xp_logs | Future Memory (Nathan, Angelo, Kylun, Manuel, Alison, and Jean)

After sensing Moira developing a craving, Nathan decides to make another chocolate-jalapeno cake to surprise her with when she gets back from doing wedding stuff in New York. His mind elsewhere, he makes the mistake of sampling it. This is a very bad thing, and leads to another precognitive fit. Getting increasingly loopy, he wanders out of the kitchen and runs into various people, until Alison finally steers him in the direction of the medlab, where he makes Jean promise not to eat broccoli.

He was a very good almost-husband, Nathan thought contentedly, giving the chocolate-jalapeno cake a smug look as he finished icing it. Moira had headed off early this morning into New York with a very long to-do list of last-minute wedding-related things - he wasn't sure who she'd brought with her, but he almost pitied them - but he'd caught the craving down the link as she'd kissed him goodbye. And even if it was gone by the time she got back, she was still a big fan of this particular cake.

Over in the sink, the bowls and utensils and the springform pan rinsed themselves under the tap and then deposited themselves in the dishwasher. Telekinesis made cooking clean-up so easy, it really did. Nathan straightened on the stool, wincing as his back protested, and picked up his glass of water, taking a sip. Maybe I should have made two. Baking was a good distraction from nerves. Which he seemed to be having, bizarre as that was.

There really wasn't that much left that he had to do for the wedding, he told himself, and not much more that he could help other people with without getting in their way. The groom was in many ways a largely superfluous thing at a wedding. The thought made him chuckle. Shaking his head, Nathan floated a plate and a fork from the cupboard over to the counter in front of him, and cut himself a tiny slice of the cake to sample it.

It was hard to believe that in less than a week he'd be a married man again. He could talk all he liked about it being just a formality, and there was a lot of truth to that - as far as he was concerned, he'd made a lifetime committment the night Moira had pushed him in the lake - but the wedding meant a lot, too. The scope of it as it had developed, all the people who'd be there... he was starting to appreciate just what it did mean to make these sorts of promises in front of all the people you cared about. That, and the whole celebration aspect of it.

Now, so long as my damned outfit arrives before we leave for Muir... Besty had had a point, there was no way he wasn't going to be properly dressed for the wedding one way or the other, but that didn't mean he really wanted to explore the last resorts. The image of half the mansion's women poking at him with pins as they tried to make sure he didn't look like a scarecrow in oversized clothes was not particularly appealing.

Blue lights flickered in his peripheral vision and Nathan froze, fork halfway to his mouth. He lowered it slowly, eyes widening. "Oh, shit," he muttered. "No way..."

Three bites of cake, chocolate or not, should not be doing anything to his precognition. It didn't make any sense, that time with Angie had involved all kinds of other factors...

But the patterns were beginning to speed up at the back of his mind, spinning outwards, faster and faster. Nathan blinked rapidly - and hurriedly shielded the link.

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit..."

~*~

Nathan poked with his cane at the wall, experimentally. Seemed solid enough. Sure looked like it wasn't, though. It was very bad when the walls started to change, Nathan thought, raising an eyebrow. Very bad. Especially when you started to be able to see through them.

Angelo, wandering down the hall on the way to somewhere else, stopped and eyed Nathan warily. "...Nate? Any particular reason you're proddin' the walls?"

Nathan blinked and looked around at him, not noticing the patterns of blue and gold light that took shape and swirled slowly in the air around his head. "...Angelo," he said, having to take a moment to remember who this was. "Stop moving around, I'm trying to see where you're going. It's hard to tell you apart from the other yous."

Angelo blinked back at him and stood very still. "...Did you hit your head?"

Nathan looked blankly at him. "Stop that," he said, and poked at Angelo with the cane this time. "Either you're there or you're not there. Make up your mind."

Angelo sidestepped the cane automatically. "I'm here. You can hear me. An' I think maybe we should be goin' to the medlab now."

Medlab! He didn't like the medlab. All roads led to the medlab. Well, most of them. Nathan gave Angelo, or whoever it was, a hard look, and then turned back to the wall. It flickered, and he raised an eyebrow at the white city he could see on the other side... no, wait, all around him. Funky.

