Chapter 4: Understanding
Emma sat by the open window, staring out at the moonlight-silvered lawn.
Maybe Charles had made a mistake. She really wasn't the right person to teach Andi. She must be doing something wrong. All the times Andi had tried, during the whole day, and Emma had seen her becoming more and more frustrated. She herself was becoming more frustrated.
Shielding. It was such a simple thing. Emma herself had learned to do it almost as soon as she had discovered her telepathic abilities. It was instinctive, the mind's way of protecting itself from other's thoughts…or, in Andi's case, feelings. Why had her mind not put one up? With all the pain and suffering that had been heaped on her, why had her mind not protected itself by developing shields? Emma had been sorely tempted to enter Andi's mind and show her how to form a shield, when she'd seen the girl so obviously miserable from her failure. She had resisted the temptation, partly because Andi really did need to learn to find it herself; and partly because she was afraid that such close contact with the girl would invariably open to Andi's mind certain memories that Emma wanted to keep very private indeed.
Andi had too much of her own pain to deal with; she didn't need to know that her teacher was an older version of herself. Andi didn't need to know that Emma had been the victim of severe childhood abuse; she didn't need to know that Emma too had been carelessly, maliciously shoved into an asylum and forgotten; she didn't need to know her teacher had been cruelly used and abused in the asylum by an assortment of guards.
Charles had struck a nerve when he asked Emma if she was happy with the way she was; and if she wanted Andi to become like her. Emma didn't. There were times when she didn't even like herself.
With difficulty, Emma ripped her thoughts away from her own life and focused on Andi's, getting out of her seat by the window and beginning to pace. It wasn't right. Something wasn't adding up. Empathy almost never turned up alone; it usually came accompanied by telepathy. Emma couldn't remember an instance of empathy turning up alone. She would have to ask Ororo if there was a chance that an injury in the car accident had damaged Andi's brain. An irreparable brain injury would explain Andi's inability to shield and her lack of telepathy.
She heard Andi walk into her room and shut the door; then, moments later, the sound of sobbing. Emma sank down on her bed, staring at the wall miserably. Tentatively lowering her own shields around her mind and Andi's brought to her a palpable wave of near-unbearable misery and anguish from the younger girl. Despair, hopelessness, a feeling that she was a failure; and a feeling that maybe her parents were right, maybe she wasn't worthy to be loved. That last made Emma's eyes get suspiciously misty; she was about to go in and try to comfort the girl when she heard Ororo's footsteps in the hall. They stopped at Andi's door, and then went in. Emma sat back. Ororo could calm the girl better than Emma could. She reinstated the shields; Andi might be too miserable to notice, but she might if she picked up on Ororo's distress on her behalf.
Emma got up and started shedding her clothes. As she slid her nightgown over her head, she looked at herself in the mirror. Her body was still firm, youthful-looking; every man's wet dream. Emma smiled faintly. She had spent a lot of money to get herself to look like this; getting to where she was now wouldn't have been possible if she hadn't taken the lessons she learned in the asylum and used them. Men, in general, were driven by their hormones; and she had learned that with her powers she could tweak their eyes and brains so they could think of nothing but those hormones. She had used that to gain access to their bank accounts and money and everything else.
She was sitting at her dresser table brushing her short, silky blond hair when she heard Ororo's footsteps leave Andi's room. She didn't turn around, expecting the other woman to walk into her own room, but instead the footsteps stopped in front of her own door. There was a brief knock, then Ororo walked in. She closed the door, walked exactly two steps into the room, and crossed her arms. In a voice so full of anger it shook, she said, "You are being too hard on the child, Emma."
Emma turned in shock. Ororo rarely ever lost her temper. It was a complete surprise to hear her this angry.
"Do you hear me?" Ororo said, her voice tight. She crossed the room the rest of the way and leaned in toward Emma over the dresser. "You are being too hard on her. Andi is not a normal child, Emma; you cannot treat her the way you treated the children at the Massachusetts Academy, or your Hellions. Andi has been through too much to ever be considered a normal child. Her failure to form and hold a shield today has done considerable damage to her self-esteem; and your offhand refusal to help her did not help that any. Emma, I am going to insist that you either change your approach to teaching Andi or I will insist to Charles that you leave."
"Go ahead then," Emma said harshly. "I am the owner of a multi-national company, after all. I have better things to do than cosset and spoil a child who thinks that she can play on your sympathies to give her everything she wants, who thinks control is as easy as getting someone to show her how to do it."
