Haller, Topaz, & Arthur | Empathy 101
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xp_logsFollowing communications and debriefings, Haller facilitates a meeting between Topaz and Arthur to see if she can help with Arthur’s continuing psychometric trauma. Topaz has a solution.
They had to pull in an additional chair, but other than that it was a familiar scene. David Haller's office was a well-put together fixture of mansion life — organized to elicit a sense of calm and open mindedness. So the three sat, with the powers counselor in his usual spot, and waited.
Arthur, newly resolved to be an everyman and trying his best, actually held back his normal smile, even if it was creeping in on the edges of his expression. "So. Feelings."
"Yes. They're bad,” Jim said it deadpan, but the look he exchanged with the session's third party that indicated this was not entirely a joke. "Well, the invasive ones that are attached to your readings, anyway."
"They're almost always worse when they're not your own," Topaz said, very much from her own experiences. "So you can read memories attached to an object, and you get the feelings from them too, correct?"
Haller's comment earned him a glare from the usually empty eyed Arthur, but the man gladly shifted his focus over to Topaz. "That's right. Mr. Haller,” and this was a deliberate jab toward the man in the other chair, “calls it empathetic mirroring — when I read something, what's strongest and clearest are the memories where the person involved had a strong emotion. I feel what they felt as I see what happened, but I can focus on that to see other scenes connected to that emotion. It is . . . definitely something I can do."
The twinge of a frown that accompanied that last comment that was about as close as Arthur was going to get to expressing a negative today. Trying.
"It's distinct from Adrienne Frost's type of psychometry," said Jim. He scrawled aimlessly on the corner of the notepad he'd brought to outline his points of concern for discussion. "Hers was to read the history of objects. Arthur's is more like using an object as a bridge to read a person in the moment — or several people in several moments chaining together. Forward and back. It —"
The telepath's pen abruptly disgorged a glob of ink onto the notepad. The shining black puddle dripped over the side of the pad and onto the desk. The look Jim shot Arthur was one of thinly-veiled suspicion.
"We think it is tied to my luck," Arthur continued as he didn't even blink at Jim's misfortune. "The emotions are triggers. Intent. They're less defined if I look forward, but it's like feeling what tips the scales from one choice to another."
He waved that fact away out of reflex. "I touched something I shouldn't have."
Topaz raised an eyebrow, looking between the men. "Okay. I'm starting to get why I'm here, but first? Whatever's going on —“ She pointed between Haller and Arthur “— here, and don't get me wrong I don't care what it is, but deal with it. Emotions are difficult enough without whatever weird pettiness is happening. Second." Now she focused back on Arthur, "I get if you're scared or freaked out but the vague attitude about it isn't going to work. 'I touched something I shouldn't have' could be anything from your roommate's sex toys to Thor's hammer, and I don't fancy going into a situation without all the relevant information."
She paused, and if her tone was slightly softer when she spoke again, well, she wasn't going to admit it. "Like I said, I get it. I take emotions too. It's terrifying to get something you really shouldn't have even when you're used to it. But pretending everything is okay rarely ends well in my experience."
"Topaz, you're right.” Arthur narrowed his eyes and took a steadying breath before replying, and he used non-casted hand to massage his temple. His tone wasn't apologetic, however, and the look he gave her was full of steel. "I choose to use my powers. I'm not frightened. Every single time was my decision, but I have recently been advised by a good friend that I need to work on a few major character flaws."
The hand retreated, and he began to tally off the last year, "There's been several instances of other's childhood trauma, being set on fire from the inside by a plague, lots of panic of a riot and tear gas, the madness of a bombmaker, and a trip into the mind of a woman who felt almost nothing. In District X, though," and there was another deep breath, "I was front row for what it was like to be turned into a Horseman. Twice. Then I saw . . . "
An ancient will with neither beginning nor end. A struggle as hopeless as fighting gravity.
Arthur had to stop here, but he didn't break eye contact.
