xp_logs | Sooraya and Jim: The art of breaking down

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Sooraya finds Haller in his room at Muir.

He couldn't remember how he'd gotten from the cliffside to his room, but that wasn't surprising. Fortunately Muir was a second home; his body knew what to do even if his mind wasn't consciously engaged. Familiar surroundings and breathing exercises always helped.

At least his body felt like his body again. Exhausted, Jim bent over his knees and stared at his feet.

"Grey carpet," he muttered. "Low pile. Dark flecks." He sighed and shut his eyes, grinding the heel of one foot into the floor to reinforce the physical connection between the two. "Shoe rasping on carpet. Rubbing corduroy sound."

There was a knock.

Hesitating for only a second, Sooraya simply opened the door and slipped inside. "Jim?" After a glance around the room she stepped around the bed and dropped on her knees in front of him. "Hey, it's me. Are you alright?" She asked softly, frowning as she took in the scene in front of her. After another moment Sooraya reached out, gently dropping a hand on his knee.

Jim registered the weight of her hand before his ears caught up with her words. He blinked, then raised his head to stare at her.

"Sooraya?" The telepath sat up a little straighter and looked around dumbly. What should have been a statement came out as a question. "I'm . . . still on Muir?"

"You're still on Muir." Sooraya confirmed, giving his knee a quick squeeze. "I came here with Arthur." She continued as her eyes narrowed and she reached up with her other hand, gently cupping his chin. "Are you with me here?"

Oh. "Us." Jim pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yeah, I'm okay," he said. The physical contact was giving him something to focus on, reviving him a little. "Sorry. I was talking to Arthur . . . I started having an episode. I left before it could get worse. I think I'm good now."

He still looked rather foggy, but it'd do for now . . . Sooraya decided just before she noticed something else and took Jim's hand as he lowered it. "You're bleeding." She simply explained as she looked over the little half-moon shaped wounds in the palm of his hand. "Let me clean that for now."

She rolled back to her feet and went to grab the little first aid kit she knew he kept in his bathroom. Returning she settled next to him on the bed, setting his hand on her lap as she reached for an alcohol pad. "This might sting a little . . . What did Arthur say that made you do this? "

Now that she'd brought attention to them Jim was beginning to notice the ache in his hands, but that wasn't why he winced. "He said it's time to stop obsessing and come back," he admitted as Sooraya began to dab at the abrasions. "I panicked, I guess."

"Well, that was probably not the best way to put it from him." Sooraya tossed the alcohol pad in a nearby trash can as she eyed her work critically for a moment. "Why'd you want to stay, Jim? Moira and your dad told me you've been doing pretty well with rebuilding your shields . . . also, want me to wrap this up for you?"

"I guess," Jim replied absently. Enough motility had returned to his face that he could feel a frown beginning. "I just . . . don't feel ready. It's not enough to have my shields patched. What if something else has changed about my telepathy? The power malfunctions happened when I was just existing around other psi’s. What if something goes wrong when I'm in someone's mind?"

"You sound scared . . ." Sooraya quietly named the emotion as she eyed the contents of the first aid kit. Palms of hand were always a terrible place to put bandaids, so Sooraya simply wrapped a small bandage around his hand, tucking some cotton wool between the gauze and bandage so the gauze would stay put. "And I think I can understand a little why. But what safer place is there to test and explore that aspect of your powers than home?" She pushed some debris aside before looking up at him. "Your other hand please."

Jim sighed and gave Sooraya his other hand. "I'm not going to gamble with people's minds. My job is putting people back together after worst-case scenarios, not causing them. And I'm not needed enough on the team to go back just to be TK support. Here would be safer than the mansion — Charles can monitor me, fix any damage I might do."

Though she opened up another alcohol pad, Sooraya hesitated before using it. Instead she gave Jim a long look. "Jim . . . we don't just want you back because of what you can do to help people or to go on missions with the X-men . . ."

The telepath met her dark eyes briefly, then looked away.

"If I'm not working I'm just taking up space," Jim muttered, awkward. "If I can't contribute there's not even anything to balance the risk of being there."

"David 'Jim' Charles Haller . . ." Sooraya let his injured hand be for the moment as she gently, firmly grasped his chin. "You did not just say you are just taking up space . . . do you truly believe that Arthur and I would have come out here if we think you're just taking up space. The bleeping feathery peacock actually let us use his private jet to get here!" She stated in a low voice, steel lacing through every word.

It was a tone of voice almost exclusively reserved for adversaries in the field and Warren Worthington, and until this moment Jim had not fully appreciated what it was like to be on the receiving end. The fact she was fully a foot shorter than he somehow made it even worse. In this moment she reminded him of Moira in the most intimidating way. Somewhere in the back of his mind he could hear Cyndi sing-songing "Somebody's in troooouble . . ."

"Sorry," he managed around her grasp on his jaw. "I . . . know that. Or I try to know that." He deflated a little under the intensity of her gaze, eyes skating away again. Once again Arthur's words echoed in his mind.

"You are a coward."

"You're right," Jim admitted, "I am scared." His bandaged hand curled against his thigh. "I was affecting the whole mansion without even knowing it. I had to spend the first week here in one of the isolation rooms, doing sessions with Charles remotely. He could've . . . if our powers had interacted badly enough it might've caused another stroke." A muscle in his jaw tightened. "If someone's close enough to help me, I'm close enough to hurt them. That's the math I can't stop thinking about."

