Yup, that's a mutant all right. Unconscious.

Unconscious behind a dumpster. And she can't be older than, what, thirteen? Fourteen at the oldest. And--shit.

The school was, first and foremost, a school. But it was also a refuge. A heartbreaking number of students had not been sent by loving parents who wanted their children to have the opportunity to explore their abilities and identities. 

This isn't the first case of, unless she misses her guess, tapping into the girl's autonomous systems and wincing at what she found there, refeeding syndrome she had ever seen, but it was probably the worst, and at least at the school they'd had medical facilities.

The smart thing to do would probably be to call an ambulance and get her to a hospital. 

Yeah.

Except that she's an underaged mutant hiding behind a dumpster. At least, I think she was hiding; her condition is by no means non-appalling but I don't see the kinds of bruises that would suggest she was attacked and left there. 

Getting her medical care is a great idea. Putting her into the system without her consent--

Yeah.

Making hard decisions sucks. I wish Dad and Papa were here. 

I wish Hank were here, with a bevy of medical equipment. 

Well. Yes.

She might wake up. For now we can smuggle her back to the dorm where we can look after her and if she looks like she's not going to wake up before--things get worse--then we can call an ambulance. I can at least stop her heart from doing all kinds of unwise things. Poor kid.

Yeah.

If--we end up regretting this--

Shit for options.

Mhm.

She peels some metal off the dumpster that won't immediately cause it to spew garbage all over the street, heats it to a searing red to sterilize it, and the two of them sit and watch the girl while they wait for the makeshift stretcher to be cool enough to carry the unconscious teenager.

--I think I recognize her. Missing persons report. Escaped from some kind of mental facility.

Definitely not calling an ambulance except as a last resort. 

Yeah.

It could be innocuous.

Not likely. 

No. Not likely at all. But if they are I don't want you irretrievably biased against. 

Sigh. Fair.

She continues monitoring the teenager. 

She's not in great shape - she's significantly underweight, and while it's subtle, it seems like there might already be some damage to her heart - but she's holding on, as stable as someone in her condition can be.

Edie purses her lips and pays particular attention to the heartrate. 

Her hands, curled into fists, tremble with barely-suppressed rage, and she promises herself that if this is what it looks like there is going to be a visit paid to the institution that this girl got out of. For now the anger is irrelevant. It won't help with the task at hand. 

And eventually the stretcher is cool enough and the two girls (carefully, carefully) lift the third onto it and begin to make their way back to campus. Emily makes sure there aren't any cameras pointed at the pair of them even as Edie makes sure no one sees their rescuee. 

She stiffens when they touch her, and her heart rate jumps a little, but she doesn't wake.

Oh dear.

In that case when they get her back to their dorm room (and have hurriedly prepared Emily's bed for a non-her occupant, she can share with Edie, it'll be fine) they settle the stretcher down on top of it and have it gently melt out from under her instead of trying to touch her with their hands again. 

Her heart rate gradually returns to normal.

Okay.

They don't know how long she's been unconscious but they know what got her there. Emily fetches a cup of water and gently slides a quicksilver-fluid sheet of titanium under her to prop her up a little and attempts to slowly feed her sips of water. 

Edie stands by to intervene if she can't swallow on her own or something goes down the wrong way. 

For the first moment, it looks like she's not going to be able to swallow, but then she manages it.

She's too far gone to react in any particular way.

...Okay.

It's probably worth trying to crush some dry toast and crackers into a powder and make a paste to feed her the same way, little by little; they don't know what exactly she needs, nutrient-wise; Edie's comprehension of the autonomics doesn't go that deep. But basic carbohydrates are a pretty safe bet. 

That goes a little less smoothly than the water; the instinct to swallow is clearly there, but she's not quite aware enough of what's happening to use it when she should. With a little work, though, they can get some food into her.

Okay. That's better than nothing.

They skip class. They can afford to. This is more important. 

She drifts, slowly, in fits and starts, toward consciousness.

Rushing her would probably be bad. They don't. They pay attention to making sure she's comfortable and ameliorating as much physical damage as telepathic aid and basic first aid skills will help with.

It takes just over a day, with a few scary moments where her heartbeat goes erratic, but eventually she comes back to consciousness. Not that they'd be able to tell, if they couldn't see it directly: she doesn't move or open her eyes; her breathing evens out a little, but that's about it.