"A traumatic incident paired with a presence of incomprehensible scope," finished Jim. "Not just the emotional intensity that comes with experiencing that kind of psychic trauma, but one that came tangled with the existential horror of what lay behind it. It's . . ." he glanced at Arthur. "Sorry, I don't think there's a technical term, so I'm going to go with 'too big for your head'. Does that sound about right?"
"I keep flashing back to it," Arthur confirmed with a sigh.
Topaz nodded along without flinching, eyes shifting to Haller when he spoke, then back at Arthur. "Too big for your head seems like a good way of describing it. You say you're not frightened, and I'll believe you there. But for the record? It'd be fine if you were, even if it was your choice to use your powers. We don't have to like the choices we make. Sometimes you do what you have to do."
She paused, taking a breath. "So, too many emotions. And now you've got no way to get rid of them. Is that about right?"
A lightbulb in the ceiling popped and went dark. To his credit, Jim's flinch was minimal.
"That was unrelated," he said calmly. He dropped his eyes from the darkened light and turned to Topaz. "Don't worry about the pettiness, I just told Arthur it was healthy to feel something other than sunshine and rainbows all the time." Jim gave Arthur a crooked smile. "You're doing great, by the way."
"Have you ever felt trapped by your power, Topaz?" Arthur knew he was deflecting, but he marched on toward his point anyway. "Turns out my usual strategy of burying any bad vibes wasn't healthy to begin with, but now I also have to feel other people's emotions too. There's too much going on up here." He tapped a temple to illustrate the point, and then gestured at the blown out light. "I'm asking for your help on how to live with this. I don't expect it to be easy, but you're the expert."
Topaz took a moment to think. "You might not have to live with it," she said slowly. "I can take them."
Arthur didn't say anything, but there was a tightening of his jaw. The rush of his pulse filled his ears, but the air only tensed with power. There was no surge of bad luck. "David," and the other man's name had none of the accusation and formality attached to it like before, "told me something about what you can do, and that's obviously why we're all here. I do not know what that means. Please, explain?"
He glanced over to Haller, then, but his words were still for Topaz. "I will not burden you."
Topaz resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Barely. "Here's the thing." She reached under her chair to grab her bag and pulled out two pens - one black, one red. "Your mutation allows you to take emotions from memories, but your brain isn't equipped to properly deal with them." She opened to a blank page and used the black pen to draw a circle as she spoke. Inside the circle she drew a bunch of little circles, squares, and triangles. "Imagine these are your emotions. They're pretty normal. But then you start taking emotions from other places and . . ." She drew several large X's in the circle. "But you're not equipped to properly process them, for lack of a better word, so they just stay.
"My empathy is partially linked to my magic. That's what allows me to drain emotion." She tapped the page, and with a small spark of magic, the X's started disappearing. "When I take emotions from someone, they'll usually come back within a couple hours to a day. But these emotions aren't naturally yours, so they won't reform. And once I have them . . . "
She flipped the page and drew a small stick figure, then began drawing squares, circles, and triangles all around it. "I hear emotions all the time. I have shielding, obviously, but empathy is different. It's like covering your ears to block out sound — it works a little, but you can still hear what's going on around you. But my brain is built to actually process things because of the nature of my mutation, so it's mostly radio static in the back of my head. If I take the emotions . . . " She drew some red X's around the stick figure, "they'll eventually fade away into the general static. And that's if I don't use them for magic. We're working on the wards around the mansion, I'm sure I can put some of that into those. Either way, they won't stay with me the way they do you."
"That's amazing," Arthur concluded. He had been an attentive student, rapt in her demonstrative scribbles and explanation. It had been enough to calm him, and his eyes were alight with the promise of what he understood. "You can actually use what I feel.”
"Use it to make the mansion safer, even." Topaz had a feeling that would make him happy. "It's not totally non-invasive and I can't promise not touch your own emotions a little, depending on how interwoven things are, but I know how to focus and get only what I want."
