Haller and Jess

[xp_alias]

Jessica meets an integrated Haller.



He still didn't know if he liked this or not.

It wasn't so much having access to his telekinesis as the fact it was . . . easy. That was a sensation he only associated with being Cyndi, and it was limited to small things. While Jack could move larger objects he worked best on instinct; using telekinesis with intent was when his control became imprecise. Making the world move like this, spinning solid and liquid and gas with equal ease -- it shouldn't be so easy.

Maybe this was what his power would always have been like if not for the accident.

There was something else. Jack was only attuned to objects in motion, and Cyndi sensed the world moving around her like a current. What he was experiencing now was something like that, but more. He could sense the shape of objects, true, but he'd realized if he concentrated it was like he could feel their -- substance. As if he could somehow process and interpret the bonds of matter like Jim had been able to read the thoughts of others. Now he could look at a thing and see how it could be pulled apart, reshaped, and reassembled. The same skills he'd honed on the astral plane applied to the physical world. He didn't dare try it, but he could see it.

It would be . . . easy.

Haller blinked out of his reverie, then pinched the bridge of his nose.

"I'm just trying to do the fucking dishes," he muttered to himself.

"You know there's a machine to do that, right? You don't have to get your brain involved." Jessica moved in from the doorway, having watched this only long enough to peg that something deeply weird and unnecessary was happening. "It's literally right next to you."

He jumped. It was a true full-body jerk that was even more obvious for happening on a frame over six feet tall. Even more cinematically, every single hovering dish abruptly dropped. Haller swore and caught them again before anything made contact with the floor -- although the same could not be said of the liquid he'd been using to wash them.

"There's already a load going. I was doing the ones still in the sink." Kitchenware back under control, the psi turned to face Jessica. He decided to proceed as if she hadn't seen that.

Jess just wished she'd been filming; satisfaction for the dozens of times she'd been foiled in her attempt to fluster, hassle, or irritate him. She raised her eyebrows at him. "And you're doing this with your brain for some reason that I assume you have?"

The floor was wet. With a sigh Haller swept his hand and lifted the soapy water from the tiles and sent it streaming back into the sink. "If you could get away with washing your dishes just by thinking at them, wouldn't you?"

"I would buy paper plates and stop wasting time thinking at or about the dishes," Jessica said. She paused, took a step forward, and narrowed her eyes at him. "Aren't you only supposed to be able to do one fucking thing at a time?"

Shit.

"Um, yeah, usually," he said, keeping his back to her to buy himself time to think about how this conversation might go. His brain, unhelpfully, kept supplying "badly".

"So are you going to update your pamphlet of lies, or what?" The sarcasm in Jess's voice was a little more taut than normal, and she crossed her arms, though she didn't move any closer. "Which one am I talking to? Or is it just like Russian roulette up in there?"

Shatterstar was right: the primer had been a mistake. On the other hand, he felt there had been no way he could have anticipated Jessica's attention to extremely specific details. Grimacing, Haller began to dry the plates by the simple expedient of peeling away the individual water molecules.

"No, I just didn't think I'd have to include anything like this. I've only had something like this happen to me once before, and that was . . . a specific situation." He tried to choose his words carefully. First, just the thought of trying to supply Jessica with the full context to explain his current condition made him want to lock himself in a closet. More importantly, though, this wasn't her problem, and while there were probably several things worse than dropping "my mind has been completely reorganized without my consent, and to be honest I'm a little fucked up about it" on someone who had endured a decade of persistent mind control none of them readily came to mind.

Jessica paused, the silence awkward. "Are you, um, having a fu - I mean, a breakdo - I mean, a mental health, um, incident?"

"No, it's . . ." The older man shook his head and finally turned to face her. He leaned against the countertop, arms folded.

"I'm not sure there's a term for it. I told you my sense of identity isn't very stable, right? It's related to that. My core system has been stable since I was a teenager, but sometimes new ego states form to deal with specific traumas. They're not always very well-developed, more like placeholders to get me through a particular time. The last time it happened a telekinetic took over during a period none of the rest of us could deal with. Once it wasn't needed anymore it just re-assimilated. During that time I was in control again, but for a while I also had access to the telekinesis while everything was getting settled. I guess you could call it a transitional phenomenon."

Jess listened to this, watching his face; her own, uncharacteristically, didn't give a lot away. "So what happened to make you need a new personality?"

"You were there for it, actually. Well, physically, at least. You probably don't remember it very well. Honestly neither do I, so don't worry about it too much. Basically, a few years ago reality broke. Alternate versions of people were showing up, and we lost a lot of ours. The world got put back together using scraps from others to fill the holes. It worked out. But that didn't mean the people who died never died." Haller looked away, his eyes fixed on some faraway point. "If I had to make a guess as to why that personality formed . . . I don't know. My job is putting people back together, but that -- I couldn't handle it. So fuck it. How was I supposed to deal with anyone else's emotions when I didn't even want to feel my own? So I just stopped being a telepath. Or someone who gave a damn at all, for that matter."

Then, seeming to come back to himself, Haller blinked and turned back to Jessica with a grimace of apology. "Sorry, you didn't need all that. I probably could have just said 'mutant shit.'"

"Jesus fucking Christ," Jess muttered, both commisserating and commenting. "I really thought people were exaggerating with the whole broken-universe thing." She shook her head, relegating this new cursed knowledge to the category of shit that is not immediately my problem. "So what's with all this?" She gestured at the dishes. "Please tell me reality didn't disintegrate while I was on hold with the state licensing board."

"If it did I've learned to tune it out, so that's something." Haller gestured vaguely at the dishes, which were precipitating the last of their condensation into the sink. "No, this is just -- a fluke. I met another mutant and had a . . . reaction to her powers. It'll only last a couple of weeks. But it's got me in a weird place, so I'm a little . . ." He waggled his fingers next to his temple in a way that could have indicated anything from "distracted" to "unsure what my name is at any given moment".

She had relaxed, minutely, the tension in her hands and eyes ebbing halfway, and taken a breath. She said, dryly, "And your reaction to that is to become a psychic dishwasher."

One of the psi's shoulders raised in a shrug. "The more I use my telekinesis the less nervous I am about having it. I guess I could just blow things up, but nothing sucks the wonder out of a power like using it for menial labor."

"Or just not using it," Jessica said. She squinted at him; something had been bothering her this whole time, and now it occurred to her: "Your eyes are both blue." If this came out a little accusatory, well, the handout had been specific on eye color.

"They are?" Stupidly, Haller raised a hand to touch his eye as if this would somehow relay any of the pertinent information. He didn't know what to do with that anyway. He grimaced and tried, "Oh. Um . . . sorry?"

"Isn't that the kid? From the handout?" Jessica asked, raising an eyebrow. "The one who supposedly has no powers?"

"Usually." Haller massaged his temples. "But it was me, too."

Jessica, like she was responding to a trick question, said: "I don't get it."

Haller sighed. "That's fine. Neither do I."

Comments

[xp_loa]

It hurts to see Haller integrated and trying to function, but I really loved this interaction between him and Jess. She's out of her depth but she's trying, bless her. It seems silly to say, but I loved the way you guys wrapped this, following Jess trying to understand and Haller trying to explain an incredibly complex thing to the best of his ability.