Aiden really, really wished he could just not be an X if it meant dealing with this.

Not really. Not at all. Being an X was something he actually took seriously, which was why he was sitting here waiting for Maya. Despite wanting to do this so very, very, very little. Even not directly thinking about it made all the muscles along his spine in his neck and shoulders curl in on themselves and try to make themselves as small as possible.

It was not comfortable at all, despite the designed-with-exhausted-people-in-mind chair he was in. Poking at his new phone and trying to find some random game to download that might distract him for a few minutes. Pretending he had slept properly. Feeling like he both had been back forever, had maybe never left, and was completely and totally out of place. Like him in a sunbaked frying pan of canola.

Hadn't been fun or appropriate, by the by. Like, at all. It had easily been the worst part of the trip.

He would rather do this than that. Or, rather, what he was waiting for. Which was sitting down and formally talking to a senior X about his mutation. And whatever the @#$%ing @#$% it had done. And how at least stop being so haunted by it, which logically (and by experience, little as he wanted to admit it) required that he know more about it.

He didn't want to know more about it. He knew that it hurt and it was empty and it had torn his life apart without even passing him something sticky to put it back together.

A few years ago, Aiden probably would have completely pretended it had never happened and just buried himself in video games and music and never thought at all, lest it rear up to haunt him more. He'd at least grown up a bit.

Which was stupid and unpleasant and he would rather go back to an ignorant kid with no responsibilities, because that's really what this was about, being a responsible X and not being a liability to the team he did really truly want to be a part of. A team he wanted to help however he could.

And right now, he would probably be less helpful than when everyone had thought he was dead.

...

More dead than he kept being in this video game. Not that the constant deaths stopped him from trying to get through the trap-studded dungeon. He just had to jump there at that exact moment...

For at least a moment, the game held enough of the former teenager's attention that he didn't look quite so miserable about life.

She had an appointment to keep. So of course that's when Rowan decided that he needed a purple juice box instead of a red one. And of course she was the mom and she was supposed to know these things. So when she'd guessed... and it was inevitably wrong... she couldn't even pick him up from where he thrashed on the ground. Every time she tried, his little shoulders would dissipate her hands as he threw himself backwards.

He knew how she had a hard time holding weight. He knew she couldn't see color. He knew she could hear much better than she could see, or touch, or feel. He knew and he wanted it to be different from how it was so he'd tested her. She'd failed on every front.

Her last straw of patience was straining under the result of all that testing. "TIME OUT, YOUNG MAN." The words bellowed through the halls of the Mansion much louder than she'd meant to make them. She felt immediately worse when he stopped crying, inhaled twice, and switched from fit throwing to honest fear. He got up by himself and ran up the stairs. To their old shared room or maybe to see her dad, if he wasn't off canoodling with the cook.

She put another failure down for today's mental register. It went right next to the one she'd pre-emptively marked for failing to be on time to meet with Aiden.

Maya hesitated between following Rowan and going to her appointment. He'd be fine, right? She could ask for forgiveness after he'd calmed down. And this was the Mansion. There was only so much trouble he could get into here, with so many others around to watch out for the puppy boy.

With a sigh, Maya went for the X-men hall, down the stairs, to the Danger Room. By the time she got there, she'd schooled herself into a somewhat passable smile with her shoulders back instead of bowing under the weight of this most recent failing.

"Aiden?" It'd been awhile since she'd seen the trainee. Maya put her hand over the scanner and just had to assume that it was doing its thing.

Okay, he got that jump - OH COME ON. Okay, okay. Fine. Jump right there, at that moment, and then not-quite-immediately afterwards jump again. One more time.

That was a voice, not the game. Aiden looked up.

He almost started to just sort of nod, but then he remembered why he was here. Waiting for Maya. To try to work on the second-worst thing that had ever happened to him. Like an adult.

Which he still didn't want to do, but he'd still managed to distract himself briefly with the game. He shoved the phone back into a pocket and pushed himself to his feet. Didn't want to do this. Didn't want to do any of this. Had to suck it up and do it... but he really didn't want to.

"Er, hey Maya," he managed. How obvious was it that he didn't want to do this but was trying to make himself do it anyway? Considering recent and distant history, probably very.

Please don't comment on it, please don't comment on it, please don't comment on it.

"Hey." She echoed his words in a much brighter tone. This was a fake it 'till you make it kind of situation. It was hard to leave behind everything that'd just happened, but that wasn't why she was here. So she just had to get over it and be a big girl.