Arthur's eyes narrowed, inquisitive, and he leaned in and then back away from Topaz. He wiggled his hand in the air as if testing its consistency. “So, is white noise — your radio static — something you can’t help but project, or does it come and go with the magic?”
Topaz frowned, tilting her head. "Usually it's just in my head. No one's mentioned it projecting before." She looked at Haller questioningly, silently asking if he could feel it too.
Jim answered the frown with one of his own. He was similarly perplexed. Automatically, he reached out to see for himself.
Reaching beyond his shields was like disturbing a house of cards. Jim's already-tenuous defenses fully collapsed, leaving his mind fully exposed to everything that lay beyond. The effect was like turning on a radio you were unaware had had its volume turned up to the maximum degree. Psychic static crowded him on all sides like a swarm of bees pulsing with persecution, and curiosity, and undercurrent of anxiety swirled with his own worry, all reflected back on him —
With a hiss of shock and pain the telepath grabbed his head, narrowly avoiding falling out of his chair.
Arthur was up and out of his chair before he realized that he shouldn't actually touch Haller in state. Or even be near him. So he hovered, frozen, and his confusion and slight panic reverberated through the air. His eyes swapped between his friend and Topaz, searching for direction.
"Topaz, Haller," he said through a controlled breath, "tell me what's happening." Then solely to Topaz, "He's been having trouble since the coma."
Topaz stood and did approach Haller carefully, trying to reel in whatever weirdness was going on around her. Then she paused. "I'm not sure what's happening," she said slowly. "But I think maybe I should step out for a minute."
"It's — it's okay." It was possible repeating this enough would make it true. With some effort Jim envisioned pulling his shields back around himself like a blanket, slowly cocooning himself once again in layers of defense. The empathic noise became muffled, then disappeared. Slowly, Jim straightened.
"My shields are . . . sort of all-or-nothing right now. I just wasn't expecting it, that's all." He turned to Topaz, his frown deepening. "Arthur's right, though. Obviously it's not that bad for the headblind — I was actively reaching, and I left myself totally open. But it's noticeable."
Topaz was still frowning, looking between Haller and Arthur. "Maybe I should still step out," she said after a moment. "That's not a normal thing.”
Arthur would later argue to himself that some situations called for old habits, or a little bit of backsliding as a necessary measure. Still, he purposely flattened his concern for Haller and tried to smooth it over into something useful. What was left was polite positivity. “Topaz,” and he trod carefully, “David’s wellbeing is something we all want, but it sounds as though you and I don’t need a chaperone for you to work. I am asking for your help.” The 'now' was implied. Heavily.
The following empty smile he offered was somewhat undercut as the unseen effect of his intention caused the screws in the doorknob for the office to loosen, unseen and unheard. Seems like no one would have the fortune of leaving if they wanted.
Topaz nodded slowly, hearing the unspoken plea. "Okay." To Haller, "I can handle it if you want to step out."
Jim hesitated. "No, I should stay. I trust you," he clarified, "it's my own work I want to monitor. I did a lot of repairs in there a few years ago. There hasn't been an opportunity to see how well the structure tolerates any kind of psionic interference, so this would give me some idea of whether I need to do some shoring up or just relax. And frankly empathy isn't my area — I'd love the chance to observe. I'll be fine now that I'm prepared."
"Okay," Topaz said again, sitting beside Arthur. "I'm going to go into your head, find the emotions that aren't yours, and take them. I can't promise I won't brush your own emotions as well — it's like a pool, things get mixed. But it shouldn't be too bad. Are you ready?"
The blond man's eyes briefly shot to Haller, as if for permission, before he caught himself. Arthur quickly self corrected and, this time, nothing broke or sputtered in the nearby surroundings. "I am having issues with touch. Is that necessary? It sounds too easy for me."
"No touch is fine," Topaz assured him. "Just close your eyes and try to clear your head."
"Okay," and he didn't fully trust it, but Arthur closed his eyes.
