WHERE: The Suite WHEN: [backdated] during Cal's solitary confinement WHAT: Sandy struggles to stay grounded, Grey's passing by; she helps. STATUS: Complete VIEW WARNINGS: Name calling.
Sandy pressed herself back against the corner of her room, her fingers twisted in her hair. Cal had been taken away and put in solitary yesterday afternoon after a confrontation with someone in the cafeteria. Heâd been thrown against a wall - she might not have felt the pain but she had felt the resonance through the mental link that she had with all of the Outsiders. Sheâd felt it reverberate through her mind. She knew he was hurt. Though when sheâd reached out to him, started asking him what was going on heâd suddenly gone quiet on her, out of her reach like heâd been shoved into a bubble that she couldnât penetrate.
Cassidy was still there, and she retreated into his mind for a little bit, but the wild panic at not being able to reach Cal had made her think right back to when sheâd been in the facility in Texas. When sheâd been alone. She knew she wasnât alone here, she knew that logically but she also knew that everyone had their own lives. She was meant to be able to cope alone, she was supposed to be working on her own focus and control and making sure that she wasnât completely reliant on the others to help her keep her mind focused.
But she couldn't do it. Not now. She didnât know if Cal had received medical attention, she didnât know what was going to happen when she was sent out on the mission tomorrow, she could say goodbye to the others but not to Cal and what if something happened? What if it was too much for her? Theyâd be going into a city, right? She hadnât been in a city alone for such a long time. What if it was too much? What if she couldnât focus? What if she messed up?
Her nails dug into her scalp as the world around her screamed. Everyoneâs thoughts pressed into her mind, overriding her own even as she tried in vain to shove them back. There were still swirling rumours about Eric - they pushed into her consciousness - there was gossip about what had happened in the mess hall between Hector and Calvin - did you see? Hectorâs a monster! Like a proper werewolf, man - she heard thoughts about the new pale skinned woman and the athletic transfer in from Texas, both the agent and the handler.
Her eyes were screwed shut tight and she thought about reaching out to Wings again, brushing her mind with his once in an attempt to let him know that she was struggling but even with that faint touch she knew he had too much going on to be able to baby her so sheâd withdrawn. She was twenty, she was supposed to be able to do this on her own.
But when she sensed someone walk past, someone whose mind was calm and quiet she couldnât stop herself.
[Help me].
Permission to remain mostly with Kathryn and Victor had done a lot to calm and soothe Grey. She knew that there would be a process on boundaries, and eventually theyâd try to cut them off from the dependence, but until that happened, Grey was content in the moment to take advantage of the willingness to enable them.
Perhaps they understood the need to keep Vic docile and content, without the use of too many drugs to rile up herself and Kathryn. Victor was, by far, the most unstable of the three, and while Grey worried somewhat for the remaining two of their unit, she was glad that they werenât being used as guinea pigs for unknown reasons.
Her room was basically a storage place for the few items sheâd collected. Mostly clothes, but the occasional item that looked odd enough for her to keep. Like the troll doll with pins in its face, likely discarded by some young girl, but enough that Grey had taken a shine to it. Something about it made her want it.
Having showered and eaten, changed her clothes and preparing to find something interesting to do, maybe find out if Victor wanted to try and stage a murder mystery, or just play Clue, she was stopped in the halls of the suite, head tilting to the side. Help me. It wasnât Victor. Or if it was, he was learning how to use other voices in a personâs mind.
Which she could say would be a valuable tool, and maybe it was something he was planning to unleash against someone -they were good at finding toys in people. But it seemed a little too desperate to be Vic, who was largely content while Kathryn was around, and herself, she knew he valued her presence. It was just that Kathryn was special for him.
[Hello?] Mental communication wasnât new for her, sometimes, it was the best way to get through to Victor, and sometimes she preferred the outside silence with the noise just in her fractured head. [Help what?]
Sandy felt a surge of relief that rippled through her when someone responded. The voice was a little stilted, but clearly used to telepathic communication. She latched onto that immediately. [I- Iâm sorry- itâs loud. I canât shut them up.]
She hated sounding weak, or feeling weak, and in all honesty it was grating on her that she was incapable of handling herself without the other Outsiders to help ground her. But they had their own lives, they had their own problems and they didnât need hers. They didnât need to baby her.
[Your mindâs quieter than some of the others around here- Iâm sorry I just- Iâm sorry for the intrusion.]
She caught her lower lip with her teeth and rubbed at her eyes as she untangled her fingers from her hair. Her scalp hurt, and as she looked at her hands, there were long strands of blonde that had been pulled out by how tight sheâd been gripping herself wrapped around her fingers.
