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Between the telepathy and the invisibility Sylvia has become the ninja grand master of avoiding emotional scenes.  As soon as the angst meter rises in the lunch room, she skitters into obscurity like a cat at bath time, and while things have been quiet in the aftermath of Strange's arrest, she's still shy of spending too much time with the group at large.  Her sanctuary these days tends to be Jack's, and she relishes her alone time there.

In the gym, with the heavy bag in front of her, she rams her fists into the duct-tape-patched vinyl, swinging from the waist and grunting a little as her knuckles meet the target.  She's still small, not strong, but someday she'll pack a wallop.

Every thump of her fists, every knee strike, every roundhouse kick is a beat of anger, an anger she can neither articulate nor comprehend and which she certainly can't express.  The last time it almost got away from her, she could feel its heat burning the air around her, curling and crisping the edges of reality like a book burning.  But Sylvia has been practicing, repressing, and compartmentalizing, and now she thinks she's starting to understand how to isolate and manipulate her own emotions as easily as she manipulates others'.  Put it in a box.  Put it in a box and take it out when you need it.  Like now.

Wham.  The bag jiggles on its mount.  Strange's head in action-capture slowmo whips away from her fist, blood and sweat spraying off his skin like a garden sprinkler.

Wham.  Hamilton, holding his detonator, staggers back with a foot to the solar plexus.

Sylvia cannot be angry at people, but she can be angry at the heavy bag.  She can punish it, and herself, where she can't punish them.

Colin arrives from the door wearing a sleeveless tracksuit and a towel around his neck. He gets to the treadmill and it takes him a moment to realize she's there.

"Oh. Hi, Sylvia."

Seeing she's quite concentrated, he doesn't disturb her any further and starts running on his own.
All the while trying to force himself not to think 'aloud'. It takes him at least as much effort as running.

The look he gets isn't quite friendly, but she doesn't mean to glare at him.  It's just that she's pounding down the villains who clutter her head, and Colin, not a constant source of joy or support these days, isn't spared a smile.


She gives the heavy bag a last series of vicious kicks and then backs away from it, like it might jump her when she's not looking.  Satisfied that it's going to stay where it is, she sits on one of the benches that circle the periphery of the room and sucks down some water.  Only then does she try to speak.  "Everything good?"

"Pretty much." he says, and it's true. There's not really much that's bothering him. She can sense a little apprehension for his family, but he's serene about that. What little is bothering him, though, is bothering him now.

Sylvia wrestles with herself.  She could pick up her things and go.  That's probably the smart thing to do.  But the others rely on Colin for comfort, and she's not sure who Colin relies on when he's upset.  Sarah?  Sarah's answer to all ills seems to be cookies, and cookies don't fix everything.

Sylvia steels herself.  "Is something wrong?"

Colin sighs, and turns the treadmill off.

"Do you feel like talking? I've got a pebble in my shoe."

Sylvia puffs out her cheeks and lets out a soft pop of air.  It gives her time to muster up some sincerity.  "I feel like listening," she says.

"I... If I were hardpressed to say a name, I'd say you are my best friend. And yet, you haven't been treating me very well, lately. You know, I don't mind when you boss me around. It's not that. It's just that you should supposedly know me better than almost anyone else, and it's like you know very little about me, instead."

"What have I missed?"  Sylvia's been dodging him, and this, for a while, but without the others' emotional turbulence roaring in her ears, she can listen to Colin and almost not want to run away.

"Well, I realized there was something wrong with me. It took me to almost burn my hands to realize what it was. So i can't really fault you for not noticing and telling me. But... you dismiss me a lot. Do you realize do that? You don't do it with me only, but lately, it's like everything I do or say is stupid or childish. And you're perfectly entitled to that opinion, but I've got the feeling you don't know very well what's going on in my head, after all, and you might be more superficial than you think."

His lips curl into a sad smile. "That's probably why you like to hang with Logan. He must be much harder to read, and probably much harder to dismiss."

She's not sure what part of that to address first, but she tries to be thorough.  "Most people are noisy, unbearably noisy.  Logan doesn't cloud my head.  If he's hard to dismiss, it's because he thinks clearly and unemotionally.  He also doesn't whine or sulk or pout or throw tantrums.  Not that you do," she adds, "but it's refreshing to spend time with someone who absolutely doesn't.

"As for your burnt hands, if you're talking about your urge to fix everything and everyone around you, no matter the cost, it's admirable to a point.  But--"  She pauses.  "You realize you can't fix people with magic, don't you?  You can't fix all people with magic."