"I think those towers are entirely too high," he muttered. "There's nothing wrong with obeying the laws of gravity."

Angelo stared at the wall, then back at Nathan. As gently as he could, he pointed out, "Nate? That's the wall. There's no towers."

"Sure there are. And there are... oh," Nathan said with a frown as the city turned to ruins. "Damn. I thought it was kind of pretty, ridiculous towers aside..."

"...Right. An' this would be the day I left my cellphone in the room. Where's that wall phone...?"

"Tell Paige she shouldn't go to Iran," Nathan said absently, poking at the wall again. He looked around, the patterns of light growing brighter, spinning faster. The whole mansion was shifting in and out. Lovely. "At least, I think it's Paige. Hard to tell when the whole story's been romanticized five hundred years later, but I don't think that'd end well one way or the other."

Angelo blinked, looking around for the phone with increased urgency. "Paige isn't goin' to Iran. At least, I don't think she is..."

"Not now. Later. Much later... I think. Are there other blondes around here I should know about?" Nathan frowned, looking around again. "The Xavier Collective thinks we were all redheads. Which is kind of strange."

"Illyana?" Angelo suggested, finally spotting the phone.

Nathan shook his head. "Too close," he muttered, leaning back against the wall, hoping that it would stay solid and he wouldn't fall through. That would be embarassing. "Hurts my head to try and see too close, and nothing makes sense after the centuries get finished with it."

Angelo moved to the phone, keeping a watchful eye on Nathan for as long as he could. "Maybe time to stop lookin', then", he suggested neutrally.

"Stop looking," Nathan muttered. Maybe he just needed to look somewhere else? He brightened and pushed away from the wall, hobbling down the hall. "Wander around until you find the center of the pattern... that's the ticket."

Angelo froze, torn, glancing between Nathan and the phone in his hand. "No - Nathan, stay here!"

Muttering to himself, Nathan heard but didn't really register Angelo's words. "Follow the pattern, find the center. Then it'll make sense..."

The phone call was more important, Angelo decided. Call the doctors, tell them what was going on, then try and hunt Nathan down again. Or let them find him.

~*~

The window had caught his attention. Mostly because it was staying a window, even if the view through it was changing from moment to moment. Nathan leaned against the windowsill, blinking out at... trees, then crowds, then that strange-looking city again, then the city in ruins. There seemed to be a definite cycle to it. How odd.

Kylun, on his way back to his room for a clean shirt following an unfortunate experiment with pudding, saw Nathan staring out the window and stopped. "Hello, Nathan," he said curiously. "It is a beautiful day, but I had not thought it quite that fascinating."

Nathan looked around at the voice - and stared. Well, that's new... Kylun was a thread, but part of another thread too, thick and shining and stretching out as far as he could see... in both directions.

"Different centuries," he said a bit vaguely, gesturing at the window. "At least, I think so."

"Your precognition?" Kylun smiled, a bit ruefully. "May your experiment be more successful than mine--the foil on those pudding cups is insidious." He cocked his head. "What is it that you see?"

Nathan tore his gaze away from Kylun with some difficulty. "People. Cities. Change over time." But just looking away didn't make the thread go away. He could feel it still there, winding through the pattern all around him. It was a part of this place, leading back to... somewhere else, and ahead to...

"Ideas," he muttered, the image of a red-haired girl hiding in the long grass as soldiers burned her settlement flickering through his mind. "I see ideas. They're as real as people."

"So my master taught me. They live, and travel from place to place; they may be fed or starved." He smiled. "From what I have heard of your Askani, some of the ideas this place champions will live long, and that is a comforting thought."

"Living and thriving are two different things." Nathan looked back at him - or through him, staring hard at the thread. A thread without a pattern, too far ahead. Was that why it had broken? "It's too vague," he said, irritably. "Trying to see the links in the chain that are closer doesn't work, and projecting backwards really doesn't work."

"We must all work with what we have," Kylun replied. "Perhaps you cannot see what you want to see, but perhaps that just means you are trying to see the wrong thing."

