Do I Know You? — Smart Money's on the Skinny B

[xp-erverse.livejournal.com]

The group finds a safe place to stay the night and takes stock of the day's events.


Quentin sat Daniella down on the small cot and took a deep breath through her nose and out her mouth. They were, if not safe, then at least unmolested for the time being. Hopefully long enough to finally figure out what had happened and how they could fix this.

He did not have full access to his powers in this body, but he hoped he could at least still read the tapestry that wove the five minds together. He ignored the brighter, stronger threads that led to Gabriel, Jean-Paul, and Wanda, and instead focused on the faint one that led into the dark recesses of the Astral Plane.

Careful, careful. There was something at the other end, that much he could tell, unknown, unmoving, and unresponsive. The link was fragile, so he could only tug it gently, fearing it would dissolve if pulled too quickly or too forcefully. Slowly, the link stabilized. Further pulling would not give, and Daniella herself was still nowhere to be found, but she still existed somewhere. Quentin was sure enough of that.

"She's a telepath, too," he informed the others, his voice uncharacteristically soft and as gentle as the psychic link. "Long range. She was so scared of what they were going to do to her. She needed help."

"Who are they people who were going to hurt her?" Wanda asked. The burning sensation in the small of their back had stopped being completely present but she still felt it flair or tingle from time to time. The placement of the pain told her all she needed to know and she would tell the others but there were more important things to do. "Thinking back, that was not a full hospital we fled from. It was smaller. A clinic, perhaps?"

If they'd had a mirror then they would have seen Daniella's face contorted in disgust. "They're Christians," Quentin said, the venom practically dripping from Daniella's mouth. "Like, Christian Science but even less science. Not a big movement, almost kind of cultish. If you can tell the difference between Christians and cults, anyway. The clinic belongs to their church, so they can practice their own fucked up 'medicine' safe away from all the quacks and fraudsters with their evidence-based medicine and peer review and whatever."

"Oh good." Gabriel's voice was all derision. "That's what the world needs. More religious zealots." The bitterness practically radiated off him, nearly infecting the other minds with which he was sharing Daniella's body. "Medical experimentation in the name of Christ." He sighed. "Do we know what were they going to do to her? Or more generally, what the hell is going on?"

"I don't know." The information was not forthcoming, and all Quentin got when he pulled on the strained thread was a flood of terror that left him dizzy and Daniella's face coated in sweat. "Fuck," he panted, their hands shaking. "They might as well tried to've killed her. Brain operation. Something to turn off her TP. Christ, they were going to fucking mutilate her. She'd've been lucky to ever wake up."

He stood up, still wobbly on their feet, and started pacing nervously, unable to keep still. "This, though, is my fault," he admitted, eyes fixed on one of the very old and very poorly maintained rifles. On his knees in the boys' room, blood pouring from his nose, three others standing over him, laughing, raising their fists to deliver a blow that would leave him on the cold dirty tiles . . . "I did this before, back in . . . never mind. I linked us and drew us all together. I don't know how. It just happened."

Jean-Paul had been listening quietly as the others discussed their situation. He'd been paying attention to small things in the room - the way the light flickered just a little, the dust on the surfaces around them, the musty scent of the blankets on the cot. Now, though, he turned his thoughts toward what Quentin was saying and waved their hand a bit. "Oui, yes, it is your fault. Excellente. Now stop and do not take us into a... a..." He paused and frowned, muttering a few choice curses in French before shrugging as the English words he wanted eluded him. "Be guilty later. Now we must fix things. Plans."

Gabriel took over so he could audibly shush the other voices. He needed to think, and it was hard to do when all four of their minds were shouting thoughts, competing for attention. Everything about this was confusing, and he felt exhausted, mentally and physically. "So we're sharing a body. The four of us. Maybe five, if she's even still there. And we're sort of sharing a brain, I guess." He sighed as he looked around the room. Their body ached, and this wasn't helping. "And we can't use a phone. That's the state of things?"

