fandomhigh | Coping With Change, Friday, Period 3

Today, Jonothon's class would come into the room to find him leaning back against his desk, as usual, arms crossed over his chest, as usual, looking thoughtfully over the classroom with two eyes, as was hopefully going to remain usual. He had most of his head back, and he was going to consider that... more or less a win.

//Welcome back,// he began, nodding to the students in the room. //I feel as though I ought to apologize for the past several weeks, but the man standing here in my place wasn't anything I had any control over, any more than many of you had control over your own selves. So I'll simply begin with assuring you that no, I'm not going to fail anybody who showed up to class last week. Not those of you who came into the room, and not those who turned back at the door.//

What? He had no eyes and his entire perception of the world came from his psionic senses. If you were a living being with capacity for thought, he knew you had been there.

//Next week we'll get back to... what's left of the syllabus. This week, we're going to do what this class is meant to teach you to do, and we're going to cope, either with the changes you experienced before, or with having changed back, now. You are all welcome to talk, today, to share your concerns or your relief, to raise questions and to answer them, to sort through what we've all been exposed to. None of you have to speak if you're uncomfortable, of course. Or if you'd rather discuss anything personal without the entire class as an audience, I'll be staying late today.//

Yes, he did usually stay late. Still, it was worth making certain people knew, just in case anybody who needed to talk was worried about holding him up.

//I think that's about it. If anybody needs to talk...//

[Open!]

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"I . . ." Cosette looked down at her hands and fidgeted a bit, then swallowed and raised her head again before going on in a rush.

"I'm very glad to be back to myself again. I don't like that other life I remember, and I wish I didn't remember it at all. It --"

She was revolted by the other person she'd been, to tell the truth, enough so that she didn't want to admit to it out loud, though it might have shown in her face just a bit.

"It wasn't very pleasant," she concluded, carefully.

//It's... usually unsettling, getting glimpses at what might have been. Especially when what we're looking at is an echo, somehow, of who we are. Even if it's far from the mark, if it's close enough that we can tell it's meant to be us...//

Jono shrugged his shoulders a little.

//Does it help you better appreciate who you are now, at least?//

"Very much so," Cosette said quickly -- maybe a little too quickly -- and emphatically. "I almost envy you a bit, to tell the truth, as I very nearly can't tell the difference at all between that girl and myself, if I look in the mirror."

Not that she wasn't glad to have kept her head in the literal sense the entire time, but.

"I find that bit rather perturbing."

//I can imagine,// Jono replied, nodding faintly. //Perhaps I've been fortunate that way... most of the biggest, most jarring changes in my life were very obviously reflected back at me in the mirror.//

He wasn't taking very much comfort in that, actually.

//And in the end, you have something to strive never to become, yourself.//

"Oh, I don't imagine that's much more reassuring, seeing how very different things might have been," Cosette told him with a slight smile. (She was trying to be tactful here. In retrospect she'd found his appearance fairly disturbing.) "Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact, so I don't truly envy you, not really. It's only a different kind of alarming, I think."

She bit her lip, considering, then nodded fiercely. "As to that, I suppose it is a warning of sorts, isn't it? And yet . . ." She faltered for a moment but continued determinedly. "I do pity that girl."

Whether she meant herself or the one she remembered growing up with in another life, or both, she wasn't entirely sure.

She frowned.

"I think it's because it makes it more real," Eleanor said, biting her lip. "You look at yourself and can see her, and that worries you. Because you also see how easily you might have been her. At least ... that's what it is, with me."

Compared to Eleanor's, Cosette's worries were fairly trivial, all things considered, but rationality didn't factor into this very much right now.

"That's it exactly," she agreed, and broke into a half-smile of relief that someone understood. "Just one thing, one thing that should have been and wasn't, and everything is different. I suppose it makes me realize how lucky I am, but I can't help thinking of all the might-have-beens."

"For want of a nail," Eleanor agreed, returning a sympathetic flash of a smile before it faded again. "There but for the Grace of God, go I. It's frightening. We like to think we control our destinies, but we're just subject to the whims of fate."

Edited 2014-04-05 01:56 (UTC)

"The whims of fate," Cosette echoed in a murmur, more to herself than to Eleanor. "We ought to thank it for looking kindly on us."

Coping With Change, Friday, Period 3

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