FicWad

Over the next few weeks my opinion slowly changed. Joe might find an answer for me, but it might not come soon enough. My visions began to become more disturbing and context-specific. My dreams, usually a safe haven, became polluted and it seemed as if I was seeing nothing but blood. My blood. My own life coming to an end and that of my friends. I was not enjoying this AT ALL. The fact that it was also Finals week REALLY didn't help. I will be the first to admit that I pushed myself too hard. I swear I must have had a death wish or something. I managed to at least pass all my tests and hand in all my projects but I think I really scared Charles and Alex that last day. However, I was going home over the long Easter weekend and we all figured I'd feel better after the break.

We were wrong. Dead. Wrong.

Easter is always a lightening tour of church, eggs, and a big family dinner for the college student. It's really only one full day of time off, the rest is spent in transit. I felt vaguely ill on the plane but dismissed it as motion sickness. The signs were there and like a frickin' moron I chose to ignore them. Right on cue, at the worse possible moment, I keeled over in the middle of the family dinner. This was the Grandfather of all meltdowns too. I jerked and thrashed, gave back my dinner, foamed at the mouth once I'd emptied my stomach, destroyed my best shirt, tie, and pants with about a quart of blood and worst of all...I rambled. About everything. Charles, Alex, Joe, do gooding, my fits and migraines, nothing was left out. Because my family only heard incoherent fragments of what was going through my head they came to their own incorrect conclusions. They completely misread my friendship bracelet (HELLO? "FRIENDSHIP???") and decided I had triply betrayed my nice, normal, God-fearing family by 1) being Super, 2) being not only gay but also one-third of a threesome, and 3) losing my mind because clearly I wasn't actually seeing shit, I was just making it up. There was a very ugly scene in the hospital where my parents gave me a choice: either give up my life of sin and Superness and allow myself to be committed to a mental institute where I could "get the help I needed", or I could pack my bags and never show my face in PA again. If I chose that I'd sever all ties and would no longer be their son.

All I could think of was my Grandma Ann.

I packed what I could and left.

I took the bus to the airport and spent the night there trying to hold off the nightmares and another nosebleed. Honestly, I think I was too exhausted on all levels to have another meltdown so soon. At the moment...I didn't really care. If I had died on the jet it wouldn't have mattered to me. I never cried outright but I couldn't keep my eyes from welling up. For the first time in my life I felt grateful for the bullies in middle school. They'd taught me well and I hid from the world just how much pain I was in. It was pouring down rain when I finally got back to Fenix. I didn't care. Our apartment wasn't far from the airport and I let the heavens do my crying for me as I walked the five miles in the cold, soaking rain.

Charles and Alex were nothing short of stunned to see me soaked and twitching a day early on the door step. Charles must have seen me bleeding inside because he didn't ask, didn't comment, just took my backpack and let me in. I went to my room and flopped face-down on the bed without even kicking off my sneakers. I was soaking and muddy and ruining my bedspread but I didn't care. Right then, I just wanted to fall asleep and never wake up. It was a good thing I crashed when I did, another meltdown (had I the energy for one) would most likely have killed me and upset as I was, I didn't want to die just yet.

I woke up almost a full three days later, hungry, heartsick, and desperately needing to pee. After taking care of business I showered and changed and went to find the guys. They must have heard me because I found them waiting in the living room with hot chocolate and bagels ready. I always did like breakfast. It's the only meal of the day I'm rested enough to enjoy. I didn't eat much, just enough to shut my stomach up. I hadn't even made it halfway through my explanation of why I had come back early when the tears started falling. Not an anime fountain but a silent, steady flow that ran down my cheeks like the water off the Spanish roof tiles outside. My voice didn't crack or even waver but Charles' eyes were spilling over despite his snarky comments meant to lighten the mood. I tried to smile but my heart wasn't in it. I leaned against Alex's ever-ready shoulder and was thankful that he and Charles thought I was worth keeping. I only had energy for mild tremors that night but Alex held me close with his arms, Charles with his thoughts, until it had passed. We camped in the living room that night like kids at a sleepover party, all huddled together in blankets on the floor. There was nothing weird about it. They were my friends, the only family I had left in the world, and I was hurting. It was as simple as that. I slept that night with my head on Alex's shoulder and Charles' hand on my own, safely shielded from my skin by a double layer of cotton T-shirt and Polar fleece blanket. My heart ached with gratitude just for the contact.

