Xaviers!

After coming back from the cafeteria and an angry dinner, the Conduit-altered Will knocked on Miriam's door.

"Mmwhat?" a yawning Miriam calls from inside.

"Miriam, you gotta minute?" Will called in. "You decent, or approaching thereof?"

"Yeah, yeah, one moment..." she mumbles and Will can hear faint rustling and thumping until Miriam finally opens the door, wearing a robe that's just a tad askew. "Oh. You're the changed one."

Will frowned a little at that. "Yeah, I guess I am," he sighed. "I won't keep you long."

It didn't take a telepath to see the dude wasn't doing great, but he was trying to keep it together.

"Come in, you can keep me for however long you need. You look like shit..." she says, stepping aside to let Will in.

"Gee, thanks," Will sniped back, before catching himself.

"Sorry, I'm sorry, that was rude, it's just...been a day, and it's getting longer all the time. Forgive me if I snipe a bit," he sighed. "I do look like shit."

"I've been there. Not in the same way perhaps, but I've woken up in a literal garbage bin. But how you look has nothing how you seem to feel."

"I mean, join the club, though I imagine you found yourself there in somewhat different circumstances," Will tried to joke.

"It's just...bleh. I'm going to impale Conduit on a rusty rake the next time we meet, see if I don't. Everything is just so...I mean, it's wrong. I'm heavy, and trudging, and I had to go drink some water because I was getting dehydrated after a fight, and just....gnnnah. Not to mention my power being on the fritz in all the wrong ways."

He slapped his thigh, letting out a bit of frustration. "Not trying to dump on you, I'm sorry," he added, closing his eyes. "It's getting fixed, I'm sure."

"Have you tried stepping into the mirror? There's more of you in there than there is out here." she says, tapping Will's forehead with her finger. "It might dilute out whatever is wrong with you right now."

"Or it could infect the rest of them, and then we have a real problem. One bad apple spoils the bunch, you know?"

"And that's not a risk worth taking." she nods. "What if I tried to mentally bridge the gap? Let you back in with the rest of you and discard... this." she waves two fingers up and down at Will.

Will wrinkled his brow in confusion. "I'm not sure I get...how that would work? I'm not saying it wouldn't; I'm saying I'm just a tad confused."

"You aren't this body, right? You are what's in your head. Maybe you don't have to bring this unshifting body into the mirror at all to... rejoin yourself? Let your memories be absorbed into the greater whole? Whatever it is that you do when one of you steps back in."

"And you have a lot of experience discarding a body then, do you?" Will tried to joke again. "Know a good pig farm or lye pit nearby?"

"Okay so maybe it's not the most thought-out plan..."

"Besides, I don't think my shifting is just physical, anyway; any more than your telepathy is just some extra lobe in your brain. This shit works on a stranger level than all that; some kind of go-between between the physical and psychological. Pop my 'self' out of this body, and I still might be all fucked up. Maybe even in new and less predictable ways!"

Will sighed. "No, I thank you, but I just came in to borrow a pillow or something; gotta try to stay comfortable when I have to worry about freaking muscles and bones."

"Do you even have a bed to sleep in?"

"I was planning on just taking the couch and staying out of the way."

"Well at least we can determine that you're still Will Stanton at the core. At least sleep in my bed, it's not like I'm using it at night anyway."

"I really don't want to impose," Will said, putting his hands up. "In addition, spending a bunch of time around people right now may...not be good, considering what I did earlier."

"Very big Stanton Energy to go into the woods and hide. What happened earlier?"

"Well, I can't shift myself, but I'm inverted. I can shift other things. Any other things. I can...I can feel the shifting potential in everything around me.

I hit Tosh with it, without meaning to. Turned him into a bottle of water for about five minutes; the poor guy is going to be scarred for about 15 years. There's someone I don't know in the cafeteria who's two inches shorter than they should be, because I couldn't see over their head while waiting in line and I brushed up against them. I barely dodged out of the way of...shit, what's his name, the dude with the glasses, you know the one. The guy who wears three pairs of glasses for his three sets of eyes. He tripped, and if he had slammed into me, I have no idea what would have happened.

