xp_logs | Haller and Maddie

In which Maddie assures Haller that Genosha did not leave her crazykakes, and he shares a ~secret~.

Jim leaned out window so the wind took most of the smoke. He'd been too tired to leave the office for the cigarette. Taking time off, while necessary, had also put him behind; among other things, he needed to return a number of calls and create files for the new students. His inbox didn't seem to register the semester had ended.

Still, he wasn't so tired he missed the sound of someone stopping outside his open door. The telepath took the cigarette from his lips and turned, then managed a brief smile when he saw who it was.

"Hey, Maddie. Sorry, you caught me on my smoke break."

The teen stood in the doorway, nose wrinkled in disgust. "That is really fucking disgusting you know. Smoking."

"Yes, it is, which is why I try not to do it in the office. Don't pick it up if you can help it." The counselor found an empty coffee mug in which to stub out the cigarette and set it on the windowsill. He waved his hand a few times to fan the remaining smoke outside before turning back to Maddie and gesturing for her to sit. "Anyway, sorry I haven't been around -- as follow-ups go this is pretty late. How've you been doing with everything?"

Maddie walked slowly into the small office, nose still wrinkled at the faint scent of tobacco that lingered in the air. Her eyes remained focus on the coffee mug, imagining the squished up butt inside it, as she flopped onto the chair opposite the counselor's desk. "Don't worry, I wasn't planning on it." She wiggled on the chair, trying to find a comfortable position before finally slipping off her flip flops and tucking her feet under her.

"I'm doing fine, you know? I mean, the whole getting kidnapped thing sucked hardcore, but it's not like anything really happened to me. So I don't have anything to really be super traumatized over."

Jim paced back to his over-stacked desk and gave her a crooked smile. "True," he said, absently straightening the more threatening piles. "And thank you for that, by the way. Although speaking of trauma, I wanted to tell you I was impressed by how you handled yourself when we were in Moreau's mind. Was that your first time in a mindscape?"

She thought about replying with some sarcastic remark about how she spent every Saturday night in some psychopath's mind, but decided against it. Mr. Haller would probably see it is some sort of way she was masking her emotions and make her discuss feelings she didn't have. So straight-forward she would be; hopefully it would be more painless. "Nope. Well not like that. A few times in training so I'd be familiar with the idea. But it was nothing like that."

"Well, it's always different in practice, but Moreau was still on the special side. The air quote kind of special." Jim shook his head at the memory. "In all seriousness, that was a hell of a baptism by fire. Even aside from the fact we were in a brain that was spread across multiple processors, you were handling a lot of threads. And your instincts for adjusting the connections were sound. I can't say I'm happy you had to be in there and I wouldn't want you trying to do it again, but since it had to happen . . ." Jim smiled and gave a one-shouldered shrug. "You did a good job. That's all."

"Thanks?" It was strange, and a tad bit awkward to be praised for something that seemed so easy compared to what the rest of the group had to do. Maddie had been given a simple task: hold the threads and make sure they stayed connected. She wasn't running around headfirst into the firefight, she had just sat there. Sure her role was important (at least everyone else said so), but it Maddie had wanted to do more. She hated being the weak link in the chain, and on top of that, the one that everyone had to worry about protecting. That wasn't her, and being praised this way felt... undeserved and wrong.

"I mean, it's not like I didn't have help, you know? But is that normal," she asked the counselor, leaning forward in her seat. "It totally felt like you were my father there for a bit. Not in the creepy way, or when young kids call their teacher 'Mommy' because they have that same feeling of being taken care of, but like seriously. Like, it felt exactly like when my father taught me how to shoot. And then I looked up and it was you and I was seriously confused."

Jim's mental note about her evasion of the compliment transformed into a small frown. His own actions early on, before they had gotten the link under control, were difficult to recall; he wasn't entirely sure what she was referring to. "Possibly," he said, probing his memory. "Sometimes the mind translates things into familiar terms. Can you elaborate?"

Audible sigh. "Well it first happened when you rescued me from drowning in my shower (thank you for that again, by the way)," she began as she shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "But you were trying to get me to isolate Doug's string and it felt like... okay, don't take this the wrong way, but you have sort of, okay they're not girly or anything but they're kinda less on the big masculine side. Your hands I mean. It seriously felt like you had grown several inches, and put on some pounds of muscle, and you were like older. Like it wasn't your usual self. Does that make any sense?"

". . . yes." He knew what she was talking about now -- and realized, too, that this conversation had been inevitable. He'd been largely successful in concealing his disorder from the student body simply by limiting his use of telekinesis, but Maddie was a telepath. No amount of shielding had ever been capable of hiding a switch from other sensitives.

With a sigh, Jim settled back in his seat. "All right. I'll explain, but first I'd appreciate if you didn't tell the other students. This has more to do with my personal life than my powers. It's not really a secret, I'd just rather anyone who ends up in my office not be distracted by what may or may not be going on with me. Fair enough?"

