. It was okay for a while because David's brain was all in pieces, but when it started getting better and he tried to catch up and Jem's brain was used to being the only one that was all whole and stuff--"
Voltron and lion crashed into each other in enthusiastic battle.
"While this makes a sort of sick sense," Betsy started, her hands massaging her temple. "I'm also broaching on a devastating migraine. Davey, while I'm sure Lorna appreciates the destructo-set demonstration, she gets it." Managing a glance in Jemail's direction, she looked back at the younger pair. "Can we please fast forward lest I remind all of you but we are all on borrowed time here. Cyndi, speed it up, will you please?"
Lorna nodded warily and folded her arms around her waist, "Yeah, I get it. So...what?"
Davey halted the battle petulantly. Cyndi rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'll take it," she said. "So, we're talking all-or-nothing scenario. Basically we got two choices. Either we let nature take its course and let David's inferior brain get eaten by Jemmy's, or we find somebody to shovel Jemmy out entirely and reclaim the skull. Re: obliteration for Jemmy. Which we had a couple problems with. Either way, enter the giant brain of Charles Francis is a Girl's Name Xavier." Cyndi paused, then raised a finger. "By the way, the universe actually managed to hold off on this one until David was like, 18, so at least we were primed for dealing with crisis. Soul crushed multiple times already."
"We asked Charles to help," Davey broke in, eager to reclaim his place. "Because Charles knows about this stuff. But after we figured out what was going on it was actually David's dumb genius idea. He thought if two was too much maybe we could get away with making two into one. Because David's a Special Boy."
"This would be example prime of why too much therapy is dangerous," Cyndi said. "Like, integrating can be a good thing for multiples. Problem being you're only supposed to integrate with, oh . . . yourself. Chuck helped us eventually because of all the Dork's begging, but he warned us about that first. Like, a lot." She crossed her arms over her waist and cocked her head at Lorna. "You wanna guess how it went?"
"Charles squished them together," Davey declared, "and David's brain went BLAAAAARGH!"
David turned to Lorna, and spoke for the first time since the narrative had begun. "You can see why we had a problem telling you," he said quietly. His eyes slid back to Betsy, carrying the silent addition.
And you, too. Until December.
Lorna stared, face impassive. Slowly, one hand lifted to her temple and fisted in her hair. "So...you..." she looked at David then tracked slowly to Jemail, "and him. You're like a hybrid. Like Malice and I were."
"Similar . . . almost." David ran a hand through his hair. "You said Malice was a computer program. They turned the collar on and she would overwrite your actions. Possession." That had made her do . . . things. Like the other woman here, the one standing feet away from him. He had no telepathy, but he could feel what must have been going on in Betsy's mind, all too well. Asked to stand here and watch him do this, to listen to this after everything he was had already been shoved in her face -- cruelly, brutally. Torture, just as surely as what Jack had done to Jemail.
But he knew what it was like to be alone with a secret. Betsy, Lorna -- Jemail -- everybody in this room had been carrying their own for so long. Things that were talked over and about, and yet somehow still kept pressed to the chest, private and untouchable. He'd never intended either woman to be put in this position. Never thought anyone would ever get close enough to him that he could. But it was too late to spare them. Now all he could do was create a shared experience . . . and some day, he prayed, that outlet.
Even if they didn't forgive him, maybe they could at least help each other.
And someone else in this room needed their presence more than the two women needed to be spared.
"There was . . . bleed for you," David continued, forcing himself to continue. "But with us it was a choice. Our integration was controlled. Charles made sure it was equal. That we could choose how we joined rather than wait for one mind to fight the other." He looked to the bleeding man, standing with eyes shut like a man awaiting the snap of the noose around his neck. "That nobody had to die," David whispered.
Lorna looked at Jemail a moment longer then shivered. "I didn't know that was an option." And if there had been guilt before, it was nothing compared to what hit her now, twisting her stomach and choking off her breath. "I didn't know you could do that."
"You can't. Kind of the point of this little tableau, isn't it?"
Jack pushed off the wall lazily, moving with the slow certainty of a predator who knew his prey was hamstrung. "How well would you really want to know another person? Share thoughts, feelings, point of view, meal preferences? Be them, for all intents and purposes. Never mind a psychotic bitch. Think real hard if there is anyone on this earth you want to have that with. Now, imagine that person's the one who killed your guardian. Or hell, let's go one better, the guy who killed you." Jack lowered his gaze to the silent Jemail, grey eyes cold and narrow. "You can survive. But you don't live."
"Would you do it again, David?" Lorna asked, "If you could go back and choose again--his life, your life, your lives...would you do this again?" Looking at Jack but addressing all four of them--her best friend but not quite. Four lions but it wasn't whole yet. Sven was killed and replaced by a member from outside the team and in the end the whole was stronger for it. Sometimes overanalyzing the metaphors wasn't entirely useless if you used Crazy Math.
None of them looked terribly good but Jemail was decaying before their eyes. Flesh dissolved away, blood soaking his clothes. His body had died years ago. "Jemail," she said softly, "would you do it again?"
Betsy watched the scene play out and remained motionless, waiting. For something.
"Go ahead, Jemmy," Jack said, "tell her about how much you liked having David's disease. Like the time you tried to use telepathy to drag Cyndi into that festering cancer you called Jim because you 'couldn't be like this' and Haller ended up with third degree burns." Jemail's mouth twisted, his one good hand rising to rake at his face. Jack's voice sounded on, mercilessly, "Tell her how you made David hate himself so much he'd use me to try to beat himself to death."
The cigarette, almost burned down now, crumpled in one bandaged hand. Grey ash rained. "I should be dead," Jemail said.
"The way you're going you sure as hell don't deserve to be alive. Hiding in plain sight so you don't have to show yourself. You know what? I'm done with the drama. So as long as we're clearing the air . . ."
Jack moved to the counter and picked up the phone and dialed a number so quickly it could only have been intimately familiar. The phone rang, and David closed his eyes.
Jack smiled.
"Howdy, would this be Safa Karami?" Jack said into the receiver. "You know that son you had, disappeared 14 years ago? You ever wonder what happened to him?"
And that finally did it for Jemail.
"Fucking bastard!"
"JEM!" Lorna gasped, half-slipping on a loose piece of paper as she scrambled to grab the man. Jack must have been twice his size and with the TK... "Christ, no. Just...stop it!"
Betsy stepped in front of Lorna, preventing her from intervening. "Don't. They need to do this." She turned away from Lorna to face David. "It's all been building up to this, hasn't it?"
Eyes still closed, David's head bowed. He began to walk forward.
