Rivalries: Chapter Three, Part Two

Notes: A little more background for Charlie and a little info on the mysterious Ari. Next up? NEW POV TIME! Yes, this is a dual-POV piece, get ready to get rocked. Or confused, as the case may be.

Title: Rivalries: Chapter Three, Part Two

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Rivalries Chapter Three, Part Two

 

“Aaand…done.”

Charlie set the end of the band down with a huge sigh of relief. How, how was it possible that in almost thirty years of life, too much of it spent running his ass off in combat zones, that he’d never discovered all of the muscles that this guy knew about before? Like this one, somewhere in the middle of his back, that was burning like a motherfucker now but would leave him able to stand without feeling like his torso was imbalanced for the next week.

“Good job,” Lionel, his physical terrorist said, handing over a towel. “One more set and we’ll call it a day.”

“I hate you,” Charlie muttered, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

“Now see, if I was a less secure person I’d be worried about that. As it stands, I know I’m in your good graces, so buck up, buttercup, and give me twenty more.”

Charlie grimaced but grabbed the end of the band, turning into the exercise as he did so.

“Good. One…two…”

“Do you call…everyone ‘buttercup’…or is it…just me?” Charlie panted as he did the reps. Some of the other people in the rehab gym were staring in his direction. Whatever, let them get an eyeful. He wasn’t ashamed of his body—he did the best he could with it, and he knew it.

He was way more ashamed of his knack, but that was another thing altogether.

“I save it for the big tough guys who get wimpy around the fourth set, just like you,” Lionel replied. “Which means I pull it out a couple times a day.” He grinned. “What can I say, I get all the fun patients. Thirteen…fourteen…”

Charlie closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. “Seventeen…eighteen…” The last two reps were torture, and when he put the band down again, his whole back shivered with relief. It was like a wire had been cut in two, and he shivered and quaked a bit as his muscles slowly remembered normalcy.

“Lie down on the table, I’ll get you a hot pack,” Lionel said, pointing to the table normally used for prone exercises. They could have gotten a private therapy room for the heat treatment, there were plenty of them available, but Charlie preferred being out in the open. He could handle being in a small, confined space by himself, but when other people got in there with him, he started to feel unsettled.

Lionel came back with a fresh towel, which he laid down on Charlie’s back, then covered with the hot pack. Warmth soaked through the thin barrier into his skin, and deeper, and Charlie sighed as the twitches began to subside. “You seemed a little rougher than usual today,” Lionel noted as he sat down at the end of the table and began to fill out his notes. “Any idea why?”

“I started a new job.”

Lionel’s pen stopped scratching. “Oh right, the teaching job! How was it?”

“Exhausting.” Understatement. “Kids are terrifying. Never have any.”

“Too late, I’ve already got three.” He sounded more amused than offended—it was one of the best things about him, that he tended to laugh instead of huff. He didn’t let patients treat him badly, but he understood bad days. Maybe because he was a veteran too, but probably just because he was had compassion. “And they’re great.”

Charlie opened his eyes and looked at the guy. “Yeah? All the time?”

“Nobody’s great all the time, but I don’t judge my kiddos solely on the messes they make.” Lionel made a few more notes. “Will you go back?”

“Yeah.” He had to. He needed the money…plus, he’d actually kind of enjoyed himself, in retrospect. Being in the academy made him feel like he was actually doing something with his life post-military, something worthwhile. He could help those kids. And if he managed to help them, then maybe he could figure out a way to help Ari too.

Speaking of Ari… “What time is it?”

Lionel checked his phone. “Six-thirty.”

Shit. He had half an hour before their Skype session. “I’ve gotta go.” He rolled over onto his side, sighing as the blissful heat fell away.

“You haven’t had that hot pack on long enough to do much good.”

“I’ll spend some time on my heating pad to make up for it,” Charlie said. Lionel looked doubtful. “Promise.”

“Pinkie swear?” Lionel grinned at whatever expression he saw on Charlie’s face. “All right, if you’re sure. See you next week, then. Be safe. Don’t let the kids get you down.”

“I won’t.” Charlie grabbed his button-down and coat and pulled them on, then booked it for his car. If the lights were on his side, he could be home in twenty minutes. That would leave him enough time to grab a quick bite, which—he should have packed a granola bar or something for after class, because he was starving.