Her eyes swept the Danger ROom for any hint of why they might be here. The obvious guess was training, but instead there was a chair. In the Danger Room.

If there'd been more people present, Maya would worry that it was an intervention. As it was, it was just Aiden and just Aiden was enough to warm up a smile on her face.

Maya offered her hand as she approached. For some reason a handshake seemed appropriate here.

"It's been awhile. Sorry about that. What can I do for you?" It wasn't like the team members all bumped into each other every day. They might meet on missions after dispatch called them individually or they might bump into each other in the halls. But this? This was almost kinda formal.

Maya was always bubbly and cheerful. He never really shared it, but since she also didn't usually really push it on other people it managed to be a little bit... calming. At least briefly.

Plus her hand, when he shook it (why were they shaking hands? It wasn't like they were meeting for the first time or something? And they weren't wearing suits or anything super formal? Was it just because he'd stood up when she arrived?) wasn't as warm as most people's. Or, er, basically everyone's. That was a big deal, okay? Skin contact was important to heat-sensitive people.

"I don't think I get to complain about not seeing people recently," Aiden muttered, but it at least managed to be an almost light-hearted mutter. Especially relative to his common range of mutters. It was definitely a you-don't-need-to-feel-bad kind of mutter. He took a careful breath and poked away some of his mounting anxiety with a mental stick.

"You know the whole everyone-thought-I-was-dead thing? I've been thinking - basically all I could do before I could get back but that's not really what I mean - someone mentioned the other day - what happened - I guess I was hoping you might be able to help. Er, help me at least figure out what happened. Someone said it might be kind of similar to your power. Somehow. I don't know."

Didn't know was kind of one of the root issues with the whole horrible thing. He didn't know why it had happened, or how it had happened, or how it had stopped, or what it was, or how he could avoid it, or if maybe there was something he could do about it. In his most optimistic moments, he wondered if there might be something he could do with it. But he didn't know.

Oh man. He was struggling. It was Aiden, so that wasn't the most surprising thing: that he'd struggle with his words. Nope. It was the content of those words, once Maya'd untangled them in her head.

"You... want... me to help you... with your power?" She'd heard about where the kid had been and she'd definitely heard about the why. Plenty of other mutants had put their powers in a similar category even if snow didn't feel like it had much to do with air. So. She could see that. On some level.

Just seemed like she was a poor choice, considering the fact that she didn't quite put herself back together right every time.

"Maybe you'll be able to give me some pointers too." And having decided all that, Maya nodded and pushed up her sleeves that already weren't below her elbows.

"Okay. So where do you want to start? Or, maybe I should ask how you start? What's it feel like? Maybe we can draw some parallels between how yours works and how mine works." So matter of fact. It was totally no big deal. They could handle it!

Some of Aiden's stubbornness deflated a little. She didn't say anything about it, but she very clearly had a hard time sorting through what he'd said. Breathing more would probably help. Trying to plan this hadn't.

Okay, breathe.

"Maybe in a year. Or ten." Was that a joke? Did it sound like a joke? It felt like a very very bad, so rusty it hadn't ever been put together before much less used, attempt at a joke. But it would probably also take that long before he could give Ghost pointers on her mutation.

Especially since, while Maya was going about this very intelligently so far, he was already at a road block. "I have no idea how it started." He'd wracked himself so many times over it, trying to at least find something that would help him avoid it. "There was snow, and I wasn't really paying attention to what people were saying, and then everything except me went away, except I did too. There wasn't anything that was me but there was enough of me to be able to tell?"

Aiden sank back into the chair and rubbed his face. "And it felt like a whole bunch of swirly painful nothing."

Nah. Being open to learning meant everyone had something to contribute, even if that contribution was a new observation. Maya tried to be the non-subjective sounding board for Aiden's word soup. So maybe then she could make an observation or two.

Hm. She tapped her foot in time with the turning brain cogs. "Okay. So it sounds like you've got no sensory extension. That has to be... not fun." Zephyr had freaked out the first time she'd made him ghost for similar reasons. And had he said it was painful?

"Wait, your new snowthing... it hurts? Or is it the lack of sensory information?" It sounded confusing. Which probably explained why he both sounded confused and was spreading that confusion to Maya.

