“I can.” Tarin explained, ”And make them do things if I try hard enough.”

Kevin didn’t think he’d like Tarin’s powers and Tarin figured Kevin was right. Tarin didn’t like his own powers most of the time so Kevin was probably exactly right.

Tarin had to smile a bit when Kevin talked about how perfect his own powers were and how he just needed to figure out how to stop draining his phone. It would come with practice and then Kevin would be an absolute menace with that shield…Tarin couldn’t wait to see what that was like.

Lee pointed out that there were downsides to all powers and Kevin disagreed…he thought that Lee’s powers were pretty easy to deal with since she’d figured everything out.

Tarin looked over at Kevin for a moment, they’d talked about this the night the teen had returned from Texas and Tarin had thought the boy had understood the point that Lee’s powers were incredibly difficult to manage.

“Yeah, remember, she’s got to constantly be thinking about her energy and how much she has and how much she’ll need until she can get more. Your Mom has been managing everything for a long time so she’s really good at it.”

Looking down at the puzzle again, Tarin snagged up a piece and tried and failed to put it in place. Moving to a different spot he tried again, no luck again….

“It just takes a while to figure everything out.”

Kevin seemed to think that other than the lack of energy she had in the mornings, that her powers didn't really have downsides since she had figured out how to manage her energy levels so well and it was almost second nature despite the mental energy it took.

And Tarin answered, basically explaining all of that to the teen. But as Kevin was looking at Tarin as he spoke, Lee sighed softly.

Starting to work on the puzzle again, Lee waited for Tarin to finish speaking, then a couple more moments to see if Kevin has any immediate questions before she spoke softly.

"There are so many more downsides, difficulties, and bad parts with my powers," she said, not looking up. "Yes, I have to watch my energy, make sure I still have enough at night so I can get up in the morning while still heading little enough to be able to sleep."

"But if I have a lot of energy, I have to watch how fast I move or how much force I use, and it's easy to use more than intended, so I don't hurt myself or break something. And if I'm in a fight, I have to watch that also so I don't hurt the other person more than I want. And depending on how much energy I have, it is far too easy for me to hurt someone more than I want to." very easily, ponytail man in Columbia's broken neck a perfect example of that.

"That's why if something happens that would be a fight, I'll just siphon as my first choice. But then there's the unknown line between someone being unconscious and me taking too much energy, and what might happen then."

As she was speaking, Lee continued to slowly work away at the puzzle, during in the correct piece here and there, though much slower than while the three of them had been working in silence. All without looking up at Kevin or Tarin.

"And if I have that much energy, I can be up for days straight. Boring, but not a huge issue for a couple days. But while I'm working through all of that energy, I'm siphoning more unless I turn it off. If my energy level stays too high to sleep, eventually my body and brain just decide to…stop. I could feel ready to vibrate out of my skin with the excess energy but I fall asleep without enough warning to set an alarm."

"If no one's there when I eventually wake up," Lee continued, voice still the same, low volume it had been to start. "And I've got no energy left because of using it while sleeping, no amount of caffeine or will power will get me out and near people so I can get energy."

"So, lots of bad things and downsides, which I can now avoid it mitigate most of the time. But not always."

When Tarin had finished speaking, Kevin had just sat there, either thinking about what Tarin said or trying to digest everything that had been said. Tonight had already been a lot when Tarin had gotten home, and now Kevin was getting even more information.

Things were quiet for a moment or two, then Lee began to speak, explaining her powers and their downsides in much more precise detail.

It was all so much to deal with on a daily basis. Tarin couldn’t imagine having to manage so many moving pieces. Lee refused to acknowledge that her very existence was impressive…but it really was. The fact that she was so successful and so good at pretty much everything was a testament to just how capable she was.

Lee brought up what she had called a “crash” before, when she’d been up so long that despite the amount of energy she had she couldn’t stay awake any longer and Tarin glanced at Kevin to see the boy looking at his Mom with slightly wide eyes as she explained what happened in those situations.

