http://x_legion.livejournal.com/ (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
x-legion.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
xp_logs2012-05-31 09:25 pm
x-legion.livejournal.com) wrote in xp_logs2012-05-31 09:25 pm
Genosha - In the Balance: Confrontation
Haller unexpectedly finds himself in his second interrogation of the day.
Warning: Violence, disturbing imagery
He wasn't sure what time it was, but he knew he'd missed at least one meal; even his ability to compartmentalize pain didn't dull it enough for his appetite to return. His wrist was especially distracting. Doug had fashioned a makeshift bandage from his own jumpsuit, but the fabric was soaked dark. Though he had largely blanked out by the time Doug began his ministrations, he did feel a brief twinge of relief that the activity had been enough to pull the younger man from his funk, however briefly. The next thing he knew someone was tossing him a new jumpsuit, helping him from his cot, and marching him into the hallway. It had been one of the kinder guards: the man had allowed for his slow movements, and helped him do up the jumpsuit when he realized Jim's left hand was giving him difficulty. If he'd told Jim what had gone on, the words hadn't registered. He wasn't even sure if Doug had been in the cell with him when he'd been taken. Now he sat in another interrogation room. Perhaps even the same one, minus his vomit. The part of his mind that held itself separate from the pain noted it seemed rather soon for a follow-up. Time went fuzzy when he was under this degree of stress, but his nose didn't seem swollen enough to indicate he'd missed an entire day.
The door open and two magistrates entered. They formed a protective circle around their leader, Elisabeth Braddock. Both men eyed Haller, as if knowing he was a feral beast, not to be trusted. "Leave us," she ordered. The men hesitated. She smiled, saccharine sweet at them. "Do not make me make you." The men saluted quickly and exited, tails firmly tucked between their legs. The door closed.
Betsy took her seat opposite Haller, pulled out a white handkerchief and tossed it at him. "I abhor the sight of blood." She offered, a lie but still. Placing a file on the table, Betsy opened it. She reviewed the dossier on Haller. "Are you going to do to my face what you did to Lucy?"
"Lose my temper and get severely beaten? No." The reply came out quickly, but only because his brain was too jumbled to interfere with his mouth. Betsy. It was Betsy, unchanged from their last encounter. She still projected an air of wrongness: subtly off movement, unfamiliar posture. She still did not remember.
She was not here to help him.
Just the thought of their last encounter made his head throb. Jim closed his eyes for a moment, composing himself, and didn't bother to make the question anything less than bald.
"Why are you here?"
"Honestly?" Betsy talked as she straightened out a paperclip. "Idle curiosity. You were clearly a very capable mutant. One of the more powerful ones we've yet to see yet you compromised your mission, your comrades because of a thought..." Betsy had successfully straightened the clip and began teasing it over her exposed forearm before puncturing the skin. " A belief. And while this dossier says you're quite mad..." She stops speaking as she punctures the skin again, forming an intricate pattern on her flesh. "I don't believe it."
"I have a dissociative disorder. That doesn't impede my ability to tell right from wrong. Or fantasy from reality." Jim found himself unable to look away from the paperclip in her hand. The movements were too careful to be anything but intentional -- in fact, they almost seemed casually practiced. Was it meant to unnerve him?
"I beg to differ," she continued, as she stopped the intricate movement of the clip and dug in deeper, creating a line of ripped skin. "Your thoughts on me, your belief that we are or have been together is, point of fact, fantasy and a clear sign your prognosis is more than D.I.D. Your doctors have done you a disservice."
Jim wrenched his gaze from her arm to meet her eyes. "We have been together," he said, the statement quiet and matter-of-fact under her amethyst regard. "For years, though yes -- there were starts and stops along the way, and my disorder did contribute to that. But you're still the only one I've ever been with."
She froze, paperclip still lodged in skin. She let her eyes connect with his and for one brief second, considering this. Then, Betsy started laughing. A full-belly laugh that rang out flatly in the room. "What a lovely fairytale. Charming. Though cast as the cradle robber seems fitting. Thank you for this. It was exactly what I needed."
A hand shot across the table and closed around her wrist, arresting her self-mutilation.
