Transparency 1.03

This should have been a happier occasion for me. Seeing Jamie awake and conscious had been a goal of mine for years, yet even now I was unable to to bring myself to feel pleased with the current situation.

I busied myself floating around the room, exploring. No sense in hiding from the staff now that they already knew about me. Jamie lay where she rested—not much else she could do otherwise—and she stubbornly remained unresponsive, even as one of the assistants gave a look in to see if she needed anything.

After my fiftieth read of the few posters, book titles, and charts in the room that were visible to me, my patience broke down and I spiraled in to hover over Jamie's bed.

"So what happened?" I asked. "For some reason I can't recall what happened to you after you tracked down the duplicator."

Jamie glared at me from her bedside, then deliberately turned her head away. I don't really want to talk about it right now, she sent. It's not something I want to remember at the moment, and you're a liar.

"And I said I was sorry!" I said, exasperated. "Look, I can't really excuse what I did, but you didn't seem to know what was going on. Bloody hell, I didn't know what was going on! For all I knew you thought you were in a really weird, really interesting dream. I—I didn't want to take that away from you..."

Hmph. You clearly didn't think much of my intelligence.

"I never said you were stupid—" I began.

But you never treated me as an equal! You forget we can share our thoughts. You've always thought of me as your bratty younger sister! She turned her head pointedly to stare at me. Well if I'm the kid sister, then consider this to be my tantrum!

I fell silent with the realisation that she was right. I had always treated Jamie as someone to be sheltered and protected, trying to put limits on what information could reach her. Without realizing it, I had subverted my goal of bringing her up to speed and allowing her to resume her life with minimal interruptions.

What was it that Flurry been talking about earlier today? How making assumptions in regards to the the team had effectively ruined us. Even if I didn't agree with my former leader's conclusions, apparently she was not the only person who had been blindsided by their hubris. If I hadn't been so concerned with thinking I knew what was best for Jamie...

My eyes widened as a new thought occurred to me. What if, by keeping Jamie from realizing that she wasn't in a dream, she hadn't put in the necessary effort to struggle for her own recovery. What if—

Jamie sent the mental equivalent of an exasperated sigh towards me. You're a total open book, you realise that? I caught on a long time ago. That fact that I didn't wake up early enough for Mama and Papa to... well, it's either my fault for not trying or still my fault for having a stupid body. In which case there's no more room for you to take any blame. She closed her eyes against a new rush of tears. Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, though.

"Hindsight's a bloody pain," I agreed. I frowned, "Just how much do you know, anyhow?"

Enough to know that wasn't the only thing you were lying to me about.

I frowned, "Like what?"

She glared at me, as if trying to determine if I was being deliberately obtuse or if I really couldn't recall what she was referring to. Trying to turn the tables against her, I tried to pick up on what she was thinking. It was like trying to read a brick wall. I picked up lots of different surface impressions, but all of them were just the same variation of each other. Nothing useful.

She turned away in a huff. If you don't remember, then we have nothing more to discuss for the moment.

I sighed.

...

Thanks to my having turned in early, I ended up waking early enough that the sun wasn't even peeking out from the horizon. Jamie's avatar floated in place over by the telly, devoid of any intelligence and I could immediately tell that she hadn't crossed back over with me. I knew that I wouldn't be able to force myself back into even a light doze, so I shucked the covers and grabbed a towel from my dresser.

After finishing with a shower and brushing my teeth, I dressed in rough, but clean clothes and stepped downstairs. As I'd expected, both of my parents were already awake and getting started with their day. They were native Japanese who had immigrated here a few years prior to Kyushu's destruction. From what stories I was able to glean from them, my father had come seeking further educational opportunities and my mother had come along for the ride, more or less.

Either things hadn't worked out, or he'd simply found a new calling in life—either way the end result was that he'd suddenly decided to open up his own restaurant. I might have thought it to be a poor decision, except that in the time following the Endbringer attack in Japan there had been a wave of migration from there to the western world. The sudden influx of refugees had increased demand enough that we made a fairly good living and he had been laying plans for having me take over the business once I had grown older.