"Essentially, though there appears to be an extra piece of fun thrown into the mix," Wanda said, taking over. Her hand drifted down and back to touch the spot on their back that kept aching. "The phone issue is probably me. As is the pain in the lower back. I have a ..." Wanda tried to think of the way to describe it. The tattoo across her back that had been infused with magic. "Safeguard, I suppose. It is supposed to keep out a certain magical creature but it seems to be reacting to me being taken from my body. As far as I can tell, it is keeping me somewhat connected to myself as well as my powers. Which means there will be complications, such as the phone issue, as I cannot control it and it comes and goes as it pleases."

"Great. Email's probably out of the question, too, then." As if this wasn't complicated enough. Quentin wearily rubbed their eyes and yawned. Gabriel wasn't the only one exhausted. "Okay, priorities. We need to somehow call Chuckles so he can send someone here. We also need to survive the night, and the cops and the church zombies are out looking for us, so we gotta stay here. Food first, then, right? And sleep? This place's gotta have like some crackers and wine, at least."

Jean-Paul snorted softly, the exhaustion the others were experiencing leeching into his own mind and making his thoughts feel sluggish. It wasn't a sensation he liked very much. "Sleep now so we do not risk being seen coming and going again. I am not so sure that we can avoid the priest and the nuns again. We can have food in the morning, once we are assured that we have left this place without the... ah, the church zombies following, oui?"

"Sure," Gabriel nodded. He surveyed their surroundings, his skin starting to crawl at even the limited vestiges of religion in the room. The sight made him crave a cigarette, even out of his nicotine-hooked body. At least it wasn't a sacristy. "You guys should..." His eyes went to the weapons table to his right, and he grabbed a pistol and a magazine. "I mean, I'm a night owl by nature. I can wait up a little longer and make sure the coast is clear." He put the gun just underneath the cot.

Quentin rolled his eyes, metaphorically speaking, but did not otherwise comment on Gabriel's idea for self-protection. "Fine, sleep. We'll fix this tomorrow. My real roommate is bad enough. Don't need three more."

~*~

Quentin retreats into a portion of the Astral Plane and inadvertently drags Gabriel with him. Because this wasn't weird enough already.


Although Daniella's body was drifting off to sleep and, Quentin presumed, so had Gabriel's and Wanda's and Jean-Paul's trapped psyches, Quentin was too wired. The whole day had been surreal and as exhausted as he was, he knew he could not get any rest until he had a chance to process what happened. And the guilt that gnawed at him like a starving rat certainly did not help. Even if they could find their way safely home (and yikes at him thinking that Xavier's School for Wayward Youth was home), then who was to say that anyone could undo the damage that Quentin's uncontrollable powers had caused? Maybe they would be stuck in this Twilight Zone equivalent of dissociative identity disorder forever.

The very least Quentin could do was clear out some space so he could focus and try to find a solution. Creating a psiscape into which he could retreat was difficult and left him even more drained than he already was, but he had seen his tutors do it enough times that he could at least approximate their techniques. The space was messy and crude, like a child's crayon drawings brought to life, but it was functional, and the cabana on which he found himself sitting was comfortable despite its lumps.

"Whoa." A somewhat bewildered Gabriel stood in Quentin's psychic playhouse, surprised to once again see his surroundings change. The sudden appearance of this new space was hardly the least surprising event of the day, but it was nice to be reminded that he could still be stunned.

"What is this?" He turned, an eyebrow raised, to look at Quentin, full-well knowing he couldn't really be looking at Quentin if they were trapped inside Daniella's brain. (This thought alone might have made his head hurt, if he had been remotely corporeal.)

"Psiscape," Quentin answered, his too-small bathing suit suddenly morphing into his Van Wyck Prep Academy uniform as he stood up, almost as if he were ashamed for Gabriel to see him like that. As if. "It's like a dimension where what's in your mind is real. Telepaths can work it. So just trying to give myself a little space to see if I can't fix this shit."

"Oh." Gabriel's eyebrow twitched a bit. He didn't notice. "Okay." He held up his arm, looking for some kind of physicality. After staring at them for a second, he sighed. "It's hardly the strangest thing that happened today, I know, but why am I in here?"