Jim carefully wound back his shields again; now that he was prepared the static he'd felt before was only a distant prickle on the back of his neck. The link to Arthur's mind, too, was formed without issue. He met Topaz's gaze and nodded.
Topaz nodded back before closing her eyes as well. It was easy enough to pick Arthur out and carefully work her way in . . .
And she found chaos.
For all Arthur was trying to exude a neutral, calm exterior, his mind betrayed it. Likely a result of the head injury, but it also felt like everything was reacting to an invader — something that didn't belong, something foreign, something that needed to be out. Topaz furrowed her brow and dug a little deeper.
Anxiousconfusionfearfearfearhurttired-
She pushed deeper, past the surface.
-hurtsadnesshopelessfearlonelyalonedespairhorrorbitterANGERANGERANGER-
Emotions didn't really have a color for Topaz, but if ever anything stood out like a vibrant red flag, that was it. She pushed off the memories trying to overwhelm her, leaving that to Haller to deal with, before carefully tapping into the vein of foreign emotions. She took a deep breath, centered herself . . .
And pulled.
Jim felt the clot of emotion stir around him like water being drained from a tub. To his relief the structure he'd established was secure, reinforced now by years of healing and Arthur's own mind establishing its own paths now that it was no longer being continually disrupted by an outside force. However, as Topaz had warned, the reading was entangled in other elements. Jim cast his mind out like a net, envisioning the mesh as fine enough to allow only the fragments of the vision filter through while Arthur's native memories collected harmlessly against it. Everything that was Arthur remained distinct and inaccessible: the rest was given over to Topaz.
All Arthur could grasp during this was an odd sense of lessening. Like the volume being turned lower — first just a little, but then the additional noise in his head matched his reconstructed memories, until . . .
He let out a long sigh, and the tension in the air in the room from his unconscious probability shifting dissipated like morning mist.
"I," the man's voice trembled like he might jinx it, "I can see it still, but the pain is gone." His eyes widened at what that meant, and his attention snapped to Topaz. The man's first instinct was to search for how to help, but he instead found none of his emotions reflected by the younger woman.
"Good." Topaz put on her usual calm demeanor. It wasn't bad at all, just a little twinge in her head, but she could already feel Arthur's anxiety and she didn't want to give him any reason to worry more. "The emotions likely won't come back since they weren't natural in the first place, but we should probably keep an eye on it just in case? And obviously check back in next time you read something."
"I'll keep an eye on it, but everything looks good on my end." Slowly extricating himself from Arthur's mind again, Jim met Topaz's gaze again. ~Thank you,~ he sent privately.
Topaz tilted her head just slightly toward Haller to acknowledge his words, but her eyes never left Arthur. "Do you have any questions about what just happened? It can be a lot sometimes."
"Earlier," Arthur ventured experimentally. His voice was strained, as if he'd just ran a mile. "You said your brain is built to process all this because of your mutation. Do you really believe that?"
Topaz shrugged. "Admittedly there's a lot of assuming going on when it comes to psi powers, but I have to imagine my brain's adjusted itself to cope with the constant feedback in the last seventeen years. Either something changes, or you go mad."
He nodded, considering. "And every time I read something, or just the next? I do not plan on stopping using my psychometry when it can help."
"I'd say it depends on what you encounter," Jim said. "It's possible your brain isn't adapted to handle the psychometry as well as it might be, but in this case I'm more inclined to think it has more to do with trying to fit however many hundreds of years that spanned into your skull. I can see that causing some problems."
"I see," Arthur allowed. He took a deep inhale and slouched back into his chair. He could finally let himself relax. "Empathy is the worst, huh? Topaz, and I mean this more than you can know, thank you."
"It has its ups and downs," Topaz said with a wry smile. "Just call me if you find yourself getting overwhelmed again, probably before any journal meltdowns." Yes, she had seen that. "You know yourself and your limits."
The telepath stared at Topaz before turning back to Arthur, the most intentionally un-introspective person he'd ever met. Jim sighed.