"Fine!" Ororo spun on her heel and marched to the door.
She had her hand on the knob when Emma said, "'Ro." Slowly she turned, her inbred politeness preventing her from doing what she really wanted to do; fling the door open and leave the room.
"I'm sorry." Ororo turned, and to her surprise, Emma actually did look sorry. "You're right. Andi isn't a normal child; and I have been too hard on her. It won't be necessary to call Charles again; I'll try to behave better from now on. I have to admit, I really didn't want to leave the company right now; and having Charles…insist…that I come didn't help my mood any."
Ororo sat down on the end of Emma's bed, surprised by the sudden admission. "I am sure Charles would not have insisted you come if you had more pressing matters to attend to."
"Yes he did. And he had a good reason to. Jean wouldn't have been able to handle seeing the ugly images in Andi's mind without letting it color her perceptions of the girl. I can…because I went through a similar experience myself when I was her age."
Ororo sucked in a breath, anger gone. "Emma…I did not know…Oh, Goddess…no wonder you did not want to go into Andi's mind! Not just for her, but also for you. She would see what happened to you; and seeing what happened to her would trigger bad memories for you!"
Emma nodded, relieved that Ororo wasn't going to insist on details, and that she understood immediately the ramifications of what a close mental contact would reveal. "I was hesitant to do so for those reasons," she said, sitting on the bed beside Ororo. As the other woman seemed to have gotten over her anger, she said, "'Ro, there is something that puzzles me. Empathy is almost never a stand-alone ability; it's usually accompanied by telepathy. And she should have learned to shield by now; her mind should have learned to put one up automatically before as she'd been in that asylum for three days, getting bombarded by all those uncontrolled emotions. Did she suffer any head injury when she was in the car accident you mentioned?"
Ororo nodded. "She had a skull fracture that kept her in the hospital for a week. It would have been longer, but Chelsea believed that Andi was faking it and insisted that she be released before the doctor was satisfied with her progress. The hospital made Chelsea Sanderson promise to engage a trained nurse for Andi, but she refused to do so, and insisted that Andi resume regular activities. When the girl proved unable to do so, her mother got upset and slapped her one day while Andi was on the stairs. Andi fell the rest of the way down the stairs, reopening the stitches on her scalp. After that her mother finally got a doctor for her."
"Is that the white scar on the front of her head?" Emma asked. "I saw it while she was brushing her hair. It looked nasty."
"Yes. That's where the scar comes from." Ororo reflected. "Jean and I actually did broach the subject with Charles; he admitted that it might be a possibility, and he asked Hank to do a brainscan. I do not know what the results of those scans were; perhaps I should call Charles and see if Hank has the results."
Emma said, "If she has damage there it could explain why she does not have telepathy. It might also explain why she can't shield."
"Charles said that if Andi proved unable to create shields he would cut her off from her empathy altogether. It would be cruel to leave her with unshielded empathy."
"I'd have to agree," Emma sighed. "Poor child."
Ororo rose. "I shall call Charles tomorrow and see if the results of the brain scan are available," she said. "In the meantime, today has been a very long one…for all of us."
"I'll say," Emma sighed. "'Night, Ororo."
"Fair evening, Emma."
* * *
Emma sat up in bed.
She wasn't quite sure what had woken her; She wasn't hearing anything…so why did she feel this vague sense of disquiet?
That disturbance again. This time Emma pinpointed it; it was mental. Something was disturbing her shield. Andi.
She slid out of bed, pulled her long white dressing gown around her, and walked softly down the hall past Ororo's room to Andi's. The door was open a bit; she pushed it open.
Andi froze in the act of shoving clothes in her suitcase. "What are you doing, Andi?"
"Running away." Andi watched Emma warily as the woman came in and sat down on the end of the bed.
"Why would you want to do that?" Emma crossed her arms and waited for Andi's answer.
"Because I'm a failure. I can't even learn how to do something as simple as shielding. Mom's disappointed with me. My mother was right; I'm a stupid ungrateful selfish child. All Mom wants is for me to be happy and learn to control my empathy and I can't even do that. You were right; I must not be trying hard enough, because if I really tried I could do it, and I can't. So I'm leaving before I disappoint Mom and make her give me up." Andi closed her suitcase. "Why are you asking? You don't care. I'm just a stupid child who wants everything easy."
"Andi," Emma reached out and placed a hand on Andi's wrist. "Running away isn't the solution. You can't run away from your problems. And there is no way that Ororo will ever 'give you up'. Andi, can't you see how much she loves you?"
