"Did she say anything else?" Julia asked, gazing out the window of the shuttle as it prepared for the final approach to the colony.
"Nope, just that she wanted to talk to you," Daddy told her. He seemed a little tense, although she wasn't sure whether that was because he wasn't flying the shuttle or because they were going to visit his fellow pilots for the first time since she'd found out about them, or because Katie just made him nervous. They'd told her that Katie was the other surviving 'experiment' from what the doctors had done, which she'd already known, and that her 'enhancements' had taken the form of fairly strong psychic abilities, which she hadn't. It explained a lot about the way that Katie had seemed to be communicating with her in her earliest memories, and why Katie needed to be alone as much as she did.
After Julia had managed to pull herself together a little better, she'd left a message for Richard, thanking him and telling him that she was all right and that she'd be by to pick up her stuff later. Then she'd gone down to the clinic to apologize - again - to Sally and Zechs. Wufei was there, hovering in his grumpy irritated way around Sally, although he didn't so much as glare at Julia when she arrived. In fact, he seemed more sympathetic towards her than anything else. She'd managed to give Sally a fairly bad compound fracture (from a glancing blow, apparently) when she hit her while she was trapped in that memory, and she'd given Zechs a mild concussion. He'd woken up by the time she got down there, and assured her that he was fine.
Then Sally had apologized to *her* for driving her to... well, whatever had happened. Julia was working very hard at not thinking about it, and not for the usual reasons. She still wasn't sure exactly what had triggered it, and until she figured out what it was, she didn't want to risk it happening again. She'd seen Daddy wince when he hugged her or when Tousan touched his arm, and she'd seen Tousan moving stiffly, trying not to bend or twist his torso at all, and it didn't take a genius to figure out that she must have hit them pretty hard while they were trying to bring her out of it. They were also obviously trying to hide it from her, so she didn't feel bad, so she didn't mention it to them, because that would just make *them* feel worse.
Is this what it comes down to? she wondered. Me and my parents hiding things from each other trying to make the other feel better? It sucked, but she couldn't think of anything else to do. She couldn't change the fact that she *had* hurt them, in more ways then one, first by running away, and then by physically hurting them. And they couldn't help that they couldn't hide the fact that they'd been hurt from her.
In any case, after all of the apologizing, some Preventer had come up and handed Daddy a message. Apparently Katie had called and asked if they would come to L4, so that she could talk to Julia. And, oh yes, there was a private shuttle waiting for them at the nearest port. Being unbelievably wealthy had its advantages. That was when they'd told her that Katie had called to tell them that she needed help, just a few hours ago, and also that Katie was directly responsible for them finding her when she'd been kidnapped. So another Preventer had them driven out to the spaceport.
Julia hadn't really appreciated how much power Quatre did have until then, when they were driven directly to the tarmac and the waiting shuttle despite their lack of identification or tickets, which would have made going through security interesting. It wasn't any problem for them, they drove straight past the terminal and directly to the shuttle. A woman in a neat uniform escorted them up the steps onto the shuttle, then closed the door behind them. It turned out that this was Quatre's personal shuttle, the one he used for more casual business trips. Julia didn't even want to think about what his 'formal' one was like.
The ride out to the colony was surprisingly short, again, probably because of Quatre's influence. Julia spent most of it sitting sandwiched in between both of her fathers in a couch that was too small to fit the three of them comfortably. None of them even mentioned it, much less suggested someone moving. Julia had explained what she'd learned about herself, both the testing and what she'd figured out on her own. Neither of her parents had said much, just sat there and held her. She'd felt both of them tense up when she mentioned the training she'd had, even before she was born, but she'd told them that she loved them, multiple times, and eventually they'd relaxed.
Daddy had... once... asked if she wanted to talk about how she'd gotten trapped in her memories. The answer to that one was a definite no, and they hadn't brought it up again.
The stewardess told them that when they got to the colony, a limo would be waiting for them the second that they stepped out of the shuttle. Daddy made some smart remark about it being handy, having enough money to buy a shuttle if you needed it, until Tousan elbowed him in the side. Julia, however, was preoccupied with what was coming up.
She hadn't really thought about it before, where Katie stood in all of this. All right, lets think about this logically, Julia decided. Listing things seemed to help when her life got... turned completely upside down. God, this has happened enough times that I have a methodology for it? How sad is that?
OK, think. She had to have known. If she was only mildly psychic, there was no way they could have hidden it from her. Julia paused for a second to consider that. Well, maybe if her parents didn't know. But they did, so she had to have known. And she didn't tell me. Well, that was a matter that could wait for later. Daddy and Tousan said that she found me by touching a ransom note the kidnappers sent. And she knew that I was in trouble... twice... before anyone else did, all the way on the colony. Here she paused. Julia wasn't by any means an expert on psychic abilities, but she had come across information on them during her study of her own mental peculiarities. The strongest known psychic she'd ever heard of could reach people a few *miles* away, not the hundreds of thousands of miles it was between earth and L4. That would make Katie stronger than any other psychic out there, not just a lot stronger, stronger by several degrees of magnitude.
Well, that makes sense. They built one for strength, one for intelligence, or something like that. Julia was mildly amused when she realized that she was irritated about being the 'brawn' one. As if she wasn't intelligent enough on her own. As if she didn't have enough problems without piling the ones that Katie had on top of it.
Now she understood why Katie almost never left her home, why she hid from everyone when there were family gatherings. No one had told her explicitly, but it didn't take a genius to figure out that Katie obviously had just as many (if not more) problems with her... um... abilities (Julia was hesitant to label what she and Katie could do as powers, it just seemed pretentious) as Julia had with hers. But she still came down to Earth to help me.
"Julia?"
Julia jumped at the hand on her arm, then realized it was just Daddy. He raised an eyebrow, and she smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, I was just thinking." She glanced out the window and saw that they had landed. "This isn't the shuttle port," she observed without thinking, then winced. Some day I've got to install some sort of break in the connection between my mouth and my brain. Or at the very least, install a time delay on all stupid, inane observations. Then she realized what she'd just said meant. "Quatre has his own port?" she asked, her voice rising.
"And you're surprised by this?" Daddy asked as the shuttle taxied to a stop.
The lone flight attendant came up then and told them that it was safe to disembark now. Julia walked to the door, shielding her eyes and wincing as she stepped into the bright sunlight.
"Eyes OK?" Daddy asked worriedly.
Julia cautiously unshielded her eyes, willing them to be ok. When the bright artificial sunlight hit her eyes, though, it caused nothing more harmful than her squinting. Normal humans did that, she'd seen it. "Fine," she reported, wondering if this was going to become a regular occurrence. It could get really irritating if they asked her how she was every time *anything* happened, no matter how well intentioned the questions.
It took a second for her brain to register that it wasn't more servants standing by the waiting limousine, but Quatre, Trowa, and Katie.
She got another shock when Katie rushed up to her the moment that her feet touched the ground and embraced her. Julia couldn't remember that happening before, not ever. Katie didn't like touching people, not beyond casual touches, usually on the hand, but here she was, giving Julia a full-blown hug.