Jack was the bigger of the two, but Jemail was faster, and now, driven by rage, his massive wounds may as well have been nonexistent. He drove Jack into the wall with his shoulder. Jack got his foot up to Jemail's stomach and pushed him; the smaller man fell to the floor, and Jack dove for him. His hands closed around Jemail's neck.
"Die--"
David had approached the two men quietly, ignored and forgotten as always in their struggle. Which was why it came as such a surprise to Jack when David, in full view of Betsy, Lorna, and all the riven parts of himself, raised one foot to kick him in the side of the head.
The blow carried no telekinesis. Not like it had with Cain and the lake. This was just David. Normal, powerless David Haller, who had never raised his hand against anyone in anger his life. It was simple, efficient, and just like his training for the X-Men had taught him.
Jack's grip broke; he fell to one side, swearing and clutching his wounded face. David just stood impassively, blue eyes hard.
"The alters don't exist," David said, not even turning his head as Jack spat red onto the carpet. "They can affect the world and feel pain because they think they should. Psionics make it seem real for them, and everybody else, too. But it's a trick. It's all just a matter of will. Mine."
Calmly, David moved to peel the soiled gauze from where Davey had bitten him hard enough to draw blood.
The skin was unbroken.
Dropping the gauze, David turned to Jemail. "No more smoke and mirrors," he said, his voice still that same, level tone. "Let's talk."
The gauze wrapping Jemail's face had already been pulled askew in the struggle with Jack. Red revealed, skin giving way, and tortured flesh twisted even more as his face contorted with rage.
"Stop trying to save me!"
"Why?"
"Because I took away your life!" Jemail's scream cut through the apartment, strewn with paper and bandages. "I took your life, everything you had, so why didn't you take mine?"
"You made a mistake. So did I." David looked at his friend steadily, his gaze meeting Jemail's only remaining eye. "Lorna asked you whether you would do it again. You said you should be dead. That wasn't her question." He asked, almost in a whisper, "Was there no part of being Jim that was worth it?"
And this, he knew, was why he needed Lorna and Betsy. He stood there, waiting, and willed his friend to look past him to the women standing in the room.
Look at them. Dying was easy when you wouldn't let yourself touch anyone. When you wouldn't let anybody know you existed. Then we became Jim, and you finally let someone see you. Whether you meant to or not.
Look at them, Jem. They've seen us both, and they're still here.
He and David had been one person too long. Jemail's uncovered eye rose to where Betsy and Lorna stood.
"If you'd known what we were from the start," he said hoarsely, "would you still have wanted to know us?"
Lorna looked at Betsy, shifting slightly so the other woman was a little more firmly in front of her and thus naturally the one to answer first.
Betsy regarded Lorna for a moment and then faced both men. "No. I would not have." She hesitated a moment before continuing. "But I didn't know then what I know now. Back then, I could barely make a rational decision and I would not be where I am if it weren't for you. Funny now, that it feels so long ago but it's only been a little over a year. The question you should be asking me is would I stay here in this room knowing what you are still." Betsy looked from Jemail and then to Haller. "And my answer is yes."
"When we met...like, practically the first time. I told you about Malice. So I can't blame you for not telling me then." She stepped around Betsy to stand next to her. "I don't know what I'd have done. She's right though. The question isn't would we have done it in the first place. The question is the same one that I asked earlier--would we do it again? Dorks." She shook her head slightly and spread her hands, "We're standing right here, aren't we?"
David's mouth twitched in what under other circumstances might have been a smile. He withdrew something from his jacket pocket and tossed it to Jemail; the other man reached out to catch it instinctively. It was the silver cigarette case Charles had given them the day he'd taken Terry to see Miriam Cross.
"Stop milking it, Jem. Remember your birthday? The professor did." He gestured to Lorna and Betsy. "The only one who's not willing to accept you is you. You just won't give anyone the chance."
Jemail's eyes went to the women watching him, then the case in his hand. Then, inexorably, they turned to Jack.
David didn't need the words to hear the question. All the pain, all the resentment -- it had torn them up. Holes in their sanity, holes in their selves. Would it be different this time? The bruises still on his body were testament enough to how poisonous the self-loathing was.
"Would you do it again?"
"Either you want to change, or you don't."
David looked at the pieces of himself. Cyndi, standing with her arms crossed; Davey, still cross-legged on the floor with a toy in his hand; and Jack, still on the floor with blood on his face.
He looked into all their eyes in turn, and realized that for the first time he found consensus.
"Jemail." David turned back to his friend and put out his hand. He spoke, and three voices rose to join his words: man, woman, and child.
"We forgive you."
They stood there for a moment, frozen in tableau, and then David grinned.
"Let's go Voltron Force."
"Now who's carrying a metaphor too far?" Lorna muttered.
Jemail's mouth was open. "Jesus christ," the small man said, his voice slow and clear, "what is wrong with you?"
"I'm sorry, did I miss something?" Betsy asked to the group as a whole. "What exactly is a Voltron?"
"A product of way more serious mental problems than the ones in this room," Jemail muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose in an attempt to alleviate a pain that had nothing to do with a deteriorating astral body.
"Does that mean she didn't get my visual aids?" Davey asked, crushed. Cyndi reached down and smacked him in the back of the head.
"It's a cartoon in the 80s. There's a giant robot and...you know what, nevermind." Lorna went to Jemail's side and knelt next to his head. "Are you going to stay down there all night?"
Jemail's stare turned to Lorna. "Thanks. In under fourteen words you've managed to totally devalue the successful suicide intervention of a guy who's been dead for fourteen years."
Cyndi rolled her eyes. "Oh my god, Jemail, just shut up and choose life already."
"Um, yeah, let's," David said. He glanced at Lorna and Betsy. "Guys, thank you. Really thank you. But for everybody's sake you probably don't need to watch this part." He touched his blue eyes on Lorna's green, then shifted and held on Betsy's purple. "Later, can we . . . talk?"
Her eyes flickered to Jemail and Lorna before stopping at Jack. "A moment." The telepath moved briskly towards the taller man, a grim expression on her face. She leaned into his personal space and brought her lips just above his ear. "When you go back, you do so under unusual circumstances. And while I understand your predicament....If I ever see a mark on his body again." Betsy paused, her eyes darkening. "I will come after you. And we both know I don't make idle threats lightly."
Betsy pulled away and locked eyes on Jack before excusing herself and exiting the room.
Lorna patted Jem's shoulder then stood. "I'll see you later," she said to the various scattered personalities then followed Betsy out.
Jack looked after Betsy and grinned. "She's swell."
