InsaneJournal

The Prestige HQ was, by and large, a busy, bustling place. You couldn't walk down a corridor without meeting someone else, and the sheer force of personality that each active Hero there seemed to hold pulsed through the building.

Sometimes, Madison needed quiet.

Which is why she found herself ducking into a conference room with a notebook and an iPad clutched to her chest and a full to the brim coffee cup balanced precariously in her hand, hoping she'd be bothered less there than the office. It was a quieter one, with less footfall alongside it. And it was empty, which was a positive sign.

Or she thought it was, at least, until she flipped the light on.

"Holy-"

Her coffee went everywhere as the sparks shot out of her hands.

The Riley Cooper-shaped body doing the best corpse pose by the far end of the table, which would've been very interested in maintaining peace and quiet in the blissful dark, immediately brought both hands up to his face. "Could you not?" he mumbled against his palms.

"I thought you were a BODY!" Maddi protested, eyes wide, before she set down her coffee cup and tried desperately to shake liquid off the iPad. "Coo-Riley, what are you doing?"

The carpet beneath their feet was providing absolutely zero assurance that he could dissolve into or through it, and it was growing clearer by the second that if that wasn't what the end result was going to be in the next hour, he was going to fucking explode like the fireworks his brother's ex-girlfriend made.

"Indy," he ignored her actually rather reasonable question, "no offense, but could you turn the fucking lights off?"

"Why are you playing dead in a conference room?" Maddi continued, ignoring him in quite the same as she took the remainder of the coffee off her iPad with the sleeve of a very expensive jumper. "Do you need a sign? We can get you a sign for the darn door!"

He could feel it building higher, higher, that static fog thickening with each passing moment. He could see the subtle flickering of the lights above through the flesh and muscle of his frigid hands, and they seared through his skull, behind his eyes, stabbing in one nail after the other. He wanted to throw up. He knew she couldn't see it, couldn't know.

He was so fucking cold.

Above their heads, the fluorescent lights flickered under the pulse he was unconsciously sending upward. One hand fell, the other remaining over his eyes. "Please," he asked in what was barely over a whisper.

It was as if the cogs in her brain all began moving at once, and her lips pressed into a tight line. Maddi flicked off the light, leaving them in darkness. Considering her expression, she was glad of it.

There was the slightest of sounds as she perched on the end of the table. "That bad?" She asked, carefully and quietly. "Your powers, I mean. Right?"

Riley could feel the tension slip away from his muscles, bit by bit. He set cool fingers to his eyelids. "Yeah. Wanna trade?"

"No." Maddi shook her head, though near-invisible in the dark. "I don't think it works like that, anyway."

They sat silently in the dark for a moment. Then, always uncomfortable with silence, the ranked hero piped up again. "Do you need anything?"

There it was, the question that never failed to come when he was like this. They wanted to help, and he didn't how to ask for what they couldn't give him. He wanted a tool to drill his head open and spill him across the floor, but short of isolating himself in here or hurting himself but discharging, there wasn't much except temporary balms.

"My mommy," he intoned with none of his usual spice. "You gonna loom or join me? Lots of floor."

Maddi's head fell to a tilt as she thought, eyes narrowing, ignoring the man on the floor. "Would you settle for your brother?" She asked, eventually, and then pushing, she drove forward. "Does he know it's this bad?"

He removed all touch from his face and stared, numbly, up at the ceiling. All sense of the room had been lost, where he was, when he'd even come in, what day it was. If he kicked out, he'd probably hit the table he'd forgotten was there. If anything existed beyond the door, he couldn't picture it. And Clark — where did Clark fit in? He couldn't even recognize what Maddi was beyond a disembodied voice.

He blearily listened to his own. "In a manner of speaking." No.

A small 'huh' emanated from the corner of the room. "Do you think you might want to clarify it with him?" Maddi said, quietly. "Cause I've seen a migraine before, but I don't think that's quite what you're working with here. Right?"

The brothers Cooper had never overlapped in her mind. She had met Riley first, a young, shy looking man who she had introduced her to early, just because that was the type of thing she did. And then Clark, her Cooper, years later. And it had taken her a while to put it together, but once she had they didn't overlap but they were, with absolute certainty, brothers. She couldn't quite put her finger on why, in this moment, it felt as strong as ever, but she'd unpack it later. Probably after Riley had exited his dark conference room.

"I could tell him." She said, quietly. "Or we get you a better room. Because this isn't okay."

Riley's eyes fell closed again. "He can't help me. He'll feel bad. And if he comes, I'll feel it, too." She was right; this wasn't the usual migraine. This kind was specifically tailored to him. He'd imagined himself having this conversation with Theo or Lottie or Bellamy, laying here on a floor in absolute vulnerability for anyone to walk in. Madison wouldn't have made the list, but here she was.