The potential side effects of those crashes included sleeping for too long and risking not having enough energy to get up. Literally.

Tarin had known all of this, and to a degree he was sure that Kevin had known too…but Kevin was just kind of looking at Lee as she finished speaking.

“I guess I didn’t really think about all of that.” Kevin said thoughtfully after a few moments of silence, “But that hasn’t happened for a long time right?” He asked, meaning the situation his Mum described where she simply couldn’t stay awake anymore no matter how much energy she had.

As Lee finished speaking, she still didn't look up. She simply put another puzzle piece into place before looking for the next likely piece.

She could feel the eyes on her, though.

Then Kevin spoke. But really, why would he have thought about all of that? Or just about any of it? There was no way to hide how mornings were for her short of going out to get energy before waking Kevin up.

But everything else…

Lee made sure not to show Kevin how difficult her life could be because all of that was something for her to worry about, not him. And she had learned decades earlier to hide the effort from others because finding that out inevitably led to finding out about what her powers did to them, and people had found out and disliked her quickly enough back then on their own.

"No, it hasn't happened for a long time," Lee reassured Kevin as she placed another piece. "It happened once after we moved here, while I was trying to find a routine working at the bar, getting you to shool, and working at Haven. Almost a second time, but I managed to sleep for a few hours after taking you to shool on the fifth day that time."

"Five? You've been awake for five days straight before?" Kevin asked in disbelief.

"A number of times," Lee said, glancing up at Kevin before looking back at the puzzle. "I seem to crash sometime on the sixth day. Though, the day you and your aunt came home from your grandparents, I misjudged my energy and fell asleep unexpectedly."

Lee wasn’t looking up as she spoke, and Tarin had a feeling that was because she’d never really told Kevin about all of this. In fact, if what Tarin knew was correct, Lee had always gone terribly out of her way to make sure that Kevin never knew how hard things could be for her. Tarin and Kevin had talked about this sort of thing a bit that night when Kevin had gotten home from Texas, but hearing it from Lee was somehow totally different.

Tarin realized he hadn’t ever asked Lee how often she had experienced those crashes and he could imagine how scary it must have been when it had happened after she’d moved back here. It wasn’t the time to ask for more details and he wasn’t sure that the details mattered anyway.

Kevin apparently hadn’t even known just how long Lee would have to stay up sometimes. It was going to take the boy days to sort though everything he’d found out today.

Lee mentioned the day at the shop when Kevin and Rachael had come home from Canada and she had fallen asleep while Tarin took a shower. Tarin had made an ignorant mistake that day and Lee had woken up barely able to move.

Tarin nodded, “She could barely get up after that.” Tarin said, tilting his head slightly as he looked at Lee, “Pretty lucky you came to the shop that day I guess.”

Tarin informed Kevin that she had barely been able to get up, then mentioned that she had been lucky she'd come by the shop.

"As long as I didn't stay in the apartment all day, I would have been alright," Lee replied with a glance up at Tarin quickly. "It was that run that did me in. I'd never run with that little energy before, so it threw me off with how much it took out of me."

Lee then looked up again, giving Tarin a smile. "I was lucky you were there when I woke up though," she added, her voice still soft from earlier. "And thankful."

"Thankful? Oh, did Tarin wake you up since you didn't have an alarm?"

Lee shook her head, and looked at Kevin. "No, your aunt's phone calls did that," she said. "But Tarin got me an energy drink. And then as I was wondering how I was going to even get myself to stand, nevermind get home, he offered that I could take energy from him. Which really surprised me, even with how tired I was at the time."

Tarin nodded when Lee said it was the run they’d taken that had done her in. “I still think that’s the only time I’ve legitimately ever beat you on a run.” Tarin said, and that was only because she’d been trying sort out her energy from dealing with the merge a couple of days before. Tarin hadn’t understood Lee’s powers very well at that point.