They don't bombard her as soon as she's awake. Edie keeps a careful eye on her in case her heart rate goes worrying again but stays scrupulously out of her thoughts. 

After a few minutes, she opens her eyes.

"Are you alright?"

She glances at Edie when she talks, and then curls up in a tight ball with a whimper.

--Okay. Some people are negatively startled by telepathy, but it's a lot easier to communicate that way, for both parties...

[Wordless: superimposition: [greeting][concern][query:specificity of problems][query: how can we help]]

She doesn't like that - she was already close to panicking, and it's not helping - but she keeps it together. [Don't send me back.][Don't send me back.][Don't send me back.]

Oh no.

[Negation][Summary of existence of missing-person report][Consideration of calling hospital; decision not to on account of making the authorities aware of her being an obviously bad choice]

She doesn't know what to make of that.

[Don't send me back,] she sends again, but it's less panicked begging, this time, and more affirmation that that's what she wants.

Poor kid.

[Firm confirmation that they are not going to do that]

She relaxes a little, but doesn't uncurl.

[Where am I?]

[University dormitory. We smuggled you here from where you were so we could try to make sure you didn't die. Also because dumpsters are horribly unsanitary and that can't be good when you're in bad shape for unrelated reasons.]

That's surprising - that she was in that bad shape; that they cared enough to do something about it - but she doesn't dwell on it.

She tries to think of what to ask next, but a wave of exhaustion washes over her. She rides it out - there's a sense that she's used to this kind of thing, at least enough that it's not surprising - and just rests, in its wake, rather than trying to communicate any more.

That is absolutely fine. This is about her recovery, after all, not the twins' curiosity. 

She rests, and watches, her thoughts vague and anxious.

Edie returns to her book. Emily returns to messing with metal in a physically implausible fashion. 

Emily's metalworking gets her attention; she doesn't move or speak but she watches closely.

Emily's metalworking involves a piece of metal floating in the air in front of her. It's vaguely cat-shaped, and periodically the surface ripples and changes in some way. Some of the changes she frowns at and reverses; others she keeps. It gets more catlike over time; a stylized cat in a position like it's about to pounce on something. 

Pretty.

She doesn't interrupt.

It takes her a while to get the shape down--a smooth, stylized kitten, all curves and feline mischief--she opens a drawer and retrieves a couple of chips of jagged broken green glass, probably from a bottle of some kind, based on the curvature of the smooth sides, and presses them carefully into the eye positions of the kitten, the metal flowing over the curved glass to cover all the sharp edges and leave the exposed green glass looking like bright, appropriately-stylized kitten eyes. 

Emily sets it down on the desk with a handful of other small metal sculptures, presumably created in the same way. 

A pair of small floating orbs, like yellow plasma globes, appear over the desk and clumsily attempt to pick the little sculpture up.

Ooh! So that's what she can do. 

The little sculpture is primarily made of stainless steel; picking it up might be tricky but as long as there aren't any bizarre unlikely accidents involving the eyes she's not likely to damage it. 

She doesn't seem to have much fine control over the orbs, but they stretch like taffy around the statue when she uses one to push it into the other, and shortly she's conveyed the statue over to the bed to have a closer look.

The kitten is very intent on its intended prey, possibly a pair of shoelaces. Its tail curls in the air above its haunch in a question mark shape, and tiny blunted claws extend from its forepaws. 

That's really cute. She examines it from all angles, looking up regularly to check on Emily and Edie.

Emily is grinning, clearly proud of her creation. Edie is smiling at her sister. 

She puts it back, carefully, when she's done. [Pretty.]

[Thanks!]

[What happens now?]

[Good question.]

[Obviously we couldn't make kinds of arrangements while you were too unconscious to make any decisions. There are defaults but they don't really seem to apply.]

Confusion.

[--Like how we couldn't bring you to a hospital because they'd have called the institution.]

Yeah, that's not the confusing part.

[Too unconscious-?] It sounds like they wanted to get her input on it, but that can't be right.

[I'm not going to make unilateral life choices for someone who just escaped from an institution, that'd be horrible.]

That is confusing, and more than a little overwhelming. She curls back up.

--Okay.

[Are you thirsty? Hungry?]

[Yeah.]

Emily fetches the water cup.

Do you know what happened to you?

She doesn't seem to want to answer that.

Well.

She can get a summary of how she recognized refeeding syndrome, laced with an undercurrent explanation of what that is that shouldn't especially register if she already knows. 