Even just being connected to someoneâs mind made Sandy feel a little bit better, the overwhelming roaring of thoughts dulled, like she was a hundred yards away from a raging waterfall rather than standing right underneath it.
[My nameâs Sandy,] she offered, sounding a little embarrassed.
Not Vic then. She couldnât hear minds, she expected loud people probably had loud minds, it was likely always loud when you could hear unspoken things. It didnât surprise her to know she had a quiet mind though. It suited her, she felt, being a quiet person, a mind to match would suit her quite well. [It is fine,] Vic rarely asked to enter her mind, she didnât feel like he needed to either. She didnât mind when he did.
Settling on the floor, against a wall, Grey crossed her legs. [I am Grey.] At least to the best of her understanding. Sheâd asked Victor once if he could find any of the things she didnât know in her head, but he told her it was about what she remembered and thought, he couldnât find things she didnât know. The damage to her brain, whenever it had happened, meant that the past was in some broken part of her mind.
[I do not like noise either. When people are too rowdy. It is irritating.] At least when it annoyed her, she could leave, walk away from it all. It didnât sound like Sandy could.
[Itâs nice to meet you, Grey,] Sandy responded, slowly unfurling herself more. Sometimes she wished she could have her powers turned off but then she wondered if sheâd even know how to communicate with people anymore; if she was stuck having to rely on what they said and not what they thought, she didnât know if sheâd be able to navigate the tricky social situations that came from not having an added insight into the minds of others. She wondered if her life would be different if she had silence in her head all the time, only bothered by her own thoughts.
She rubbed her hand across her face and then leaned her head back against the wall. The quiet was nice. Sheâd reached out to Rachel, asked if she could see Cal and had been shut down numerous times. That wasnât fair. It wasnât right. They couldnât keep them apart like that.
[It is,] she agreed. Banal conversation was precisely what she needed; something that kept her from being stuck listening to everything else without anything to focus on. Rachel had said âmeet me in the Hologymâ. Sandy had no desire to do that, but Rachel had said she would come to find her anyway. Rationally she knew her handler was trying to help but Sandy didnât want to admit that. Didnât want to like Rachel. Didnât want to like it here. [This place is always pretty noisy. Have you- I donât think Iâve seen you properly before. How long have you been here?]
People were noisy. Not just in their heads. At the Cheshire Medical facility, there had been a lot of screaming, sometimes for hours. In certain places, you couldnât hear it, but most of the time there was a wail to it, possibly because it was someoneâs power, maybe they were experimenting on vocal power, Grey could never tell. [I have been here a short while.]
Time tended to get away from her, she understood the passage of it, could tell the time and date, but more often than not, she didnât track it the same. Sometimes it was because she slept for days, sometimes because she was focused on something else. Occasionally, very occasionally, it was due to the length of time she spent laying and listening to whatever was rolling through Victorâs head. They were breaking that habit, slowly, learning that this place required activity from them regularly.
[I spent more of my time with my friends. We are not exceptionally social. Most of the time.] Vic would talk to anyone if he was in the mood for it, Grey limited herself to social interactions that interested her. She thought that Kathryn did the same, but they had different ideas of âinterestingâ. [Are you needing help with something? I am good at helping.] At least, that depended on what the help was.
[Talking to me like this is helping,] Sandy admitted after a moment, hand rubbing across her face again. Rachel would be coming for her any minute, even though she hadnât asked for any help from the stupid woman. Rachel didnât know what it was like to be a telepath and she didnât care about how it felt to have someoneâs support structure pulled away from them.
The calm, collected nature of Greyâs thoughts were unusual to Sandy, but she appreciated it. It was unusual that she found someone who was so quiet and ordered. She wanted to ask more but she didn't, it wasnât her place but maybe later. Maybe next time when they met face to face.
[My- My brother was put in solitary,] she told Grey. [And I canât reach him. He helps me keep the thoughts out.] She didnât mention that when she was taken away from them the first time that sheâd nearly gone insane.
Talking was helping? Grey didnât have a lot of experience with that, the talking. She was possibly the quietest of their group, probably because she rarely had things to say -and her silence often annoyed people, then it creeped them out. Vic told her she had the creepy thing working for her. She didnât really know if that was a good thing or not, but she went with it.
[My friend is a telepath. They tried to split us up too. It did not go well for them.] Kathryn took it better, possibly because she planned better, while Victor and she were placed together, likely to keep Victorâs outbursts to a minimal, Grey wasnât sure where the others had ended up. She did know that regret came quickly when they moved her from Maine and left Victor.
