Shattered World Life

Nothing unusual had happened. Luca had stayed as he had always been—he was a murderer who had threatened her life because she was a part of the machinery keeping him captive when they were out in the city, and he had threatened it again when she stopped him from escaping last night. Nothing surprising. Nothing new. Nothing that she should be feeling bad about. Viv stayed where she was, unmoving, until the tears vanished away and the world around her seemed to brighten gradually, then sharpened. She smelt cotton, and realised almost at the same time that the shifting, faintly squeaking support beneath the softness beneath her cheek—and beneath every part of her body—was a beanbag. Someone had laid her in a beanbag, which had then swallowed her nearly whole. The room wasn’t sideways, Viv was simply lying down. Viv found that she could move her body when she tried, although her neck and shoulders crackled dangerously when she turned her head. There was already the beginning of a migraine forming in the heat behind her eyes. Fantastic. Who had put her in a beanbag like an empty, crumpled, migrainey packet of chips? She turned her head further, and encountered a purple plaid leg crossed over another, both of which glimmered just faintly in a way that should have been because they were clad in expensive silk but today seemed to hold a very faint difference. “You’re awake,” said the crossed leg. It had Jasper’s voice. Viv managed to turn herself in the beanbag, but in so doing sank deeper into it. She hadn’t had any plans of getting up just yet, but she would have preferred to have been able to look Jasper in the face rather than gazing up at him from a beanbag like an undercaffeinated owl. “Looks like it,” she agreed. “What happened?” “You used your Between ability for the second time,” Jasper said coolly. There was nothing about his smooth face to suggest that he was amused, but Viv couldn’t quite see his eyes beyond the reflection of his round glasses, and she felt as though he was amused despite that. “You’re talking about the heavy words,” she said flatly. There was the very faintest tilt of Jasper’s head to the left, and for the first time since she had woken to see him, Viv thought she caught a brief sight of his eyes. Faint puzzlement showed there, she thought. “The ones that made Luca stop when he didn’t want to,” she added. “Exactly,” Jasper said, so smoothly that she might not have known he had had a moment of puzzlement if he hadn’t added, “I suppose heavy words isn’t a bad description. I don’t often get to hear the human experience; it’s different for behindkind.” That, thought Viv, explained a lot. Jasper didn’t seem quite human sometimes, and if he’d spent all of his life with behindkind, that wasn’t surprising. What exactly had Jasper’s father been into? Then it occurred to Viv that Jasper had said “used your Between ability for the second time,” and something very like a chill crept over her. She sat up a little in the beanbag, carefully and slowly. “What do you mean by the second time?” she asked, when she was settled. “I’ve never done that before. I didn’t know it was a thing that could be done.” “You did it in the park with the dog,” he told her. “Humans don’t often have Between abilities, so I was interested. At the very least, I thought it would be a good idea to keep you close until I figured out how strong you were. You gave me a bit of a nasty shock the second day when you couldn’t even make the elevator work. I thought I’d made a mistake.” “I didn’t make the elevator work,” Viv said. Of that much, she was sure. Her lips felt numb. “Denise did it the first time, and after that it just seemed to recognise me.” She didn’t think Jasper was convinced, but it didn’t really matter. The elevator, she felt, tolerated her—and since Bazza had been at the front desk, she had found it easier to use. Rather plaintively, she added, “Why can I do this? How can I do it?” Jasper gazed at her for a moment before he asked, “Can you do it? Now?” “How am I supposed to—what do I do?” she asked. “Tell me to do something,” he said. “Anything you like. Think about how it felt last night, and do it again. Make me get up.” Viv swallowed. She didn’t particularly want to think about last night. She didn’t want to think about her own foolishness or the prick of a knife at her throat, and the absolute helplessness she had felt. Even the heaviness of those words she had spoken—those words that had stopped Luca in his tracks and made him freeze in mid-air—had felt as though they had come out of her of their own volition instead of being something that she had chosen to do. But Jasper was looking at her expectantly, and Viv felt that as stupid as it seemed to try and get someone to do something by the force of her words alone, under Jasper’s watchful eyes, the distinct feeling crept over her that not trying was the foolish option. His raised eyebrow seemed to suggest that it was ridiculous to doubt that it was reasonable and right that one human should be able to control another by words alone—and that it was likewise ridiculous to suggest that such control shouldn’t be practised. “Get up,” she said. Her voice was curt with embarrassment, but there was nothing of that searing heat and power to it that had propelled Luca backward last night. Still, Viv was pleased that she managed not to say “please.” Jasper settled back in his chair, both brows rising slightly and the faintest touch of amusement to the line of his thin lips. Viv, trying in earnest now to both make Jasper do what she wanted him to do and wipe the mildly annoying amusement from his face in one go, said in an even clearer voice, “Get up, Jasper.” She wasn’t sure why she thought saying his name would have any more effect than the mere words by themselves, but she had the feeling that Jasper himself had also expected it to have more of an effect than it had, because he seemed to have stiffened at the sound of his name. Evidently he felt nothing more than she had felt, however, because he relaxed again a moment later. “Hm,” he said, with the faintest tilt of his head once again. “Not even a sausage, as they say. Perhaps you need to tell me not to do something. I’d thought that the stop should be considered in the light of a command, but maybe you thought of it in terms of prohibition.” Viv wasn’t sure she’d thought about it in any light but that of desperate need, but she didn’t think that Jasper was asking a question of her—if anything, he was asking a question of himself. That made more sense than asking Viv the question, but it didn’t make her feel any less disregarded. “All right,” he said, leaning forward and then slipping out of his chair so quickly that Viv had no chance to react. “I’m going to lift you out of the beanbag. Make me stop.” Viv felt a moment of unreasoning, stark panic, her throat so sensitive and expectant of the sharp tip of a knife that she felt Jasper’s breath against her collarbones as he dug his arms into the beanbag that surrounded her. “No!” she said sharply, shoving at his shoulder once, short and sharp and hard. The blow connected, though it had little physical effect other than to make Jasper stiffen. There was a brief moment of silence, then he sat back, the stiffness gone. “Ah,” he said. “That was thoughtless of me; I apologise. I didn’t think about how it might seem after last night.” “Men don’t, usually,” said Viv, with some dryness. She still felt unpleasantly helpless; she wished Jasper had helped her out of the beanbag instead of invading her personal space to lift her bodily, even in the service of trying to get to the bottom of what she’d been able to do last night. Maybe especially in the service of that goal. “They don’t have to.” “Perhaps we could–” Jasper appeared to be at a loss, his glasses reflective and a line between his brows. Viv wasn’t sure if he was perturbed by her inability to recreate what she had done last night, or if he felt the awkwardness of having made a misstep. She saw the quick intake of his breath in decision a moment before he said, “I’m going to take off my tie—make me stop.” Viv couldn’t help the laugh that spluttered out of her. Perhaps some of it was relief, but some of it was also the realisation that Luca had been right about something else—Jasper did care what people thought of his sartorial charms, and he was almost certainly doing something to make sure that he produced exactly the effects that he wished to produce. Whatever it was he did with his glasses, it was deliberate, and it was magic—or whatever it was that gave people power in this new world she had woken in. She was aware that she was far more amused than she ought to be at the situation in general and in particular at Jasper sitting in front of her and coolly stripping off his tie while he demanded that she stop him from so doing with a word. “Don’t laugh,” Jasper said, his slender fingers tugging at the knot and loosening it. “Make me stop.”