Veronica never saw Hannibal but she assumed Clarice Starling felt much the same sitting across from a neutral. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. No, that wasn’t the word. It was a once in a lifetime threat; a “goddamn miracle I survived that” threat.
Veronica lived for that rush. She had sat across from this particular neutral before. Jason Dean, her ex. She made the decision to return to him in her undergraduate and now after obtaining her masters in psychology, she decided to invest her time in working with people exactly like him. Neutrals or another name for the group of would-be threats. People whose powers had grown too large or resisted the social structure.
She was the very definition of a bright, or a person with mild enhancement superpowers. Hers being perfect recall.
She was bright, she is an Ivy league, and she will have a white picket fence future. She stands at the opposite ends of a correctional facility from a criminal in his ocean blue and white room with an iceberg blue bed. He had a single pale yellow lamp and a poster of a beach in stark contrast with the wall. His shirt contrasted the room by being the brightest object in there: a lust red, signifying his containment group.
“Did you ever marry that lawyer?” J.D. questions, his eyes open and friendly as they had been on their first date, at least, she hoped he considered it a date.
“A hello would be appreciated,” Her words stuck on her lips. She recoiled at her own lack of maturity - thankfully, no one else was in the room with them besides god. Even criminals have privacy rights, she supposed.
“You were staring for a good five minutes,” he mutters. “Though, I assume you could ask the security officer behind that camera in the corner for a photo when we’re done here. It will last longer.”
She missed that. She blinks and shakes her head. Criminals have some privacy rights for their sessions. Video, no audio. Call remote attached to her waist.
She’s supposed to go over protocol. “What’s your name?”
“You screamed it before,” His smile doesn’t meet his eyes and Veronica thinks he regrets the joke as soon as it comes out of his mouth. “J.D.”
“Why are you here?”
“You know why.”
“Why are you here.”
“Arson.”
“What were you thinking, J.D.?” Veronica whispers. “Arson, are you serious. Arson. You didn’t need to go full rogue, you’re barely a pastel.”
“That’s a nice word for useless,” He says. The fun labelling system they learnt in school for their powers was not what other kids referred to them on the playground. “I was nothing before. My fires are bright. No, they’re pure.”
“Does anything in this room look flammable? You couldn’t even light a candle in here.”
“It was the same out there.”
He’d been taunted quite heavily for his lackluster powers, especially after people saw them together. Beige, blank, dull, geeky, creepy, and now a neutral. He went from useless to a failed arsonist. However, Veronica never tattled on him for the murders of his classmates, and even Veronica wouldn’t know where he’d be if the police found out he had killed three pure students. People destined to rise in fame and glory within their military and popular consciousness, unlike brights who tended to do work within the government and the back end. Or even pastels, who more or less either had to join in one of those two avenues and destined to have low ranking careers, or return back to non-powered society after over ten years within an education not designed for them. It would be a do over, one without a proper education and a lack of connections and skillsets.
He was more than a killer. As a correctional psychologist she had to believe that. As his best and only ex-friend, she could not give up on him. Detached and empathetic, ruthless and merciful, nice and kind; these were the lines she walked on every single day since high school. Theoretically, she could be good at her roles by now.
“Some struggling people,” She says, “display antisocial behavior. Do you need help?”
“Now, you sound like our teacher,” He snorts.
“When did you first obtain those shitty powers anyways?”
J.D. stops.
His mom was trying to find a lighter she kept hidden in her drawer to light his birthday candle. She never kept it out because of his dad’s alcoholism but J.D. rarely thought about that; by how she reacted - shaking her head and muttering to herself that she “didn’t want that sort of trouble in the house”, he thought it was some mild annoyance. J.D. had that same disapproving tilt and much like her, he never really stopped shaking his head. Constantly rolling, judging and ticketing others for their mishaps. He likes to think his judgement came from her but he knows his was a combination of both of his parents' worst vices: judgement and nihilism.
His parents were both blanks - or what they refer now to as pures - back when it took on a worse connotation. Back when it meant going into warzones with nothing but your power. Those who came home formed the “blank” generation. Not named for their genocide or for the few to return, but for their fellow soldiers snickering behind their backs as they grabbed their bulletproof vests that would protect them and only them, that they were “shooting blanks today, eh?”. Fortunately, it was his ninth birthday and it was looking to be like he wouldn’t even have any powers.
He sat down at the table as his mother fretted around, tossing open every drawer with her telekinesis. Her powers were larger than life itself as she chucked and sorted all the newspapers, the phone books, carefully put back the knives -
“Jay, help me!” She scolds him. “You see I’m struggling over here”
“But it’s my birthday.”
“Oh, the sun rises under the pillar of your tongue,” She says with a snap of her fingers. All the miscellaneous items click as they rush back to their spots. “You little sneak. You didn’t tell me you found my lighter.”
“I had, in fact, not found a lighter,” He clicks his tongue. “She had a fondness for poems.”
“You took after your mother.”
“I’d hardly call lighting a candle as taking after her, but yes, she displayed impressive mental abilities,” He states. “It was something my dad could never achieve with his pyrokinesis. People assumed my powers would grow like his, but they never loomed quite as large.”
Having a superpower did not mean it was useful. Creating a combustible reaction from nothing was unheard of.
“That’s impossible,” Veronica was reminded by the cheesy posters from middle school shouting “I’m possible” at her and she grits her teeth. She remembers the day she gained her powers. “Not even brights can’t do that.”
“What was impressive is that she did not even need to move her wrist to throw an object.” He says and she shrinks back. “I think we both know what’s possible.”
“So you do remember.” Veronica clarifies and he nods his head. She’s blushing but her teeth are grinding painfully against one another. She remembers the day she gained powers but she had certainly exaggerated certain features. To the wider world she was bright, not pure.
She aced every test since the first grade and her parents had attributed it to her incredible talent. She could hardly call it a talent however - it wasn’t effortless, it was an effort of pure desperation. It required hardwork, blood, and some muscle to obtain pitch perfect grades. More than anything in the world, Veronica desperately needed to be bright.
“How did that turn out for you?” J.D. asks her. “Building your life on a field of lies and on the back of the hard work of your classmates.”
“Bad,” she whispers; there was no one there but J.D., Veronica, and god. “Really bad.”