Haller & Arthur | (Un)Luck
Jan. 31st, 2024 10:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsAfter Arthur is noticeably improving after a second blood transfusion courtesy of Hope (Summers), an accounting is due.
***
Haller has questions on words said and Arthur’s mental health.
Haller had been waiting.
That was clear, at least, from when Arthur had reentered the suite. The other man had been hovering in that way his friend had been doing for the past month — like a person on edge who wasn't sure which way they'd fall. Arthur could feel his own anxiety pooling in his chest, but that was easy enough to hide with a smile. A nod of greeting. The simple motions of refilling his water bottle were an effective way to mask that he was also putting the power inhibitor back on. He'd been weaning off of it lately for a handful of compelling reasons, but something about his friend's body language indicated he might need it.
Arthur sat down on a nearby bar stool and waited.
The telepath's odd-colored eyes immediately flicked to the inhibitor on Arthur's wrist; sleight-of-hand was irrelevant if you knew it was coming. That was as good an indication as any of how Arthur felt about having this conversation. Jim pressed his fingers against the tension headache starting between his eyes before taking a seat of his own.
"Okay, so . . . first of all, how's your head feeling today?" he asked as he folded his hands across the kitchen island. The question was calm, professional.
This part had become routine. "I made it down to the lobby without losing balance or focus, and nothing was fuzzy. Bouncing forward steadily." Arthur folded his hands in a mirror of Haller's own, his illustration-covered cast thudding softly against the stone. "How about yours?"
Jim pretended not to hear the attempt at deflection — his own little routine with Arthur. "I'm glad it's improving. You seem more lucid overall, too, which is a definite improvement. How's your psychometry? Have any new reads been triggering since your powers came back?"
"Nothing unexpected." It wasn't a full answer, but this is how the dance went. Arthur hadn't tried to read anything since that first time. He'd been trying to keep as far away from that of part of himself as possible. "And no, not the other thing either. My name is Arthur Centino, it is Wednesday, and I’m okay."
"Okay, well, now that you're doing better we should talk about what you did read out there. I don't mean a debrief; I mean it was clearly having a pretty significant emotional effect on you, so we should really . . ."
Jim slowed, then stopped.
"Ah," was Arthur's first response, followed by a broken, "I’ve found that a positive attitu —"
He didn't slow, but he did stop. His posture stiffened. "Jim?"
Haller really did need to question Arthur about what he'd read in District X. The emotional fallout had been terrible, and Jim didn't know if that was because of the nature of the reading, complications from the traumatic brain injury that had followed, or an escalation of whatever had already been happening with his powers. But he had been keeping himself in check for so, so long, letting things pass so he didn't upset Arthur, and between watching his friend struggle through recovery and shields that felt more like cardboard "out of gas" wasn't the right term. He'd been pushing the whole damn car for weeks.
Jim dropped all pretense of professionalism and stared Arthur dead in the eyes.
"Do you actually think you're not a real person?"
"Oh," and the other man suddenly found anywhere else to look, "that was —"
"Don't blame the concussion," Jim interrupted. "Maybe the concussion was why you said it aloud, but shit like that doesn't come from nowhere."
Arthur's attention snapped right back, and he almost snarled. A near thing. "No. I didn't need the concussion to feel that way. I already knew."
"Then you should have expressed some of that before it had a chance to spill all over the journals instead of just deflecting with finger-guns." This, too, was perilously close to a snap, and the rise in tension was not going unnoticed. Felix, who had been splayed across the couch watching the proceedings, now rushed towards the raised voices in clear distress. The golden's expressive tail now wagged in stiff, agitated strokes as he ran to Arthur's side, whining.
Jim paused to take a breath and pulled his hands down his face. "Is that why you keep doing this shit?" he asked, calmer now for Felix's sake. "I get why you did it this time. I do. But it feels like you just — throw yourself away the instant you think anyone else might benefit from it, no matter what it might do to you. Like it's your job. Like you don't matter."
Felix got a consoling hand on his head.
"So which is it, then? What I did, what I said on the journals, or how I feel?" Arthur's voice flattened into a low growl, "it doesn't matter who I am, Jim, that's what I am. That's how the luck works. That's what I'm good for."