"Just don't make exclusionary comments like that in front of Lorna," David said. His attention went back to Jemail. "Are we okay?" He hesitated, then said, "Are you okay?"
Jemail, bleeding and rumpled, gave David a look through his single remaining eye. "I know you can't get through an entire conversation without asking that question, but that better have been rhetorical."
"Going to be, I mean. Are you going to be okay with this. I mean . . . us." David hesitated, and gestured at the others. "You've got the telepathy, Jem. It's your choice."
Us. The DID, the disease that had eaten him alive. That conflict hadn't just been Jack. Jack had only been reacting to the problem, trying to protect his host like any immune system would. David had been right. Jemail had never accepted himself, and that refusal had in turn spread through the gestalt that was Jim.
But that had been Jemail's baggage. Glorian's dream, plucked from the twisted chaos that was David's mind, hadn't been for a world without mutants. As they had told Crystal, that had just been a convoluted means of expression. Jemail knew what his friend had really wished for the moment their paths had crossed again, and they'd looked each other in the eye for the first time since David was eighteen years old.
It hadn't been his powers David had been rejecting, but the pain they'd caused.
The man looked back at the expectant eyes of the alters, silent and expectant. Jack, Cyndi, Davey. Three sets of eyes, and only one person looking out through them all.
Jack was a part, but David was the sum. If David could get over it . . . if David could go through what he'd gone through and still offer his hand . . . then so could he.
Jemail took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "Okay," he said, raising his hand to meet his friend's.
"But I'm not Princess Allura."
Where we've come from.
March 10, 2000
Tomorrow?
Yeah.
So we're really going to do this?
Yeah. I guess so.
Is there anything you want to do first? Do you need to do anything?
No, I'm OK.
You always say that.
If you don't write something this isn't a dialogue.
Do you want to see your mom?
No.
Why?
It's just better.
I wish you would.
Are you okay?
Yeah.
You're not okay.
Do you want to watch Clerks?
OK.
March 15, 2000
Went outside for the first time today. It was raining. The water was cold. It ran down my neck and into my shirt, hard, big drops, pounding me in the face, and it was the first time in years I thought:
I'm alive.
My head feels so heavy, but clear. Clearer than it's been for a long time. Concentrated.
Charles asked who we want to be.
I think I want to be Jim.
August 4, 2000
I thought I heard somebody talking to me. There was no one.
The professor said it might be unstable.
Wait and see.
Breathe.
September 19, 2000
Lost time.
February 23, 2001
Went to see Dr. Allen today. Didn't talk. It was a waste of time. I'm not sick. David was sick. I'm not David but Jim is David is Jemail, we're Jim. We need to think as one person or this will get worse. It can't get worse. You dragged me into your freak show. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't want you to die I didn't want to die, but not like this. We can't undo it. We can't. But I can't be like this! I'm sorry I'm sorry do something, god please somebody do something, please god somebody help me, please let me out and make this stop
I'm sorry
I'm sorry
I'm sorry
June 5, 2001
that fuckin son of a bitch fuck him fuck him tryin that on me he has no rights this isn't his brain WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS he's going to pay i'm going to make him pay i'm going to show him who he's fuckin with
i am fucking fire
June 17, 2001
It hurts, n when I go away I cant hear or see any thing. Jack said Jim did some thing Bad to us n it was Charles fault but he wont say what. Cyndi is so mad, our arm is hurt n I have to write with the other one because it has no skin n I dont know whats going on.
Jim, where are you?
February 24, 2002
Need Charles.
The cripple piece of shit who did this to us.
He did what I asked him to do.
He knew it would do this to you.
He warned me. He warned us. I begged him anyway.
He could have said no. He could have not drawn you a fucking map and sat you on his lap to push the pedals while you steered the wheel. So why did he?
Because I asked. Because David would have gone insane if he didn't.
What are you now?
What did you do to Davey?
He's where you can't contaminate him.
You think you deserve control in here?
You're nothing. And I'll show you what that means if I have to kill us all.
Call Charles
Where we're going.
His steps galvanized the small grey birds picking at the shore into flight, fluttering with the beat of wings and the muted calls of alarm. He had started in the Medlab. Somehow he had gotten to the lake, carried by feet that moved of their own accord. Running.
Escaping.
Now the water barred him. There was nowhere left to go. The initiative that had sustained his flight bled away; his legs folded beneath him, collapsing him into the dirt. With Cyndi he had boiled a tsunami; with Jack, held back the wall of water through the sheer force of his will. Now he had neither. He was just David, unable even to reach out of his own head, and now watching as all his cards were ripped out of his grasp and thrown face-up on the table.
David Haller, nothing boy.
Another of Charles' telepathic overtures came, and once again he rejected it. Alone, alone, leave me alone! Hands rose to his face, a slow, inexorable arc of bone and scarred skin, and David's scream echoed across the water.
"You're scaring the fish."
Cain's matter-of-fact tone belied his concern, as he wandered leisurely down the path towards David, a long fishing pole balanced over one shoulder. He'd checked his email on the way out the door, then stopped by Charles' office to laugh at him without explanation, then off to the lake to fish. Only now, he found Haller -his nephew, by all accounts - collapsed on the shore screaming at the waves.
The young man's head rose slow jerkily, like a machine missing a gear. The moment of emotion had passed. David's boney frame unfolded from the crouch with all the grace of a rusted lawnchair and his hands drifted down to rest on his knees. The picture of serenity.
"Sorry," David said without turning to look at the speaker. "Nervous breakdown. I can have it somewhere else." Long legs pushed and straightened beneath him, the movement raining dust and fragments of dry grass. "Sorry."
"Sit down."
While Cain's tone was soft, the words were no less an order for their lack of volume. He walked over to David's side and crouched down in the dirt and grass, absently fiddling with his fishing pole. "Had yourself a hell of a time recently, ain't you?"
David's hands traveled to the dirt and curled. His fingernails darkened as dirt began to collect. The sun pressed on his face warm as a blanket. Some small piece of life rippled the lake, indistinguishable against the green.
"I pulled Jem into hell, and he's been burning ever since." He said to the soft click click of the other man's reel, "And part of me wants him to."
"Way I hear it," Cain drawled as he cast his line out over the lake, "you were a kid and had an accident. So you got voices in your head. And this whatsisname, Jim fella, he's an actual other person got caught up in the mess. Shit happens, you know. Ain't always the best, but you gotta learn to live with it."