This is also confusing, though she seems to follow the explanation itself just fine. [Okay.]

[toastpaste: was a thing while she was unconscious][just continuing to not give her access to food other than toastpaste seems like Obviously the Wrong solution to preventing further refeeding syndrome problems][no solution at all would also be bad][explaining relevant things and letting her make her own choices: Obvious Correct solution to most problems it could be considered a solution to at all]

That is the thing she's been confused about; now she's skeptical instead.

...The part where they want her to be able to make informed choices?

The part where they want that, yes.

Well. They do.

A lot of people don't and wouldn't; if that weren't the case, it would have been safe to take her to a hospital. But mutants aren't looked on so much better than the mentaly atypical that they don't have a little perspective on the subject. 

[Mutants?]

[People like you and me. Who are different. I can talk in your head and keep your heart from battering itself to death against your ribcage and Emily can make metal dance to her will and you can make balls of light. Because we're mutants. Not every mutation is so beneficial; many are neutral anomalies, like my aunt's blue skin, and a few are disadvantages, but we're all different.]

[Okay.]

[Not every mutant is a good person though. My dad--there was another mutant who--well. It was bad.]

She doesn't exactly seem surprised.

[And the ways in which it was bad--well.

I would kill myself with a rusty spatula before I let myself be anything like him.]

[Sorry.]

She settles back down.

[I don't usually ...talk... to people.]

[By preference or necessity?]

[Both. More the second one.]

[If you don't want to talk, that's fine. If you want to, that's also fine.]

[This is okay, I'm just not very good at thinking of things.]

[That makes sense.]

[I can do another thing, too, but I don't know what it is yet.]

[Oh, cool. Powers don't necessarily have much to do with each other; my dad knows someone who's a telepath, like me, but she can also turn into diamond.]

[Yeah. It's something with imagining things.]

[Huh...maybe I'd be better able to help if I remembered manifesting my own abilities.]

[I will probably get it eventually. The balls weren't hard to figure out.]

[Yeah. I don't think I've ever heard of someone not figuring something like that out eventually.]

[That's good.]

[Yes. It's--possible I could figure it out more directly but I'm not going to suggest it because it would involve taking control of your power and that seems like it would be bad for you but I thought you might want to know that it was conceptually possible.]

She is remarkably ambivalent about this idea.

Huh.

[How do your balls work?]

[Like part of my body. Except they're only there if I want them to be.]

Nod. [That's a common but not universal experience.]

She nods.

[Do you know when you manifested?]

[When I got my powers? A couple weeks ago.]

[Is that when you got out?]

[I waited a little bit first. To make sure I could do it.]

[Wise of you.]

[Mistakes like that are dangerous.]

[They are.]

She very much wants a hug, right now. (She's not sure she can move well enough to initiate one, and she doesn't really want to find out.)

Edie hugs her, carefully, so that she should be able to escape if she wants to and doesn't just want to say so (or trust that saying so would work).

She snuggles up.

[I don't want to go back.] She sounds so young.

[You're not going to,] she promises. [We won't send you back and we won't let anyone else, ever, if they try to. No matter what.]

[Mm.] She's skeptical, and lets it leak through a little, but she'll let herself believe it, for now.

Her doubt is completely reasonable. Time is the only guarantor.

She stays snuggled up for a while.

Eventually, though, she tentatively sends: [food?]

[Right.]

In addition to toast for making paste with, there are miscellaneous fruits and a handful of kinds of candy. 

[I don't care.]

...Okay.

Fruit, then, first. 

Nom.

(She's clumsy with her hands, too; she has trouble picking up anything small, or keeping hold of it. The orbs come back out to assist, after a minute.)

Emily observes her having trouble and offers an apple. If she has trouble with that she can cut it into optimally sized slices. 

Yeah, she can manage an apple.

Well, half an apple, and then she needs to rest again.

The other half gets wrapped up to prevent oxidation. They let her sleep.

She sleeps.

After a while, her heart rate kicks up again. Her breathing gets a little faster, too - nightmare, maybe.

Edie hesitates, but after a moment starts gently projecting calm. 

She jerks awake, looking wildly around the room.

[Sorry!]

[It's fine.][It's fine.][I'm [calm][under control][not going to cause trouble][not in need of [punishment][drugging][isolation]]]

[I didn't--I wouldn't--I didn't mean--you were having a nightmare, no one likes nightmares--I'm sorry.]