"Uncharted territory," Nathan muttered, looking back at the window. "We can only stumble through the dark."

"I would say rather that we struggle toward the light," Kylun corrected him gently. "Unless you see an end to all hope, and I do not believe that will ever come to pass."

But it did, Nathan wanted to say, but didn't. Who was he to say that? Ideas were based on belief; if that was lost, so was any battle. Every battle.

The patterns were spinning faster in his head, now. "I think I'll watch for a while," Nathan murmured. "The nexus points have to be here somewhere, or there wouldn't be this much happening over so much time."

Kylun nodded. "If there is anything I can do to help . . ."

"Think of connections to make," Nathan said, staring fixedly out the window. "You need to carry it forward, whatever else you do."

"I do?" Kylun asked, startled. "What do I carry, that echoes so far forward?"

"Ideas in their pure form. Ones that won't blur around the edges." His eyes unfocused and he blinked, rubbing at them for a moment. "The compromises are necessary but they aren't all of it. There has to be continuity, not just adaptation. Constant adaptation is theirs, not ours."

"I am not sure I understand, but I will do my best." Kylun frowned. "Will you be all right, if I leave you to your contemplation?"

"I'll be fine. Lots to see." Although he needed to stop staring through the window and keep looking for the center of his pattern. That was probably a more productive use of his time. "Just don't break the thread."

"I will do my best not to. Be well, Nathan."

~*~

All right. So this wasn't working quite as well as he thought it might, Nathan admitted to himself with a grimace. He was trying to find the center of the pattern, but the mansion kept shifting around him and it wasn't presenting itself. He took a step forward - only to walk into a wall that he could have sworn wasn't there a moment ago. He cursed in Askani and straightened, trying to focus.

Manuel turned the corner and stop dead. He saw Nathan, with his pretty little blue and gold lights, but what was far more colorful, and far more worrisome, was his stained-glass fractured emotional patterns. He'd sensed something like this before, long ago.

In Marie-Ange.

"Nathan?" he said, warily approaching the larger man.

Nathan looked around at him, raising an eyebrow. "Oh," he said, tilting his head. "I see it now. Well, not it but the echoes of it. You made quite a mess, didn't you?"

"I'm sorry?" he said, buttoning his mind up as tightly as he could. Three walls of interlocking and clashing emotions. He barely had enough brainpower to speak and think coherently. "What mess?"

"The you in the chair. You made quite a mess. Kicked the bucket and it all came tumbling down... you should have left well enough alone," Nathan chided him.

Manuel paled. "You are seeing the Man in the Chair?" he whispered. "Tell me, how does it end? Does it end well?"

"I'm not seeing him, I'm seeing the echoes of him. Don't you listen?" Nathan paused, tilting his head in the other direction. "Sorry, stupid question. Of course you don't. You made it, and when you weren't there anymore it faded right away. You never will figure out how to make permanent changes, Manuel. At least not on that thread." The patterns around his head glowed more fiercely. "Pull it, opt for the other. Happier endings."

"I suppose that a lifetime of global peace is all I could have really expected." he said with a shrug. "Pull what and opt for the other? The other what?"

"The one where you're forgotten."

Manuel blinked. He should KNOW BETTER by now then to let a precognitive Get him like this. "I cannot do that." he said, a remnant of old pride coming to the forefront. "Well, OK, maybe I can." he said after a moment's reflection. "But why let such a long line die at me? Even if the name is gone, the blood still sings."

"Happiness is a quiet thing," Nathan said, leaning heavily against the wall. "Do you want them to tell stories about you? I don't hear many good stories down the line, Manuel. They're sad at best, and full of hate most of the time."

Manuel took Nathan's words to heart. "I suppose, then, that that's what I can expect from the future." he said simply. "The best I can hope for is to not be hated."

Nathan shook his head. "I don't see the small things," he muttered, pushing himself away from the wall. "I wish I did. Would make this easier." He started to limp past Manuel, heading... where was he going again? "It's very confusing."

