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Handling Your Powers, Tuesday

"Welcome back from the trip," Kaidan greeted the kids as they came into the class. He sounded - and looked - a little tired. Which he was. He just didn't want it to affect his class. "Since we focused on the physical last time, I figured I could bring you guys in gentle this week."

"We're going to be doing some extended meditation exercises," he continued, "then we're going to sit down and everyone can share as much of their story as they want to. I'm using the word 'story' for a reason here - you can cover the last ten years or the last five days. One of the most important reasons we're here doing this thing is to learn from each other's experiences, figure out we're not alone in this crap."

He stepped past the desk. "Now let's get these tables out of the way..."

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Evan stayed right where he was, not quite ready to let the suggestion of peace and freedom go, so long as there was going to be discussion in the cards. He took a deep breath, hesitating for a moment, not quite certain if he wanted to say anything at all.

And then it all came out at once.

"I'm a clone," he said, softly. "I was created from the DNA of a little boy who was murdered in his playroom, who also just so happened to be the reincarnation of one of the most evil, powerful people my reality's ever known. The boy was being raised to be a champion of evolution, of the dominance of mutants over homo sapiens, to be a god among his people, like he's been in all of his other lifetimes before."

He swallowed the lump in his throat and pressed on.

"I was an experiment, made by the person who killed the boy. He wanted to know what would come out strongest in a contest of nature versus nurture. I was raised in a perfect home, in a virtual reality, with a Ma and Pa who took good care of me. I was taught to be a hero, and I had no idea what I really was until... until about a year ago, last week. Finding out the truth was... it was..."

He tapered off and shook his head, pulling in a ragged breath. It had been a year since he found out that everyone that had ever loved him either wasn't what they seemed, or wasn't real at all. A year since he found out just what sort of monster everyone was accusing him of being.

Well, fuck.

Kaidan had enough experience and presence of mind not to say that out loud, though - and he'd heard enough from Evan before to be able to guess at... some of this.

But still, fuck.

"Hey," he said instead. "Evan. It's okay. You're right here, we're all real-- it's gonna be okay."

He was never really terribly good with words.

"You're all real," Evan agreed quietly. "The real world is way too cruel to be some virtual reality dream."

Wow, he'd never realized before now just how fascinating his toes were.

"I worry," he said, after another deep breath. "I stay up at night, just thinking, terrified of what might happen if someday I just give up on everything around me and I slip and I become whatever He was. I never had to cope before, I never had anything really serious to cope with, and reality is... it's way, way bigger than I am. It's about a half-and-half split, in glimpses of the future between Fandom and my own world, between the ones where I'm me and ones where I'm the monster."

Edited 2014-03-04 14:55 (UTC)

"That's... in your own hands," Kaidan said slowly. Thoughtfully. "I mean... I know that's not much of a consolation. But at the end of the day - it's not really up in the air, y'know? Keeping control... keeping yourself from turning into a monster... it's hard work, but it's doable. It's not something you can't touch."

"If it wasn't doable, there wouldn't be a split, right?" Evan's mouth twitched a little, something that was trying to be a smile and falling horribly short. "It's hard, yeah. Especially when... I mean, back in my own reality, there are a lot of things making it hard to hang on to me."

He was kind of fond of himself. All not murdery and evil.

"Here has its moments too, but overall it's still more steady."

"You have a choice," Eleanor said, her voice shaking. She cleared her throat to steady it. "It isn't nature or nurture at all. It's decisions. Each day you decide what path you'll take, and you have to live with that path."

It was meant to be reassuring, though she couldn't say if she had succeeded.

"Sometimes, it's difficult to remember that," Evan replied, wrapping his arms around his knees and closing his eyes. "There are moments when I lose sight of choice entirely. If I let myself get angry, I'm angry. I go from me to this force of nature that doesn't want to stop until whatever made me snap has gone. I'm... getting a lot better at that, though. Dr. Banner taught a class on anger management that helped."

Thank goodness.

She bit her lip as she looked over at him. "It sounds like you were hurt," she said, "and you lash out until you stop hurting. It's perfectly natural. It's a defensive mechanism, dialed up to a strong degree. It doesn't ... mean you're evil, if that's what you're worried about."

"That's... a part of it," Evan agreed, nodding a little. "And another part of it is that the power that's in me wants to be used that way. I can feel it, sometimes. Like... Like a shadow I can't quite step out of, just waiting to swallow everything up. And maybe it wouldn't be so bad, except the things that happen when I get angry generally involve a lot of fire. I can leave craters behind, if I'm not careful."

"Fire can be cleansing," Eleanor said, thinking of the way the splicers had burned. "And if you have fire, sometimes what you want most is to see something burn."

"Sometimes," Evan agreed. "It's just hard to remember in moments like those that what I want isn't the same as what's best."

Edited 2014-03-04 20:22 (UTC)

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Handling Your Powers, Tuesday

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