It didn’t take long for Tarin to gather his things, being sure to get his keys and his wallet this time before they left the shop and shoving them into his pocket.

It seemed so wrong that it was an absolutely beautiful day. Not the usual dirty grey spring days that were so common this time of year. Today the sky was blue, and while there was still a bit of chill in the air it just kind of seemed like maybe winter was losing its hold.

Again. It seemed wrong.

It was quiet while they walked, and the silence was not quite comfortable. Well, maybe it was a bit more comfortable than small talk.

What did he do for fun?

What did he do for fun? She couldn’t have started with something a little easier like geopolitics or the ethics of animal testing?

“Um…” he said cleverly, “I like to work out? Jog?” he said. That much was true, staying in shape had always helped his mental health and made it easier to concentrate.

“I dunno. I like movies.” Though it was weird to go to them alone, he frequented one of the theaters near central park. They had reclining heated seats and a giant screen. The spirits hated the sound system so it was a good place to have some peace and quiet.

“I spent the last few years hitting up the museums around here,” again, on his own, “Kind of wanted to catch up with how things are different, but I realized that I didn’t really know enough about the past on my side to know. I guess I kind of like history stuff. Art is cool I guess…”

That was enough.

“What about you?”

[font color=dodgerblue “What about you?”[/font]

Damn it. She’d asked, now she had to answer. But what did she do for fun that wasn’t something to entertain Kevin these days? “I jog too,” she ended up replying thoughtfully. “Though most times it’s to get rid of excess energy, and I haven’t needed to as much in the last few years since cutting back from working in the bar while they’re open at night. It can be relaxing, though.

“I work out and spar semi-regularly too. Kevin keeps begging me to let him do mixed martial arts, but the last thing we need is his powers to appear in the middle of sparring with some kid.” Lee sighed and walked along in thought for a couple moments. What else did she do? Or at least what else would she do if she had the time to do it?

“And I play guitar. My sister keeps trying to drag me to open mic nights, but it’s hard when she’s my babysitter.”

Lee also jogged and worked out, it seemed. She had to have some way to burn off the extra energy that she acquired. She mentioned that it was better when she didn’t work in “the bar” and Tarin found his curiosity peaked.

“So it isn’t just touch based?” he asked. Generally speaking it was a little rude to ask people about the ins and the outs of their powers in such a casual way…but Lee already knew so much about his that Tarin decided it wasn’t too much of a breach of propriety to ask. “Even when you’re burning it off, if you’re out in public it just builds up again?” That was a hell of a thing.

As for the kid, “Did you have him tested?” again, it was a real personal question, but one of the strangest things about this world (at least to Tarin) was the fact that parents could know what to expect with their kids and there were resources to help with the inevitable transition that would occur when their powers came into play, there were even schools out there to help mutant kids finish their education while learning how to manage their powers. “You don’t have to answer…” he said a bit lamely, “I just…I kind of wish I’d have been known.”

Lee mentioned music and Tarin nodded appreciatively, “I’ve never had a musical bone in my body.” he admitted, “Can’t carry a tune in a bucket and all that…It’s super cool if you can. You should listen to your sister.”

He thought for a moment, trying to decide if there was anything else to add. Nice, safe topics.

“How did you end up in New York originally?” surely that was safe.

Lee took a deep breath when Tarin asked for details about her siphoning. Though, she realized, it must be strange with her knowing so much about his powers while he knew almost nothing about her. “No, it’s not. I just take a lot more, faster, with direct contact. Generally speaking, I’m siphoning a bit of energy from everyone within…it’s hard to tell, 30-40 feet of me. And without siphoning from people, I have no energy.”

Was it strange to be so direct and open about how her powers worked? Sure was. But it did only seem fair. And though she was less worried about it than she had been when she was younger, Lee hoped that Tarin would be accepting of what she did. “And yes, I do still siphon while I’m trying to burn off energy, but generally there aren’t that many people around when I’m jogging. Unless I actually shut it off, but I don’t tend to do that too often. It’s a strange feeling.”

“Did you have him tested?”

Lee looked over at Tarin in surprise. Had she, had they, gotten Kevin tested for the X gene? Of course they hadn’t, why would they when they knew…

But they didn’t actually know for sure. They had, she just assumed that Kevin was a mutant and would develop powers. “No, we never even thought about doing that, to be honest,” she finally said, the shocked expression now gone. “We just always assumed, even before getting pregnant, that they would be a mutant. And there are good reasons for that, but it is a much longer, weirder story than I should tell out here.”

And someone else thinking that she should get out there to perform. Lee shook her head slightly as she let out a soft laugh. “Like I said, easier said than done.”