"It wasn't a fairytale," he said. The statement was quiet, but it cut through the laughter like a whipcrack. Jim's hand was still on her wrist, but his eyes were locked on hers.
"You protect yourself by running from intimacy because it's safer than depending on someone, than opening up to them, and half the time we've been together I've spent chasing after you to keep it that way. When you couldn't run physically because whatever you didn't like was happening inside your own head, you'd use alcohol to blot it out. You used to call me up drunk and say things you'd never say sober, and then when I tried to talk to you about it you'd pretend it never happened. Even when you were reaching out, you'd push me away. It was not a fairytale."
Eyes never leaving Betsy's face, the telepath prized the paperclip from her hand and released her wrist. He gripped her with his injured hand; she could have shaken his grip with ease. She did not. Just sat there, watching him. Jim finally allowed his eyes to drop as he set the blood-slick piece of metal aside and released her wrist, now reaching for the handkerchief she'd thrown to him.
"You're blunt, and you have a cutting sense of humor," he said, less vehemently now, "and you've said things that hurt me. But I've said and done things that hurt you, too. Even without my disorder to deal with, I've forgotten promises and done things that embarrassed you. I kept secrets that hurt you, and I've fought with you, or avoided fights that needed to happen because I didn't want to deal with them, and a hundred other things I wish I could take back. So it hasn't been easy. Not for either of us." He pressed the handkerchief to her forearm, and looked back to her face as he felt the sticky heat of her blood soaking through the thin cloth. "But I wouldn't have kept chasing you if it wasn't worth the effort."
"I've seen the files and not diminishing what you go through, Mr. Haller but somehow wondering, why you think it is painfully similar to me. " Betsy smiled, then tenderly touched his cheek as he held her hand.
Just a brief moment before she slammed his head into the table with the other.
"I see now. In your mind, you've concocted this world in which I'm broken enough to accept you." She tossed him back the handkerchief. "Thank you for your concern but it is not needed."
The handkerchief flopped to the table, a white and scarlet blur in the periphery of his vision. Jim's head swam. He raised it slowly, dazed and watery-eyed with pain, and her words found an echo in his memory.
". . . I know what you go through is painfully similar but it is not the same . . ."
Blinking back tears, Jim's vision slowly began to undouble. It resolved first on the stained white cloth, and traveled to Betsy's arm.
". . . you don't suffer from something that malevolently wishes for you to die. That waits for one chance to take over . . ."
Carved in her forearm, a bloody diamond.
"What is that?" The words came out thick, but fear was burning away the mist. Heedless of what had happened the last time, Jim grabbed her injured arm. He raised his face to hers, eyes wide. "What did you do?"
Betsy pushed him away, disgusted. "What was necessary for you to get the message." She looked to the door and called out. "Guards!"
Jim tightened his grip on her arm and pulled her across the table. The fear was gone now, replaced with something much more dangerous. He pulled the magistrate closer and looked her hard in the eyes.
"Did she take you over?" The words were so low they were almost a whisper, but they were backed by a heat as scalding as an underground lava flow. He held her so close she could feel his breath.
"If this is her," Jim said, his voice almost a snarl, "if she did this to you-"
"I must not have been clear." A flare of light lit both their faces in amethyst. Betsy's eyes glowed hotly. "This fantasy is over."
There was the click of a safety being released, and behind him a voice said, "Release Commander Braddock. Now."
The guards had entered unnoticed. Now one of them was pointing a gun at his head and showing absolutely no sign he would be bothered by discharging it. Betsy's eyes still burned with power.
Jim released her wrist. He couldn't fight them, and even at full power he didn't know if he could have taken Betsy.
As a guard forced his arms behind his back he caught a glimpse of a faint scar on her palm: just a little white line, hardly more than a nick taken from a broken glass. He remembered the injury. It was the first time she'd reached out to him with her mind, and he had been there to treat it.
She was still that woman. Whatever had happened it was still her, and a bitter hope was better than none.
She moved to the door, stopped, and turned to regard Jim. "Whatever hope you're holding onto, I suggest you leave it in this room. It'll make your time here easier." Eying the guards, she barked, "Take him back to his cell."