Lee said she was lucky that Tarin had been there when she’d woken up and he thought it was very gracious of her because it had been his dumb idea to not wake her up in the first place when she’d fallen asleep.

Kevin asked if Tarin had been the one to wake Lee up and as she explained that it had been Rachael’s phone calls, Tarin smiled slightly at the memory.

Lee had been so bad off when she’d woken up and Tarin had felt awful for not realizing that sleep would do nothing for her. Lee commented how surprised she’d been that he’d offer her energy and Tarin shrugged, a bit sheepishly, ”I still don’t see why it’s a big deal…” he said. ”You needed to get home and I hadn’t realized that sleeping would make things worse for you instead of better.” It had been the least he could do.

”But yeah….” Tarin said, looking back at Kevin ”Even someone as good with their powers as your Mom has things they need to consider or deal with.”

"I'm pretty sure that there's been a few other times," Lee told Tarin. She had definitely had other days when she hadn't been able to make the entire run or had needed Tarin to slow down. That couldn't have been the only day that he'd 'beaten' her.

And though she had tried to explain it before, though he had now heard from both herself and her parents what things had been like when she was barely older than Kevin, Tarin still didn't understand why it was such a big deal to her that he had offered energy to her like that. Not just in general, but that day in particular.

"It's a 'big deal' because not only have so few people done that for me, but less than 48 hours earlier, you had still been passed out because of how much I had siphoned," Lee told him. Again. She didn't think it was so hard to understand.

Then Lee turned to Kevin again and added to what Tarin had said. "And even people who have their powers figured out can have things not work properly at times."

Kevin just nodded, but he didn't look too happy about the idea that even once he learned all these things about his powers they were telling him that he needed to learn, that things still might not work as well as he'd want. Unfortunately, that was just the way life was sometimes.

"But mum, I don't remember you sleeping for a long time ever. So when did you…crash?"

"No, because I never sleep more than 8 hours if I set an alarm." B when had she actually crashed after starting working at Haven? When she was up for literal days at a time, things did have a tendency to blend together in her memory simply because she didn't have those sleeps to break up each day.

"I think it was about 2 weeks after starting at Haven," Lee said. "It took some trial and error, which is why I almost crashed again. But I ended up getting a few hours sleep every four to five days if the bar schedule didn't let me sleep at night."

Well. That had clearly been the wrong thing to say. It just hadn’t been a big deal for him. Clearly it had been a big deal for Lee…she’d just gotten done explaining all of that. Had she thought he was arguing?

She was also bringing up the way they’d dealt with the merge as if that should have made some kind of difference. As if Lee doing what she had done hadn’t been far more for his benefit than to his detriment.

“You needed it.” was all he said with a small shrug, pretty much the same thing he’d said at the time.

The conversation moved on and Kevin asked the question about when Lee had crashed, but she couldn’t really remember. That wasn’t too much of a surprise considering that during that time she’d apparently been awake consistently for four or five days at a time before she’d manage to get a few hours of sleep.

This was something that Tarin and Lee hadn’t really talked about before and it really did drive home the point that Lee was used to being up for long periods of time. Had she been up for any periods of time like that since he’d moved in? Tarin didn’t think so.

Lee had just said she’d been working at Haven and working at the bar, with all those people at night. It made sense that she’d had a lot of extra energy, but consistently having enough to be up for all that time?

Looking back to the puzzle, Tarin started fiddling with pieces again, working at filling in the middle as they talked.

“How long did you have to do that?” he asked.

Again, Tarin's response was simply that she needed it. In a way it was kind of mindblowing to her, after how she had lived her life, how people had reacted to her and treated her and her powers. But the way that Tarin said it made it sound like it was an obvious, automatic thing to do.

And that had been before they even really knew each other. But he had continued to offer, even before they had started their 'secret' relationship. Though the 'secret' part hadn't lasted as long as she had expected because Kevin had been able to figure out on his own that they at least liked each other.

"Dad did that kind of thing for you though, right mum?" Kevin asked, looking straight at Lee.