"Okay. Hold up." She held up her hands to stop her brain from running off without her. There were parallels there. She could take a few uneducated guesses about them or they could actually try something. "So, I can change you into my element. If you wanted. It's freaky and it freaks people out, but maybe it would give you a baseline? Maybe? Just... don't freak out." Because she didn't want another Jiri running around. And she really did think it might help.

Okay, he had Maya thinking. Hopefully she'd come up with something, anything, that would give some shape to this thing. Progress. He wanted progress, progress towards not being a liability.

Not having nightmares would also be really nice, come to think of it. But not being a liability to his team was more the core of his motivation.

"It doesn't completely, always hurt, but I can definitely feel pain." The shadow of that remembered pain, fragmented and so completely unpredictable, settled behind his eyes. He rubbed his forehead again when Maya called for a pause and tried to clear the pressing memories away, but like brushing at cobwebs they just seemed to stick more.

That was definitely an idea he hadn't thought of.

At all.

"If I freak out, it'll probably be more like curling into a ball and trying to pretend nothing's happening," Aiden said after a few moments. Not that he was looking forward to this.

At all.

"If you think it might help, though... Go ahead." Aiden swallowed. His words were a lot more sure than he was, although he was also kind of sure? In a very, very unwilling sort of way.

It was so odd and so very different, the thought that one's mutation might cause them pain.

"Well, you won't have to worry about this hurting at least. My power makes everyone feel less." So Maya stepped up to bat. She offered both her hands at a close enough place where Aiden could grab all the way up to her elbows, Roman greeting style, if he wanted to.

"I'll go slow and I'll try to talk you through it as it happens? Okay? All you need to do to make it stop is let go. At any time you can let go." She tried to inspect his face for the mental fortitude this journey would require. Her eyes might have darted around the planes of his face, but the details weren't enough to reassure her in either direction.

She waited for him to accept the invitation. It had to be his choice and his explicit acceptance, not some vague permission like 'go ahead.' He may as well have added. 'Do your worst.'

The pain was probably just cosmic balancing for his healing anyway - or God was an ass - but that didn't keep Aiden from feeling a solid rush of relief at Maya's words. Feeling less was much better than feeling pain, at least as long as it didn't go all the way to feeling nothing at all, because that was kind of way, way worse than just feeling pain.

It still took a heartbeat for him to lift his arms and hesitantly take Maya's forearms. He shivered a little at the contact when it lasted more than just a moment. Skin on skin was such a rare thing that he didn't even think of it until it was parading its unusual weirdness wherever the contact was. It wasn't bad weird, just... not something he was used to. Especially when it wasn't uncomfortably warm.

Let go to stop. That was more control than his mutation had ever allowed him. The best he'd had before was 'stop moving and the snowflakes will eventually go away.' Let go to stop. That was all it would take.

It was easier to breathe evenly now. "Do it," he said before he could entertain any second thoughts.

She was glad he was taking it seriously even if it did take him a moment between grabbing hold of her and calling for the A O-K. "Here we go then." Maya started to take a breath and then hesitated since she was pretty sure this was one of those things she should explain first.

"I'll inhale and then all at once my body, my clothes, and the parts of you that I'm touching will all go incorporeal." In a panic, she'd been known to take chunks of flooring too sometimes, but this was a nice and controlled situation. "It happens fast for me and you won't feel your arms in the same way exactly. I, uh, I wouldn't try to move a whole lot while I change you."

There. That probably covered most of it. Maya nodded once to herself and then took a big, deep breath. Just like she'd promised, poof she was gone along with Aiden's arms up to a few centimeters away from where she'd been touching him. She could still feel where they touched skin to skin, but otherwise when she was ghosted there was no other direct sensation. She might feel mentally taxed if she changed her shape too much or if she tried to change too many complex things or people, but anything else was physically white noise at this point.

"You okay?" She squeezed his ghostly arms in hers. He should probably feel that. "When you're ready I'll start pushing the ghosting further down your arms and into your body's mass. At some point, your vision will swap over to what I see most days now. Maybe half way? Let me know when you see it. You'll see..." she grasped for an explanation that was simple enough, "where air is and where air is not."

Ghosted vision was a 360 view for a decent radius with no light and no color. Mass that took up space was nothing more than darkness, a void of air. And, though air might technically touch every surface, the more porous and breathable an object was, the more confusing it was to decipher what it was. Jiri had thrown the terms "uncanny valley" and "poor 3D rendering" at her after his experience.