Commander Braddock left to the muted sounds of bone connecting to flesh and tried not to smile.
Warning: Violence, disturbing imagery
He wasn't sure what time it was, but he knew he'd missed at least one meal; even his ability to compartmentalize pain didn't dull it enough for his appetite to return. His wrist was especially distracting. Doug had fashioned a makeshift bandage from his own jumpsuit, but the fabric was soaked dark. Though he had largely blanked out by the time Doug began his ministrations, he did feel a brief twinge of relief that the activity had been enough to pull the younger man from his funk, however briefly. The next thing he knew someone was tossing him a new jumpsuit, helping him from his cot, and marching him into the hallway. It had been one of the kinder guards: the man had allowed for his slow movements, and helped him do up the jumpsuit when he realized Jim's left hand was giving him difficulty. If he'd told Jim what had gone on, the words hadn't registered. He wasn't even sure if Doug had been in the cell with him when he'd been taken. Now he sat in another interrogation room. Perhaps even the same one, minus his vomit. The part of his mind that held itself separate from the pain noted it seemed rather soon for a follow-up. Time went fuzzy when he was under this degree of stress, but his nose didn't seem swollen enough to indicate he'd missed an entire day.
The door open and two magistrates entered. They formed a protective circle around their leader, Elisabeth Braddock. Both men eyed Haller, as if knowing he was a feral beast, not to be trusted. "Leave us," she ordered. The men hesitated. She smiled, saccharine sweet at them. "Do not make me make you." The men saluted quickly and exited, tails firmly tucked between their legs. The door closed.
Betsy took her seat opposite Haller, pulled out a white handkerchief and tossed it at him. "I abhor the sight of blood." She offered, a lie but still. Placing a file on the table, Betsy opened it. She reviewed the dossier on Haller. "Are you going to do to my face what you did to Lucy?"
"Lose my temper and get severely beaten? No." The reply came out quickly, but only because his brain was too jumbled to interfere with his mouth. Betsy. It was Betsy, unchanged from their last encounter. She still projected an air of wrongness: subtly off movement, unfamiliar posture. She still did not remember.
She was not here to help him.
Just the thought of their last encounter made his head throb. Jim closed his eyes for a moment, composing himself, and didn't bother to make the question anything less than bald.
"Why are you here?"
"Honestly?" Betsy talked as she straightened out a paperclip. "Idle curiosity. You were clearly a very capable mutant. One of the more powerful ones we've yet to see yet you compromised your mission, your comrades because of a thought..." Betsy had successfully straightened the clip and began teasing it over her exposed forearm before puncturing the skin. " A belief. And while this dossier says you're quite mad..." She stops speaking as she punctures the skin again, forming an intricate pattern on her flesh. "I don't believe it."
"I have a dissociative disorder. That doesn't impede my ability to tell right from wrong. Or fantasy from reality." Jim found himself unable to look away from the paperclip in her hand. The movements were too careful to be anything but intentional -- in fact, they almost seemed casually practiced. Was it meant to unnerve him?
"I beg to differ," she continued, as she stopped the intricate movement of the clip and dug in deeper, creating a line of ripped skin. "Your thoughts on me, your belief that we are or have been together is, point of fact, fantasy and a clear sign your prognosis is more than D.I.D. Your doctors have done you a disservice."
Jim wrenched his gaze from her arm to meet her eyes. "We have been together," he said, the statement quiet and matter-of-fact under her amethyst regard. "For years, though yes -- there were starts and stops along the way, and my disorder did contribute to that. But you're still the only one I've ever been with."
She froze, paperclip still lodged in skin. She let her eyes connect with his and for one brief second, considering this. Then, Betsy started laughing. A full-belly laugh that rang out flatly in the room. "What a lovely fairytale. Charming. Though cast as the cradle robber seems fitting. Thank you for this. It was exactly what I needed."
A hand shot across the table and closed around her wrist, arresting her self-mutilation.
"It wasn't a fairytale," he said. The statement was quiet, but it cut through the laughter like a whipcrack. Jim's hand was still on her wrist, but his eyes were locked on hers.
