> “Nerves?”

Noel jumped at Ranger as he and Charles, AKA Lumberjack, showed up on time. She hadn’t heard them approaching and that was bad. Charles wasn’t easy to miss.

”Yeah, I guess so.” Noel admitted with a chuckle because if it wasn’t funny, it was just plain sad. Her notes were filled in. Extraneous brain information emptied. She’d gotten sleep, she’d warned Ranger, she’d warned Tempest, she’d gotten all the intel she could from Sveta. Now that back up was here, there was nothing left but to go in and face herself.

> “There’s other ways to do this.” She could almost feel Charles’ rumbly baritone. Big man. Big voice.

”Not for me.” Noel moved aside so that Charles could see the crappy black and white cctv set up outside the interrogation room. Nolan sat with his head drooping forward. His hands and legs both secured to the chair. He’d gotten a little TLC from Jude just to make sure his concussion wouldn’t lose them any information.

”He’s got what I need, but if I take too long I can lose everything. The longer I touch him, the more he gets from me. The more he gets from me, the less I get from him.”

“So why am I here?”

A wan smile pulled her lips tight. It was time. She didn’t have a good reason to put it off any longer. Noel grabbed her notepad and ripped off a page of questions for Charles to ask her when she got out.

”In case he does anything untoward. I don’t want Ranger in the same room as him. And after all this is done, I need someone to make sure that I don’t end up thinking more like him than I think like me. Somebody with a little less bias.” She didn’t want to hurt Michael if she wasn’t quite herself. She put a hand on Ranger’s forearm as she passed, a last lingering touch. ”Thanks, Charles. I know we don’t know each other all that well, but I trust Ranger and he trusts you.”

“You know there’s other ways, right?”

”Not for me.” And she wasn’t sure which “me” that applied to most.

He jerked out of a doze at the sound of the door.

There was nothing in this room. Nothing to do. Only so much to look at. No way to get his arms to stop with the pins and needles. He wasn’t sure if they were keeping him bored for torture or just because it took time to organize a proper interrogation. It was both a relief and a stress to have something to do, now. His brain kicked into overdrive.

What did they want from him? Where was he? Who would they send? Why was he trussed up while his mouth, the most dangerous aspect of himself, was left unchecked?

> ”I gotta pee.” He blurted out more than the recommended dose of friendship memories in his voice. If they wanted him to talk, he was more than willing to oblige.

His dopple was the one on her way through the door. She hesitated, probably because of the mental sucker punch, and called his bluff. ”Then pee.”

Interesting. She didn’t broadcast any memories back. And, now that she wasn’t in a ninja get up, the agent was getting his first real look at her.

She moved with confidence, this was a space where she was comfortable. She didn’t have a single scar that he could see. She was toned, controlled, and had a twist to her mouth like she’d just tasted something nasty.

Weirdest of all, her eyes. They were like his with dark lashes that showed stark against her tan. When he first saw her and those eyes, he had a feeling he’d met someone he already knew. When she’d pulled him into a kiss, he’d dug into her mind and seen… him. But not. She was a mental Frankenstein’s monster.

> ”Your powers aren’t the same are they?”

Noel moved a chair to face him and slapped a legal pad full of notes down on the table. She didn’t know everything, but she knew enough to answer truthfully.

”No. They’re not.”

> ”So where did we go different?”

”We’ll both find out before too long when I take your memories.” Whether it was a mistake to let him know she was planning on touching him, Noel couldn’t tell. She wanted him mentally prepared to guard himself. Maybe if he tried to keep her out, he wouldn’t be taking her memories in and she could take his. Or maybe that would really, actually keep her out?

> ”We look similar from what I can see. Do we have the same sibs? Parents? Same tattoos?” He scanned over her and didn’t see any. Huh.

Since Noel didn’t know, she simply met his gaze. He laughed, breathy with frustration.

> ”Right. I’ll find out eventually, I guess. What do they call you?” Since he’d be accessing her mind, Nolan seemed to be laying off on the mental clutter. There was no point in putting things in her mind. She had notes and she was prepared. He would just get back what he already had if he forced it on her. That wasn’t what he wanted.

”Noel.”

> ”Gage?”

”Guess that’s the same.” She made a note, mostly just to do something other than look him in the eyes. She wasn’t entirely sure how his powerset worked either. He seemed more than happy to talk. Somehow the interview portion had already gotten away from her.

