Jean and Adrienne (Backdated)

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

Jean goes into Adrienne's mind with her to better understand Adrienne's mindscape with hopes of helping to better manage it.



"Hey," Adrienne grinned at Jean as she opened her suite door to admit the doctor, "come on in. I picked up some pizza," she announced, gesturing to a box on her coffee table, with plates and napkins next to it. "I couldn't figure out if this was a doctor-patient meeting or a friends meeting, so I went with friends, and thus pizza. And there's wine." Just because they were getting together to go into Adrienne's mindscape so Jean could familiarize herself with it based on the report Haller had given her didn't mean they couldn't enjoy each other's company as friends, right?

Jean laughed. "I think maybe the wine should wait for after," she mused as sat down in one of the chairs. "Never tried mind-reading while intoxicated. I don't think it'd be a good idea."

She eyed the pizza, her stomach growling it's pleasure. "Though sometimes I think you're the telepath. Excellent choice, I must say."

Chuckling, Adrienne took a seat on the couch and snagged a piece of pizza. "Well, Haller was hoping I'd start to see some changes with my powers now that he fixed the self-perpetuating lack-of-control issue, but I'm guessing telepathy's going to be a bit of a stretch. And," she pointed out, "wait til you see the inside of my head. You might reconsider being drunk when you're in there. Or, you could just assume you already are drunk," she shrugged.

"Has Forge's concoction started working again now that Haller's cleaned things out?" Jean said, opting for a bottle of water in the meantime. She laughed again.

"He told me the story about the mind-wide subconscious compulsive hoarding. I'm almost afraid to look. Almost."

Adrienne nodded, bemused. "Yeah, it was pretty creepy in there. I'm sure it put anything on Hoarders to shame. But Haller torched a lot of it so it isn't as scary anymore as it was when I was actually drowning in it." She considered Jean's question as she stared at her hands. "It's working again, yeah." She sounded a little disappointed when she said it, though. She'd been hoping she might see an improvement in her control after Haller had separated her keeper Readings into two parts, since he'd told her more control might happen. She was sick of wearing the coating solution. But Haller had also said it might not work, or it might take a while, so Adrienne knew she shouldn't have gotten her hopes up. But she had.

Leaning back thoughtfully in her chair, Jean put down her pizza. "You've been through a hell of a lot. This thing with the overload of your powers....it's been the result of years of culmination. Think of it like breaking your leg. Something happened that cracked the bone. The body will heal, as it always does, with time. And in the meanwhile you wear crutches and everyone signs the cast," she said with a smile.

"Taking it easy for a bit works best. Then you can work on building back up that leg, or in this case your powers, to be better. Figuring out the problem was the first step. Laying out the framework was another. And building the foundation over the old one comes now." She paused.

"I think I like analogies far too much."

Chuckling, Adrienne shrugged. "There's nothing wrong with analogies. In fact, that helped a great deal to put things in perspective," she assured Jean gratefully as she wolfed down a piece of pizza. "Although now I'm strongly considering getting myself a hat and getting people to sign it and wearing it around like it's a cast for my broken mind."

Midway through taking a drink, Jean laughed, hiding her grin with her cup. "I'm sure Molly would probably have a spare one," she said, setting the glass down.

"I'm glad my pithy observations were of some help."

"I'll have to ask her," Adrienne smirked. "So? Are you ready to check out the mind-wide subconscious compulsive hoarding?" she asked her friend with a waggle of her eyebrows. Polishing off the rest of her pizza, Jean nodded, scooting a bit closer to the edge of her chair as she sat up straighter. She wiped her hands off on a towel in case when they got done she wouldn't be touching her face or anything covered in marinara.

"Let's take a look."

Nodding, Adrienne closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and tried to recapture what Emma had taught her, and what she'd practiced with Haller. Getting herself into her own mindscape while she wasn't actually unconscious was getting easier, though, thanks to all the help.

The Corporate America Theme Park was running a lot more smoothly these days, with the majority of the misplaced images from the Readings having been cleaned up and dislodged from places they didn't belong. The pathway to the chalet that housed her Repository of Readings and memories was now mostly clear, and Adrienne had come into the mindscape on the path already, just a short distance from the chalet itself. She bent down to pull a fork out of a flowerbed where dollar bills were growing next to the path while she waited for Jean.

A moment passed as Jean appeared. The air around her seemed to bend, shimmering, like a heat mirage. She wore a simple green dress, one step down from her astral armor, through some of it bled through unconsciously. She glanced around, taking in the sights that were Adrienneland. It made sense.

"So it was filled to the brim?" she said.

