Reflection 3.07

We met in Darkness.

A featureless blank devoid of any and all sensations—there was no touch, no feeling, no sight or sound. Neither of us could see or hear each other, but we were still aware of their presence. We were still so closely attuned to each other it was as if the two of us were standing in broad daylight.

"Hello?" I called out.

I felt the other presence shifting almost reluctantly.

"You shoved me into your chest," the other voice grumbled. "Do you have any idea just how weird that is?"

"I wanted to make sure I had your attention, Jamie."

"Poltergeist," she corrected.

"There's no one else around, Jamie," I countered. "You'll always be my little sister to me."

"Any family relation between us is just a fabrication of the mind," she pointed out. "Your parents are not mine, even if they share the exact same names."

"Okay, stop," I said firmly. "Here's the deal. I'm going to be talking to you. You're free to listen or not, but what you are not to do is come up with a snappy comment regarding how little the two of us share in common. That the two of us aren't really the same person or how our circumstances aren't really identical. I get that now—what I want isn't the same thing you want—so there's no need to keep repeating that old argument. Deal?"

I had the impression of her crossing her arms as she regarded me sullenly. "Whatever."

"Fantastic."

She stared at me in silence for several long moments. "You seem to be quite bitter all of a sudden," she commented.

"Gee, I wonder why?" I replied, not bothering to keep the sarcasm out from my tone. "Maybe it has to do with the fact that you're doing your very level best to turn my life on its head."

"Not hard to do," she snorted. "Your life is dull. You have about as much presence in the world as a blank sheet of paper in the wind. It's not very hard to send it blowing out of control."

"Why?" I demanded. "I keep asking but you just keep telling me that you're finally doing what you've always wanted to do without any restrictions. Or that nobody seems to listen to you. Or that everybody seems to have it in for you—you're just retaliating against them just as harshly. Well guess what? I've been looking back on my life and I think that if anything, I've been cutting you far too much slack. I've tried to listen to you but you don't seem to want to explain. As for everybody being out to get you—you've just attacked a group of heroes!"

"Not just you and Flurry; I also got her old boss and his current flavor of the month," she pointed out helpfully.

"That's even worse!" I shouted. I sighed and palmed my forehead. "Jamie—"

"Poltergeist."

"—are you trying to become a villain?!"

She didn't reply for several moments. Instead she looked around the Darkness—at my mindscape—the way a visiting guest might inspect a house's decor. She drifted back and forth as she surveyed the void from one 'end' to the 'other'. Finally she turned her attention back towards me. "I noticed you seem to have taken care of the little challenge I set upon you," she remarked. "Colour me impressed. How'd you manage it so quickly?"

I shook my head at the sudden change of topic, but decided to go along with her for a few moments at least. "I can see where and how we're connected," I explained. "The differences between you and I are pronounced enough to differentiate our energies if you know where to look. I admit I probably wouldn't know the first thing about forcing myself onto someone—that's likely your own powers at work there—but I think I know enough now to be able to throw off your influence over me."

She blinked in surprise at my explanation. "You can't have possibly learned how to do that in just a few days," she scoffed.

"Learned?" I replied. I shook my head. "No, not quite. There weren't really any techniques involved. I guess you could say that it's more like a different mindset," I said as I tapped my head. "More importantly, I think I've figured out something yourself that you might have overlooked."

She scoffed. "You. Figuring out something that I missed. That's rich."

"You're not as strong as you say you are," I stated bluntly. "Think back to all the people you've tried to take over. At worst you've given them enough of a shock to knock them out briefly or make them stumble, but when was the last time you've taken control over something?"

"Let's see," she said, tapping her finger against her chin. "How about... you? And there's also the matter of the fifty or so guys I just had a few minutes ago, perhaps you recall them as well?"

"Right," I admitted, "but Flurry told me you tried to get her too and failed. I don't think you've ever succeeded against Nightwalker. And would I be correct in saying that before you got to Duplex, you tried to hit Ajax? How'd that turn out?"

She stared at me for a long few moments. "My power works," she said at last.

I nodded. "It does, against birds, against cats, against people and things with very simple thought processes—"

"Oh, so now you're calling yourself a half-wit? What do you need me for, then?"