This was it - nope, now Maya was hesitating. Explanation. Explanations were okay. Aiden nodded his at least theoretical understanding. It couldn't be any worse than when Mirror dragged him through mirrors on his very first mission, could it? Well, the Danger Room could clean up just about anything set loose in it, so there was that.

Incorporeal was a little harder to predict, though, at least when it came to expecting what things felt like. Watching Maya's face rather than where their arms were linked, at first it just looked the same as when she ghosted. It wasn't the first time he'd seen it.

Then he looked down, and while his stomach tilted its metaphorical head in confusion he was struck by the desire to try to draw it. Except his hands felt a bit weird, in a not-quite-there way that wasn't exactly numbness. He shifted his fingers slightly, testing their ability to move more than anything without actually moving them, and then Maya squeezed his arms. He felt that. Okay. Different, but there was still feeling there.

He let out the breath he didn't notice taking in, and found himself relaxing a bit. "I'm okay," he reassured Maya. The hairs on the back of his neck perked up in wariness when she tried to describe the vision change, but he just set his jaw against it. That was kind of the point. Part of the point. At any rate, it had to be done.

It was still both beautiful and horrendously discomforting to watch his arms... dissolve and fade out, degree by degree, and then it changed.

Nothing nothing nothing it was nothing all over again

Except this nothing was kind of two toned, that was something to pay attention to even if he could tell it WASN'T SEEING this was not something eyes did, whatever it was it wasn't sight. Streaks. Patches. Patches of nothing and deep swathes of something. Was he still holding onto Maya? He wasn't crushing her arms, was he? That would be bad.

His head spun through the patchiness, fragments of patterns leaning out at him but never resolving into anything recognizable. He had to let go, he had to let go, he had to let go this was too much the same even if it wasn't the same, it was like a zebra and a horse they weren't the same BUT THEY REALLY WERE PRETTY MUCH THE SAME but in order to let go he'd have to have hands.

He still had hands. Vaguely, but they were there. And his arms, and his legs, and the general vague recognition of overall self.

He tried to rein in his panic before it tore itself free and just made a mess everywhere. He made a dent, but that was all.

Aiden forced his hands open.

Maya squeezed his arms again, gently, to try to get Aiden's attention.

He was freaking out. She could tell because he'd increased the pressure of his hands in direct proportion to how much of him that she'd ghosted. It hurt. She'd probably bruise. There were worse things that could have happened.

"Are you breathing?" She tried to remind him helpfully instead of just feeling sad about freaking yet another kid out. Was her power set really so alien that even other mutants couldn't handle it?

Technically, nobody had to breathe while ghosted that she knew of. But half of being in this form was how Aiden saw himself. How he thought his body would react and feel and look was exactly how it was going to present itself. "Aiden, breathe." What could she do? She could remind him that he had a body and give him a hug. He didn't seem to be hearing her soft verbal reminders. Maya let one of his arms go and tried to find his face to touch him. To remind him that he still had one.

He squeezed once, harder and then released both his hands.

She was still holding on to him with one hand. She could draw him in. But she'd also told him that all he had to do to stop this crazy train was to let go.

She let him go.

All at once Aiden would find himself and his clothes back to their full weight. While they'd drifted a tad upward during the transition, it wouldn't be a long drop for him to find himself back in his chair. Solid. Whole. Seeing.

If only it was that easy for Maya. Ghost let herself drop into something more amorphous like a cloud so that Aiden wouldn't see how disappointed she was. "Did... that help? Any?" Yet another failure in the tally books.

Maya was talking, he could hear her, but his distress was almost as solid a wall as that... Alaska incident had been. This might be a diluted version, but it reminded him, it reminded him so much -

He hit the ground, knees barely remembering to reflexively flex and absorb the impact in time, and wavered. And then simply tipped backwards into the chair he'd made to wait in. He couldn't seem to help but wrap his arms around himself, reminding himself of his existence and senses.

Bit by bit, Aiden's heartrate crept closer to a healthy range and closing his eyes longer than blinking didn't throw out anticipation of unplaceable, unpredictable, untraceable pain.

Help? It was enough like that other time that he could guarantee 100% nightmares tonight. He tried to rest his hands on his knees. Most of the colour had leached from his skin, stress-pale. His face was probably much the same.

"Does seeing a zebra help explain a horse?" he asked shakily, voice still a little vague. He leaned back in the chair and stared at the blank ceiling.

Want aside - could he even do this?