A moment later, Julia realized she could feel fine tremors running through Katie's body, almost like she was clinging to Julia for support. "What's wrong?!" she asked, alarmed. "Are you all right? What happened?"
Katie let out a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob, and backed up a step. "What's wrong? You got drugged and kidnapped!" she said, pointing an accusing finger at her.
Julia finally got a good look at her, and was not pleased by what she saw. Katie looked terrible, so pale she almost looked translucent, and even thinner than usual, more like a skeleton than a living human. There were huge circles under her eyes, too, although someone had tried to conceal the fact with badly-applied makeup. Now, however, she didn't look so fragile, glaring at Julia through tear-misted eyes.
"I... I didn't mean to," Julia said hesitantly, not sure exactly what she was apologizing for.
Katie stared at her for a minute, then suddenly raised a hand to cover her mouth as she started giggling. The sound was contagious, and after a few seconds Julia joined in, as their respective fathers looked at them as if they'd both lost their minds.
"That was a little ridiculous, wasn't it?" Katie said rhetorically after they'd finished.
"A little," Julia said. "I am sorry, though," she apologized, knowing suddenly that she was somehow responsible for Katie's current appearance. She didn't know how she knew it, or where it had come from, but it was true, she could feel it. "What did I do?"
Katie blinked, then her eyes narrowed slightly, and Julia heard an odd humming in the back of her mind, like white noise, but she wasn't actually hearing it. After a second the strange sensation was gone, and Katie blinked again.
"Oh. I guess turnabout is fair play," she muttered, and this time it was Julia who blinked. That sounded like something *she'd* say - sarcasm was more her style than Katie's. Katie tended toward mysterious, irritatingly vague comments and laughing at strange intervals. "It... I know you didn't mean to, but we're tied together. When something bad happens to you, I can see it, either before it happens or when it does. And I've got a pretty good memory, so I keep seeing it, over and over again, until something happens to change it." Her eyes became rather vague, like she wasn't really looking at Julia any more. "Has to be changed," she murmured to herself, closing her eyes. "It can't end that way... no, not that way..."
Julia sensed, rather than saw, Katie drifting away, and she knew it wasn't a good thing. She reached out and touched Katie's arm, not wanting to intrude on her personal space, but knowing that she had to bring her back, somehow.
Katie blinked, then looked down at Julia's hand and squeezed it tightly, hard enough for Julia to feel her bones grate together. She's strong, almost as strong as me. She had to be, to do that to Julia's hand. A few seconds passed, then Katie dropped her hand like it was burning, and she refused to meet Julia's eyes. She's ashamed. "It's all right," she said, awkwardly, again not sure of why she knew these things. Ordinarily that would have alarmed her a lot, but she was willing to use the knowledge, for Katie's sake.
"Thank you," Katie said quietly, still studying her hands. "I... where was I?" she glanced at Julia, who 'heard' that odd noise again for a moment. "Oh yes. I... those... those dreams, they wear on me. And then, when I had to come to Earth..." she trailed off with a shudder.
"You had to come to Earth?"
"Yes." Katie finally raised her eyes to meet Julia's. "It was the only way I could see, the only way that you wouldn't..." she cut herself off, staring at the ground again.
Julia remembered the moment that she became absolutely certain that Stevens would never let her go, that she was going to die, and made a connection. "You... you saw me die, didn't you?" she asked. Such a thin thread of events had ended up in her living through the kidnapping. If Stevens hadn't frightened her so badly that he pushed her beyond scared, if she hadn't remembered that she could pick locks, if she hadn't slammed her fist against the door and realized she could break through it, if she hadn't managed to disable that man, if she hadn't taken his gun, if she'd hesitated...
Katie's eyes widened slightly, then she nodded, her face becoming expressionless and hard. Julia swallowed. She'd seen that expression before, on the old recordings of her daddy during the war, when he pushed away whatever he was feeling in order to get a mission done. "Yes," she admitted. "I didn't want you to know, but..."
"I'm sorry," Julia told her again, giving her a hug. She kept her touch light, in case Katie wanted to back away, but Katie just stood there, trembling. After a few long seconds, she relaxed slightly, the stiffness leaving her body.
"I thought it would upset..."
Julia thought about it for a minute. "It might have," she admitted, releasing Katie and backing up a step. "But... it doesn't, right now. I don't know why. I knew he was going to kill me, though. I don't think I would have had the courage to try anything if I hadn't known that."
Katie nodded. "I don't think I would have been able to," she confessed. "I would have frozen."
"You came to Earth, didn't you? Isn't that... bad... for you?" Katie's face went slack for a moment, and Julia quickly added, "You don't have to tell me, if you don't want."
"No, it's all right. And it wasn't... fun. But I had to. You're my sister." Katie smiled hesitantly at her.
Julia smiled back. "I never had a sister before."
"Well, you did, you just didn't know it. But," she added, becoming serious once again. "I would never let anything happen to you, if I could prevent it. And I knew that I'd probably be all right. It's different. When I saw what the first man tried to do, I was so scared..." she trailed off with a shiver.
"Hey, how much did you see?" Julia asked, mock-scolding.
"All of it. And when the second man..." she abruptly cut herself off, glancing over Julia's shoulder at Daddy and Tousan.
"What second man? What first man? What happened?" Daddy demanded, stepping forward, hands on his hips. Tousan looked concerned, as well, his lips twitching downward slightly as he crossed his arms across his chest.
"Uh, can we talk about this later?" Julia asked, not looking forward to the fit they were going to throw when they found out what had happened. They would, somehow. She couldn't picture them letting her not explain this, and even if she somehow managed to put them off, she was fairly certain that Tousan would hack into the Preventers' records to find out what the interrogated prisoners had said had happened. They wouldn't find out about Stevens holding his gun to her head (the first time) that way, but they'd find out about the other guy trying to beat her, and probably be hurt that she hadn't told them.
"Not much later," Daddy warned her, but he stopped glaring at her.
Julia sighed. "OK, I promise we can talk about it later." She glanced over Katie's shoulders at her two 'uncles'. "Hi Quatre! Hi Trowa!"
Quatre smiled at her, and Julia noticed that he was looking a little haggard, too, and wondered if it had anything to do with Katie. Probably. Trowa's lips quirked upwards as well, and he gave a slight nod in her direction.
"We can go back to the house now," Quatre said meaningfully. "Unless you would prefer to stand here the rest of the afternoon?"
"Well, the sun is nice," Julia said, looking at Katie.
"But it will absolutely ruin my pale, ghostlike appearance," Katie protested, one hand going to her hair.
"Would it?" Julia asked.
Katie considered. "No, probably not. I'm pretty much albino."
"Then we might as well go inside."
"Yes, we might as well."
"Do you really have to do that?" Quatre asked irritably.
They both turned innocently vacant looks on him, and he sighed.
---------
"Are they always like that?" Julia asked several hours later. They'd just finished with a long, very expensive-seeming dinner, followed by dessert, which consisted of home-made ice-cream sundaes. Made by Daddy and Quatre, specifically, so they were lucky they didn't all die of sugar overdoses.