He had to take a breath, and his face screwed a tight grimace. "The psychometry only made that worse. I get to feel everything I'm missing. Everyone else's lives."
"What do you mean 'which is it'? It's all part of the same thing. I can be pissed about all of it." Jim massaged his forehead with one hand. The headache was increasing; being this close to Arthur when the other man was experiencing such a churn of emotions wasn't helping, but damned if he was leaving now. "What are you talking about, anyway? Yeah, your power is useful, but it's just a power. You're a person, not a lucky rabbit's foot."
Arthur stared blankly. "We never . . . You wouldn't know, would you? You glued me back together before the end of the world and you left. I'm the world's luckiest rabbit, Jim. That's what I do. I'm not smart, I'm not clever. I make movie references, I smile, and I'm lucky."
Jim returned the stare. Then he got off the stool.
"Excuse me for a minute," he said, and turned his back to Arthur. There was a solid, stainless steel trashcan standing next to the counter. Jim stared at it, his right eye paling to grey, and Felix startled as the receptacle suddenly imploded like a soda can at terminal depth.
What remained of the trashcan thudded dully against the tiles. Calmer now, Jim returned to his seat.
"I'm sorry. I had to get that out of my system." The telepath sighed. "Arthur, you're worth more than your luck. You don't need to reduce yourself to just a — a role."
"What if that's all that is left?" Arthur, deflated, was absently running a finger along the contours of the power inhibitor.
Jim sliced the air with his hand. "Stop. I've been in your head, and you're as real as anyone. What I don't get is why you feel the need to hide it. You can help people without doing that to yourself. Just — you're allowed to be a person, Arthur."
"You would know, right? You're at least three people."
"It depends how you're counting. At minimum I'm two. Five at the outside." A statement that would have stung at any other time barely caused a ripple. If they were fighting about Arthur's right to experience complicated personhood then a little bit of uncharacteristic nastiness was actually reassuring. Haller leaned forward on his elbows, steepling his fingers and turning the compressed index fingers towards the blond. "Nice try. Now answer the question."
Arthur let out a long sigh.
"Eight years. The world ended and all that, but my old life was gone before that. I burned all of my bridges, and everything left in my head felt like I was just watching a film. A story from a friend. Worse, though, everyone just kept telling me how it was good I was lucky. How everything must be perfect. So I put on an empty smile and gave them what they wanted, and it worked! No one asked any questions. Everyone stopped looking at me like I might bring down a mountain. It worked so well that I bought into it too."
He paused there, and had to stop his hand from trembling. Felix, offered a sympathetic nose. "The luck, too. Everyone isn't wrong. When it works, I feel amazing. All of that loneliness melts away. I ask the world for something, anything, and I get it. But," and he bit his lip, "it only works when I'm in the role."
Jim felt a pang of guilt. It was more than likely he had contributed to that sense of disconnection of the two stages of Arthur's life. He'd done what he could to repair the damage Mojo's agents had inflicted on the then-stuntman's memories to keep him under control, but the structures he'd established would always be artificial. Those emotional connections to the moment that formed that sense of 'realness' might simply have been unrecoverable. Quality from the original that didn't survive the transfer.
"I'm sorry if we made you feel pigeon-holed by your power," he said, trying to focus on what he could help, "and I'm especially sorry if I contributed to it. But I don't see why you need to keep putting on the performance. We know you better now. I promise people will understand if you occasionally have a moment where you're something less than positive. To be honest, some of them would probably feel better if you did."
"I can't," Arthur stated like this was a fact. "You aren't getting it, Jim. My luck is a curse. I don't control it. I want things, and they happen. I can use that to help people, but wishing — thinking, hoping — for what I want makes it go wrong."
Jim blinked. Arthur was correct; he wasn't getting it.
"Wait, so you mean . . . you can't use it with intent?" he tried. "Like thinking about it gets you too in your head?"
The other man frowned. "I . . . It . . . All I know is that if I keep things simple, the better it works? If I'm doing good, it works even better. The more I think about something or consider the details, the more fickle my luck gets. Other people get hurt."
Acting primarily on instinct made sense; over-thinking could impair performance in many areas, and mutant abilities were no exception. But the other part . . . Jim frowned. "I know most probability powers require maintaining some sort of balance to avoid rebound, but it . . . sounds like you're saying your powers are also linked to intent somehow? Like there's a moral component to what you're allowed to do?"