She's very confused, and then she realizes where she is, and relaxes. [Oh.][Yeah.]

[I shouldn't have done it without asking. I'm sorry.]

[?]

[I--pushed calmness at you. I'm sorry.]

[Oh.]

[Sorry.]

[You didn't do anything wrong.]

Shrug.

[Do you want me to wake you if you have any more nightmares?]

[Don't care.] She curls up a little tighter.

[Okay.]

[I don't think I can not have nightmares.]

[What, ever?]

[I mean I don't know how make myself not.]

[...I don't think most people can. I haven't met anyone who could, and believe me, I know some people who have nightmares.]

[Okay.]

[Are you alright?]

[Yeah.]

She really doesn't seem all right, as much as she's trying to avoid any indication that she's not.

[Okay.]

[Are you all right?]

[--I don't like accidentally hurting people with my powers.]

[I'm fine. You didn't hurt me.] And she does seem better, now; calmer, more centered.

[...I'm glad. It looked like I had.]

[I don't know what you need.]

[--I don't understand what you mean.]

[I don't- you're- you're doing things for a reason, I don't know why.]

[...You could have died where we found you.]

She curls up tight. [Yeah.]

[But that doesn't tell me what you need.]

[I need to be the kind of person who helps people.]

Her heart rate kicks up a notch, though there's no other indication that she's upset. [Okay.]

[Actually helps people, not whatever passed for it where you were.]

[Okay.]

She doesn't believe it, not even slightly.

That's reasonable. Depressing, but reasonable. 

She seems ...content... to stay curled up like that, for now.

Okay.

She relaxes, slightly, over a few minutes. Watches them.

Edie goes back to her book.

That's fine.

Good.

Yup.

After a few hours, she asks for something to eat again - she still claims not to care what - and after another few hours she goes back to sleep.

They feed her, and at the appropriate hour they go to sleep, curled up together in Edie's bed. 

If she has more nightmares, she's very quiet about it.

When she wakes the next day they're gone. There's a note telling her they have classes and will be back later, as well as the fruit she didn't eat last night and miscellaneous packaged foods that they presumably bought before she woke up and several water bottles. 

She's very confused, at first, at having been left alone. But after half an hour of waiting, she gets up to look around the room, and discovers the note and the food.

She eats - just the fruit; she has no idea how to open the packages - and then resumes her exploration of the room.

There are a lot more little sculptures like the cat. 

Also a lot of books. 

What kinda books?

Many of them are textbooks, but most are novels or at least the kind of nonfiction you don't need college-level context to grasp. 

There's enough here that they probably won't miss one, if she picks carefully. Like this math book, say.

She sticks it under her pillow for now. Anything else interesting?

The drawer that Emily retrieved the glass chips from is full of miscellaneous trinkets like that, mostly broken things like shards of glass or half a ring, but with a reasonable scattering of the kind of thing you could pick up off the ground, like acorns or feathers or interesting pebbles. 

She's never gotten to see a feather up close before. Or a pebble, for that matter. She examines them for a minute, without touching them, and then moves on.

On Emily's side of the room, there are a handful of photographs. The twins are in a few of them, but mostly it's people Denice wouldn't recognize: a handful of adults (one of whom does have blue skin) and some teenagers, one of whom appears to have a full set of angel-like feathered wings. 

She examines these without touching them, too. (Can she get a sense for what the people in the pictures are like, at all?)

Everyone's smiling; these are photographs, after all. But their smiles are different. The blue-skinned woman is smirking at the camera, as though daring the cameraperson to comment on her appearance. One man--invariably seen seated, generally in a wheelchair--has a bright, beaming smile, while another often seen with him has a much smaller one, sometimes forced-looking, but deep and proud when looking at what appears to be a much younger version of the two girls who are hosting her. The other teenagers have the carefree smiles of teenagers recently engaging in the younger, less stupid version of a college "hold my beer" incident. 

That's... good. It's good. (It doesn't occur to her to think of it as something she could have. But it's still good context - makes it easier to think of the girls as people rather than staff.)

She moves on, again, eventually.

Edie has a jewelry box filled with what are probably, based on the style, Emily's creations. 

- that's getting a little personal. She puts the box back and goes back to the bed.

Did the note say when they're due back? Is there a clock?

There is. They think they'll be back around three; it's currently a little after one. 

It's math time, then.

