Caleb 17 - The Prodigal Returns

"And what happens if I stumble across something illegal while I'm in there?" I asked.

"We ignore it," he said. "Our part of the waiver is that we will not prosecute any crimes that are revealed by having read their minds. Aside from that, if we started 'discovering' all their crimes, it would kind of give the game away. Obviously, if it is a serious crime, an anonymous tip might find its way to our investigators, but it would have to be a big thing."

He braced himself for my outburst.

There was so much wrong with that scenario, but the 'new me' realized that I would be tilting at windmills all over again. Dean had told me not to sweat the small stuff. I was still figuring out what qualified, and I was still uncomfortable with just how much did to people like James and Maggie. I remembered what she'd said about the war on terror looking like a farce compared to the dangers they watched out for every single day. I felt a sudden weight. It wasn't anyone's powers. It was purely metaphorical, but I felt it on my chest and on my shoulders all the same.

I decided to save my next tantrum for something bigger, at least, and decided to try to throw James off instead.

"So, these students," I said with a grin. "Are they good-looking?"

He seemed a little shocked for a second, but then grinned back. "They are not normally the 'beautiful crowd,'" he said, "more the 'nerd herd.'"

"Hey," I said, "I'm a nerd!"

"Exactly my point," he replied, but then his grin twisted up and he started to squirm, having suddenly developed a very annoying itch.

"Will you stop that?" he growled, cutting the connection before pointing me back in the direction of the changing rooms. "Go get changed. It's time you were out of here." He sent me on my way with his boot to my butt, laughing. We seemed to be back in a good place again.

When I got back to my truck, a meter maid was taking a picture in preparation for writing a ticket.

"Hi," I said. "That's my truck."

"This is FBI parking only," she said, looking me up and down.

"I'm a consultant with them," I said, getting out my ID and trying to coolly flash it. I dropped it.

She grinned at me, and I blushed as I picked it up and showed her.

"You need to practice that move," she said, and I blushed even more as she walked away, laughing.

I decided to stop off and get something to eat, so I pulled into a diner. They didn't have any food challenges advertised, and I hadn't really been training hard enough to build a big appetite, so I just ordered a couple of burgers and fries.

"Hey Jules," I sent.

"Hey Caleb, how'd it go?" she asked.

"We're all friends again, and they even called off the assassin," I joked.

"Don't even..."

"Maggie says you reached out to Dianna to find out about Edward Everson and his bride?" I sent. I felt a spike of guilt.

"Sorry," she sent. "I should have asked you. Do you mind?"

"No need to apologize," I returned. "You don't need my permission to do anything. Maggie said that she has put a couple of her interns on it, to see what she can track down."

Jules' spike of suspicion made me smile.

"We're all friends again," I sent. "Shall we give them the benefit of the doubt?"

"Okay," she agreed. "Are you on your way home?"

"Stopped for lunch," I responded, "but I wanted to try something. Are you busy?"

"Lunch? It's ten thirty!" I felt amusement. "Is Bilbo having his second breakfast?"

"What did you want to try?" she sent after seeing the picture I sent of me sticking my tongue out at her.

"Apparently I should be able to use my powers by proxy," I sent, "using someone I can link to. I think I might have done it with Ness one time, but I wanted to test it."

"What do you need me to do?" she asked.

"Show me what you can see."

She was sitting out in the backyard, on the deck. I thought for a second about trying to lift the hot tub again, but remembered James telling me that distance makes things harder. I decided on one of the other chairs.

The chair lifted with no trouble. I felt some surprise from Jules.

"Can you feel that?" I asked her. "Is it hurting you in any way?"

"No, not at all," she sent. "It was just weird seeing the chair suddenly levitate." I felt a mischievous humor envelop her. "We have got to have a séance. We could scare the crap out of everybody."

I laughed out loud, getting some funny looks from the other diners. I placed the chair down on the deck, and, given the ease with which I had picked it up, decided to do the sensible thing, and try the hot tub.

Getting Jules to look at the hot tub, I lifted it up. It was tough. Not nosebleed-tough, but tough. I figured that I was about twenty miles from home, and the hot tub weighed in at about eight to ten thousand pounds. The thought occurred that I could train harder with the same amount of weight by adding a proxy, and distance.

"Caleb," Jules sent, "there's someone at the door. You'll have to put it down."

I replaced the hot tub and Jules went to answer the door.

I called the waitress over.

"Did you want the check?" she asked, I shook my head.

"Can I get another three burgers, fries, and a shake please?" I was suddenly hungry again.

