Reflection 3.02

I explained as much as I felt was safe to do so. I told them about Jamie Shirakawa, distaff counterpart to James Shirakawa and the shared coincidences that had determined the course of our lives. I detailed most of her recent history—her emancipation, her perceived abandonment and the increasingly erratic behavior that resulted from that discovery. I explained how we had figured out the more subtle nuances of our powers and what we had done to experiment with them. I closed with an abbreviated version of the events that led up to Jamie's breakdown and her attack on Karen and Sunny.

I withheld certain details out of respect for Flurry, not knowing just how much of her personal life—what I had gleaned from having lived with Sunny—she'd be comfortable sharing. Instead I tried to generalise it into Jamie having simply lashed out against a pair of kindly strangers.

Volley hadn't gotten his beer, but by the time I was finished with my explanation he had one hand cradling the bridge of his nose as if nursing a headache. Flurry appeared to be completely unmoved, which was to say that she didn't look much different either way.

I felt my excitement begin to fade away, slowly replaced with dread as the two of them finished absorbing my tale.

"You don't believe me, do you?" I asked, looking back and forth between my former teammates.

"You're sort of talking about having accomplished something even Haywire wasn't able to," Volley pointed out, referring to the first Tinker to have broken the barrier between alternate realities. "By accident, no less."

"What do you mean?" I blinked in confusion.

"You're saying you've more or less found a way into an alternate Earth that's diverged barely... how old are you, nineteen or twenty years old?" Volley shook his head. "Haywire was at the top of his game and he couldn't create any apertures to worlds closer than thirty years of divergence from our own. It's pretty much accepted as common fact in the circles I walk—what you're talking about is impossible."

"I do not have any opinion on the possibility of an alternate dimension, one way or the other," Flurry said. "However, I am mostly concerned with the fact that what you are telling us is cannot be corroborated by any third-party evidence."

"Are you saying I'm lying?" I began heatedly. I couldn't help the surge in my emotions. Here I was, laying out my whole future and leaving it to the mercy of my best... friends? Allies? But they didn't believe me?

Flurry shook her head. "I believe you are telling the truth as you see it," she said. "However, I am not so certain as to your state of mind." She gave me a somewhat pitying look. "You have not been acting like yourself these past few months, James. You have broken away from your usual patrol patterns by taking on a night-schedule. You have cut yourself off from your family by doing this, as well as having made it much harder for the both of us interact with you in any meaningful manner."

I opened my mouth, a protest on my lips that died as she raised her hand.

"I do not blame you for this. We have all been guilty of this to some degree or another. Each of us have been forced to deal with our grief in our own way. You seemed to have dealt with it better than the rest of us, but now I believe you were simply capable of hiding it better."

"Wha—?" I spluttered. "You think I've finally cracked to some form of post-traumatic stress? It's real! Jamie's world is real. I'm there through Jamie. You're both there—well, Volley isn't but I'd heard rumours that he used to be there. Bloody hells, Wu Lung is alive there too!"

I immediately knew that was the wrong thing to say if I was trying to show that I had been able to move myself past Iceland in a healthy manner. Both Volley and Flurry turned towards me with sympathetic expressions and I had to fight the urge to bite their heads off.

I tried a different tack. "Look, I'm fine with you lot not believing me about the parallel world part. Honestly, it's a load off of my shoulders. But Jamie really has gone a bit around the bend and I could use some help dealing with her."

Volley half raised his hand. "Does this have anything to do with why you wanted me to sleep with you?"

I felt my face flush even as Flurry gave him a curious look. "That's not what I said—or meant. But yes, she's sort of gotten into my head and I'm worried that I wont be able to wake up on my own anymore. I think I'd need somebody else to bring me out of it and make sure I don't drop into my own coma."

"A result of this possession ability you attribute to her?" Flurry asked.

"Yes."

"The same possession ability you claim she herself told you about?"

"Right, she's demonstrated the ability to temporarily disable other humans she's tried to possess. But she can pretty much completely take over any creatures with relatively simple minds."

"Creatures like that kitten you've been holding in your arms this whole time?" Volley asked.