"Well . . . he's working on it.”
They had to pull in an additional chair, but other than that it was a familiar scene. David Haller's office was a well-put together fixture of mansion life — organized to elicit a sense of calm and open mindedness. So the three sat, with the powers counselor in his usual spot, and waited.
Arthur, newly resolved to be an everyman and trying his best, actually held back his normal smile, even if it was creeping in on the edges of his expression. "So. Feelings."
"Yes. They're bad,” Jim said it deadpan, but the look he exchanged with the session's third party that indicated this was not entirely a joke. "Well, the invasive ones that are attached to your readings, anyway."
"They're almost always worse when they're not your own," Topaz said, very much from her own experiences. "So you can read memories attached to an object, and you get the feelings from them too, correct?"
Haller's comment earned him a glare from the usually empty eyed Arthur, but the man gladly shifted his focus over to Topaz. "That's right. Mr. Haller,” and this was a deliberate jab toward the man in the other chair, “calls it empathetic mirroring — when I read something, what's strongest and clearest are the memories where the person involved had a strong emotion. I feel what they felt as I see what happened, but I can focus on that to see other scenes connected to that emotion. It is . . . definitely something I can do."
The twinge of a frown that accompanied that last comment that was about as close as Arthur was going to get to expressing a negative today. Trying.
"It's distinct from Adrienne Frost's type of psychometry," said Jim. He scrawled aimlessly on the corner of the notepad he'd brought to outline his points of concern for discussion. "Hers was to read the history of objects. Arthur's is more like using an object as a bridge to read a person in the moment — or several people in several moments chaining together. Forward and back. It —"
The telepath's pen abruptly disgorged a glob of ink onto the notepad. The shining black puddle dripped over the side of the pad and onto the desk. The look Jim shot Arthur was one of thinly-veiled suspicion.
"We think it is tied to my luck," Arthur continued as he didn't even blink at Jim's misfortune. "The emotions are triggers. Intent. They're less defined if I look forward, but it's like feeling what tips the scales from one choice to another."
He waved that fact away out of reflex. "I touched something I shouldn't have."
Topaz raised an eyebrow, looking between the men. "Okay. I'm starting to get why I'm here, but first? Whatever's going on —“ She pointed between Haller and Arthur “— here, and don't get me wrong I don't care what it is, but deal with it. Emotions are difficult enough without whatever weird pettiness is happening. Second." Now she focused back on Arthur, "I get if you're scared or freaked out but the vague attitude about it isn't going to work. 'I touched something I shouldn't have' could be anything from your roommate's sex toys to Thor's hammer, and I don't fancy going into a situation without all the relevant information."
She paused, and if her tone was slightly softer when she spoke again, well, she wasn't going to admit it. "Like I said, I get it. I take emotions too. It's terrifying to get something you really shouldn't have even when you're used to it. But pretending everything is okay rarely ends well in my experience."
"Topaz, you're right.” Arthur narrowed his eyes and took a steadying breath before replying, and he used non-casted hand to massage his temple. His tone wasn't apologetic, however, and the look he gave her was full of steel. "I choose to use my powers. I'm not frightened. Every single time was my decision, but I have recently been advised by a good friend that I need to work on a few major character flaws."
The hand retreated, and he began to tally off the last year, "There's been several instances of other's childhood trauma, being set on fire from the inside by a plague, lots of panic of a riot and tear gas, the madness of a bombmaker, and a trip into the mind of a woman who felt almost nothing. In District X, though," and there was another deep breath, "I was front row for what it was like to be turned into a Horseman. Twice. Then I saw . . . "
An ancient will with neither beginning nor end. A struggle as hopeless as fighting gravity.
Arthur had to stop here, but he didn't break eye contact.
"A traumatic incident paired with a presence of incomprehensible scope," finished Jim. "Not just the emotional intensity that comes with experiencing that kind of psychic trauma, but one that came tangled with the existential horror of what lay behind it. It's . . ." he glanced at Arthur. "Sorry, I don't think there's a technical term, so I'm going to go with 'too big for your head'. Does that sound about right?"