The girl bounced in her chair and leaned forward excitedly. "OMG Are you like really a vampire? Or like a vampire-werewolf hybrid." Her hands moved rapidly, miming two clawed creatures joining in a awkward angle. "Cause vampires are telepathic. And scrawny and pale. But like werewolves get all 'GRRR BIG' when they shift and not just at a full moon but when they're fighting too. So you have to shift from you to bigger you when you fight and stuff. But no one can know who you are or the high council of vampires will hunt you down for being an abomination because your parents went against their laws? Well you'd have to be the son of a half vampire-half werewolf or else you would be all super hairy and 'GRR' when you morphed.

"That's just what I heard. Around. Do you sparkle?"

"Um, no," Jim replied, moderately distracted by both the non sequitor and sniggers from the part of his brain that considered itself a part of Maddie's peer-group. "Actually I-- wait, how would you even get a werewolf/vampire hybrid? That would involve bestiality and necrophilia. Neither of those cause pregnancy. I may not be Mr. Science, but I don't think they cancel each other out."

"OMG someone needs to tell you about Twilight. It is so bad but all this is explained in there." Maddie sighed, and settled in to explain to the last person in the universe who had not read the books, seen the movies, or just read the summaries because the first two were so awful, like she did. "Basically Edward, the vampire, still has some sperm in his penis so then when he and Bella have sex she gets pregnant and the baby grows like super super fast and when she comes out Jacob, the werewolf who was in love with Bella, imprints himself on the baby so when she grows up she will be his lovah and since he's alive I bet they can spawn too. Just extrapolate and carry it on until you reach the conclusion.

"You should really brush up on your pop culture if you're going to relate to teenagers these days, Mr. Haller."

"Oh, right. That series." He did have a vague familiarity with it, though most of it involved profound relief that Cyndi's only opinions on the Edward vs. Jacob debate involved criticizing the former's overuse of foundation and wondering if the latter had some clause in his contract that prevented him from wearing a shirt.

"Well, I do sort of -- wait, someone fell in love with a baby? You know what, never mind. Somehow I doubt context will do anything but raise further questions." Jim pinched the bridge of his nose to refocus his thoughts, then let his hand drop so he could regard Maddie. "Anyway, going back to the original topic -- no, I'm not a vampire. I have Dissociative Identity Disorder. They used to call it Multiple Personality Disorder."

"Oh. That's cool?" Compared to Haller being a vampire this was kinda boring, actually. Defeated, she sunk back into the chair and watched the counselor closely. She had been so sure. "Not gonna lie, that was kinda anticlimactic. Multiple Personality Disorder," her lips pursed in concentration. "So you have like, other people living in your head? Well not really people but like they aren't you and it's not like you're you and you're all calm and shit and when you get angry another side of you comes out? Who are you? Are you, you? Or do you not know which you you are?

"Were you the you you were born as? Were all of you always you? Do all your yous think they're you when they're you? Like they're you and you're not you.

"I am seriously confusing myself here. Can one of your yous please explain? With small words because, woah."

Silently, Jim took a moment to congratulate Maddie on hitting upon phrasing so confusing even someone who'd lived with the disorder for two thirds of his life couldn't track it.

"It's probably easier to think of the personalities as different mental and emotional states," Jim said, rewinding to one of the more coherent questions. "Basically, the mind splits itself up to deal with traumatic incidents -- allotting different emotions and memories to parts better able to deal with them. It's like an extreme form of compartmentalizing. It's all me, just expressed differently." A hand moved to massage the old scars that covered his right. "Strong emotions or certain situations can trigger a change, but yes, we're always aware I'm really one person. The main difficulty is that some of my ego states got tied to my powers. I had dissociative tendencies beforehand, but the main split happened when I manifested."

"Oh-kay." Maddie nodded slowly as Mr. Haller continued to talk. It was starting to make sense, the whole multiple personality thing, but there were still questions that had been left unanswered. "But they're not this," she motioned to him, "you. Like when I have coffee and get super hyper, I'm like crazy and bouncing off the walls, but I'm still Maddie. But if you have coffee and get super hyper you turn into Bobo the Clown. And Bobo can only like, I don't know, use his telekinesis to create balloon animals out of psionic energy and send them galloping into the distance?"

Jim looked at her for a long moment. Then he said, "O . . . kay. Setting aside speculation that you seem to have met some really disturbing clowns, that's -- sort of what it's like. Not with coffee, obviously, but sometimes if I get angry about a topic an alter is especially invested in that personality will take over. When that happens I can use telekinesis, but lose access to my telepathy." He laced his fingers in front of him. "Telepathy is the only power my core personality ever managed to integrate. The others alters, the ones that hold the more aggressive emotions -- they have the more offensive stuff. There were fatalities the first time I used my powers. I didn't want anything to do with them for a long time."

