desert places

[ladyfirestarter]

Charlie steps through into the second-floor corridor and stands aside, holding the door wide for Olivia to follow her. The air on the other side is dry and cool, with the slight brittle chill that only comes with air conditioning.

"Welcome to Taos," Charlie says, lightly.

Comments

[ladyfirestarter]

Charlie's watching her. "No luck?"

[flip_the_lights]

"No luck," she confirms. When she shoves her hair back this time, there's a lot more sharpness to the movement. "It's like I can't find the switch. I know it's there, but..."

[ladyfirestarter]

"You've done it before once, you said, right? What kind of situation was it?"

[flip_the_lights]

"I had to defuse a bomb," she says. "There was...this person who'd been involved in the creation of the Cortexiphan kids."

That seems like the easiest way to sum up David Robert Jones, despite some inaccuracies.

"He tracked some of us down to test us. My test was turning off a light grid telekinetically; if I didn't do it within a certain amount of time, a bioweapon would explode over Boston."

[ladyfirestarter]

Charlie's eyes widen. "Jesus," she mutters.

[flip_the_lights]

Olivia nods.

"High pressure situations seem like a fairly reliable way to trigger manifestations in most of us," she says. "But there's too much potential for that to be spontaneous, not deliberately controlled."

[ladyfirestarter]

(What she wants to ask right now is did you at least get the bastard later? -- but that isn't the subject at hand.)

"Yeah," she says instead. "I don't think we want to try and recreate a similar state of pressure here."

[flip_the_lights]

Another crooked smile. "Exactly."

Olivia glances down at some of the pebbles near her feet, sizing them up.

"Any other suggestions for how to find the switch?"

[ladyfirestarter]

She considers it.

"What about ... instead of recreating the situation, what about trying to relive it? Call up the memory of what you were thinking and how you were feeling, as vividly as you can?"

[flip_the_lights]

Like the fear she latched onto the first time she triggered the glimmer. It makes sense: maybe the key is assigning different emotions to different abilities.

Because while she was afraid in that skyscraper, it wasn't the gut-wrenching fear of glimmer. It was steel; it was determination; it was the nerves of one bullet left in her gun and a fast-approaching target.

So. You can do this. You have to do this.

Do it.

Olivia spreads her fingers, the emotion heavy and rock-solid against her stomach. Another breeze whispers across the ground.

And this time, it starts to grow.

[ladyfirestarter]

A quick glance around confirms it: the "breeze" isn't stirring anything else around them, not the brush a few yards away, not the ends of Charlie's own hair. It's localized entirely around Olivia.

You've got it. Keep going --

[flip_the_lights]

The force wavers, as if Olivia's adjusting her grip on a slippery object; it dies to nothing, returns with a shove, settles back into something approaching steadiness. The pebbles around her feet rattle.

One by one, they begin to lift off the ground. Not very far -- not more than an inch or two, as visible strain starts to etch itself along Olivia's face -- but they're entirely under her control.

[ladyfirestarter]

"Yes!"

Charlie's grinning fiercely.

[flip_the_lights]

At Charlie's exclamation, Olivia opens her eyes -- and soon she's grinning just as bright, the pebbles swirling another inch higher as if buoyed by her fierce pride.

It only lasts another five seconds before the stones clatter to the ground, but, breathless, she keeps smiling.

[ladyfirestarter]

"You got it." Charlie's beaming. "Excellent."

[flip_the_lights]

"It's a start," she manages, still grinning as she braces her hands on her knees. "Just have to refine it."

But now she knows what to do. How to find the switches, and label them, and -- eventually, she hopes -- hit them as quickly as drawing her service weapon.

[ladyfirestarter]

"So that worked? Reliving the memory of the last time you did it?"

[flip_the_lights]

She nods, taking an extra moment to finish catching her breath before she straightens.

"The emotions I experienced when I went through it," she explains. "I learned to get a better handle on the glimmer like that, but...I thought I could only access the abilities through fear."

[ladyfirestarter]

"... yeah," she says, sobering a little, "that sounds familiar. But this time it wasn't fear?"

[flip_the_lights]

"No," she says. "I wasn't...it wasn't exactly fear. I just knew the stakes were too high to fail."

[ladyfirestarter]

Charlie nods.

(She's thinking of a row of stalls in a burning stable; she's thinking of a cracked black orb.)

"Determination, maybe," she suggests.

[flip_the_lights]

"Exactly." A little softer.

Absently, Olivia rubs her forehead. There's a tension lurking at her temples; not a headache yet, but had she gone on much longer, odds are good it would've blossomed into one.

[ladyfirestarter]

Charlie notices that gesture, though, oh yes, and a little furrow of concern forms between her brows.

"Headache?"

[flip_the_lights]

"Not really," she's quick to say. Olivia drops her hands. "It took a lot of focus."

[ladyfirestarter]

"Let me know if you get one," she says. "I've got painkillers in my handbag."

The look on her face is complicated: a blend of memory and loss so old as to have had nearly all the pain leached out by now.

"My dad used to get crippling migraines if he had to use his power too much in a short time."