"Jim," and there was a bite in Arthur's voice now, "All I know is that I pull good luck to myself. It works better when I'm positive and feel like I'm helping, so that's what I do. I can't be selfish. It only cares about making me happy, so I just ignore myself. Easy. Everyone wins."
The telepath stared at him, then turned slowly to the kitchen again. There were no more trash cans to crush. He turned back to Arthur.
"Everyone wins," Jim said flatly.
"I thought if anyone could understand, it would be you," Arthur sighed.
Jim pinched the bridge of his nose. The headache had progressed from 'hammer and chisel wielded by skilled stonemason' to 'jackhammer operated by worker rushing to finish his shift'.
"Okay." The word was very calm, very professional. "I'm going to tell you something important, and I want you to really think about it. I'm saying it as someone who thinks of you as a friend." Jim dropped his hand and pinned the other man's blue-eyed gaze with his heterochromatic.
"Arthur, you aren't the center of the fucking universe."
"No no," his own subtle accent flattened to mirror Haller's own by reflex, defensive mirroring, with his vowels shortening and consonants hardening, "I am doing the opposite of that."
"No, you're not. You think your luck won't work if you're selfish so you flatten yourself out until you're just a cipher so you can do the most good. I understand that reasoning. Except for one thing." Jim's own accent stayed precisely where it was, although the temptation to allow Jack's Texan drawl to take over was proving increasingly difficult to resist. His hand on the countertop curled into a fist.
"Everyone plays a role sometimes, but you decided to go method. You've cast yourself as the hero of your own personal action movie, except at the end of the day actors actually leave the fucking set. Who says you have to be a lucky charm all the time?"
"Is that how you see me?" Arthur's voice was suddenly very small. He folded in on himself. Felix, who had shrunken back with a whine at the harsh voices, was suddenly a life preserver.
"Benji yelled at me too, you know. While I love having that kid around, he's a reminder of who I used to be — the way he looks at me and seeing my old stuff playing in the common areas. It is like seeing a stranger with my own face. It hurts. Jim, I'm so tired of hurting."
"Yeah," Jim said. The hurt in the other man's voice drained some of the sharpness from his. "I get that." The telepath rubbed his eye with the heel of one hand. I'm tired of that for you, too.
"I don't see you like that," he continued, softer now. "I'm frustrated because from where I'm standing that seems to be how you see yourself. Just — an actor filling a role. Serving a function for everyone else at the expense of being an actual person. You deserve to be more than what you can do."
Arthur's gaze drifted back up from the dog, but at least his trembling had subsided. "What if I'm right, though?"
"That doesn't matter." The telepath exhaled slowly and absently rubbed a thumb against the old scars on his right hand. "Look . . . you're the sculptor, not the chisel. Your powers are a tool to be used, not all you are. Things come easier to you if you keep it simple, and that's fair — but you also don't need to be That Guy all the time. That's what I meant when I said you'd set yourself up as if you were the main character. Even I take time for myself once in a while. Yes, really," he said before Arthur could make a remark, "I paint, Davey gets his own time every day. Cyndi is out if she needs to be. No one can be on all the time, even if they're doing it for all the right reasons. It'll wear you down until you're no use to anyone. Especially not yourself."
"So," and this actually got a self-deprecating chuckle, "Be more interesting? I remember that comment stinging." Arthur's tone sobered just as quickly, "I just don't know where to start."
Jim nodded to the inhibitor on Arthur's wrist. "First you can worry about feeling confident enough to go without that. Then . . . we'll see. But probably it should start with accepting that just being the luckiest guy in the room isn't a personality, either."
The familiar words got a wince, but the other man tried not to look at his accessory as he folded his hands back onto the countertop. "I see. So, what else then? Or did you want to pull up the journals for reference?"
The younger man shifted his weight on the stool so he could fish around in his pocket for his phone. "I mean, if you need more evidence that repressing all this crap is untenable —"
Arthur blew a deep exhale out through his nose, but settled in for the full accounting of his crimes.
***
Haller has questions on words said and Arthur’s mental health.
Haller had been waiting.