I wasn't too keen at first. Although my parents were aware that I was a parahuman, my abilities were fairly inoffensive as far as powers go and they weren't terribly supportive of my desire to be a hero. I avoided any discussions or attempts to recruit me by using the structured schedule that came from being in school and filling up my spare time by going out in costume as part of a team.

Between the group's dissolution and the fact that I had elected not to continue on to higher education, I now found that I had a lot more free time available to me and I had reluctantly spent more time with my parents in order to learn the family trade.

Still, it wasn't like being a restaurant owner—or at least a worker—didn't have some appeal to it. If nothing else, it could provide suitable cover for my outings as a cape. Suspicious movements in and out of the building could be explained away as late-night deliveries or supply runs, for example.

Pop was in the kitchen, preparing the broths and the stews that would be on today's menu, whereas Mum was helping with sorting out the vegetables—vegetables and spices I recognized as having been on my shopping list the previous day. I nearly groaned and wanted to hit myself. Yesterday I had been in the midst of shopping when I got sidetracked by the whole cafe brawl. In my haste to return home, I must have left my groceries behind.

Mum glanced up at me as I entered the dining room and clicked her tongue. "Your lady friend from school dropped this off whilst you were asleep," she said to me in Japanese. Her tone was lightly laced with disapproval. "You should pay closer attention to your responsibilities. She said you had run off and left the food with her. She was forced to come all this way to deliver them."

"Er..." I stopped in place, more than slightly confused. Lady friend? From school? This was news to me. Was it a sad thing that I'd no idea I had any friends of the female variety? Actually, now that I thought about it, I couldn't think of a single one of my former classmates that I had anything but a scholarly relationship with.

The reminder about 'my responsibilities' had me hunting down a damp washcloth. I began removing the chairs from atop a nearby table and sweeping the surface with the cloth.

She's talking about Flurry, Big Brother. Jamie suddenly entered the conversation, still upstairs in my room where I'd left her avatar. She'd evidently been listening in. Remember when we brought everyone here for lunch a ways back?

"Oh!" I said aloud. At the time, the 'these are just my classmates'-excuse had been the first thing that had come to mind to explain our association. "Riiight... yes, I'll have to thank her next time I see her." To be honest, I think I was more surprised that Mum had even remembered that meeting. That had been years ago.

I moved on to the next table, judging my current one to be clean enough. Are you okay? I sent back to Jamie.

Annoyed, she said bluntly. I was hoping to pull an all-nighter just to get back at you, but this body of mine is too weak right now. I fell asleep. The last part came as an irritated grumble.

"You are up early," Pop said. He was the one who'd made it a point for me to learn to speak English fluently and habit made him continue to speak it whenever I was around.

"I slept early," I reminded him. "Yesterday was rather exhausting. Sorry for missing out on dinner." You should come down and greet Mum and Pop, if you're 'awake'.

They're not my Mama and Papa, Jamie replied bitterly. Mine wouldn't be asking after your health and caring for your future.

"So this girl," Mum said suddenly, as if on cue, "is she unattached?"

The embarrassment was almost worth it, considering Jamie was laughing for the first time I'd seen since her awakening.

ooo

"What do you think happens when I touch something?" Jamie said. We were currently out on patrol—the restaurant's preparations for the day were pretty much complete and my parents wouldn't need me back until the dinner rush. Jamie was crouching in the air, one arm wrapped around her lower body whilst the other traced patterns at her 'feet'.

"Nothing. You'll just pass through them," I said reflexively. I tilted my head back to find her glaring at me and winced. Right, I was supposed to stop hiding things from her now. "Well, to anything inanimate, I guess. Living things... you sorta give them a kind of mental shock or something."

"Like what?" she asked.

