[Activity] A Very Zen Pancake

[Miriam Bell]

Some time early during summer break a cab pulls into the drive-way and out climbs Miriam, unfolding an umbrella she soon tucks into the crook of her neck as she tries to hold on to it with her shoulder lifted against her tilted head. With her hands free she opens the car's door on the other side and pulls out a very large, very strange pancake of sorts. Hoisting the strange substance up with both arms until she can at least sort of carry it, glancing from mansion to dorms and over her shoulder towards the infirmary, uncertain of where to go.

((open))

[Will Stanton]

Will had stayed quiet throughout the carride -- the expected result for someone whose brain activity had been reduced to near zero (not that it had had that far to go, doh-ho-ho-ho). Occasionally, as the car had passed particularly busy intersections or historic sights, his mental activity had threatened to punch through again, and then died back down. This was probably more good than bad on the whole; it proved to Miriam that no, she hadn't killed him or something, though it showed that he was still apt to being overstimulated, even in his current state.

[Miriam Bell]

With no obviously good place to take Will Miriam ends up lugging them to her room. Of course Sam isn't there. Like most students she has friends and loved ones to go visit over the summer and she'd been prattling on about some kind of fairy non-sense, probably camping in a mushroom circle in the woods somewhere or something equally hippy, dressed up in the pretentiousness of 'the wild' like so much fur and feathers. Which leaves Miriam to clean up this mess. That she arguably made. But still.

She harumphs as she heaves Will onto Sam's bed and lets out an additional exasperated breath. Without the excuse of actually having to breathe it's entirely theatrics for an audience of (n)one.

[Will Stanton]

It took four or five hours before there was a stir in the pancake, as Will's senses started to come back to him. He didn't immediately shift back to a humanoid form, instead just slowly trying to get reacclimated to being awake and conscious.

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam looks up from her book the moment she can feel a stirring of thoughts from Will, closing the book on her index finger as she waits to see if it's for real or just the mental equivalent of rolling over in your sleep.

[Will Stanton]

Mrfduh. Whahappen...

It was, at least, for real.

[Miriam Bell]

"You tell me!" Miriam says a bit louder than intended but with an undercurrent of worry. "You wanted quiet and home and this is the closest I could manage."

[Will Stanton]

I think there's hair in these sheets... Will said, slowly morphing back roughly humanoid, holding his head in his hands.

"Ugh...my head is still hammering, though I think this time it's the withdrawl..."

[Miriam Bell]

"There's hair everywhere in here and barely any of it's human. I don't even want to imagine the other room."


"Did it help?" she adds after a brief pause. "The self-medicating and whatever the hell it is that I did back there?"

[Will Stanton]

"...No and yes. The MGH was...not a wise idea. It felt like something was trying to push out from behind my eyeballs; and I just couldn't hold focus on anything....I don't know if it was just a 'bad trip', or if it was something more serious than what happened the first time."

"As for YOU, you really did a number on me. That quieted everything right down; kind of what I was looking for out there in the countryside. So, yeah, I think I'd say that helped. I think. I'm still very confused."

[Miriam Bell]

"I was looking to your feelings for... guidance on what you were looking for, I suppose. I'm not sure what I found was entirely from within you though. To be entirely honest, I have no idea what that was. It felt calm but too much so? An almost unsettling stillness. Maybe that counteracted the frantic MGH somehow?"

[Will Stanton]

"Fighting an inferno with a tidal wave. It makes sense, at least in theory,"

Will started drumming his fingers on the edge of the bed.

[Miriam Bell]

"And once again the best I can manage is to fix a problem I cause in the first place." she sighs.

[Will Stanton]

"I...don't think this is you," Will said, after a pause. "Not directly, at any rate."

The drumming of his fingertips got a little faster-paced.

[Miriam Bell]

"You're getting fidgety again already..."

[Will Stanton]

"Yeah," Will frowned, looking at his hand.

"Maybe I just need a fidget pyramid or something; keep me distracted. Keep the annoying parts of my brain busy.

Maybe that's why it didn't hit so badly last time? Because I was so drained and tired from the courseload, that the MGH just brought me up to a sweet spot of some description?"