I just kinda hung out and slept a lot that week. I couldn't really get up the energy to do anything else. Charles let me sit and doodle while he worked in the robotics lab and I sat as the lone spectator at rugby practice since no one trusted me to be alone for long. I just wanted to sit and cry for a couple of days but I couldn't. There was class to attend, work to do, homework to finish, and days to save. I went through the motions quietly. I was dead tired but couldn't fall asleep at night. Because of that I usually passed out in Alex's arms, trembling feebly in the throes of a seizure while Charles looked on.

My visions, if anything, got worse. Blood And Death became my recurring nightmare and every time it got worse. I knew now that we'd all die young, particularly me. I didn't tell the guys, at least not the specifics. I couldn't. I didn't know how. My meltdowns started getting more violent as the stress built. Charles and Alex put down throw rugs in a vain attempt to try to spare the carpet from my fits. It didn't help much but we'd learned to buy spot remover in bulk.

One episode in particular stands out in my mind. It had been a long day for all of us. I'd since switched to full time work and part time classes for the sake of tuition and medical benefits and had pulled a double-shift of both that day. The guys had also put in a full day of class, labs, and practice and to top it off we'd had a rough battle with the villain of the week. We'd won, but it'd been an ugly win. None of us had escaped unmarked. We were all in Charles and Alex's room taking a moment to just lay there and rest. They sat on their respective sides of the bed leaning against the headboard, Charles holding an ice pack against Alex's face. I lay stretched on my back across the foot of the bed wondering if my shoulder had been re-broken and if my head was going to explode. I put my hands to my head as if I could block the images that way. Charles noticed the spike in mental activity as well as my modest dramatics and asked what was wrong? I grunted "migraine" and he told me not to fight it, to relax and just fall asleep where I was. They would go through my pockets for change later. I tried to smile but the pain was rapidly escalating. Blurry images were already floating before my eyes and I removed my glasses, holding them shakily out for someone to take before I lost it and accidentally broke them again.

"Ray?" Alex asked, accepting my glasses. I couldn't answer. My head already lolling and unable to hold my balance any longer, I slid off the bedspread and fell to the floor.

"RAY!" Alex shouted as I thudded to the carpet.

"Alex, a little more ATTENTATIVNESS, please?" Charles scolded in concern as he and Alex struggled to get up and help me. "You're supposed to catch him!"

"I couldn't catch him with you holding ice over my eye. I can't catch what I can't see." He wasn't really angry, just afraid for me as well. "At least he didn't have far to fall."

"Yeah, and it's carpeted. He breathing?"

Alex rolled me onto my back and checked my pulse and lungs before answering.

"Yeah, he's okay, just out."

"How bad?"

"/Petit mal/. Just kinda shivering right now."

"Hopefully that's all he'll do. Maybe he'll just pass out."

"Yeah."

I distantly felt Alex gather me up and hold me close. I continued to tremble in his arms while he gently held my head still with one massive hand. Charles sat nearby attempting to gauge my mental state.

"His nose bleeding yet?" he asked. Nosebleeds are a textbook symptom of telepathic overload and the more blood spilled, the more severe the attack.

"Guys," I stammered around my twitching, briefly managing to fight through the flood of images threatening to drown me.

"What, Ray?" Charles asked.

"Call 911," I choked as the vessel in my nose broke and the tide of visions rose to swallow me once more, "otherwise they'll think you did something..."

"Huh?" Alex blinked. I couldn't answer; I was being overwhelmed by the invisible. I began to twitch in earnest and Alex did his best to hang on as blood poured out my nose.

"He's getting worse..." warned Alex, his jersey now stained.

"Hang on to him."

"I am, I'm just worried."

"He's been worse."

"Yeah, but..."

"Let's just see if he comes out of it."

"Whoah! Easy, man!" Alex soothed as my twitches turned to bucking. "He's getting worse. Maybe we could call an ambulance?"

A pause as Charles thought and watched me, weighing the decision of whether or not to call the hospital and blow my cover.

"How bad?" he asked, knowing Alex's answer would make the choice easier.

"Grand mal/," Alex answered as I struggled vainly against him. "Charles I really think we should-/Holy shit!!"

The blood had doubled, surging down my face and all over Alex's jersey, causing me to choke.

"Okay, NOW we are calling the hospital." There was panic in Charles' voice as he got up and ran for the phone. Alex shifted so he could hold me on my side. I heaved and choked an alarming amount of blood all over the carpet.

"CHARLES!!" Alex yelled, honestly afraid now.

"They're on their way!" Charles hollered back.

"I think maybe you should shut him off now, I've never seen him heave this much blood!"

