xp_logs | (Backdated) Log: [Garrison, Haller] A night at Harry's

Haller and Garrison run into one another at Harry's and end up in a meandering conversation about women, identity, women, the nature of good and evil, and women.

It had been some time since they'd gone to Harry's, and now she'd begged off again. Jim couldn't blame her; whatever bug Betsy had contracted was still going strong, and she was plainly not feeling her best. Still, her absence had turned a planned night of relaxing socialization into an opportunity for his mind to note that whatever the plan, the reality involved sitting in a bar and drinking alone. He was beginning to remember why he didn't do this after extensive repair work. That and his abstract worry about Betsy's health was making Cyndi's "screw being an adult, I'm gonna go burn something" attitude increasingly attractive.

He sipped his beer, half-watching an ESPN highlight reel playing over the bar. He barely registered the front door open.

"What did I tell you, Harry? Leafs spank the Rangers. Spank them." Garrison said as he walked through the door, shedding his jacket. At the bar, Harry barely looked up from the glass he was polishing.

"You're a hell of a poor winner, Gar."

"So long as I keep doing it. And I'll take those free beers now." Kane grinned as he sat down, noticing Haller there for the first time. "Hey David. I'm here to gloat. You?"

"Huh?" Jim's brain, which had only just registered the fact Harry had spoken, realized an actual acquaintance had arrived and attempted to get with the program. "Oh, hey, Garrison. Uh, nothing really. Night out fell through." Enough of the exchange with Harry filtered back enough to supply additional small talk. "What, you didn't bring anyone to celebrate with?" he asked.

"Tandy and Adrienne are having 'Unwilling Minor -Reluctant Guardian' time. And I've got no clue where the hell Logan went. He owes me a beer too." Kane plucked the pint that Briar placed on the bar and took a long sip. He was still in his suit, FBI ID clipped to the breast pocket. Obviously just coming in from the city. "What about you? Braddock take a pass on all the luxury and refinement that this places offers?"

"Fuck you twice, Gar."

"You promised not to swear in front of the kids, Harry." Garrison said as the owner ambled past towards the cold cellar for replacement cases.

"I'm pretty sure we're the same age. Wouldn't that technically be 'us'?" The telepath sighed and sat back. "And yeah, Betts wasn't up to it tonight. Or just needed a break from me, considering how scrambled I can get between empathy sessions with Topaz and clean-up with Adrienne." He tilted his head at the other man. "She doing all right, by the way? Personally I mean."

"It's always hard to tell with Adrienne. I've seen FBI profilers with less highly developed personal defense mechanicizms."

Jim snorted in amusement. "Agreed. I notice she does a great job of seeming open."

"Well, you learn to survive an abusive father and an abusive husband while packing a career as a model in the middle, and it doesn't leave a lot of space for healthy growth. The fact she hasn't been sneaking off for blow binges in the city is nothing short of a fucking miracle." The truth was that Adrienne had made a hard transition to the school. Her life had been very different before her powers forced her to Xavier's, and over the years, she'd progressively lost more and more of what had defined her to the pressures of this life. Her survival as a relatively healthy person was a remarkable testament to her internal strength.

"Her powers make it more amazing. In some ways it's like telepathy. The things normal social conduct would shield you from don't apply. You get the truth, whether you want it or not." Jim shook his head and took another drink. "How are you doing?" he asked, turning his attention more solidly to Garrison. "After all of that, I mean."

"Truthfully, I have no idea. Adrienne seems fine, and has been getting better about being honest. I'm more worried that she's trying to do too much in an effort to prove that she's okay, instead of letting herself take time to properly process things and figure out what she needs."

The telepath raised an eyebrow. "I meant you personally. Your girlfriend spent a couple weeks acting increasingly altered, started hallucinating, and had a seizure in front of you. That's a little stressful."

"At this point, we've been both so far from normal as a couple that I don't know what shocks me any more." Kane shrugged. "Watching her eyes roll up in her head with a teenager freaking out behind me is not my idea of a good time. But- I don't know. I was so focused on getting her to the medlab, and then stopping Tandy and Sue from melting down, I think I just went into crisis mode and stayed there until she woke up. Bitching about sports. She's very odd, you know."

"A little, yeah. She handled the meltdown weirdly well on the inside, too." Jim sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know. Sometimes . . . I wonder if it's a good idea. Love, I mean." He paused to consider what he'd just said and added, "I may be slightly drunk."

"Fuck, are we already at the 'is it worth opening yourself up because of the pain' conversations? Because if it is, I'm behind." Garrison waved for a couple of shots of Crown along with a second pint.