"—and me. But I don't think I can be categorised in the same grouping as the rest. I think it's something more. Something related to the link we share with each other."

"Let's get one thing straight," she said. She jabbed a finger at me, but had her other arm folded across her torso. "I don't—I don't need you. There's nothing special between us except for the fact that I'm stuck with you." I caught a flash of something in her expression, but her emotions were held in as tightly as the arm she had wrapped around herself.

I shook my head. "It's true, we've got something else." I met her disbelieving stare and held out a hand to wave her forward. "C'mon, I want to show you something."

She still looked unconvinced, but grudgingly followed as I turned and headed further into the Darkness. I led her deep into the depths of my psyche—to the breach in my mindscape where she had gained access to my world. I pointed it out to her. "You know what this is, right?"

"Of course," she replied. "It's how I figured out how to consciously cross-over into the other—waaaait a sec, you didn't do anything to my body, did you?!" she demanded.

"You mean like taking control over your body for the expressed purpose of taking it to strange places, speaking with strange people, and doing things you'd never have done yourself in a million years even if massive quantities of alcohol had been involved?" I asked dryly.

"Yes," she said heatedly. "Because if you did, then I swear you'll regret it when I totally—" she paused and blinked as what I'd been saying finally sunk in. "Oh."

"Yeah... I think that ship has sailed," I pointed out. "But no, to answer your question—I didn't do anything to your body. I was just exploring on my own, trying to figure out how the process worked for myself. Also, I was wondering about that thing on the bridge, I'm curious to hear your thoughts about it."

She narrowed her eyes at me. "Bridge? What bridge?"

"I'm talking about the bridge that spans the gap between us. Maybe you just didn't take enough time to perceive it, in too much of a rush perhaps?"

I floated through the gap and caught a glimpse of her following me through. I emerged into the brilliant darkness that my mind had categorised as The Bridge. A darkness even deeper than either of our minds, emptier even that spanned the whole of this area. At the centre of it—or at least what I assumed was the centre—was a brilliant sliver of light. It did nothing to dispel the darkness around it—one moment it was completely pitch black, the next moment it was pure light. It was like a crystal in the way that it seemed to glow from within, yet partially obscured. Almost as if the shard was there, yet not wholly there. Part of our both of our worlds, yet not belonging to either.

I was about to ask for Jamie's opinion when I noticed her simply continuing past me with a blank, unseeing expression on her face. I reached out to grab her, almost by reflex, before I'd even considered that neither of us could really touch anything in our current forms. It was to my surprise, then, when I succeeded in snaring her wrist and bringing her to a dead stop beside me.

The dead look in her eyes remained for several moments, but then she shook her head and they cleared up. Her gaze immediately went to the glowing shard, then towards me, then back to the shard. Finally she looked down at our linked arms and reeled away, tearing her hand out of my grasp. "What the—what is that?!" she demanded.

"I'm not sure," I admitted. "I was honestly sorta hoping you could tell me."

"I've... never seen this before," she said. "Never." She looked around, as if noticing her surroundings for the first time. "Where are we?"

"As far as I can tell, we're between your world and mine." I shrugged. "I've been calling it The Bridge—not very imaginative, but I think it works."

"You're right, imagination is not one of your strong points." She glanced back to the opening from which we'd arrived from, forward to her destination, then finally floated forward towards the shard. "It seems apt, I guess." She leaned in closer, raising a hand as if to touch it and I held my breath in anticipation, carefully watching for any reaction.

It was almost anticlimactic when nothing happened as she pressed her hand against the glowing light. Emboldened, she began repeatedly tapping a finger against various points. "So what does it do, other than glow? I mean, not that there's anything wrong with being shiny and all..."

I had to fight to hold back a grin as she trailed off. Her eyes were lit up with the same childish curiosity and wonder that had long characterised Jamie for much of the time that I'd known her. For a brief moment, I could have even pretended that the last few days had not actually taken place.

Still, as much as I was loathe to interrupt this innocent interlude, there were still things we needed to discuss and this distraction was not a good way to keep up a dialogue. "Jamie..."