"They're not migraines," he confirmed just as quietly. "S'just easier. It's… pressure. Being weighed down by everyone's… bad feelings 'til it's like they're my own, and I'm just… lost. Swimming in it. And it hurts," his voice cracked, "and it's cold, and isolating, and when I let it out, it all builds back up anyway."

His fingertips fell back into place, comforting against his eyelids, smearing hot wetness from his lashes he hadn't even known was there. "I feel like — I'm drowning, but there's no water. Like I have… something dark and angry and wrong inside of me that never goes away."

Maybe it was time for an exorcism after all.

The woman in the dark sat there quietly, listening. She thought to herself and said nothing, but concentrated now; this was awful. The suffering he was feeling was awful beyond all measure. But it wasn't hers. And Madison Janssen refused to contribute to this. So she allowed herself a second, just to breathe, and thought of happier times, and good things, and all the things she enjoyed because the mere idea of what Riley Cooper felt on a daily basis made her feel sick and she could not, would not, contribute to it.

And so when her tone brightened, she hoped he knew it wasn't entirely for her benefit.

"There's nothing wrong with you." She fought for something measured. "I can promise you that nothing about you is wrong. It… sounds like it sucks, yeah." The older blonde scrambled for the right words (be positive, be positive). "And I'm so sorry you have to deal with that. And if you ever need help, you can ask me, like, I will do whatever I can."

A momentary pause. This wasn't fixable. She couldn't fix this (be positive, be positive). "There are people who don't want you to drown, Riley. There are people who really don't want that. And I don't know how we fix that, but I've never seen a problem I couldn't solve before."

"I could be the first." Riley smeared the tears across his skin. The sensation was oddly soothing, frustrating as their presence was. "What happens if I'm unfixable, Indy?"

"I don't believe it!" Her voice rang out bell-clear; with brevity, cheer, and sheer defiance. "I just don't think that's true. And you don't know it either. So between us, that's two people with the optimism you might actually need here." Madison took another deep breath, brushed a lock of blonde hair behind her ear, clasped her hands together, tried to find something to do with them (be positive, be positive).

His shoulders shook with a breathy laugh. He was beyond exhausted, beyond pained to tell her to keep her voice down; he could feel her voice rattling inside of him, but unlike the bad energy everyone else had been giving off, hers was light, nearly undetectable.

As one hand came down, his wrist connected with a table leg, though he barely registered it. "Optimism and I don't get along," he croaked, and finally wrapped that hand around the leg. "Why don't you tell my brother that the reason I can blow out electronics is because I attract electromagnetic radiation and send out EMPs, and see if you can both be optimistic then? Because," he painstakingly drew himself up to a seated position, "I fucking can't do it."

Maddi snorted. "I literally almost set off fireworks in this room like, a few minutes ago. And contrary to popular belief, I'm not actually all that fireproof. We've all got problems." She said it without thinking, and when the words passed her lips she (be positive, be positive) decided she would think about that later.

"It's not the same." She countered. "Don't get me wrong, I know. But if you don't want to tell your brother that, you think I can't?"

Another snort, light-hearted. "You think I turned thirty years old after years of training and I'm gonna get depressed over an EMP? Oh, honey. Watch me."

Riley's struggle to stand was just that, a struggle. He slapped a hand down on the table once he was mostly righted. "Great talk, Indy. 'm so inspired. You should write a…" And there went the world spinning. "Book," he exhaled, hard. It was only a moment before Maddi was in front of him, hands steady on his shoulders. The speed boost came in handy, sometimes.

Her grin was almost tangible in the dark: it shone. It bore down like a weight. Madison Janssen could do little, but Ms Independence was an unstoppable force. She'd use it where she could. "I don't have time." She said, plainly. "Too busy with paperwork. That and annoying Coopers."

"Yeah, you talk too much," he grumbled. "And you're too tall right now."

"No, I'm not!"

She was third ranked, his coworker, his brother's ex-girlfriend, and still he said, with all the insolence he had energy for, "And annoying, so can I just," he moved to step out of her hold, "be dead in another room, thanks."

Maddi smiled almost audibly in the dark. "That's fine! I'll be here." A pause. "If you need to talk." Again. "Not here all the time, sometimes in my office, but go right ahead." She patted him on the arm.

He made a sound that made it clear that was the last thing on his mind right now — why was she talking so much — and slipped past her. Not that he was at all interested in submerging himself back into the light, but if it meant finding another room or stairwell, he'd survive the walk. He always did, whatever the pain.

Hand on the door knob, Riley nearly left without another word, until: "Sorry 'bout your shirt," he mumbled, then excused himself from the room.

"Don't worry about it!" He heard, almost the same volume through the door. "Hope you get some rest!"