"It's not just that. Love can make you stupid." The telepath gestured to Garrison with his bottle, only failing to slosh the contents because they were nearly gone. "Sometimes crisis mode means calming everyone down and getting the person to proper care. Other times it means being an idiot, accidentally distracting one of your teammates so they can get captured, and getting stabbed in the brain. Fear is . . . unpredictable."

"So what this really is about is 'I saw my smoking hot but brainwashed girlfriend, and instead of acting like the hardened trained soldier that I am, I got caught off guard and dragged someone down with me'." Kane shook his head. "Man, I'm a cop, Haller. You're a shrink. I'm trained to react properly to crisis situations, and one of the first things we learn in that training is that you can't anticipate for everything. You can't turn off being human when shit goes down." He waved over Briar with a refill of shots for both of them. "Let me tell you a story about a man named Don. Don was a former veteran of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team. He's the kind of guy that makes Scott look like an undisciplined pussy. This guy once faced down a terrorist who was firing at him with an automatic rifle around a human shield. Bullets everywhere, Don doesn't rush things, taking extra seconds to line this guy up properly and get a clean shot without hitting the hostage. To do that, you need a pair the size of boulders and cast out of pure adamantium. Anyways, Don is out with the family having brunch, and on his way back from the can, three geniuses decide to hold up the place, waving guns around his family. This guy, real life action hero that would make Bruce Willis his bitch, packing his sidearm at the small of his back, trained for this very situation his entire professional career. What does he do?"

Kane paused for effect. taking a sip of his beer. "He speartackles the guy closest to the table with his wife and two little girls. Gets himself shot twice before the perps take off to start a high speed case that later gets them wrapped around a bridge abutment as a kind of self-imposed death penalty. Don should have had his weapon out, put all three of them in the dirt or on their knees with their hands held high. But it was his family, so he just reacted. That shit happens to the best of the best. You either accept it or you go find a monestry in Tibet to hole up in and rejection all personal contact for the rest of your life."

"I went twenty-odd years of my life without a date because that was the original plan," Jim replied dryly. "No, I'm at peace with screwing up. I'd do it again, though hopefully in a less stupid way. This isn't about the danger. It's just . . ." he groped for the right words, not entirely sure what he was trying to say. He tried again.

"Before I manifested I spent a lot of time being passed around. I've met your father and I know . . . some of what that relationship was like, so maybe it's similar for you. When you've been abandoned, even if the other party couldn't help it, you get used it. In the back of your mind, part of love is waiting for the other shoe to drop."

"Sure, but the options get pretty bleak. I mean, when my mom died, it wasn't about feeling alone. It was more... something was suddenly missing. What do they call it? Phantom limb syndrome, I guess. Not that Adrienne is a replacement for my mother, but what was absent comes from that same place." He said. "When it's not there, there's still pain. I don't think I was protected from it when I was alone and unattached - I just hurt in a different way."

"Connection," Jim suggested. He put his empty bottle on the counter; it was replaced with another. "That's what was missing, I think. Sex, or shared work, or friendly banter . . . they can help, but they aren't substitute for being understood. Or accepted." He put the bottle against his forehead for a moment, letting some of the chill seep in. "God knows our lives work against us on that last part. The mutant part is enough of a hurdle without throwing in the team and the other ancillary weirdness."

"Only if you're locked into a traditional viewpoint about it. I mean, let's be honest - there's nothing normal about the social structure we operate in; X-Men or not."

Jim popped the top of his beer and took a swig. "What, you mean living in a social microcosm that regularly sees its students abducted doesn't exactly put you on speaking terms with normalcy? Couldn't be."

"I was more talking about the ratio of former underwear models to residents compared to an average sample of the populace at large."

"Maybe it's another reason we're called homo superiors. But yeah, it's a little strange. So's their taste. Okay," Jim gestured at Garrison, "RCMP/FBI guy, I don't think anyone's going to argue that doesn't make sense. But I still don't know what Betsy was on."

"Not following." Kane took a sip from his drink.

The telepath quirked his eyebrows again. "Former mental patient and current headcase isn't traditionally desirable. We have some common ground, but I wouldn't have expected to get to a point where we found that out." Or that their first private conversation had ended in the defilement her former office, but he wasn't that drunk. He shrugged and took another drink. "Most telepaths are a little crazy, though."

"Maybe there's some kind of psionic synchronicity; a resonance based on your, you know, powers. I mean, I understand the attraction for you, obviously, but I agree that her being into you makes no sense. There has to be some kind of damage involved."