"Fuck if I know." Quentin had grown accustomed to a completely different understanding of reality since manifesting his telepathy, but he was still flying blind most of the time. "Maybe it's just because Poutine and Magneto Junior are asleep and you're the only one awake for this. Maybe it's 'cuz of some residual effect of fucking. Couldn't say. Sorry." He even sounded like he actually meant it.

"Don't be." Gabriel dropped his arms to his sides, and it was only then he realized that he (or whatever manifestation this was) was standing clad in only a pair of running shorts and sneakers. Lacking the psychic stamina to conjure clothes he didn't question it. "I mean, this totally blows, no question about it. Wasn't exactly looking to go back to..."

He gave Quentin a small shrug as he trailed off, but his mind finished the sentence for him. In his head, a mental picture of Daniella, standing on a crowded street corner waiting for the light to change. Across the street, a man. An older man, staring at her. A familiar expression.

He'd seen that kind of wanting before. That kind of desire. That look, this body, that moment. In that instant, he was 16 again, strolling down the street in well-worn clothes from Goodwill, trying to attract attention but trying desperately to avoid it. The eyes. He tried to block out a lot of things, but he could never block out their eyes.

Nor, given the vigor of the psychic link between them, could he block out Quentin from finding himself in Gabriel's shoes. He was exposed, vulnerable in a way eerily reminiscent of his own tortuous time in high school. Chad Matthews looming over him, hands on his belt buckle, laughing . . .

"Dammit," Quentin said weakly, desperately trying to shield himself off from Gabriel, but the walls collapsed more quickly than he could build them, like sandcastles near the shore at high tide.

The flash of an unfamiliar face pushed against the rapid current of Gabriel's thoughts, the glint off the belt buckle triggering an almost visceral inhalation. Hands grabbing his shoulders, a man lifting his chin, grunts, footsteps, sirens. The 16-year-old, darting around downtown Austin, clenching his fists, one in a tight ball, the other around a wad of cash.

Through it all, a kind of darkness. A fear that was almost palpable in the psiscape.

Their memories bled into each other, and it was impossible to tell what image and what sensation belonged to whom. Quentin was reasonably certain that if they did not stop traveling down this spiral of bad memories and self-loathing, then they might never be able to escape. "Fuck. Stop. Think of something else, literally anything. Something good." Good memories were hard to come by for Quentin, but one stood out clearly.

The psiscape started to shift, and the dirty streets changed into a well-furnished bedroom, decorated with strewn clothing.

The change in setting was enough to break Gabriel out of the shame-spiral. Something seemed to break, and the tension left his shoulders a bit as he looked around. The silence hung in the space around him.

"Fuck," he finally said, dropping down onto the imagined bed. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." He leaned over, resting his elbows on his knees and putting his head in his hands. "Just— what the fuck?"

Quentin stood by awkwardly for a moment before he sat down next to Gabriel. He was not a comforting person by nature, but he patted Gabriel's thigh and left his hand there, unsure of what else to do. "This place, it . . . it directly responds to what you're thinking and feeling," he tried to explain. "I think it's stable for now, just try not to think too hard about bad memories. Assuming those were memories . . ." The vividness of the images and Gabriel's terror suggested they were, but Quentin left it hanging, anyway, to save face if Gabriel wanted.

"Yeah." Gabriel tensed briefly at the touch, then relaxed. "They were." He looked up at Quentin, his face rather cryptic given the 4,000 things he was now feeling. "Just — fuck," he spat out. "We're in this fucking girl's body, hiding and running and hiding and running," he said after a second, his sense of loathing all too clear. "Fucking 16 again."

"Parents who hate you for what you are," Quentin continued with some sympathetic understanding. "Sixteen? It doesn't feel like it's that long you ago. Your memories. They feel younger. Wait." He blinked. "How old are you?"

As unhappy as he felt, Gabriel couldn't help the small smile that appeared. "How old do you think I am?" He flopped back against the bed, tilting his head to look at Quentin. "Guess."

