regaining trust is harder than it seems ((Clark, Harry Dresden))

[slayers_desire]

It has been weeks since April's voices were returned to normal, thanks to the efforts of Clark, Ed and Cipher Nine. And while the voices returned to their everyday work, of providing assistance and advice to the Key, it seemed that she wasn't willing to pay attention.

April was scared, truth be told. She was scared in trusting her voices again.

It was J'onn who informed Clark that his wife was refusing to provide advice to the other JLA members. And while no one had suffered yet, it was like the team was missing a big part of their strengths.

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[thepizzalord]

Clark rarely thinks about how odd that sounds anymore. "Stay safe!" he calls back, sending a little wave of love over the bond, and hoping that she finds what she's looking for.

The SSV Normandy SR-2 is a fairly spacious ship, rebuilt from the ground up to be more luxurious than the first version, which was a purely military vessel. The decks and bulkheads are shining clean, mostly black with silver and white trim, and blue and white lighting. It used to be a very sterile space, absent of any life or clutter.

Harry has done his very best to change that. His lab features a long workbench running through the center, topped with what looks like an old-fashioned chemistry set with beakers and flasks. The workbench itself is a mess at the moment, strewn with random garbage and with a pot of something bubbling away over an electric burner.

Against the wall are hundreds of small storage cabinets, each one marked with a handwritten label on some kind of futuristic tape: Bus tickets. Broken electronics. Newspaper clippings. Thermal clips. And many, many more. Most of it looks like random junk that no one would ever want to hold onto. Another wall holds a bookshelf that's mostly empty at the moment, but he's slowly been accumulating dusty old books, held upright by an improvised bookend, a big glass jar of dirt labeled Earth.

Harry himself is sitting at the workbench on one of the padded leather chairs bolted to the deck, and he waves when she appears. "Welcome to my lair."

[slayers_desire]

"What a very interesting lair it is..." April studies her surroundings carefully. She can see that Harry definitely lives in his own environment. And has made this place his home, as best as he can.

[thepizzalord]

There's a low rumble coming through the floor, a droning sort of sound that never stops, but Harry doesn't act like anything's out of the ordinary. "Sorry for the mess."

[slayers_desire]

"I have seen messier." She frowns at the low rumble for a moment. One of the difficulties of tuning out her own voices is not knowing if she is in immediate danger.

"So, I should explain why I wanted to speak to you."

"A living virus got into my mind, and infected my internal voices. And now, even when it is gone, I still can't trust myself."

[thepizzalord]

"A living virus?" That sounds serious, and he gestures to the chair next to him. Looks like this might be a long talk.

[slayers_desire]

"A creature that was created from human, demon and technology named Adam. He invaded my mind."

[thepizzalord]

"And he altered your clairvoyance somehow? How?"

[slayers_desire]

"My clairvoyance is a living entity itself. And he infected the voices, so that they would deceive me. A life... was taken because of an erred vision."

[thepizzalord]

"Hell's bells. April, I'm sorry." Harry's no stranger to killing, but it really sucks to have someone die who didn't deserve it, especially if it was an accident.

[slayers_desire]

"Clark, and two close friends of mine, went into my mind to battle Adam, the thing that infected me...."

"And they did defeat him..."

"But I am still so scared..."

[thepizzalord]

"If he's gone, what's scarin' you?"

[slayers_desire]

"That I will hurt someone again..."

[thepizzalord]

"I'd offer to do an exorcism, but it sounds like you don't need one anymore." Harry's a little slow on the uptake about why he's the person to talk to about this.

[slayers_desire]

"No. But I thought it would help to talk to someone who has experience... with voices in their head that is not their own."

[thepizzalord]

"Oh," he says as the penny drops. "That's... yeah, I can see why I'd be your guy."

Lasciel stirs a little, paying slightly closer attention, though her vigilance never really stops.

[slayers_desire]

"I know my connection to the voices is different... but I just am struggling so much relating to them right now."

[thepizzalord]

He nods slowly. "Okay... what do you want to talk about?" He remembers that he's told her about how Lasciel came to be with him, or at least the cliff notes version, but not much about what it's like.

[slayers_desire]

"What is your relationship like Lasciel like?"

[thepizzalord]

"Right now? We have an... understanding. It's kind of a business relationship, I guess. She needs a host, and I needed the extra firepower. There are some... drawbacks... but I can't do much about that." He doesn't really want to think about the whole damned soul part of the whole thing. It was a decision that took him years to make. "She lets me do most of the talkin' and the walkin'." The way he phrases that implies, correctly, that it's her decision how much of his behavior is his own. "She watches and learns, and when we need her to come out, no one's left standing."

[slayers_desire]

"I really never researched where my voices originated. How they got to me... except for being inherited from my mother."

"In your business relationship, do you trust her?"

[thepizzalord]

"She has a vested interest in keeping me alive and well," he says, which isn't exactly a yes.

[slayers_desire]

"They are always there..." April touches her temple. "Whispering to me. Even when I try to ignore them..."

"I wish I knew if they still wanted to keep me alive and well."

[thepizzalord]

He's silent for a moment as he gathers his thoughts. "Lash wasn't always like this, with me. Before I took up the coin, she started off as just whispers. Kind of like an imprint or an echo, like when you write in a notebook and the next page still has the lines of whatever you wrote."

[slayers_desire]

"There are times I wish I could understand them better..." And she doesn't mean by literally understanding their words. But understanding their origin.

"A part of me... fears that they could easily foretell dark events."

[thepizzalord]

"I didn't think that was out of the ordinary," he says, a little confused.