Six months? Tarin flipped back through the papers real quickly to check the dates and looked over at Lee. All of this had happened within six months of them getting married.

Tarin shook his head and flipped to the next paper. Another serial killer. For a moment, Tarin’s eyes flicked up to Lee’s, then back down to the paper…had this been another…

No, it didn’t seem like it. Lee had carefully annotated the other merge that had been in this folder and…this was something she had never mentioned. Tarin’s eyes caught on the title of the paper then and he frowned slightly, ”Tallahassee? As in, Florida?”

He scanned the two articles on the page quickly, ”How did you end up there?”

Tarin looked quite confused at first about the next couple of articles he was looking at. The confusion was explained a moment later when he questioned her being in Florida. She hadn't’ mentioned anything about Florida before this, had she?

”Yeah, we went to Florida. Jacen I mentioned with the SWAT team?” she asked, referencing the restaurant hostages article. ”I first ran into him on a run before we went to Columbia. Literally. And a while after the hostage thing, we went for a drink with Jacen and, I guess Kealey was his girlfriend at the time, and what we did in Columbia was briefly brought up.

“Well, one of Jacen’s friends went looking into his parents’ deaths down in Tallahassee and then disappeared after sending him a cryptic package of papers. Jacen couldn’t go ‘officially’ and with not knowing what was going on and Lori being a mutant,” Lee paused as she shrugged. Had they ever really gotten an answer as to why Jacen had asked them of all people to help? ”Jacen called and asked if we would go down and help figure out what happened to his friend.

“Part of me wishes we hadn’t gone,” Lee admitted softly. ”That Pulse guy’s powers were scary…”

Apparently when Lee made friends, they were SWAT team members and she helped them track down serial killers halfway across the country.

From what Tarin could follow from the story, that was filled with more people that Tarin didn’t know. This friend of Lee’s had discovered that something shady had happened to a friend and needed help finding out what. Somehow Lee and the Tarin from this side had gotten wrapped up in the whole thing.

Part of Lee wished they hadn’t gone? It was another thing that had to have been pretty bad if Lee was wishing they hadn’t gone.

”What were his powers?” Tarin had to ask.

What were his powers? ”I’m not sure the extent of what all of his powers were, but he was able to speed up or slow down a person’s heart,” Lee said, her hand coming up to grasp at the collar of her shirt unconsciously as she spoke. Was her heart beating faster just thinking about this? ”And he was able to use the beat in his music to do it, too.

“Thankfully…wait,” Lee paused, her head tilting as she looked at Tarin. ”Do you know what Adapteds are?” To explain this story further, and how they’d really managed not to die, Tarin knowing what Jacen was able to do was important. But she didn’t know if there had been Adapteds on the other side of the rift, and if not, she wasn’t sure whether he’d learned in the last six years.

Speed up and slow down a person’s heart rate? Through music?

God. That was scary.

Did he know what adapteds were? Tarin nodded, ”They nullify powers.” he said. ”I hardly notice.” he said, ”I know it’s not the same for everyone.”

Lee nodded absently when Tarin said that he barely noticed when he was in and adapted’s field. ”Thankfully, Jacen is an adapted,” Lee continued her previous train of thought. ”And entering his field when Pulse had sped your heart up so much it was painful was about as noticeable as it is for me to step in Jacen’s field in the middle of a crowded bar.”

Realizing that her hand was still gripping the collar of her shirt, Lee took a deep breath and let go, putting her hand in her lap. ”But Pulse is who had taken Lori when she was poking around in Tallahassee. Her powers are electrical, he was using her like a battery.

“Everything happened so quickly that I only pieced everything together when we were talking on the flight home. But I guess Pulse was hunting adapteds? He’d found a frequency that would give adapteds intense pain, but did nothing to normal humans or mutants, and he was using Lori as a battery to power a device to amplify his powers.”

Lee explained that her friend was an adapted and that he was able to negate the facts of Pulse’s powers.

Just thinking about being someplace, around someone who could make your heart race to a point that it hurt was a lot.

Then Lee pointed out that it was a shock for her to step into an adapted’s field…he’d have to come back to that because Lee was explaining more of the situation in Florida.

The mutant in Florida had taken someone Lee knew and was using her as a battery to amplify his power? He was hunting adapteds?

”You said your friend was an adapted?” Tarin asked, ”What’s it like for you? You said it was noticeable, but what happens?”

Lee’s head tilted as she thought, and she actually leaned back against the couch for the first time since giving Tarin the folder. ”It really depends on where I am, to be honest,” Lee told Tarin after a moment. ”When I said I had first run into Jacen when running, I mean that I literally ran into him. When I’m running at night, I tend to focus on my siphoning more than what I can see. Since it’s dark, I can normally feel someone before I would see them.

“As far as my powers are concerned, Jacen does not exist.

“But when there’s people around…” Lee shook her head slightly, trying to explain this. She had tried to explain how her siphoning felt to people before, and how it felt to suddenly not feel the siphoning. The only person who was close to understanding that had been Kealey because she was constantly feeling everyone’s emotions around her.

”I can feel the energy that I siphon,” Lee started explaining. ”It’s like it…flows into me. I’ve learned to tell which direction and as long as there aren’t too many people, how far away. But when there’s a crowd, it’s just…it’s coming from everywhere. And the more people, the more energy.

“Stepping into an adapted’s field is like…it’s suddenly all gone, except I can still see and hear the people.” Lee paused as she thought again. She’d never come across a real parallel that helped people understand, but maybe she could come close? ”Like…you’re at the bar and all of a sudden you can’t hear anything. Like a switch was flicked and it’s still gone. But you know there’s still sound because you can feel the bass.”