"You have so t-shit." Charles cursed entering the room again and noting the huge puddle I'd made. "Oh that CAN'T be good."

"No shit."

"Ray? Ray, you in there?"

I could only hang in Alex's arms and vomit blood.

"Dammit, where ARE they?" Charles wondered aloud tensely. At that moment the doorbell rang and he jumped up to answer it. The paramedics had arrived.

"You with him?" they asked Alex, assuming incorrectly that we were lovers. Charles was out of the room on the phone again, speaking with someone else.

"Yeah," Alex answered, misreading the question himself.

"You wanna come with him?"

Alex paused to shout back to Charles before climbing into the ambulance with me.

"I'm riding with Ray, meet you at the hospital!"

Of course I don't remember ANY of this. What I know, I know from what Charles and Alex told me later. Alex, apparently, had to do some quick thinking when the paramedics started asking questions about me. The official story was that I was epileptic, except that wasn't really my problem. Alex, not knowing what else to say, gave the honest answer of "I don't know." Given my seizures, the EMS guys decided (incorrectly) that I was having an epileptic fit and all the blood gushing from my face must be from a bitten tongue. I almost choked to death on my own unswallowed blood twice before we reached the ER. Since I hadn't actually bitten my tongue all the gauze they shoved in my mouth only made it hard to spit out the back-drip from my nose. Alex tried his best to explain but nobody was listening. He spent a very tense fifteen minutes in the ER waiting room before he was approached by the smallest man he had ever seen. Clearly the man was a doctor if his clothing was any indication. Alex told me he initially thought he was seeing things. The doctor could have only stood four feet tall at best but he strode right up to Alex and started asking about me.

"The young man is not epileptic," he stated in a thick German accent. "Tell me, vhat is really going on?"

For some reason Alex found himself spilling the entire story. Dr. Straussen listened patiently and told him not to worry, he was a Super too. Charles arrived about ten minutes later and was promptly seized by the shirttail and dragged into the ER by Dr. Straussen so he could shut me off. The reboot did the trick but I was still in pretty bad shape. I'd lost so much blood I needed a transfusion and I'd acquired some nice bruises in all my thrashing. I woke up briefly around 6AM the next morning and then passed out again for another forty-eight hours. I finally came back to myself the afternoon of the third day. Alex and Charles were there waiting, one on either side of my bed. I smiled for them as best I could with my nose packed in ice. A third person sat perched on the end of my bed and I wondered briefly if she was one of my or Alex's nieces. Then it hit me. Here aura was too dazzling and far too mature to be a kid's even though she couldn't have been even a full four feet tall. I realized belatedly that this was Charles' mom, the famous Edna Mode. It made sense that she'd come to visit, being a powerful telepath herself. Still, I was in awe and more than a little flattered that she would come and see me. She must have caught me blushing for she smiled gently.

"Mom and Dr. Karl say you'll be okay," Charles smiled, his expression genuinely glad but weary around the edges. Alex looked tired too. I noticed he was still wearing the same bloodied jeans and jersey he'd had on when I was brought in. Wait a minute...

"Who's Dr. Karl?" I asked, still groggy.

"Zat vould be me." A man not much taller than Ms. Mode entered the room, his white coat marking him as a physician. He spared a strangely significant smile for Ms. Mode before turning his full attention to me. I caught Charles looking far more amused than he had a right to be but concentrated on listening to Dr. Straussen.

The short version was that I had more control over my power than I thought but in all the wrong ways. By holding the visions back I was actually doing myself more damage than I would in just letting them come. He understood that I couldn't afford to wander around half asleep all day but also scolded me for putting off my training for so long. Alex stepped in at that point and explained my family situation. Dr. Straussen's eyebrows rose at this and he said it was impressive I'd lasted so long. Like Joe, the way he said it actually gave me a bit of an ego boost rather than make me nervous. I felt proud of myself for coping as well as I had. For a guy working blind and with no formal training, I felt kinda pleased with myself. However, I still had a lot to learn and no one was quite sure what to teach me. Clairvoyants are a rare breed and they all have the same problem: too much power and nowhere to go with it. Because of this they don't last long and usually die of a brain aneurism before they hit forty. The oldest one on record had died at thirty-eight. THAT was not terribly encouraging. I was already twenty-five and no closer to managing my visions than I was when I was fifteen. Charles' mom taught me several new tricks before she went home but nothing that would help me reign in the nightmares. Charles paged his dad who was the dean of a special school for Super kids out in CA, but he didn't have any really useful information for me either. I needed a teacher and I needed one fast. Immediately, I thought of Joe.