She has things she needs to do.  She also has things she wants to do.  She's a combat esper and she hasn't taken much of a vacation in two years.  Financially, she'll be fine.  Better than Tim, since he's paying her the at-fault unexpected partnerships dissolution fee.

she hopes he's not going to lose the theater, he loves it so much

She hasn't, traditionally, been much of a notetaker.  But for reasons she's deliberately not examining or thinking right now, she's picked up the habit in the last few months.

New partner(top priority, medium urgent)

Cancel all dungeons for a week, minimum.  (medium priority, ASAP urgent)

Mental health day(second-highest priority and urgency)

She stares at her list.  She - surely has other things she needs to do?  Right?  Has her entire life been dungeons?  When was the last time she did something fun?  Other than.  Well.

Yeah.  She's got a list of tasks.  She can execute.

She calls up her agent.  She's not running any dungeons for a week.  At least.  Maybe two.  She's also in the market for a new partner.  Oh, you have a list?  Real funny how that works out.  Y-you've been compiling it for the last month?

She thinks about an old-timey TV scene, where they could slam the telephone back on the receiver.  Apparently everyfuckingbody and their dog knew that her partnership was collapsing.

If she thought about it, it wasn't - completely unexpected.  She and Tim had been on shaky terms since his backlash collapse, but - well.  Maybe it was just a matter of time.

For better or worse, Carol self-identifies as a combat esper.  She's got a mission to run and if her hands are shaky and her vision a little blurry, it's not the first time she's run a mission with shaking hands or blurred vision.

What was the last thing she did for her mental health, on her own, without anybody around?

You know what, it's time for rock climbing.  Not coincidentally, she's only a mile or two away, and it's pretty nice out.  She packs her backpack - chalk, change of clothes, some good boots, a yellow Esperade.  She looks at the esperade, and then deliberately sets it back in the fridge.  She retrieves a red one instead.

One light jog later, she's there.  She stashes her kit, changes to her climbing boots, and wipes the sweat off her hands.  She walks up to her favorite wall, planning out a route.  She puts her hands on the wall, and.  Stops.

See, she has an arrangement.  Her power isn't quite like that of Ti-her partner's.  Her FORMER partner's.  He can be as tough as he wants to be.  She's got a little bit of toughness.  She can handle falls at terminal velocity just fine, though, at whatever angle she lands on.

But.  She doesn't have a partner anymore.

She gets off the wall.  She runs through a quick breathing exercise.  Normally, it's for calming her nerves pre-dungeon.  Now, it's used to resist the urge to turn on her power just long enough to turn all of her emotions into rage.  Then she finds and smiles at one of the employees.  "Excuse me, do you think you could show me how to use the belaying machine?"  Her eyes aren't shiny, that's just a trick of the light.

It's not what she wants.  She wants to feel free.  She wants to ascend or fall based on her skill.  She's so constrained by this stupid harness, it's chafing her left thigh somehow but it's not worth adjusting because it's so pointless.  She wants to have the world narrow down to the route she planned and her body's ability to execute on the plan.

Instead, she's resting.  She'd slipped and instead of falling, the harness caught her.  So she's lying back, staring at the ceiling of the gym.  Her feet are kicking against the climbing wall, keeping her shifting back and forth in the air.

"Are you okay up there, miss?"

"Uh, miss?  Are you okay?  Do you need to be let down?"

"I'm FINE!"  Christ on the cross, I was zoned out.  "Sorry, sorry - I was just, uh.  Planning my route.  I'll be back at it in a minute!"

"Okay!  I'll be here if you need anything!"  Must've froze.  Happens to everyone, sooner or later.

She recovers.  She makes a climbing plan.  She executes it.  It's not much longer before she's at the top.

She used to leap from the top, sometimes.  Her agent hated it, but what's the point of being able to jump a hundred feet onto a foam surface and laugh it off if you never actually do it?  Now, staring down?  It's just another reminder that she can't do anything anymore.