The lights weren’t on his side. He got home with two minutes to spare, just enough time to fling himself down in front of his computer and get Skype running. Ari and his mom were already online. Of course.

They called a moment later. Charlie accepted the call, and smiled when he saw that Ari was leaning so far forward that a view of his nose filled almost the entire screen. “Hey, buddy.”

“Charlie! You’re here!” He leaned back against his mom, relief washing over his tense features. “I was worried something had happened to you.”

Charlie shook his head. “Nope. I’m right here, same as always. When do I miss our talks?”

“Never ever,” Huda, Ari’s mother, said, brushing a strand of hair back from her forehead with an elegant hand. She didn’t bother to look at Charlie, just kept her eyes on her child, like she could measure the level of pain he was in just by watching. Maybe she could, maybe parenthood came with its own set of knacks, but if it did, it wasn’t a knack that could end her child’s suffering. Unfortunately, for now, the only person who could do that was Charlie, just by showing up. It wasn’t a power he felt he deserved.

“Tell me about your day, buddy,” Charlie said, and Ari launched into a retelling of the day’s events—a trip to the library and the aquarium, then writing a report on manta rays. As he spoke, he relaxed more and more against his mother’s side, until finally he looked like any other kid. Once he did, Huda let herself relax too, and smiled at Charlie.

“Did you know that manta rays can jump way high out of the water?”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It’s so cool, let me show you the video…” He shared his screen, and Charlie spent the next ten minutes watching a documentary on manta rays and listening to his stomach rumble.

Ari was yawning by the time the video ended. “I think you’re done here,” his mother said. “Go get ready for bed.”

“But Mom—”

“Go on. Say goodnight to Charlie.”

Ari sighed unhappily. “Goodnight, Charlie. See you tomorrow?”

Charlie smiled for him. “Yeah, see you tomorrow.” Ari left, and Huda got up and shut the door, then came back to the camera.

“What a day,” she said, rubbing her fingertips across her forehead. She had a decade on Charlie, and had been a professional diplomat for twice as long as he’d been in the army. She knew how to hide her feelings. If she was letting them out now, it was either because she meant to or because she was exhausted.

“Tough time for Ari?”

“Not so bad for him today, he had fun. But I spent five hours arguing with the hospital, then with the school. He wants to go back to one, doesn’t want to go back to the other, and generally it’s just a mess.” She looked seriously at Charlie. “Do try to keep this job, all right? I went to a lot of trouble to arrange it for you, and you’ll need the credentials if Ari ends up needing to transition to one-on-one learning, which I hope he won’t, but…” She sighed. “I do hate having to rely on you so much.”

“I get it.” Charlie knew it wasn’t an insult. “I’m sorry.”

“Lord, don’t be sorry, you’re helping me keep him out of isolation and an eternity of tests as it is. And I’m so grateful for that.” She bit her lip. “But it isn’t fair. Not to you or to him.” Or me, her subtext read loud and clear.

“The docs will figure out his knack,” Charlie said, for probably the hundredth time. He was starting to lose faith, but he had to keep the form of it for Huda’s sake. “They’ll find a way to fix the problem.”

“We’ll see.” She smiled slightly, then reached for the screen. “Good night, Charlie. See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, you bet.” The connection ended. Tomorrow. Another day of putting on a brave face, dealing with a principal who hates him, students who would test him to his limits, and another session with Ari.

Fuck it. Ari dealt with worse all the time, and he was eleven. Buck up, buttercup. Tomorrow’s a brand new day.

Rivalries: Chapter Three, Part One

Notes: More Rivalries, yay! A little introspection at the end of the day, and another confrontation with the principal. One more post after this with Charlie, and then we might...SWITCH POVS!

Title: Rivalries: Chapter Three, Part One

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Rivalries: Chapter Three, Part One

 

The final bell rang, the seniors left, and Charlie finally let himself heave the huge sigh of relief that had been building in his chest all afternoon. God damn, but he’d faced down panels of military brass that weren’t as intimidating as a group of high schoolers who were too self-assured to know what they didn’t know. Fuck, had he been as bad when he was in high school? He didn’t think so…then again, he’d had such a chip on his shoulder that he’d almost killed another student by being an uncontrolled idiot. He was lucky he’d still been accepted into the military after that.