I lowered my head and looked out across the street from my rooftop vantage point. "Well, with smaller animals like bugs and birds, I've seen you pretty much knock them out of the sky after you pass through them."

She winced. "Did they recover?"

"I don't know," I replied honestly. "Generally there were other things going on at the time. Paying attention to them was sort of low on the priority list for the both of us."

"I see... and what about... people?"

"I've been a bit cautious when I'm directing you. As far as I know you've only really 'touched' three people. Two of them ended up more or less catatonic, at least temporarily." I scratched my head, anticipating her next question. "One, of course, was our duplicator. The other was Nightwalker—do you remember him? I think it was during our first month with the group."

"I remember," she said quietly. "I thought Volley had taken him down." She floated around in front of me. "Who was the third?" she demanded.

I shrugged. "It was me. Back when we were first getting used to each other. I remember you being so excited about the fact you could fly. You were flitting back and forth across my bedroom almost faster than I could see." My face darkened as the memory resurfaced in my mind. "And then... you tried to hug me. It... I don't remember if I passed out or not. But to me it felt like I had returned to the Darkness for a moment... back to being alone, back to trying to reach out for something, anything to keep it at bay somehow."

She was quiet for several moments, thinking. She lifted her head, "And you think I did that to the others too?"

I nodded, "It's a possibility."

"And they couldn't handle it."

"We couldn't either. I'm pretty sure that was our trigger event."

She thought again, scrunching her face in concentration. "Do you think you could handle it now?"

I shivered. "What?" I asked, hoping I hadn't heard her correctly.

She looked thoughtful. "I don't remember the first two events, maybe because I was in and out before I could even think about it. But when I was finding the duplicator for you... I don't recall just what made me try to jump into his body, but I sort of remember what happened afterwards."

She glanced at me, as if looking for permission. I tightened my jaw and nodded for her to continue.

"It was... it was kind of like what you said. I was in the Darkness again, except there was... something else to it—like a faint light, a way out. Except the Darkness seemed to press back against me, keeping me from reaching it. By the time I was close enough to see the light in reach, I saw you. I saw you reaching for me, and I tried to reach back."

The duplicator's body turning towards me, his body trembling with strain as if under a great stress.
His eyes were wide and his mouth slowly drew open, saying...

"You called to me," I said.

"I tried," she admitted. "And once I saw you, the very moment I relaxed my efforts, the Darkness took the chance to throw me back out..." She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. "I woke up. For real. It was like some sort of... barrier had broken within me when I was ejected. I woke up for real... and you weren't there. I shouted for you, but you weren't there. It was the first time I could even remember you not being around when I needed you."

"You... were trying to take over the duplicator's body," I summarized. "And the duplicator fought back. The mental shock must have been enough to break through whatever was keeping you from waking up yourself..."

"...and suddenly we were two people again, each in our own worlds," she continued the thought even as I was realising it.

I shook my head, trying to get it around this terrifying conclusion. "You shouldn't do that again," I said firmly. "Messing around with people's heads is like the number one way to get the authorities to come down hard on the both of us."

"That wasn't all, though," Jamie said.

I lifted my head to stare at her again. She had the look of someone about to give some very bad news.

"It's not the first time I remember feeling that way," she said slowly. She looked me in the eye. "I did it to you too."

I could feel my mouth falling open. "But I thought you said you didn't remember that far," I protested.

She shook her head, "I don't mean what you remember... I mean, when you were in my world..." She frowned. "You kept me in the Darkness. On purpose! You kept me from seeing your own point of view!"

My shoulders slumped. "I didn't want you to..."

"Yes yes... we've already established that you were protecting me from knowing I was the Littlest Coma Patient." She sounded rather annoyed, justifiably so. "My point was, I saw the same 'light' in you that I saw in the duplicator. And I remember having to force my way to it so that I could see. Except you didn't seem to fight me as much, if at all."