How had she ended up in New York? If he hadn’t added in the ‘originally’, Lee would have needed to ask which time. “Back then, it was far more noticeable what I did if someone was around me for an extended length of time. When I had almost no control over it. So I ended up getting evicted a lot. Spent a few years moving around Toronto, then Windsor. Then hopped the border and came here, hoping it would be easier to blend in and not be noticed with so many more people here. It was, yet,” she chuckled softly. “It also wasn’t.”

Tarin knew what it was like to have a power that operated all the time. It was the same, but it was different from what Lee was explaining. From what Lee was saying, it sounded like she needed her power in order to function. Tarin mostly just wanted his to go away.

She could shut it off though. Her entire power? Like, completely off?

Tarin looked over and down at the rather small woman. The more he learned about Lee, the more he thought that maybe his rose colored view of this world had been a bit short sighted. Just because things were more open here now didn’t mean they’d always been that way. Lee was obviously well trained and well prepared.

He’d surprised her with the question about her kid..Kevin? Cameron? Christian?

It was moot though, and after her surprise had worn off Lee explained that they had just assumed their kid was a mutant. Tarin figured that was fair enough, he didn’t know much about genetics, but he did know that two mutant parents were typically a recipe for a mutant child. Plus there were reasons, mysterious and weird why they’d felt so sure.

Okay.

Tarin’s question about how Lee originally came to New York didn’t seem to be too bad a topic though and her story was similar to how a lot of mutants ended up where they ended up. Apparently she hadn’t always been so good with her powers and it had necessitated moving from place to place until they landed in a major metropolitan area with lots of people…and lots of mutants.

“How so?” He said, partially because he was curious and partially so she would be the one to keep talking.

Tarin was quiet as she spoke, listening, she presumed. Trying to take it all in. What she had expanded on, at least. That would be a lot more difficult for him if she were to ever explain why they had been so sure that any child of theirs would be a mutant.

How was it easier to blend in here in New York, but also not blend in? That…hmm…Lee realized that that was going to be a lot more difficult to explain than she had initially thought. “To start, with just so many more people, it’s so much easier for one person to not stand out. And I must have gotten more control over my powers without realizing it, even before meeting Tarin, because I wasn’t evicted or fired from nearly as many jobs here as I had been previously. For the most part, I was able to just go about my day, my life, and be left alone, people didn’t figure out what I was.

“Though,” as she continued, a frown appeared on her face as the crease formed between her brows, and she looked at the sidewalk in front of them as they walked. “The times where I was ‘outed’, obviously shown to be a mutant around people who were not so friendly were infinitely worse than I had ever experienced before coming to New York.”

She paused here, taking a deep breath before looking over at Tarin. Easiest example first. “Have you heard about the Mutant Registration Act here?” She asked, her voice quiet.

As Lee spoke, Tarin nodded his head. With big cities came big hatred, if there was one thing that Tarin knew…it was that.

“Have you heard about the Mutant Registration Act here?”

Something about the way Lee said it made Tarin’s skin crawl a little bit. He took a minute to respond, thinking about what he did and didn’t know.

“I mean…I’ve heard of it. I’ve read about it in a few places and I went down a rabbit hole online once.”

He frowned, there had been machines to hunt mutants down and subdue them, collars to stop mutants from using their powers. The way that Lee brought it up…

“Were you here while it was in full force?”

Lee nodded when Tarin said that he’d heard about it, and that he went down a rabbit hole. He knew, but at the same time, it didn’t matter how deep of a rabbit hole someone went down, there was no way to know.

She wrapped her arms around herself as her eyes dropped back to the sidewalk. “I was,” she replied, her voice even quieter than it had been. “I was caught. Thankfully, it was only for a month, and I was lucky that they adjusted my collar so it wasn’t the automatic death sentence I’d feared, but a month was also far too long.”

Lee took a deep breath and let it out slowly before looking up at him with a shrug, one corner of her mouth turning up slightly. “But no matter what’s happened, no matter how many times I’ve left, New York is just home. Does that make sense?”

Tarin visibly winced when Lee said she had been caught. He’d read about the camps. People had died there and by all accounts they’d been horrible. Tarin honestly didn’t know what to say.

“I’m glad it was only a month…” something tickled the back of his mind, “Does that mean you were there during the breakout?” By all accounts it had been a massacre. They still didn’t know who was responsible for that whole mess, but it had resulted in everything changing on this side of the rift.

”We had SUPER.” Tarin said, lips drawing into a thin line as he thought about the paramilitary group that had made his life a living hell.

“How much do you know about them on the other side?”

Lee couldn’t help but shudder slightly when Tarin brought up the breakout. “I was. And it was probably worse than you’d imagine.”