When I got home, all the girls were in the living room, waiting for me.

"Caleb," Mary said, "we need to talk."

I sensed that this wasn't anything to do with any of the important matters, but more about something I was doing that they didn't agree with. I sat down and waited.

"We're starting to get a bit worried about your diet," said Amanda.

"What about it?" I asked. "You know that training my abilities makes me hungry. I need the calories."

"It's not about the amount you are eating," said Jules. "It's more about WHAT you are eating. In short: crap."

"What did you have for lunch?" asked Mary.

"Burger, fries, and a shake," I said.

"Burger?" she clarified.

"Okay, five burgers, two lots of fries, and two shakes," I admitted.

"We know you need to eat a lot," said Mary, "but you need to eat more healthily. Your blood glucose must be through the roof, and heaven knows what your cholesterol will be doing if you carry on like that."

I considered her point.

"I've been keeping track," Mary said. "I estimated that you need something like ten to fifteen thousand calories a day on the days you train - more, if you do something extraordinary, like lifting a tractor out of a ditch.

"I have also been looking up what professional athletes, who need high-calorie intake, eat. I have come up with this." She passed me a folder.

In it was a list of foods, and their calorific value, along with some suggested diets. I was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting half a grapefruit and a celery leaf. The selections were all substantial meals, and almost all of them were things I liked to eat - with options for snacks too. Yes, there was a lot more fruit and vegetables than I had been eating recently, but it all looked good.

"Two problems," I said. "One, we don't have any of this in the house, and two, even if we did, I can't cook for shit."

"Neither problem is insurmountable," she said. "There is a superstore four miles away, we have a car, and we have money. And as for you not being able to cook, I will cook for now. I'm no chef like Ness, but at least I don't burn the potato water. And soon neither will you because you are going to learn to cook."

"I'm what now?" I asked.

"You heard me. And there are two reasons for that too."

"Okay, you have my interest," I said.

"One is because you are a twenty-first-century pansexual paragon of gender equality," she said with a wry smile. "You need to be able to cook for yourself."

"And the other?"

"It's Ness's birthday in seven months," she said. "Can you imagine how much it would mean to her if you learned to cook, so you could cook her a meal on her birthday?"

I looked at Jules. She shook her head. "Not my idea."

Amanda shook her head too.

"You were right," Mary said, "when you said that I hadn't taken care of Jules. I love Jules. You all know I do, but - and I'm sorry, Jules - against what I considered the stakes to be, her being overwhelmed by Dianna's powers seemed insignificant. It had nothing to do with her being a Norm. It was all about you.

"You didn't seem to understand what was at stake. Not only was I scared that you were going to become the man that even you were scared you would become, but there was a real possibility that if they felt a great enough threat from you, they were going to kill you. That agent outside the hospital wasn't very subtle when he spoke about a sniper's bullet."

I didn't tell her that was not his intent - or rather, that Dianna hadn't thought it was. Things were getting complicated again, and I had little desire to make them even more so with distracting asides.

"I wanted to show you that I do love Jules and Ness as much as you guys do." Mary sniffled a little before continuing. "I know you could easily attribute this to more manipulation - that I'm trying to make it look good - but I can't do anything more to prove myself to you." The sniffling turned ugly, and tears ran down her face.

I didn't know what to say. On the one hand, I had made peace with Maggie - and even Dianna, for the most part - so it seemed unjust to keep holding out on Mary. On the other hand, it wasn't just about making peace; it was about coming to a real understanding - whether that meant one of us agreeing the other was right, or finding a way to live with our disagreements longer term. Dianna and Maggie had bent a little. I'd bent a little. The situation with Mary was different. Her love for me was at war with her beliefs and her other loyalties.

She was trying, though. She'd bent about Compulsion. I'd bent about shutting off my emotions. She wasn't doing quite as good a job conceding that she'd completely failed and betrayed Jules, but she was at least thinking about ways to apologize for the hurt that it had caused. As I'd told her in the car on our way back home, our relationship wasn't just about us, either. It was about Amanda, Jules, Ness, and even Dianna.

I held in another big sigh. It was becoming a habit. I decided it was time to bend a little more.

"Only it hasn't made any difference, has it?" she asked.

I looked into those beautiful golden eyes and nodded. "It's made all the difference," I said.

She seemed to look sad for a second. I felt through the bond that she hadn't actually heard what I'd said. She'd been caught up in her own fear and expectation. It took another moment for the actual words to register, but they did.

"Really?" she asked hopefully, and I saw a similar expression of hope on her sister's face. Her eyes brightened. It made them even more beautiful.