That was clear, at least, from when Arthur had reentered the suite. The other man had been hovering in that way his friend had been doing for the past month — like a person on edge who wasn't sure which way they'd fall. Arthur could feel his own anxiety pooling in his chest, but that was easy enough to hide with a smile. A nod of greeting. The simple motions of refilling his water bottle were an effective way to mask that he was also putting the power inhibitor back on. He'd been weaning off of it lately for a handful of compelling reasons, but something about his friend's body language indicated he might need it.
Arthur sat down on a nearby bar stool and waited.
The telepath's odd-colored eyes immediately flicked to the inhibitor on Arthur's wrist; sleight-of-hand was irrelevant if you knew it was coming. That was as good an indication as any of how Arthur felt about having this conversation. Jim pressed his fingers against the tension headache starting between his eyes before taking a seat of his own.
"Okay, so . . . first of all, how's your head feeling today?" he asked as he folded his hands across the kitchen island. The question was calm, professional.
This part had become routine. "I made it down to the lobby without losing balance or focus, and nothing was fuzzy. Bouncing forward steadily." Arthur folded his hands in a mirror of Haller's own, his illustration-covered cast thudding softly against the stone. "How about yours?"
Jim pretended not to hear the attempt at deflection — his own little routine with Arthur. "I'm glad it's improving. You seem more lucid overall, too, which is a definite improvement. How's your psychometry? Have any new reads been triggering since your powers came back?"
"Nothing unexpected." It wasn't a full answer, but this is how the dance went. Arthur hadn't tried to read anything since that first time. He'd been trying to keep as far away from that of part of himself as possible. "And no, not the other thing either. My name is Arthur Centino, it is Wednesday, and I’m okay."
"Okay, well, now that you're doing better we should talk about what you did read out there. I don't mean a debrief; I mean it was clearly having a pretty significant emotional effect on you, so we should really . . ."
Jim slowed, then stopped.
"Ah," was Arthur's first response, followed by a broken, "I’ve found that a positive attitu —"
He didn't slow, but he did stop. His posture stiffened. "Jim?"
Haller really did need to question Arthur about what he'd read in District X. The emotional fallout had been terrible, and Jim didn't know if that was because of the nature of the reading, complications from the traumatic brain injury that had followed, or an escalation of whatever had already been happening with his powers. But he had been keeping himself in check for so, so long, letting things pass so he didn't upset Arthur, and between watching his friend struggle through recovery and shields that felt more like cardboard "out of gas" wasn't the right term. He'd been pushing the whole damn car for weeks.
Jim dropped all pretense of professionalism and stared Arthur dead in the eyes.
"Do you actually think you're not a real person?"
"Oh," and the other man suddenly found anywhere else to look, "that was —"
"Don't blame the concussion," Jim interrupted. "Maybe the concussion was why you said it aloud, but shit like that doesn't come from nowhere."
Arthur's attention snapped right back, and he almost snarled. A near thing. "No. I didn't need the concussion to feel that way. I already knew."
"Then you should have expressed some of that before it had a chance to spill all over the journals instead of just deflecting with finger-guns." This, too, was perilously close to a snap, and the rise in tension was not going unnoticed. Felix, who had been splayed across the couch watching the proceedings, now rushed towards the raised voices in clear distress. The golden's expressive tail now wagged in stiff, agitated strokes as he ran to Arthur's side, whining.
Jim paused to take a breath and pulled his hands down his face. "Is that why you keep doing this shit?" he asked, calmer now for Felix's sake. "I get why you did it this time. I do. But it feels like you just — throw yourself away the instant you think anyone else might benefit from it, no matter what it might do to you. Like it's your job. Like you don't matter."
Felix got a consoling hand on his head.
"So which is it, then? What I did, what I said on the journals, or how I feel?" Arthur's voice flattened into a low growl, "it doesn't matter who I am, Jim, that's what I am. That's how the luck works. That's what I'm good for."
He had to take a breath, and his face screwed a tight grimace. "The psychometry only made that worse. I get to feel everything I'm missing. Everyone else's lives."
"What do you mean 'which is it'? It's all part of the same thing. I can be pissed about all of it." Jim massaged his forehead with one hand. The headache was increasing; being this close to Arthur when the other man was experiencing such a churn of emotions wasn't helping, but damned if he was leaving now. "What are you talking about, anyway? Yeah, your power is useful, but it's just a power. You're a person, not a lucky rabbit's foot."