The girls return at the promised time. They aren't sneaky, either, she should have a little warning. 

Yup. She puts the book away with half an hour to spare, and eats some more of the fruit while she waits.

[Hi.]

[Hi. Everything okay? No heart problems?]

[I'm fine.]

[I'm glad. Do you want anything?]

[...Like, I don't know, food that isn't fruit or chips.]

[Okay.]

She glances at the unopened pile of packaged food, and adds, [Maybe also scissors?]

[Maybe,] she agrees.

[Sorry, I forgot you might not be able to.]

[It's okay. The fruit was good.]

[I'm glad.]

[Where were you?]

[Classes. This is a university.]

[Okay.]

[We skipped while you were unconscious and looked like you might die but you seemed like you can take care of yourself on that level now.]

"We skipped" scares her a bit, but she calms herself fairly quickly. [I'm okay, yeah.]

[I'm glad.]

[Now what?]

[--I don't know. Did you have a plan before?]

[Not really.]

[Did you have--a want, something sort of like a plan but without an idea of how to get there?]

She takes a deep breath; she still doesn't look up at them.

[Just not to be there any more. It was really bad.]

[I'm sorry.]

[Well. Not there has been achieved. Now we just have to figure out what next.]

She takes another deep breath, and steels herself a little. [Yeah.]

[...I don't have any good ideas yet,] she admits. 

[Okay. I can wait.]

[Okay.]

She lays down.

Okay.

[Are you bored?]

[A little.]

[Do you want to borrow a book?]

[...Um. Sorry? I, uh, may occasionally forget that it is biologically possible to pass the age of six without learning to read.]

[It's okay.]

[...Do you want to learn?]

What a very quiet panic attack that is.

[Or not!!! Not is fine!!!]

Yeah, that doesn't particularly help.

She curls up in a ball again.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Yes, that.

She's trying to stop - rather desperately, in fact - but not managing it yet.

--Edie is going to go sit down on her bed and pick up a book and read it and not pay any attention whatsoever to whether Denice is having a panic attack. 

That helps, some. It still takes her a while to get her emotions back under control.

She looks up, when she finally does: carefully, so as not to attract attention, checking to see what Edie is doing.

Still has her nose buried in the book. 

Well, she's certainly not going to interrupt her. She adjusts to a slightly more comfortable position and waits.

Eventually she looks up.

[I'm sorry for scaring you.]

[It's okay.]

[I don't know what kind of thing would make that scary but it's--that's bad. That's really really bad.]

She gives a wry grin. [It was really, really bad, there.]

[I am very angry with them.]

That's only a little scary, but scary is the thing that it is; she sends an impression of it not being safe.

[Scary for whom? They can't hurt me.]

[Yeah. But it still feels unsafe.]

[Yeah.]

[I want it to stop.]

[Where is it?]

[You said they want me back.]

[--Right. Fair. That's not why I wanted to know but you have no reason to believe that.]

[And even if you don't want it they might make you.]

[...They couldn't make me.]

[What would happen if they tried to?]

[Depends on how they tried to, I guess. But they don't have any actual legal authority over us, and if they tried to use physical force, well, Emily can move pieces of metal a lot bigger than her sculptures.]

[Okay.] It's pretty obvious that she's still confused.

[I'm not sure what inferential gap I'm failing to cover.]

[...legal authority?]

[Ah. Well. Places like that...have way more control over their inhabitants than is okay, but since I'm not one, if they tell me to do something and I tell them no they aren't actually allowed to try to make me do it anyway.]

That sounds fake. Like, really, really fake.

...Well it's true. And even if it weren't they could still trivially overpower them. 

Mm. [Maybe later.]

[No pressure or anything.]

She curls back up.

Yeah okay. Back to her book for the moment. 

Sure.

Edie continues reading. 

Eventually she gets up to go to the library. She does not know much about how involuntary commitment of minors to mental hospitals usually goes. She needs to do some research. 

Denice relaxes a little, but only a little, when she leaves.

Mm.

Emily extracts some scrap metal from a drawer and starts idly molding it like clay.

After a few minutes, Denice rolls over to watch.

Emily continues this, meditatively, for a few minutes before starting to sculpt an actual shape.

It's not obvious what it is, at first, just a sort of uneven y shape, but as she progresses and the details develop she uses her hands less and less and it becomes more apparent what it's supposed to be; apparently some kind of tree. 

That's neat.