Jim smiled faintly. "We met when we were both in a lot of pain. I think even without telepathy we recognized that in each other. But it wasn't love then. That only came after we got to know each other." He rolled the bottle between his hands as his tone mellowed. "Maybe when you set aside everything else it's as simple as wanting that connection. We do have damage. It sets us apart, even if it's just in our own minds. It's rare to find someone who can not only understand what we've been through, but accept it."

It was just a fragment. It didn't encompass the long debates about astral theory or viability of human/mutant coexistence. Not the nights spent leaning against one another as they watched movies on the couch, or the sincere but only occasional attempts at home-cooking that inevitably ended in a blackened pan whenever Betsy took the lead. Not the little favors performed automatically on the other's behalf, or the little slights intentionally performed during a fight, or the sex or the jokes or the fights or the million other things that happened behind closed doors. But even here, ostensibly talking about relationships, Jim didn't want to put any of that into words.

"Anyway," he said, attempting to move away from personal ground, "how do you quantify it? What is it about Adrienne that's different?"

"I don't know. It wasn't really a 'wow, she's the one' moment that set her apart from other women I've dated. It more evolved - there was her legal issues from her late husband, stuff tied up with the HFC. It just seemed like we were thrown into a lot of shit together, or when there wasn't a crisis, we were in the same place together away."

"Yeah. It just . . . happens." The telepath rubbed a thumb down the condensation on the bottleneck. "Have you ever felt like that with anyone else?" he asked.

"Been in love with someone? Sure. But it's always different with each person, you know? I've never dated anyone like Adrienne before. She's got different viewpoints, experiences, attitudes; not to mention a wholly insane outlook on life. So our relationship is unlike any other one I've had, but I think that's true with every real relationship, eh?"

"Romantically I wouldn't know. But like I said, I spent most of my life avoiding them." The counselor put his bottle on the bar and stared at it. "I don't know. As messy as they can be and as badly as they can end, you still look for relationships. You seem pretty good at them. I guess I admire that." After a short pause, Jim sighed. "Can you drink any faster? I think I'm way too far ahead of you in drunken honesty."

"Enhanced endurance. It includes obscene levels of resistance to toxins. You're always going to be drinks ahead of me." Kane said with a smile, but drained his pint anyways and waved for another. "You're really pushing this kind of 'grass is greener' approach. Look, Haller, there's no grand secret here. I don't go looking for relationships; I try to make connections and see where it takes me. Most of the time, as long as you're willing to be honest and give things a shot, it goes as far as it is supposed to naturally."

"Sorry, my self-esteem decreases in direct proportion to the amount I've had to drink. Besides, I didn't mean romantically. Or not just romantically. Social capability is just not something I ever mastered." Jim shrugged. "My life is world's better than it was before I came to Xavier's. I have friends. I have a woman I love. I will never not be thankful for that. I guess I'm just -- curious. About what it's like for other people. And never going to mix lessons in empathic manipulation and alcohol again. Christ, I'm already regretting this conversation."

"Everyone what's to know what it's like for other people. It always seems easier for them, doesn't it?" He took the beer from the rail and looked at it for a moment. "You see them and they seem to understand what to do all the time. Or they seem like they have everything figured out. But really, no one does. We're all figuring shit out, even the guy with all the friends and all the girls. Hell, I don't even know my own brain these days. At the end of the day, it's having the friends, having the person to love that makes matter, not how cool or how stupid you feel making it happen."

Jim laughed at his own awkwardness, conceding the point. "True enough. And we do all have one thing in common, at least: nobody really knows their own mind. And rarely anyone else's, even for those of us who have the opportunity to visit."

"Yeah, see, that was a moment you had to ruin by reminding me that you can just bounce around people's minds. Ethics my ass. I bet you've seen everyone in this place naked through their own eyes. Haven't you? You have. Nah, I'm kidding." He took a sip. "You have."

"I have a dissociative disorder, remember? Half the time my own body feels like a rental car. Besides, anything I see during a repair feels like a personal memory. Unless you find yourself especially arousing it doesn't mean much." The telepath took another drink. "No matter what power Marie used to attribute to your abs."

"I am very pretty, it's true. I'm told something around the eyes makes me remind people of Pam Grier." It was second nature to try to downplay and defuse a serious situation with a joke. "Nothing you'd be able to tell without eyeliner. Did you spend some time in Vice you want to tell us about?" It was easy to fall into the other man's rhythm, at least once he managed to stop thinking about it.