Arthur stared blankly. "We never . . . You wouldn't know, would you? You glued me back together before the end of the world and you left. I'm the world's luckiest rabbit, Jim. That's what I do. I'm not smart, I'm not clever. I make movie references, I smile, and I'm lucky."
Jim returned the stare. Then he got off the stool.
"Excuse me for a minute," he said, and turned his back to Arthur. There was a solid, stainless steel trashcan standing next to the counter. Jim stared at it, his right eye paling to grey, and Felix startled as the receptacle suddenly imploded like a soda can at terminal depth.
What remained of the trashcan thudded dully against the tiles. Calmer now, Jim returned to his seat.
"I'm sorry. I had to get that out of my system." The telepath sighed. "Arthur, you're worth more than your luck. You don't need to reduce yourself to just a — a role."
"What if that's all that is left?" Arthur, deflated, was absently running a finger along the contours of the power inhibitor.
Jim sliced the air with his hand. "Stop. I've been in your head, and you're as real as anyone. What I don't get is why you feel the need to hide it. You can help people without doing that to yourself. Just — you're allowed to be a person, Arthur."
"You would know, right? You're at least three people."
"It depends how you're counting. At minimum I'm two. Five at the outside." A statement that would have stung at any other time barely caused a ripple. If they were fighting about Arthur's right to experience complicated personhood then a little bit of uncharacteristic nastiness was actually reassuring. Haller leaned forward on his elbows, steepling his fingers and turning the compressed index fingers towards the blond. "Nice try. Now answer the question."
Arthur let out a long sigh.
"Eight years. The world ended and all that, but my old life was gone before that. I burned all of my bridges, and everything left in my head felt like I was just watching a film. A story from a friend. Worse, though, everyone just kept telling me how it was good I was lucky. How everything must be perfect. So I put on an empty smile and gave them what they wanted, and it worked! No one asked any questions. Everyone stopped looking at me like I might bring down a mountain. It worked so well that I bought into it too."
He paused there, and had to stop his hand from trembling. Felix, offered a sympathetic nose. "The luck, too. Everyone isn't wrong. When it works, I feel amazing. All of that loneliness melts away. I ask the world for something, anything, and I get it. But," and he bit his lip, "it only works when I'm in the role."
Jim felt a pang of guilt. It was more than likely he had contributed to that sense of disconnection of the two stages of Arthur's life. He'd done what he could to repair the damage Mojo's agents had inflicted on the then-stuntman's memories to keep him under control, but the structures he'd established would always be artificial. Those emotional connections to the moment that formed that sense of 'realness' might simply have been unrecoverable. Quality from the original that didn't survive the transfer.
"I'm sorry if we made you feel pigeon-holed by your power," he said, trying to focus on what he could help, "and I'm especially sorry if I contributed to it. But I don't see why you need to keep putting on the performance. We know you better now. I promise people will understand if you occasionally have a moment where you're something less than positive. To be honest, some of them would probably feel better if you did."
"I can't," Arthur stated like this was a fact. "You aren't getting it, Jim. My luck is a curse. I don't control it. I want things, and they happen. I can use that to help people, but wishing — thinking, hoping — for what I want makes it go wrong."
Jim blinked. Arthur was correct; he wasn't getting it.
"Wait, so you mean . . . you can't use it with intent?" he tried. "Like thinking about it gets you too in your head?"
The other man frowned. "I . . . It . . . All I know is that if I keep things simple, the better it works? If I'm doing good, it works even better. The more I think about something or consider the details, the more fickle my luck gets. Other people get hurt."
Acting primarily on instinct made sense; over-thinking could impair performance in many areas, and mutant abilities were no exception. But the other part . . . Jim frowned. "I know most probability powers require maintaining some sort of balance to avoid rebound, but it . . . sounds like you're saying your powers are also linked to intent somehow? Like there's a moral component to what you're allowed to do?"
"Jim," and there was a bite in Arthur's voice now, "All I know is that I pull good luck to myself. It works better when I'm positive and feel like I'm helping, so that's what I do. I can't be selfish. It only cares about making me happy, so I just ignore myself. Easy. Everyone wins."