> ”My tracker’s gone or shielded since I’ve been in the same place for so long.” He noted and then realized what that meant, exactly, for his chance of a rescue.

> “I'm on the other side, aren't I?” The other side. It may as well have been Canada. He didn’t feel any different, but he’d already guessed they had a healer work on him. Had they found his tracker? They had to have. Otherwise this place would have had a SpecOps team, right? Except, maybe not. Because Canada.

> ”And my head’s fine despite your Muse’s outburst. So what is it? What do you want bad enough to clean me up and let me talk?”

”I need to know about SUPER and your history. Probably the same stuff you’re interested in: parents, job, skills. Compare, contrast.”

> ”And… you want me to tell you?” He tried to lean forward in his chair. Could it be that she didn’t know what he could do?

”I’ll know if you’re lying.”

They’d gone over the basics. He was Nolan Gage. He was a trainer. He used his abilities to put experience in young cadets’ heads. She’d seemed interested in that, but declined a sampling. He had been less than truthful about how and why he joined. And cagey about how SUPER came to be. Truth be told, he didn’t really know. He hadn’t been with SUPER for as long as some of the others. He was also starting to believe that she could tell truth from lies like she’d said. When he slipped on it, there was a cringing around her eyes...

”Tell me your name.”

> ”I did. Nolan Ga—”

”Your real name.”

He hesitated, thrown off only for a beat.

> ”You’re that messed up aren’t you?”

Her eyebrow twitch was lovely. She was easy to irritate and he was eager to retaliate. Some of that was him, voicing his fears. Most was a guess that she was like him and he peppered in the details from the fleeting memories he’d nabbed to make it that much more personal.

> “Your memory is a big dump. One second it's karate action. The next, it's some prep school brat getting lectures in Latin. You've picked up so much weird and useless crap, you don’t know who you are any more, do you?”

He saw her jaw working as she swallowed down whatever she’d wanted to say. There was so much he didn’t know, but that? That was his greatest fear. He did not want to grow up to be her. It had to chaffe to get called out like that. So he pressed his advantage.

> ”So what? You’re walking around pretending you know people? Pretending you care?”

”Shut up.”

Except he couldn’t. He had nothing left to lose and these were questions that he too wanted the answers for.

>”They’ll lose interest in you. You’ll grow old and useless. You can fool them, but you can’t fool me. You’re a husk of a person. You’re the skin that the real Noel left behind. Unwanted. Unuseful. Unable to fend for yourself. What’s the point, Noel?”

“The point? ” She stood and the taller she get, the further Nolan’s stomach sank. Maybe he’d gone one accusation too far because there was murder in her eyes.

What had his dopple been up to? Now when she came close he'd be digging a bit deeper. He would be prepared. But then… so would she.

He flinched in anticipation of a blow that never landed. Instead, she touched his face gently, just enough to turn his chin up.

“The point is to learn and grow.” From the foundation of her past? Or to grow into a new person?

Was it weird to kiss yourself?

She pressed her lips against his with one fingernail dug into the soft and vulnerable spot between the bone of his jaw to keep him there. He squirmed, but with his hands and feet tied down, he didn’t have much choice.

Would it ever not be weird to kiss someone?

Bypassing the SUPER knowledge for now, Noel opted to look for his history. Her history.

Eugh! They’re weeeeet! GROOOOOSSSSS. Pick up your disgusting socks! The girl, an imperious teen with a pink scrunchie plucked the offending cheap-o tube socks and threw them as hard as she could back at him. A sister. He had a sister! But the memory was slipping through Noel’s fingers as fast as she could view it. It was getting jumbled. It wasn’t a sister, it was Hades’ wife. They were sparring for real. They were hitting each other with pillows and dirty socks.

Noel needed to mass download and be done, sever their tie, get as far away as possible.

She scrambled to get what she was tasked with finding: information on SUPER, but the siren call was strong for her own past.

I’ll love you forever. I’ll like you for always. As long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be. Her eyes were brown like the gills of mushrooms and her hair was dark and curling. Just next to her face was his. A strong jaw and the barest dusting of a goatee. His hair was lighter, but they were both so young. Mommy and daddy love you very much, Angel.

She broke the tie and sat where there was no chair, falling the scant foot and a half to the floor and even that was not far enough so she crab walked it back a bit.

His nose was bleeding.

Her nose was bleeding.

She imagined her face was a pretty good mirror of what she was seeing on his.

> ”Truce?”

”Y-yeah.”