"Jemail. Jem. That's his name." The younger man watched the line cut a lazy V in the water in response to minute adjustments of slack. "He's more than caught. Last summer when the lake burned, right before you left, we talked about having power that wasn't yours, and living past your time. I said the words, but it was Jem who was talking. I shook your hand. You took his, too. Synergy. That's what 'Jim' is." David lifted his hands, letting the dirt crumble. "Was."
"Oh, cry me a fucking river already," Cain growled, pulling in his line and casting again. "I'm sixty-seven years old. You're what, twenty? Don't try and give me shit about living past your time. Yeah, I figured I was riding off into the sunset. But you know what I did instead?" Cain glared over at Haller, shaking his head. "I wasn't fucking about to give up. I took him by the goddamn throat and I kicked his ass to Hell and back, literally. Didn't see me weeping like some damn schoolgirl who got dumped at the prom."
"What am I supposed to be fighting? Charles? Aunt Gaby? The guy who's only ever tried to make up for what he did to me, who spent almost ten years using the power that killed him to try and put my mind back together, and who my subconscious is torturing on top of murdering?" The faintest suggestion of heat rose, then ebbed again. "You said you'd done a lot you weren't proud of, but Cyttorak was something outside of you. You could fight him. I'm killing the same person a second time because Jack proves that no matter what I want, deep down I can't let go." The younger man's hand tightened into a fist. The gauze wrapped around his wounded hand crinkled, spidering white threads in the cake of dirt. "It's my brain, and I'm the only one without a fucking vote."
"Your head," Cain insisted, "you decide who stays or goes. Only reason you ain't doing that is because you're a weak-willed chickenshit." Cain snorted derisively. "Looks like you inherited that from your old man. David can't get his head together because it'd be mean to all his imaginary friends. Hell with that." Cain set down the fishing rod and pointed at the mansion. "You've been learning all the wrong goddamn lessons from those folks in there. The martyrs, the self-absorbed whiners, the ones who keep putting themselves in the shit and complaining about the smell. Either you want to change, or you don't. And if you do, then you fucking do it."
It was incredible. Today was only the latest in a series of weeks where he'd felt steadily more cored, and yet somehow in less than a minute Cain had succeeded in driving his bloodpressure through the roof. Clenching his jaw had never been his habit, but in the quiet, peaceful spring afternoon David almost cracked his back teeth.
He managed to grit, "It doesn't really work like that."
"No?" Cain asked. "Then how does it work? Chuck need to sit you down and put your broken brain back together again? I ain't an expert on crazy, but after a few years here, I'm becoming a bit of an authority on people who can't get their shit together. If you want to join the parade of people who rely on Chuck to solve their problems for them, hey, be my guest. He's in the big house up there. Can't miss him, bald guy in the chair. Likes tea."
Unbelievably, the mention of Charles made his head actually throb with the pressure of the blood suddenly being hammered through his veins. Had Cyndi still been present she would have said 'Issues, thy name is Daddy,' although since Cyndi didn't know words like 'thy' only in spirit.
His mind was in shreds. His friend was dying, and an aspect of himself was trying its best to make his last remaining hours agony. And now he was sitting here on what was possibly the worst day of a life that seemed to be contrived only of new and hideous ways to top itself and being abused and that was enough.
The red and white bobber dipped in the water as David rose again. Wind rustled the branches above them, touching their clothes, their hair; black and red moved. Across the lake some hidden bird called. Bweeeet bweetbweetbweet . . .
Cyndi held fire. Jack held force.
And the fist that slammed to full extension an inch from Cain's face drove both.
The punch was a surprise. The telekinetic force behind it even more so, as Cain found himself knocked almost thirty feet through the air before he impacted the lake shore, digging a trench almost half the length of a football field before coming to a stop.
Quietly, he sat up, exhaling slowly. In the distance he could see Haller - no, David - standing at the shore, a small corona of flame fading around him.
And the only thing Cain could think to do was smile.
"That's more like it..."
David stared at his still outstretched fist like an alien landscape. He hadn't quite realized he was swinging at Cain, but as the blanket of heat around him dissipated he was acutely aware of a certain rawness to his exposed skin. The gauze around his hand was oddly shriveled.
He looked at Cain, laying half-swallowed in lips of dirt, and all he could get out was "How?"
Then his eyes widened as he remembered Charles' words to him in the Medlab, almost unregistered at the time.
"You're healing, David."
Covered in wet dirt and shreds of grass, Cain stomped back over to David, looking down at his nephew. He stood there for a moment, then reached down and picked up his fishing pole, slowly winding the line in. As the bobber approached the shore, it jerked once, provoking a smile from Cain.
"Hey," he said cheerfully, as if he hadn't just been punched across the entire shore, "a bite."
David, standing in the middle of a ring of grass that was noticeably browner than it had been before, stared at him.
"You have deep psychological problems," he said.
"Says the boy whose brain's run by committee," Cain remarked, reeling in the line until he held up a wriggling fish. Frowning, he gingerly unhooked his catch and tossed it back to the lake, muttering something almost like 'too damn small'.
David watched the ripples in the lake die. Healing. The infection had been introduced long ago. Jemail was like a failed organ transplant, and Jack had responded like any immune system would: rejection. The psychic inhibitors Charles had imposed to act as immuno-suppressants were gone; he knew now they had only ever served to buy time.
Sometimes the only way to close a wound was to excise the damage.
So that's what I have to do.
"There's somewhere I have to be," David said. The last ripples from the released fish sloshed gently at the shore as the young man turned back to the mansion and paused. "Thanks."
"Yep," Cain remarked simply, casting his line out into the lake again.
David shook his head, smiling faintly. "I have no good rolemodels," he murmured.
Maybe, he thought as he started walking back towards the mansion. Mistakes had been made. By him, too. Even so, now it was time to apply the lessons.
And the end.
It had been a long day. At this point, it had been a long day, a long week, several very long months that were all part of the longest year on record. The email waiting for her when she'd gotten back from Mass, stunning and horrifying in its implications as it was, hit Lorna as just yet another thing and for several minutes all she could do was hang her head back and cover her eyes. Her best friend had gone spectacularly crazy and crazier, it seemed, than was even apparent. Special.
Given that this was David--David, being after all, David even when he was everyone else--Lorna knew there would be hiding, trying to run until the problem was covered over by something else. So she went to his room and knocked on the door. The trouble with the alters was that they had no substance of their own. She could have sensed David. But the rest were as insubstantial as mist. She rather hoped that Jack was home. It would be nice to punch him.
The knock jarred the gauze from his hands; falling from nerveless fingers, it hit the floor and rolled, streaming white behind it. He tried to shoot to his feet and hit his knee hard against the coffee table. If the resulting bang hadn't been enough to dispel the illusion of an empty room the curse of pain that followed stomped it to pieces.