"I keep flashing back to it," Arthur confirmed with a sigh.
Topaz nodded along without flinching, eyes shifting to Haller when he spoke, then back at Arthur. "Too big for your head seems like a good way of describing it. You say you're not frightened, and I'll believe you there. But for the record? It'd be fine if you were, even if it was your choice to use your powers. We don't have to like the choices we make. Sometimes you do what you have to do."
She paused, taking a breath. "So, too many emotions. And now you've got no way to get rid of them. Is that about right?"
A lightbulb in the ceiling popped and went dark. To his credit, Jim's flinch was minimal.
"That was unrelated," he said calmly. He dropped his eyes from the darkened light and turned to Topaz. "Don't worry about the pettiness, I just told Arthur it was healthy to feel something other than sunshine and rainbows all the time." Jim gave Arthur a crooked smile. "You're doing great, by the way."
"Have you ever felt trapped by your power, Topaz?" Arthur knew he was deflecting, but he marched on toward his point anyway. "Turns out my usual strategy of burying any bad vibes wasn't healthy to begin with, but now I also have to feel other people's emotions too. There's too much going on up here." He tapped a temple to illustrate the point, and then gestured at the blown out light. "I'm asking for your help on how to live with this. I don't expect it to be easy, but you're the expert."
Topaz took a moment to think. "You might not have to live with it," she said slowly. "I can take them."
Arthur didn't say anything, but there was a tightening of his jaw. The rush of his pulse filled his ears, but the air only tensed with power. There was no surge of bad luck. "David," and the other man's name had none of the accusation and formality attached to it like before, "told me something about what you can do, and that's obviously why we're all here. I do not know what that means. Please, explain?"
He glanced over to Haller, then, but his words were still for Topaz. "I will not burden you."
Topaz resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Barely. "Here's the thing." She reached under her chair to grab her bag and pulled out two pens - one black, one red. "Your mutation allows you to take emotions from memories, but your brain isn't equipped to properly deal with them." She opened to a blank page and used the black pen to draw a circle as she spoke. Inside the circle she drew a bunch of little circles, squares, and triangles. "Imagine these are your emotions. They're pretty normal. But then you start taking emotions from other places and . . ." She drew several large X's in the circle. "But you're not equipped to properly process them, for lack of a better word, so they just stay.
"My empathy is partially linked to my magic. That's what allows me to drain emotion." She tapped the page, and with a small spark of magic, the X's started disappearing. "When I take emotions from someone, they'll usually come back within a couple hours to a day. But these emotions aren't naturally yours, so they won't reform. And once I have them . . . "
She flipped the page and drew a small stick figure, then began drawing squares, circles, and triangles all around it. "I hear emotions all the time. I have shielding, obviously, but empathy is different. It's like covering your ears to block out sound — it works a little, but you can still hear what's going on around you. But my brain is built to actually process things because of the nature of my mutation, so it's mostly radio static in the back of my head. If I take the emotions . . . " She drew some red X's around the stick figure, "they'll eventually fade away into the general static. And that's if I don't use them for magic. We're working on the wards around the mansion, I'm sure I can put some of that into those. Either way, they won't stay with me the way they do you."
"That's amazing," Arthur concluded. He had been an attentive student, rapt in her demonstrative scribbles and explanation. It had been enough to calm him, and his eyes were alight with the promise of what he understood. "You can actually use what I feel.”
"Use it to make the mansion safer, even." Topaz had a feeling that would make him happy. "It's not totally non-invasive and I can't promise not touch your own emotions a little, depending on how interwoven things are, but I know how to focus and get only what I want."
Arthur's eyes narrowed, inquisitive, and he leaned in and then back away from Topaz. He wiggled his hand in the air as if testing its consistency. “So, is white noise — your radio static — something you can’t help but project, or does it come and go with the magic?”
