xp_logs | LOG: Shatterstar (Benjamin) and Haller (Jack)

Nothing goes well when Benjamin and Jack are the ones to 'talk' after Haller is out of the medbay instead of Shatterstar and Jim.

Shatterstar was going for his run when he spotted Haller on the grounds, seemingly resting against a tree. He knew of course that none of what had happened to Haller was Haller's fault, but any rational thought left as Benjamin shoved Shatterstar behind the walls of their mind, watching but not very able to interfere. The concern rolling off of them took the form of anger, tight-chested rage. (It was always the easiest emotion to feel). This wasn't the Benji who played with Felix, but the version of Benjamin who fought and ran until he and Shatter were sent to jail.

He stalked towards Haller like someone who didn't realize the height and muscle they carried. It was hard to tell if he was shaking from the build up of his powers or emotion. "I can't believe you! You practically died! There was nothing there!" He said this as an accusation, but he had run towards him and not away from him. Benjamin had never run to someone before. "You and Miss Abbott were both just lost! And you don't even let me see you!"

It didn't matter if that was the full truth or not- the truth wasn't something Benjamin was too concerned with.

Jim almost slid off the tree trunk. A ranting teen was a terrible thing to encounter without warning, especially when you were in the middle of the moderate stamina-building exercises you had been instructed to take after a month of reduced activity and insufficient nutrition. It was even more jarring because his patchy shields meant he could see who was fronting.

"Benjamin," Jim said, momentarily more surprised than offended. "Okay, slow down. What can I--"

"You just disappeared like no one else here mattered!" Benjamin said, ignoring that he knew Haller was an X-Man, that this is what X-Men did- go off and leave people at home to be ripped open by something as raw and stupid as caring. (This is what Shatterstar wanted to do, to be, to abandon him for).

Shatterstar was the one who had good control, who actually knew how the powers worked. The air was a buzz saw around them.

"People thought you were never coming back to your body for a month!" He was yelling now. "All your evil powers can't help anyone if you're dead! All the getting into people's heads in the world and you'd be what? Dead!" His voice kept rising to be heard over the buzz in the air, the tugging at his hair.

"Benjamin, it's okay." It was starting to be able to see the boy's own self-image without consciously initiating it. Benjamin was shorter and rounder in the face than the body, and the star-shaped birthmark was larger, and the eye it encircled fully white rather than just showing a hint of a cataract. More distracting, though, was the emotional feedback. The boy's anger was sleeting through his shields like hail through tissue paper. Jim raised his hands.

"It's true, I was hurt," he agreed, "but I'm all right now. Let's focus on that to start with. Once you've calmed down--"

"Make me! Do it! I dare you!" Benjamin screamed at him, somewhere between a challenge and a plea. "Make me calm down! Make me!" He barred his teeth and all the control and shields he and Shatterstar had learned were useless in keeping the power- Shatterstar's power as Benjamin thought of it- from exploding out of him, eviscerating the ground in front of Haller. He swayed from the force of it, but yelled again, not even noticing his own exhaustion. "Bastard! Drop in and out like you always do! Make me! Make me!"

It sounded like a challenge, but it wasn't. Jim could feel the sincerity in the boy's pleas: the desperate desire to have someone else take control, to make him be calm, and suddenly Jim was afraid that if the boy kept asking he wouldn't be able to stop himself from giving Benjamin what he wanted.

He couldn't handle this. Not with his shields in pieces. He needed Jack. Jack was headblind.

But Jack was angry.

Drop in and out like you always do . . .

A sharp line of earth exploded between the two men: physical evidence of the telekinetic shield he'd just driven into the ground. Rage sent the barrier scything through the limb of a nearby tree.

"Listen to me," hissed Jack. "I am not your father. Whatever we're doing, we don't need your permission. We don't even owe you an explanation. If you don't want to be treated like a child, act like something other than a brat that throws a tantrum because he's not getting coddled exactly how he wants, when he wants it."

The anger was what Benjamin wanted, wanted to hear Haller admit it, to say that he didn't care and that they didn't matter to him. He wanted the confirmation so he could throw away all the feelings he had towards the older man and get it over with. It would hurt less that way, to get it over with. "I don't want you to be our father!" He said and he could almost believe it was true.

He wouldn't have to feel things like worry for this man anymore. But he was still angry, and being so near exhaustion had him close to tears to hear what he had wanted Haller to eventually admit, even if had been the cowboy, Jack, and not Jim. He must be broken, that it hurt to hear Jack say they didn't matter.

He did try to hold back the next vibrational wave. It did no good. The force of it hitting Jack's shield had him staggering. He was burning out, enough for Shatterstar, the Shatterstar who was more Gaveedra-Seven than his own person, to wrench back control. His face turned stony and blank.

"We don't need a father. You're right. We don't need to care about you."

The wave crashed harmlessly off the shield, but a muscle beneath Jack's eye twitched. It wasn't only the change in body language or abrupt cessation of tears -- he could see the change in the boy just as clearly as Jim had. Now he was looking at someone more in-line with the body, but with the port wine birthmark replaced by an ink-black star. His features were sharper, too, and strangely reminiscent of Arthur's.

"No, you don't," Jack agreed, not allowing his confusion into his face or voice. "Expecting other people to look out for you is only going to get you hurt. Glad you figured it out early."

He didn't even give Jack a nod before leaving, just a deep breath as he gathered himself and separated from the emotions still rolling around Benjamin.

He was the warrior, not the actual person Shatterstar had become when he walked away, forcing himself not to show the toll his powers had taken on his body. Even in the headspace he was going back to Arthur's face, not the one Shatterstar had created for himself. Gaveedra-Seven was a good defense. He hadn't shut Benjamin's emotions out almost wholesale in... well, at least before they'd come to the mansion, but he needed to not feel the anger at all. He couldn't let Haller see how close he was to collapsing.

He couldn't be weak like that in front of Haller. He couldn't protect him by being weak.

Fuck. Jack dragged a hand down his face as the boy strode off. He shouldn't have gone that hard on him. Not even if it had been the truth. He'd let their own fragility get the better of him, and now they were going to pay for it later.

That would have to be a problem for another time. For now, he needed to rest.