After that, Julia had announced that they were going to talk upstairs, and that they didn't want any company. Daddy had started to protest, and Julia had diverted him by saying that they needed to talk about 'girl stuff'. Next Quatre had jumped in with another objection, which Katie countered by saying that it was 'genetically engineered freaks of nature stuff'. All four of their parents had objected to that statement, and it had been a few minutes before they could finally escape.
"Obsessively over-protective?" Katie asked, settling herself down on a huge pillow. They were in the 'quiet' room, which Julia now knew was actually shielded against telepathic interference, a side effect of which was the sound-proofing that Julia appreciated so much.
"Well, I wasn't going to say it that way, but... yes."
"Yes. With good reason," Katie added after a second. "I... had a lot of problems when I was littler. But I'm not four years old anymore, and I'm not going to break if they look away for a couple of hours!"
"I hope my parents don't do that. They might, though," Julia added, thinking of how they'd been acting on the plane.
"It's because they love you so much, you know," Katie said.
"I know."
"I mean it. They gave up a lot for you. Mine too."
"What sort of things?"
"The things they were programmed to do. The fighting, it's hard to stop that, once you start. And helping people. That's even harder to give up. They gave up a lot for us. First, because they felt responsible, and guilty. But then they just... loved us. Even me," she said speculatively.
"Even you?" Julia asked, frowning. "Why 'even you'?"
"I caused them a lot of pain, Father especially."
"Why?"
"He's sensitive... empathic, like me, except nowhere near as strong. And because of the feedback, it hurt me to be around him. That hurt him, even though he doesn't like to admit it to me."
"It wasn't your fault, not really," Julia said.
"I'll believe that when you stop blaming yourself for what happened to Sally and that man," Katie replied, and Julia winced. "Sorry. That wasn't the point though, that wasn't where I was going." She winced and pressed a hand to her forehead. "Where I was going... I was talking about how much they love us... that's why they did it, you know," she said, suddenly intense, looking at Julia.
"What?" This time, Julia couldn't follow Katie's logic. If logic was involved in whatever was going on in her mind, which she was beginning to doubt.
"That's why they didn't tell you. About... well, everything. They were trying to protect you, let you have the childhood they didn't," Katie explained, studying her face. "But they did it because they loved you. If they hadn't... if it had been any other reason, *I* would have told you."
Julia stared back at her for a minute, then finally said, "Thank you." In a way, it was a little creepy to know that Katie had been keeping an eye on her all this time, in another, it was reassuring. She told Katie that.
"I... I was afraid you'd just be angry with me," Katie confessed.
Julia smiled slightly. "If you know anything about me, you know that I don't stay mad at the people I love."
"Well, you've been so angry for the past few days... I have trouble remembering, other things, sometimes. I get overwhelmed by strong emotions," Katie explained.
"How far can you reach? I mean, you can feel me, on Earth. That's farther than anyone I've ever heard of," Julia said.
"There are a few other people, in hiding, who are pretty strong," Katie said. "Not nearly as strong as me, but... a lot stronger than anyone you'd ever hear about. But... I'm not actually *that* strong. You're the only one I can reach on Earth from L4." She paused, then added, "Well, sometimes I can pick up hints of things from Heero and Duo."
"Why?"
"Well, we're linked, for one thing. I don't know how or why, exactly, but we always have been." Katie shrugged. "Also, it doesn't hurt that you have a little bit of power yourself."
"Me?"
"Well, yeah, you didn't think that they'd create their weapons without trying to balance things out a little bit. I'm not as strong as you, but I'm well above the level of any normal human. About as strong as our fathers, maybe a little stronger. You aren't nearly as strong a psychic as I am... but you're probably stronger than most of the ones you'd find on Earth."
"What? I am?" Katie nodded. "But... wouldn't I have noticed that? I mean, I've never sensed other people's thoughts or anything."
"You're suppressing it," Katie replied immediately. "You have been for years. It was probably too much, along with your enhanced senses. You've got it blocked off so much that you're probably more psychically dead than most people."
"But you..."
"You've blocked off everything... except our link," Katie amended her previous statement. She was smiling slightly. "That's still as strong as ever, and combining your power with mine gives me just enough reach to be able to contact you on Earth." She paused, then hesitantly added, "If you'd like, I could teach you how to use your power... a little. At least give you some conscious control over it."
Julia considered. On one hand, she was pretty sure that she didn't need any more oddness in her mind than she already had - her own main 'enhancements' gave her enough trouble as it was. On the other hand, she'd had much less trouble with her abilities after she'd found out what was really the problem. Conscious control over whatever other 'gifts' she had would be good. The problem with subconscious or unconscious control was that when it started to slip, there was nothing you could do to help it.
"Am I... am I going to have problems with it soon?" Julia asked. "Like in the next couple of months?"
Katie looked at her sharply, then her eyes unfocussed. Julia heard that odd noise in the back of her mind again, and then it stopped as Katie refocused her eyes. "I don't think so," Katie said. "There's no sign that it's any weaker than it's ever been."
"Did you... just look in my mind?" Julia asked, pressing a hand to the back of her head, trying to pinpoint where the sound had been.
Katie nodded, then gave her another sharp look. "How did you know?"
"I heard something. I think."
"This?"
Julia heard the noise in her mind again. "Yes."
She nodded, and saw a flash of alarm on Katie's face. "What does that mean?"
Katie shifted slightly on her pillow. "I'm not sure." She leaned forward, reaching one hand towards Julia's forehead. "May I?"
Julia swallowed and nodded, shifting forward herself so that Katie could reach her. Katie touched her forehead, and the odd noise returned. It was louder this time, and Julia imagined that she could almost feel a delicate hand poking at the back of her mind. It wasn't an altogether comfortable sensation, and if it had been anyone but Katie, she would have shoved them out and then given the a good piece of her mind, the regular way. But with Katie... she'd always been there, sort of, in the back of Julia's mind, so this probe wasn't hurtfully intrusive, just... odd.
A few seconds passed, and then Katie withdrew. "The block... it *is* changing, somehow. I don't know why. You never sensed me before. Maybe it's just because you know what to look for, now." She paused speculatively. "You shouldn't have any problems for a while, though, not at the rate it's changing. I'll let you know if it's going to be a problem."
"Thank you," Julia replied. "I think I need some time to come to grips with everything else, first. I want to make sure I have real control over everything, before I start on anything new. But, after that... If you have the time..."
"If I have the time?" Katie actually started laughing. "*If* I have the time?"
"What's so funny?" Julia demanded.
"Julia, what do you think I spend all my time doing?"
Julia actually hadn't thought about it very much. "Um... school?" she said, knowing even as she did so that her guess was wrong.
Katie gave her a look that suggested she'd just said something profoundly stupid. "I can't be around other people, and the few tutors I can stand educated me well past high-school level years ago. Since then, I mostly sit around by myself, or help Father with business things, or study things that interest me. That's about it. Watching other people is about as close as I come to a real life."
Julia stared at her. "Um... why?"
"Why what?"
"Are you working on, um, strengthening yourself so that you can be around people more often? You came to the port to pick us up last time we visited," she pointed out.
"Yes, I've been building up my shields."
"So?"
"So what?"
"So have you tested them? Been testing them? I mean, aside from that one trip to Earth and coming to the port to pick us up."