Whatever had happened to Johnny Gibilisco? He’d only seen the other boy once after their duel—in the hospital, when Charlie went to visit him right after graduation. Their meeting had been stunted, filled with hurt and shame and overseen by both of their guardians, which had added an extra level of “ugh, why?” to the whole thing. Johnny had, technically, forgiven Charlie—or at least, he’d said “Forget it,” which to a teenage boy desperate for absolution was the same thing. But Charlie had never bothered to follow up, never looked to see what had become of Johnny, whether he’d ever figured out his knack…

Charlie wasn’t going to try now either, ease of searching for people via social media and freedom to communicate be damned. If he started looking back at his past, he might fall into a black hole and never claw his way free again. It had been hard enough the first time to get over the urge to feel like all his best moments were behind him, and the only life he had to look forward to now was a lesser one, a shriveled reflection of what he could have had. Jeanine, his therapist, had set him right on that front, at least.

“You’re here,” she’d said simply, during a particularly voluble session. “You’re not the same, but you’re still here. And some of your friends, soldiers-in-arms, people you loved and trusted—they’re not. It’s hard not to wish for things to be different. I can’t tell you not to do that, or that you’ll ever stop doing it. But I can tell you that you’re here, in the world, and you still have a chance to make a difference in it. It won’t be the same kind of difference you made before, but you can do it. I think no one on your team would begrudge you that.”

And fuck her for coming out and saying it, but she’d been right. That session was the start of Charlie getting his head on straight—dedicating more effort to his PT, listening to the shield specialists as they’d talked about retraining even when it became apparent that he wasn’t going to be able to do it, getting in touch with Julianna and Sergeant Myers and Ari…

Speaking of Ari, they were supposed to Skype tonight. And Charlie still had to get to the clinic, and make dinner, and plan out the next day’s lessons. He put his hand over his face for a moment and just breathed, taking in the smell of lemon-scented cleaner and, beneath that, the scent of his own sweat that all the bleach in the world couldn’t hide.

“Mr. Verlaine?”

Charlie lifted his head quickly and looked at the door to the classroom. Principal Cross was there, her hands folded in front of her like a ship’s prow, her mouth pinched so tight the lines around it were practically ruched. “Yes?” he replied when she didn’t immediately speak.

“Are you quite all right?”

“Quite.” He kept it short—the last thing he wanted right now was to get into a discussion of the day with someone who was probably counting the hours until she could get rid of him. He stood up and began to pull his papers together. “I’ll be out of your hair shortly.”

Principal Cross tilted her head. “I’ve heard all sorts of…interesting reports about your class today.”

Charlie faked a smile. It was the best he could do under the circumstances, and no matter who he flashed it at, they always seemed to see right through it. “Already? Class just ended a few minutes ago.”

“Class ended half an hour ago, Mr. Verlaine.”

Oh, shit. Time had gotten away from him. Fuck, fuck, fuck, it had been a while since he’d zoned out like that, lost in his own head. He thought he’d gotten over it. Better schedule an appointment with Jeanine. “What’s the consensus?” he asked, not bothering to meet her eyes as he continued to pack up. “Am I the worst teacher ever?”

“No.” She sounded somewhat disappointed by that, too. “The students by and large had positive things to say about their first class with you. Of course, it was only the first class, Mr. Verlaine. You have an entire semester stretching ahead of you. As…novel as you are to the children, it might be some time before the rose is off the bloom.”

“Well.” He snapped his case shut and made sure he wasn’t leaving anything behind. “I’ll be sure to put off inevitably disappointing them for as long as possible, Principal.”

“I won’t have you misleading them,” she cautioned, still blocking the door. “These are some of the best and brightest students in the entire country, each of them gifted with something many people would kill to have. They are to be celebrated, Mr. Verlaine, not frightened into submission about the potential futures their gifts might bring.”

Aha. Someone told her I’m being a bit of a hardass. “Having a knack is a thing to celebrate,” Charlie agreed. “But knacks aren’t purely positive, either. Everything comes with two sides, and I want to make sure these kids understand both perspectives instead of throwing a bunch of hopes and dreams at them and leaving them unprepared for the real world.”

