InsaneJournal

Jean - Counseling sessoin forward dated to Wednesday
They'd let Kevin burn through his powers until he stopped feeling like he needed to tear his own skin off the first night. Hadn't even risked trying to question him until that was done. And the fact that questioning him would have been an actual risk at the time still made his stomach twist into painful knots. But it would have. His skin had been crawling with need and all he'd seen anywhere was death. Even when he'd flashed a room bare in a heartbeat, burned through more than a week's training allotment of organics in moments, the death sight hadn't faded. It still hadn't.

And then the questioning had come. Hours of it. About who had said what and when. How they'd said it. How Josh had reacted and how he'd reacted to Josh. How he'd felt. What Julian's role in it all had been. How far gone his control had been shot to hell before he'd gotten out of there with Julian along to try and keep everyone safe from him as they'd made their way across campus.

If he'd ever entertained the intent to actually touch Josh.

That one still echoed in his mind. Along with the sharp stab of absolute horror the question had inspired. He'd managed to choke out a negative before his stomach won the battle he'd been fighting against it since Josh's room, and he'd heaved up ashy bile on the floor between his feet.

They'd finally let him sleep then. Or try to.

And then it had started again. Questions followed by tests followed by training exercises followed by meditation followed by more questions. All of it conducted from behind safety glass, because they weren't sure his powers wouldn't flare wildly again. And all they'd tell him about Josh was that he was fine. Whatever fine meant when he'd scared Josh so badly he couldn't draw back his powers, or even look at him.

He needed to focus on his own issues, apparently. On his mental stability and control. Needed to find his calm center...something that had become so much a part of him it had been like breathing. But he'd lost it now, in a welter of emotions and spiraling waves of power he'd never felt before. He might have never had any real control of his power, but he'd always, always had control of himself.

And he'd been trying. He'd been trying so damned hard. Because he knew that they weren't going to let him out of here - let him see Josh, or at least talk to him - until he'd managed to get himself back under some kind of control. Unfortunately, Josh was his calm center. The one thing he'd always been able to rely on, that had made it possible to deal with everything else. Even if he couldn't be with him, he'd always been there and he'd accepted, unquestioning, that he always would be...and now Kevin had no idea if he was anymore and he didn't have anything to replace that certainty with.

He'd finally asked for pen and paper. If he couldn't see him, couldn't even talk to him for the first time in years, he could still write to him. Keeping his powers pulled back to a dark buzz under his skin so he didn't ash the paper just by proximity, he wrote page after page in a slow, careful hand. Poured everything out onto the paper and tried to remember to breathe.