[Miriam Bell]

"A sweet spot of filling two entire rooms with copies of yourself. Or was that intentional spite for getting locked up?"

[Will Stanton]

"Hey, if your situation changed so you could lounge on the beach all day, you wouldn't take advantage of it?

And yes, I was very angry, and now I'm annoyed that they might have had a point."

[Miriam Bell]

"It is extremely obnoxious when they turn out to have been right all along. Makes them feel sanctimonious even if they aren't."

[Will Stanton]

"They do it because they care, and all that. Still -- at least you brought me home and not to the funny farm."

He started drumming his fingers on the bedpost again, seemingly without noticing.

[Miriam Bell]

"You just need to find some kind of balance. Energetic without being frantic, an outlet and purpose and role you can sink your teeth into."

[Will Stanton]

"Well, there's a problem there. I'm having a hard time..." he paused, closing his eyes.

"I'm having a hard time focusing on any one thing. Even now, as we're sitting here talking, my brain's going a mile a minute. It's like...

Like, I could be talking to you, and having this conversation. Or I could be going out and getting a work out in. Or heading downtown for a pint. Or any number of things and we...I am having trouble making that decision. Everything's...distracting.

Maybe I need some ADHD medication or something. But that's why I was off and away; somewhere calm and quiet where I didn't have to....think. Because I'm thinking too much. That's why I went all out to try to do what you wanted for the night out. Leave it to me, and I would have been sitting in the forest still, unable to pare down my choices. I'm...

We're not coming across clear, am I?"

[Miriam Bell]

"You're trying to go at things so hard you forget about everything else your brain is telling you to do."

"I might not be great at... ethics, but I am a telepath after all. You caught a glimpse not of what you could be but how much of it. All at once. You're used to your body being what your mind demands of it and right now that's not happening."

[Will Stanton]

Will was quiet for a moment. Not still, mind you, his toes tapping anxiously, but quiet.

"Sedatives, then. Something to dope me up and slow me down; stop me from going so hard..."

[Miriam Bell]

"No. Isn't that what this place is supposed to be for? Learning how to express who we are without it being... destructive or dangerous? They sent us to Muir because it's not as simple as teaching someone not to rip off doorhandles with their strength but that failure's on them. You have to be yourself and I'm not going to watch anybody try to bury that. Not even yourself. There has to be a better way."

[Will Stanton]

Will frowned, but nodded.

"I'm...afraid, Miriam. I'm afraid of Legion."

[Miriam Bell]

"Is that what you're calling the idea of splitting yourself apart?"

[Will Stanton]

"Legion is...

My counterpart, in the evil dimension parallel to my own. Or maybe a possible future; there's been...stories of what I end up becoming after all my friends are gone and I am very old.

And I am very old indeed."

[Miriam Bell]

"I know what it's like to hear stories about what you could become. To see the kind of hurt can be inflicted on people dear to me. But as old as you are, your friends are still here and more of them are waiting for you back home. I can't say that facing the possibility of outliving everyone and everything isn't terrifying but you've been through eternity once already and people are still here for you."

[Will Stanton]

Will drummed his fingers even faster.

"If I...give in to this. I need your word.

I need your word that you will shut me down if I get too...much."

[Miriam Bell]

"Always. Even if I might not be the best judge of what exactly is too 'much'."

[Will Stanton]

"Well, you can get help from others to make that determination. Whoever happens to be around," he sighed.

"And, for safety, we'll have to set up a space for me. So we can...evaluate how things are going."

[Miriam Bell]

"I'm not one for restraint and... as much as it hurts me to say this, I might want Sam around to sanity-check what I'm doing... but I think I have an idea for making sure there's always part of me around to keep you in check."

[Will Stanton]

Will raised an eyebrow.

"What do you mean?"

[Miriam Bell]

"Some of the things I've been manifesting have been... less than temporary. Well, once and I'm not entirely sure how because it's bit of a haze of drugs and blood and... distractions."

[Will Stanton]

"Are you alright? I don't mean to be dumping all my stuff on you," Will said, once again leaping to put someone else's needs in front of his own.

[Miriam Bell]

"I've woken up in worse states. I just need to get a better handle on however I did that."

[Will Stanton]

Will nodded. "I guess we both have a lot to do over summer vacation."