i_seeall Insanity... is There a Pill For This? [Babs/Jake]
Who: Babs and Jake What: Talk of insanity after school When: Wednesday Afternoon Where: Babs' house
Babs: Babs found herself really liking the arangement she'd set up in her home. Helena, herself, and now Jake, suited her just fine. Everyone had their own space, seemed to repsect each other, and got along. She'd had no major disputes with Jake besides the initial talk about where his weapons were to go, and they'd come to an agreement on that without and tears or bloodshed. Everything was working out just fine.
Babs didn't even mind the bit of extra cleaning a new member of the household added. Sometimes domestic activities were nice. They reminded her that things could actually be normal in her world.
The radio was on as she worked through the kitchen, loading the dishwasher and wiping down the counters from lunch. She even opened the door so that air could blow in through the screen door. It was rather nice out, and for once, she wasn't up in the tower.
Jake: School had been school. Nothing outstanding. He was a good student, as he always was. Those habits died hard as well, and it seemed even harder for him to fail when he was unerringly and unmeaningly plucking answers from the minds of his teachers. Had he always been able to do that, but was simply now more aware of the ability? It was possible.
There'd been a bad moment on the walk home. A very bad moment. Jake had been crossing the street when a glint of metal and glass let him know there'd been an accident there, recently. And then the world had spun, and he'd seen a vision of a forest, of a door, of a key, of a rose.
Then someone had bumped into him, almost knocking him down, and Jake had cried out, scared suddenly of falling into the street. Someone else had grabbed him, pulling him up, and Jake had started running.
I fell, whispered a voice in his mind. I fell and I died, and a woman screamed and I bled and…
I am obviously still alive! cried another voice. Someone caught me, didn't you see that?
'No' was Jake's own wild, frantic thought. 'Not again. Not again!'
He came in through the open screen door. He was dressed in uniform, with his satchel slung over his shoulder. It was filled with schoolbooks now, not plates (though there was still one or two in the back flap… gunslinger habits died hard), and his uniform was reminiscent of his days back at the Piper School. He'd laughed when he first saw it, but hadn't quite gotten it to feel comfortable again just yet.
He wasn't laughing now. He looked pale and out of breath.
Babs: Babs was just pouring soap into the dishwasher and closing it when Jake came into the house. She looked up quickly to make sure it was him, as that was maily who she'd left the door opened for, and then quickly went back to what she was doing. A few seconds later she was ready to completely devote her attention to Jake. She wiped her hands on a paper towel and looked over at him.
"Hey, is everything alright, you look like you've been running," She asked concernedly, taking in the look on his face. Instinctively she moved over to close the door, taking a cautious look out before shutting it. "There's snack food in the fridge. Bad day at school?"
Jake: There was a man. All in black. He scared me.
There was no man! There was no Cadillac! I didn't die!
Jake looked up at Barbara, and shook his head. "No. Just... I fell. I almost fell. Someone caught me."
No one caught me. I fell and I died.
I am not dead. I'm having a conversation. How can you converse with someone when you're dead?
Don't ask me, but I died. And now I'm in a strange place.
He shook his head, knowing it was useless, and looked up at her. "I'm... fine."
Babs: All this over a fall? Babs tilted her head curiously, but backed away from the door more so that Jake could come in completely. He didn't seem like one who would get upset over taking a stumble.
"Any homework?" She asked, still looking at him worriedly. He seemed distracted, though maybe that was just the fact that he looked like minutes before he'd been gasping for air. Yes. Definitely running, or something like it. "Do you want some water?"
Jake: Jake was at war with himself. In more than one way. While the halves of his mind were arguing in their fanatical debate over his life or lack thereof, Jake was trying to debate whether or not he could trust this woman. And how much.
You're dead, Jake. You were run over by a car, and you're dead.
Don't be stupid. She's offering you a glass of water. Do they have nice people in wheelchairs in the afterlife?