Katie actually blushed. "I... um... haven't, yet. I'm scared," she added with a frankness that surprised Julia.
"That you won't be able to deal with it," Julia guessed. I'd be scared. If she can't learn to deal with it, then she'll never get out of here. As long as she doesn't really try, she won't know if she'll fail. "But you're never going to get out of here this way, either," she said softly.
"I know. I just..." Katie looked down at her hands, then waved one of them at the room. "I hate this place. I hate this room, I hate the four walls of it, I hate that I feel like I've spent half of my life here. And... if I can't hold up my shields, this is where I'll spend the rest of my life."
Julia looked around. She liked this room, it was quiet (really quiet, not just quiet enough that most people couldn't hear anything), and it was the sort of place that helped you calm yourself, helped you think. But to be stuck in here... she shivered.
"Is there... is there anything I can do to help?"
Katie blinked, and Julia fought the urge to smack her. "What, you're allowed to risk your sanity for me, but I can't try to help you? You said that I have power, even if I don't know it. Can you... use that, somehow? To help support yourself, to ease yourself into things?"
Katie blinked again. "I... I don't know. I never thought about it."
Julia sighed. "I'm beginning to think that they built some very large blind spots into us when they finished."
She felt the brush of Katie's mind against her own, and Katie nodded with a slightly twisted smile. "Yes. I think they did."
"Well? Can I help you?"
"I... I don't know. Father helps me, but from the outside. And... I need to do this without him. But... I need to think about this a little."
"Well, when you do think about it, you just let me know. I'll do whatever I can. And you're going to train me anyway," Julia reminded her.
Katie nodded, then said slowly, "Thank you."
Julia nodded back and smiled a little.
They both sat silently for a minute, then Katie asked, "What are you going to do?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you've graduated high school... or you will in a few weeks."
"Yeah. My teachers aren't going to be real happy with me, though," Julia said with a laugh. "I haven't been to school in over a week. Not since before..." Since before I was kidnapped, she thought, but didn't say. "I should probably go back before finals."
Not that she needed to worry about finals. She could pass them on no sleep for a week without even looking at the material. But there was no reason to unnecessarily upset the teachers who'd been there through the last four years. It wasn't their fault that she didn't need them, and she knew her long unexplained absence after not missing a class for several years would have some people worried.
But the idea of just going back to class, like nothing had happened, like she'd just had a bad flu or something... She wasn't the same person she'd been a week ago, she couldn't possibly be. And the thought of trying to *pretend* that she was... it just made her sick. So what was she going to do? She couldn't possibly tell them the truth.
"I have to go back there soon," she murmured.
"And after?"
This time it was Julia's turn to blink. Truth be told, she hadn't thought that far ahead. So much of what she'd done over the past week had just been reacting, and then she'd been so caught up in what the immediate future held, that she hadn't thought any further ahead. "I... I'm not sure. I was planning to take some time off before college, maybe wait until I got old enough to drive a car on my own, but now..." she glanced at Katie. "I have the distinct feeling that my parents are about to come down with a bad case of overprotectingness. And... it would be good to get out of the house, for a while. Every time I see that wall I punched a hole in, I'm going to be thinking about... everything. Some new scenery would probably help."
"So you're going to go to college?"
"Well, I didn't apply at the regular time. I may not be able to get in."
Katie snorted her opinion of that. "They'll make an exception for you."
"Who will?"
"Whatever college you want to go to. Let them get a good look at your records - all of them, including your IQ test and those early qualifiers they gave you when they saw your IQ score - and they'll break whatever rules they have to in order to get you there."
Julia frowned. "That seems..."
"Wrong? Grossly unfair? Cheating? Using your advantage? The world... the galaxy is that way," Katie replied with a shrug. "We got screwed, we got advantages, we work with what we're given." She paused, eyeing Julia thoughtfully. "Look, all I'm saying is that if you want to go to college, you're in."
"Oh."
"Any idea where you want to go?"
"No, not really."
"What about your powers?"
"I don't know," Julia said, knowing immediately what Katie was asking. "I... I think I have control over everything. I'm not going to accidentally hurt someone, at least."
"But can you actually use them?"
Julia frowned. "Yes. I punched a hole in the wall at home," she pointed out.
"But... do you know your practical limits? If you got in a situation where you actually had to use them, push yourself to your limits? I know you haven't, yet."
Julia didn't like the way she said that. "Yet?"
"Do you know?"
Julia shook her head. "No, you have to know that. The only way I'd be able to find that out is if I actually did try to press myself that far, and there's no reason to. I don't think I can just practice benchlifting cars."
"No, that's not what I was thinking of."
Suddenly making a connection, Julia stared at Katie. "Why would the Preventers want to help me with something like that?"
Katie shrugged. "Work on it. You're a genius, you'll come up with something."
"Daddy and Tousan won't like that."
"Then figure out a way they will like. Or," she added when Julia snorted, "at least one that they won't hate."
"Why?"
Katie became very still. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"Why are you so set on getting me to do this? I mean, I think it'd be nice to have that kind of control, but it's not like I'm ever going to need it, right?" She didn't like the silence that echoed in the room after her question. "Right?" Her voice sounded very small and hollow to her own ears.
"I... I think you should learn it, if you can."
Julia felt a chill run through her. "Did you... see the future?" she asked hesitantly.
Katie shook her head. "It doesn't work like that. My premonitions only come a couple of hours before an event, if that. Usually more a like a couple of minutes. Anything farther ahead than that, and it's just... hints. Feelings. Not even really anything of the future, just an idea that I ought to do something now. I can usually get an idea of what's coming from that. And all I know right now is that you should learn to use your powers, not just keep them from interfering."
"Any ideas why?"
Katie smiled slightly, even as she shook her head. "You're the daughter of two Gundam pilots, and the offspring of all five of them. Is it any surprise that your life is going to be interesting?"
Yay! I've been struggling for days to figure out how to end this. It was actually supposed to go a little further, but it suddenly ended on me. I had a lot of fun with this last section, especially the conversations between Katie and Julia. I'm not entirely sure how it sounds, because although it makes sense in my head, there was a lot going on between them that couldn't be stated outright. Anyway, hope it turned out all right.
As is now becoming traditional (or just 'cause I like to), here are the stats for the story:
~ 180 pages, ~115,000 words, roughly 17 months in the works (sorry about that!)
I really had a lot of fun writing this, no matter how much I might have complained about it at the time. I have a lot of plans for Julia (too many, actually, have to narrow down to a few workable ideas), hopefully some of those plans will actually make it on to paper at some point soon. I have started working on a short sidefic/companion piece from Katie's perspective, so that one should be out... sometime.
As a side note, I'm currently taking a Japanese class, so I now know the pronunciation for most of the Japanese words that I used in this story. Since I'm interested in that stuff, I figure I might as well include those pronunciations now, even if it's a little late.
Tousan (toe-san) - a shortened version of 'otousan' (oh-toe-san), a respectful version of 'father'
Daisuki (actually pronounced die-ski) - strong form of 'like' ('I like this a lot'), which can mean 'love' or 'like' (with the connotation of being attracted to someone) in certain situations
Anyway, hope that everyone enjoyed the story!