"He did," Lee said, her voice a little slower. "At least when I was allowing touch. With the hugs and kisses we had, so you would have thought it was gross. But I don't think it was because simply that I needed it. Though, I couldn't turn my siphoning off back then, so I had a lot more sleepless nights than I do now."

It grew quiet for a little bit as Tarin and Kevin took that in as well as the fact that she had slept so little when she was working at Haven.

"How long did you have to do that?”

"I think about four or five months," Lee said as she looked up at Tarin. "The nights I wasn't at the bar, I did have a proper sleep. But I tried to get at least those few hours every four days because that way if something happened and I didn't sleep, I still had at least a day before I crashed."

And once she had gotten that routine figured out, it had actually worked out pretty well. The weekends she had Kevin had been the most difficult, though.

"Is that why you started having naps?" Kevin asked, a frown of confusion on his face. "But you could turn it off then, right? So why didn't you, so you could sleep?"

"That is why," Lee confirmed. It hadn't happened often when Kevin was home, but it had happened. "And I did learn I could turn it off around then. But I wasn't very good at it. Plus, it's very strange and uncomfortable for me to be around a lot of people but not be siphoning. That's why I didn't turn it off when I got you at the airport, either. Because being awake for a day or two after that felt like a better decision to me than turning it off."

Kevin had another question for Lee and Tarin kept his eyes on the table and the puzzle as Lee answered. The answer was consistent with everything Lee had said in the past. The people in her life, no matter how close they’d been, hadn’t ever really thought to simply offer her energy when she needed energy.

What a weird thing. A weird thought.

Lee hadn’t been able to turn off her siphoning back then, there had been a lot more sleepless nights…that made sense. When Lee forgot to turn off her siphoning now there definitely were sleepless nights, especially if she couldn’t go for long runs. “When she allowed touch,” was hard to hear too, but Tarin knew that history, and as much as it sucked it made sense too.

Tarin asked how long Lee had needed to survive those four or five day stretches of wakefulness and his eyes shot up to hers. She had gone four or five months only sleeping for a few hours every several days. No, Lee didn’t need sleep like the average person needed sleep, but she did need sleep.

Tarin didn’t say anything though. Lee didn’t tend to like it when he said things about her being awake, or alone and awake, or too much about all of that.

Kevin spoke again, asking why Lee didn’t just turn her siphoning off when she’d worked at the bar and Haven and Tarin thought he knew the answer and discovered he was right when Lee answered. If she’d been able to tolerate a few hours of sleep every four or five days, staying up less than that to avoid the disorientation that turning off her siphoning caused.

Tarin didn’t want to talk on things he didn’t know, but Lee had explained this to him before, Tarin looked at Lee before he spoke, ”Stop me if I’m wrong Lee…” he said, glancing at Lee for a moment before looking to Kevin, ”Your Mom can feel all the people around her all the time. Like feeling in 3D. Think about that for a minute, then imagine just shutting it all off.” Maybe it would be easier for Kevin to understand if someone who couldn’t actually do what Lee could do explained it.

The way that Tarin's eyes shot up to hers when she told him how long she had gone with her sleeping habits like that due to working the two jobs, Lee knew that he was shocked. It was shocking if just about anyone else in the world had done something similar.

"It really wasn't that bad," Lee told him. "I actually had something to do for most of that time I was awake. And the few times that I didn't have anything to do, I went for a run so I could try to get at least a couple hours of sleep."

Sure, it had all been rough at times. She had been extremely busy all the time, but she had felt challenged in a good way. She had still had lots of time with Kevin, her working hours being while he was either at school or asleep. And with Rachel living with them at the time, it had made working at the bar so much simpler.

Kevin was right in that turning her siphoning off at the bar would have allowed her to sleep much more frequently at the time. Though, with the two jobs and him (nevermind trying to spend time with Blaine as well), there really hadn't been very many hours left in the day for her to have actually slept anyway.

