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“Do you know why you’re here?”
Lex just stared at the clock, waiting for the allotted half an hour to pass.
The university-appointed therapist carried on regardless.
“You barely scraped a pass on your last assignment.”
“I still passed,” Lex muttered, still glaring at the clock.
“You arrived at this university with glowing qualifications. You could have been here two years ago if you had really wanted to. Perhaps earlier. And yet, now that you’re here, you’re wasting your talent.”
“I’m not the one wasting my talent,” Lex said with a roll of her eyes. “This university is. I’m bored, Doc, and I’m too smart to deal with being bored.” She gave the therapist a condescending smile. “Now that the mystery is solved, can I leave?”
The therapist didn’t look amused. “This is your future, Lex. How you do here will dictate the course your life will take. You worked hard to get here, are you truly willing to throw that all away now?”
Lex smirked. “Doc, look at me.” She waved her hand in front of her face. “I have plenty of other options. I gave up on modelling to focus on my academic work, but maybe that was a mistake. I could easily go back and probably make more money than I could with a degree in mathematics. Especially given how skinny I’ve gotten...”
“Okay, clearly you don’t want to talk about your academics. How about we talk about the Aspect of Justice instead.”
Lex glared at her. “Why would you ask me about her?”
The therapist gave her a kindly smile that made her skin crawl. “Your mother was worried that you hadn’t been answering her calls and she told us all about what happened. It must have been difficult for you, to lose your partner and best friend in the same day.”
“My mother only cares that I do impressive things that she can brag about and that I otherwise stay out of trouble. Don’t believe for a second that she actually knows anything about my life beyond that. She doesn’t care enough to.”
“I see. So, you think you have nothing behind you. No family, no home. And what was ahead... That was always tied up in Justice, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a future for just you, it was a future for both of you, and now that she’s gone, you don’t think you have a future at all.”
Lex folded her arms, going back to glaring at the clock. “Save your breath, I’m not talking about this.”
“Have you tried to meet new people since you got here? New friends, or dates?”
Lex snorted, shaking her head. “Just stop, okay. Please. I have failed to make friends and to attract any lasting romantic interest, and I know that the temptation is to say that I just didn’t try enough. I mean, look at me. I’m pretty and smart and talented... But I have tried again and again, and I have failed again and again. I promise you, trying isn’t the problem. I just work on a different frequency to everyone else. How could I not? I’m a genius that can run circles around them all.”
“Have you ever considered that they’re not the problem?”
Lex felt the words like a shot to her chest, and it took her a moment to regain her breath.
“Of course I have,” she eventually hissed. “Again, I’m working with considerable brainpower here. But has it occurred to you, Doc, that I have tackled this from every conceivable angle and can’t find a solution? And if it’s my fault, and I can’t find the solution after years of trying, then the only logical solution is that there is no solution. And I cannot live with that assessment.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest that it was a problem you needed to solve on your own. That’s what I’m here for. But you’re not the only student I’ve heard this monologue from. Not by far. It’s incredibly common for intelligent students with autism to feel this way. Have you ever considered that you might be on the spectrum?”
Lex stood up at that, grabbing her bag before storming out.
She didn’t think that the therapist was wrong.
She’d done enough research to suspect that being autistic might have been the answer all along.
But it was an answer that went nowhere.
If she was autistic, then they had all been right. All of the kids who had refused to play with her. The parents that had ignored her, probably to avoid thinking about all of her quirks instead of her achievements. All of the dates who lost interest as soon as she opened her mouth...
If she was autistic, then they weren’t just mean idiots, beneath her in every way.
If she was autistic, then they were right.
She was broken, and all of those assholes who couldn’t keep up with her and had to make her feel bad for it...
They were the normal ones.
That didn’t make sense.
She was broken from her thoughts by someone walking right into her.
“Hey!” she protested, but they just kept walking, not even giving her a second look.
Another person bumped into her shoulder before she had a chance to process that.
And then someone else walked into her back.
“What the hell?” she demanded, spinning to face all of the people who were bumping into her. “Am I invisible to you people or something?”
They all just kept looking, none of their eyes focusing on her.
She went to wave a hand in front of one of their faces, but she couldn’t see anything.
“What the hell?” she repeated as she looked down at herself, only to see that she was, indeed, invisible.
#
LEX HEADED BACK TO her room at a complete loss.
She had turned invisible.
How had she turned invisible?
The only powers she knew of like that were the Aspects. Specifically, the Aspect of Loneliness could turn invisible.
But there was only ever one Aspect for each emotion at a time.
She had Rena blood, so she could potentially be an Aspect.
Could she have tapped into those powers somehow?
She looked over to her mirror to see that she was mostly visible again, though there were still patches of her fading in and out.
She was distracted by a knock at her door.
She groaned, expecting to see that the therapist had chased after her. But when she opened the door, she saw an unfamiliar woman with dark brown hair, tied up, away from her olive skin, and silver eyes hidden behind glasses.
“Lex Lau?” the woman asked, glancing over her fading patches, though she didn’t seem concerned.
“Who are you?” Lex demanded.
“I’m Ms Bennett. I’m from the Aspects Program.”
“Oh,” Lex managed, realising exactly what her disappearing must be. She realised after a moment that they were just standing in her doorway and stepped aside to allow Bennett in.
Bennett stepped into the room but made no effort to sit anywhere. Probably because most of the surfaces were covered in clothes and even Lex wasn’t sure whether they were clean or not.
“Loneliness died, didn’t they?” Lex asked. She didn’t pay much attention to the Aspects - never had - so she had no clue who she would be replacing. The Aspects without offensive powers tended to need replacing regularly enough that even if she wanted to pay attention, she would probably struggle to keep up.
Bennett nodded. “The information I had been given said you were astute. I see that it was correct. And given that you are already tapping into your powers so thoroughly, you are showing more skill at being an Aspect than I had anticipated.”
Lex looked away, not interested in her praise.
“As you have clearly already gathered, you have been chosen as the next Aspect of Loneliness. As an Aspect, it is required that you move to the appropriate Aspect Tower and give up all facets of your old life.”
“The appropriate Tower?” Lex asked, her mind lagging behind as all she found herself capable of thinking was that Justice and Vengeance were stationed at Tower Five.
“Tower Three.”
Lex just nodded, her mind remembering as Bennett spoke.
“Are you ready to go?”
Lex nodded again.
It wasn’t as if she was leaving much behind...