Haller, Yvette - Friday afternoon

[x-penance.livejournal.com]

Haller comes up with a nifty powers training exercise for Yvette, who's showing definite signs of progress.



He always felt a little strange making spontaneous out-of-office visits to students, but coming off as that teacher who never seemed to go off duty was better than needlessly cranking up the stress by suggesting an appointment. Shifting the zip-locked bag to his other hand, Jim knocked on the suite door.

After a moment, the door opened, revealing Yvette, peering up at him. "Hello, Mr. Haller!" she said, eyes flaring brightly for a moment. She stepped aside, holding the door open wider for him. "Come in, yes?"

Jim smiled as he stepped through. "Hi, Yvette. Thanks. I just came by to check on how you were doing with everything that's been going on with Laurie lately." It was only her emotional state he needed to ask about, really -- from her stiff face and borderline spiky hair he could tell she was feeling the physical effects of her roommate's stress. Still, it was better than he'd expected.

"I am... well." Yvette sounded a little surprised despite herself. "Laurie, she is very sad and worried, and she is not using the air scrubbing machine, so sometimes I am having the hard skin. But it is not so bad. I am makign myself be calm, the way you are showing me, yes?"

"That's great," Jim smiled as she closed the door behind him. "I was hoping you were doing well -- I think I may have another way you can practice, if you're interested." Jim held up the ziplock bag he'd brought. It was filled with colored squares of paper of varying sizes. The largest strained the edge of the bag at ten inches, gradually diminishing in dimension to 2"x2" squares. The rainbow of colors made the bag look like a bottomheavy godseye. "Do you know origami?" he asked.

"I do not think so." Yvette tilted her head curiously. The colours were very pretty. "You will show me this origami, yes?"

"A little," the counselor agreed. He motioned her over to the coffee table and sat down on the floor, legs-crossed, and ripped open the ziplock. "It's the art of folding paper to make shapes," he explained as he began to pull out some of the sheets. He wrestled with the largest ones to try and free them from the bag without snagging the corners on the plastic. "You can make almost anything. Animals, objects, patterns. A nurse showed me how once." The largest squares were free. He set the stack on top of the rest of the bag and took one for himself. Another he placed in front of Yvette, a slight smile playing on his lips. "Now I'll show you."

Yvette joined him, folding easily into a crouch as she watched him intently. "But, the paper... I will tear it?" she suggested, sounding a little disappointed. It looked interesting.

"Maybe," Jim admitted, "but this isn't normal paper." He lifted his sheet from the table. It bent slightly, but remained more or less horizontal. Only one side of it was colored. "It's a kind called washi," he explained, laying the colored part against the tabletop. "It's tough -- it's got some texture, too, so you should be able to handle it a little easier. Don't worry if you tear it at first. That's why I brought a lot."

"And this is why it is to be the training, yes?" Yvette said, with a hint of a smile. "I am to be trying to make my hands less sharp, so I can be making the paper things?"

"Exactly. Although I should probably mention they can be tough to get the hang of even without powers." Jim turned his square so it lay like a diamond. Folding it down the middle, it became an inverted triangle. He smoothed out the crease and looked back up at Yvette. "This is step one. If you can do it with me -- great. If not, it's just a demonstration. Do you want to try?"

Yvette nodded, a little more confidently than she felt. She was doing better with her powers, she reminded herself, and this was training. It was all right to make mistakes. Pulling off her gloves - a side effect of the self-repairing material was that it stretched or shrank to cover the changing length of her fingers - she carefully pulled the bright blue piece of paper towards herself with one fingertip. A game, it was just a game, she told herself, and lay her other finger across the middle of the paper before folding the corner down over the top of it and making a perfectly straight line along its length. Hard was all right, she just needed to make sure she didn't become sharp as well... The first fold completed, she looked up at Haller with a pleased little smile. "Like this, yes?"

Jim returned the smile. The difficulty it must have taken to get her fingers under the paper without shredding it when physically keyed up by Laurie's communicated stress was not lost on him. "Yes, just like that. Now, the next step -- fold that triangle in half." He did so with his own.

Yvette copied him, a little faster than before. There was a moment where her fingers slipped and the tip of one scoured across the paper, but he'd been right about it being tougher than normal paper. There was a scratch, but no cut.

Noticing the slip, Jim only smiled. "You're doing pretty good. Getting clean folds is more important than the surface of the paper. Now, this is a little trickier . . ." Pinning one flap of the folded triangle to the table with a fire-pitted hand, Jim gently pressed down on the upstanding flap until the inside of the topmost crease touched the paper below it, pressing it into another diamond. He had to take a moment to work his fingertip in the top to get the pucker out of the paper. "That top part is going to be the back. It'll fight you a little bit."

Watching intently, Yvette nodded, and very carefully folded down her own flap. She mimicked Jim's motion to remove the pucker, her longer, pointed fingers making easy work of it and presenting a perfectly formed corner. "This is good, yes?" she asked, eyes glowing a little.

"It is, actually," Jim replied. He hadn't quite connected the fact that Yvette's power could, in some cases, lend themselves to forming tools. Logan had taught her how to whittle. Jim turned his paper over and repeated the first move on the other side. Art had been part of his recovery, but his background was only pencil, paint and pastel. Could there be something else her power could apply to in lieu of small objects she still had some difficulty with. Sculpture, pottery . . . engraving?

Yvette beamed, eyes glowing brightly, and followed Jim's instructions until at the end she found herself with a small paper crane. With something of a truncated beak - she'd slipped when folding that part down, and sliced off the end. But still, it was something she'd made. Out of paper. "Oh, this is the very fun training, Mr. Haller!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands together a little.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it. It keeps me from having a complex about not being very useful with general training." Jim grinned as he tugged on the tail and head of his crane, making the wings flex. He nodded to indicate the different-colored squares. "When you feel comfortable, try moving down a size. Some people can fold cranes as small as a quarter. Not me, but some. It might be a good present for Logan. Or the new student."

"It is the Japanese art, yes? I would like to see if the new student would like to do this also - it is good to have the things from home, sometimes," Yvette agreed. She wasn't about to try the same manoevuer with her crane, however - there were limits to her dexterity. "Mr. Logan is showing me the carving, you are showing me the origami..." Her accent made the word almost unrecognisable. "And Angel is making the wood stencils with me - she is making the practice with her fire, to burn the patterns, yes? I think perhaps I am better at the art than before I was having the powers, Mr. Haller." She giggled a little.

"Me too, strangely," Jim said. He thought about adding that suffering was traditionally seen as a driving force behind great art, but the part of him that was Cyndi pointed out that once in a while it was good to keep the depressing profundity to himself. Art is whatever you need, emo boy. David needed therapy. This kid needs fun. Let her have it.

The corner of Jim's mouth crooked slightly. "New developments give us new options. Here's to putting them to good use."