"It's a fine line, it's quite hard to tell when I start doing 'magic'. Often it just happens, when I touch something. But I wasn't trying to use magic to fix him. I did use magic in that sense, but later, at the hospital, to help him recover. I don't 'fix' people. I've never taken any credit for that. I can only give them a little nudge in a (hopefully) good direction, be it physical or mental. They still have to do the work, and credit goes to them if they do. I don't heal as magic does in Donnie's games. I don't really close wounds. But I can help someone recover faster, and with less complications. I can help them cling to life while help arrives."

He looks down.

"I was trying to get him to look at me, so he could know he wasn't alone fighting what Strange put in his head. And well, a part of me wanted me to get hurt. To feel that pain."

He looks up back at her.

"See, even now, what you did? 'You realize that, don't you?' Wouldn't you call that condescension?"

"I wasn't talking about him," she says.  "I was talking about Alicia."

Colin frowns.

"Have I ever done or said anything to make you think I have the pretension to be able to 'fix' what was done to Alicia?"

"And yet you did something to her, didn't you?  How did she wind up in that half-assed state?"  Sylvia's language can be rough, but she seems calm.

"I did something with her. She had fake memories implanted. I helped her get rid of them. Do you know what they did to her?"

Sylvia nods solemnly.  "What I saw, when we went in together, the second time, was that your method seems incomplete.  You don't always see the whole picture, and when you try to fix something like that in parts, you leave your--"  She pauses to consider, and the word emerges with a slight twist of irony.  "--patients in turmoil."

"That's not really how I see it. When Allie realized she'd been led to believe in lies for such a long time, that she was disconnected from her true self, she began to question everything about her identity, and it resulted in a fracture. People can get that way without my intervention, for reasons that don't need to be paranormal. identity turmoil is quite common during adolescence."

From the way he talks, it's quite obvious he's given it some thought and did some research.

"I did nothing the second time a therapist couldn't have done. Did you?"

[Hey, Nestor?  I tried to create a consistent profile for Alicia, stuff Sylvia would know that Alicia might not know herself.  If anything in particular is wrong, let me know, and I'll edit.]

"Yes," Sylvia says.  At this point it's nothing but professional analysis.  "She wasn't fractured because she was questioning her identity.  She was fractured because the mentalist, or whatever he is, who toyed with her left--"  She squints at the far wall, remembering the organic tangle of webbing she seems to have seen.  "--a cage in her head.  He was trying to suppress her and control her.  He conditioned her to feel guilty for the things that he'd made her do."

She adds, "As for identity turmoil, Alicia has an underlying nature, a strong foundation of instinct.  That's who she really is, her essential self.  But she's inclined to believe about herself what others say.  Unfortunately, if she doesn't trust you, she won't believe anything good you say about her.  That's not part of the mentalist's conditioning.  That has to do with how she's been treated in the past.

"If I may dispense my opinion, without your calling it condescension, Alicia needs someone she can count on to treat her like a responsible human instead of a half-wild alley cat, or she's going to spend the rest of her life in fight or flight, unable to control herself and possibly always under the control of someone else.

"Not a mentalist," Sylvia clarifies.  "She won't let that happen again.  An abusive boyfriend, a domineering employer.  She'll attract that kind of person her whole life until she learns to trust herself again."

Sylvia lets her gaze drop.  She tries not to share the others' secrets, but Colin is the only one who has even a sliver of right to hear this.  If it'll make him think twice before he munges around in someone's head as if she were made of Lego blocks, so much the better.

"You came looking for me that night because you were afraid she was going to explode. She would have thrown off that cage on her own. We just helped her do it so she wouldn't hurt herself or someone else in the process."


"And? What's your point? I haven't treated her that way since day one. Also, she has Jack, who's helping her a lot."

OOC: Not too far off. Let me see if I can put this into words correctly...

Alicia's inner person views the world as a hierarchy, a sort of pack mentality. She seeks her position on the pack, dominating those below her and submitting to those above her. If someone 'above' her shows weakness or inability to maintain their position, she doesn't see a problem with challenging them. Equally, she makes sure not to show weakness to those 'below' her. Life for her is a constant jostling for status and peer respect. That pretty much defines her 'id'.

What the mentalist did is create a layer suppressing that id while enhancing the super-ego. He essentially gave her a one-way ticket for a guilt trip, ensuring that the implanted memories would have their full impact on her emotional state.

She has a hard time trusting people because she can't not see any overture as anything but a potential challenge. Nothing comes free, if someone gives you something they want something in return, is it something she's willing to give? Etc., etc.

She's intelligent enough to understand that not everyone works the way she does, and that some people are willing to give without taking. That doesn't help overcome her instinctive reluctance to do the same.

