「 The Professor & I 」VOLUME II

(160) Infinite Loop

Charles' POV

Jason's initial interaction with Lynn in the empty Danger Room was transformed into the lightly snowing streets of Manhattan when Lynn and I took a trip into the city on the first Monday of our Christmas break in '91. Huddling together in the cold, yet strutting happily around the bustling Times Square after lunch, we came across an Italian cafe packed with a crowd and a snaking queue that extended beyond the block.

Activated by her sweet tooth, Lynn insisted we joined the fad and approximately an hour later, after continuous jokes, blatant teasing and the occasional make out to occupy our time, we laid hands on the seemingly famous yet obscured gelato that had been the talk of the town for months. Skipping enthusiastically with her cone of dark chocolate and vanilla milk ice cream decorated with a dash of colourful icing sprinkles, she excitedly dragged me on a stroll towards Central Park where we ended up savouring more of each other's dessert rather than our own.

Playfully chasing each other around the maze of pathways in the huge garden, we eventually found ourselves along Fifth Avenue, before the gates of the freshly renovated zoo. Scrutinizing each other discriminatingly with silly grins on our faces, dollars were converted to tickets that impulsively landed in our hands and we spent the rest of the afternoon amongst the countless captive animals that were made surprisingly available for public viewing in the middle of a metropolitan city. Touring the enclosures and revelling in heated debates revolving around evolution and our area of expertise on a relatively fine winter's day, evening dawned sooner than we wished.

Despite the day ending devastatingly with the horrific news broadcasted on the radio during our drive home that a renown inventor and his wife had possibly passed on in a fatal car crash on their way to JFK, it was essentially the innocent joy she felt throughout the rest of the day and the sheer pleasure she derived from the plain sight of my legs actually working without the expense of my mind that rendered this memory so vivid and potent for Jason to tap on.

Jason possessed powerful and impressive gifts, capable of generating illusions from scratch or recreating past recollections that existed within the minds of others to an incredible level of authenticity to completely delude his subjects, albeit being extremely poor in controlling his talents that sometimes only allowed for intermittent images to be projected.

His autism naturally dampened his pace of mastering new knowledge and certainly restricted his proficiency to fully learn about his mutation. Originally, we were glad that he was comfortable opening up with Lynn, and I even endorsed her demand to transfer all her teaching duties to Jean so that she could focus on his guidance, but her rapidly heightening obsession with his hallucinations undoubtedly did not benefit both of their situations.

For days turned weeks, I strived to recover myself, knowing that my plight was the major source of Lynn's immense grief but my success in regaining independency did not serve its purpose of redeeming her from the sins she forcefully and unnecessarily imposed upon herself. She was once again utterly broken by our useless limbs and the unexplainable disappearance of her dearest sister, lacking the resilience and courage she previously had to climb out of the abyss we had been cruelly and repeatedly thrown into.

Instead, the extreme and unacceptable losses had her wallowing in desolation.

She took no notice of my efforts, or anyone else's, that came as nothing but futile to lift her spirits. She was uncharacteristically indifferent towards Peter's decision to return home to his mother's basement and almost unconcerned by Hank's announcement of his leaving that was also mandated by Washington as he secured a job within a government.

Every day and every night, she cared about nothing more and nothing less than fantasising upon the immaterial scenes planted in her head, practically living off the energy Jason required to prolong the dream that her world remained beautiful and perfect. Regardless of her comprehensive awareness that it was all mere figments of imagination, she continued to indulged in the artificial settings endlessly and compulsively, nearly resorting to violence whenever Jason failed to deliver the fallacies she wilfully conceived as the only way she had to deal with the pain of reality.

The fatigue that accumulated itself over time due to his overexertion was clearly reflected by his increasingly inaccurate and temporary illustrations in her mind that similarly appeared in mine, but with a faded extent of persuasiveness that permitted me to distinguish his tricks from the truth. Jason's inevitable incompetency triggered an unforeseen hysterical behaviour from Lynn as she yearned and begged for him to reproduce our wonderful moments.

Her frantic and unintentional actions instilled an unprecedented fear within the boy, causing him to isolate himself again, which resulted in his random and unpredictable cast of false conceptions around the mansion. Discovering that Jason's condition, blindly assumed as an illness, was not granted any significant improvement or explicit cure at our school, his father resolutely demanded his extraction from the academy, notwithstanding any advice given the obstinate and conceited man he was.

While Jason's abrupt departure was surely detrimental to his own circumstances, its impact was undeniably more far-reaching than we could ever envision. Lynn had developed a such considerable dependence based on the exploitation of Jason's abilities, she practically could not function without it.

Severely hurt, awfully unsettled and terribly upset, her telepathic barrier became virtually devoid and her disarray of emotions flooded my mind.

She faulted herself for her negligence she determined to be the root of the accident no one could anticipate. She reproached herself for the involuntary jealousy that emanated from her heart. She hated herself for the rationality that inherently and evidently still prevailed within her.

It distressingly prohibited her from shifting the blame to me, forthrightly pointing out her bitter envy to be a case built upon invalid premises that my fidelity had faltered. It ruthlessly criticised her spoilt conduct of addiction, making it exceptionally torturous for her to simultaneously crave yet be precisely conscious that it was devastating not only to her, but my heart. It constantly reminded her of the respect and devotion she desperately wanted to contribute to our relationship, drastically amplifying her dilemma that she helplessly desired to forsake it.

All her sentiments could be understood and most definitely forgiven, yet she chose to condemn herself. Locking her soul in an infinite loop of censure, she could not recognise how gracious and selfless she indeed was.

She resigned herself to fate, dwelled in her sorrows, and thoroughly weakened from fighting against the suffering that had mercilessly descended upon her, she passively confined herself to the bed, albeit being plagued with insomnia. All my endeavours to cheer her up were depressingly inadequate and disappointedly ineffective to bring back so much as a tinge of optimism into her life but I could not be disheartened.

One of us had to stay strong.

Over the weeks and months, Lynn gradually withdrew into herself, barely speaking, eating only for survival to keep me alive. Even when her body was always physically in our room, her frame was ultimately just a shell that I had agonizingly refrained from touching, condoning her misbelief that she was unworthy of my everlasting love for her, only in hope it would appease her guilt and remorse.

Lynn simply could not step out of the shadows, the daunting ones from our past that have brutally resurfaced, perpetually and relentlessly haunting her since Cuba.

XXXXX

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