Given enough time, Lee probably would be able to get used to not siphoning around crowds of people. That would not make things easier in the meantime.

As Tarin went on to try and explain how her siphoning felt, Lee nodded. It was hard to explain something that others couldn't feel or experience, she knew. Watching Kevin's face, Lee had no idea if he was understanding Tarin's explanation or not. Because again, something he couldn't feel.

When Kevin was still quiet for a few moments after Tarin finished speaking, Lee thought that she would add something. "That's why I'm so startled and jumpy when you surprise me with your shield up," she explained. "A lot of the time, I rely on my siphoning more than my eyes to know if someone's coming closer to me. So when I don't feel you but you're suddenly behind me, it's shocking."

Lee reassured Tarin that everything had really been okay during that period of time and he nodded. Lee didn’t mince a lot of words about when things had been really difficult for her, so if she said that things had been fine during that time….they’d been fine. Sometimes Tarin had to shift his perspective for things like that where Lee was concerned. Generally he did a good job, sometimes things still caught him off guard.

Kevin had gotten really quiet at this point and even when Tarin explained his take on Lee’s powers and why it was so disorienting for Lee when she turned her siphoning off, Kevin didn’t say anything.

Tarin frowned a little, thoughtfully, as Kevin just sat in his chair for a moment. Lee spoke again and Kevin turned to look at her, understanding washing over his features as she explained why it was so weird for her when Kevin turned on his shield and she couldn’t feel him.

“I kind of feel like my head is going to explode.” Kevin said finally, “Are my powers going to get worse or did I just get really lucky?”

Tarin shook his head and shrugged, ”Right now it seems like you’ve got a really good handle on things. Learning fine control and what all you can do might be the most you ever have to worry about. That would be excellent. Things could change though as you get older and stronger, that’s why I yammer all the time about knowing your powers and how they work…so if things do change you’re ready.”

Kevin turned to look at Lee as she spoke, but continued sitting there quietly after.

Until he announced that he thought his head was going to explode with all of the things he had learned that evening. That was completely understandable. She had been older than him when she'd discovered she was a mutant and had learned all of these things so much more gradually.

Though he was worried about his powers getting worse as he got older, harder to deal with.

But Tarin did a good job explaining that that was why you needed to learn about your powers, so that Kevin would be able to deal with any changes or whatever with his powers as he grew older.

"Sometimes, the bad things or downsides to your powers just need to be thought about differently, too," Lee pointed out gently after a few moments. "Because the fact that I need to get my energy from others, and that I can be up for a long time as long as I have the energy has never been as beneficial as when you were a baby."

Kevin still looked a little shell-shocked and Tarin left it to Lee to handle that part of things. Tarin knew he could ramble on for ages about powers and where they came from and how to figure them out, but Lee was Kevin’s Mother and therefore far better at assuaging his concerns.

Lee used herself as an example again and pointed out that sometimes the downsides to powers simply needed a different perspective. Lee had a point, being able to stay up without many repercussions when Kevin had been a baby had probably been a huge advantage.

Kevin looked thoughtful as Lee pointed that out and nodded, ”I don’t know how draining electronic stuff could be a good thing, but what you said made sense. Babies are awake a lot and in movies everyone always seems tired when there’s a baby around.”

Tarin didn’t interject, he was thoughtfully working on putting puzzle pieces into place. The downsides of his powers didn’t seem to have a silver lining like Lee described. What could possibly be good about spirits muscling their way in and taking over. What change of perspective would make the other type of merge a good thing? Well when it had happened to the other Tarin, Lee had said it have saved them at the camps…and saved her when they’d been in Romania.

The way Lee reacted to the very thought of that kind of merge made Tarin balk at the idea of it ever being a good thing…

Snagging another couple of pieces and putting them into place, Tarin tried to think of a way to answer Kevin’s question. “Maybe draining the electronics themselves isn’t such a great thing, but being able to make a shield is an amazing thing. You can always protect yourself….having to plug in your phone afterwards could easily be worth it.”