Lorna sighed and pushed the door open, letting herself in. "Hello?" She was hoping for a Haller--any Haller. She didn't know if she could quite deal with the stranger with the familiar face. She very much wasn't equipped to deal with the sight that greeted her. Gasping, she'd taken three steps back again before the whole scene registered.
There were dark spots on his jeans. The source was more obvious through the thinner cloth of the tanktop. Blood, soaking through. The gauze that wound around the right side of his face covered eye and cheek, but the skin creeping across his chin revealed a patch too pink for his dusky skin.
Lorna. The person he'd least wanted to be confronting after what had been revealed. Had feared ever since the first time she'd ever brought him lunch back when they were still distant enough that she would knock. Panic -- but no escape. Nothing to be done.
Moving clumsily, the young man fished a packet of cigarettes out of the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt. He couldn't manipulate the package; he shook one out onto his palm as best he could.
"Don't worry," Jemail told her as he pocketed the package, cigarette held clumsily in a left hand thick with bandages, "you're not going to be seeing it much longer."
"You gave me a cigarette. In the dream." It was possibly the most inane thing she could have said. Lorna scrubbed her hands on her jeans and took a deep breath. As Jack had said, she already knew "Jim." She just hadn't known. "What's happening?"
The young man withdrew his lighter and snapped it into flame. When he drew breath the cigarette burned down. He could taste it. Smell it. But it wasn't real. Sensory hallucinations, telepathy inflicted on . . . himself. Air being moved by telekinesis. Cyndi's telekinesis -- David's telekinesis. All of David. All his powers working as one, playing out the fantasy for himself and everyone else.
He took a drag. Almost too slightly to be noticed, the fingers that drew the cigarette away from his lips shook.
"We cheated for a while, but only one could stay. That's how it was always going to go down." Jemail fixed his gaze on the cigarette held in his afflicted hand. "I know. I didn't say goodbye, but since I skipped on hello anyway I figured why not two for two."
"And so you're graphically falling apart instead? My God, is there anything about you and David that isn't actually made of Drama?" He was freaking her out. Just standing there, just the reality of him. A parasite in her best friend's head; half of who her best friend was. Like Malice--someone dead and gone but persistent. If she hadn't killed Malice, would they have come to this? Two people with one body and soul?
"Astral voodoo. It's . . ." Jemail struggled for the metaphor. "Like a vine. Those ones that grow into trees. They can choke them. You tear them off and save the tree, but you can't get it all. Pieces get left behind. The vine dies." The tightness in his jaw as he paused showed the casual tone for the lie it was. "'I have a mindworm' doesn't exactly slide easy into a conversation."
"You're bleeding!" Lorna pointed out somewhat hysterically, proving she either wasn't listening or wasn't processing.
Jemail stared at the bandaged hand, the neurotic wrappings he'd begun to apply after Jack's revelation. Not to staunch the blood, because it couldn't. To hide the only thing he had left to hide. Back in San Diego Kurt had asked: 'Haller?', and Jack had made his promise.
"They really think that's you, don't they? That's fine. Now that we're out of the cripple's convenient little cage again we'll show them exactly what you are. That's what you wanted, right? No more hiding."
It wasn't the DID he'd meant. David had never wanted to hide this. The secrecy, the shame -- that had been Jemail. All Jemail.
Jemail lowered his cigarette, and the tense line of his shoulders collapsed. "Lorna, I'm sorry," he whispered.
She could feel herself shaking, felt the trembling from her hands through her shoulders and down her spine. She curled her fingers to fists and put her back against the wall, seeking strength in rigidity. When she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper for the same reason. Not that it mattered--he was a projection. Just in her head. "You've been lying to me about who you are for an entire year. I never asked. I never pushed. And you let me believe..." Lorna bit her lip. "You gave me a cigarette in the dream. And then Jim lied to my face."
"Don't be too hard on the kid. That one was a collaborative effort."
Jack walked through the open door. Something in the way he placed his steps carried the weight of a decision. Making his way to the wall farthest from Lorna he settled in to lean, grey eyes fixed on Jemail.
"Jack, wait!" Betsy called out from the hallway. She crossed the doorway focused on her target. "Damn it, I am not following you like a damn lap dog...." Taking in the scene, Jack at Jemail's side, Lorna holed up behind her by the door.
"After all, it's hard to be honest when you got someone standing behind you twisting your arm behind your back," Jack finished.
Betsy's shoulders dropped, stopping dead in her tracks. "Are you actually dripping?"
"I think it's technically more ooze," Cyndi observed, coming up behind her. Her tone was flip, but her eyes lingered on Jemail. From the doorway Davey wrapped his hands around the frame and peered around the corner, pale-faced. The girl gravitated towards the sofa, and for once she didn't sprawl. She sat calmly, hands palms-down on the cushion. Her head turned to the woman standing by the door. "Lorna," she said, her normally exaggerated cadences softened, "you still with us?"
Lorna glanced at Cyndi, a little wide-eyed and fraying about the edges. "I should go." Her gaze tracked from the girl to the man to the boy in the doorway then finally back to the dark bandaged man in the center of all this. "I...have...should go."
"Lorna," Betsy turned away, her eyes still on Jemail. "We should talk. No, we need to talk."
"Later." Lorna edged to the door, avoiding all eyes. She watched the floor.
Betsy moved swiftly to Lorna's side, pulling her deeper into the room. "It's not as bad as it looks," she said fiercely. "I would be frightened as you are this very moment and you have every right to be. And normally I would not ask this of you but you cannot leave them like this." She bent her head lower, speaking directly in Lorna's ear. "They'll take it personally. It's never been hard for any one of them to think themselves an abomination and sadly for you each one of them looks to you as if you were Queen. You can't leave," she whispered. "Not without breaking them in the process."
"I'm not..." Lorna took a breath, focused on the woman in front of her. "I'm not scared. It's not them. I...can't do this. I need to go. You're here. He'll...they'll listen to you." Grey eyes, blue eyes, green eyes...she didn't have to see them to know they were on her, all with that preternatural calm that said they were--no matter what they looked like--products of the same mind. "They lied to me," she said softly, despairing, "but that's not the problem. I don't want to make things worse."
"Please stay." The youngest alter slipped around the doorframe and joined the women. His skin was still ashen, but the set to his jaw carried more years than the face that held it. He met Lorna's gaze, but it was Betsy, standing beside him, whose hand he reached out to.
"David's always witness," the boy said to them. "Now he needs somebody else to see him."
