Haller and Jess

[xp_alias]

Haller, sweet summer child that he is, hopes that Jess has forgotten the entire conversation with Warren yesterday.

"--and Jean said that if you keep improving she can discharge you soon, whatever that means. You can stay in the Medlab if it's more convenient, or we can move you into one of the suites upstairs."

Jim glanced up at her face as he placed the fresh cup of ice chips on Jessica's tray. She'd been wearing a certain expression ever since he walked in, and the last few minutes of status updates didn't seem to have changed it to any appreciable degree.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing," Jessica said flatly, continuing to follow him with her eyes. "I'm just wondering when your weird evil twin is going to make an appearance."

"Sorry?"

Jessica's voice took on an entirely different timbre and tone, the opening she had been waiting for arriving: "'Women love being listened to, but when it's by a man with the raw sexual magnetism of a dead bat? Catnip.'" She looked him dead in the eye, daring him to deny it. "Ring any fucking bells?"

Jim froze. One part of his brain was impressed by her crystal-clear recall of his phrasing, which boded well for the psychic repair. The other part was preoccupied with a single thought, and that thought was GOD DAMN IT CYNDI.

The telepath pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to use the pressure to distract him from his brattiest alter's howls of laughter. It was funny, he really had convinced himself that Jessica wouldn't remember that little performance just because he personally was trying to delete it from his memory. "Sorry. I was trying to give you an alibi for those times when someone wanted to talk about something you might be comfortable with and got sort of . . . carried away." hate you hate you hate you hate you

"Carried away?" Jessica's voice was deceptively mild as she absorbed this incredible understatement. "Please, explain how this was for me, because all I saw was - what. A nervous breakdown? That you have now, apparently, completely recovered from?"

"No, the TBI was supposed to be alibi. The other part was--" Jim got a preview of the words that were about to leave his mouth and gave up, and they weren't going to help his case. He ran a hand down his face and started over. "Okay, let's back up. Do you remember when I told you I have something called dissociative identity disorder?"

"Sure," Jess said, and then stopped short, disbelief warring with realization. "That was one of your - multiple personalities?"

Jim wasn't sure whether he liked this new evidence that Jessica's memory was, in fact, actually pretty good now that she was able to form memories outside of persistent mind control. Or at least, not in this particular case. He sank back in the visitor's chair. "Yeah. That was Cyndi." He added, just a touch sharply, "She thinks she's funny."

Jessica closed her eyes, processing this, then looked back at Jim, as though trying to make the memory fit. "She's deranged."

"Yes," Jim said flatly. "Yes she is. But look, Warren . . . Okay, honestly? I have no idea how to deal with that man. The very first conversation we ever had was just ten straight minutes of him refusing to believe I wasn't sleeping with his ex. Sometimes it's just easier to let someone more comfortable with the situation handle it, and Cyndi's better with people." Then he added, before Jessica even had a chance to make the comment, "And yes, I know that's sad."

Jess, deprived of an easy retort once again, felt instinctively that she was dealing with the Haller she knew. "I honestly thought I was going to have to knock him out to get him to shut up," she said grudgingly, "And I wasn't sure I was up to it."

Jim waved a hand in a broad this-is-what-I'm-talking-about motion. "You see my situation. And it did distract him. I just wish the strategy hadn't been 'I need to match this energy'."

"That guy belongs in a facility," Jessica said, with passion that could only make sense after one had met Warren. She glanced sidelong at Haller, assessing. "So you've just got, like, what - a whole other person in there who steps in when you can't get rid of someone on your own?"

The older man stroked at the old scars of one hand, considering. "Not . . . exactly. The others have their own identities, but we're all me. They were made to deal with specific emotions and experiences, hence the 'dissociative' part of the disorder. The extent to which we feel separate really depends on the situation. Sometimes they're voices in my head, and sometimes I do something and I can't tell if it's me, or them, or both. Sometimes it feels like I'm standing over my own shoulder, just watching my body walk around and have entire conversations without me. And sometimes, if things are really bad, I don't feel like anyone at all." The counselor shook his head. "Anyway, that's more than you wanted to know. I promise it's not as bad as it sounds. It's just different."

Jessica took this all in without comment, eyebrows drawing together, and some strain - recognition - showed transiently around her eyes. She shook her head, brushing it off. "Sounds complicated," she said, her voice taking half a second to hit 'dry' rather than 'uncertain'. "Lucky for you that you got one just to deal with assholes, though."

The twitch didn't escape Jim's notice, but then, he'd been looking for it. Jessica didn't want to talk, and that was fine. He just wanted to make sure she knew that, if she ever did, there was at least one person here who might be able to begin to understand.

Aloud he said, "Yeah, it's a great system. And the only price I pay is having to listen to myself saying the most embarrassing shit you've ever heard in your life."