There may be a part of her, even hidden to her conscious self, that yearns for the loss of control, for submission. That may be getting a bit deep (and perhaps a bit too squicky) for this campaign, though. ;)

Edit: Sorry I wasn't able to get this out sooner. :)

"I'm not accusing you of treating her badly.  I'm trying to give you an understanding of the complexity of what you're messing with.

"The reason therapy works, sometimes, is that there's a whole chain of discoveries and decisions that goes into what, in composite, is personality.  The epiphany is not the significant moment.  The process is.  Imagine, for instance, that someone overeats.  He does it because it's the way his parents express their feelings--for him and for each other and for themselves.  It's his primary source of comfort.

"Someone like you or me could go in and change his habit.  We could say, 'Put those fuckin' Cheetos down, Donnie, and don't do that anymore,' and magically he would stop overeating.  But everything he might have built on the way to making that decision on his own wouldn't be there.  He wouldn't have the coherent memories of learning to--"  She shrugs.  "--love carrot sticks or exercise or water instead of Coca-Cola.  The behavior we might have squelched isn't the problem.  The problem is what lies around it.  The reason.  Taking away the behavior just leaves a hole, and someone or something else can go in and fill that hole, not always for the better.

"Thus, my point:  you can't fix all people with magic.  I can't fix all people with telepathy.  Not permanently and not well.  It is not your job to go in and remove their angst.  It only leaves them empty, and sometimes that's worse."

Now she frowns.  "That's why I haven't fixed you.  That's why I haven't said a word about your masochistic urge to plunge in and hurt yourself whenever you think it'll help someone else.  It's admirable, as I said, to a point, and it seems to make you feel good about yourself.  Who am I to take that away?"

"Ok, are you done with that? That's not at all what I do. I couldn't do that even if I wanted, and I still wouldn't want it. I can't take away anything, or leave any kind of hole. I can only heal and strengthen. Nothing I could do would make this hypothetical person to stop overeating. But if he had decided to stop, I could help by strengthening his resolve. There are very strict limits to what I can do when it comes to free will. 'No messing with free will' is the rule. And If I helped, it wouldn't be something tacked on either. I don't do anything, really. I'd just help the process go on smoothly, and possibly a little quicker, but that's it. But still only -after- they took the decision to go this way. And not without them knowing. So there's no 'click-fixed-on my way'. -Alicia- asked me to help her. I did it on her terms. And I didn't call you because you weren't exactly on speaking terms at the moment, and it was gnawing at her. She was terrified she could hurt Rhys or someone else, like she believed she hurt that girl. If I didn't notice the cage left there, it's probably because while I was there, I was attacked."

He pulls down  his shirt on his back to show her the tattoo-scar.

"It wasn't very nice, it caught me by surprise. So I was happy I survived and that Alicia was relieved, I was exhausted, and left it at that. I'm really really glad you noticed what that bastard had left in her mind while I wasn't able to, but that doesn't give you any right to misrepresent me the way you do."


Colin's eyes go really wide, and he had to bite his lips and take a few deep breaths not to shout. He opens and clenches his hands a few times.

"Does helping others make me feel good about myself? Yes, it does. Do I need to hurt myself to do it? No, I don't. That's something different. So you noticed. And you didn't think of talk with your friend about why it looks like he strives to get hurt. Did learning to read minds make you forget completely how it was like to be a friend without powers?"

"You said what you do is like therapy.  I'm telling you it's not.  Some things you can't rush."


Sylvia looks at him, wondering if this is one of those times when she needs to unpack the careful stash of rumpled, spiky emotions lodged somewhere between her heart and the pit of her stomach.  She declines to do so.  "I would do anything you ask me to do," she says simply, "but sometimes, even when we think we're helping each other, we're not."

"And you say this backed by the experimental evidence of... one case?"


"No, you wouldn't. Sometimes, even when we don't think we're leaving people alone, we are."

"I'm not a psychiatrist," she says.  "I'm a telepath."


She feels heat, which she squashes down relentlessly into its box.  She doesn't quite succeed.  Anger seeps into her voice.  "Sometimes leaving someone alone is what you have to do."

"And did you go back to check on all the other people I helped, which, by the way, are faring very well? Did you go back to check on Billy Hitchcock, who has been clean for months now, and will go to college? Did you go check on Shelia like I asked you to? You see, that's what I am. I can't leave anything or anyone behind, even when I'd like to."


Colin's shoulders slump down in disappointment.

"Really? I guess I should thank you then. Right, thank you. You were my Logan, and you left me alone, but thank you."

