milliways_bar | (no subject)

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They found another one of the Cortexiphan kids this week: Simon Phillips. He wasn't in Olivia's "class"; he took part in the Wooster trials several states over, and was kicked out after his primary skill turned toward mind reading.

Olivia was the first person he'd met in twenty years who could enter his house and not start a cacophony. Two decades of uncontrolled telepathy, with the Cortexiphan in Olivia's body -- how it triggered a barrier to her thoughts, one Simon couldn't cross for whatever reason -- offering him the only relief.

Two decades of living in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, because otherwise, he'd go completely insane from the noise.

Now, she's at a table with a glass of whiskey, studying it with more care than strictly necessary. Her problem, she thinks, has always been finding the so-called "on" switch -- never in turning it off again. Maybe it's time to explore the benefits of both.

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Olivia lifts an eyebrow.

"Sounds like there's a story behind that," she says.

"Not much of one, just ... I can remember some uneventful times that weren't very good at all. Nothing bad happening, but nothing getting any better either."

Several months in the Shop's installation in Virginia, for instance.

"Oh." That's a little quieter. "Yeah. I can...understand that."

Calm is one thing. The dreariness of unchanging circumstances -- especially poor ones -- is another altogether.

"Fortunately, it's been the good kind of uneventful lately."

She has her work, she has the kids who need her, she has friends, she has the good people she works with and for. It's a good life.

(It's enough, may be the subtext of that.)

(A subtext that reads loud and clear, to Olivia.)

"I'm glad to hear." She takes another sip of her drink; lets the silence stretch.

Then, somewhat abruptly, "Could I ask you something?"

Charlie's brows tug together a fraction, and her gaze focuses a touch more sharply on Olivia's face. "Sure."

"How did you learn to control...what you could do?"

An absent gesture.

"With the fire?"

She's quiet for a moment.

"I told you once, I think, about the people who ran the Lot Six experiment? And how they seized me and my father to test the results? They were the ones who taught me to control it."

A beat; her face is quite calm. "Are the methods what you're interested in?"

I told you once; Olivia's mouth thins by the barest degree. And now that Charlie's rehashing the story, of course she can remember it, like another box unlocking to set the memory loose.

Her powers of recall used to be impeccable. The gaps that still spring up every so often jar her, rousing the old, dull anger in her chest: how could they do this to me.

She takes in a breath to recenter herself, putting her full focus on Charlie. Low-voiced: "Not those kind of methods."

If Charlie notices Olivia's reaction to the reminder, she doesn't comment on it.

"For the record," she says, still calm, "the testing methods themselves weren't cruel. If I'd been a willing participant who was free to leave at any time, there wouldn't have been much to take issue with."

Another brief silence.

"Considering my next question was going to be if you could teach me how to control it," she says, "I'd rather not make you relive that time of your life."

Charlie rests her chin on one hand, running her thumb contemplatively along her jawline.

"I don't know if I could teach you," she says at length, "but I'd be willing to try. And I can share what worked for me."

Olivia studies her.

"Are you sure?"

"Very sure." She meets Olivia's gaze steadily.

Slowly, Olivia nods: all right.

"Then I'd like to get started whenever it's convenient for you."

"I could give you the general idea now," she says, "and you can tell me if any of it sounds like it would be applicable to your abilities. It might not be; I've met pyrokinetics here whose fire doesn't work at all the same way as mine."

"That sounds like it would work."

Her drink's nearly done; Olivia polishes it off and sets the glass aside. She's not quite aware of the faint urgency welling up in her tone.

"I'm sure there's something I could use, even something small."

Maybe she's not aware of it; Charlie is.

"First of all, there was the setting. It was done in a lab, but it could have been anywhere really; the important thing was that they made the place as fireproof as possible. Nothing flammable except for the thing I was supposed to set on fire, and a huge tank of ice water for me to throw the fire at when I wanted it to quit. Controlled circumstances."

Olivia nods.

For now, she's silent, absorbing what Charlie says.

"I did have the advantage there," she says a little slower, "that I already knew one sure way to make it stop. Throwing it at water. The colder the better. And having that there meant I could start fires without being afraid that they would go everywhere."

A beat.

"When you were using it, during the fight where we first met ... how did you get it to stop, when you were done?"

Olivia's mouth quirks; she shrugs, turns a hand over, spreads her fingers.

"I don't know," she says. "It wasn't anything sustained. It was like an electric shock -- it didn't last long enough for me to have conscious control over it."

"Did it come back at all? During the rest of the battle?"

She shakes her head.

"Fire's always been the hardest to access," she says. "One or two of my other abilities are...a little easier. But it's still too unpredictable. I want to be sure."

"Other abilities," she says. "Moving between worlds, I think you told me?"

"Right," she confirms. "And -- there's got to be a better phrase for it. Seeing displaced objects that came from another universe."

A tiny smile.

"It's how I found the Slenderman's tree."