"You protect yourself by running from intimacy because it's safer than depending on someone, than opening up to them, and half the time we've been together I've spent chasing after you to keep it that way. When you couldn't run physically because whatever you didn't like was happening inside your own head, you'd use alcohol to blot it out. You used to call me up drunk and say things you'd never say sober, and then when I tried to talk to you about it you'd pretend it never happened. Even when you were reaching out, you'd push me away. It was not a fairytale."
Eyes never leaving Betsy's face, the telepath prized the paperclip from her hand and released her wrist. He gripped her with his injured hand; she could have shaken his grip with ease. She did not. Just sat there, watching him. Jim finally allowed his eyes to drop as he set the blood-slick piece of metal aside and released her wrist, now reaching for the handkerchief she'd thrown to him.
"You're blunt, and you have a cutting sense of humor," he said, less vehemently now, "and you've said things that hurt me. But I've said and done things that hurt you, too. Even without my disorder to deal with, I've forgotten promises and done things that embarrassed you. I kept secrets that hurt you, and I've fought with you, or avoided fights that needed to happen because I didn't want to deal with them, and a hundred other things I wish I could take back. So it hasn't been easy. Not for either of us." He pressed the handkerchief to her forearm, and looked back to her face as he felt the sticky heat of her blood soaking through the thin cloth. "But I wouldn't have kept chasing you if it wasn't worth the effort."
"I've seen the files and not diminishing what you go through, Mr. Haller but somehow wondering, why you think it is painfully similar to me. " Betsy smiled, then tenderly touched his cheek as he held her hand.
Just a brief moment before she slammed his head into the table with the other.
"I see now. In your mind, you've concocted this world in which I'm broken enough to accept you." She tossed him back the handkerchief. "Thank you for your concern but it is not needed."
The handkerchief flopped to the table, a white and scarlet blur in the periphery of his vision. Jim's head swam. He raised it slowly, dazed and watery-eyed with pain, and her words found an echo in his memory.
". . . I know what you go through is painfully similar but it is not the same . . ."
Blinking back tears, Jim's vision slowly began to undouble. It resolved first on the stained white cloth, and traveled to Betsy's arm.
". . . you don't suffer from something that malevolently wishes for you to die. That waits for one chance to take over . . ."
Carved in her forearm, a bloody diamond.
"What is that?" The words came out thick, but fear was burning away the mist. Heedless of what had happened the last time, Jim grabbed her injured arm. He raised his face to hers, eyes wide. "What did you do?"
Betsy pushed him away, disgusted. "What was necessary for you to get the message." She looked to the door and called out. "Guards!"
Jim tightened his grip on her arm and pulled her across the table. The fear was gone now, replaced with something much more dangerous. He pulled the magistrate closer and looked her hard in the eyes.
"Did she take you over?" The words were so low they were almost a whisper, but they were backed by a heat as scalding as an underground lava flow. He held her so close she could feel his breath.
"If this is her," Jim said, his voice almost a snarl, "if she did this to you-"
"I must not have been clear." A flare of light lit both their faces in amethyst. Betsy's eyes glowed hotly. "This fantasy is over."
There was the click of a safety being released, and behind him a voice said, "Release Commander Braddock. Now."
The guards had entered unnoticed. Now one of them was pointing a gun at his head and showing absolutely no sign he would be bothered by discharging it. Betsy's eyes still burned with power.
Jim released her wrist. He couldn't fight them, and even at full power he didn't know if he could have taken Betsy.
As a guard forced his arms behind his back he caught a glimpse of a faint scar on her palm: just a little white line, hardly more than a nick taken from a broken glass. He remembered the injury. It was the first time she'd reached out to him with her mind, and he had been there to treat it.
She was still that woman. Whatever had happened it was still her, and a bitter hope was better than none.
She moved to the door, stopped, and turned to regard Jim. "Whatever hope you're holding onto, I suggest you leave it in this room. It'll make your time here easier." Eying the guards, she barked, "Take him back to his cell."
Commander Braddock left to the muted sounds of bone connecting to flesh and tried not to smile.