The telepath stared at him, then turned slowly to the kitchen again. There were no more trash cans to crush. He turned back to Arthur.
"Everyone wins," Jim said flatly.
"I thought if anyone could understand, it would be you," Arthur sighed.
Jim pinched the bridge of his nose. The headache had progressed from 'hammer and chisel wielded by skilled stonemason' to 'jackhammer operated by worker rushing to finish his shift'.
"Okay." The word was very calm, very professional. "I'm going to tell you something important, and I want you to really think about it. I'm saying it as someone who thinks of you as a friend." Jim dropped his hand and pinned the other man's blue-eyed gaze with his heterochromatic.
"Arthur, you aren't the center of the fucking universe."
"No no," his own subtle accent flattened to mirror Haller's own by reflex, defensive mirroring, with his vowels shortening and consonants hardening, "I am doing the opposite of that."
"No, you're not. You think your luck won't work if you're selfish so you flatten yourself out until you're just a cipher so you can do the most good. I understand that reasoning. Except for one thing." Jim's own accent stayed precisely where it was, although the temptation to allow Jack's Texan drawl to take over was proving increasingly difficult to resist. His hand on the countertop curled into a fist.
"Everyone plays a role sometimes, but you decided to go method. You've cast yourself as the hero of your own personal action movie, except at the end of the day actors actually leave the fucking set. Who says you have to be a lucky charm all the time?"
"Is that how you see me?" Arthur's voice was suddenly very small. He folded in on himself. Felix, who had shrunken back with a whine at the harsh voices, was suddenly a life preserver.
"Benji yelled at me too, you know. While I love having that kid around, he's a reminder of who I used to be — the way he looks at me and seeing my old stuff playing in the common areas. It is like seeing a stranger with my own face. It hurts. Jim, I'm so tired of hurting."
"Yeah," Jim said. The hurt in the other man's voice drained some of the sharpness from his. "I get that." The telepath rubbed his eye with the heel of one hand. I'm tired of that for you, too.
"I don't see you like that," he continued, softer now. "I'm frustrated because from where I'm standing that seems to be how you see yourself. Just — an actor filling a role. Serving a function for everyone else at the expense of being an actual person. You deserve to be more than what you can do."
Arthur's gaze drifted back up from the dog, but at least his trembling had subsided. "What if I'm right, though?"
"That doesn't matter." The telepath exhaled slowly and absently rubbed a thumb against the old scars on his right hand. "Look . . . you're the sculptor, not the chisel. Your powers are a tool to be used, not all you are. Things come easier to you if you keep it simple, and that's fair — but you also don't need to be That Guy all the time. That's what I meant when I said you'd set yourself up as if you were the main character. Even I take time for myself once in a while. Yes, really," he said before Arthur could make a remark, "I paint, Davey gets his own time every day. Cyndi is out if she needs to be. No one can be on all the time, even if they're doing it for all the right reasons. It'll wear you down until you're no use to anyone. Especially not yourself."
"So," and this actually got a self-deprecating chuckle, "Be more interesting? I remember that comment stinging." Arthur's tone sobered just as quickly, "I just don't know where to start."
Jim nodded to the inhibitor on Arthur's wrist. "First you can worry about feeling confident enough to go without that. Then . . . we'll see. But probably it should start with accepting that just being the luckiest guy in the room isn't a personality, either."
The familiar words got a wince, but the other man tried not to look at his accessory as he folded his hands back onto the countertop. "I see. So, what else then? Or did you want to pull up the journals for reference?"
The younger man shifted his weight on the stool so he could fish around in his pocket for his phone. "I mean, if you need more evidence that repressing all this crap is untenable —"
Arthur blew a deep exhale out through his nose, but settled in for the full accounting of his crimes.
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Date: 2024-01-31 05:46 pm (UTC)I haven't seen Haller lose control and I play Warren. This is a really good deep dive into both these characters. <3 Great job, guys!
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Date: 2024-01-31 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-31 07:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-31 08:43 pm (UTC)It's a little bit heartbreaking but lovely to read, so I'm excited to see what growth comes from it.
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Date: 2024-01-31 11:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-01 12:17 am (UTC)this was incredible
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Date: 2024-02-02 12:40 am (UTC)