As Catherine lowered herself quite literally down to his level, Jordan heard the acid in her voice, corrosive and cutting. It was as though he had stuck his finger in an outlet and the electricity jolted through him, resting in his stomach, pooling there along with all the other feelings he could remember like the back of his hand, like the hilt of his rifle. 

The sound of students approaching was visceral, tugging at Jordan's guts and making his coil of regret and bitter feeling jump, even as he sat stock still. Catherine turned and Jordan looked away, eyes falling on the discarded water pistol. He frowned, bit his lip, and clenched his fist. 

[i]Crunch.[/i]

The gun was unrecognizable, deformed and compressed by a larger than life fist of earth. The faint stains of pink paint had been abraded by the fist's grains, blurred to be illegible, but Jordan was nowhere near a state of mind to do anything more precise.

It only happened when she was around. The rest of the time, Jordan could sink deep into his chosen persona of joker, prankster, and all-around humour-driven scoundrel. It was after all, a significant core of his personality to begin with. But when she came around... That all fell away.

It was like she embodied the fight in him, in others, in the world. She was a task, an objective, a mission he had failed utterly. She was a person too, but Jordan's concern went beyond that. He was, or at least, had been, a fixer. He took situations so far gone, so incredibly beyond the pale that nobody could salvage them, and made them right. And Catherine Hargreaves was the one mission he'd failed. Maybe he couldn't help her. Maybe people weren't missions you could save, could repair with the right course of action. Maybe Jordan just wasn't the fixer he used to be. He didn't know. All he knew was that the damned woman had sucked away his vitality, had stolen his purpose, had RUINED-

Wait no, that had been him too.

A searing pain flared in Jordan's side, and he winced. The twinge pricked and itched and curled up from his ribs into his shoulder. [i]Like if you ground sand in the ball joint and wore away the ligament... Have I done that before?[/i] Jordan got up, and oblivious to what the students were saying, silent in answer to what Cathy- To what Catherine had said, he stalked off into the gloom. 

Jordan's pain flared, and he rolled his shoulder gingerly. Despite the insistence by numerous authorities that his injuries were psycho-somatic, Jordan knew better. He had to get the sand out of his shoulder. Wouldn't do to have a gym teacher who can't pitch, or throw a right hook, or...

[i]Or write an apology to somebody he's wronged?[/i]

Much like the water gun, Manilow suspected his attempts at an apology would also end up crumbled, erased, and abandoned on the ground.

[@Stern Algorithm]