"I'm sure it is." he said sympathetically. "So what do they say about me, in the timeframes that you can see? Am I to be Shiva, then?"

Nathan paused. "I think it's you," he said, shaking his head again. "Or your son. Time alters so much. Everything that's familiar is barely recognizable when you see it from far enough ahead. And I can't keep the threads straight. I just know that there are more than I think you realize."

"I know - I struggle with the threads as well, and they're strictly in the here-and-now." he said. "I have long known that I am not the sole arbiter of my fate, the determiner of my destiny."

"None of us are. Not a single one of us..." Nathan frowned, then turned away. "You make my head hurt. Don't follow me? There are enough of them watching me from other places..."

"That's just depressing, though." he commented. "And who's watching you from other places? Me?"

"Shh," Nathan said, waving his free hand at him as he hobbled away. "Don't draw their attention."

"No, this I think I want to experience." he said with a mischevious grin. And somewhere, on a completely different plane of reality, a God looked up and smiled.

~*~

His coordination was definitely off. Which was frustrating, because how was he supposed to focus on what he was seeing if he kept walking into walls? "Damn it, stay put," he muttered at the mansion. It wasn't fair if the mansion kept being indecisive about whether it wanted to be, itself or the ruins of itself or an open field or what seemed to be some kind of cathedral. Not fair at all.

At least Manuel had lost interest and gone away. Maybe to talk to the man in the chair?

Stepping out of the music room, Alison looked around casually at the sound of someone's voice, then blinked bemusedly. Nathan was walking down the hallway. Only, there was something of the drunken sailor sway to his walk. Tilting her head slowly to the side to try and match his angle, Alison finally gave up. The swirling light were almost noticed as an afterthough, since light was such a part of Alison's life.

"Uh oh. Um... Nathan?"

Someone touched his arm and Nathan flinched violently, focusing on the blonde figure in front of him. "If you write teaching music don't use major keys," he said, blinking rapidly to try and clear his vision. "Because if you use major keys, the people who might have used the music won't and things will be forgotten that shouldn't be."

"Hi, Nathan," Alison said, keeping her hand where it had been, not moving for a moment before letting it fall to her side. He was loopy again. No doubt about it. At least he wasn't near the journals this time. "Lots of patterns, huh?" She stomped down on her impulse to ask him what he meant about music being forgotten and grinned a bit at him instead.

"They're tricky," he said, wondering if the mansion was contagious. Now Alison couldn't seem to decide whether she was a person or a painting. How very odd. "They snuck up on me and I'm trying to find the center of them. Only people keep looking at me oddly. Not here, in the other places."

"That's probably because you shouldn't be looking into those other places," she replied complacently. At least he was standing in one place and not panicky. "Did you have something in particular to eat not long ago? Chocolate maybe?"

Nathan stopped, blinking. "I can't... chocolate?" he said vaguely. "I was making a cake for Moira. I think. I can't remember." The walls flickered around him again and he winced, tilting his head, not noticing or even seeing the way the patterns of light flared outwards, more brightly. "Oh, I wish the world would stay put..."

"You're not supposed to eat chocolate Naaaathan," Alison hummed lowly. "I'm going to steady you just a bit now." She didn't think it would have the same effect as the last time, but it couldn't hurt to try, either way. "And then we're going to take a nice walk together."

He jumped - just a little, this time, as she touched him. "Keep your hair long," he said a bit dazedly as she started to steer him towards - what? He really had no idea where he was, so he didn't know where they were going. "Otherwise it looks really strange in the paintings. And don't dye it red, because if you do there'll be historical controversy that mixes you up with Angie and I think it's very important that they keep details like that straight, don't you?"

Down to the medlab they were going, Alison thought, blinking a bit in puzzlement at his words. Then again, she'd done that a lot of revieweing Marie-Ange's entries in the database they'd set up for her since Youra. And then some at times. But... vanity still thrived. "Paintings of me, huh?" Her lips curled slightly at that, even as she debated the merits of the elevator (small enclosed metallic space) versus the steps (steps!).

