[sensory overload, PTSD-related flashback, mutation-related hallucinations, mentions of blood, gunshot wounds, death, restraints]
This is the fifth sense for my Sense series. I originally wrote something entirely different for Sight, which turned into an as of yet unfinished 14 pages monster, and will be published later in this series under the name Migraine. So I wrote this instead for Sight, and I admit I quite like it.
It contains a bunch of headcanons as to how John's abilities work, so I hope I made them clear enough.
This starts just after the car scene between John and Clarice in eMergence, when they go track down Jasmine.
As always, enjoy, and don't hesitate to tell me what you think!
"So where do we start?" Clarice asks when John starts the car.
"I have to pick up Jasmine's trail somewhere," John says. "I can't do that through her sister. I mean, I can recognize her that way, but I have to be somewhere they've been together for that."
"So, Liberty Park complex?"
"Yes. There's a good chance Sentinel Services left completely after they checked there was no one left, but we'll have to be careful. They could have left agents to catch any mutant who tries to come back."
"John, are you sure you want to do this? Isn't it too dangerous?"
"You're the one who asked me to track her down."
"I know," Clarice says. "I want to find her for Christina, and for her own sake, but I don't want us to take too many risks either."
"Don't worry," John answers. "We'll be careful."
He's not really concerned about the Sentinel Services rookies that may have been left at the complex. What worries him a lot more, though, is what he picked up off Christina, before she showered and changed at their place. That and the fact that they've only managed to save ten mutants from the almost hundred that lived in the complex tells him the raid must have been a carnage.
"Damn, I forgot my sunglasses," he mutters when the glare of the sun, even in the cloudy sky, makes him squint to see where he's driving the car.
"Sunglasses," Clarice says. "Maybe I should try that instead of contacts. Those things really are a pain in the ass."
"You know it's not enough," John says. "It might fly when we're just walking down the streets, but you can't wear sunglasses inside without being suspicious."
"You do, though," Clarice counters.
"I wish. I only ever wear them at home, Clarice. We can't afford to get noticed."
"I know," Clarice sighs. "You'll be alright without them today? You know, we could buy you another pair to keep in the car. Last time you didn't have them−"
" I know. I don't usually forget them," John says. "I was just...distracted, I guess. Thinking about Lorna."
"And Marcos."
"And Marcos. But mostly Lorna. She's going to have her baby soon, if she hasn't already. I hope she has someone taking care of her."
"You're still worried about her," Clarice states.
"She was my best friend, Clarice. I can't just turn that off overnight."
"It's been six months, though. That's not exactly overnight anymore."
"It doesn't change anything," John sighs. "We've talked about this."
"I know," Clarice says. "Sorry, I don't mean to be insensitive. I know you care about her."
John shakes his head. "It's not just that. It's like...everything we built, everything we worked for...it's all gone. Lorna and I built the Atlanta station from the ground up, we brought all those people together, and now there's nothing left."
"There's us," Clarice says, putting her hand on his thigh.
John doesn't take his eyes off the road.
"Yeah, but… Don't get me wrong, us being together is wonderful, but you were only at the station for a couple of months, and so were the Struckers. What we had there, this group of people helping each other, fighting together, good people, they're all gone. Sonya's dead, and Pulse...Lorna's God knows where, and Marcos is pulling away a little more everyday. I feel like..."
John trails off, still not looking at Clarice. For some conversations, having the excuse of driving, even when he has to squint to do it, makes things much easier.
"Everything's changed," Clarice finished for him. It's not exactly what he meant to say, but he has no better words. He nods. "I know," Clarice continues. "It's been a long time since I've had anything stable in my life, but sometimes I wish...I just hope we can be that stable thing for each other."
"So do I," John says. He's just not sure the world is going to give them that. Is he going to watch Clarice get snatched away from him, like Sonya? Like Gus?
"We're here," he says, parking the car two full blocks away from the entrance of the complex. Better be safe than sorry.
"Let's go," Clarice undoes her seat belt and jumps out of the car.