“The real world will come at them quickly enough,” Principal Cross countered, something in her expression seeming almost troubled. “School is meant to be a safe place for every student, and Euryale Academy is uniquely suited to cater to the needs of these very special children. They should take comfort in this safety while it’s available to them. After they leave—”

“Do you have statistics on what happens to them after they leave?” Charlie interrupted, a little surprised he was bothering instead of letting her blather at him and blandly agreeing until she left. But this…this was important, this could be the difference between a student that excelled once they left here and a student that floundered under the weight of their own knack in the real world.

He pressed on. “Because I’d be really interested in seeing if feeding your students a load of fluff about how special they are instead of preparing them for the reality of being used—yes, used—” he emphasized when he saw her shake her head “—for the good of the country, whether that makes them more or less likely to succeed. I went to Stheno, you know, just down the road, and we didn’t have your facilities or connections, but we had a damn lot of students who knew the real score, and a high success rate in the field after graduation. How many of the students here freak out once they get to college, or wash out after they go into the military? How many of them end up in institutions, or under the care of other people with knacks, to keep them from doing the world at large harm? Because I bet it’s probably—”

“That’s enough, Mr. Verlaine.” Principal Cross had gone pale and stiff. “I think…I think you should leave now.” She put her money where her mouth was and turned around herself. He heard her clicking heels disappear down the hall, and wondered what kind of nerve he’d struck.

No time to pursue it—he was already running half an hour late. Charlie headed out the door, kicking it shut behind himself.

He’d dig deeper later. For now, he had a date with a physical therapist who wouldn’t take it easy on him just because he’d had a rough day at work. He hated it, but it was what he needed, and the army was paying for it, so…

Get a move on, Verlaine.

He glanced at his phone again and hustled to his car.

Rivalries: Chapter Two, Part Two

Notes: The last class of the day, the SENIORS! Oooh, fun times. Good luck, Charlie, you're going to need it.

Title: Rivalries: Chapter Two, Part Two

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Rivalries: Chapter Two, Part Two

 

Being in the military meant that, once you reached a certain rank and had to manage people—or just had enough years in and were fairly observant—you could spot personnel problems a mile off. It was never as simple as taking someone down a peg, especially when you and everyone else around you had a knack. Attitude problems came from all kinds of directions, and as soon as the senior class walked in, the last class of the day for both Charlie and the group of fifteen students, Charlie spotted at least three different sources of trouble at once.

He should have expected it. Hell, he had expected it. Seniors in a school like this were the ones with the least to lose. They’d already taken all the tests to assure their path forward, and they’d had three-plus years to form themselves into a cohesive unit—or, in this case, carve themselves into factions that probably only united when facing a common enemy. Charlie knew that, right now, he was that enemy. They didn’t know him, didn’t understand his skills or where he was coming from, and had no reason to give him respect—he hadn’t had the forming of them, hadn’t guided them past early fumbles into the state of competency with their knacks that they were in—or at least, had better be in—right now.

This wasn’t the army, either. He couldn’t give problem children pushups or make them gear up and run an obstacle course knack-less if they got in his face. If he went to the principal with anything, he’d automatically lose any chance of gaining their respect. He needed to handle this right.

But what was right?

He introduced himself and went down the attendance list, matching names and knacks to faces. Four purely mental, four purely physical, two ornamentals, three elementals, and two crossovers. Pretty good distribution.

“So,” Charlie said, sitting on the edge of his desk and crossing his feet at the ankles. “Who’s already been accepted to college?”

Ten of the students raised their hands.

“Or a military academy,” he modified, and four more students lifted their hands up. Only one girl didn’t join in, a girl with brown skin and dark hair down her back who scowled at the floor. Charlie checked his list. Elemental knack, premier grade. Shit, she ought to have entrance to any school in the country with a knack like that, all expenses paid. What was stopping her?

Not the time to find out. “How many of you are legacies?”

The hands weren’t as quick to rise this time. Nine of them eventually found their way into the air, the students glancing between each other.

Not surprising. “How many of you have already been offered jobs for once you get out of school?”

All of their hands went up this time. “Excuse me, Mr. Verlaine,” a boy in the front of class drawled, dropping his hand as he leaned back in his chair, his legs spread as far apart as they could go before running into the sides of the desk. Ah, we have a manspreader. Great. “Why do you need to know our plans for the future? Isn’t your job to, like, help us refine what we’ve already got going on?” The look on his face said very clearly Not that you could.