Jack's taut posture never loosened, but there was suddenly there was an air of attentiveness around him. Cyndi remained seated, her expressive face for once inscrutable. In the back of the room, just steps from Jack, Jemail stood alone.
"Will you?" asked Cyndi.
Grey, blue, green--all drawn from the same thought. What kind of friend would she be if she could not be a friend now? If she let her own memories punish the four...two..one... Lorna trembled in place then bowed her head slowly. "Fine. We'll talk."
Davey looked up to the woman whose hand he held. "Betsy?"
"You lot can work this out without me," Betsy said, reflecting on the texture of Davey's hand. Soft but it wasn't really there, was it? She still reassuringly squeezed his fingers, rubbing her thumb over his palm. Yes, this would be better done by Lorna. They all felt comfortable around her and Lorna could help fit the pieces and make it make sense. Though her friend never acknowledged this ability, she had a distinct knack for making things whole, mutation aside. Betsy released Davey's hand an attempt to expedite her exit. "This will go farther without another voice clogging up the process. I'll go find David while you all chat."
The newcomer's presence was revealed only by the soft click of metal in metal.
"I'm here," David said, voice quiet in the crowded silence. Blue eyes took in the room as the young man closed the door behind him: Jemail and Jack in the back, Cyndi on the couch, Lorna and Davey in the center, and Betsy, frozen half in flight.
David moved across the room and stopped in front of Betsy. He stopped, hesitating, his eyes on hers, and then reached out to take her hand.
"Please, babe," David whispered. The second hand moved to join the first, fingers tracing her knuckles, "stay."
Wordlessly, Davey gravitated to Lorna's side. He wrapped her in a brief hug, then pulled away.
"This is completely cracked," she said to no one in particular. Her eyes were trained at their entangled hands. "You do know that? All right, I'll stay but no good will come of it.""
Lorna's hand curled through Davey's hair, brushing back through unruly black locks--something else they all had in common--then settled on his neck, keeping him close, though for his comfort or hers she didn't know. "I don't understand exactly what we're supposed to be doing here. I just came over to see how David was after..." Mentioning the email was probably really dumb right now so Lorna just finished her sentence with a one-shouldered shrug.
David held his eyes on Betsy's for a moment longer. He squeezed her hands, then released them and stepped away. Cyndi tapped on of her heels against the side of the couch. "You came to see what the hell was going on, right? So now we gotta explain. Betts, sorry about the incoming redundancy, but I think at this point Lorna needs a little enlightening." Cyndi levered herself from the couch and brushed herself off, looking at the three men in the room. "But not from Captain Moodswing or the Wonder Twins, because no way are we getting unbiased reporting from them. Yo, Davey! Storytime!"
Davey blinked, then squirmed out of Lorna's arms and ran to the couch. He dropped to his knees and peered under the furniture while Jack watched with an impassivity that almost bordered on boredom. Jemail stood in silence, eyes trained on the floor, and across the room stood David, eyes trained on him.
"This story makes my brain hurt," Davey explained, his arm shoved up beneath the couch up to his shoulder, "I need visual aids. --Found it!" He emerged from the depths of the couch triumphantly, flourishing an old metal Voltron toy. He crossed his legs under him and looked around the room expectantly from the floor. "This is the Story of David's Brain."
To Lorna's look Cyndi just shrugged. "Dude, don't judge. I figure if we get the 10 year old to do it this explanation might actually have a shot at being understandable."
"Okay," Davey said, warming to his role, "way long ago David accidentally sucked Jem into his brain -- aw, hang on." The boy paused to detach one leg, then hefted the toy again. "Okay. Jem got sucked into the brain. There was some stuff with a coma and then Charles got us out and that's boring so I'll just say David got lots and lots of therapy, Jem helped and we got better. Jem was in our brain but he wasn't part of our brain. He was like a cranky roommate who's sometimes nice and makes dinner. David," Davey waggled the one-legged humanoid to ensure identification of the props was up to date -- "Jemail" the single leg got a wave. The boy paused to assess Lorna's comprehension so far. "With us?"
Lorna blinked, surveyed the blue lion and nodded, "Jemail is Princess Allura. Or Sven. Got it." Going with the crazy was so much easier than trying to parse the crazy.
Davey wrinkled his nose at her. "Stop thinking about it! Thinking ruins metaphors. Anyway, ummm . . ." There was a little flurry of activity as Davey hastily juggled the contents of his hands to allow him to straighten the lone lion's joints. He presented the quadrupedal result to her. "Okay. The lion can walk and do all the stuff a lion does. Like run and hunt and choke gazelles." He lifted the one-legged mecha. "Voltron's only got one leg. I mean, he can still punch things, but when I want to play something I like stuff that's got an even number of legs. David's brain did that. Except with brains, not legs." He paused for dramatic effect.
Cyndi raised a piercing-studded eyebrow. "Uh, you wanna give her a little more there?"
"Jem is the lion," Davey said, exasperated. "David is Voltron. David's brain was broken and lame."
"So totally true," Cyndi nodded.
Davey ignored her. "When David started getting more back together it was like tug-o-war. Because even if you've got powers your brain can only take so much, 'cause you know, only one person's supposed to be in there. It was okay for a while because David's brain was all in pieces, but when it started getting better and he tried to catch up and Jem's brain was used to being the only one that was all whole and stuff--"
Voltron and lion crashed into each other in enthusiastic battle.
"While this makes a sort of sick sense," Betsy started, her hands massaging her temple. "I'm also broaching on a devastating migraine. Davey, while I'm sure Lorna appreciates the destructo-set demonstration, she gets it." Managing a glance in Jemail's direction, she looked back at the younger pair. "Can we please fast forward lest I remind all of you but we are all on borrowed time here. Cyndi, speed it up, will you please?"
Lorna nodded warily and folded her arms around her waist, "Yeah, I get it. So...what?"
Davey halted the battle petulantly. Cyndi rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'll take it," she said. "So, we're talking all-or-nothing scenario. Basically we got two choices. Either we let nature take its course and let David's inferior brain get eaten by Jemmy's, or we find somebody to shovel Jemmy out entirely and reclaim the skull. Re: obliteration for Jemmy. Which we had a couple problems with. Either way, enter the giant brain of Charles Francis is a Girl's Name Xavier." Cyndi paused, then raised a finger. "By the way, the universe actually managed to hold off on this one until David was like, 18, so at least we were primed for dealing with crisis. Soul crushed multiple times already."
"We asked Charles to help," Davey broke in, eager to reclaim his place. "Because Charles knows about this stuff. But after we figured out what was going on it was actually David's dumb genius idea. He thought if two was too much maybe we could get away with making two into one. Because David's a Special Boy."