"No homework. Wait. Yes. Some history." That was laughable. History? When he didn't even know his own world anymore?
I don't know. But I know you were run over by a car.
No!
Yes. It happened on May 9th, 1977, at 8:25 am. You died less than a minute later.
No! No! No!
Jake shut his eyes. "Barbara? I know I don't know you that well... but... will you trust me for a moment?"
Babs: Babs didn't answer immediately. She'd taken a glass from the cabinate and filled it with water in the sink, setting it down on the table now and pointing to it. "Drink."
She settled herself across from the table and watched Jake for a brief moment before nodding her head. "Yes. Are you going to tell me what's going on?" Because if she hadn't known for sure before, she was certain now. That question never lead to anything good.
Jake: "Yes."
Jake's hand was trembling a bit as he took the glas and began to drink. He didn't set it back down on the table until it was drained. He drank slowly, and used the time wisely.
He'd never liked the kind of intrusion his ability granted. He knew he could dig deeper into Barbara's mind if he needed to. He could also watch her undress, but that wouldn't be any more acceptable. When he'd finished with the water, he knew he could trust here. There were enough secrets in her mind, and well-guarded secrets at that. He'd have to remind himself not to ask her too many questions about computers. She seemed pretty up-to-date on them.
Before he said anything, Jake took the plates that were hidden in his satchel, and carefully held them out to her. "I can't be trusted right now," he said. His voice was calm, even if his eyes were strained, fighting something internal. "Not with these."
He took a breath. "I think my father is here."
Babs: Babs didn't bother to hide the shock she felt when he pulled the plates out of his bag. He'd been rather adament about keeping them, and had seemed so relieved when she relented and let him. She'd understood why, everyone liked to feel like they could protect themselves if the time arose. It was why she kept her staff around her in the house at all times.
So when he took them out and then proceeded to tell her that she couldn't trust him, she felt slightly confused. And slightly amazed that a boy this young would have the sense to even recognise this fact. Not many people who couldn't be trusted with weapons actually did the right thing and handed them over.
She reached out and took them from him slowly, allowing him the time to change his mind if he needed to. Careful of the edges she sat them in her lap. "Would you like me to put them with the guns?" She asked, still worried. "I'd think having your father arrive would cheer you up a bit. Did you see him earlier?"
Jake: You died.
I didn't. I'm right here, in the kitchen. Safe with Barbara.
That doesn't matter. You died, and you know it.
The hell of it was, he knew both things to be true.
"This has happened before," he said. "I think... the City... it pulls people from different places, different times? I think in the when that it took Roland, this was happening to him."
Lightly, from far beyond his mind, he could hear the whispers.
There was a boy. There was no boy.
And the pleas of the gunslinger to make them stop.
It hurt more than his own private agony.
'We're going insane.'
Babs: She shook her head, swearing that the voice had echoed from inside. It wasn't a sensation she was used to, having not dealt with many telepaths during her career. It took her a moment to realise it had been Jake's voice.
"Insane?" Babs repeated. Insanity... the only cases of insanity she'd had to deal with were in the minds of the villians they faced. Never in someone under her care.
Her first instinct was to reach out and put hand to his forehead. No fever, she determined after a breif moment. She frowned, beckoning him to follow as she turned to roll into the living room and to the small elevator. She kept her safe in the bedroom, and it seemed the maybe the plates really did need to be locked up.
"If your father, Roland, was having mental problems at the time, why would it affect you? Does it have to do with your control of the telepathy?"
Jake: "There was a... paradox." Th boy snickered. "Time travel is a stupid thing, but I guess ka doesn't follow the conventions of science fiction, huh?"
See? I'm laughing. How can I be dead?
I don't care. You died, and that's all I have to say on the matter.
"Shut up," Jake muttered. And added to Barbara, quickly, "Not you."
He tried to concentrate. To remember. "I'm going to sound really insane here." And he laughed again, a mad sound, near hysterics. Of course it sounded insane. He WAS going insane! "But it's the truth. I swear."