John gets out from his side and stops her for going any closer. "Wait." He crouches down to put his hand on the floor. His eyes are already burning, so he closes them to avoid superposing two visual inputs.
"There are a couple of guard at the entrance, but they're not on high alert," he says. "Can you portal us in?"
"If we can find a place out of the way with a view into the complex," Clarice answers.
John mentally contours the block. "Over there," he indicates an alley. "It should be hidden enough."
"I only just put those contacts in," Clarice grumbles as she pulls them off her eyes.
"What, you're gonna complain you have to remove them now?" John laughs, keeping an ear on the two Sentinel Services agents.
"You're so funny," Clarice shoots back.
The moment Clarice portals them inside an empty apartment, John stumbles. The rush of images and sensations is too strong, too fast. He gets glimpses, no more, not enough to make sense of what happened here. There was a woman. A gunshot. A man. A blown-up window. Death. Screams. John shudders.
"You okay?" Clarice asks, putting a hand on his arm.
John nods, unable to speak. Pulling himself back to the present, anchoring himself to Clarice's hand−she's squeezing hard, and he can actually feel it properly−takes all of his concentration. He gently moves their arms until they're holding hands, so they can move without letting go.
The bodies are gone. Sentinel Services is well known for cleaning up after themselves quickly, before anyone can claim any wrongdoing. It's been their strategy from the start. The only thing that's left is the mess they made in the apartment, furniture knocked over and pieces of broken windows.
"We have to find Christina's apartment," John rasps when his mouth starts working again. He doesn't detail what he's seen for Clarice. There's no point.
The front door leads onto a gallery over the parking lot. The outside is, if possible, even worse. It's quiet now, but not for John. In his mind's eye, it's chaos.
He catches himself on the balustrade before his knees give out under him, Clarice's hand is still in his, but the moment he touches the railing, he regrets it. The influx of images, of smells and sounds and violence, is overwhelming.
For a second, John isn't even in the complex anymore. He's in a past further away, hiding behind a Humvee from automatic guns. He steps, almost automatically, in front of Gus before the rain of bullets gets to him, screaming at him to duck.
Only it's not Gus behind him, because Gus is dead. It's Clarice, with her beautiful green eyes he can lose himself in. "John? John!" She's shaking him, or trying to, because she's not strong enough to make him move. John lets go of her hand when he realizes he's still holding it, afraid to hurt her.
Has he screamed out loud, or just spaced out? His throat feels raw, but it could just be the overload. John hangs on to the techniques he learned, so long ago at the Institute, to ground himself.
Five things you hear. The wind in the trees. Clarice calling his name. His hair brushing against his ears. The cars passing in the street outside. Sentinel Services guards, calling each other on their radio. "I heard something inside. I'm going in." Damn, he did scream out loud. He opens his mouth to warn Clarice, but nothing comes out.
Five things you smell. His soap. Clarice's shampoo. Car exhaust. Gunpowder. Blood. Stay in the present.
John shakes his head.
Five things you see. Clarice's hands, hovering. Her purple hair. The floor, where he dropped down. Blood. No. Don't get sucked in again. John closes his eyes firmly, but as usual his brain just bypasses the barrier of his eyelids and sees what his other senses pick up. His hand, on the floor, the vibrations. People running, ramming into the door. Screams. Shots. Bodies dropping to the floor. Handcuffs. Collars. A collar, around his neck. John lashes out, scraping at his skin.
He finds a hand firmly holding his. "John!" Clarice is calling him again.
John takes a deep breath, trying to calm his racing heart. He puts his hands over his ears and his head between his knees and gives himself a second to center himself.
"You with me?" Clarice asks close to his ear, not much above a whisper. She's learned, over the last few months, when not to make noise.
John nods as much as he can, and stands back up shakily, careful not to touch anything. He swallows several times. "Guard's coming," he murmurs after a few tries. Talking is too hard, but Clarice needs to be prepared.
"Where?"
John points toward the entrance of the complex without a word.
"I can portal us out of here, but we haven't found Jasmine's trail yet," Clarice says.
"No. Take me behind him."
"You're sure?"
John just nods.
"Alright. Wait for it...yes, I see him. Let's go."