"This would be example prime of why too much therapy is dangerous," Cyndi said. "Like, integrating can be a good thing for multiples. Problem being you're only supposed to integrate with, oh . . . yourself. Chuck helped us eventually because of all the Dork's begging, but he warned us about that first. Like, a lot." She crossed her arms over her waist and cocked her head at Lorna. "You wanna guess how it went?"
"Charles squished them together," Davey declared, "and David's brain went BLAAAAARGH!"
David turned to Lorna, and spoke for the first time since the narrative had begun. "You can see why we had a problem telling you," he said quietly. His eyes slid back to Betsy, carrying the silent addition.
And you, too. Until December.
Lorna stared, face impassive. Slowly, one hand lifted to her temple and fisted in her hair. "So...you..." she looked at David then tracked slowly to Jemail, "and him. You're like a hybrid. Like Malice and I were."
"Similar . . . almost." David ran a hand through his hair. "You said Malice was a computer program. They turned the collar on and she would overwrite your actions. Possession." That had made her do . . . things. Like the other woman here, the one standing feet away from him. He had no telepathy, but he could feel what must have been going on in Betsy's mind, all too well. Asked to stand here and watch him do this, to listen to this after everything he was had already been shoved in her face -- cruelly, brutally. Torture, just as surely as what Jack had done to Jemail.
But he knew what it was like to be alone with a secret. Betsy, Lorna -- Jemail -- everybody in this room had been carrying their own for so long. Things that were talked over and about, and yet somehow still kept pressed to the chest, private and untouchable. He'd never intended either woman to be put in this position. Never thought anyone would ever get close enough to him that he could. But it was too late to spare them. Now all he could do was create a shared experience . . . and some day, he prayed, that outlet.
Even if they didn't forgive him, maybe they could at least help each other.
And someone else in this room needed their presence more than the two women needed to be spared.
"There was . . . bleed for you," David continued, forcing himself to continue. "But with us it was a choice. Our integration was controlled. Charles made sure it was equal. That we could choose how we joined rather than wait for one mind to fight the other." He looked to the bleeding man, standing with eyes shut like a man awaiting the snap of the noose around his neck. "That nobody had to die," David whispered.
Lorna looked at Jemail a moment longer then shivered. "I didn't know that was an option." And if there had been guilt before, it was nothing compared to what hit her now, twisting her stomach and choking off her breath. "I didn't know you could do that."
"You can't. Kind of the point of this little tableau, isn't it?"
Jack pushed off the wall lazily, moving with the slow certainty of a predator who knew his prey was hamstrung. "How well would you really want to know another person? Share thoughts, feelings, point of view, meal preferences? Be them, for all intents and purposes. Never mind a psychotic bitch. Think real hard if there is anyone on this earth you want to have that with. Now, imagine that person's the one who killed your guardian. Or hell, let's go one better, the guy who killed you." Jack lowered his gaze to the silent Jemail, grey eyes cold and narrow. "You can survive. But you don't live."
"Would you do it again, David?" Lorna asked, "If you could go back and choose again--his life, your life, your lives...would you do this again?" Looking at Jack but addressing all four of them--her best friend but not quite. Four lions but it wasn't whole yet. Sven was killed and replaced by a member from outside the team and in the end the whole was stronger for it. Sometimes overanalyzing the metaphors wasn't entirely useless if you used Crazy Math.
None of them looked terribly good but Jemail was decaying before their eyes. Flesh dissolved away, blood soaking his clothes. His body had died years ago. "Jemail," she said softly, "would you do it again?"
Betsy watched the scene play out and remained motionless, waiting. For something.
"Go ahead, Jemmy," Jack said, "tell her about how much you liked having David's disease. Like the time you tried to use telepathy to drag Cyndi into that festering cancer you called Jim because you 'couldn't be like this' and Haller ended up with third degree burns." Jemail's mouth twisted, his one good hand rising to rake at his face. Jack's voice sounded on, mercilessly, "Tell her how you made David hate himself so much he'd use me to try to beat himself to death."
The cigarette, almost burned down now, crumpled in one bandaged hand. Grey ash rained. "I should be dead," Jemail said.
"The way you're going you sure as hell don't deserve to be alive. Hiding in plain sight so you don't have to show yourself. You know what? I'm done with the drama. So as long as we're clearing the air . . ."
Jack moved to the counter and picked up the phone and dialed a number so quickly it could only have been intimately familiar. The phone rang, and David closed his eyes.
Jack smiled.
"Howdy, would this be Safa Karami?" Jack said into the receiver. "You know that son you had, disappeared 14 years ago? You ever wonder what happened to him?"
And that finally did it for Jemail.
"Fucking bastard!"
"JEM!" Lorna gasped, half-slipping on a loose piece of paper as she scrambled to grab the man. Jack must have been twice his size and with the TK... "Christ, no. Just...stop it!"
Betsy stepped in front of Lorna, preventing her from intervening. "Don't. They need to do this." She turned away from Lorna to face David. "It's all been building up to this, hasn't it?"
Eyes still closed, David's head bowed. He began to walk forward.
Jack was the bigger of the two, but Jemail was faster, and now, driven by rage, his massive wounds may as well have been nonexistent. He drove Jack into the wall with his shoulder. Jack got his foot up to Jemail's stomach and pushed him; the smaller man fell to the floor, and Jack dove for him. His hands closed around Jemail's neck.
"Die--"
David had approached the two men quietly, ignored and forgotten as always in their struggle. Which was why it came as such a surprise to Jack when David, in full view of Betsy, Lorna, and all the riven parts of himself, raised one foot to kick him in the side of the head.
The blow carried no telekinesis. Not like it had with Cain and the lake. This was just David. Normal, powerless David Haller, who had never raised his hand against anyone in anger his life. It was simple, efficient, and just like his training for the X-Men had taught him.
Jack's grip broke; he fell to one side, swearing and clutching his wounded face. David just stood impassively, blue eyes hard.
"The alters don't exist," David said, not even turning his head as Jack spat red onto the carpet. "They can affect the world and feel pain because they think they should. Psionics make it seem real for them, and everybody else, too. But it's a trick. It's all just a matter of will. Mine."
Calmly, David moved to peel the soiled gauze from where Davey had bitten him hard enough to draw blood.
The skin was unbroken.
Dropping the gauze, David turned to Jemail. "No more smoke and mirrors," he said, his voice still that same, level tone. "Let's talk."
The gauze wrapping Jemail's face had already been pulled askew in the struggle with Jack. Red revealed, skin giving way, and tortured flesh twisted even more as his face contorted with rage.