Andi looked up at Emma and a slow tear crept out of her eye. "I want her to love me. I want her to be proud of me. But all I seem to manage to do is disappoint her. I did the same thing to my mother…and she gave me away. My biological mother gave me away. I don't want to be there when Mom decides she can't deal with my constant failure and gives me away. What then? Where will I go? Who will take me? I'd rather run away now and live on the street than go to another home like Dr. Hebron's."
Emma sighed. "Andi, sit down." Reluctantly, the girl sat. "Close your eyes." Andi closed them. Emma dropped her shields, both around her mind and around Andi's, and slipped in.
So much pain and anguish here. Emma's heart constricted in sympathy. Parents that didn't love her, who shoved her in boarding school after boarding school, ignored her and neglected her, beat her unmercifully when she was bad…but the beatings were better than the cold indifference that she was treated with the rest of the time. Andi became the schools' problem child; her grades were excellent, but she picked fights and just generally got into all sorts of trouble. Emma probed gently further into Andi's mind, having to drop a few more barriers than she normally did in order to see; and then she dropped one barrier too many.
Andi gasped and went rigid as images flooded her mind. A young Emma cried under her own parents' beatings and her father's abuse; then suffered the same thing, much more violently, in the asylum when Emma's telepathy asserted itself. Images flooded Andi's mind of Emma, thrown over a table and brutally used for her guards' pleasure; other inmates of the asylum being offered the use of the helpless teen's body; and then the desperation that forced her to take control of one of the guards' minds and have him release her. Then the years of living on the street, stealing from shopkeepers with the help of her telepathy; insinuating herself into parties where the rich arrogant men thought Emma was easy pickings; and found themselves signing away small portions of their fortunes as a result. Andi watched Emma's ruthless climb to the top; her exploitation of men; and finally the months of painful cosmetic surgery to enhance Emma's natural beauty to conform to men's idea of the perfect woman in order to get where she had gotten today. She saw Emma's shock and horror and guilt as the group of youngsters she had gathered and called the Hellions were ruthlessly slaughtered; and saw Emma's determination to never allow such a thing to happen again. And she saw what Ororo had tried to tell her but Andi hadn't believed; Emma did care about Andi. It was because she did care deeply that she was so hard on her; she didn't want to go easy on Andi and pass over anything in her teaching that might mean life or death later.
Emma saw Andi, shivering, nude, bruised, locked in a tiny cell, lying in her own body's filth; saw the agonized shudder when the electricity passed through sensitive flesh; saw the familiar face twisted in agony as she was violated from behind, not only with her captors' body, but with all sorts of inanimate objects. Her own body shuddered in sympathetic pain; she knew what it felt like.
And there it was; unnoticeable to anyone who wasn't looking for it, but Emma was, and it confirmed her suspicions. Andi had suffered irreparable brain damage from the skull fracture's rebreaking. The damage had locked her telepathy inside her, leaving only her empathy; but that empathy was considerably heightened.
Emma had to really look for Andi's center; for a while it seemed that the girl didn't have one. And when she did find it, she found it as crowded and tumultuous as the rest of Andi's mind. Feelings of shame, despair, pain, anguish, and self-hatred swirled around Andi's center. Emma touched one of the knots of emotions, quietly unraveling all the negative emotions and dispelling them, replacing them with a feeling of trust in the X-Men and Ororo and Emma; calm and peace, and love above all. And a sense of self-esteem, a feeling that she wasn't worthless, that she was worthy of being loved, and that she would never be hurt or used or abused or exploited again. Then she 'led' Andi over to that calm corner of her mind, planted the girl in the middle of it, and showed her how to ground and center. She could sense Andi's wonder and elation as she accomplished it, and then she withdrew from Andi's mind.
"Do you have it?" she asked. When Andi nodded, Emma sent a wave of emotion roaring at her. The shield didn't waver. "Now let it go, Andi. Unshield." She 'saw' Andi's branches withdraw, felt the girl pick up on her own emotions and the faint, muted emotions of Ororo sleeping down the hall; but before it could drive her into panic again, Emma said, "Shield!" Andi did. It wobbled a little bit; the girl physically put out a hand to steady herself; but the shield held.
"I did it!" Andi gasped in delight when Emma opened her eyes. "I did it, I really did it, oh, thank you, Emma, thank you--" and she threw her arms around the other woman. Emma smiled as the girl hugged her so tight her spine creaked.
She didn't mind a bit.