"What," she said, recovering herself to deadpan, "You mean you don't go into normal conversations to extol the virtues of the - uh - long-distance orgasm?"

"Um, no." Jim cleared his throat uncomfortably, desperately hoping the sudden heat in his cheeks wasn't visible to the naked eye. "Anyway, Cyndi doesn't know what she's talking about," he lied. "She's been sixteen since I was ten years old. She just likes giving me crap."

Distraction accomplished - the man could be hassled, thank God - Jess just raised her eyebrows. "So you just . . . live with a, I'm going to reiterate, deranged sixteen-year-old girl in there, all the time?"

This got a shrug. "A lot of people have a voice in their head that's able to take an objective look at the situation and laugh at what they see. Mine can just also light things on fire with her brain. Besides, like I said, my identity is pretty fluid. We're all me. Sometimes the distinction is just more present than others."

"Uh, hold up. Did you just say light things on fire with her brain?"

"Sure. Telepathy's the only power I can use. It doesn't mean it's the only one I have." Had he chosen mildly sinister phrasing as revenge for her long-distance orgasm comment? Maybe.

"Oh, that's cool," Jessica said acidly. "Mind - whatever you call it, fire-starting, you got someone in there with laser eyes, too?"

Jim met her sarcasm with the most infuriating defense of all: a complete failure to acknowledge it. "No, just telekinesis. It's all the same class of power, we just delegate the specifics."

Jess narrowed her eyes; this was the guy she remembered, all right. "And how many of you are there in there?"

"Just four these days. Me, Cyndi, Jack, and Davey. Davey's a kid, though. He doesn't have any powers, unless you count the ability to rack up microtransactions in gacha games." He might as well cover the whole system, he decided, if for no other reason than the fact he suspected she would somehow sense the omission and get it out of him anyway. Jim covered his mild discomfort by offering, helpfully, "Should I make a hand-out?"

"Yes," Jess said. "With a fucking flowchart. Preferably specifying which ones can start fires." And she wasn't even going to ask what a gacha game was.

"Good idea. I'll have it ready by tomorrow."

"Uh-huh, sure." Jessica eyed him irritably, suspecting him of sass, but the most annoying thing about the sarcastic dork was that it was all plausibly deniable. She changed the subject: "What was that you were saying about moving, before, anyway?"

Jim accepted the new topic as smoothly as a man accepting a baton in a relay race. "You'll be able to leave the Medlab soon," he replied. "I don't know if your old suite's still available, but at least you'll be able to recover somewhere a little more private."

"My old - right." She was going to have to get used to the fact that she'd been here before. Especially since she was pretty sure she didn't have anywhere else to go. She paused. "Is it possible - okay, you know what, I'm pretty sure this is just amnesia, but there's no way that my old roommate was a fucking prince or something, right?"

"Uh . . . sort of." Jim briefly entertained the possibility of trying to walk her through the consequences of a broken universe, but not even Cyndi had the fortitude to handle that conversation right now. He threw that subject into the Handouts to Prepare for New Arrivals bucket and pressed on. "He's not around anymore, though, so I'm not sure where you'd end up. Maybe a guest room, at least for the time being."

"And how do you guys decide who stays here, anyway?" This entire setup was, to Jess's eye, insane, and at least Haller answered questions willingly. "I don't need to stay permanently or anything, but I'm pretty sure I'm getting evicted as we speak, so." She lifted a hand; what can you do.

"It depends. A lot of people end up here based on need. In your case you're probably looking at a couple of months of aftercare strictly for the TBI, and at least some followup for the . . ." Here Jim gestured to his own head to avoid saying the words 'prolonged mind control'. "Anyway, what you want to do after that's sorted out is up to you. Until then, we'll make sure you've got somewhere safe to recover."

" -- just to clarify, this isn't actually a cult or something, right?" Okay, she was looking a gift horse in the mouth, but the fundamental who ARE these people question had been rattling around in her head for days. Feelings of vague benignity from a past she barely remembered aside, it couldn't hurt to check.

"Some people would probably try to make a case for that, but frankly we're not organized enough for public shaming circles or forced labor." He paused. "I guess the X-Men do have uniforms, but those aren't mandatory."

She looked pained. "You could just lie. I wouldn't know."

The telepath gave her a shrug. "I can lie and get snarked at later, or I can tell the truth and get snarked at now. It's all the same on my end." Jim raised himself from the chair and smoothed out his shirt. "Anyway, I'll check on the room situation before I see you next. Is there anything else you need?"

"I'm good," she said, waving it off. She paused for a second, then sighed, and added, "Thanks."

Jim gave her an over-the-shoulder wave as he made his way to the door. "Don't worry about it," he said. "And I'll probably have that hand-out for you by tomorrow."