"Poltergeist," she absent-mindedly corrected me, still prodding at the light.

"Jamie," I repeated firmly. I waited as she reluctantly pulled herself away from the shard, her face losing its good cheer and settling into a studiously neutral expression. "I think this is a point in my favor," I remarked. "You can't know everything. You might never have even found this if it weren't for me."

"Maybe... or maybe I would have." She shrugged. "It didn't take you long to figure out how to control your own body once I'd demonstrated the process for you, did it now?"

"You're missing the point," I said. "Neither of us know everything about ourselves. We're barely qualified to plan out our own lives on our own, much less unilaterally make decisions for the other." I pressed a hand to my chest. "It took me a long time—and the help of an outside perspective—to realise it, but I've done you a disservice. I've let you run free far too long without any real supervision, but I also tried to force my world upon you. I never really gave proper consideration to your own existence in your world."

I bowed my head in apology. "I'm sorry, Jamie. I did this to you."

She lifted an eyebrow at me. "...That's it? You take responsibility for everything I've been doing as if you had any say in it? Isn't that exactly what you were doing before—trying to dictate my life when you thought I didn't know any better?"

I looked up, confused. "If I hadn't interfered with your life, you might not have done the things that you did. How is that not my fault?"

"Aargh," she slapped the heel of her hand against her forehead. "And here I was getting ready to hear an earth-shattering epiphany that would make me see the errors of my ways and bring me back to the side of good." She said the last sentence in a falsetto, fluttering her eyelashes and clasping her hands together against her cheek. Head tilted to the side, she then narrowed her eyes at me. "You suck at this, James."

"I-I'm sorry?" I stammered reflexively.

She lowered her hands and jabbed a finger at me. "Let's get one thing straight: you are incredibly self-centred and you have a massive guilt complex." She pulled her hand back and used that finger to begin counting off points on her other hand. "You've blamed yourself for the trigger event that gave us our powers. You've blamed yourself for my coma. You're apparently blaming yourself for not being a hard enough authority figure. And you're blaming yourself for not being able to 'control' me when I decided I suddenly felt like going all eeevil~" She wiggled the fingers on both her hands as she said the last part, then held out her hand with all fingers outstretched.

She lowered one finger. "Nothing and nobody determines who gets a trigger event—any ideas to the contrary are just ridiculous. Everything we know about them tells us that they're just a response to severe traumatic events. If anybody is responsible, they'd have to be a God-tiered being of some kind."

She lowered another finger, "Next, my coma. I seem to recall having said my piece on that and I'm not going to repeat myself. And no—before you even think about it—the accident where we triggered wasn't your fault either." She peered at me closely, then nodded as I remained silent. "Good, I was starting to worry you'd find a way to blame yourself for that too, somehow."

Another finger went down, then the last one as well. "I've said this before as well, but I guess this is important enough to say it again. You're not the boss of me. You don't control me, you don't order me. I am not your puppet, nor am I your minion. The days where you just point me in a direction, where you tell me to fly and I reply with, 'yes, but how far?'—those days are long past.

"I'm not doing what you, or what anybody else wants anymore. From now on, I'm doing whatever I want."

I struggled to find my voice again in the face of her outburst. "Jamie, what is it that you want?"

"What I want is for you, your friends, and your parents to take their compassion and self-righteous kindliness and shove it up their arses." She loomed over me as if to jab a finger against my chest. "What I want is to have my own set of friends and loved ones that aren't tangentially attached to you. What I want is for people to look at me without pity. I'm not an invalid, I'm not a charity case, I'm not helpless!

"I am not your crippled little sister, James. I'm not even part of your family. Hells, I'm not even a part of my family!" She slapped a hand against her chest. "I'm me. I don't have to define myself by associations to you. I—I don't need you..."

She settled back, breathing heavily as she recovered from her rant. "I'm me," she repeated quietly. Her voice grew in strength as she straightened up to her full height. "I'm not Looking Glass' sidekick. I'm not 'J'—not just your power. I'm not your partner. I'm Jamie. And... and if it means breaking out from the mould you've cast me into..." she said as her shoulders slumped slightly, "...if the world wont let me be who I want to be, then I can be a villain too. I can be Poltergeist."