Marika 11/20/02
"Nope, just that she wanted to talk to you," Daddy told her. He seemed a little tense, although she wasn't sure whether that was because he wasn't flying the shuttle or because they were going to visit his fellow pilots for the first time since she'd found out about them, or because Katie just made him nervous. They'd told her that Katie was the other surviving 'experiment' from what the doctors had done, which she'd already known, and that her 'enhancements' had taken the form of fairly strong psychic abilities, which she hadn't. It explained a lot about the way that Katie had seemed to be communicating with her in her earliest memories, and why Katie needed to be alone as much as she did.
After Julia had managed to pull herself together a little better, she'd left a message for Richard, thanking him and telling him that she was all right and that she'd be by to pick up her stuff later. Then she'd gone down to the clinic to apologize - again - to Sally and Zechs. Wufei was there, hovering in his grumpy irritated way around Sally, although he didn't so much as glare at Julia when she arrived. In fact, he seemed more sympathetic towards her than anything else. She'd managed to give Sally a fairly bad compound fracture (from a glancing blow, apparently) when she hit her while she was trapped in that memory, and she'd given Zechs a mild concussion. He'd woken up by the time she got down there, and assured her that he was fine.
Then Sally had apologized to *her* for driving her to... well, whatever had happened. Julia was working very hard at not thinking about it, and not for the usual reasons. She still wasn't sure exactly what had triggered it, and until she figured out what it was, she didn't want to risk it happening again. She'd seen Daddy wince when he hugged her or when Tousan touched his arm, and she'd seen Tousan moving stiffly, trying not to bend or twist his torso at all, and it didn't take a genius to figure out that she must have hit them pretty hard while they were trying to bring her out of it. They were also obviously trying to hide it from her, so she didn't feel bad, so she didn't mention it to them, because that would just make *them* feel worse.
Is this what it comes down to? she wondered. Me and my parents hiding things from each other trying to make the other feel better? It sucked, but she couldn't think of anything else to do. She couldn't change the fact that she *had* hurt them, in more ways then one, first by running away, and then by physically hurting them. And they couldn't help that they couldn't hide the fact that they'd been hurt from her.
In any case, after all of the apologizing, some Preventer had come up and handed Daddy a message. Apparently Katie had called and asked if they would come to L4, so that she could talk to Julia. And, oh yes, there was a private shuttle waiting for them at the nearest port. Being unbelievably wealthy had its advantages. That was when they'd told her that Katie had called to tell them that she needed help, just a few hours ago, and also that Katie was directly responsible for them finding her when she'd been kidnapped. So another Preventer had them driven out to the spaceport.
Julia hadn't really appreciated how much power Quatre did have until then, when they were driven directly to the tarmac and the waiting shuttle despite their lack of identification or tickets, which would have made going through security interesting. It wasn't any problem for them, they drove straight past the terminal and directly to the shuttle. A woman in a neat uniform escorted them up the steps onto the shuttle, then closed the door behind them. It turned out that this was Quatre's personal shuttle, the one he used for more casual business trips. Julia didn't even want to think about what his 'formal' one was like.
The ride out to the colony was surprisingly short, again, probably because of Quatre's influence. Julia spent most of it sitting sandwiched in between both of her fathers in a couch that was too small to fit the three of them comfortably. None of them even mentioned it, much less suggested someone moving. Julia had explained what she'd learned about herself, both the testing and what she'd figured out on her own. Neither of her parents had said much, just sat there and held her. She'd felt both of them tense up when she mentioned the training she'd had, even before she was born, but she'd told them that she loved them, multiple times, and eventually they'd relaxed.
Daddy had... once... asked if she wanted to talk about how she'd gotten trapped in her memories. The answer to that one was a definite no, and they hadn't brought it up again.
The stewardess told them that when they got to the colony, a limo would be waiting for them the second that they stepped out of the shuttle. Daddy made some smart remark about it being handy, having enough money to buy a shuttle if you needed it, until Tousan elbowed him in the side. Julia, however, was preoccupied with what was coming up.
She hadn't really thought about it before, where Katie stood in all of this. All right, lets think about this logically, Julia decided. Listing things seemed to help when her life got... turned completely upside down. God, this has happened enough times that I have a methodology for it? How sad is that?
OK, think. She had to have known. If she was only mildly psychic, there was no way they could have hidden it from her. Julia paused for a second to consider that. Well, maybe if her parents didn't know. But they did, so she had to have known. And she didn't tell me. Well, that was a matter that could wait for later. Daddy and Tousan said that she found me by touching a ransom note the kidnappers sent. And she knew that I was in trouble... twice... before anyone else did, all the way on the colony. Here she paused. Julia wasn't by any means an expert on psychic abilities, but she had come across information on them during her study of her own mental peculiarities. The strongest known psychic she'd ever heard of could reach people a few *miles* away, not the hundreds of thousands of miles it was between earth and L4. That would make Katie stronger than any other psychic out there, not just a lot stronger, stronger by several degrees of magnitude.
Well, that makes sense. They built one for strength, one for intelligence, or something like that. Julia was mildly amused when she realized that she was irritated about being the 'brawn' one. As if she wasn't intelligent enough on her own. As if she didn't have enough problems without piling the ones that Katie had on top of it.
Now she understood why Katie almost never left her home, why she hid from everyone when there were family gatherings. No one had told her explicitly, but it didn't take a genius to figure out that Katie obviously had just as many (if not more) problems with her... um... abilities (Julia was hesitant to label what she and Katie could do as powers, it just seemed pretentious) as Julia had with hers. But she still came down to Earth to help me.
"Julia?"
Julia jumped at the hand on her arm, then realized it was just Daddy. He raised an eyebrow, and she smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, I was just thinking." She glanced out the window and saw that they had landed. "This isn't the shuttle port," she observed without thinking, then winced. Some day I've got to install some sort of break in the connection between my mouth and my brain. Or at the very least, install a time delay on all stupid, inane observations. Then she realized what she'd just said meant. "Quatre has his own port?" she asked, her voice rising.
"And you're surprised by this?" Daddy asked as the shuttle taxied to a stop.
The lone flight attendant came up then and told them that it was safe to disembark now. Julia walked to the door, shielding her eyes and wincing as she stepped into the bright sunlight.
"Eyes OK?" Daddy asked worriedly.
Julia cautiously unshielded her eyes, willing them to be ok. When the bright artificial sunlight hit her eyes, though, it caused nothing more harmful than her squinting. Normal humans did that, she'd seen it. "Fine," she reported, wondering if this was going to become a regular occurrence. It could get really irritating if they asked her how she was every time *anything* happened, no matter how well intentioned the questions.
It took a second for her brain to register that it wasn't more servants standing by the waiting limousine, but Quatre, Trowa, and Katie.
She got another shock when Katie rushed up to her the moment that her feet touched the ground and embraced her. Julia couldn't remember that happening before, not ever. Katie didn't like touching people, not beyond casual touches, usually on the hand, but here she was, giving Julia a full-blown hug.
A moment later, Julia realized she could feel fine tremors running through Katie's body, almost like she was clinging to Julia for support. "What's wrong?!" she asked, alarmed. "Are you all right? What happened?"
