Do I Know You? — I Can't Leave Her

[xp-erverse.livejournal.com]

With Xavier's help, Quentin leads Gabriel, Jean-Paul, and Wanda deep into the Astral Plane to save a terrified telepath.


"Surreal" did not begin to explain how it felt to see your own body lying unconscious on a hospital bed while standing in someone else's body. Quentin felt he might as well be living in a Max Ernst painting. He walked up to his sleeping form and leaned in closely to examine it. It was alive, at least, even if completely unresponsive to his touch. "Ugh, my roots are starting to show," he bemoaned as he ran Daniella's hand through his hair. "All right, fix this so I can fix that. How do we get this girl to come back and get us out of here?"

The entire link was a bit of a mess - to be expected when it was being maintained by someone as inexperienced as the young woman they were here to save. Charles frowned for a long moment as he searched through the familiar minds to find the one he didn't recognize. That took a little longer.

~She's there,~ he finally said, tracing the link back to its root. ~She's hidden herself back in her mind, you'll have to bring her out yourself. I can guide you there.~

Quentin sat them down on the chair next to his bed and nodded. Though he still did not have full access to his powers, being so close to his own body did seem to enhance the paltry ability he had been contending with for the past two days. With Chuckles's guidance, he was sure he could do this. ~Okay,~ he replied, gently extending a telepathic hand to his mentor, ~Show us.~

This was possibly the most cooperative Quentin had ever been, Charles noted dryly. ~Stay close,~ he advised them gently as he started ahead, feeling much like a tour guide leading a group behind him. ~And stay on the path.~ it wouldn't do to have any of them tumbling off into the girl's mind.

"Yeah." The voice came from Daniella's body, but the thoughts were clearly Gabriel's. He'd been to enough therapy sessions with Xavier for the older man to know that. "That'll be a challenge. So many places to go." He saw his body lying in front of them, and for a moment, his mind flashed back to a year earlier, when he'd arrived at Xavier's. "Okay, okay." The body took a deep breath. "Sorry. I'll focus." He did his best to calm his thoughts and clear his mind.

"There's always oblivion." Quentin shut their eyes at turned inward. He was close behind Charles, and Gabriel, Jean-Paul, and Wanda were close behind him. Four lost souls, traveling down a path guided by a benevolent super-power to save themselves and return home. Quentin could not help the shape that the Astral Plane took: brilliant blue sky above, lush green trees alongside them, and a yellow-brick road under their feet. Even his sneakers were studded with glittering red sequins. "Well, this might be the gayest I've ever been," he said with some amusement. "And these clash with my hair."

"Good lord," Wanda commented, squinting slightly at the sight. "I never quite took you as the Dorothy type, though. Red tends to be more my color." There was an exhausted and slightly pained undertone to her words and, for those that knew where to look, a spot at the small of her back was glowing with a steady rhythm. "Charles, if I start to be a problem in this, I will try to remove myself as far away as I can without getting lost."

~Quentin please be serious,~ Charles sighed, but there was a faintly amused tone in his voice. ~And hopefully we can fix this before it starts to be a problem~, he added to Wanda.

Jean-Paul attempted - and mostly succeeded - to keep his curses silent and to himself. But really. A yellow brick road? He tried to keep himself silent, as well, but he couldn't help it when he half-laughed and asked, "Which one of us is Toto?"

"Probably you." Gabriel sounded half-distracted, because he was trying to focus on focusing, keeping his thoughts inward. His last experience in a psiscape had been volatile and emotional, and he was determined not to let that happen again. The path winded and curved, yellow bricks swirling around their shared mental space. He was determined not to let them detour.

The verdant landscape eventually faded to black, and the yellow-brick road to the familiar pink of Quentin's hair and psi signature. They had passed the depths that Quentin had dared to descent himself alone, and he hesitated with each step as if they were crossing a rickety suspension bridge. He glanced back at the people following him, who depended on him for their safe return. Fuck. What messed-up cosmic force had decided to play this trick on him and burden him with the responsibility of other people's lives? He was going to have to rethink his stance on harder drugs when this was all over.

Perhaps fortuitously, it was not much longer before they had spelunked to the deepest level, and a large glowing white flower stood before them. Its petals were closed, but they opened as the group approached, revealing a familiar waif of a girl in a simple white dress.

"Daniella."

The name was hers, but nothing else seemed to be. Daniella turned slowly towards the voice, her eyes half closed in a dream-like state. "Is it over?," she asked, stretching her arms.
‎
The doctor said it would be like going to sleep and then she'd wake up and there'd be no more headaches and her parents wouldn't have those tight expressions anymore. All her medical bills cost money. This was the permanent solution.

Blinking, she finally looked around and grew more and more confused as the landscape became more apparent. "This isn't the recovery room.....where are we? Where's my mom and dad? Who are you?" Retreating back onto her flower, she hugged her knees tight to her chest. ‎ "I'm dreaming....this must be a dream..."

"She doesn't remember anything. Must've shut off as soon as we got in," Quentin said to the others before turning back to the scared girl. "It's kind of a dream? But also kind of real. We're in your head. I'm Quentin. I heard you, when you were scared. You called and you brought us here."

"And then you disappeared," Gabriel chimed up. His arms were crossed, his psyche having put up the most minimal kind of wall at this girl's sudden presence. "And we broke you out of the hospital, and we ran." He found himself next to her, apparently having taken some initiative to move toward her. "We ran a lot." He squatted down, putting a hand on her shoulder.