And it freaks people out, and it bums me out. I came out of the mirror for a specific role, and not only can I not do that, but I have to watch other people do things that I'd kill for and freak out about it," he said, slowly building into a rant. "And it just feels so, so wrong -- like, if everyone could ready your mind rather than vice versa. It just isn't the way things go.

I don't know why I'm reacting so much worse than I did when Lippencott drained all our powers. That was frustrating and aggravating, but this just feels...like I'm coated in a layer of grease, or something. Everything just feels wrong, on an inherent level. I can feel it in my bones."

"It's one thing to be denied, another to watch everyone else have it. Worse, discard it because they don't even deign to enjoy it. Trust me, I know."

Will nodded. "It's that, and more -- it's like waking up one morning to the sun rising in the west. It's just so inherently and obviously wrong, I can feel it in my marrow. Which I have now. Because I have bones."

"And not by choice." she nods. "But if I catch you resting them out on the couch instead of the bed that you made me I'm going to be cross."

Will frowned at that. "If I was going to grab some version of me for resting, I would have done that already, Miriam. And 'I' didn't make you that bed; I have no memories of it because it's never returned to the mirror. I don't know what you've been up to in here."

"It... right. I suppose it's more like a twin at this point. Still, you don't need to punish yourself on top of everything."

"I'm not punishing myself, Miriam," Will frowned, crossing his arms. "And until I know what's going on with me, I'm not sure it's a great idea for me to be interacting with other versions of myself. Otherwise, I would have just grabbed a pillow and a sleeping bag from the mirror and gone to town.

I mean, what if I somehow infect your bed, and you go to sleep on it one morning and wake up to find yourself transformed into laundry or a ham sandwich or something? Or something worse; something that leaves you vulnerable to the sun?"

It was fairly clear that Will was making excuses, certainly, and making up problems where they may or may not exist. Though they did seem to be out of an honest concern for Miriam's safety, at the end of the day, as well as a healthy dollop of trying to keep his innate weirdness at least somewhat hidden from the world.

"You're feeling miserable and you're trying to take control of something even if it's just where you sleep. You've settled on something and now you're making excuses. I appreciate the concern, but you're talking to a telepath. A telepath who is very familiar with this kind of thinking. You're not infectious, you're not a leper, you're dealing with an unfamiliar feeling of being in control of things and people around you and you're terrified of not being able to reign yourself in."

"I've already scarred one friend today," Will grumbled, admitting Miriam's point without admitting Miriam's point; a classic page out of the Bell playbook.

"And I don't scare easily. Far be it from me to tell you not to brood, but at least we can brood together. I'm rather experienced at it."

"Fine, fine, we'll try it your way," Will grumbled, trying to give Miriam a bit of a wide berth as he walked into her dorm room.

"Things going OK with the bed, by the by?"

"It's been exquisite, yes. It's... comforting. Comfortable." she corrects herself immediately.

Will raised an eyebrow at the slip of the tongue. "I see. A great conversationalist he is not, I take it?"

"No, but at least to me his kind of... blissful trance makes for a nice ambience."

"Well, if it works for you, it works for you," Will nodded, still eying the bed a little dubiously, and kind of awkwardly standing in the corner of the room. "I seem to remember you looking for something a little more...attentive...the last time you asked me into your room," he said, trying to break some of the awkwardness and tension with a joke.

"I was... a good deal more desperate for companionship and tried to force something that can't be forced. Or shouldn't be. Feelings are malleable to me as the world is to you right now. It's... tempting."

"I was trying to stab you at the time. Some overreaction was probably called for," Will admitted.

"And I think I have a better grip on the temptation now than I did then..."

"Gee, thanks. I know I rub people the wrong way but that's taking the piss."