The Many Faces of Tully

Five minutes haven’t even pass before I hear a knock on the door.

“Tully?” I hear Jace say from behind the door. I don’t even look up but my door swings open. “Whoa.”

I just keep crying. I hear my door shut and his feet walking towards me. I feel my bed bounce beneath me as he crawls on to it and sits right next to me. He puts his arm around me and hugs me to him. I start crying harder.

I unfold myself and turn into him. I start crying into his shoulder and he wraps his other arm around me. He doesn’t say anything. He just holds me and strokes my hair. I don’t feel like talking anyways. I want to cry.

He lets me cry out all my tears. When I’m done his shirt is soaked with my tears and snot. I finally pull away from him and start wiping my face off. He reaches up and wipes away a tear I missed.

“I’m sorry about that,” I croak at him. He shrugs.

“Are you okay?” he asks me.

I shrug now. “He’s right about me.” I cough again. I can’t seem to get the ash out.

“Don’t you dare say that. He isn’t right about you. I hate how you are persuaded so easily. It’s almost like you want to believe him,” he says angrily.

I take a deep breath to argue back but then I start coughing. There are tears in my eyes again when I finally get over it. I can hardly breathe through it and I am gasping for air.

“Tully? Are you okay?” Jace asks, concerned.

“Yeah,” I manage to say. “Just inhaled some ash.” I try to hold back more coughing.

“Let me help you with that.” He reaches over and puts one hand on my throat and one on my back. They suddenly turn really warm, almost hot, and I can see the faint green glow. His fingers brush my collar bone as he removes his hand from my neck. I shiver slightly.

“Thank you.” My voice is clear again and I don’t feel the need to cough at all anymore. “Do you think you could heal cancer?” I ask him suddenly.

“I think so. I don’t know why I wouldn’t be able to. But don’t change the subject.” He looks at me with an annoyed expression.

“That’s my point though. You could do so much good for the world. You heal. I destroy. What good can I do?” I look him straight in the eye. I can do no good.

“That’s why we’re doing this. So you can control your powers and not destroy everything. I’d say you’d make one hell of a weapon for the army but I know you wouldn’t like that. Don’t let your powers shape who you are.” He stares right back at me.

“That’s not what I learned the first day I was here. I distinctly remember Zazu saying my power is who I really am,” I rebut.

“Oh my God. You don’t know how much I hate that saying. It’s so stupid and the falsest statement I’ve ever heard,” he complains.

“But our power is what we do.” My eyebrows pull together.

“Yes. But it’s not who we are. Do you think Haides is invisible to everyone? Do you think girls don’t notice him when he’s walking around town?” he questions me.

“I guess not…” I admit slowly.

“Is Elsu birdlike? Other than being able to fly?”

“No…”

“My power is healing, but I can take health too. I might be able to heal people, doesn’t mean that’s all I want to do.” He’s always right.

“But all of your powers can be used for the better. What can mine be used for?” I question him. I’m not trying to argue with him, I really do want an answer.

“All of their powers can be used for the better, but they can be used for the worst too. Just like mine. Just like yours,” he comforts me. It doesn’t work.

“How?”

He opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. He closes it and just stares at me. His eyes flick back and forth between mine. He’s searching for an answer.

“How, Jace?” I ask him desperately.

“I don’t know,” he admits quietly. Then his eyes burn into mine. “But I promise you, we will find a way. You’re a good person, so we’ll make your powers good too.”

I resist the urge to kiss him. Barely.

“You think it’s possible?” I ask him.

“Why not? I’ll make it possible. Maybe the best we could do is to help you control it. You yourself are such a good person that if you stop blowing up then that will be enough. We need your kind of goodness in this world.” His eyes are intense.

“Then why do I have these powers? You would think we have them for a reason. If I just stop using them then what’s the point? I’m meant to have these powers, for something. I need to find the good in them,” I say fiercely. Jace purses his lips, thinking over what I just said.

“I’ll help you. There must be something you can do that’s good, because you do more than explode. You morph, shape shift, you can alter people’s memories, and you’re telekinetic. Oh, and you have some form of protection because you shocked me the other day when I grabbed your arm. I wonder if you can do anything else,” he says, more to himself.

Something he said strikes me odd. “Why wasn’t I wiped from your guys’ memories?” I ask him.

“What?” He is pulled out of his reverie.

“When I morphed into the panther. I always erase the memories of the people who knew me when I’m running. I was going to run, but none of you forgot me.” I never thought about it before. Also, my bags didn’t pack and come flying to me.

“Maybe you didn’t want to? Maybe you wanted us to remember you. Maybe you didn’t want to run. You wanted to stay, so you didn’t wipe our memories,” he suggests.

“Huh. Maybe. Maybe my mind erasing powers don’t work on people with powers?” I propose.

“That could be it. I honestly don’t know, but it has to be one of those. No other explanation.” He taps his lips. He does that a lot when he is really trying to solve a problem.

I like the way he talks all technical when he’s confronted with a problem. I smile.

“We should work on your telekinetic powers,” he announces suddenly.

“I don’t know how…” I trail off.

“That’s why we should work on it. See if you can do it on purpose. See if we can get you to gain control of that power. It would be a start,” he offers.

“All right,” we spend the rest of the night trying to get me to move things around my room. He tells me to try to focus on just one object at a time and just picture it moving, but I can’t do it. I keep thinking that I feel silly just staring at a random object with false intensity. I feel his eyes on me so I can’t ignore him and focus at the task at hand.

He tries to have me command something out loud but that just makes me feel even more ridiculous. I tell the remote to 'move' or the movie to 'come here' but I end up laughing halfway through the command. That idea was a bust.

He suggests a few more things but I finally get things to move when I’m about to give up. I make my mind completely blank and I can actually pretend Jace isn’t there, which helps things a lot. Then I think about an object I want to move and it would. I have my TV turning on and off and my clothes folding themselves. It’s pretty neat and I am actually insanely happy that I finally conquered one of my powers.

Jace leaves my room at 9 o'clock, somewhat reluctantly, to go to bed. I decide to practice a little bit more. I get my toothbrush to wet and paste itself so I can brush my teeth. My pajamas lay out for me as I brush my teeth and I get a random movie set up in the DVD player for me to fall asleep to. One could get used to these powers. I go to bed happier than I thought I could be after my monstrous transformation today.