Things were beginning to make more sense, but it was clear to Maddie that this was going to be one of those things that she probably wasn't going to fully comprehend. But she at least wanted to get a basic understanding of what all of this meant. "So when you picked me up, and when you were helping me that was an alter?" She looked up at Haller for confirmation that she used the correct term. "And you right here are the core? And that is most of the time? So, like, you probably won't just randomly switch when we're talking like this? And, like, if you're all in the same body, why did you feel so physically different?"

"I'm the primary, yes, and yeah, I don't switch in front of students. Everyone in my system has a job. Not always the kind you'd get employed for, but we don't interrupt each other when we're doing them, and working at Xavier's is mine." Thoughtfully, the telepath rubbed the back of his head. "As for why I felt different . . . each alter has its own sense of physical identity, so it wouldn't be unusual to feel it on the astral plane. But you felt it when you manifested, too?"

She nodded once in a very decisive manner. "Yup. I mean, it was all kind of a scary jumble and overwhelming, but I definitely remember feeling like my father had scooped me up to carry me to safety."

"Hm." That was strange. He'd been 'seen' as one of his alters before, but no one had ever mentioned being able to feel the self-image they created for themselves. Not outside the astral plane, anyway. Was it unique to the situation, or simply because no one else had ever had the chance? He couldn't remember.

Jim shook his head and put the question aside for future perusal. "It might've been because we were in physical contact," he ventured. "And your lack of shields probably contributed, at least a little. Either way, the one you felt was Jack. It was him you felt in Moreau's mind, too."

"Can I ask you something," Maddie asked after several seconds of contemplative silence. He was probably getting more than a little tired of all her questions, she figured, but he hadn't asked her to stop yet. "You don't have to answer, cause I know I ask a lot of questions and you have a ton of papers to go through." She eyed the pile on his desk. "But how many alters do you have?"

The way he tracked Maddie's gaze was the only indication the counselor wasn't wringing his hands about his other obligations. Considering it had reached the point where he'd been willing to spare braincells trying to understand the unsettling cultural phenomena that was the Twilight Saga, this was a tremendous act of self-control.

"Three," Jim replied. "The one that's existed the longest is ten. Normal kid, no powers. There are only a handful of people he shows himself around, so he's not really a factor. The other two have my telekinesis." There was a moment of hesitation before he continued, "If you want, I can show you."

"Oh." This was definitely something the teenager had not anticipated. And even though she had already experienced one of his alters, there was something unnerving about the thought of her counselor turning into someone else before her eyes. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat and replied, "No. No thank you. I mean, it's like totally interesting, but I am totally not ready to have it just be like 'Bam!' Like right in front of me. Way too much sharing for one day."

Jim nodded, mildly relieved. Jack wasn't so bad, but Cyndi could and had raised awkward questions, such as Angel once questioning Cain about his sexual orientation. Though in fairness, he had to admit this could not be entirely attributed to his disorder.

"That's okay, I just wanted to warn you. It's why I don't normally do powers-training. If for some reason I have to use TK in front of students I try to keep it short and limit what I say. But with psis -- it's noticeable, and it can be weird." Jim's smile was wry. "Anyway, you can probably see why I prefer to keep my personal life personal."

"Dude." Maddie away his words. "We live in some dude's crazy huge house and there is a stealth plane under the basketball court. I think we are well beyond weird. But I feel ya," she continued, anticipating further comments. "Some things are too weird for even the weird to not think is weird. And I will totes keep your secret. But that totally explains why our few sessions made me want to claw my eyes out from boredom. Totally wanted to make sure I wanted nothing to do with you."

The telepath arched an eyebrow. "So much for my secret plan," Jim said, though without rancor. "Well, okay. Meditation and theory actually are important. But yeah, my disorder is one of the reasons I stay away from overt expressions of power. It kind of limits how involved I can get." His hand traveled to rub the back of his head again. "Although I think you're the first traditionally telepathic student we've had since I've been here, so it's not like I ever developed a solid curriculum. And you do know what's going on now. If you're okay dealing with the weird, we could try some other things."

"Um, yes?" It was kind of a no-brainer, really. "I mean, come on, I love Doc Jean and the Prof, but sometimes it's like we're speaking totally different languages. And the other teachers can only do so much with my brain abilities. You know?"

"Yeah, I know." He remembered what a relief it had been to finally talk to someone who knew what they were doing; for the first three years, Jemail hadn't even had that. Trial and error was an excruciating way to learn if you had no conclusive grasp of the end result. Differing perspectives were invaluable.

"Okay," Jim said after a moment, "I'll compare notes with Jean and the professor and we'll see what we can work out. But you're not immediately off the hook for the fundamentals. They're boring, but they suddenly get a lot less useless the first time something advanced screws up on you."

As boring as it all was, Maddie knew Haller was right. But she had just felt so helpless in Genosha that she was itching to get going on the learning something actually useful if she happened to find herself in a similar situation in the future. "Ugh. I know I need to focus on the basics. Can we try to make it less 'blah blah blah blah blah'?"

The smile the counselor flashed her was amused. "If I start getting demonstrative with the lessons, just remember you said that."