He started to tell her. About the Piper School. About his real parents. About the day that everything went wrong. How he'd known, even before it happened, how events would play out leading up to his demise under the wheels of a Cadillac. Meeting the gunslinger in another world. Their travels through the desert. How the man had saved his life, first in the Oracle's ring, and again, in the darkness under the mountains. And how, when Jake had stumbled, the gunslinger had let him fall, in pursuit of the man in black, and the Tower beyond.
Then he told another story. Of how Roland later was in a place to either let Jake be crushed by the car, or to save his life. He told her how Roland had been unable to let Jake die again. And how that one, tiny change, had created the break that was tearing them apart.
"I know he's here. I'm closer to him than any of the others. Except maybe Oy. He was at the intersection, where I almost fell. I almost fell. And someone caught me. And now, it's happening again."
Babs: Babs was rather glad she'd taken them upstairs. Up here there were computers. While her mind was good and rarely lost details, this was a story so extreme that she wanted to be able to store everything while it was fresh. Immediately.
She put the plates down on her dresser. The safe was under her bed, but she would certainly attend to them later. The story Jake was telling her, his words, were the more pressing matter at the time. Babs reached for her laptop, folded down on her desk, opened it and turned it on immediately. She opened Jake's file (which had been started as soon as he'd entered her home) and started typing.
"So as I'm understanding it... you've been dead once before. And your father tampered with the time continuum to save you when he had the chance, creating a paradox and essentially driving the both of you insane. That's where the insanity comes from?" A perfect example of why she was so adamant about people not messing around with time or fiddling with the course of events. "Is that the short of it?
"When you fell... you think that was your father catching you? Or was it somebody else? And who is Oy?"
Jake: Jake shook his head. t was someone else. Someone random. Just like last time. Roland didn�t catch me. He killed the man who pushed me, before he ever got a chance to.
"But today" Roland had been there. "I know he was." Jake sat down on a chair, and rubbed his temples. "The voices they never..." A pained expression crossed his face.
They never stop
He pressed his hands on either side of his head, resting his elbows on his knees. "Oy was smarter than a pet. He was my friend. A billy-bumbler. Looked like a cross between a weasel and a raccoon. Barked. Talked. He could talk and count." Among other things.
Jake managed a smirk. "I've died three times, Barbara. I know what to expect by now."
Babs: "I'm sorry... three times?" Babs looked at him in surprise. That was quite an achievement for someone his age.
...his age. She looked at him examinately. It was quite possible that he wasn't the age of the body standing in front of her. Another interesting point that she quickly typed into her files.
After she'd finished thinking about his number of deaths, the mention of the talking dog like creature didn't phase her at all. His world was definitely an odd one.
"You hear voices in your mind?" Anyone else she might have recomended to the closest doctor in Arkham, but Jake she kept in front of her. Kept listening to his story.
Jake: "It's not exactly voices. It's... me. The different mes. One died. And went to Roland's world. The other is insisting that I'm quite obviously alive. It's like a casette tape running in my head, over and over, with no stopping." He shut his eyes again, pressing at his temples. "I died. Once with the Cadillac. Then in the mountains, when Roland let me fall. But then that didn't happen and I didn't die either of those times. And I still did."
He sighed. "We managed to fix it later. Once we were together again, it all stopped. We kept traveling. But then... I got hit by another car. Saving a man's life. I died. I know I did, I've done it enough. And then, I was here."
He shut his eyes. 'There are other worlds than these.'
Babs: "When you and Roland come together it stops?" Babs felt slightly bad asking him so many questions, but she knew that to help him (if she even could) she needed to understand what was happening completely. "Then why now... do you two have to be completely together for it to stop?"
If so. She was going to have some searching to do.
Jake: Jake nodded. "It all stopped as soon as we were together. He hugged me, and it went away."
Pausing for just a moment, trying to contain a swell of hope that was rising in his belly, Jake looked up at her. "Do you... you think you can find him?"