Charlie knew his missing arm was getting a lot of attention, knew it the way he always knew when someone was staring at him—a prickle across the back of his neck, like he’d been grazed there with the edge of an ice cube. It was a wariness that had developed as an effect of his training, a little bit of a crossover bleed that some people with a mental knack could get if they worked hard enough on it. Charlie was almost strong enough with his mental alert system for it to qualify as a crossover, except that—what was there to cross over from, now that he couldn’t make a shield?

Head in the game, Verlaine. “That is my primary job, yes,” Charlie replied. “And to know how to best help you refine your skills, I need to know where you’re going. Those of you heading into the military academies will get worked to hell and back, so apart from making sure you’re ready to handle the first year, I’m not too worried. Those of you who are legacies, depending on the kind of institution, will either have an easier time of it than you should, or a much, much harder time of it than you should. Those of you going into a university that no one in your family has attended before should be as sharp as possible, regardless of prior expectation.”

“I’m going to Harvard in the fall,” a girl in the second row said. She was a knockout, put together in a way that screamed wealth to Charlie. It was a wonder she wasn’t a legacy, honestly. “I really can’t think of any reason they’d have to try and push me out. I’ve got one of the rarest mental knacks in existence, after all.”

Emotional manipulation at a fundamental level. It  was a very rare knack—this was a girl who, in seconds, could plunge someone into a terrible depression or elevate them to a joy so exalted that coming down from the high might kill them. She was almost certainly going to end up either a doctor or a black-ops specialist.

“It’s not that they’d tried to push you out,” Charlie said, going for honesty. Not that this girl probably didn’t already know what was coming at her, but it couldn’t hurt to reiterate it. “It’s that they’re going to want to control you. Whether its out of fear or jealousy or just because someone with a stronger knack can, you’re almost guaranteed that an upperclassman will try it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Who can beat what I’ve got?”

“Dream knack,” the girl who hadn’t raised her hand the first two times said. “Your stuff’s only useful when you’re awake. Someone could get into one of your dreams and put you in a coma. Or an invisibility knack. Wouldn’t even see them coming until it was too late.” Invisibility knacks never made a person actually invisible—they generally made them so unnoticeable, so plain and unremarkable, that it was essentially the same thing, though.

“All we have to do to fuck your knack up is keep you inside, ‘Nanda,” the manipulator shot back. A few of the other kids laughed.

“It’s important to be aware of your strengths,” Charlie said, interceding before the argument could get any hotter. “And I’m pretty sure that most of you are very aware of your strengths. Confidence is important in ensuring your knacks work reliably, after all. But at your level, it’s also important to be aware of your weaknesses. The ones inherent in the knack, and the ones that are specific to you.”

“What if we don’t have any?” the boy in the front—Willard, the sheet said, which had to be a family name, he probably went by Will—asked, with all the cockiness of a teenage boy backed up by a formidable knack.

“Then we make sure you’re right before you leave school, so that you don’t get any unpleasant surprises in the future,” Charlie replied. “What’s your knack, Will?”

“It’s Willard, and I’m a shield.” The kid grinned, and a small, acid green mushroom-cloud burst against the floor in front of Charlie, leaving a scuff behind on the tile.

Oh boy. The most arrogant jackass in his class was a shield.

Great.

Just great.

“I want a list from each of you of pros and cons related to your knacks,” Charlie said, ignoring the way his heart ached seeing a shield cast for the first time in months. His own knack rumbled loudly inside him again, thrumming in his chest and throat so strongly he could barely speak. “This will be the basis for a paper you’re going to write later on, and for most of the practical training we’ll be doing this semester. And for those of you who think you don’t have any weaknesses?” He glanced at Willard. “Do some research and revise your thinking.”

“What’s your knack, sir?” Willard asked, all false innocence. If he spread his legs any farther apart, his pants would split. “If you don’t mind me asking, of course.”

Charlie didn’t have to tell them. Just like Principal Cross, he could refuse to say and that would be that.

He couldn’t do that, though. It would just be a different way of jettisoning his chances of gaining their respect. “Shield,” he said evenly, and watched Willard do a doubletake. “And believe me, our knack’s got plenty of weaknesses.” He stood up and went behind the desk. “Everybody get to work.”