Lee explained what it was like for her when she was around an adapted and Tarin listened intently as she tried to explain.

It was…kind of incredible to hear her describe.

Lee could feel all of the people around her, she used that to orient herself in space, especially at night when she couldn’t see things as clearly.

As an adapted, her friend didn’t exist.

She could feel the energy all the time…except when there was an adapted around, then it all stopped.

It was like if suddenly all of the sound in a bar stopped, but you could still feel the music.

”That…makes sense.” Tarin said, smiling slightly ”Wow.”

”Wow…but disorienting for it all to stop, right?”

He was getting distracted. ”Your friend was an adapted and this guy was hunting them…it obviously all worked out. How?”

Lee blinked slightly in surprise. Tarin understood? Had she finally figured out a way to explain her siphoning in a way that was actually understandable to others, or was it just Tarin, right now, who somehow understood it?

”I feel off balance the entire time,” Lee admitted. ”It’s the same when I stop my siphoning, just not as jarring. When we were at the bar and I walked back into Jacen’s field, I stumbled it was so sudden.”

How did they manage to get away from Pulse, who was hunting adapteds like Jacen, using Lori as a battery, and could kill them and make it look like a heart attack? ”Jacen may not have been able to go to Florida ‘officially’ as a cop, but he apparently didn’t go unarmed. And I guess even when in pain, it doesn’t take much to pull a trigger.”

She didn’t like it very much when her powers were shut off. That definitely made sense, especially after Lee explained how it was more than energy that she used her powers for and how it helped her orient herself in space.

Lee finished the story and it turned out pretty much the only way it could have, with someone dead. Luckily it hadn’t been Lee, or Lee’s friend, or the other Tarin, or the Lori person that Lee had mentioned.

”Well. I guess that’s…good.” Tarin said, not sure what else was productive.

Tarin didn’t know what else to say about it and he moved the piece of paper to the back of the stack to see a lone article with no annotations. He quickly read the news article, noting that it had to do with some kind of shared dream experience. The information was interesting, but it was very different from everything else that had been in the folder. Maybe it was like the other articles where there was more context on the next page.

Tarin lifted the article about the shared dream but kept it in his hand and found himself staring into the face of a little girl. Well, a drawing of a little girl and a name. Frowning slightly as he read the annotations, Tarin looked back at the article in his hand for a moment, then back at the picture. Finally he looked up at Lee.

”From memory?” he asked, nodding at the drawing.

Even before Tarin had revealed the page with the picture of her on it, there was a slightly sad frown on Lee’s face. And when Tarin asked if it had been drawn from memory, Lee nodded as she looked down at the little girl.

”From his,” she whispered after a moment. ”I don’t have any actual memories of her, of the dream. Just feelings and emotions….Like, for the longest time after that, I would randomly feel a moment of panic because I didn’t know where she was. Or that no matter what we did, the apartment felt empty. I couldn’t remember a thing about her, other than what he told me about her, and what Rupert said. But I missed her.”

Lee finally pulled her eyes away from the picture of her little girl and looked up at Tarin. A couple tears actually sitting in her eyes. ”We had an artist in Central Park draw her,” Lee continued, her voice still a whisper. ”From his memory, so I could at least have an idea what she looked like. But that picture, and those few words, is the extent of what I ‘remember’. Memory of words on a page, of a drawing, not of her.

“And yet…”

Lee confirmed that the picture was a memory from the dream described in the article and Tarin found himself staring down at the little girl again. She did look like Lee in that eerie way that kids can look like their parents while still looking distinct.

Lee’s voice had gotten quiet, she’d looked upset, and it had been hard for her to talk about several of the things that were in the folder. This was the first time tonight that Tarin could actually see tears in her eyes. With what Lee described, it made sense. Tarin couldn’t imagine what she described, the apartment feeling empty…suddenly missing someone that just wasn’t there.

The artist had been a good idea, and Tarin found himself glad that Lee had the picture, and had the memories from the two men who were now gone. Tarin wanted to ask why Lee didn’t have more memories when clearly the other Rupert and the Tarin from this side had. The memories seemed hard though, so he didn’t.

”And yet…”

Realizing he’d been looking at the picture this whole time, Tarin pulled his eyes up to Lee’s, nodding for her to go on.

Lee’s eyes had drifted down to the drawing of the daughter. This had been tucked away safely until this weekend and Lee hadn’t even looked at it in years. Most of the time, especially now, Lee was able to pretend that it, that she had never existed. Only having vague feelings and no actual memories of her own, that had been easier than it had been for him, Lee knew. Not easy, but easier.

”And yet,” Lee finally continued, her whisper even quieter as a tear spilled over and rolled down her cheek. ”All these years after that dream, or whatever it was, I still miss her…”

It had been so easy to tell Lee that she needed to explain all of these things she’d done to Rachel and Robert so that they could understand how much Lee was capable of.

It didn’t seem so easy now, and Tarin felt awful about suggesting it so nonchalantly so many times. His frame of reference had been flawed and as that tear slipped down Lee’s cheek he set the papers down and reached out to wipe it away. He didn’t know what to say, what did you say in this situation besides…

”I’m so sorry…” he said, flipping the folder shut for a minute. For some reason, maybe the fact that the little girl had his mother’s name as her middle name, or the fact that that she did look like Lee made it hard to look.

”I never should have pushed you to do this.” he said, frowning, ”I…guess I kind of lost the forest for the trees. I get why ti’s so hard to share…”