None of this was making sense. "I disappeared?" She stretched an arm out tentatively and frowned. "But I'm here...and who are you? How could I call you if I don't know you?" She suddenly threw her hands up onto the sides of her head and closed her eyes tightly. "I don't understand. I just want to go home!"

"Daniella," Wanda said softly from a safe distance away, still concerned about the impact of her powers or the magic that tagged along with her, "I know this is terrifying. You called to us because you have a gift, a power called telepathy and you used it to call to us. You grew scared of what the doctors were going to try and you used your telepathy to call for help."

"I'm a telepath, too," Quentin said. "I heard you. You were so scared, I tried to find you, but . . . well, telepathy is tricky. Don't worry about the specifics. The thing is, we're all from a school for mutants. They help people like you. Like us." He could not believe that he was actually pitching for Xavier, but he would hate himself for that later. He would hate himself a million times more if he did not help this victim.

Jean-Paul's eyebrow quirked slightly and his eyes slid to the side as Quentin spoke. Then he shook his head a little and sat on his heels beside Gabriel, in front of the girl, to begin speaking quietly in French. "They are trying to be very nice about this and they are mostly right about things. Even if they are being ridiculous and treating you like you will break. You know you will not, I know you will not. Therefore, it is probably best to come out of the flower so that we can speak more clearly, yes?"

"We're sharing a brain, idiot." Gabriel couldn't help but sound exasperated. Jean-Paul was lucky he was—well, hardly mattered. "But he's not wrong," he added flatly, turning his attention back to Daniella. "You want to go home. God knows why, after the creepy doctors and the cops and all that shit. And we want to go home too. So all of us lose if we're stuck like this."

Quentin shared a look of bewilderment with Wanda, as if to say he could not believe he was being the nice one for once in his life. Had he somehow screwed things up and absorbed the group's collective compassion? "I did something like this, too, the first time I used my telepathy," he said to Daniella, turning back to her. "Except I actually tried to hurt as many people as I could, and that's not you at all. So you're already way ahead of me there. You can let us out."

"But," Daniella said, her eyes wide with confusion, "I don't know how to do that. I don't even know how you got into my head, how am I supposed to let you out?" She frowned and dropped her hands to her lap. "Can't you just leave?"

"We're bound too strongly to just get up and go, so even if we could, then it could really hurt you," Quentin replied. "Your parents wanted to hurt you. This whole thing was them trying to strip away an important part of yourself, that makes you special. But we can prove them wrong. If you stay here, then those . . . monsters get exactly what they wanted. But if we work together, then they can honestly go fuck themselves."

The look of confusion and terror on Daniella's face broke Wanda's heart. "You obviously did not know that you were a mutant," she said gently. "But they probably figured it out. And they mislead and manipulated you until you agreed to let them do what you want. You deserve the chance to not only control your abilities, Daniella, but you deserve a happy, healthy life. I know you do not know how to get us out of here but, thankfully, you are not alone."

She pointed to Quentin and then Charles. "They'll help you, I promise."

"We can offer you help and protection, and a way to control your gifts," Charles told Daniella gently. "But you have to let everyone go first. We can help you with that as well."

Daniella looked around the landscape, managing to avoid eye contact with everyone. Deep down inside, she knew her parents were ignoring the problem, were doing something that would affect her forever. But they were her parents. ...

"I want my head back....so I'll agree to that."

Simple as that, the dark psiscape began to brighten, like the sun rising after a long night. "This is one of the first things I learned, too," Quentin said, extending his hands to Daniella so she could take them. "From one of the few people I know who's not a complete waste of space. How to disentangle yourself from others. Find yourself, get centered, and it's easy to let them go. Let me show you. Are you ready?"

Daniella wasn't but what else could she do? Not trusting herself to speak, she simply nodded and reached out. It was surprisingly easy to borrow from his strength and let herself walk off the flower.

The first step was always the hardest anyways.

Gabriel watched as Danielle and Quentin joined hands. Something about the psiscape changed again - something subtle, another brightening. He barely registered it before everything became dark.

Silence, emptiness, disconnection. He felt untethered. Lost.

And then, a discomforting brightness, as his eyes opened, and he woke up with a sharp gasp.

Jean-Paul woke slowly, first one eye opening and then the other. After the Wizard of Oz psiscape, then the total darkness, he was not entirely sure what he would find. But it was simply a room and medical equipment, beeping away. He rolled his shoulders, happy that they did as he wanted them to do and he didn't have to fight anyone else's instincts. Also, he had a cock again. It was a relief.

Next, Wanda. Her eyes shot open and she let out a strangled "Fuck" at the combination of seeing the too familiar tiles of the MedLab above her and the sudden shock of being back in her body again. But her mind was blissfully, finally back where it should be and for the first time in days, alone. "Fuck," she repeated, satisfied that the word conveyed everything she wanted it to at the moment.

Quentin was last, and for him, it was like coming out of a too-long sleep. He was still dazed and woozy, and his vision blurred when he opened his eyes. "Someone press the snooze button," he muttered drunkenly, holding up a hand to shield his eyes from the harsh fluorescent lighting. "I'm going back to bed."

How holding someone's hand could suddenly transport her ‎back to reality, Daniella had no idea. If it wasn't for the fact that she suddenly felt very awake and very aware, she'd wonder if it was all a dream .

Charles smiled wryly as he leaned back in his wheelchair, watching everyone slowly come around. He took a moment to make sure no one had any complaints beyond Quentin's desire to sleep before wheeling himself out of the room to let the doctors know their patients were awake.