"Paintings of all of us. In a hall. They take the kids down to see them on field trips," Nathan said, tottering a little. "Of course, it's not really us. Stylized and all, and things get very garbled over the centuries."

"Huh." He was seeing way out there possibilities. Only thing that made sense. Still, it was a nice thought, and a feeling of wistfulness rose within her. It served no purpose to wonder about that, just now. "That's nice I guess. Careful, I think we're going to have to take the steps. But I'm not sure about how steady you are for it." The nagging feeling that the elevator would be bad just wouldn't let go.

"Stairs are not my friend. The only way to get up to the tower were the stairs, and by the time he got up there she was dead. Which was not right!" Nathan said vehemently, glaring down at her. "She was supposed to lead armies. But they ~pulled her thread~ and everything she should have done never happened. Things would have been different."

"Yes, but if you go boom in the elevator it will be bad," Alison murmured, making sure to rest one of his hands on the railing before simply making sure he wouldn't take a tumble by putting herself in front of them, going down the step backwards. "Come on. And maybe in another future they didn't and she... led her armies after all. Oh."

"They're liars, all of them," Nathan said, clinging hard to the railing. Not falling. "It's not about the strong, it's about them. Poison and treachery and stabbing the ones who could make a difference in the back... they knew, they knew every time and went right after them."

Looking up at him gravely, Alison let her hand slide down his arm to hold his carefully. "One step at a time, Nathan." Tugging ever so gently she started to lead him down the stairs, making sure his weight was properly distributed before allowing another step. On impulse, she threaded light down the railing and on the edges of the steps, giving him the ghost of a pattern to follow.

"Dishonest," Nathan muttered, trying to follow the patterns of light. They were steady, at least. "It makes me so angry. Over and over... nothing but cowards. ~There's no great virtue in the shadows unless you're there to serve the light.~"

Well, that seemed to be helping a bit, she thought, seeing how he was tracking the light at least. And nearly lost her next step as what he had said in Askani hit. Ice welled up in the back of her mind, hard and fast and she found her footing again before backing up a bit more, the light only wavering briefly before steadying. She hoped he woudn't remember all of this, though he had no frame of reference to sort out what he'd just said, couldn't possibly... "There's only light here now, Nathan, see?"

"I don't know where here is," Nathan said, sounding upset. "There are so many heres, Alison. Spinning in the patterns, switching places. And I can't stay focused on any of them. I keep getting pulled ahead. Like an echo. I think effect comes before cause."

"I can see," she winced a bit at the word, "that." She could try one thing she supposed, but it would have to wait until they reached the bottom of the steps. Nathan collapsing on her would not be fun. In being squished when tumbling down the steps and then flattened more at the landing kind of non fun. It was, she decided, a happy coincidence that they hit ground level a few moments later. "Ookay, Nathan? Try and focus on this one..." And light swelled around her for a moment, a blank sheet of light with no patterns at all, before slowly whirling into one of the steadying patterns she'd been taught by the Askani before Nathan's first major precognitive snap.

The blue and gold patterns spiraling around his head proceeded to bend, as if drawn down to the new pattern of light. There was definite resistance there, though, as if they were straining against it, and Nathan gritted his teeth, something close to a pained noise escaping him. "Too much light," he muttered. "All in circles, breaking the chain... old before your time... I can't sort it out, I don't know who they are but I know that face..."

A student paused around the corner and peered at them with wide eyes, Alison unsure who it was. Alison waved whoever it was off, a small gesture, even as she kept the pattern even, slowly shaping it into a steadily glowing trail of light. Not so bright as before, but there all the same. "You don't have to sort it out," she murmured, in a way she hoped was reassuring. "Just focus on the pattern here and now." And she did the same as well, the mental imagery of what she was creating sharp and bright in her mind.

Nathan took a staggering step forward, then another, following her. The color was fading out of the light flaring around his head, its pattern beginning to match the one she was projecting. "It's clear," he muttered. "There's just so much of it... too much. No way to separate all the threads. And love doesn't mean you can stop taking the long view."