John braces himself, willing his hands to stop shaking. It's easy enough, to step through the portal and hit the guard in the neck, right where even a weak punch will take him out. It helps him keep to the present, even, gives him the sense of urgency that the place's memories can't rip apart completely.
Clarice portals them right back to the gallery, though in front of another door. "You're gonna be okay?" she asks worriedly. She's at least figured out that now is not the right time to explain what just happened.
"I think so," Johns says, his voice still weaker than he'd like.
He doesn't get pulled into the past again in the next few apartments they try, not enough to lose his hold on reality. He still sees it all, things he would rather not have in his head on top of everything he already has−the near perfect recall that comes with his special brand of synesthesia is something he could do without−but he's learned to deal with the images long ago, even the worst of them, as long as he's not taken by surprise.
He gets glimpses of Christina regularly, now that he can stand outside the apartments without melting down. She lived here, so it makes sense that she would have left traces. He can't distinguish individual scents from before the raid well enough to tell which is her sister's though.
The fifth apartment they try is the right one. Christina's presence is stronger there, clearer. John makes out two adults as well−her parents, most likely−and stops short in front of the dried pool of blood on the floor. He swallows and closes his eyes again, trying to turn off as much of the visual input as possible.
"Her father died here," he murmurs. When the words can come out, it sometimes makes it easier to describe what he sees. He doesn't go into the gory details, he wants to spare Clarice that, but he indicates the door. "The agent who shot him was over there. He didn't resist."
Clarice slips her hand into his again. John keeps it factual, so he doesn't drown in his own emotions, his anger at the monsters who did this. "The mother told the girls to run. She was shot down, there," John indicates another blood stain in the threshold of another door. "It happened really fast."
He steps carefully over the blood into the corridor beyond, keeping his free hand away from anything that could make the vision stronger. "The girls were there," he says, his voice still emotionless, entering a bedroom.
"How did they escape?" Clarice asks, following him.
John gestures toward the blown out window. "Christina's power is pretty strong," he says. "With some training−" He shakes his head. The girl just lost her parents. She's not a fighter.
"What's her ability?"
"Telekinesis, I think. She threw a chair through the window. I've got Jasmine."
"Great," Clarice nods. "Where do we go from here?"
John can feel the ghost presence of the twelve-year-old, jumping from the first floor window. "Our best bet is to follow their steps," he says. "She got out of here unharmed."
He steps closer to the window, but Clarice pulls him back. "Are you really going to jump out of a window with your eyes closed?" she asks.
John opens his eyes, surprised he forgot he'd closed them. The sensations he's picking up from this place are so strong that his merged, connected senses give him a perfect picture of the room whether he actually sees it or not. It's not the case of the outside, though, not on this side of the building. The street below is much clearer with his eyes open.
"Sorry," he says sheepishly. "I can't wait to get out of here."
"Sure," Clarice answers. "We don't have to jump, though, I can just blink us down there. Can you see somewhere safe?"
Safe means out of sight. "There," John points to a large garbage dumpster. "Behind that, we won't be visible from the street."
"Alright," Clarice says, stepping back. John has to look away from the bright purple light escaping her hands, his eyes burning. He closes them again as he steps through.
"Can you actually see through your eyelids or something?" Clarice asks, closing the portal.
"No," John says, "but my senses are so interconnected that shutting one down doesn't make much of a difference."
"Oh. So you can what, see with your ears?"
John laughs. He knows what Clarice is trying to do, distract him from the chaos still in his mind, and he's grateful. She may not understand everything about his mutation, but she knows how to be supportive, and that's a beautiful gift.
"I love you," he says instead of answering. It took a while, but he can say it now, and not feel like she might slip through his fingers.
"I love you too," Clarice smiles, pulling him in for a kiss. Her lips on his feel like bliss, after everything.
"Shall we?" he asks when they pull apart.
"Lead the way."
Now that John knows what she feels like, it's fairly easy to pick up Jasmine's trail from under the window. She and Christina ran down the street for a while, joining a group of other mutants who were escaping the complex. John follows the trail mentally as far as he can go, while Clarice puts her contacts back on her eyes.