"It's okay to be scared. And it's good to be alert to possible risks. I can't help but agree with that." Sooraya quickly shifted her grip so she was cupping his chin and her voice had softened as well. "But what you're doing right now isn't that. You're catastrophizing, Jim, getting stuck in all possible worse-case scenarios. Even though I know that sometimes that has happened in the past."

The telepath fell silent.

He didn't know whether Sooraya had picked up the term from Moira or elsewhere, but "catastrophizing" was an accurate label for what he was doing. Cognitive distortion, negative thoughts . . . he knew these patterns from treating patients, and yet was somehow surprised to find them in himself every time.

"Yeah." Jim forced himself to take a deep breath and finally look Sooraya in the eye. "Yeah, you're right. Sorry. I guess I've been . . . sorry."

"It's okay. Just promise you'll try to stop tying yourself into knots?" She smiled a little as she dropped her hand to his shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. "And work with us to try and figure out a way for you to come home without you feeling you're walking on eggshells. We both know staying on Muir for much longer isn't gonna help you either?"

The older man's shoulders slump at her touch. "Charles said I was fine," Jim admitted. "I trust him. It's harder to trust myself. It's not just what could have happened, it's what did happen. We were lucky that nobody had any major issues in the field; most people were only inconvenienced. But Arthur's powers were . . . you didn't see him, but he really went through hell." He laughed, bitter. "He came to me for help because that's what I do. That's what I built my telepathy around. But all along I was making him worse, and I didn't even realize it."

"Let me ask you something, okay . . . " Sooraya pulled her leg up and shifted a little so she could face him more easily. "Say Jean has been treating a patient and afterwards she learned that without knowing it, without having any idea, she has accidentally made her injuries worse. What would you tell her then? If she came to you?"

Jim's mouth quirked. "I know what you're getting at, and obviously I'd say it wasn't her fault — that all she could do is concentrate on learning from the error and work not to repeat it. Intellectually I understand that. It's just hard to accept on an emotional level. I think most people would agree."

"But you are forgetting something important here . . . this is not an everyday mistake or something. You were literally recovering from a severe psionic injury . . . your father explained a little of it to me, so I could understand it better." Sooraya gently squeezed his shoulder again and a note of sadness laced her voice as she added: "Jim, how much compassion, grace and acceptance you have for everyone is always one of the things I've most admired about you. I just wish so much you could accept some of that for yourself."

Her eyes fixed him in place. The telepath felt a lurch in his chest, like a bird throwing itself against the bars of its cage.

What are you feeling? Why are you feeling it?

"I'm . . . going to try to talk this out." Jim said at last. He took a breath and tried to focus on articulating what was going on in his head, as much for himself as for Sooraya. "It's hard to accept what you don't feel like you deserve. The same goes for help. Accepting help requires you to trust the person giving it. It . . . leaves you open." He rubbed at his face, feeling the dressing she'd fixed pull against his stubble. "When I was a kid everyone David was supposed to be able to trust left. Or . . . that's wrong. I lost them."

Sooraya let her first urge to simply pull him into a hug melt away as she listened. "And if you open again, you also open up to that risk all over again?" She asked softly after he fell silent.

"Yeah. That's the thing." Memories rose in the back of his throat: the woman who was more sister than friend, burned to ash in front of his eyes, and the lover who had stepped out of his life, existence unmade somewhere in the darkness. Jim couldn't help but feel the bleak absurdity of it, and felt his mouth turn in an empty smile even as his eyes stung.

"When I finally tried, that's exactly what happened."

"But I bet opening up didn't just bring loss though... it also brought other things, didn't it?"

Such a simple question, but this, too, Jim could recognize as an arrow pointing to yet another cognitive distortion. When hurt had loomed in your life so large and so long the quiet comforts couldn't help but dwindle, and so Jim forced himself to think beyond Lorna and Betsy. There had also been Charles and Moira, and Scott, and Arthur.

Sooraya herself.

Just because Jim couldn't conceive of an outstretched hand as anything other than a future absence didn't mean everyone he'd come to care about had been lost.

"Yeah," Jim murmured. He rubbed the wetness from his eyes and forced a laugh. "Yeah, it did. I forget that sometimes. Or try to, maybe. It's when I have to acknowledge it I start to . . . I just don't want to think about the implications, I guess."

Taking Jim's hand, she lifted it and pressed it against her face. "Don't deny yourself this . . . " Sooraya whispered as she focused on what she wanted Jim to know . . . to feel and simply offered it to him.

He had, without even realizing it, been keeping his shields tight. After so many weeks rubbed raw by the thoughts of others, psychic isolation had become a luxury. Yet Sooraya was a friend, and he could no sooner miss the mental invitation than he could miss the taking of his hand.

It wasn't a fight he could win, nor, he realized, was it one he wanted to.

Breathing deeply, the telepath let her thoughts settle over his. There was frustration there, even a trace of anger, but they paled beside the concern from which it grew; there was distress in watching someone you cared for struggle in a way that seemed so needless.

These things were little more than flotsam on the surface of her thoughts. The foundation was carved of affection, and determination, but above all it was her love that he felt. The love Sooraya gave so freely and so fiercely to so many moved beneath it all like the pulse of a heart. It was a presence that demanded nothing, expected nothing, only pressed against him like a caress.

An outstretched hand, offering.

Drawing a shuddering breath, Jim managed to nod. He raised his hand to cover the one resting on his cheek and squeezed once, gently.

"Thank you," he whispered.