"Gnrk!" Strangling the man in the middle of a precognitive fit would be mean and Alison firmly admonished herself not to do so. What did he mean with lo- there were myriad possibilities and thinking about them now would only lead to her losing the pattern which Would Not Do. Resuming the backwards walk she led him towards down the hallway slowly, still keeping up the lightshow. "That's okay, Nathan." Memorize every word, get him to the medlab. Those were good priorities. "Just follow me now..."

Nathan followed her obediently, too tired to protest. The spinning patterns in his head were slowing down, but all the edges were softening, blurring into each other. "I only had a bite of the cake," he muttered in protest. "And I'm getting married in a week. I'm not allowed to be insane."

Sense! He'd made sense! Grinning suddenly, Alison wrinkled her nose at him. "Corks were the right thing to put in that puzzle box after all. Even us non-precognitives get the right idea at time." Relief that the pattern seemed to be working somewhat, even though he looked exhausted, was making her a touch giddy.

"Angie's going to make fun of me... and Moira's going to kill me when she gets back from New York." He gave her the puppy-dog eyes, rather hampered by the fact that his gaze wasn't quite focused. "Good thing I shielded the link, huh? I'm getting much better about learning to do that when I have insane moments..."

"Well, you could, you know, strike pre-emptively and email her while she's in New York to let her know. Brownie points for telling right away, survival odds get higher since she's in New York." Definately making more sense, now. "Marie-Ange should just get to make fun at you." she nodded wisely at that, grinning as they reached the flight of stairs leading to the medlab level.

Nathan batted with his free hand at the little sparkles of blue light that danced in his vision. "Least I didn't do this with Angie this time," he muttered. "Wasn't seeing everything. Maybe the headache won't be as bad."

"Uh huh. Maybe it won't. Think you'll remember not to eat chocolate again the next time?" The teasing was light, colored with a hint of relief. "Though I can't blame you. Chocolate." Idly she made a mental note to go check on the kitchen, after. Or maybe it'd be better if she weren't found by Lorna in a devastated kitchen. Hrm. Email it would be.

"I think I'm off chocolate. That's a depressing thought..." He blinked, shaking his head as if to clear it. "It's strange. Echoes. I don't see from here, but I see here, reflected. In the ripples."

She brightened the pattern still in place around her just a touch, nodding to acknowledge his words. "You can commiserate with Kyle over it. Probably help him to see things in another perspective too other than you being the super ninja dude, mmm?" Steps again. "You mean you're seeing all sorts of alternate possibilities, in line with this one? The one we live?"

"Wrong word for it," Nathan said, his free hand to his temple. "It's all reflections. Temporal geometry. Change the angle and the whole chain of events alters.... it's all about perception and what you do with it." He swallowed. "And there are other precogs. Everywhere."

Her comm shivered at that moment but before the first could even be finished, Alison grinned and sub-vocalized a reply. "He's with me. Someone else saw Nathan before I did, huh?" Not really waiting for a reply, she helped him down the last of the stairs. "We're almost there, won't be long now. C'mon Nathan..."

"How do we do anything if they're out there doing the same things we are for different reasons?" Nathan said, sounding exhausted and frustrated. "All futile. We probably wind up making the futures we don't want just because we're working at cross-purposes."

"You don't know that," was the calm reply. She didn't think he meant what... she thought he might mean. "You're seeing too far ahead to be able to determine that and it makes you grumpy. I don't blame you, mind," she continued, settling on a quiet babble, pattern still whirling about. She wasn't concentrating on her words as much as the lightshow, though it wasn't that hard as compared to when she'd started working on making the patterns visible.

"I don't know anything. That's the problem. I have," Nathan said, with great finality, "precognitive ADD. That's what Angie said."

"I think you just tend to see too much. She's farsighted but can only See stuff that's up close, you're nearsighted but can only See stuff that's far away. That's all." Turning around the corner and down the hallway - almost there. "Fate's a jealous thing. Doesn't want to share what's coming up the easy way."

"Haroun would say it's only fair. Not supposed to see Allah's plan and all..." But if there was a God, precognition had to be one of his nastier practical jokes. Nathan tottered a little. "I would like," he said, very clearly, "to lie down somewhere. I think."