Babs: "Jake, darling." Babs tapped her computer and looked at him significantly. She realised that what with the time he was from, he might not understand the power of the keystroke, but it really was a mighty and powerful thing. "I can find anyone. And I will find Roland. I promise. I'll make this as short and painless for you as I can."
Jake: Jake let out a long, hard, sigh of relief. Without thinking about it, he stood, leaned over her computer - what a thin and flimsy thing that looked like - and hugged her. "Thankee. Thankee sai. Thankee big."
Babs: Babs was taken aback at this, barely having the time to steel herself for the hug before Jake had wrapped his arms around her. She didn't skimp on hugging him back though, just made sure her computer was steady in her lap before she leaned over to hug him back.
"Don't worry. I do plan on finding your father," she said, half patting and half stroking his hair. "It won't be too long."
Jake:Jake had enough experience with women in wheelchairs to know how to hug comfortably in one. When he drew back from this particular hug, he was smiling, despite the echoes in his mind. She would help. She'd find him.
"His name is Roland Deschain. Roland of Gilead. Tall. Blue eyes. Blue jeans and what might look like a cowboy hat. Guns with sandalwood grips. And he's missing the first two fingers of his right hand."
Jake bit at his lip for a moment. "He's my father, but he's also the most dangerous person I know. He's the one who taught me." It was a word of caution. Roland would be half-mad himself, and he had none of his ka-tet to help him.
Babs: "Come here, let me show you something." After he'd finished his description of his father Babs beckoned to Jake to step behind her so he could see the computer screen. She quickly got rid of the Oracle symbol in the background, but remained signed into the network.
With a few clicks, she brought up her video screens. She couldn't see nearly as many from her one laptop as she could from her area in the clocktower, but it was good enough for a demonstration to Jake. She pulled up the cameras for the school area, the outside of Wayne Manor, and a cluster of buildings downtown.
"This is how I found you," she said, tapping the screen. "It should let me find your father. It'll beeasier now that I have a description."
Jake: He looked at the computers in a kind of wonder. He'd seen Blaine the Mono, who was himself a major technological achievement. And he'd seen the machines and the drums in the city of Lud. But to a boy from 1977 New York, this was still incredible. He'd seen the broken remains of a world that may once have been able to perform these kinds of feats. Now, he was able to see the peak of that use of technology.
"Wow," he said. "How does that work? Are there cameras?" Part of him wanted to ask about dipolar computers. Maybe she knew what the hell it meant. But that part of his life was over. There was no more need to think on Blaine. Blaine had been a pain, and now the train was dead.
Babs: Babs nodded. "They are. There're cameras all over The City, so unless your father insists on staying in the park or the cemetary for his entire visit, he should pop up at some point. I'm also able to listen to the police radios and read the reports, so if gets picked up at any point, I'll know about that as well. Same with the hospital. All of the bases are covered."
She switched around a few of the angles and zoomed in on a few things just so that Jake could be completely assured on the wonders of technology. "Understand?"
Jake: He watched the screens, and nodded. "I think so."
A thought suddenly struck him, one he was surprised he hadn't asked before. "What year is it? Here. Or... well, what when are you from?"
Babs: "2005. Though it's 2006 here. According to the papers, so I got pushed just a little further ahead. Though there're people like you who've been brought from further back and then there're those who've come from about fifty years in the future," she explained. She switched away from the video screen and back to her files which she promptly saved and then turned off the laptop.
Jake: 2006? Two thousand and six? Jake couldn't help but gawk.
"Wow," he said. "I guess it's a good thing the school didn't ask for my birth certificate."
He remembered meeting Pere Callahan, and when Don had asked what year they were all from. Jake grinned. It had been a good question for him to ask. Jake found himself curious as well. Hopefully, some things were universal.
"Have the Red Sox won a World Series yet?"