Startled, I cast into my memories, back to those long nights—all the periods I had spent in quiet contemplation. I tried and couldn't even recall the few times when Jamie had seemed to stop babbling for companionship.

I was not babbling! She deliberately sent the retort as a thought. She relaxed slightly, floating closer in as her face softened, though her eyes still bore directly into mine. "What I think," she explained, "is that I can... possess certain living things. The more complex their minds are, the more they'll fight my control. Perhaps I'd do better with creatures with more basic thought patterns. Also..." Jamie placed a finger to her mouth as she mulled over her next point. "I'm wondering if I could possess you. We have, after all, pretty much been in each other's heads for quite some time. I don't think there's anybody I'd know better." She held out her hand. "Do you trust me?"

I stared at her hand for several long seconds. Did I trust her? To do what? To hijack my body? To not twist my thoughts around? I was pretty sure she couldn't do that, but...

Mind alteration was one of the most feared abilities around for the world. The only known telepath, the Simurgh, was arguably the most destructive Endbringer known when one factored in the messed up things it made its victims pull off months or even years later. Entire cities had been known to be wiped from the map after the Simurgh attacked. Not because of unrecoverable property damage, but simply because entire populations could no longer be trusted to remain human.

The Parahumans Online message boards were a good source of international news, info, and warnings regarding anything to do with capes. There were numerous individuals in the world capable of bending another's will, most of them in the United States. Nearly all of them were villains. If Jamie's abilities—or were these my abilities?—ever came to light, I could easily see us being classed as such in the minds of people worldwide.

At the same time, I had already betrayed Jamie's faith in me once. Could I afford to not extend my own trust in her without breaking our relationship? Should that even have been an issue?

I extended my hand and grasped hers. No, I wouldn't allow myself to let Jamie down again.

Not ever again.

ooo

This feels weird.

I stared at my hand, turning them this way and that, flipping them around to inspect the fingers. The fabric around one of my gloves was a bit threadbare, I noted. I turned my head and walked over to the edge of the roof, reaching for the railing.

Whoa! Do that some more!

I frowned. "Which part? Turning around or reaching for the railing?"

So far, even as Jamie 'possessed' my body, I had honestly not felt any different than I normally did. She'd told me everything looked to be normal on her end, but she didn't seem to be disappointed at all. Rather, she seemed to be enjoying the sensations I took for granted, like touch, and of basic actions like...

Both? Ooh no, wait. Walk! Walk, slave!

...like walking. From my own experiences I knew it was a different sort of process than simply willing yourself to move from point A to point B like the way we could when 'ghosting' around. I dutifully paced back and for several times as she shrieked and squealed as if she were on a roller coaster.

I can't walk in my body, she explained. Not at the moment anyhow. I could barely even move my arms. Stupid muscle atrophy.

"Ah, I see."

Okay, I think I've got it now.

Huh? Got what? My question was answered when I spun in place and walked towards the fire escape I had used to scale the building's side. "Er, Jamie?" I tried to reassert control over my body but I felt no response at all. It was extremely unnerving. "Jamie, you've made your point."

I felt myself slowing from my brisk walk and then come to a complete stop. I tested my legs again, but apparently she had not yet relinquished control. Instead, my hands came up and began running fingers over my cheeks. They traced my nose and lips, and suddenly I felt my mouth opening.

"It's like an old memory," she said from my own mouth. "Being able to touch my own face... even if it's not." I blinked. "Wow, this is even weirder than hearing your own voice in a recording."

A tingling in my limbs that I hadn't realized was present faded away and I felt myself settling into place, just as Jamie floated out of my chest and turned to face me. She had a melancholic expression on her face as she seemed to review the past few minutes.

Did you have fun? I caught the words before they emerged from my mouth. Too flippant for this sort of situation. She must have picked up on my thoughts because she lifted her eyes and smiled briefly before schooling her features and squaring her shoulders.

"I have a favor I want to ask of you," she said.

ooo