"Mary," I said gently, "you and I are, in some ways, too much alike. I love you more than anything, and I would do anything to help and protect you. You feel the same way about me and will also do whatever you think is required to protect me, whether I approve or not. I can see that we are going to butt heads in the future, and that is okay. If I was interested in dumb, passive girls, I wouldn't have chosen you two, or Jules.

"And make no mistake, I did choose you, all of you, just like you chose me," I said, looking around the room. Both Mary and Amanda were crying.

"I have come to realize," I said, "that, far from being a blessing, the bond is a curse, but not for the reasons you think. It's a curse not because it binds us together, but because it made me doubt the truth of what I should always have known: that your love for me, like mine for you, is real. Mary, Amanda, what I have with Jules and Ness - that's what I want to have with you. We need to figure out how to break this thing without hurting anybody, and then, with our eyes wide open, we can all decide together if that will be our next step.

"I am still pissed at what you allowed Dianna to do to Jules, but that's okay too, because people who love each other can be angry with each other for a while. What you suggested tonight for Ness was a beautiful idea, and it shows me that you're really trying, and you really care.

"Mary, I won't apologize for butting heads with you, but just like you're telling me that you hate that you caused Jules's pain, I'm telling you the same: I hate that I've caused your pain. That said, though, I told Dianna that if I ever saw her abusing her powers like that again, I would report her to the Bureau. I'm giving you a similar warning. If I ever see you abusing your power to run roughshod over Norms, I will put you over my knee and paddle your ass until you can't sit down."

Mary flushed. Her nostrils flared and her pupils suddenly went huge.

"That's me fucked then," I heard Jules mutter, and Amanda giggled.

"No, it isn't," I said seriously, "because that isn't all. Jules, you and Ness are equals in this relationship. All three of us - the ones with powers - are on notice about that. I'm pretty confident that my ass won't get a paddling for failing to treat you right, but if I earn one, then I'll let one or both of you do it.

"If Mary wants a paddling from me that badly," I finished with a half-smile, "she can find some other way to earn it."

"Can and will," Amanda murmured happily.

I stood up, and so did Mary. Slowly, as if both of us were worried the other would startle and run away, we approached, and then she was in my arms, clinging to me and sobbing. Amanda joined us, and Jules was only seconds behind.

Mary looked up at me. She opened her mouth, maybe to apologize, maybe to tell me I was standing on her foot. I didn't care. She didn't get to speak. I leaned down and lost myself in her kiss.

We stood there, all together for a good while, and then Mary decided she needed to clean herself up. Her face was a little bit red and covered in tears. She and Amanda went into the bathroom.

I sat back down, and Jules curled up on my lap.

"They apologized, you know," she said.

"Who?" I asked.

"Both of them," she said. "Not together. Mary came to me first and told me how scared she had been that you were going to get hurt if she couldn't make you see sense and that when Dianna used her powers on me, she decided to try and talk her down rather than call her out, so there would be less anger in the atmosphere when you got back. You just got back too early. She said she was sorry that I had had that done to me and promised she would never stand by and watch anyone abuse their powers again - no matter who."

"What did Amanda say?" I asked with interest.

"In her own way, pretty much the same?" she said, her voice lilting upwards. "It actually sounded a lot more like what you just said, honestly. There was less explaining; I think Mary takes the lead whenever there's planning and plotting to be done. But Amanda didn't throw Mary under the bus. There was a lot more crying and hugging, too. I still feel bad sometimes, because I know that Amanda, especially, is a little lost when she can't use her powers or sexual intimacy to show her love.

"On that note, can I ask a favor?" she asked.

"Of course," I said.

"Can you tell the girls it's all right to use their powers sometimes? I liked how they made me feel, and I miss going to sleep surrounded by love. I know the love is there, but we mere mortals can't feel it like you can. Please?"

She looked up at my stunned face and must have read my thoughts, because she said, "Don't give yourself a hard time about depriving me of the feeling. We're just getting back to a good place. Let's not go dark again."

I flexed my power and surrounded Jules with love, trust, and gratitude.

She moaned and stretched like a cat being petted. "I missed that. Better than sex."

I caught the knowing wink in the words, and it made me chuckle. I looked up and saw Mary and Amanda watching us. "Our little girl has missed feeling loved," I told them. "I've been depriving her by making you guys too scared to use your powers. Can we make it up to her from now on?"

They both smiled. Jules was in for quite the trip, but I decided that that was okay. College kids and drugs were hardly strangers, after all.