Babs: Babs laughed outright as she moved back over to her desk to lay the computer down. "Last year, yes, they beat the Yankees in a sweep. I don't remember much more than that, I'm not a big sports person, but there was certainly a huge hooplah over the whole thing." She smiled, thoroughly amused that that would be the first question Jake chose to ask. "And now you'll have to promise me that you won't go betting on the series when you get back home."
Jake: Jake grinned, wishing that he could tell Callahan. Maybe he would see him again. If Helena was right and Eddie was here, and alive, maybe he would like to hear the news.
Then again, maybe not, if they beat the Yankees in a sweep. But what a way to end the curse.
Her mention of 'home' made Jake pause, the smile on his face faltering slightly. They don't have the World Series back home. That was the thought that crossed his mind. Home was Roland's world.
No. Jake shook his head at his own thought. Home was wherever his ka-tet was. And if Eddie was here, and now Roland... Maybe if Suze and Oy....
'Stop kidding yourself, Jake. You'll get so hopeful, you'll start hearing their voices.'
But that was just it, wasn't it? He was hearing someone. A familiar tug in his mind, under the echoing voices from Roland, which in turn were far under the voices hammering his own.
Babs: Babs smiled along with him, faltering only when he started getting that far away look in his eyes again. She ruffled his hair slowly, and then rested her hand in her lap. She looked at him sadly, ""Try to stay with me, alright? I know you're going to get through this."
She didn't know exactly what she could do other than look for Roland and try to keep Jake healthy. Other than that there was really nothing. She wasn't a psychiactric doctor.
Jake: With some effort, Jake moved his eyes back to hers. The boy nodded. "I'm trying," he said. "I'm not going anywhere."
But things were going to get harder. Every action would become a struggle. Even the simple things, like finding something to eat. Eating. Going to school would be... Hell was too simple a word.
"Can I stay home tomorrow?"
Babs: She laughed again, touching his cheek gently and nodding her head. "Of course. I think it might be better if you do until we find Roland. I doubt you'll argue with that."
Babs pointed to the door and to the hall. "Does bed sound good? I don't want you to... do anything you might not mean to."
Jake: "It does, say thankee," he agreed with a nod. He could already feel exhaustion setting in. "I won't hurt anyone," he promised. "It's just easier not to when I don't any anything to do it with." He tried a smile, and almost succeeded. It was a sad smile. "Instinct isn't the easiest thing to control when you are in control of yourself."
Jake knew that his instincts had been honed to a killer's edge. That's what Roland had turned him into. No, what Roland sculpted him into. What he'd already been - Roland had just cleared away the excess.
But sleep. A safe bed. Someone who would understand when he started raving, or would help him out if he was struggling to fix a drink of water. The relief washed off of him in waves. He only hoped that, for the gunslinger's sake, they would find one another soon, and end this nightmare.
Babs: "Go on and get out of that uniform, okay?" Babs waved a hand at him. "I'll bring you up something to eat in a minute. I'm going to run upstairs quickly. " Upstairs was her second 'lair' of sorts. A long time ago she'd converted her attic into a place where she could work on her 'night job' almost as well as she could in her other locations around Gotham. It was just convienent to have a base at home.
Babs glanced at Jake once more . "Oh, something that could be useful... what kind of places does your father frequent?"
Jake: Jake paused. Frequent? Did Roland 'frequent' anywhere? He found himself hesitating. "I'm... not sure. We weren't much around civilization. He goes where he's needed, do it please ya. A pub if he can find some. More likely a place where he can get away from the cars and the pavement. He's not from this kind of world."
Babs: "A pub, it's somewhere to start." Babs smiled at Jake reassuringly. They were going to do this. "Okay. I'm going to start on that tonight. You, to bed. Don't worry about school or your homework. I'll talk to your teachers tomorrow."
She picked up her laptop and set it down into her lap before moving behind and shooing him out of the room. Once she was sure that he was headed for his room, she went towards the elevator with the code that lead up to the attic. There was work to be done and as it didn't involve psychopathic villians, she was glad to do it.