"I'm a federal police officer. We don't do 'Vice'. That's for weird, fat local cops in ill-fitting blue suits." Kane leaned back, giving Haller a long look. "Tell me something, man, with all of this. You sure this isn't just a reaction to the likelihood that you're changing? That the 'lonely crazy unsocialized guy' is rapidly becoming a description that no longer fits?" Most people forgot that Kane had a degree in psychology.

"It's possible. Sharing a continent with my girlfriend again is certainly a challenge to the sense of isolation. But I don't know. Everything's okay, we're getting along, but something's -- off. And I'm trying to figure out if it's me." Jim made a frustrated noise. "You know how Adrienne's good at hiding her feelings because she's great at seeming open? Betsy comes at it from the other direction. We established early on that I don't press her for anything related to her work with Snow Valley. She's very protective of them, she wouldn't create the security risk. I agree. But she has this great tendency to use her work as a smokescreen, and fucked if she makes it easy to tell which is which. Even under direct questioning." He sighed and took another drink. "Sometimes I really hate that spy training."

"It's not just training, Haller. Some people are like that naturally. It's how they end up spies. Uncle Pete used to talk about it, that the job picks you, not the other way around."

"I know. An intense aversion to openness is one of the things we have in common. Double-edged sword of being telepaths, too: on the one hand, we don't need to actively express ourselves for the other person to know what we feel for them, or them for us. It lifts that natural barrier. On the other, there comes a point where understanding becomes an excuse for inaction."

The telepath put his chin in his hand and regarded Garrison. "You said you don't know your own brain these days. Well, nobody can. Not even those of us who helped put it back together. It's because we're not disembodied minds. Does it matter how good your intentions are if you don't act on them? If you have terrible impulses but you resist them, are you really a bad person? Actions matter. Just like with that guy Don. Who you are on paper is meaningless in the moment."

"Which is good, because most days, I feel like I'm some kind of fictional character, trapped into being tormented by some sick minded individual's joy of putting me through as much pain as possible for his own amusement. Maybe we all are." His eyes unfocused as he turned to look at a middle distance and fell silent for a moment.

"Nah, I'm kidding."

"Mm hm." Jim's chin didn't budge from his hand. "You sure this quip isn't just a reaction to the likelihood that you've been through some terrible crap and use humor and personal anecdotes as a way to avoid the issue?"

"I'm sure I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about." He grinned and swigged some beer. "Maybe this is all a dream, and any minute Patrick Duffy is going to step out of the shower."

Jim sighed. "Everybody's got a defense mechanism. By the way, that joke's a lot less funny considering Jean and I have actually created 'it was all a dream' scenarios. I look forward to the inevitable day we find out we're figments populating Maddie's snow-globe."

"That is entirely more terrifying than I'm willing to contemplate. Seriously though, I think you've let the telepath side jade you a bit. Actions matter, but intent matters too. I'm not talking about people being 'good' or 'bad'. Those are distinctions that a few years in law enforcement quickly dispels. People do good and bad things for good and bad reasons, and sometimes with no reason at all. Choosing not to act on bad intentions is a good thing, but it doesn't invalidate the bad intentions. That's where you need to get inside your own head and figure out why, and right now, I need a map and a native guide to do that.

Jim frowned at the last. One mention was circumstance. Two was a tell. "What is it you feel you need to figure out?"

"Everything. I don't fundamentally understand myself right now. The sense of disconnect is always there." He finished off the pint with a long swallow. "It's not something that has me worried, but it's disconcerting. Look at it this way. I've been a hockey fan my entire life. Been so since I could remember liking anything. But right now, I couldn't tell you why I started. I can't tell you what I felt like watching hockey as a kid or a young man. I don't know whether what I feel now is really me or it's the remembered habit of a lifetime of doing it. That, my friend, is a very odd place to be."

"This is since Aikins?"

"Since I woke up. I had problems before Aitkins; but apparently that was Amanda's spell doing it."

"Magic." Jim was getting tired of magic and magical entities. He only ever seemed to deal with the aftermath, and it was never good. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "You were essentially tabula rasa when we worked on you. It could have been the effect of chaos magic, or maybe even something about that hammer you caught . . . maybe both, I don't know. Either way, your mental schemata was gone. Not damaged, actually gone. We reconstructed as best we could, but it was still a ground-up rebuild. It would make sense that it doesn't have the same weight as the initial experiences." Fuck, he'd hoped . . . but nothing was ever quite the same after it'd been broken, was it? He should have known that. The telepath shook his head.

"What about interpersonal connections? Were those affected?"

"Not sure. Some of them seem distant - old slights and things have a lot less weight. But it's more emotional distance than disconnect."