[Can you hear what everyone is thinking?] Grey understood why Victor was a little bit crazy, just from hearing thoughts all the time, Grey would go crazy too if she heard every little thing people thought, [People say really dumb things around here. I bet they think it all too. I would not like to have that.]
Likely why Sandy was feeling overwhelmed without her brother.
[They split me up from my friends too,] Sandy admitted. [They drugged me so that I stopped hurting people.] She sounded guilty though for what she had done; she hadnât meant to hurt anyone at that point. She wasnât able to control her powers having been taken away from a support system sheâd had for ten years. She had lashed out in whatever way she could and her powers were utterly out of her control. It hadnât been so bad since she got here.
She took a breath in and smiled a little. [Yeah, I hear everything. All the time. Itâs- itâs never quiet but sometimes I can sit in Cal or Casâ head and they help make it a little quieter. Calâs better though. He was the first.]
Wrinkling her nose, she laughed softly down the connection. [People think dumber stuff than they say. And they think mean stuff about other people, too. Itâs just all stupid.]
Grey suppressed a shudder from the mention of drugs. She remembered what they did to Victor to try and control him, the injections that were constant at Cheshire, how theyâd had to slowly push all the drugs from their systems. Drugs were still a fallback that Regiment used on Victor, which tended to make him dizzy and floppy.
[The trick is not to let them know you are hurting them.] Victorâs manipulations were subtle, sometimes. And Grey rather liked giving him a few ideas here and there. She hadnât really been violent with anyone in Regiment, not since they placed her with Victor and let her stay near him. It was different at the medical facility. Theyâd hurt whoever they could when they could, that was all that was done to them.
[Dumb people suck.] Grey hated when people just said the stupidest of things; like their brains didnât connect to their mouths, they just verbally vomited nonsense. [So you can focus on one mind. When you are connected? For quiet?]
Sandy tilted her head a little. [My- I donât think my powers are that subtle,] she admitted, [I wish they were.] Because that would have made their lives easier, too, when they were living on the streets. She caught a stray thought about drugs and she shuddered herself; her limiter was an electric shock and a steady stream of strong sedatives. As if the only way to stop her from being a danger to them was for them to put her to sleep, back into the half-coma sheâd been in for almost three months.
She pressed her lips together and laughed down the line again. [I was told Iâm not allowed to just stop dumb people and make them sleep,] she told Grey. [C- Cal said that I had to avoid using all my powers here so that they donât know what I have and what I donât.] She closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall again. [Sort of, yeah. Focusing on one mind is like turning the volume on the television down. Or the radio. Does that make sense? So focusing on one mind makes it easier for me to just⌠tune the other stuff out. Even though I can still hear it, it doesnât bother me so much. Calâs my favourite to go to.]
It would be good, likely, to avoid divulging too much. The more these people knew, the more they could hurt them. It sounded like good advice. Maybe this place was a little different from Cheshire, and that was something, but it still felt like a prison. [Smart.] Although Grey couldnât help but think that shutting up dumb people would be a good trick, at least once in a while. Maybe they would know who did it if it was infrequent enough.
[It makes sense.] Sheâd never asked Victor about his powers, just let him into her mind whenever he chose, to talk or ask about songs he heard, put a jingle in her head and leave, she didnât really mind, most of the time, because it was a connection she craved all the same. [Tuning out the white noise. Making the reception clearer. And Cal is not around right now? I am sorry your friend is apart.]
Now that she had Kat and Vic again, she knew sheâd flip out if they were taken away. [I can stay a while. If you want. I am not needed elsewhere.] Vic had Kat, she could be a little longer yet.
Sandy gently knocked the back of her head against the wall and twisted her fingers together, tugging the sleeves of her hoodie over her hands. [They put him in solitary,] she replied. [Heâs not far away but they wonât let me see him and his asshole handlerâs being an- uh- asshole.]
Wetting her lower lip, Sandy smiled a little. [If you donât mind,] she said quietly, [I would really, really appreciate it.]
Strangely, she got the sense that Sandy was moderately distressed from that, which she could understand. So, Grey crossed her legs, perfectly content to sit in the hall where she was, and carry on a mental conversation.
[I do not mind.] It would likely calm her too, just in general. Mentally, she didnât mind talking, verbally was hard sometimes. [I will tell you about the time we went to a tattoo parlour. A few months ago, Victor and myself were out, we had gone to get groceries, but forgotten what we were doing.] She could sit there and lay out all the details of their trip, the parlour and the tattoo artist, Victor convincing them heâd paid and booked it, getting weird cat face on him, while Grey let the piercing woman poke some holes in her.
It had been a fun trip, even if theyâd not gotten what they were out for. But the point was that Grey could take the trip down memory lane and let Sandy just relax for a little while.