Adrienne's eyes widened at Jean's astral projection, wondering how long it would take before she could project herself with certain outfits on, instead of just what she was wearing when she went into her meditative state. "Yeah, it pretty much was," Adrienne nodded, putting the issue of clothes out of her mind and focusing on why they were there. "There were Readings corrupting everything in the mindscape, like sticking out of buildings and things like that. There were piles and piles of them gathered up in the streets- I was swimming in clothes at one point. But Haller... set fire to them. After he had me collect anything that might be important to me. I think he recognized that if he destroyed something that had emotional or... developmental meaning to me, I'd have gaps in my memory? But most of it was just garbage that I didn't need to keep. The majority of the important stuff is in here, in the shoe closet," she told Jean, gesturing up the path to the chalet, where the 'shoe closet', if it could be called a closet, was situated.

Jean nodded with a note of familiarity to her own 'heart' in her own mind. "It's good to have a centrally located place," she said. She rarely spoke to non-telepaths about astral plane related business but it seemed there were exceptions lately, such as with Garrison as well. She circled the area, taking in every little bit of stone and sprig of grass.

"Right now I'm just wanting to get a tour and a feel of everything, just in case. I'd like to try different ways of getting here, different paths. In case things get moved around again."

"Different paths? To the chalet, you mean? Or to my mindscape?" Adrienne questioned, unsure but quite curious. Until this overload had happened, she'd never even been to her mindscape, so she didn't know anything about it other than what she was beginning to learn recently.

"I was thinking the chalet. It's your fortress. Having a mental map might come in handy," Jean said with a smile.

Adrienne nodded in acknowledgement, walking around the outside of the chalet with Jean and then leading her up the porch steps to the door of the chalet. "So... do you think things are likely to get moved around again?" she questioned, hoping she sounded casual about it. "I mean, when you say you want to have a mental map so you can find it if things get moved around... do you think that's likely to happen again? That I'm going to... have another break?" The sounding casual probably wasn't working. She was sure Jean could figure out that she was scared.

Jean studied the path carefully. "I don't know," she admitted, slowing down after a moment or two. She wasn't going to lie.

"It's possible. But that's why we're getting prepared, just in case."

She hated to made her afraid, but she'd rather her be aware of the possibility and be able to face it head on should it happen. Experience was made that way. "I can see why you and Garrison are such good friends," Adrienne grinned, "you and your 'always be prepared' mantras. Not that that's in any way a bad thing," she added with a good-natured shrug. In fact, that might have been why she was so close to both of them. Maybe she was drawn to people who were well-prepared or something. "Oh!" She stepped on a misplaced Reading, a wine glass half-lodged into the path around the chalet. "Here's something that doesn't belong," she told Jean, stepping back so Jean could see it.

Crouching down, Jean studied it. "How did Haller suggest you clean up these errant readings?" she said. She knew what she would do,but she wanted to make sure Adrienne would too.

"Uhh, well..." Adrienne wrinkled her brow in thought. "He had me hold on to a bag, and think about memories I had relating to the objects I was seeing, and if they meant something significant to me the memory went into the bag. If it wasn't significant, or once the significance was... taken out of it, he torched the object. And then when we had the significant objects, we pulled them apart so they made two halves, the Reading part, and the memory part. Haller was hoping that when those were separated, I could gain more control over my powers. But... I don't think that part worked."

"It will take practice," Jean said with a sympathetic nod.

"Somewhere between now and then this wine glass got discombobulated. It's what happens when you're half thinking about something. You're partially aware of it but your mind's on something else so subconsciously you're aware that this item has use in that it holds your drink, but you don't really think much about it. We're going to try a few exercises. First I want you to concentrate on the glass, imagine holding it in your hand, the feel of it, the weight, the smoothness of the glass as you pull it out of the ground. Focus on the details."

Brow furrowed, Adrienne concentrated and did as Jean instructed, managing to pull the glass out of the ground in an effortless, fluid motion. "Hey, lookit that," she grinned. "I figured I'd break it for sure."

Jean grinned. "Excellent. It's a great start," she said, her soothing, encouraging tones peeking through as she found herself slipping into teacher mode.

"Now I'd like to try a different exercise. We're going to see what effect a reading has on your mindscape. But only if you're up for it."

Adrienne's eyebrows shot up. "Of course I'm up for it! I think that's a great idea! Should we go into the Repository first- the shoe closet?" she clarified. "I mean... do you think the new Reading would go there? That's where it's supposed to go, right?"

"It should," Jean said, studying the landscape. "We can start there but since the remnant of a reading wound up outside of the Repository first we should definitely keep an eye out just in case."

She outstretched her hand, then smiled.

"Shall we? It is an excuse to drink more wine."