Like the—oh.

I blanched and looked down, half afraid to find the kitten smirking at me with an unnaturally human-like expression. Instead I discovered that it had fallen asleep at some point during our discussion. As the three of us fell silent, it seemed to sense the change in mood and mewled piteously, reach out with one arm to bat against my chest. I absent-mindedly adjusted my posture and began scratching its head with my free hand, which seemed enough to quiet it back down.

Could this have been Jamie all along? I didn't sense her at all, but that wasn't exactly a brand-new occurrence. I shook my head and looked back up to find the other two watching me.

"If that's Jamie, she doesn't look like she's exactly in a hurry to up and claw us to death," Volley remarked.

"Peter," Flurry admonished him with a glare. She turned back towards me. "James, you may be correct. Or you may not be. One thing that I am certain of, however, is that you are currently under a great deal of stress. If you were still my responsibility, I would bench you."

She closed her eyes briefly in exasperation as Volley broke into a fit of coughing that sounded more like a well-hidden 'hah'. "As it stands right now, as someone who is simply concerned for your health, I would strongly suggest that you take a few days off and return to your normal schedule when you resume your duties."

"So that's it then?" I asked. "You're not going to do anything?"

"Even if you were being completely factual and truthful," Flurry replied, "what then? If Jamie is truly making trouble in a world completely beyond our reach, what could we possibly do to resolve that sort of situation?"

I slumped. "I don't know... I just thought you could do... something."

Flurry and Volley traded glances. Volley shrugged and twirled his finger around his ear and Flurry shook her head at his display.

"One of us will check back with you tomorrow," Flurry promised. "In the meantime, I suggest you attempt to reconnect with your family. Do something that is not cape-related and just relax. Can you commit to at least that much?"

"We'll see," I said glumly.

ooo

Volley had volunteered to walk me back home, though from the tone of his voice I assumed that the offer wasn't genuine, simply a continuation of his earlier joke. I declined, wanting to be alone with my thoughts.

Or not entirely alone. Although it wasn't until I had turned down the street to my parents' flat that the voice I had been expecting decided to show itself.

That didn't quite go as I'd expected it to, but I'm not in a position to complain.

I slowed to a stop and glanced down my chest. The kitten stared back at me with a disturbingly knowing look and I shook my head. I started to lower myself to the street and reached out with one hand to pick it up by the scruff of its neck.

Don't put me down, Jamie interrupted me. This girl's too tired to walk anywhere, I don't think I've ever had her stay up this late before. There was an almost imperceptible shift in the kitten's posture and then Jamie was floating before me, staring down at the kitten fondly. The kitten simply shifted in my arms slightly and promptly fell asleep again.

"Cute, isn't she?" she cooed.

"Adorable," I said flatly as I stood up again. "How'd you get her all the way over here from the downtown?"

"I carried her, of course," Jamie said, sounding affronted. "I'm not so cruel as to make a kitty walk the whole distance by her lonesome self."

"How did you carry—"

"Oh, and feel free to just bring her inside. Mama already knows about her. Sort of." Jamie looped around in midair and flew towards the restaurant. The main floor's lights were off, having been closed for some time, so she simply ascended to the second floor and floated through my bedroom window.

I followed her inside, taking the more mundane route through the restaurant on the ground floor. When I climbed the stairs, I found Mum staring at me—or rather, at the sleeping kitten in my arms—with a displeased expression.

"I thought I had told you already," she scolded me. "The cat does not go through the eating area! Use your window if you want to bring it inside!"

"Er... yes, Mum. Sorry," I said bewilderedly. She let me pass without any further complaints, instead heading downstairs muttering how she'd have to run the place over with a vacuum the next morning.

I stepped into my room to find Jamie grinning at me.

"Do I want to know?" I asked her.

She pointed towards a secluded corner of the room I rarely ventured and I was only half-surprised to find a small blanket-lined basket sitting there. I placed the still-sleeping kitten in the basket—in the room's light I noticed her fur was bicoloured, mostly black with a few large patches of white across her belly and face. I continued my inspection of the kitten for a few more moments before I turned my attention back towards Jamie.