"Good. Because we're aaaalmost there." She shifted, this time so he could lean on her if he needed to as they neared the medlab door. "Sleepy time for you, Nathan..."

~*~

Someone was shining a light into his eyes. He could even sense who the someone was. "Jean, don't eat broccoli," he muttered. "Eating broccoli is bad. Especially when they're people."

"I'll keep that in mind, Nathan," Jean said, "but will you please just follow where the light is, not where it's going to be, if you can?" His mind felt so odd, and Jean was having a little trouble focusing past it, although from what Alison had said he had calmed down considerably.

"Too much light," Nathan muttered. "Has my head stopped glowing? I don't really think my head should be glowing..." The patterns had pretty much stopped spinning. They were just turning over idly from time to time, now.

"And here I thought the glowing trick was Alison's. You're not glowing now, Nathan, but your pupils are far more dilated than normal. And I understand this has something to do with chocolate?"

"I thought the last time it happened it had to do with Angie and I synching powers," Nathan said, trying doggedly to focus on her as the light in his eyes went away. "Not so much the chocolate. But Angie wasn't there and I wasn't meditating this time... just baking."

"Baking and sampling, I presume?" Jean asked. "All the tests that were done on you last time weren't until the next morning," she mused, "so I think it's into the ping machine for you. Moira and Hank are going to want to get a look at your EEGs. Me, I'm after your blood."

She set down her light and reached for a syringe, adding, "Your arm, if you please."

"My EEG doesn't make any sense anymore," Nathan said, but extended his arm obediently. "Moira keeps telling me to tell Askani to behave when she tries to run them, but I don't think it works that way."

"Yes, I can imagine. But, if it's possible to establish a baseline for you now that you have them, we'll be able to compare your current state to that." The needle was carefully inserted and blood drawn. "All right, now, lie back and we'll get some readings. And you didn't answer my question about the eating chocolate."

Nathan laid back. "I just tried the cake," he muttered crankily. "Just a little. Stupid. Started feeling odd right away..." Was it possible that he hadn't had any chocolate since the incident with the brownies?

"Right away, huh? Well, that pretty much narrows it down. What else did this cake feature?" The pinging machine was powered up and moved into place where it started to beep away to itself.

"Chocolate jalapeno cake. Moira likes them. Satisfies a craving." There were still lights flickering at the edges of his vision, but he ignored them. There were no pictures in them, after all. "No broccoli."

She couldn't help but smile. "Gotcha, no broccoli. But I take it the cake was fairly standard? Flour, sugar, salt and so on? The notable parts being chocolate and jalapenos?"

"Uh-huh." He sighed, trying to relax. "Just an ordinary cake. No hallucinogenic drugs or anything..."

"Not unless someone has started playing with the shopping list," Jean said a few seconds before the machine pinged to let her know it had finished. "How are you feeling?" she asked as she looked over the results.

"Tired, mostly." He stared up at the ceiling. "Still seeing things but at least here and now's steady around me again. Is there some rule that says that precognition makes you insane? I think there must be. Written down somewhere..."

"Charles would know, I'm sure, but, well, really, Nathan. You can see the future. Of course it will make you crazy. I wouldn't wish that mutation on my worst enemy. Given that you're a friend, and you're stuck with it, though, I'll just do my best to help."

"I wish it had stayed burned out," Nathan grumbled, trying to focus on her. Why her hair looked like it was on fire, he wasn't sure. Maybe the painting overlapping again? "If wishes were horses, though..."

"We'd all be riding prettily about and still crazy?" Jean offered. She reached up to push away a strand of hair, ignoring the faint flicker of an idea of the feeling of fire. He was crazy, and she was crazy, but that didn't mean the crazy had to match.

"She can't do what you do, you know," Nathan muttered, closing his eyes. "Keep that in mind. And it's important that you do what you need to do. We all have to."

Jean raised an eyebrow at him, although with his eyes closed he couldn't see it. "Right. You need a nap, my dear man. I'm going to start your blood tests, you, sleep."