I blinked as she wrapped her arms around herself, her mouth moving silently as she seemed to repeat her own words to herself. Despite the fact that we were currently the same size as each other, she had never seemed quite so small as she seemed to be now. I shifted my focus to the side and saw the shard twinkling there, if not quite between us, then equally distant.

'A Bridge,' I had called it. A Bridge that spanned our worlds. A single, alien presence that linked the two of us together—two individuals out of the infinite numbers there must have been in the multiverse. Not that I had met any other copies of myself, but I didn't think it was a coincidence that the two of us had developed parahuman abilities in tandem with each other. It seemed obvious in hindsight, but I still kicked myself a bit for not having put the pieces together earlier.

An idea formed within my mind and I turned back towards Jamie, the heavy weight of a resolution settling across my shoulders. "You 'can be' Poltergeist," I repeated her words. "Can. Not want to be."

She lifted her eyes towards me and narrowed them. "Your point?" Her tone was so venomous that I nearly reconsidered my plan of action.

I mentally shook my head and pressed on. "Let's put aside hero versus villain for a moment," I said. "Jamie, if you had the chance to be a normal girl—if you could be a regular person without any of this cape nonsense—would you take that opportunity?"

She looked down at herself—at her whip-thin, transparent, unnaturally proportioned body. She looked at me, identical in almost every way except for subtle differences in our facial features. She slowly nodded. "If—and this is a big if—none of this had ever happened, I think I might have been happier. Why?" she demanded, suddenly suspicious.

I jerked my thumb towards the shard between us. "I think I might have an idea of what this thing is. It's what's maintaining our link. More than that, I'm willing to bet that it's the source of our powers in some manner. I'm not one-hundred percent certain... but still reasonably confident. I have no idea if it'll fix anything, but what do you think might happen if we somehow destroyed it? Or at least removed it?"

"What?" Her face paled, a remarkable thing considering our spectral forms. She glanced towards the shard again as if seeing it for the first time. "That's... but what will happen to us?"

"Well, if my theory is correct, we'll both get kicked back into our respective bodies and our own worlds, we'll lose our powers, and we'll probably never meet again. You get a clean break from everything related to me—the chance to build your own relationships without having to worry that I'm influencing your circumstances somehow." I paused. "I'm not sure if you'd get the use of your legs back, but if that's a side-effect of your powers, then maybe?"

"Wha—but... what about you?" she demanded. "Wait wait wait. If you do this, we'll be separated too—you're okay with getting rid of me?"

I did my best to keep my face expressionless. "As long as you're happy, then yeah. Like you just said, I seem to have a 'massive guilt complex' where you're concerned. I'd go even further and call it a sort of self-imposed martyrdom. If this is something that will improve your life, I'm all for it." I raised my hand and energies from around the area began streaming around it. "So? We can solve most of our issues right now. The only cost is our powers, but that's sort of a given for us to become normal again. Mundane, even."

"But... it's not just our powers... you..."

"Sunny might still be mad at you for a little while, but there's no way you could be a threat if you didn't have me around. I don't know if she'd still let you near her sister, but once you show yourself to be harmless, she might come around."

"But... you..."

I shrugged. "I'd probably lose what little contact I have with the others when they move on, but I guess I'm used to not having very many friends to begin with. I can cope." I floated towards the shard with my arm outstretched.

"You're bluffing," she said frantically. Her eyes flickered back and forth between my hand and the shard. "Even if that was the source of our powers—which I'm still not convinced of!—there's no way you'd destroy it. I bet you don't even know how to destroy it!"

"Maybe," I admitted with a shrug. "I do have a horrible track record of figuring out new things on my own. But then again, I've known about this for... how long? And you had never even noticed it until now." I turned to face her, my composure breaking as I gave her a sad smile. "Sayonara, Little Sister," I said. I fell back onto the language Mum had drilled into our heads when we were younger. A final touchstone to happier days.

Good bye.

I lowered myself into a formal bow, not meeting her eyes. "Despite everything that's just happened, I'm truly glad to have gotten to know you."

