The X-Project

Manuel comes to his Friday lesson, but Nathan isn't in any shape to make it an empathy day. They talk a little about what happened on Tuesday night and a little more about Kwannon. Manuel does something rather altruistic for Nathan, who responds by having an inspiration for a form of English-practice that Manuel might actually enjoy.



Part of Nathan was glad when he got to the classroom and found that Manuel wasn't there just yet. Gave him a minute to compose himself, to remind himself that this was just another morning with Manuel and the last couple of days really were immaterial one way or the other.

Manuel appeared a few minutes later, dusting crumbs off of his button-down and sipping from a large glass of grapefruit juice. "Hola." he said neutrally, stretching out his empathic sense to get a gauge of how Nathan was feeling. "Feeling better after your little eruption?"

"More or less," Nathan answered after a moment, trying not to feel so pathetically glad at the calm tone of Manuel's question. "I've screwed up our schedule again; I'm sorry."

Manuel waved that off. "Forgiven." he said generously. "Want to talk about it?"

Nathan opened his mouth, the quick words of dismissal already forming in his mind, but something in the level way Manuel was looking at him made him pause. "I... what did you feel, precisely?" Nathan stopped, clearing his throat before he went on. "I didn't see what you'd written on the journals until Wednesday night. About it waking you up."

Manuel settled back in his chair, controlling his posture and expression to be as non-offensive as possible. "I felt everything. From you and from Kwannon." he said simply.

"That... must have been a headful," Nathan said, managing a weak smile and trying to ignore the sinking feeling. It hadn't occurred to him that Manuel would know that the other person out there Tuesday night had been Betsy.

"You could say that." he said mildly. "Next empathy lesson is going to be on how to shield while I'm asleep. She really got to you, didn't she? I could feel your terror from my room."

"I got to myself, Manuel," Nathan corrected him with a flicker of bleak humor. "Apparently it doesn't take much." It wasn't as if they'd been standing out there shouting at each other all night, after all. A few minutes, a few well-chosen words, and he'd just snapped. He really ought to be more upset about his lack of control than he was.

Manuel shook his head. "No, I don't think so." But then he smiled self-mockingly. "But I could be wrong. As I am told so often, I usually am. I was just - concerned. I am tempted to go have some words with Kwannon myself, but I have too much coming up that could be placed at risk."

Don't touch the Betsy issue. Take him at his word. Nathan sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck. He hadn't slept particularly well last night, either. "I've got to be honest, Manuel - I know we should be doing empathy practice today to make up for what we missed, but I don't know that I'm up to participating. Maybe you and Galin could... just talk about sleep-shielding?"

Manuel shook his head. "With you as rattled as you are, it would not be productive." he said. "We can talk empathy tomorrow. I've only felt despair like that once, and that was right before the doctors decided to test to see if I could withstand death-trauma from the inside. So yes, I owe myself $20 - I made a bet that you would be dead by morning."

Nathan's expression froze. "I..." His voice failed him, and his hands clenched spasmodically on the arms of his chair. "That's a bit macabre, Manuel."

"Yes, that's what Amanda said too. I am relieved that I was wrong." he said. He reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, extracted from it a new $20 bill, and put it on the table. Then he replaced his wallet, and picked up the $20. "I felt what you felt, remember?" he said softly, before pocketing the $20.

"We all have...demons in our past," Nathan said slowly, remembering what Betsy had said to him. "Sometimes we need a good, sharp smack upside the head to remind us to suck it up."

"Who is _she_ to be calling up _your_ demons! When she has not answered for what _SHE_ has done!" he raged. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself, and then continued. "Considering the source, I think that her words were probably just a bit hypocritical, don't you?"

Nathan took a deep breath. Calm, he told himself, steadying his shields. Manuel's angry thoughts had crashed against them like a physical blow. "Manuel... Kwannon was what you thought... past tense, I hope... the Askani were. A malevolent parasite, using Betsy."