"No."  Sylvia's not looking at him.  She's looking at the heavy bag.  She's angry with the heavy bag.  She feels her anger as if it were something with its own weight, a teaspoon-full of neutron star distorting space-time with its mass.  "You should have left me alone.  You thought you were helping.  I know you thought you were helping.  But you should have left me alone."

"What?! When? When we went to the astral realm?"

Sylvia's boxes, wrapped with packing tape and marked "Bad Thoughts," split at the seams.  She tries to keep herself under control, but for all she knows, she's screaming.  Her throat hurts.  Yes, she might be screaming.  "When you shoved me back into my body after I died.  Why did you do that?  WHY DID YOU DO THAT, COLIN?"

The heavy bag is swinging gently on its mount, propelled by some unseen force into a slow, pendular movement.  And then, suddenly, and without drama--

It isn't.

Colin's eyes go wide and he takes, unwittingly, a step back. Almost immediately his eyes start shining as he peeks through the spirit veils.

"Sylvia?" he asks, as he's really not sure he's talking to Sylvia. "I didn't do that. You're very alive. Why do you say that?"

Sylvia's staring at the heavy bag--or the space where the heavy bag was.  She's not sure now if she was screaming.  Maybe she wasn't.  Maybe she didn't say anything.  No, she must have said something.  Colin is asking her about it.  Where's the heavy bag?  It was there, wasn't it?  She's sure it was.  She's going to try not to think about it, even though her hands feel a little jittery and cold.  Maybe it was never there.

She tries to resume her train of thought, but the anger that knifed it up out of her is gone, like the bag.  "I--uh, I'm alive because of you," she says as if she's reading a teleprompter out of context.  "Thank you?"

Colin's anger is completely gone too, flushed away by his concern. He takes her hand, gently.

"Are you all right? Is it gone?"

He takes a few breaths before continuing. "I've sent John to save you a couple times, because I wouldn't have been fast enough. But you helped me and the others escape from the witches' dreamworld. We would have all died that day otherwise. And at the Janusch' party, at the beginning of the year, you created a hundred colins to distract that spirit from feeding upon me. We're even."

Another breath.

"Is it so hard to stand, the noise? Would you be better off not... being a telepath?"

Sylvia reaches into her bag and rolls something around between her thumb and forefinger.  "I don't know what you're talking about," she says, with the kind of resolution that suggests she'll never admit to anything, if there's anything to admit to.


Sylvia's brow creases.  "Remember when you called me emo?"

If he shows any sign of defensiveness, or remorse, she waves it off.  It's unimportant.  "I could show you what it's like.  I could show you everything I've seen.  I've been tempted.  Sometimes I think it would be good just to know that someone else understands.  But I wouldn't want to do that to you.  It's no good, seeing too much of what's inside people.  It makes it hard to accept all the things you're just supposed to believe.  But I could show you.  If you think I'm too cynical about human nature or that I'm lying about what I see, I could show you.  I just don't know what it'll do to you."

Colin thinks about it for a moment. A long moment. Then he nods.

"Ok. Show me. It's no use having a friend if he can't understand you. But after I do that, it's my turn to show you something, ok?"

Sylvia wrestles with herself and then nods.  She shows him everything she's seen.

To the outside world only a couple moments pass before Colin blinks.

He grimaces, and bites his lips badly before looking up at her again.

"I... I'm sorry."

He lost the words somewhere along the way, and it takes him some time before finding them again.

"I really was a jackass. I... I still believe the things I said, but you deserved better. I'm sorry. Why did you keep this to yourself? How could we... No, never mind. But really, you're not alone anymore. I'm here when you're going to need to let some steam out. I can take it."

He sighs.

"And I'm about to show you why. It's the short filtered version. I have very good reasons not to expose you to the full brunt of it."

He takes her hand and squeezes it.

Sylvia doesn't pore through his mind so much as she lets him share what he wants.  It's a different experience from her usual, more like a guided tour than a battlefield raid, and she shows no expression as the memories and emotions feed in.  But when it's over, she continues to stare at the floor, filing away every little thing, each in its proper box.

She sounds depressed.  "Now I know why I hate you so much."  She doesn't.  He knows that now.  "You're me."

"Earth-shattering, isn't it?"

He slumps on the floor, looking thoughtfully at the ceiling.

"If we were older, and white, I'd offer you one of Jack's beer. What about a milkshake instead?"

"What do you mean?" Sylvia says, smiling a little at the weirdness of Colin's comment.  "I'm not white?  But that means Carolyn and Mitzi aren't my real parents.  Man, now I'm going to be really emo."

She gets to her feet.  "You know your girlfriend is white?"  The set of Sylvia's eyebrows turns wicked.  "And, apparently, she's a natural redhead."