We stared at each other for several long seconds. "I'm surprised you held back from—I don't know—attacking Flurry and Volley, claws deployed for... clawing," I said finally.

"I keep telling you that I'm not crazy, but do you ever listen? Nooo. To what purpose would attacking them have served me?" Jamie rolled her eyes and reclined in midair. "It'd leave me alone versus two others—three if you jumped in to help them. It would completely validate all of your claims in their eyes and they'd have no choice but to help you out." She threw a glance towards the corner of the room and let a soft, silly smile grow on her face. "Also the kitty would probably get hurt."

"What are you afraid of that you're willing to hide yourself from Flurry and Volley?" I demanded.

"Nothing," she said. "I've got nothing against Flurry. It's Sunny and everyone else in my world that I've got a problem with. I'm nothing here, I get that. But I shouldn't have to be dependent on anything in the place where I belong. I shouldn't have to be forced to do anything I don't want to when there's actually something I can do about it."

She straightened up and slowly floated towards me, eyes focused completely on mine. "Mama and Papa left me because they didn't want to be responsible for me? Fine. I can be responsible for myself. Sunny keeps trying to decide things for me, like where I should live and what I should eat. I can make my own decisions. Karen likes being around me, I can tell. But Sunny doesn't want her being friends with me? I think I'll be the judge of that, too, in her place."

"I think she couldn't decide for herself because you knocked her out," I pointed out. "And that was you. I may have been your instrument, but I'm starting to figure out when you're taking control over me."

"Are you? Do you really have the self-awareness to know when your will isn't your own?"

"Yeah," I said. "I'm learning more every day, as much as I don't want to." I stabbed my hand towards the kitten's basket. "Just how long did it take you to get her used to my presence by hijacking my body?"

She brought her hands up and clapped slowly, although her hands made no sound. "Only a few days. She's young, only a few weeks I think. She imprinted fairly quickly, especially once I brought her here and gave her a warmer place to live than that box she had before. The harder part was getting her used to my presence without running off too much. She actually probably likes you better than me at the moment."

"You brought her here, which is how Mum knows about her," I concluded, pinching the bridge of my nose. I sighed. "And you used my body to do it, which is why she thinks I know. Is this why I've been feeling a bit tired these last few days?"

"I waited to bring it up until you were aware of her, but 'Jamie' isn't a bad name for her, don't you think?" she chirped, ignoring the last. "That way you can bring me along whenever you're out in civvies and I can use her as a disguise. The normals wont even think twice if you're randomly talking to your cat like a normal person, I hear lots of pet owners do that."

"Enough about the cat!" I exclaimed. "Jamie, can't you see that what you're doing is so far afield of common sense? Even if not that, then what about the fact that you're forcing a choice on your friend that she might not approve of?"

"Karen will come around," she said with conviction. "She's just a bit surprised, possibly a bit uncertain, but that's just because everything had to happen so quickly. Sunny's really too domineering, I'm surprised she's stayed with her so long. It'll be good for her to get out from underneath her thumb."

I shook my head. "It's a bad job all around, if you ask me."

"Well, it's a good thing I haven't asked anything of you," she said. Her eyes bored into mine. "What you need to understand is that I don't need you either, James. I'm not dependent on you, I don't need to identify myself by my relation with you. I can be my own person. You need to back off and accept that."

"I can't do that, Jamie," I said sadly. "Like it or not, we're family. Misguided or not, I still feel like I have to protect you. And if that means stopping you from what you're doing, then so be it."

Jamie stared at me for several more moments, then finally glanced away. "We'll see," she said. "Have a nice sleep, James."

...

Jamie pulled her vanishing act fairly quickly after that. I found some pet food in the pantry and filled up a small bowl which I took back upstairs and left it next to the sleeping kitten. I hoped that Jamie had somehow house-trained her new pet, but otherwise I had more pressing concerns.

It was barely past midnight, far earlier than I normally went to be in my nocturnal schedule. I scribbled a quick note on a piece of scratch paper, a message to anyone coming to see me, telling them to wake me up in the morning—no matter what it took. After taping it to the outside of my bedroom door, I settled into my bed and simply lay there, hoping I could put myself to sleep using sheer boredom.

It worked... eventually. The transition was somehow more noticeable than I had ever previously recalled it being, which was helpful because it took me several moments to realise that the darkness of my room had been replaced with a slightly different quality of darkness.

"Hey... "

My vision snapped back into focus, revealing a large room that had obviously seen better days. Dust, dirt, and cobwebs littered every wall and floor space and piles of some sort of semi-reflective material were bunched around the corner. An empty table stood in one corner, adjacent to an open door that looked like it led deeper into the abandoned structure. I quickly scanned the walls and found a tracked door that had rusted over. Some of the rust had been scraped from the rails, a sign that the door had been recently used.

I finally turned towards the source of the voice and nearly froze in shock. The room had no working lights nor windows and I hadn't noticed Karen in the relative darkness at first. She was sitting against one of six support pillars that ran from floor to ceiling, closest to the table and the inside doorway, tied in place with a length of rubber tubing around her arms and waist. Her glasses were missing and she slumped with obvious fatigue, but she stared at me out of the corner of one eye.

"Hey," she repeated. "Are you sane?"

"Sane?" I repeated blankly. I swept the room again, finding it oddly familiar although I couldn't quite place where I'd recognised it from. A thought suddenly occurred to me and my head whipped back towards the girl. "Have you been awake this whole time?"

"Oh, good," Karen said. "You're back. And no, I've caught a few naps here and there. Maybe I'll take another one now that you seem to have regained your senses. You're pretty creepy as an automaton, did you know that?"

"Back up, just back up," I said. "What's happened here?"

Karen glanced down at her restrained hands. "Well, offhand I'd say I'm a prisoner. Jamie wasn't saying anything, but you were doing all sorts of things... and you had this utterly blank look on your face."

"...like there was no life behind it?" I guessed, remembering what Jamie's avatar had looked like when she wasn't all there.

"Yeah. Like I said, creepy." Karen gave me a wry grin. "I must ask, did I upset her somehow?"

"No, actually. If anything, I think she honestly believes she's helping you." I frowned at her. "You're taking this remarkably well."

"Oh, I'm absolutely terrified out of my wits," Karen admitted, still in that cheerful tone. "But I like to think I can snark my way out of anything. A coping mechanism, I suppose you could say."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"For what? I guess you could make the case that you weren't fully in control of your actions. In fact I'd say it's not a coincidence that you seem to have reverted to the nice, little ghosty I've come to know after Jamie went to bed." Karen closed her eyes and rested her head against the pillar behind her. "Please tell me I'm not going to turn into you. Lie if you need to."

"Er, what?"

"Are you one of her past victims? I'd really hate to think this of her, but she didn't kill you and turn you into... that, did she?"

"What?! No! No no no, Jamie's power doesn't work out like that at all."

Karen smiled, though she didn't open her eyes again. "Oh, that's a relief to know."

I tried to smile back, but simply taking in the situation around me killed any attempt before I could even start it. I shook my head to clear it, then pointed off to the side. "Um, I hope you don't think I'm abandoning you, but are you going to be okay if I head out to explore a bit?"

"Knock yourself out," Karen replied. "It's not like I'm going anywhere."

I floated away at a slow pace, keeping an eye on her to make sure she'd really be okay. When she didn't do anything in response, I flipped myself around and began a quick tour of the building.

The internal doorway led to a small hallway that terminated in a pair of small rooms along one side, and a lavatory to the other. One of the rooms was completely empty, ignoring the random debris that cluttered the floor. The other had a small desk and a broken bed frame. The mattress had been tossed to the floor and Jamie's wheelchair was locked into place, her sleeping body sprawled along the dusty mattress itself.

The room that Karen had been tied up in was clearly the main area, the tracked door led outside to a relatively overgrown area. Sunny's car was parked outside, suggesting the means Jamie had used to bring herself and her 'totally-not-a-prisoner'-friend over here. The whole structure wasn't terribly far from a riverbank. That final detail twigged a memory that had me going back through the rooms and around the nearby woods to make sure. Although it was missing a waterwheel, there was no doubt in my mind that we were in the same location as Volley's hideout in my world.

I floated back inside, both pleased and disturbed by the information. On one hand, I had a relatively good idea of where we were so I knew that if I could somehow manage it, I could have Karen returned to her home. The problem lay in the fact that Volley had been more or less a recluse. He'd either specifically built this structure or repurposed an existing one for the sole reason that it was fairly distant from the rest of civilisation. The nearest house was beyond my tether range, so there was no way I could go out for help.

As I settled back into a watchful position over Karen, she spoke up in a conversational tone, though she let her eyes rest shut.

"So, what is the deal with you two, if you don't mind my asking?"

"What do you mean?"

"I normally try not to pry—it's sort of counter-productive when you're trying to get people to comfortable around you. But considering the situation I think I'm allowed a few indiscretions." She cracked one eye open to stare at me, though it was slightly unfocused without her glasses to help her. "What's the story behind you and Jamie?"

I thought back to Flurry and Volley's responses not a few hours ago and grimaced. "I doubt it's anything you'd believe," I said.

Karen didn't try to protest that, or insist that she'd understand no matter what. She didn't reply at all for a good several minutes, and when she did finally speak up again, it was with something completely different.

"I nearly died when I was younger," she said.

I blinked and looked over to find her staring directly at me. She was still slumped against the pillar, but her eyes were unusually serious and she was lacking her ever-present grin.

"Both of my parents had died when I was little," she continued. "My mum to an illness, my dad to a car accident. Sunny and I were raised by an auntie from my mum's side of the family, though she was a batty old hag and neither of us really liked her."

"I'm sorry for your loss," I said automatically.

She snorted at the expected trite, but didn't comment on it directly. "Auntie didn't much care for any sprogs of my dad—in fact the whole mother's side of my family seemed to hate him. She didn't pay too much attention to us, so Sunny pretty much had to do everything. One day when I was, oh... maybe eleven or twelve? We took a daytrip to York. Beautiful place, I'd recommend going there if you haven't. Except we went there in the winter. It was a pretty bad one, actually, I don't remember what made us think that was a good time to go."

"Cold?" I asked conversationally.

"Freezing, windy, and completely snowed in." She lifted her hands to about chest-height from her sitting position. "Snow on the streets up to this high, if you can imagine. An equal amount on the rooftops. So here we are, we've just crossed the River Ouse and ducked onto a side street, when all of a sudden a snowdrift slides off a nearby roof and falls smack dab on top of me. I'm just a lil' un, mind you. It knocks me out cold." She chuckled at her own little pun.

"And you survived?"

She patted her chest in several places, then looked at me and nodded. "Apparently so. It was a near thing, though. It was a big roof and that was a lot of snow on top of me. Naturally I don't remember much of the actual event, but Sunny's never really forgotten it. She tried digging me out as soon as she realised what had happened. Auntie was useless, of course. She just sat to the side and screamed her head off. Worse, there was a whole street full of bystanders—regular folk going about their day—who simply stood by and watched."

Karen's eyes seemed to stare off into the distance. "Sunny thinks I would have died that day. Except my Auntie's screams seemed to have been some use. Some homeless bloke heard her and ran over to help. Had a big, honking dog, from what Sunny tells me. With their help, I was dug out quicker than you can say 'blizzard'."

I simply stared, unable to process just what must have been going through Sunny's head as she found herself unable to find her sister, the last remnants of her immediate family. What it must have been like for her to dig as fast as she could, knowing that she might not be doing enough. The relief she must have felt when an absolute stranger helped her and laid her fears to rest. Actually, now that I thought about it, a horrifying suspicion had crept into my mind...

"If you ever wanted to know why it is we do what we do, that's pretty much it," Karen said. "There was no possible way we could have repaid that man, whoever he was. Unfortunately he slipped away whilst Sunny and my auntie rushed me to the hospital. They were never able to find him and thank him properly. But a whole crowd of people around and the only person to help us is a vagrant? Sunny decided then and there that she wouldn't ignore folks like that. That she'd be doing everything she could to help them get back on their feet and give them second chances at life, just like they gave me mine."

I shook my head. "That... that's a remarkable story," I said. "I'm glad there are people like you around. Did you ever find your saviour?"

Karen shook her head. "Nah. We tried going back a few months later to try to find him, but we'd heard that he'd moved on. Apparently he's one of those transient types. We were half-hoping he'd run into us one day, all the way down here, but after all this time I'm not sure either of us could recognise him even if we saw him."

"Pity."

"Ain't it just?" A smile finally returned to her face as she regarded me with half-lidded eyes. "Your turn."

"For what?" I asked.

"To tell me a story," she said with that maddening grin. "Fair's fair. I told you one of mine, I ought to get one of yours."

I simply stared at her even as her smile widened at my annoyed expression. Part of me wanted to simply ignore her, but another part of me felt like sharing. Perhaps it was because I wanted some validation of my own. Karen was probably less likely to disregard my warnings, considering she was living out the consequences already. Part of me felt like there wouldn't be a better time, considering Jamie was still asleep, although I couldn't say for how much longer.

I closed my eyes and tried to centre myself. "Fine," I said. "Let me tell you about an overly confident fellow who was too self-absorbed with his own fears and problems to see those of a person very close to him. He called himself Looking Glass... "

ooo

Karen fell asleep before I was completely done with the recitation of my life's story, but somehow it didn't bother me. Just the act of telling someone about myself—having told multiple people in fact—made me feel lighter than I had in months, possibly even years.

Even as I came to this realisation, I felt a sort of mental summons backed by a strong compulsion. Almost without thinking or being aware of my own response, I found myself in the inner room whilst Jamie sleepily raised herself into a sitting position. I found myself automatically bracing the wheelchair whilst she climbed into the seat, though she elected to propel herself to the lavatory.

"Karen's asleep," I told her as she did her business. "She's had a long night, I'd suggest letting her sleep herself out."

I've got no arguments against that, she sent back to me, apparently still too tired to speak coherently. Need to scrounge up some food anyhow.

"And where did you expect to do that?"

There's a market out there somewhere. We passed it on the way here. I'm sure they'll be open to some zero-finger discounts.

I rolled my eyes. "Kidnapping and shoplifting—my, you're certainly going full-on villain, aren't you?"

I've even got a kick-arse name lined up, she said with good cheer. What do you say to Poltergeist?

"...is this because your 'power' is a ghost that can throw material objects around willy-nilly?"

Hey, I never said it was terribly original, I just said it was kick-arse. It's better than Looking Glass, anyhow.

"I think I'll take offense to that," I muttered. I might have said more, but a muffled crack suddenly filled the air and the building shuddered slightly. Without even thinking about it, I rose vertically until I was outside and above the building, partly covered by the tree-canopy.

The sun was just barely peeking over the horizon, there wasn't quite enough light in the forest to make spotting anything easy. I spun in a quick circle, trying to find the source of the odd sound when it suddenly repeated itself, much louder and closer than before. Even as I zeroed in on it, I saw a flash of red just as a nearby tree trunk was splintered by a fireball with the loud crack I'd heard earlier. The tree wavered in mid-air for a few brief moments, then came crashing down with another ground-shaking impact.

There was a rush of smaller sounds all blending together and I watched as a large group of men and women clad in various styles of clothing—all of them coloured red and gold—marched into the clearing. Behind them was an armoured figure in the same red and gold. The crowd parted before him as he walked towards the front, a tall woman following at his heels. She was also dressed in the reds the rest of the mob was wearing.

Er, Jamie? I sent, knowing she was already tapping into my senses.

I see it, she replied grimly, although there was an undercurrent of excitement in her mental tone.

"Oy! To the fuckers inside that busted up shack you call a hideout!" Wu Lung shouted loud enough to scatter the local wildlife, if there had been any left after his display of pyrotechnics. "Next time you decide to steal a car, make sure it doesn't have a Tracker!"

ooo