LOG: Manuel and Amanda - A Walk Through Dark Places

[x-empath.livejournal.com]

Manuel walked Amanda's mind, now it's her turn to walk his. She sees his life, from the beginning all the way down to the current time. She learns some things about him, why he is the way he is. Backdated all the way to May 1st (Beltaine) because I suck.



Manuel read his email with a mixture of trepidation and absolute delight. No more secrets, starting tonight. Apparently today was some sort of pagan day of Power, so she was swimming with might. Time for him to live up to his end of the bargain. He slid off his chair to sit on the floor, using his wall as a back-brace. With every breath, out went negativity, doubt, fear. With every indrawn breath he took in confidence, self-assurance, and love.

Also, with every breath he let himself sink deeper into the emotional eddies and currents of the Mansion. He quickly passed beyond surface emotions until he was looking through his walls, through the mere impediments of matter. He was going in deep, because he'd need every scrap of energy, every ounce of feeling that he could muster.

Reflexively, he checked up on those he cared for the most. Danielle was a familiar ball of self-loathing and worry under her sunny disposition. Her every color, her every feeling jumped out at him as if compelled. He could see her child, too, but by instinct and reflex he purposely did not Look too deeply. In such places lay madness. Alex, too, was a complicated ball of emotions.. On the surface, he was happy and in love, but when he looked deeper, he saw Her fingerprints, like an oily stain across the boy's mind. He wondered if that was what his mind would look like to another empath, but Danielle did not sense things as he did, and the mere thought of expecting Amanda's ward to be able to See so deeply was, quite simply, absurd.

He was as ready as he could be. He saw the link he shared with Amanda, the old friend that let them slip the barriers of Self and embrace the totality of Other.

Or at least, he mentally grumbled, that's how it was supposed to be.

It was appropriate that she should be doing this on Beltane, and not just because it was a time of power. Beltane was traditionally a time for relationships, for couples to take the next step towards commitment - not a binding, but a promise to try.

Definitely fitting.

She'd asked Kurt to watch over Meggan again tonight, explaining to the child that there was something important to do with the Special Day that needed doing. Best to cover her bases, if this was going to be as rough as she suspected. Power thrummed through her, not the overwhelming rush of the Gem of Cyttorak or somewhere like Asgard, but something more... natural. More right, if that made sense. She'd been made for times such as this, and she embraced the feeling of joy, of new hope.

~Ready when you are, love,~ she sent down the link, feeling the mixture of fear and anticipation and sending back a quiet sense of reassurance. ~Do you want me there?~

Manuel sent back the mental equivalent of a shrug. It didn't matter one way or the other to him. He sent a quick warning pulse to Danielle, and the opened his end of the link as far as he could. He fed it a steady trickle of power, letting the link grow inside of his mind. He was careful to keep it away from his autonomous functions - the last thing he needed was to stop breathing in the middle of this. "Now it's on you." he thought at her, positive that the link was open enough for her to receive his thoughts. "It needs to go as wide as you can make it. I have the power, and so do you."

Okay, here in her room it was - it would have been easier with the contact, at least on his end she would have thought, but Strange's teachings had been enough to prepare her for the task. Although he might not approve of this entirely... Banishing that thought, she settled herself on her bed, legs folded under her and hands folded in her lap, palms upwards. She'd done this before - it was just a matter of doing it without the sex. Or the beating.

Concentrating on the link, she pictured the beam of light cast by the lighthouse growing wider, solidifying, becoming a pathway from her mind to his. Around her neck the amulet glowed from the power expenditure, softly at first but then more brightly as she set a mental 'foot' on the path she'd created. One step with each inhalation, until she was 'standing' in his mindscape, not interacting with it, merely present.

"I'm here," she said, her voice quiet but firm, her astral form more solid and real than it had ever been before, crackling a little with the power she was absorbing. "Show me?"

Manuel spent a little energy and manifested himself in his mindscape - the twenty-year-old that he was in Reality, but with the constantly-glowing red eyes. "You ready?" he said in his softly lisping Castillian accent that even mindspeech couldn't erase. "Because this won't be pretty. We'll start at the beginning." he said, and then his mindscape _blurred_.

When it settled back down, the two of them were standing in a lavish opera box, gazing down at the Vienna Opera Company performing _La Traviata_. In the seat next to a six-year-old Manuel sat a confidant man who oozed power and charm and grace.

Alphonso.

His companion for the night was a stunning raven-haired beauty, all sloe-eyed and fluttery. It was obvious that she was completely enraptured in Alphonso, to the point of barely paying the opera any attention. Then-Manuel, on the other hand, was fascinated, gazing downward with a large smile.

It was hard not to flinch at the sight of Alphonso, and so she focused deliberately on the younger Manuel, enraptured by the music. Losing himself in it, in a way she recognised. A small smile crossed her face - he'd been a heartbreaker even then, with big dark eyes and a mop of dark hair - even as she took in the way the adults paid attention to their own concerns.

The scene blurred and shifted to the back of a limousine. Alphonso sat comfortably, toying with a glass of champagne. Then-Manuel sat across from him, with his own child-sized goblet clutched in his own two hands. "So what did you think of the opera, Lito?" he asked with a ready smile.

"It was great, Papa!" said then-Manuel, eyes wide and shining with the experience and the wonder of it all.

"Barely tolerable." retorted Alphonso. "The flutes were ragged, the dancing in the second act was abysmal, and they botched a scene change. Still, the evening was not a total waste." he said with a grin. "Do you remember how I said that we were going to visit Seville in a few weeks?"

"Yes?" then-Manuel said, eyes bright and smiling.

"Well, there's someone there I want you to meet. