Chapter Text
“Patient 17-A-2, session four. Have officially designated the patient as an ‘A’ type, specifically emotion-alteration, as well as some unspecified action-at-a-distance ability. While both may fall under ‘A’ categorization, I’ve yet to see two such different abilities manifest in the same patient. Though a surprisingly wide range of atypical abilities can manifest in the blowing of my light bulb…”
“Today I want to work on exploring the capabilities of the emotion-alteration. I believe that full control is the path to dampening, and that focussing only on suppression would be… ineffective.”
“Patient has said some things in previous sessions that I find intriguing. References to events that are untrue, a strange usage of the word ‘here’ when talking about the world, and an off-hand reference to ‘they are out to get me’. While most patients are naturally suspicious of my intentions, James is unusually guarded.”
“Note to self: investigate the known limits of ‘D’ type abilities. As… sore, a subject that may be for me.”
“... and let the leaf float down the stream. When you are ready, exhale, then open your eyes.”
Danny did as she said, wincing a little as the bright sunshine of the office met his eyes. He cleared his throat and rubbed his hands on his knees.
“How do you feel?”
“Um. A bit more relaxed, physically? I guess some nice deep breathing for ten minutes is like, actually good for you.”
“Just physically?”
“Yeah, um. I’m not sure I’m very good at the exercise. Acknowledging the thoughts and just… letting them go down the stream. Like, if a thought comes to me, it sticks around, you know? I can picture a leaf or something drifting away from me but like, the actual thought is still in my brain. So rather than letting it drift away it sits there, and then to do the exercise right - having a new thought arrive on the stream - I try to think of what else could go on a leaf, and now I have a new thought, and they’re all piling up in my brain like a rotten leaf pile in the fall. You know?”
Doctor Bright nodded. The corners of her eyes softened a touch and the side of her mouth twitched. “I wouldn’t be too worried about how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ you are at meditation, James. This was your first attempt, and it might take some time and work for it to click with you.”
“I guess. Just feels like another responsibility, you know? Chores and grades and my job and paperwork, now I’ve got to add another thing to the list?”
“I suppose you could think of it that way, James. Our mental wellbeing is something that takes work, and sometimes doing so can infringe on other things in our life.”
“Yeah!”
Against his better judgement, Danny liked Doctor Bright. A bit. That she often simply agreed with what he said was… well. He wasn’t exactly used to it. He craved both her approval and disapproval in equal measure, so couldn’t help himself from pushback when the opportunity arose.
“And like, I know you’re gonna say it needs to be a high priority, but everything’s high priority. I need good grades if I’m gonna have a future, I need to keep the apartment clean if I don’t wanna get evicted, I need to keep myself clean and fed so I don’t get sick, I need my job to get money to do any of the above. It’s just, like. It’s a lot. Twenty minutes a day is a lot.”
“Many teenagers find their lives to be uniquely pressured. All the responsibilities of adulthood are coming in, with all the restrictions of childhood. Many feel a sense ‘now or never’, and that their future success is totally determined by their achievement as an adolescent.”
“But it’s hard not to think that, when that’s what every adult is telling you. Like, I can know logically that it’s all bullcrap and that teachers and school admins tell you that so you get good SATs and go to a good college ‘cause then they get better funding and reputation and stuff, I know all that. And that like, plenty of people turn their lives around when they’re an adult. But in a way it is kinda true for me ‘cause I have nothing else going for me right now, Doctor Bright.”
He sat up straight and, clutching his imaginary pearls, recited, “I’m seventeen, I’ve no money and no prospects. I’m a burden on… the state? And I’m frightened.” Accent and everything.
Doctor Bright’s eyebrows raised at that. “Pride and Prejudice?”
“Yeah. My si-. Um. I used to know someone who was obsessed with it. I could probably quote you the entire movie.”
“Movie? I thought it was a miniseries?”
“Oh. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, I don’t have a backup plan. If I flunk out now, I have no real future. I need to do well now to go to college so I can make money and have an actual life.”
“Unfortunately, your stress is understandable. Many of your personal circumstances - poverty, emancipation - these are significant obstacles. Whereas others your age can afford to spend some time finding their feet in their adolescence, you’ve had extra responsibilities placed on you, many that your peers could never understand.”
“Wait, so you agree? That I'm screwed?”
“Not at all, James. From what I’ve seen, you are more than capable of making your way in the world. You’re smart, driven, and passionate, and I believe wholeheartedly that you can succeed. You have a future, James. You’re right in that it will be more difficult for you than for others, but you need to allow yourself some grace. The occasional mistake, or even failure, will not doom you.”
Danny didn’t answer, and took a deep interest in the decor instead. There was a strip of sealant around the doorframe that was coming off, just slightly. He wanted to rip it off all the way.
It was moments like this that really drove home that therapy with the doctor could only get him so far. The occasional mistake will not doom you.
Only last week, he’d nearly had a panic attack when he’d seen another kid surreptitiously check their phone during a surprise test. Danny hadn’t even been the one cheating, but simply being witness to it had brought on visions of bombed-out cities.
Doctor Bright already knew more about him than he was comfortable with. His lingering terror-guilt-disgust over that one potential future would not be something solved in this office.
The doctor’s voice snapped him back.
“If I may, James, I’d like to come back to what you said earlier about the leaves stacking up in your mind during the visualization. Do you often feel like that?”
Danny scoffed. “Oh, a hundred percent. It’s constantly like - you know that thing, where if someone says, ‘don’t think about penguins’, all you can do is think about penguins?”
“I’m familiar with the concept.”
“I feel like that all the time. Like there are thoughts I know I should be having, like my internal to-do list, or concentrating on the lesson, or looking at someone in their face when they’re talking to you. And then there are the thoughts I really don’t want to be having, but I’m always aware of what I’m trying not to think about, so. I think about them. And then it all stacks together and it’s like everyone talking at once, the good and the bad and the necessary, and then it’s all ‘Hey, kid, you listening?’ and someone in the real world is snapping their fingers in my face.”
“That must be stressful.”
“It is. And even though the meditation was kinda the same, it was… less, I guess? Like rather than try and push the bad thoughts down, just having them sit there visually, I don’t know. They stayed more like surface thoughts than anything deeper. Like the leaves were still there, but I was holding them in my hands rather than having them sucked in through my ears into my brain. You know?”
“That’s excellent, James. I think if you can try to find any calm moments in the day to practice this visualization, you’ll get better and better at identifying and diffusing these discrete thoughts. Not to mention the physical benefits you mentioned.”
“Okay. I’ll try.”
Danny didn’t want to get into a discussion about how there were no ‘calm moments’ in his days. But this did bring him onto something he’d been wondering about.
“Um, Doctor Bright. I gotta ask - why are you teaching me meditation? I thought we were gonna work on my ‘scary thing’, now that I know you know that I’m a, um. An Atypical.”
“Ah, I should have explained better. While anyone can benefit from meditation, there is a wealth of evidence that it is particularly useful for Atypicals who are learning how to control their abilities - especially those that are linked to their emotional state. Which, to be honest, is most of them.”
Danny felt his eyebrows furrow. “‘Linked to their emotional state,’ how?”
Barely perceptible, Doctor Bright’s eyes lit up slightly. “Here’s one example. A fytokinetic is someone with the ability to control plant matter with their mind - it’s a very broad ability type, with many manifestations. Someone with limited control over their ability - say, a young person who’s new to their powers - would likely find the plant matter around them acting in direct response to their mental state. Intense sadness could cause wilting, or feelings of self-disgust and loneliness to plant matter rotting and decaying. Bursts of joy could cause flowers to bloom.”
“So, classic X-Men stuff, right? Powers as a metaphor, ‘show don’t tell?’”
“In a way, although I encourage my patients not to equate their lives with fictional worlds and people. You, your life, and your powers are real, James. Your ability isn’t a metaphor, it’s just a fact of life.”
“A shitty one.”
“Maybe so. But it doesn’t have to be.”
“How could it not be? Say I get full control, what then? It’s hardly useful, the ability to scare people sh- witless. It’s not something I need any more, but it’s still here, making me miserable. It’s stopping me from making friends, or keeping a job. The best thing I can do with it is stop it.”
“I wish I had more answers for you, James, but I don’t. Your ability is a part of you, whether or not you like it. And you have to learn to live with it.”
“Hah. Live with it.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Nothing. Never mind. So coming back to the mental state thing - if I can better control my emotions, I can better control my abilities?”
The Doctor looked like she went to write something, then thought better of it. “That's the case for most Atypicals, yes. Especially so for those whose abilities are of the psychic type, interacting with others’ minds, as yours is. I've already seen good evidence that your own mental state influences your ability.”
“Wait, really?”
“Yes. I'm pretty attuned to identifying when my mind is being influenced by an Atypical ability, as you might imagine, but even without that, I think I would have noticed a difference. My sense of fear and unease spikes when you appear to be agitated or distrusting; it eases when you're relaxed. You may not feel that our visualization exercise was working well, but I experienced a significant drop in my fear.”
“Oh.”
In all honesty, Danny had forgotten that his Fear was continuing to influence the doctor. She certainly didn’t act afraid of him - or any of the other manifestations he experienced. Scorn. Anger. Disgust.
Danny didn’t want Doctor Bright to be scared of him. That she so readily admitted that she still was, in such a dispassionate, clinical matter-of-fact way, was kind of a bummer.
“Does that surprise you?”
“I mean, it shouldn’t. I've always… um. Just like, everything else I do in life is harder when I'm anxious, so I guess the same goes for this. So are you saying the key to managing this is to just what, be happy?”
“That's an overly simplistic way of looking at it. No one can, or should, be happy all the time. But I believe that addressing the root cause of your own fear and anxiety may be the best course of action.”
“Wait, so this is still just like, normal therapy? Talking about my feelings and not like. Doing tests? Taking samples?”
“Yes, James. My therapist practice isn't some front for Atypical coaching, it's still therapy. It's simply that effective therapy for Atypicals is necessarily holistic - better mental health leads to better control over abilities, which improves living conditions, which in turn improves mental health.”
“But there’s got to be more to it? Like, you talk like there’s a whole science to studying Atypicals. Do you not have some kind of like. Um. Lab?”
Danny was not a fan of his voice crack at the end there.
“I don’t personally believe that is necessary, James. There is already a wealth of evidence on psychic-type abilities to reference. This is talking therapy.”
“Okay. So we just, what, talk about my anxiety at school? And boom, I’m cured?”
“‘Curing’ is not a model I subscribe to, James. You are not sick. What I’m here to help you with is control. But there are other things we can do, besides addressing your mental health.” She adjusted her glasses. “I find that discussing my patients’ experience of their abilities often yields fruit in opening up new ways to control them. Would you be up for that kind of discussion?”
Dangerous territory. You’re not a fucking ‘Atypical’, Danny, you’re dead.
What if the way he described his abilities was totally unheard of for the Doctor? What would she even make of that? He didn’t know the first thing about the people he was trying to mimic.
Play it cool, play it cool. You’re a scared little mutant with one inconvenient power, in a world full of scared little mutants with inconvenient powers.
“Um. Sure? But uh, I don’t know what’s normal. Like, how do other people describe their abilities? Actually, I know nothing at all about like… typical Atypicals. If that makes sense?”
“I'd encourage you not to dwell too much on being a ‘normal’ Atypical. It is, after all, a bit of a contradiction.”
Unhelpful, Doc.
“But I want to know about Atypicals in general! So I can know what's me-weird and what's Atypical-weird. Like, when do people get their powers? How many are there? How long have they been around? How does no one know about them?”
“Let's see… ability onset is incredibly varied, with some manifesting in utero, and some not developing until well into adulthood, though those are edge-cases. It is somewhat typical for abilities to onset at puberty or during teenage years. It's very hard to estimate numbers. Recent studies put it as high as four percent of the population-”
“Four percent?”
“-but that is skewed in multiple directions: on the one hand, many people with abilities live in secret; on the other, some abilities are so mild as to not register as much more than unusual talents or intuition. I have a colleague who thinks as many as twenty percent of Olympians may be low-level Atypicals. Atypical abilities aren't strictly binary, but scalar, and cover a wide range of power and disruption. In terms of the number of people with abilities either powerful enough to be noticeable, or to cause problems in someone's life? Maybe one in one in five hundred people?
“And as far as we're aware, there have always been Atypicals. More than one time traveler has witnessed them at the dawn of human history.”
“... time travelers?”
She smiled. “Yes, James.”
“Doesn't that cause huge issues with like, the timeline? Paradoxes, evil futures?”
“Most abilities aren't powerful enough to disrupt the universe, and have some inbuilt fail-safes. Most time travelers, for instance, can only witness the past, not influence it. And the future is nearly always mutable.”
“That's… wild, actually.”
“It's certainly fascinating. But to bring us back again: how would you feel about discussing your ability with me in more depth?”
“I mean, what is there to discuss? I don't even do anything.”
Doctor Bright set her notebook on the table. “I want you to close your eyes for a second.”
Danny did so.
“Where's a place you frequently find yourself anxious?”
“School. Especially in crowds.”
“Okay. I want you to picture yourself in school. The bell has gone, and it's the crush between lessons. Your ability is influencing those around you, making them fear and distrust you.”
“Okay.”
“Could you describe what emotions you feel? Besides anxiety?”
“Um. Is ‘fuck off’ an emotion?”
He heard Doctor Bright let out a slight huff, as if amused. “I daresay it is. Describe it to me.”
“Like I want everyone out of my personal space, and the more they get in my face, the worse it gets, until I want to fucking bite anything that comes near my face.”
“How does this feeling move around you? Does it come from an outside source, or from within you, projected outwards?”
“Oh, the second one, for sure. Like I want a gust of wind to push everyone around me away from me.”
“If this feeling were visible, what would it look like? A gas, a liquid? Is it slow, fast-?”
“It's green. Toxic green.”
“Okay. I now want you to picture yourself alone, somewhere you feel calm. It can be a real place, or imaginary. Think about what it looks like. Imagine the sounds, if there are any. Think about your body in the space - are you sitting, standing, lying down? Think about the temperature, the smells…”
Easy. The roof of the observatory, on a clear night - he imagined it clearer than possible, really, in Amity. The Milky Way stretched thick and dense overhead, the constellations large and proud. The air was cool and fresh, a slight breeze blowing through his hair. He wasn’t sure what color it should be.
As Doctor Bright talked, it became more real, more solid. Her voice started to fade into the background, and his awareness of the office started to dull. He tried to lean into that fact, and not let it scare him.
The concrete sloped under where he was sitting, to the gutter below him. Small weeds and flowers grew from it, and moths flittered about, attracted to his soft glow.
Doctor Bright invited him to imagine a loved one, someone he felt safe with. He couldn’t pick one, so now Sam, Tucker and Jazz all sat with him, pressing on either side.
He couldn’t remember how they should smell. But he could remember that Sam’s perfume always reminded him of smoke.
A lone car rumbled by. An owl called.
His chest was a gaping wound, draining slick, green sludge down his front. It moved of its own accord, fingers rising and falling, surging outwards. He didn’t move, simply watching as it crawled down his stomach and up across his shoulders, grabbing and dragging itself across the others. They recoiled, sounds of dismay from their mouths and they scrabbled to escape, and the Danny of this vision didn’t move, didn’t even watch.
The ectoplasm became more violent, faster, pushing its fingers into their eyes, their mouths, stifling their screams. Tucker clawed backwards in fear, getting ever-closer to the edge, losing his balance, falling-
The vision froze. Danny held onto his friend, arresting his fall, fixing him in place. He started ripping the ectoplasm away from him, digging his real fingers into his mouth and pulling, and pulling, on and on.
He had to change the ectoplasm. Change how it looked.
It was red. No. Pink. Something between the two. And it was oily, and slick, and watery and moved according to his whim, not on its own accord. It was what held Tucker in place.
It was warm, and sweet-smelling, and giddy, and fascinating.
He turned to look at Sam and Jazz. Both were smiling, the glowing red-pink oil dripping from their bared teeth, their eyes pinned open-
Danny wrenched himself back to the office with open eyes and a gasp. “Doc, I’m not sure what-”
The Doctor was staring at him.
Her eyes were wide open, round as balls, and her pupils were totally blown. She leaned forward, way too far, but her body seemed relaxed. She breathed deep and even.
Danny stood up and stepped away from the couch. “Um. Doc? Doctor Bright? What are you doing…?”
Her posture didn’t change, but her eyes followed him, and she continued to take deep breaths. Her lips parted slightly.
“Doc, fucking, snap out of it. Doctor Bright? What are you…”
She started him down, totally entranced. The corners of her lips started to turn upwards.
Then she whispered, almost undetectable.
“Danny…”
Next thing he knew, Danny had thrown his untouched glass of water right in her face.
She spluttered and recoiled, taking in her bearings. Her eyes returned to normal.
“What. Where…?” Her eyes landed on him. “James…?”
Danny gripped his hair. “Doc, what the fuck was that? You were, I mean, it was totally freaking me out, I didn’t know what to do, oh my god you're soaked I’m so sorry, what was that?”
“James, calm down, I need you to calm-”
“What did you do? What did I do?! I’ve never done that before! Was that me? You called me- shit do you remember? Do you remember any of that? Shit.”
“James, please calm down-”
But Danny didn’t hear the rest. He ignored the receptionist, Sarah’s stunned cry (and she was also gasping, clutching her heart) as he slammed through the office door, and was halfway home before he remembered to breathe.
The Inbox of ‘James Jackson’
To: James Jackson
Subject: Checking In
Hello James,
Just wanted to check that you were okay and safe after our session - I could not get through to your phone.
I want to reassure you than Sarah and I are perfectly fine, and I cannot discern any noticeable ongoing side effects from the hypnosis.
While I have no memory of the experience, I know it must have been distressing for you.
I want to apologize for putting you in that position. I did not anticipate that the exploration exercise would yield such an extreme result.
Please let me know you’re okay.
Best wishes,
Dr. Joan Bright, PsyD, ABPP
Licensed Therapist
The Inbox of Joan Bright
To: Joan Bright
Subject: RE: Checking In
Hi Dr Bright. I’m safe. I’m really sorry about earlier. I don’t know what happened.
Sent from my iPhone
The Inbox of ‘James Jackson’
To: James Jackson
Subject: RE: RE: Checking In
Hello James,
I am glad to hear it. I want to reassure you we are still on for next week. If you want an emergency session in the interim, I would be happy to oblige.
Best wishes,
Dr. Joan Bright, PsyD, ABPP
Licensed Therapist
To: James Jackson
Subject: Are you okay?
Hello James,
I am concerned that I have not heard from you since last week. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
Best wishes,
Dr. Joan Bright, PsyD, ABPP
Licensed Therapist
To: James Jackson
Subject: RE: Are you okay?
Hello James,
I am following up on your missed appointment today. I am obliged to inform the school, but I do not want to do so yet, given your situation. Please let me know you’re alright.
Best wishes,
Dr. Joan Bright, PsyD, ABPP
Licensed Therapist
The Inbox of Caleb Michaels
To: Caleb Michaels
Subject: RE: Referred Patient
Hello Caleb,
I did not get a chance to discuss this with your classmate in our last session. However, I am worried, as he has not been responding to my emails, though I know he has continued to attend school.
I was going to suggest that you two begin some e-correspondence, so you could both talk without being affected by your respective abilities. I cannot share his details without his permission, so you might have to make contact in person.
Please bear in mind, he’s flighty. But I know he could do with a friend or two.
Best wishes,
Dr. Joan Bright, PsyD, ABPP
Licensed Therapist