Katie let out a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob, and backed up a step. "What's wrong? You got drugged and kidnapped!" she said, pointing an accusing finger at her.
Julia finally got a good look at her, and was not pleased by what she saw. Katie looked terrible, so pale she almost looked translucent, and even thinner than usual, more like a skeleton than a living human. There were huge circles under her eyes, too, although someone had tried to conceal the fact with badly-applied makeup. Now, however, she didn't look so fragile, glaring at Julia through tear-misted eyes.
"I... I didn't mean to," Julia said hesitantly, not sure exactly what she was apologizing for.
Katie stared at her for a minute, then suddenly raised a hand to cover her mouth as she started giggling. The sound was contagious, and after a few seconds Julia joined in, as their respective fathers looked at them as if they'd both lost their minds.
"That was a little ridiculous, wasn't it?" Katie said rhetorically after they'd finished.
"A little," Julia said. "I am sorry, though," she apologized, knowing suddenly that she was somehow responsible for Katie's current appearance. She didn't know how she knew it, or where it had come from, but it was true, she could feel it. "What did I do?"
Katie blinked, then her eyes narrowed slightly, and Julia heard an odd humming in the back of her mind, like white noise, but she wasn't actually hearing it. After a second the strange sensation was gone, and Katie blinked again.
"Oh. I guess turnabout is fair play," she muttered, and this time it was Julia who blinked. That sounded like something *she'd* say - sarcasm was more her style than Katie's. Katie tended toward mysterious, irritatingly vague comments and laughing at strange intervals. "It... I know you didn't mean to, but we're tied together. When something bad happens to you, I can see it, either before it happens or when it does. And I've got a pretty good memory, so I keep seeing it, over and over again, until something happens to change it." Her eyes became rather vague, like she wasn't really looking at Julia any more. "Has to be changed," she murmured to herself, closing her eyes. "It can't end that way... no, not that way..."
Julia sensed, rather than saw, Katie drifting away, and she knew it wasn't a good thing. She reached out and touched Katie's arm, not wanting to intrude on her personal space, but knowing that she had to bring her back, somehow.
Katie blinked, then looked down at Julia's hand and squeezed it tightly, hard enough for Julia to feel her bones grate together. She's strong, almost as strong as me. She had to be, to do that to Julia's hand. A few seconds passed, then Katie dropped her hand like it was burning, and she refused to meet Julia's eyes. She's ashamed. "It's all right," she said, awkwardly, again not sure of why she knew these things. Ordinarily that would have alarmed her a lot, but she was willing to use the knowledge, for Katie's sake.
"Thank you," Katie said quietly, still studying her hands. "I... where was I?" she glanced at Julia, who 'heard' that odd noise again for a moment. "Oh yes. I... those... those dreams, they wear on me. And then, when I had to come to Earth..." she trailed off with a shudder.
"You had to come to Earth?"
"Yes." Katie finally raised her eyes to meet Julia's. "It was the only way I could see, the only way that you wouldn't..." she cut herself off, staring at the ground again.
Julia remembered the moment that she became absolutely certain that Stevens would never let her go, that she was going to die, and made a connection. "You... you saw me die, didn't you?" she asked. Such a thin thread of events had ended up in her living through the kidnapping. If Stevens hadn't frightened her so badly that he pushed her beyond scared, if she hadn't remembered that she could pick locks, if she hadn't slammed her fist against the door and realized she could break through it, if she hadn't managed to disable that man, if she hadn't taken his gun, if she'd hesitated...
Katie's eyes widened slightly, then she nodded, her face becoming expressionless and hard. Julia swallowed. She'd seen that expression before, on the old recordings of her daddy during the war, when he pushed away whatever he was feeling in order to get a mission done. "Yes," she admitted. "I didn't want you to know, but..."
"I'm sorry," Julia told her again, giving her a hug. She kept her touch light, in case Katie wanted to back away, but Katie just stood there, trembling. After a few long seconds, she relaxed slightly, the stiffness leaving her body.
"I thought it would upset..."
Julia thought about it for a minute. "It might have," she admitted, releasing Katie and backing up a step. "But... it doesn't, right now. I don't know why. I knew he was going to kill me, though. I don't think I would have had the courage to try anything if I hadn't known that."
Katie nodded. "I don't think I would have been able to," she confessed. "I would have frozen."
"You came to Earth, didn't you? Isn't that... bad... for you?" Katie's face went slack for a moment, and Julia quickly added, "You don't have to tell me, if you don't want."
"No, it's all right. And it wasn't... fun. But I had to. You're my sister." Katie smiled hesitantly at her.
Julia smiled back. "I never had a sister before."
"Well, you did, you just didn't know it. But," she added, becoming serious once again. "I would never let anything happen to you, if I could prevent it. And I knew that I'd probably be all right. It's different. When I saw what the first man tried to do, I was so scared..." she trailed off with a shiver.
"Hey, how much did you see?" Julia asked, mock-scolding.
"All of it. And when the second man..." she abruptly cut herself off, glancing over Julia's shoulder at Daddy and Tousan.
"What second man? What first man? What happened?" Daddy demanded, stepping forward, hands on his hips. Tousan looked concerned, as well, his lips twitching downward slightly as he crossed his arms across his chest.
"Uh, can we talk about this later?" Julia asked, not looking forward to the fit they were going to throw when they found out what had happened. They would, somehow. She couldn't picture them letting her not explain this, and even if she somehow managed to put them off, she was fairly certain that Tousan would hack into the Preventers' records to find out what the interrogated prisoners had said had happened. They wouldn't find out about Stevens holding his gun to her head (the first time) that way, but they'd find out about the other guy trying to beat her, and probably be hurt that she hadn't told them.
"Not much later," Daddy warned her, but he stopped glaring at her.
Julia sighed. "OK, I promise we can talk about it later." She glanced over Katie's shoulders at her two 'uncles'. "Hi Quatre! Hi Trowa!"
Quatre smiled at her, and Julia noticed that he was looking a little haggard, too, and wondered if it had anything to do with Katie. Probably. Trowa's lips quirked upwards as well, and he gave a slight nod in her direction.
"We can go back to the house now," Quatre said meaningfully. "Unless you would prefer to stand here the rest of the afternoon?"
"Well, the sun is nice," Julia said, looking at Katie.
"But it will absolutely ruin my pale, ghostlike appearance," Katie protested, one hand going to her hair.
"Would it?" Julia asked.
Katie considered. "No, probably not. I'm pretty much albino."
"Then we might as well go inside."
"Yes, we might as well."
"Do you really have to do that?" Quatre asked irritably.
They both turned innocently vacant looks on him, and he sighed.
---------
"Are they always like that?" Julia asked several hours later. They'd just finished with a long, very expensive-seeming dinner, followed by dessert, which consisted of home-made ice-cream sundaes. Made by Daddy and Quatre, specifically, so they were lucky they didn't all die of sugar overdoses.
After that, Julia had announced that they were going to talk upstairs, and that they didn't want any company. Daddy had started to protest, and Julia had diverted him by saying that they needed to talk about 'girl stuff'. Next Quatre had jumped in with another objection, which Katie countered by saying that it was 'genetically engineered freaks of nature stuff'. All four of their parents had objected to that statement, and it had been a few minutes before they could finally escape.
