Chapter 116: Nikki's Inner Demon
Nikki was still unconscious in Logan's arms. Her eyes were open but empty, and from them came a cold white light that made her look, in the dark, like two pale lamps burning in a fog.
They didn't stop inside. Logan and Matthew walked straight out of the villa and brought her to where Professor X was waiting.
Charles took Nikki from Logan's arms.
He raised one hand and rested it gently against her forehead. In the same moment, a current of psychic energy moved into her, soft and measured as flowing water, and the tension in her small body released.
He could have managed the intervention remotely. The reason he had come in person was partly that remote psychic contact on an unstable subject carried risks: an imprecise application could affect the brain itself. Partly, it was because he wanted to see the Umbrella executive who held no prejudice against mutants and whom Logan had spoken well of.
As Charles's presence settled over Nikki, she slipped from the locked unconscious state into ordinary sleep.
Charles passed her back to Matthew.
Matthew took her, careful with his hands.
The transfer complete, everything around them began to move again. The world resumed as if a paused recording had been restarted. The still air began to flow. In the corner behind them, the owl's claws completed their descent, and the mouse that had been suspended mid-flight for the past hour disappeared into the dark with a small sound and a great deal of opinion about the evening.
Matthew and the others let out collective breaths. The weight of the past hour settled.
Charles spoke first, filling the quiet. "Mr. Lawrence. Since Logan came back from his visit, I've heard your name often."
Matthew glanced sideways at Logan. "Is that right? What kind of things did he say? Anything unflattering?"
"Not unflattering, no." Charles shook his head. "He said you were generous, and that you gave him a bottle of two-million-dollar whiskey on his way out. He said it was excellent, and extended me an invitation to try it as well."
"Did you?"
"I did. The 1926 Macallan. It lives up to everything said about it."
Charles nodded with genuine satisfaction, and extended his hand. "Charles Francis Xavier. Director of the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, and a professor. The name is somewhat long, so you're welcome to call me Professor Charles."
"Matthew Lawrence. An unremarkable head of security. Much shorter name. Matthew is fine." Matthew shook it.
When they released, Matthew looked down at the sleeping Nikki for a moment. Then he looked up at Charles.
"Professor Charles. Logan tells me you're exceptionally capable on the psychic side of things. Would you be able to determine why Nikki keeps losing control of her ability?"
"The specific reason?"
Charles paused for a few seconds.
"I could find out."
"But the practice of freely entering another person's mind and observing their psychic state without permission is quite rude, and it's not something I'm comfortable doing."
The statement was something between a disclaimer and a line in the sand. I am capable of this, it said, and also: I don't use that capability carelessly. I don't read people without reason, I don't invade, I don't control.
Matthew understood what the statement was doing. "But if we know what's causing the disruptions, we can help her get actual control of the ability. That seems worth the intrusion."
Charles looked at him. "You're certain?"
"I am."
Matthew wanted to know why this kept happening. As her guardian, the request was his to make. Charles considered it briefly, then nodded.
He placed a hand on Nikki's forehead.
Psychic current flowed.
And the world changed.
The villa and the night and the streetlamps vanished. Hell's Kitchen materialized around them, as Nikki remembered it.
In Nikki's memory, Hell's Kitchen was grey. It was always raining.
The sound of rain swallowed everything else, but beneath it were the sounds of crying, muttered words, layers of noise that never fully resolved. Even the air here carried something, less a smell than a quality. Sadness concentrated to the point of becoming a physical texture.
This was part of why Charles was reluctant to enter uninvited. Human memory held more grief than people knew. If you looked at enough of it, you stopped being able to keep your distance.
Through the rain, a small figure was running.
Charles followed.
The figure slowed and stopped.
In front of her: a tent. More than half of it sat underwater. The zipper was open, and the gap had allowed water to pour freely inside, so that the interior held more standing water than the ground outside.
Charles looked through the gap in the zipper.
Inside was the body of a woman. The decomposition was severe. She had been in the water long enough that her skin had distended, and the surface of her body was covered with larvae. Her eyes had burst through their lids from the pressure of internal gases. The color left in them was grey.
Nikki stood before the tent opening.
She was whispering: "Mama."
Charles had started to form the conclusion that the mother's death was the source of the disruptions. Then the body moved.
It came out of the tent in the manner specific to horror: crawling, limbs operating at wrong angles, head tilted without muscle control. Moving toward Nikki. And as it moved, the mouth opened and closed, producing sound.
"Nikki... my good girl... my good girl..."
"Where is the medicine you were getting for me... where did you put it..."
"Mama is in so much pain... why didn't you come..."
"Your life is better now. You have a new family. You have people who look after you. What about me?"
"Have you just left me behind?"
"I'm still here. In the cold ground. Watching you. Every single day."
The corpse shrieked and surged forward. Rotting hands closed around Nikki's face and pulled it close, that bloated ruined face pressing toward hers, the words continuing without pause, repeating, each repetition landing with another layer of weight.
Nikki stood frozen. She was shaking without moving. Her eyes had fixed on her own feet with the empty staring quality of someone who had gone somewhere inside that wasn't here.
Charles caught the smell before he registered what it meant. Then he understood.
This child, had been frightened past the point her body could contain.
[TL note: the source say Nikki is four? this isn't Naruto, so Imma keep her age ambiguous]
Charles stood and looked at the scene in front of him, his expression tightened.
The emotions coming from Nikki were readable at this depth. They were simple and they were total.
Guilt.
It wasn't the mother's death that drove the ability out of control. It was this: Nikki was happy now. She had Matthew, she had Ada, she had a warm place and people who looked after her. She had moved on. And the guilt of having moved on, of having found something good after abandoning her mother's last days to the infection and the rain, had built and built until it found a release valve.
Charles held the shape of the problem in his mind and thought about what to do with it.
Two paths.
The first: leave it to time. Time was an able therapist. It worked slowly and without precision, but it was thorough. Let Nikki live, and the weight would lift on its own schedule.
The problem with the first path was what it asked of Nikki in the meantime: continued loss of control, continued nights like this one, continued guilt and suffering for however long the schedule required.
The second path was more definitive.
He could address it directly. He could enter this place properly, not as an observer, and help Nikki resolve what was holding her.
He had done this before. He had brought many children with unstable abilities through his school over the years, and part of what that meant was learning how to move inside someone's grief without making it worse. He had some facility with this kind of work.
He had built the school partly for exactly this.
Charles made his decision.
He was going in.