[Now we know who told Alicia.  :)  ]

"Sorry to break it to you." he grins.


Colin hides his face in his hands.

"No, God and Great Spirit, please tell me I didn't share that. Please tell me you picked it up as a stray thought in another occasion. So it would be slightly less awkward."

Sylvia lies badly, deliberately badly.  "No, you didn't share that.  I picked it up as a stray thought.

"Oh, wait.  I know.  Sarah told me in the girls' locker room.

"No, I lied.  It was really on her blog.  Her webcam.

"It's just sad that both you and Jack are getting more action than me."

"I'm so sorry, Syl. I'd bury myself if I could. I'll probably go take that beer."


"Really? I thought... I mean, Donnie worships the ground you tread on."

"No, it's fine."  Sylvia is relentless in her deadpan way.  "Sarah's a good kisser."


Sylvia weighs the relative merit of protecting the private nature of her relationship with Donnie and the merit of not leading Colin to think he's the only one blurting secrets.  "Donnie has some interesting ideas about sex before marriage.  It's complicated."  She shrugs, trying not to make too much of it.  "It has more to do with his parents than it does with me, I think."

If he had a pillow, Colin would suffocate himself to death.


Colin narrows his eyes and tries not to comment about that either verbally or mentally. An 'idiot' here and there might get through.

"Well, we didn't plan it. It just happened. He might say so now, but circumstances might make a difference."

Flash-forward, 2011:  Sylvia is post-prom radiant, as all seventeen-year-old girls are even if they don't realize it.  She doesn't look like a little girl anymore, and she's wearing the gauzy eyelet babydoll, complete with stockings and heels, that she bought under Alicia's well-meaning advice.  "Donnie, sweetie," she says, looking and sounding annoyed, "open the door."

Donnie, on the other side of the bathroom door, is a golden-haired hunk, shoulders thick from sword work.  But the look on his face as he stares at himself in the mirror is the pure, cold fear of a bunny in a burrow, with something toothy and hungry lurking at the entrance to the warren.  "Just a minute," he calls nervously.

"Donnie!"  Sylvia stamps her stiletto against the hotel-room carpet.  Her leg is head-cheerleader sleek.  "Open the goddamn--"

Sylvia nods, taking what Colin says to heart.  "I'm in no rush," she says.  "I just--he's kind of. . . . "  She wonders if she shouldn't be sharing this with a reliable girlfriend instead of Colin.  "He loves me."  This is all she knows for sure about Donnie, and it's supposed to be enough.

Colin struggles to turn his thoughts into words that makes sense.

"Does he make you happy? And I mean really happy, in your guts."

Sylvia doesn't even know what that means.  "I'm happy when we're just wandering around together, alone.  I'm happy when we get together with you and Sarah to play those games.  I'm happy when things are normal and when he and I are normal."

She doesn't want to say it out loud, but maybe Colin knows now:  that sliver of Donnie's nature that runs wild, she senses it doesn't care much for her.  Oh, it wants her.  It wants to keep her.  But it doesn't care.  And Sylvia is no good at being kept.

Colin decides it's best to change topic before the urge to bang Donnie's head on the wall gets stronger.

"Are you planning any normal things for spring break?"

Sylvia shakes her head.  "Donnie has a chance to visit his grandfather.  I told him he should take it.  His parents . . . well, I'm hoping he connects with his grandfather.  It would be nice if he did."

"He had mentioned Iceland, I guess he changed his mind. Are you going with him?"

"No.  He needs to bond, don't you think?  I don't want to get in the way of that."

"Uhm. That makes sense in a burning-bridges-behind-you kind of way. I mean, you give him few other options. His spring break is going to suck if they don't... click."

"I'm going to Arizona to visit some friends. It's been planned for some time, and mom says she doesn't mind, even with the pregnancy thing. They live near Eagle's Nest, and one of them works there, so she might sneak us in for a tour. If you're interested, you only have to take the Sarah express. She's been steadily improving her jumping distance, and she's going to drop by."

Sylvia has been scarily focused on finding her way into one of the nation's big superhero groups since getting shot with a laser.  This is like waving a Hulk poster in front of Rob and then saying, casually, "So I'm going to his house for dinner tomorrow night.  Wanna drop by?"  Which is actually pretty close to the situation at hand, come to think of it.

"Yes," she says.  "Yes, please.  Yes.  Please take me."  If Donnie could get this kind of response out of Sylvia, they'd have no issues at all.

"Ok." Colin is a little taken by surprise by her enthusiasm. "If you want to stay more than a day I'll have to ask a few questions around, and I figure Carolyne will want to be informed of every detail too. I'll let you know."