She takes a few minutes at the top to get her shit together.  It's a little rude to hog a wall like she is, but Carol McCleery doesn't give a shit about anything today, least of all being slightly rude.  She makes her way down the responsible way.

She does a free-climb, but that's not really even that high or hard.  It's not engaging.

Carol McCleery is officially getting a failing grade in Mental Health Day.

Still, she smiles at the employees on the way out!  Just because she's miserable doesn't mean anyone else has to see it and be in a bad mood because of her.

She leaves, and the smile vanishes.  What else do I enjoy doing, aside from guiding, that I can do alone?  She meanders home - freeclimbing is fun, jogging is fun.  Jogging after free-climbing is pure masochism, and she's not built for that.

She unlocks the door, closes it.  Locks it behind her.  Have I eaten yet today?  I don't think so?  She putters together a quick meal - frozen waffles in the air fryer.  Blueberries dropped on top.  Confectioner's sugar sprinkled over it.  Two fried eggs on the side.  It's a good meal.

She doesn't, actually, enjoy it.

Well.  She doesn't have to be sad.  If she just took a second to use her power, it really wouldn't take much at all.  She knows how to steer, with anger.

She doesn't, though.  She remembers Hell Week.  It's a little like the story her Great-Uncle Sam told her about sneaking a smoke and being forced to smoke an entire pack in one sitting.  She's tempted, but she doesn't want to go to jail again.

Instead, she cuddles up with her favorite blanket on her favorite couch in her solarium.  Even with everything else going on, her solarium is nice.  She's just going to not think about the time she NOT THINKING about that, Carol.

God damn it.  I'm going to be reminded of him every fucking time, aren't I.  And since he - really, really doesn't want to see me.

She composes a text to her agent.  She's selling the house.  She wants to rent a house with these specs.  It needs to be away from New England.  It needs to be in an area with extremely available teleportation infrastructure.  She'll want to be moved in within a week.  She'll mark the furniture she wants to keep.  Everything else can stay with the house.

And just like that!  She has a mission, which is better than a Mental Health Day.  She uses some pink yarn she'd accumulated from...somewhere...to mark the furniture she wants to keep.  Couch, yes.  Bed, no.  Small dining room table and chairs, yes.  Office, no.  Her console and laptop get packed up, along with her projector.

In the end, it only takes a day to mark the things she wants to keep!

Nighttime isn't as easy.  She'd gotten used to sleeping next to someone.

Sleep doesn’t come easy, but she sleeps like the dead when she finally drifts off.

When she wakes up, she rolls over and looks at her phone.  11:23.

”SHIT IN MY FUCKING BEARD!” It’s so late, I forgot my dunge-

oh

She takes a shower.  It takes a long time to run this particular tank out of hot water, but she manages it.  She dries off enough to put on some loose athletic shorts and a T-shirt, then heads down to her the solarium.  She flops across her couch.  That, at least, she's keeping.  It was her first big purchase after becoming an esper, and she'll be damned if she gets rid of it over a boy.

She can always make new memories.

Well.  Let's see what a motivated agent can come up with.

She picks an impersonal-feeling home.  Modern, sleek, metallic appliances, stone countertops.  It has a den, and that can be her concession to her current house's comfy style.  Her agent offers her a cleaning service, and she obviously accepts it.  She'll decide if she wants to keep him or not later - he did have some sketchy bullshit sidechannel information, but he clearly used the information to her advantage without ever admitting to it.  Maybe that's okay.

The move is, if anything, too easy.  If she was learning to drive a rent-a-truck across the country, she'd be terrified of backing into something the sensors didn't catch or missing an exit somehow.  If she'd been on a plane ride, she would have been stressed about missing her flight and touching strangers' elbows and legs and stretching out the kinks after a cramped seat. 

But instead, a pair of nice young men had taken all of her worldly belongings away to be transported without her assistance.  After that she  was two teleport hops away from a ten minute Otto! ride to her new home.  And now that she's at her new home, well.  She doesn't have anything to think about or to do.