"Okay. Distance, but not absence. Okay." Jim allowed himself to breathe again. There was something stomach-churning about the idea that Garrison's memories had been preserved, but not the emotions. This wasn't ideal, but at least it wasn't the worst-case scenario. Just . . . halfway. "I think I'm starting to see what you mean," he said. At this point the beer was long forgotten. "Does anything help? Jog a connection with the old stuff?"

"It's not really like that. Some things feel synched up, others don't but feel like they should. Some are just memories that I don't feel anything at all about. And maybe that's normal. Maybe I've dealt with some of it." He took another sip. "Maybe this makes me well adjusted now. You could market this as a service."

"Maybe these days living is like a kind of psychic occupational therapy. Your injuries weren't only physical. You're rediscovering what works and what doesn't. Some connections are still there. Some you lost, or, like you said, maybe didn't need. It's hard to know." The telepath stared into his bottle for a long moment, then shook his head. "Whatever the reason, I'm sorry we couldn't do better by you."

"I got punched to death by a God. I'm not inclined to complain, David." He waved for another round of shots, and considered the full one of rye. "I sort of remember the blankness - the nu-self. It was... it was like floating, with that feeling you get when something you can see is close to you."

"You had some awareness?" Jim asked, surprised. "Maybe awareness is too strong a word, but . . . that's interesting. I didn't see anything until I imposed a structure. Just a void." He rubbed his face thoughtfully. "That means even when everything is stripped away, there's still something left."

"It's hard to describe. Again, it wasn't rational thought as much as the sense of something being there. I don't know - it could have even been the residual magic. Or the guilt, or who knows what."

"Guilt implies an identity, conscious or not. Can you feel guilt if you have no concept of right and wrong? If your self had been completely destroyed, how could you even register a feeling?" Jim drummed his fingers thoughtfully. "I don't like using words like 'soul,' but there's -- something. Telepaths can do a lot of things, but we only work with the material in front of us. We can't create life where there isn't any."

"That's getting a little metaphysical for me. Maybe the echo had more of a tie than we thought it might."

"Could be. It's not like we have anything to compare it to." The telepath shrugged. "It's true that some things are formed by experience and habit. But some people use trauma or abuse as a reason to perpetuate the cycle, while others with the same experience go on to become cops or doctors or social workers. I don't believe anyone's born good or bad, but I don't know what makes them go one way or another, either. Maybe it's disposition, maybe it's circumstance. Or both, or neither. I don't know. I doubt anyone does."

"Maybe it's not fixed like that. This job is good for seeing the scope of human activity. I watched a career hitman break down in tears when he heard during his trial that his apartment had been evicted and his cat had been put down. A guy who once killed a Mafia informant with a toaster sobbing like a five year old over a pet. I've seen saints hide a monstrous side, and monsters who love their mothers and donate to widows and orphans funds."

"Those only look like contradictions from the outside. What we think of as aberrations are personally consistent to the people doing them. There's a spectrum of behavior. That doesn't mean even the extremes can't be complicated." Jim spread a hand. "There's no 'pure' anything. But there are things we will and won't do, even if the scale is sliding."

"It's not the spectrum of behaviour I'm talking about. It's more our inaccurate classifications of it. What was the saying 'save me from the righteous with the best intentions'? A good man is more likely to burn you at the stake for your own good than an evil one, after all."

"Sure. It goes back to personal perspective. I mean, to me, the idea of rewiring a mind is worse than killing someone. The person facing the option might not agree." Jim returned his chin to his hand, coasting now on the pleasantly philosophical stage of inebriation. "I've seen people try to be good. I've tried. But I've never seen anybody consciously try to be bad, or think of themselves that way. They're coming from a flawed starting point, taking a logical point to an illogical extreme, or don't care about the consequences for others. Or all of the above. None of that makes you evil, but it isn't usually a recipe for good."

"That's where your life experience and mine differ. I've seen people planning to be bad. There's all kinds of reasons and rationale, but they embraced the inherent evil. Gladly, in some cases."

"We have a different interpretation of bad, at least when it comes to personal awareness. Some people rationalize pain and cruelty. Some people elevate it to something necessary or noble. Like you said, there's always a rationale, even if it's only for fun. But there's always something." The telepath sighed. "I guess definition goes back to the complexity of the issue. Besides, if human nature was cut and dry what would we have left to talk about? Remembering that I don't follow sports."

"Normally, this is the point that we start talking about chicks or something."

"We already covered chicks. What else do you have?"

"We're down to drinking stories and boobs."

"Sounds good. I've never had to question my faith in humanity because of breasts."