Manuel snorted at that. "So I've been told." he said coldly. "She still has not made amends, has not apologized, has not done ANYTHING to compensate for what she did!"

"I just..." He couldn't do this, Nathan realized suddenly, the realization hitting him sharply. Didn't have the energy, still, even two days later. "I'm sorry," Nathan murmured, rubbing at his eyes. "I know... well, I don't know, but I understand that's something that's still weighing on you."

"She _used_ me, Nathan! She used me!" he said, hiding his eyes and wiping them with the back of his had. "She lied to me, she used me, and good people got hurt because of it!"

"I know." Nathan shook his head slowly, forcing himself to pull it together, to respond to the obvious need here. "I know what it's like to be used, Manuel, to be made to do things you spend the rest of your life regretting."

Manuel slammed his hand against the desk, heedless of the pain doing so gave him. "I want satisfaction." he hissed. "Or, at the _very_ least, a sincere apology."

"And who do you think you're going to get either from?" Nathan asked tiredly. "Two separate entities, Manuel. You may have only known one in that body, but your experience is not the sum of reality whether you want to admit that or not. I'm not minimizing what happened to you, but do you think Betsy didn't suffer, being kept prisoner in her own mind? Where's the honor in holding her responsible for something she didn't do?"

"She will do." he hissed, then tried to relax his suddenly-tense shoulders. "Someone has to be responsible."

Nathan pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead, concentrating hard, trying to blank his mind. "Closure," he muttered. "Might as well be the Holy Grail, sometimes..."

"I apologized when I hurt people. Why isn't she held to the same standard?" he asked, still trying to relax himself.

"Because it wasn't her, Manuel," Nathan said dully. "Please try to understand that. She was every bit as much a victim in this."

"That didn't fly when I was being tossed to and fro by everyone's emotions, it isn't going to fly now. It was her." he said with a grimace.

One last try. Then he was going to run out of the room screaming. Or maybe just walk over to that nice, handy wall and introduce it to his head. "Manuel," Nathan said. "Am I Galin?"

Manuel looked at Nathan. "Sometimes, yes." he said. "You check out, he checks in. It's the same with all the Askani." He then shivered despite himself.

There was a more significant problem here than he could hope to fix, Nathan thought, depressed. Maybe Charles would have some way to illustrate it to him better, to make him understand...

...what the hell was he saying? His hands started to shake and he folded them together in his lap. What was he doing? Just trying to head off conflict? As if that was the most important thing... as if it wasn't wrong that Manuel was still in pain about this.

Manuel looked at Nathan oddly as his emotions changed. "Oh, fuck." he whispered. "Relapse? Nathan? Do you need help?"

Nathan shook his head mutely, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. "I'm so sorry, Manuel," he finally said, his voice uneven. "For... arguing with you about this. It's the same old thing, isn't it? Implying that you need to shake it off, get over it - that what you experienced is somehow less important just because a situation was damaging all around..." He gave a weak, unsteady laugh with no humor in it at all. "I'm sorry," he repeated, more brokenly this time. "I should be able to do better than that, for you..."

Manuel took a deep breath, and then his eyes glowed red as he tried to take that black depression and make it Go Away for a time. He went carefully, doing his very limtied best to watch out for triggers or other nasties inside of Nathan's brain.

It was as if someone had lifted a crushing weight off his chest, as if a warm wind had blown through him, moderating the icy chill he felt if not banishing it entirely. There was no panic, no instinctive reaction. Just relief. Nathan let the air in his lungs out on a shaky sigh, his eyes closing for a moment as the feeling sank in.

#...thank you.# He opened his eyes, managing a faint smile as he met Manuel's eyes. "I meant it, you know," he said, only a bit of a tremor in his voice now. "I don't know how to help, what advice to give... but it's wrong, Manuel."

Manuel looked at Nathan, eyes still glowing red. "Maybe. Maybe not. But I have to try."