Both the comment itself and the pinpricks of light it elicited shining through the cloud of despair that was Gabriel's psyche brought an equivalent smirk to Quentin's face. "I'd've guessed 23, 24. You work at a bar and it's not that shady to hire underage. But you can't be much older than me."

"A fake ID and a beard will get you far." Gabriel's smile widened. He closed his eyes, contemplating whether to give Quentin a real answer or not, and then whether to bother with an explanation. "I'm 20. Barely. For, like, 6 weeks. But let's keep that between us."

That revelation earned Gabriel a look that suggested this was the most bizarre thing Quentin had heard that day. "Well, fuck me," he exclaimed as he lied down next to Gabriel, his tie loosening and the first couple of buttons of his shirt coming undone, as if responding of their own accord to his expression. "Why the con?"

"I dunno. I mean, it started because I wanted a job job, and I wasn't 18. Or 21. And then, you want to start buying cigarettes and booze." He shrugged, the sheets scrunching under him as his shoulder moved. "Plus, it's convenient. Nobody lectures you when they think you're in your 20s. Nobody tries to send you back to school or asks where your parents are. And I look the part, so..."

"Of all the secrets to keep, it seems so blase. But, whatever. Do you. I don't have a reason to tell anyone. How come you were on the street, though?"

Gabriel turned his head, staring at the ceiling. "Of all the secrets, that's the only one I've got that's actually fun." It was a matter-of-fact statement, devoid of any angst or self-pity. "Nowhere else to go."

Part of Quentin recommended that he stop digging, but that was a part that he rarely listened to. And besides, they were so close right now and the memories had been so intense that Quentin picked up hints and whispers and was pretty sure he could figure it out on his own, so what was the big deal?

"Parents kicked you out?" he asked to confirm his suspicion.

"Yep. Caught me in the backseat with a senior on the track team." It sounded so cliche, he couldn't help the small smile. "Old story. New twist."

Quentin snorted. "And you got all the way up from Texas to New York? How many truckers did you have to blow for that?"

"I took the bus, asshole." Gabriel's face darkened. After where his memories had just taken them, he saw nothing funny in Quentin's joke. "Austin to Houston to Atlanta to New York. And then you get off at Port Authority at god-knows-what-time, and it's sketchy as hell."

Quentin was quiet for a moment as he contemplated what Gabriel was telling (and also not telling) him. Despite the brief spillover of memory, it was clear that Gabriel tightly locked up that time of his life. The walls around those memories were strong for a non-psi. Quentin was sure he could break them down if he wanted but what would be the point. He sat up again, fidgeting with his tie.

"Same kinda shit could've happened with Daniella if she'd run away," he said. "Either die on the operating table or become another statistic on the street."

"Yeah. Well." Gabriel sat up too, still looking a bit distant. If he was again lost in his own thoughts, he was doing a much better job preventing their projection. "Good thing she's resourceful," he said after a few seconds. "Clearly more than me. Never occurred to me to trap four strangers inside my head."

"She went the wrong way. She should've done what I did and trap her parents and mini-Mengeles in her head, instead." The scene around them flashed briefly – quickly as a screen glitch – to the dark, hellishly cartoonish torture chamber in which Quentin had trapped himself and his classmates so many months ago.

If Gabriel noticed the scene change, he didn't say anything. "Yes, well." He shrugged. "Hindsight is 20/20, or whatever. I don't know. I've never had psychic powers."

Quentin just snorted softly. "We should probably try to get some sleep. I don't know if us doing this is keeping the body . . . Daniella awake, or what's up with JP and Maximoff, or however the hell this works."

"Yeah," the other boy agreed. "Probably." He looked around the psiscape again, taking full notice of the detailed decor and comparing the luxuriousness of Quentin's parent's bedroom to their current surroundings.

In an instant, the clothes he was wearing transformed into a loose T-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts. "Oh." He blinked, looking down at himself, or the mental projection of himself or whatever it was. "Huh." He looked up, a bemused expression on his face. "This just keeps getting weirder, huh?"