"Obsessively over-protective?" Katie asked, settling herself down on a huge pillow. They were in the 'quiet' room, which Julia now knew was actually shielded against telepathic interference, a side effect of which was the sound-proofing that Julia appreciated so much.
"Well, I wasn't going to say it that way, but... yes."
"Yes. With good reason," Katie added after a second. "I... had a lot of problems when I was littler. But I'm not four years old anymore, and I'm not going to break if they look away for a couple of hours!"
"I hope my parents don't do that. They might, though," Julia added, thinking of how they'd been acting on the plane.
"It's because they love you so much, you know," Katie said.
"I know."
"I mean it. They gave up a lot for you. Mine too."
"What sort of things?"
"The things they were programmed to do. The fighting, it's hard to stop that, once you start. And helping people. That's even harder to give up. They gave up a lot for us. First, because they felt responsible, and guilty. But then they just... loved us. Even me," she said speculatively.
"Even you?" Julia asked, frowning. "Why 'even you'?"
"I caused them a lot of pain, Father especially."
"Why?"
"He's sensitive... empathic, like me, except nowhere near as strong. And because of the feedback, it hurt me to be around him. That hurt him, even though he doesn't like to admit it to me."
"It wasn't your fault, not really," Julia said.
"I'll believe that when you stop blaming yourself for what happened to Sally and that man," Katie replied, and Julia winced. "Sorry. That wasn't the point though, that wasn't where I was going." She winced and pressed a hand to her forehead. "Where I was going... I was talking about how much they love us... that's why they did it, you know," she said, suddenly intense, looking at Julia.
"What?" This time, Julia couldn't follow Katie's logic. If logic was involved in whatever was going on in her mind, which she was beginning to doubt.
"That's why they didn't tell you. About... well, everything. They were trying to protect you, let you have the childhood they didn't," Katie explained, studying her face. "But they did it because they loved you. If they hadn't... if it had been any other reason, *I* would have told you."
Julia stared back at her for a minute, then finally said, "Thank you." In a way, it was a little creepy to know that Katie had been keeping an eye on her all this time, in another, it was reassuring. She told Katie that.
"I... I was afraid you'd just be angry with me," Katie confessed.
Julia smiled slightly. "If you know anything about me, you know that I don't stay mad at the people I love."
"Well, you've been so angry for the past few days... I have trouble remembering, other things, sometimes. I get overwhelmed by strong emotions," Katie explained.
"How far can you reach? I mean, you can feel me, on Earth. That's farther than anyone I've ever heard of," Julia said.
"There are a few other people, in hiding, who are pretty strong," Katie said. "Not nearly as strong as me, but... a lot stronger than anyone you'd ever hear about. But... I'm not actually *that* strong. You're the only one I can reach on Earth from L4." She paused, then added, "Well, sometimes I can pick up hints of things from Heero and Duo."
"Why?"
"Well, we're linked, for one thing. I don't know how or why, exactly, but we always have been." Katie shrugged. "Also, it doesn't hurt that you have a little bit of power yourself."
"Me?"
"Well, yeah, you didn't think that they'd create their weapons without trying to balance things out a little bit. I'm not as strong as you, but I'm well above the level of any normal human. About as strong as our fathers, maybe a little stronger. You aren't nearly as strong a psychic as I am... but you're probably stronger than most of the ones you'd find on Earth."
"What? I am?" Katie nodded. "But... wouldn't I have noticed that? I mean, I've never sensed other people's thoughts or anything."
"You're suppressing it," Katie replied immediately. "You have been for years. It was probably too much, along with your enhanced senses. You've got it blocked off so much that you're probably more psychically dead than most people."
"But you..."
"You've blocked off everything... except our link," Katie amended her previous statement. She was smiling slightly. "That's still as strong as ever, and combining your power with mine gives me just enough reach to be able to contact you on Earth." She paused, then hesitantly added, "If you'd like, I could teach you how to use your power... a little. At least give you some conscious control over it."
Julia considered. On one hand, she was pretty sure that she didn't need any more oddness in her mind than she already had - her own main 'enhancements' gave her enough trouble as it was. On the other hand, she'd had much less trouble with her abilities after she'd found out what was really the problem. Conscious control over whatever other 'gifts' she had would be good. The problem with subconscious or unconscious control was that when it started to slip, there was nothing you could do to help it.
"Am I... am I going to have problems with it soon?" Julia asked. "Like in the next couple of months?"
Katie looked at her sharply, then her eyes unfocussed. Julia heard that odd noise in the back of her mind again, and then it stopped as Katie refocused her eyes. "I don't think so," Katie said. "There's no sign that it's any weaker than it's ever been."
"Did you... just look in my mind?" Julia asked, pressing a hand to the back of her head, trying to pinpoint where the sound had been.
Katie nodded, then gave her another sharp look. "How did you know?"
"I heard something. I think."
"This?"
Julia heard the noise in her mind again. "Yes."
She nodded, and saw a flash of alarm on Katie's face. "What does that mean?"
Katie shifted slightly on her pillow. "I'm not sure." She leaned forward, reaching one hand towards Julia's forehead. "May I?"
Julia swallowed and nodded, shifting forward herself so that Katie could reach her. Katie touched her forehead, and the odd noise returned. It was louder this time, and Julia imagined that she could almost feel a delicate hand poking at the back of her mind. It wasn't an altogether comfortable sensation, and if it had been anyone but Katie, she would have shoved them out and then given the a good piece of her mind, the regular way. But with Katie... she'd always been there, sort of, in the back of Julia's mind, so this probe wasn't hurtfully intrusive, just... odd.
A few seconds passed, and then Katie withdrew. "The block... it *is* changing, somehow. I don't know why. You never sensed me before. Maybe it's just because you know what to look for, now." She paused speculatively. "You shouldn't have any problems for a while, though, not at the rate it's changing. I'll let you know if it's going to be a problem."
"Thank you," Julia replied. "I think I need some time to come to grips with everything else, first. I want to make sure I have real control over everything, before I start on anything new. But, after that... If you have the time..."
"If I have the time?" Katie actually started laughing. "*If* I have the time?"
"What's so funny?" Julia demanded.
"Julia, what do you think I spend all my time doing?"
Julia actually hadn't thought about it very much. "Um... school?" she said, knowing even as she did so that her guess was wrong.
Katie gave her a look that suggested she'd just said something profoundly stupid. "I can't be around other people, and the few tutors I can stand educated me well past high-school level years ago. Since then, I mostly sit around by myself, or help Father with business things, or study things that interest me. That's about it. Watching other people is about as close as I come to a real life."
Julia stared at her. "Um... why?"
"Why what?"
"Are you working on, um, strengthening yourself so that you can be around people more often? You came to the port to pick us up last time we visited," she pointed out.
"Yes, I've been building up my shields."
"So?"
"So what?"
"So have you tested them? Been testing them? I mean, aside from that one trip to Earth and coming to the port to pick us up."