Topaz frowned, tilting her head. "Usually it's just in my head. No one's mentioned it projecting before." She looked at Haller questioningly, silently asking if he could feel it too.
Jim answered the frown with one of his own. He was similarly perplexed. Automatically, he reached out to see for himself.
Reaching beyond his shields was like disturbing a house of cards. Jim's already-tenuous defenses fully collapsed, leaving his mind fully exposed to everything that lay beyond. The effect was like turning on a radio you were unaware had had its volume turned up to the maximum degree. Psychic static crowded him on all sides like a swarm of bees pulsing with persecution, and curiosity, and undercurrent of anxiety swirled with his own worry, all reflected back on him —
With a hiss of shock and pain the telepath grabbed his head, narrowly avoiding falling out of his chair.
Arthur was up and out of his chair before he realized that he shouldn't actually touch Haller in state. Or even be near him. So he hovered, frozen, and his confusion and slight panic reverberated through the air. His eyes swapped between his friend and Topaz, searching for direction.
"Topaz, Haller," he said through a controlled breath, "tell me what's happening." Then solely to Topaz, "He's been having trouble since the coma."
Topaz stood and did approach Haller carefully, trying to reel in whatever weirdness was going on around her. Then she paused. "I'm not sure what's happening," she said slowly. "But I think maybe I should step out for a minute."
"It's — it's okay." It was possible repeating this enough would make it true. With some effort Jim envisioned pulling his shields back around himself like a blanket, slowly cocooning himself once again in layers of defense. The empathic noise became muffled, then disappeared. Slowly, Jim straightened.
"My shields are . . . sort of all-or-nothing right now. I just wasn't expecting it, that's all." He turned to Topaz, his frown deepening. "Arthur's right, though. Obviously it's not that bad for the headblind — I was actively reaching, and I left myself totally open. But it's noticeable."
Topaz was still frowning, looking between Haller and Arthur. "Maybe I should still step out," she said after a moment. "That's not a normal thing.”
Arthur would later argue to himself that some situations called for old habits, or a little bit of backsliding as a necessary measure. Still, he purposely flattened his concern for Haller and tried to smooth it over into something useful. What was left was polite positivity. “Topaz,” and he trod carefully, “David’s wellbeing is something we all want, but it sounds as though you and I don’t need a chaperone for you to work. I am asking for your help.” The 'now' was implied. Heavily.
The following empty smile he offered was somewhat undercut as the unseen effect of his intention caused the screws in the doorknob for the office to loosen, unseen and unheard. Seems like no one would have the fortune of leaving if they wanted.
Topaz nodded slowly, hearing the unspoken plea. "Okay." To Haller, "I can handle it if you want to step out."
Jim hesitated. "No, I should stay. I trust you," he clarified, "it's my own work I want to monitor. I did a lot of repairs in there a few years ago. There hasn't been an opportunity to see how well the structure tolerates any kind of psionic interference, so this would give me some idea of whether I need to do some shoring up or just relax. And frankly empathy isn't my area — I'd love the chance to observe. I'll be fine now that I'm prepared."
"Okay," Topaz said again, sitting beside Arthur. "I'm going to go into your head, find the emotions that aren't yours, and take them. I can't promise I won't brush your own emotions as well — it's like a pool, things get mixed. But it shouldn't be too bad. Are you ready?"
The blond man's eyes briefly shot to Haller, as if for permission, before he caught himself. Arthur quickly self corrected and, this time, nothing broke or sputtered in the nearby surroundings. "I am having issues with touch. Is that necessary? It sounds too easy for me."
"No touch is fine," Topaz assured him. "Just close your eyes and try to clear your head."
"Okay," and he didn't fully trust it, but Arthur closed his eyes.
Jim carefully wound back his shields again; now that he was prepared the static he'd felt before was only a distant prickle on the back of his neck. The link to Arthur's mind, too, was formed without issue. He met Topaz's gaze and nodded.