It would be so easy to dip into just a little bit of backlash so she could be properly, soul-satisfyingly annoyed.  Instead, she's not much of anything.  A little sad.  But mostly empty.

When her annoyance is justified by her brain and also by her backlash, it's just so obviously correct.  It's like scratching a poison ivy rash - you know it's the wrong thing to do, everyone tells you it's wrong.  But it feels so good.  In her current mental state, she's probably qualified to solo D-ranks, but D-ranks you barely need a team for.  You just walk people out.

She wants to ask her power the one question it ever bothers to answer, and then let her power guide her hands.  She wants a dungeon monster, one of the nasty ones.  When her endorsed hatred of dungeon monsters and her backlash-induced annoyance with them combine - it's not like sex.  It's not love.  There isn't a word for it in English, Carol doesn't think.  But it's such satisfaction to destroy something that deserves it.

But she can't even lean on her stupid emotional crutch because then she'll have backlash and she doesn't have a fucking partner anymore, now does she.

Okay.  What would make her happy?  ... she isn't sure.  What would normally make her happy?  She makes a few notes, a habit she picked up pretty recently but isn't thinking about the source of the habit.

A good dungeon(no)
A good meal
Tim
Rock climbing(tried, no)
A jog
Seeing papa(don't want to talk to anyone)
A movie

Okay.  This suggests a plan.  She'll run downtown, change in a bathroom or something, see a movie and then grab a meal.  Or grab a meal and then see a movie.  She's flexible.

The jog helps a little.  It's simple, it's easy.  Pick up Foot A, put down Foot A.  Pick up Foot B, put down Foot B  Keep doing it over and over.  Don't think, because if you think you'll start thinking about the stitch in your side, the ache in your lungs.  She feels oddly free, in a way that rock climbing hadn't let her be.  She picks out a pace that feels natural to her, and whenever she comes perilously close to thinking, she steps it up a little.

She's running by the end.  Sweat runs down her face, her tank-top is clinging unpleasantly to her chest.  She's flushed and panting and she's not thinking and if she could run like this forever, she'd be happy.

Oh.  I just picked a direction and ran.  Well.  Thankfully for Carol, modern conveniences are such that she's able to change in the family restroom of a nearby supermarket.  She's definitely not willing to eat anything after that little wind sprint she'd ended on.

A movie isn't too far away, and her legs aren't quite so jello that she can't do another half-mile.  She wants a comedy.  Not a rom com.  Action movie.  She'll talk to the ticket seller, get a recommendation, and mentally heckle the fight scenes.

She turns to ask Tim to show her how to throw someone like that in their next spar, and -

oh.  yeah.

She sticks it out for the remaining 23 minutes.  The guy gets the girl, the beta couple get together.  She's too dignified to flee the theater, but she doesn't dawdle leaving, either.

She's recovered enough that she won't puke if she eats, and she's not hungry but she ran ten miles without thinking about it and probably ought to eat something.  She picks the most mom'n'pop looking place she can find, which turns out to be a small steakhouse.  It's expensive, which is to say a meal here costs .012 dungeons(on average).  She's good for it.

Hm.  That guy's cute.  No ring.  She and her puppy previous partner were mostly monogamous, but he didn't mind her hooking up for guiding.  And he can't complain now, can he?

She makes a move.  He's a little shocked, but he flirts back.  She's not ready to go all the way, not today.  She's not ready for the vulnerability. 

She is ready to go down on him, though.  There's no guiding involved, and in some ways she's relieved about it.  She doesn't want everything to be about being an esper, forever.

By the time she's done, her new acquaintance is exhausted and she's feeling a bit worn out herself.  She calls herself an autotaxi and goes 'home'.  She's tired enough to pass out, this time.

She moves on.  She finds a local pro guide with tolerable compatibility.  She runs as many dungeons as she can manage with her backlash load.  She travels.  A lot.  Anyplace that'll pay her travel fees is good enough for her.

She's not okay.

But she will be.