"I didn't mean what you want," Nathan said, more steadily. "I mean it's wrong, me or anyone else telling you not to want it."

Manuel quirked an eyebrow. "You've been telling me what to want and what not to want since we started these sessions together. Samson tells me about what I should and should not want all the time."

"It's like everything else," Nathan said quietly. "Slippery slope. And I took a big step too far just now." He studied Manuel for a moment, astonishing by how clearly he could think. "What does Samson say about Kwannon? Have the two of you talked about that?"

"Extensively. And it will stay between Samson and I. None of your business, really." he said, letting his power fade away. "That should do for a while. I still can't do long-term or permanent modification, but that should last for an hour or two."

Nathan accepted the rebuke with a nod. It wasn't, really. He smiled faintly again, staring down at his hands. They'd stopped shaking. "Still," he said softly. "I wish... there was something I could do to help. And I'm sorry. For trying to push you back into a mental Box over this." He shook his head. "There has to be a solution. A middle ground. I just... can't see it."

"We have time. Assuming that my brain doesn't melt or you don't turn the Mansion into glass or demons from Hell don't invade or the nice gentlemen with guns introduce us to high-caliber persuasion, we'll have time." he said with a black grin.

"There's always those rare few days between crises," Nathan said, managing a dry tone. "Maybe it's just a question of proper scheduling."

Manuel laughed. "Maybe it is."

Nathan closed his eyes again for a moment, taking another deep breath, the last of that raw feeling ebbing completely. Maybe it wouldn't last, but for now... "Thank you," he said again, aloud this time, gratefully.

Manuel waved that off. "A small down payment on the debt I owe you. So - what are we doing today? More of your hell-runs, or more bullshit work?" he asked with a smile.

A faint smile, of real humor this time, tugged at Nathan's lips as he opened his eyes. "Which would you hate less?"

"An interesting question. I think I'd hate the bullshit less, but it's close." he said with a grin.

"Then bullshit it is," Nathan said, his gaze going distant for a moment. Then he turned to his briefcase, glad he'd thought to bring the laptop down with him just in case. "What about a little reading practice? There are sites that compile music reviews...."

"Now you're making the bullshit almost taste good. What do you have for me?" he asked with a grin.

Nathan started up the laptop, opening a browser and doing a quick search. "What about this?" he asked, setting the laptop on the table and turning it so that Manuel could see it. "Music-Critic.com... it covers a range of musical types, so you could decide what you'd prefer to read about."

Manuel hrmmed as he took a look around the site. He then frowned, and looked at the page again. "Ummmm ... it's OK, I guess." he said, in far from his usual just-this-side-of-arrogant tones.

"Why not pick one?" Nathan suggested, easing gratefully back into the teaching-role. Inspiration hit, and he actually grinned at Manuel. "An album you haven't heard yet, but want. Then we'll order it, and you can write your own review. A rebuttal, even, if the review if you read on here is full of shit."

Manuel clicked on the electronic music link, then scrolled down. "Hey, Kraftwerk! I didn't know they had a new one out. Let's see what they think." He clicked on the review link, and his lips moved silently as he sounded out the words to the review. "Sounds like a winner, and it'll also drive Amanda absolutely berserk. She _hates_ pure electronic music."

"Never let it said that I'm not an equal-opportunity sadist, then," Nathan said with a chuckle.

"Done, then." he said with a grin. "As soon as the CD arrives, I'll write a review for you." He then stopped and blinked, realizing that his enthusiasm for this project was really blowing his I-don't-care image out of the water.

Nathan caught the stray thought and reacted quickly. "And you can expect lots of red pen if you screw up your spelling as badly as you did on the last assignment," he said, managing a credible growl. Oh, Manuel would undoubtedly see that it was an act, but this morning at least, Nathan was perfectly happy to pretend if he wanted.

Manuel shrugged. "Hey, you're the sadist who won't let me use spellcheck." he shrugged. "At least you're not giving me crap about using a Mac."