Another deep breath as her dyes dropped to the sidewalk once more. “On top of all that, he came to rescue me. We…merged, and I almost killed him…”

Unbeknownst to the man walking beside her, Lee did know who had been responsible for the breakout. At least for it having been successful in getting the mutants out. But that hypocrite was another story that would require far more privacy to share.

Then he was asking what she knew about SUPER. “Not a whole lot, to be honest,” Lee admitted as she glanced back over at him and her arms slowly unwrapped from around herself. “Other than they were a huge part of things being so bad for mutants over there.”

Lee explained just how bad things had been during the breakout and then said something that made Tarin stop in the middle of the street in mute shock and horror.

More than one person cursed at him as the flow of foot traffic parted.

“I’m sorry…you what?”

He didn’t even hear what she had said about SUPER. He was too focused on the revelation. “You…and…and him? Did what? That’s a thing?”

Could he do that?! Was there yet another level of fucked up with this set of powers that he had yet to even discover?

When Lee glanced over as she was answering his question about SUPER, she saw that Tarin was no longer beside her. Then she heard his incredulous voice behind her, along with others cursing. Turning, she saw that he had stopped a few paces back with a look of horror on his face. Moving back to where he was standing, Lee gently grabbed his arm and started him walking again.

“Yeah, we did,” she said slowly. Then she saw a small green space ahead of them, not quite a park, and led him over so they could stop walking and not upset half of Manhattan. Once they were stopped, Lee turned to look up at Tarin. “You…you didn’t know about merging with people?” She asked, confused. “So you never…with the truck? Back in Texas.”

Lee grabbed his arm and tugged him forward and Tarin allowed himself to be guided/drug to a little green space off the sidewalk.

Lee seemed surprised that Tarin didn’t know about this delightful nuance of his existence and Tarin supposed that was fair. It was almost as fucked up as everything else.

She brought up a truck…in Texas…and Tarin shook his head.

“I left Texas when I was 14 years old.” He said, “I couldn’t even drive off the farm.”

Tarin sighed, “SUPER on my side is nothing like what they say they are over here.” As he said it, Tarin’s eyes narrowed.

“They wanted to keep tabs on every mutant. They’d tag you so they could find you anywhere, any time. People would disappear all the time, there were rumors of labs and experiments…”.

Tarin paused for a moment, remembering. “It was vitally important to stay off of their radar and to keep other mutants off their radar.”

He scowled, “They had a thing for psychics. You got to become a card carrying member of SUPER whether you wanted to or not. Then you got to help them round everyone else up.”

He was telling things out of order, but there was just too much to get into right now.

“I don’t know if I even have that power, but how do I make sure I never find out?”

That first merge, the merge that she had seen ‘first hand’ in Tarin’s dream, had never happened to the man in front of her because he had left Texas when he was 14. Literal years earlier. Even younger than she had been when she left home.

But then he went on to explain how SUPER in the world he had grown up in were very different from the SUPER that had come to this world.

“That’s…wow,” Lee said. The Registration Act and camps had been bad enough, but to have lived in that kind of fear of being discovered…

When he asked about how to make sure he never found out if he was able to merge with another person, Lee’s lip found its way between her teeth as she thought. “He didn’t really like talking about it,” she said slowly. “It wasn’t exactly casual, family dinner conversation. He said that there was a very distinct feeling he would get before it happened, so he knew it was coming and would do everything he could possibly do to not touch or be touched by anyone. A certain…I don’t know, maybe tingling? In his hands and feet. He was never able to really describe it, just like I can’t really describe what my siphoning feels like.”

Lee paused and took a breath as she looked over and up at Tarin. “Hopefully, since it’s never happened to you, and you’ve only had two others, that means it’ll never happen. With him, it’s only ever happened in very bad, very emotionally bad, situations. Like the breakout. And when I di-” Lee cut herself off, not finishing the thought as her eyes quickly darted away.

He hadn’t liked to talk about it. No, Tarin expected, he wouldn’t have. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing that one bandied about like a party trick.

Lee had a few details though and Tarin listened closely as she explained everything she could. There was a distinct feeling? Hands and feet tingled? Like last night before he’d passed out? Obviously not, or they wouldn’t be standing here right now. How was he supposed to tell the difference between his limbs falling asleep and something utterly catastrophic.

Extreme situations. Like the breakout.

Like when she had di….?

Lee snapped her mouth shut on that word but Tarin had heard enough. Turning so that he more fully faced Lee, he lowered his voice and leaned down slightly.

“Are you telling me that you have died? And that this…person merge nightmare had something to do with it?”