"Stop trying to save me!"
"Why?"
"Because I took away your life!" Jemail's scream cut through the apartment, strewn with paper and bandages. "I took your life, everything you had, so why didn't you take mine?"
"You made a mistake. So did I." David looked at his friend steadily, his gaze meeting Jemail's only remaining eye. "Lorna asked you whether you would do it again. You said you should be dead. That wasn't her question." He asked, almost in a whisper, "Was there no part of being Jim that was worth it?"
And this, he knew, was why he needed Lorna and Betsy. He stood there, waiting, and willed his friend to look past him to the women standing in the room.
Look at them. Dying was easy when you wouldn't let yourself touch anyone. When you wouldn't let anybody know you existed. Then we became Jim, and you finally let someone see you. Whether you meant to or not.
Look at them, Jem. They've seen us both, and they're still here.
He and David had been one person too long. Jemail's uncovered eye rose to where Betsy and Lorna stood.
"If you'd known what we were from the start," he said hoarsely, "would you still have wanted to know us?"
Lorna looked at Betsy, shifting slightly so the other woman was a little more firmly in front of her and thus naturally the one to answer first.
Betsy regarded Lorna for a moment and then faced both men. "No. I would not have." She hesitated a moment before continuing. "But I didn't know then what I know now. Back then, I could barely make a rational decision and I would not be where I am if it weren't for you. Funny now, that it feels so long ago but it's only been a little over a year. The question you should be asking me is would I stay here in this room knowing what you are still." Betsy looked from Jemail and then to Haller. "And my answer is yes."
"When we met...like, practically the first time. I told you about Malice. So I can't blame you for not telling me then." She stepped around Betsy to stand next to her. "I don't know what I'd have done. She's right though. The question isn't would we have done it in the first place. The question is the same one that I asked earlier--would we do it again? Dorks." She shook her head slightly and spread her hands, "We're standing right here, aren't we?"
David's mouth twitched in what under other circumstances might have been a smile. He withdrew something from his jacket pocket and tossed it to Jemail; the other man reached out to catch it instinctively. It was the silver cigarette case Charles had given them the day he'd taken Terry to see Miriam Cross.
"Stop milking it, Jem. Remember your birthday? The professor did." He gestured to Lorna and Betsy. "The only one who's not willing to accept you is you. You just won't give anyone the chance."
Jemail's eyes went to the women watching him, then the case in his hand. Then, inexorably, they turned to Jack.
David didn't need the words to hear the question. All the pain, all the resentment -- it had torn them up. Holes in their sanity, holes in their selves. Would it be different this time? The bruises still on his body were testament enough to how poisonous the self-loathing was.
"Would you do it again?"
"Either you want to change, or you don't."
David looked at the pieces of himself. Cyndi, standing with her arms crossed; Davey, still cross-legged on the floor with a toy in his hand; and Jack, still on the floor with blood on his face.
He looked into all their eyes in turn, and realized that for the first time he found consensus.
"Jemail." David turned back to his friend and put out his hand. He spoke, and three voices rose to join his words: man, woman, and child.
"We forgive you."
They stood there for a moment, frozen in tableau, and then David grinned.
"Let's go Voltron Force."
"Now who's carrying a metaphor too far?" Lorna muttered.
Jemail's mouth was open. "Jesus christ," the small man said, his voice slow and clear, "what is wrong with you?"
"I'm sorry, did I miss something?" Betsy asked to the group as a whole. "What exactly is a Voltron?"
"A product of way more serious mental problems than the ones in this room," Jemail muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose in an attempt to alleviate a pain that had nothing to do with a deteriorating astral body.
"Does that mean she didn't get my visual aids?" Davey asked, crushed. Cyndi reached down and smacked him in the back of the head.
"It's a cartoon in the 80s. There's a giant robot and...you know what, nevermind." Lorna went to Jemail's side and knelt next to his head. "Are you going to stay down there all night?"
Jemail's stare turned to Lorna. "Thanks. In under fourteen words you've managed to totally devalue the successful suicide intervention of a guy who's been dead for fourteen years."
Cyndi rolled her eyes. "Oh my god, Jemail, just shut up and choose life already."
"Um, yeah, let's," David said. He glanced at Lorna and Betsy. "Guys, thank you. Really thank you. But for everybody's sake you probably don't need to watch this part." He touched his blue eyes on Lorna's green, then shifted and held on Betsy's purple. "Later, can we . . . talk?"
Her eyes flickered to Jemail and Lorna before stopping at Jack. "A moment." The telepath moved briskly towards the taller man, a grim expression on her face. She leaned into his personal space and brought her lips just above his ear. "When you go back, you do so under unusual circumstances. And while I understand your predicament....If I ever see a mark on his body again." Betsy paused, her eyes darkening. "I will come after you. And we both know I don't make idle threats lightly."
Betsy pulled away and locked eyes on Jack before excusing herself and exiting the room.
Lorna patted Jem's shoulder then stood. "I'll see you later," she said to the various scattered personalities then followed Betsy out.
Jack looked after Betsy and grinned. "She's swell."
"Just don't make exclusionary comments like that in front of Lorna," David said. His attention went back to Jemail. "Are we okay?" He hesitated, then said, "Are you okay?"
Jemail, bleeding and rumpled, gave David a look through his single remaining eye. "I know you can't get through an entire conversation without asking that question, but that better have been rhetorical."
"Going to be, I mean. Are you going to be okay with this. I mean . . . us." David hesitated, and gestured at the others. "You've got the telepathy, Jem. It's your choice."
Us. The DID, the disease that had eaten him alive. That conflict hadn't just been Jack. Jack had only been reacting to the problem, trying to protect his host like any immune system would. David had been right. Jemail had never accepted himself, and that refusal had in turn spread through the gestalt that was Jim.
But that had been Jemail's baggage. Glorian's dream, plucked from the twisted chaos that was David's mind, hadn't been for a world without mutants. As they had told Crystal, that had just been a convoluted means of expression. Jemail knew what his friend had really wished for the moment their paths had crossed again, and they'd looked each other in the eye for the first time since David was eighteen years old.
It hadn't been his powers David had been rejecting, but the pain they'd caused.
The man looked back at the expectant eyes of the alters, silent and expectant. Jack, Cyndi, Davey. Three sets of eyes, and only one person looking out through them all.
Jack was a part, but David was the sum. If David could get over it . . . if David could go through what he'd gone through and still offer his hand . . . then so could he.
Jemail took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "Okay," he said, raising his hand to meet his friend's.
"But I'm not Princess Allura."
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