I turned back to face the shard and inspected the mental energies wrapped around my arm. Closing my eyes, I drew it back, then swung it forward with all of my 'strength' behind it.

"NO!" Jamie shrieked.

I was suddenly thrown sideways as she careened into me at full speed. There was no ground for us to fall upon, so the force of her tackle sent us flipping topsy-turvy through the void. She grabbed at my arm even as the spiralling energy around it vanished into the ether, holding it away from my body as if that would keep me from resummoning it. Eventually we came to a stop with one of her hands holding onto my shoulder while the other grabbed at my wrist.

"Don't leave me all alone!" she pleaded. Her eyes were wide and brimming with unshed tears. For the first time in a very long while, I could feel her emotions as the strength of her sudden fear and despair came crashing through the bond. "Not again! I... you're all I have left. Everybody else is gone. Please, don't leave me alone... "

I remained still, making sure to keep my face impassive in the face of her pleas. "But what about your life? If we don't do this, we'll still be linked together for who-knows-how-long? You'll have to put up with having to deal with my friends and colleagues, as well as me possibly interfering with your own relationships."

"I... I don't know," she said brokenly. "I want to be my own person—really, I do! But... I can't imagine a life without you there. Under my thumb, maybe. Yelling at me. Fighting me. Sometimes... I suppose you could be helping me too. But you're always with me. And I'm always with you. I just don't want you to leave me by myself like everybody else has."

My narrowed my eyes and did my best impression of a stone statue. "You might never walk again. You might have to put up with looks of sympathy—or pity. People will judge you for your perceived disability. For the circumstances of your life, especially if you continue down this path."

Her face screwed up into a look of irritation. "That would really suck, I'm not gonna pretend that it won't. But... it's still better than having to be on my own."

"Sunny might never forgive you. She might never let you near Karen ever again. Heck, Flurry might never forgive you for what you've done today."

"Flurry can just sit on it and spin, for all I care," Jamie replied. "She can't do jack to me. Sunny... Karen... I don't know. I don't want to have to lose the first friend I've made since we triggered. But..." Her shoulders slumped and she pulled away from me to hug her arms against her body. "But I just don't know."

"So," I said, brushing myself off and rising back into a more vertical posture. "What's it going to be, then? You don't want to go back to normal, but we can't continue like this either. No more villainy—at least in my world. That's me setting down my limits. I can promise that I'll try to be more considerate of your thoughts when I'm in control. If I'm not, feel free to knock me over the head. But you can't toe the line anymore, either. You've got to be on your best behaviour from this point onward."

"Always?" she asked. "I can't—I don't know—do a bit of childish disobedience? I don't want to go back to being air-headed, happy Jamie. I want to be me."

"For the immediate future, while you're in my world, you behave," I reiterated. "If we can get through this situation in one piece, then I'll reconsider. When we're in your world... I suppose I'll have to follow your lead, there."

"Until I get arrested," she grumbled. "Just... if they do, don't leave me? Ever? You'll stay by me?"

"Always," I promised. I finally allowed myself a smile as I extended one hand towards her. "Okaeri, Jamie."

Welcome back.

She waffled for a brief moment, chewing on her lip as she stared at everything but me. Finally, she ducked her head and peered up at me through her bangs as she took my hand. "Tadaima, Big Brother."

I'm home.

She was beaming as I took her hand and pulled her back through my mindscape.

ooo

(a/n)—i'm a bit nervous about this update, i wasn't sure i could properly 'resolve' the conflict i had put into place with the characters. a straight up fight was out—not only are my actions scenes kinda... meh... in my own eyes, it wouldn't have worked between the two J's.

also there was a second part to this update dealing with some of the real-world events that would follow, but i felt like it sorta killed the flow of the narrative, so i decided to cut it out. i'm almost positive that at least one of the things happening in this chapter will be considered something of an asspull, and i'd hoped to resolve/explain it in the second part, but again i think that ending this chapter here gives gives it more impact, and the second part will sorta feel like a letdown after it.

aaanyhow. let me know what you think in the reviews. are you happy with the way this was resolved? did you expect something else? are you worried about a karma houdini? we're not quite in the aftermath just yet! but i'm curious to know.