Katie actually blushed. "I... um... haven't, yet. I'm scared," she added with a frankness that surprised Julia.
"That you won't be able to deal with it," Julia guessed. I'd be scared. If she can't learn to deal with it, then she'll never get out of here. As long as she doesn't really try, she won't know if she'll fail. "But you're never going to get out of here this way, either," she said softly.
"I know. I just..." Katie looked down at her hands, then waved one of them at the room. "I hate this place. I hate this room, I hate the four walls of it, I hate that I feel like I've spent half of my life here. And... if I can't hold up my shields, this is where I'll spend the rest of my life."
Julia looked around. She liked this room, it was quiet (really quiet, not just quiet enough that most people couldn't hear anything), and it was the sort of place that helped you calm yourself, helped you think. But to be stuck in here... she shivered.
"Is there... is there anything I can do to help?"
Katie blinked, and Julia fought the urge to smack her. "What, you're allowed to risk your sanity for me, but I can't try to help you? You said that I have power, even if I don't know it. Can you... use that, somehow? To help support yourself, to ease yourself into things?"
Katie blinked again. "I... I don't know. I never thought about it."
Julia sighed. "I'm beginning to think that they built some very large blind spots into us when they finished."
She felt the brush of Katie's mind against her own, and Katie nodded with a slightly twisted smile. "Yes. I think they did."
"Well? Can I help you?"
"I... I don't know. Father helps me, but from the outside. And... I need to do this without him. But... I need to think about this a little."
"Well, when you do think about it, you just let me know. I'll do whatever I can. And you're going to train me anyway," Julia reminded her.
Katie nodded, then said slowly, "Thank you."
Julia nodded back and smiled a little.
They both sat silently for a minute, then Katie asked, "What are you going to do?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you've graduated high school... or you will in a few weeks."
"Yeah. My teachers aren't going to be real happy with me, though," Julia said with a laugh. "I haven't been to school in over a week. Not since before..." Since before I was kidnapped, she thought, but didn't say. "I should probably go back before finals."
Not that she needed to worry about finals. She could pass them on no sleep for a week without even looking at the material. But there was no reason to unnecessarily upset the teachers who'd been there through the last four years. It wasn't their fault that she didn't need them, and she knew her long unexplained absence after not missing a class for several years would have some people worried.
But the idea of just going back to class, like nothing had happened, like she'd just had a bad flu or something... She wasn't the same person she'd been a week ago, she couldn't possibly be. And the thought of trying to *pretend* that she was... it just made her sick. So what was she going to do? She couldn't possibly tell them the truth.
"I have to go back there soon," she murmured.
"And after?"
This time it was Julia's turn to blink. Truth be told, she hadn't thought that far ahead. So much of what she'd done over the past week had just been reacting, and then she'd been so caught up in what the immediate future held, that she hadn't thought any further ahead. "I... I'm not sure. I was planning to take some time off before college, maybe wait until I got old enough to drive a car on my own, but now..." she glanced at Katie. "I have the distinct feeling that my parents are about to come down with a bad case of overprotectingness. And... it would be good to get out of the house, for a while. Every time I see that wall I punched a hole in, I'm going to be thinking about... everything. Some new scenery would probably help."
"So you're going to go to college?"
"Well, I didn't apply at the regular time. I may not be able to get in."
Katie snorted her opinion of that. "They'll make an exception for you."
"Who will?"
"Whatever college you want to go to. Let them get a good look at your records - all of them, including your IQ test and those early qualifiers they gave you when they saw your IQ score - and they'll break whatever rules they have to in order to get you there."
Julia frowned. "That seems..."
"Wrong? Grossly unfair? Cheating? Using your advantage? The world... the galaxy is that way," Katie replied with a shrug. "We got screwed, we got advantages, we work with what we're given." She paused, eyeing Julia thoughtfully. "Look, all I'm saying is that if you want to go to college, you're in."
"Oh."
"Any idea where you want to go?"
"No, not really."
"What about your powers?"
"I don't know," Julia said, knowing immediately what Katie was asking. "I... I think I have control over everything. I'm not going to accidentally hurt someone, at least."
"But can you actually use them?"
Julia frowned. "Yes. I punched a hole in the wall at home," she pointed out.
"But... do you know your practical limits? If you got in a situation where you actually had to use them, push yourself to your limits? I know you haven't, yet."
Julia didn't like the way she said that. "Yet?"
"Do you know?"
Julia shook her head. "No, you have to know that. The only way I'd be able to find that out is if I actually did try to press myself that far, and there's no reason to. I don't think I can just practice benchlifting cars."
"No, that's not what I was thinking of."
Suddenly making a connection, Julia stared at Katie. "Why would the Preventers want to help me with something like that?"
Katie shrugged. "Work on it. You're a genius, you'll come up with something."
"Daddy and Tousan won't like that."
"Then figure out a way they will like. Or," she added when Julia snorted, "at least one that they won't hate."
"Why?"
Katie became very still. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"Why are you so set on getting me to do this? I mean, I think it'd be nice to have that kind of control, but it's not like I'm ever going to need it, right?" She didn't like the silence that echoed in the room after her question. "Right?" Her voice sounded very small and hollow to her own ears.
"I... I think you should learn it, if you can."
Julia felt a chill run through her. "Did you... see the future?" she asked hesitantly.
Katie shook her head. "It doesn't work like that. My premonitions only come a couple of hours before an event, if that. Usually more a like a couple of minutes. Anything farther ahead than that, and it's just... hints. Feelings. Not even really anything of the future, just an idea that I ought to do something now. I can usually get an idea of what's coming from that. And all I know right now is that you should learn to use your powers, not just keep them from interfering."
"Any ideas why?"
Katie smiled slightly, even as she shook her head. "You're the daughter of two Gundam pilots, and the offspring of all five of them. Is it any surprise that your life is going to be interesting?"
Yay! I've been struggling for days to figure out how to end this. It was actually supposed to go a little further, but it suddenly ended on me. I had a lot of fun with this last section, especially the conversations between Katie and Julia. I'm not entirely sure how it sounds, because although it makes sense in my head, there was a lot going on between them that couldn't be stated outright. Anyway, hope it turned out all right.
As is now becoming traditional (or just 'cause I like to), here are the stats for the story:
~ 180 pages, ~115,000 words, roughly 17 months in the works (sorry about that!)
I really had a lot of fun writing this, no matter how much I might have complained about it at the time. I have a lot of plans for Julia (too many, actually, have to narrow down to a few workable ideas), hopefully some of those plans will actually make it on to paper at some point soon. I have started working on a short sidefic/companion piece from Katie's perspective, so that one should be out... sometime.
As a side note, I'm currently taking a Japanese class, so I now know the pronunciation for most of the Japanese words that I used in this story. Since I'm interested in that stuff, I figure I might as well include those pronunciations now, even if it's a little late.
Tousan (toe-san) - a shortened version of 'otousan' (oh-toe-san), a respectful version of 'father'
Daisuki (actually pronounced die-ski) - strong form of 'like' ('I like this a lot'), which can mean 'love' or 'like' (with the connotation of being attracted to someone) in certain situations
Anyway, hope that everyone enjoyed the story!
Marika 11/20/02