Topaz nodded back before closing her eyes as well. It was easy enough to pick Arthur out and carefully work her way in . . .
And she found chaos.
For all Arthur was trying to exude a neutral, calm exterior, his mind betrayed it. Likely a result of the head injury, but it also felt like everything was reacting to an invader — something that didn't belong, something foreign, something that needed to be out. Topaz furrowed her brow and dug a little deeper.
Anxiousconfusionfearfearfearhurttired-
She pushed deeper, past the surface.
-hurtsadnesshopelessfearlonelyalonedespairhorrorbitterANGERANGERANGER-
Emotions didn't really have a color for Topaz, but if ever anything stood out like a vibrant red flag, that was it. She pushed off the memories trying to overwhelm her, leaving that to Haller to deal with, before carefully tapping into the vein of foreign emotions. She took a deep breath, centered herself . . .
And pulled.
Jim felt the clot of emotion stir around him like water being drained from a tub. To his relief the structure he'd established was secure, reinforced now by years of healing and Arthur's own mind establishing its own paths now that it was no longer being continually disrupted by an outside force. However, as Topaz had warned, the reading was entangled in other elements. Jim cast his mind out like a net, envisioning the mesh as fine enough to allow only the fragments of the vision filter through while Arthur's native memories collected harmlessly against it. Everything that was Arthur remained distinct and inaccessible: the rest was given over to Topaz.
All Arthur could grasp during this was an odd sense of lessening. Like the volume being turned lower — first just a little, but then the additional noise in his head matched his reconstructed memories, until . . .
He let out a long sigh, and the tension in the air in the room from his unconscious probability shifting dissipated like morning mist.
"I," the man's voice trembled like he might jinx it, "I can see it still, but the pain is gone." His eyes widened at what that meant, and his attention snapped to Topaz. The man's first instinct was to search for how to help, but he instead found none of his emotions reflected by the younger woman.
"Good." Topaz put on her usual calm demeanor. It wasn't bad at all, just a little twinge in her head, but she could already feel Arthur's anxiety and she didn't want to give him any reason to worry more. "The emotions likely won't come back since they weren't natural in the first place, but we should probably keep an eye on it just in case? And obviously check back in next time you read something."
"I'll keep an eye on it, but everything looks good on my end." Slowly extricating himself from Arthur's mind again, Jim met Topaz's gaze again. ~Thank you,~ he sent privately.
Topaz tilted her head just slightly toward Haller to acknowledge his words, but her eyes never left Arthur. "Do you have any questions about what just happened? It can be a lot sometimes."
"Earlier," Arthur ventured experimentally. His voice was strained, as if he'd just ran a mile. "You said your brain is built to process all this because of your mutation. Do you really believe that?"
Topaz shrugged. "Admittedly there's a lot of assuming going on when it comes to psi powers, but I have to imagine my brain's adjusted itself to cope with the constant feedback in the last seventeen years. Either something changes, or you go mad."
He nodded, considering. "And every time I read something, or just the next? I do not plan on stopping using my psychometry when it can help."
"I'd say it depends on what you encounter," Jim said. "It's possible your brain isn't adapted to handle the psychometry as well as it might be, but in this case I'm more inclined to think it has more to do with trying to fit however many hundreds of years that spanned into your skull. I can see that causing some problems."
"I see," Arthur allowed. He took a deep inhale and slouched back into his chair. He could finally let himself relax. "Empathy is the worst, huh? Topaz, and I mean this more than you can know, thank you."
"It has its ups and downs," Topaz said with a wry smile. "Just call me if you find yourself getting overwhelmed again, probably before any journal meltdowns." Yes, she had seen that. "You know yourself and your limits."
The telepath stared at Topaz before turning back to Arthur, the most intentionally un-introspective person he'd ever met. Jim sighed.
"Well . . . he's working on it.”
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Date: 2024-02-09 07:30 pm (UTC)Everything about this log is just great.
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Date: 2024-02-10 08:08 am (UTC)