Of course the truce couldn't last for too long. Noel grabbed her notes and made a break for the door before she could change her mind. She had to write things down. Now. Everything he had before that she had now. She slammed the door behind her and didn't bother to get comfortable. Noel slapped the pad of paper down on the floor and started writing. She wrote until the pad was full and then asked for another. Names, titles, positions, typical greetings, building locations, Nolan's job and interactions. It wasn't organized. It was just a big brain dump. Anything and everything SUPER.

If he had to guess how his interrogation was going to go... that hadn't even been on his list of possibilities.

He was unnerved. This woman was a culmination of all his fears. Having her here and seeing what he could have been had no one to keep him in check was a punch to the gut. How did she know what she stood for? What she believed in? How could she possibly do anything but follow or agree or be a foot soldier?

He asked for a truce while he sorted through what she'd given him. She left. He didn't really get a say.

Of every angle he considered, there wasn't a single one where this ended well for him. Were they out there deciding his fate right now? He tested his restraints and took stock of what memories he had left that were his own. Mostly his doppel's memories were from someone else. There were days when Nolan felt like it was that bad, that he might not have any memories of his own, but in reality it was never that bad.

It was trickier than he anticipated to separate out what was his and what was hers. She didn’t think in the way that Nolan was used to woman thinking, possibly because of the franken-memory or maybe because she’d gotten almost all her memories from men. There was virtually nothing about this place. He hadn’t directed his thoughts well enough. He’d been caught off guard. He had to think.

Could he implant something painful? Memories weren't exactly a great weapon. They took time to take root and then exploit. And he really hadn't seen much that was personal in his doppel besides the dog and the man she did not take memories from. His best weapon, at a guess, was what he knew about himself. It could translate to what she didn’t know about herself.

He did his best to formulate a plan, review how her powers worked, think about strategy…

Eventually fatigue set in. He could only be on alert for so long. She was taking her dear sweet time in coming back… he was assuming she would be back...

Nolan jerked awake as a heavily calloused hand scraped against the back of his neck and settled there. He could smell body odor, urine, exhaust, and cigarettes, among other things. Noel walked around and pulled up a chair in front of him to watch.

His questioning look became wide eyes and a fierce struggle as the contact between him and the vagrant continued and he realized what she had in store for him.

His power took in memories. He couldn't stop so long as he was in skin-to-skin contact with another person. It was why he typically wore gloves, long sleeves, and the off-putting attitude. Noel's limitations were different, she had to taste a person to get a memory. Some things were the same for both of them, but skin-to-skin? That was Nolan's weakness. He couldn't stop the memories of the man behind him from flooding in.

Family drama.

Family trauma.

Alcoholic spiral.

Job loss.

Loss of hope.

He also couldn't see anything recent. He couldn't tell from his memories what she had told this man, this vagrant, what to do. All the man had to do was hold on and Nolan's mind would become oversaturated until there was nothing left of him.

He glared daggers are Noel and could tell from the set of her jaw, the look in her eyes that she was... sorry. But not sorry enough to stop.

She checked her watch, changed which leg was crossed on top of the other, and almost anything besides listening to him plead and attempt to bargain and struggle. She checked the man behind Nolan, meeting his eyes more than a few times as he wavered. But they'd promised him enough for him to get what he needed. She'd promised him more than just money, a fresher start without certain memories to weigh him down.

Now, those memories would weigh Nolan down instead.

Nolan's struggles became weaker, he became more confused, and everything about him seemed to get heavier, weaker, sadder.

They could have replaced Nolan's memories with anyone else's, but it was best to find someone with no relation to Noel's secrets. No one with memories of Haven or mutants or Michael or anything. She was killing for the things she loved, without actually killing him. Now, they could release Nolan back out into the wild and he might recover some of who he was. Or he might end up fighting the otherverse's homeless for a favorite park bench.

It didn't matter, so long as he stayed out of their way.

Once she was sure it'd been long enough, Noel walked their homeless man to the door and paid him in full, including a bitter tasting kiss and a quick wipe of this whole experience. He was escorted out, a few memories lighter.

From there, Noel just had to make sure Nolan would also forget the strange day he'd had. She stuck a sticky note to his chest and set about the surgical removal of certain memories, including the memory of seeing her face.

Noel's vision expanded out from the dark tunnel that ended in Nolan's eyes.

His eyes were glassy. He bled from the nose and ears. And Noel injected him with something to help him sleep. Because her sticky note said to.