He recognizes some of the mutants who were with Christina from the group Clarice and Lauren saved. The people he and Marcos picked up went into another direction, but many went with Christina's group−many more than the five they found.
John keeps going. The trail is harder to follow here, since although it isn't a busy street, people have passed through since yesterday. He's following the mutants' footsteps physically now, pulling Clarice along.
He stops and flinches when he gets to the intersection.
"What is it?" Clarice asks, nearly crashing into him. John catches her before she overbalances and keeps holding her, trying to anchor himself.
"They shot into the crowd," he murmurs.
The sidewalk has been cleaned. Bleached, even. But nothing can completely erases the slaughter, the blood, the men and women−and one child−screaming and running. Not for John.
He doesn't need to touch the ground, or even to look. It's all still there in the walls around them, in the air, in the ground. A woman with purple skin, shot in the back when she tried to run. Christina trying to pull her sister closer, getting grazed by a bullet, losing Jasmine. The tallest, strongest of the men, stepping forward, trying to protect them, but he's not bulletproof, not like John−
John chokes on his own breath, almost feeling the bullets entering his body.
"John!" Clarice's hands are on his face, but he can't feel them, not really. Her touch is too light to register above the sensations he's experiencing. He can't give in to the urge to punch through something, not in the middle of the street, so he bites his tongue hard instead.
The taste of blood doesn't register, but the smell does. John nearly gags, but he's back, the past fading from his perception.
"You okay?" Clarice asks when she feels the change.
John nods. "Sorry," he murmurs, his voice thick around his bitten tongue. "It was bad."
"Maybe we should go home. This is too hard on you."
"Clarice, I won't give up just because I can't stand the visions. Jasmine is twelve, and alone somewhere in the city. We have to find her."
"I've just never seen you like this," Clarice says, tilting her head.
"The Sentinel Services are escalating, it's getting worse each time. We need to do something."
John knows he sounds desperate, but then it's pretty much how he feels, too. Witnessing the raids, the murders afterwards, it's almost worse than being there at the time. At least if he'd been there, he could have protected those mutants, saved them, maybe.
Now he can only watch and etch their faces into his mind. More people to get justice for.
His list is far too long already.
"Let's start by finding Jasmine," Clarice says. "You said she's alone in the city, I assume it means she escaped?"
"She hid for a bit, while the agents followed Christina and the others. Then she ran. This way," John indicates the street on their left.
Clarice looks around. "We found Christina in there," she says, gesturing toward a building further along in the street they're in. "You think Jasmine managed to loose the Sentinel Services?"
"They didn't follow her," John answers. "But she was on her own and terrified. I don't know how far she can possibly have made it. She can't have hidden for long," he adds. "She's got markings like you. She's too visible."
"Damn," Clarice mutters. "Then it's all the more urgent to find her." She sound more upbeat than she undoubtedly feels, but it helps John start moving.
He follows the little girl through a network of back streets. It's calmer now. Plenty of things happened in these streets, but none are as fresh or violent as the raid. John concentrates on Jasmine, and he can almost turn down the scent of her fear in favor of just watching her run.
It took him years of practice to be able to tell apart consistently what's actually around him from what his senses pick up because of his mutation. Seeing everything he hears, everything he smells from far away made him overload constantly at first, but the visions from the past, the ones he gets from the minute traces he's come to think of as a place's memories, those are the worst. When they're strong enough, when the traces are fresh, the visions are as real as anything. He spent so long fighting enemies who didn't exist outside his own head that he nearly lost himself before the Professor found him and they figured out what was really happening to him.
Jasmine is real enough that John could reach out and touch her, right now. He drags Clarice along with him, running down narrow street after narrow street, all out of sight. The girl knows how to stay out of sight, she never went close to the larger avenues longer than the time it took to cross them.
"John, wait!" Clarice rasps, out of breath, when he goes to follow the trail down yet another back alley.
John almost shouts at her, on edge, but she bends over as soon as they stop.
"You okay?" he asks instead.
"Yeah," Clarice says once she's stopped panting. "You're just going too fast for me."
"Sorry."
"We've been running for over an hour," she adds. "Jasmine really went all this way?"
John nods. "I think the fear gave her energy. I'm sorry I made you run so far, I didn't realize."
"No everybody has superhuman endurance," Clarice smiles. "I'm good, we can keep going. Just no more running for a bit, okay?"
John slips an arm around her shoulders. "Of course. We'll be less conspicuous walking anyway."
He only needs to blink to find Jasmine in front of him again. She looks tired, too, exhausted even. But she's still trembling in terror, still running.
"We're almost at the bus station, I think," Clarice says. "You think that's where she went?"
"Maybe," John says. "She knew where she was headed. She didn't hesitate once."
"This is far from her neighborhood, though. You think she learned escape routes in case something like this happened?"
"It's possible, I guess. We'll have to ask Christina."
"It's so sad," Clarice sighs. "That a twelve-year-old should need to, you know−"
"Yeah," John nods. "But it might have saved her life."
"I hope so."
They walk the rest of the way to the bus station, once it becomes obvious that's where Jasmine was headed. John tracks her to a little corner out of the way, out of sight from the ticket office.
"She sat here," he said. "For a while, at least an hour. It was nearly nighttime when she got up."
"Where did she go?"
John looks around him. "Over here. Damn, I've lost her."
"How? If she was here−"
John crouches and puts his hand on the ground, trying to focus his tracking. "There was a...car. Blue sedan. She was picked up."
"By who?" Clarice asks.
"I don't know. The driver never came out, and the trail's too old for me to see them."
"What do you mean?"
"I'd need a scent for that," John answers. "There's been too much activity since yesterday, I can only pick up the tire tracks."
"So she's just...gone?"
"I can't track a moving car, especially not one I've never actually seen."
"But you can track me when I portal?"
"It's different," John says. "Your portals leave a...sort of energy. I can't quite see it, but I can pick it up anyway. And I can only track you if you portal inside my range."
"So when I was trying to escape you, all I had to do was go more than three miles and you wouldn't have found me?"
"I'm glad you didn't," John smiles.
Clarice snorts. "Yeah, me too," she admits. She sobers when she looks back as the bus stop in front of them.
"What do we tell Christina?" she asks.
"The truth. There's no sign of a struggle, so it might have been someone she knew, or someone she could trust right away. She doesn't seem to have hesitated much."
"But we can't find her."
"She might turn up somewhere. If it was a mutant, it might have been someone from the Underground, or from a shelter. We can reach out."
"Okay," Clarice nods, discouraged.
"Clarice, I can't do anything more," John sighs. "I'm sorry."
"No, don't. Don't blame yourself for this, John. You brought us this far."
John looks away from Clarice's searching gaze.
"But she's still gone," he says.
"Are we still talking about Jasmine?" Clarice asks, putting a hand on his shoulder. She's being more tactile than usual today. Her concern is showing.
"Jasmine, Lorna… Does it make a difference? I can't find either of them. What use is this−power−if I can't even find my best friend?"
"John, Lorna doesn't want to be found."
They've had this conversation too many times. It sounds rehearsed, almost. John shifts uncomfortably, still not looking at Clarice.
"You found and saved ten mutants yesterday with your abilities," Clarice says. "That counts for something, doesn't it?"
"Sure," John murmurs, to placate her more than anything else.
"Let's go back to the car, okay?" Clarice takes his hand.
John pulls her closer and hugs her instead, trying to lose himself in her scent. There are too many images in his head, but Clarice almost always manages to appease him. She melts in his arms, too, tired and cold and tense from their run. She squeezes him as hard as she can and John runs his hand through her hair.
"Let's go home," he murmurs.
So this series was supposed to be in five parts, one for each of the main senses, but I kinda want to keep going now! There is one more story coming at least, Migraine, and I want to write more, maybe about the less-known senses (like proprioception) or other tidbits about John's mutation. We'll see. If you have ideas, I'll take prompts. Might as well keep me busy waiting until the New Year, 'cause they really left us hanging there!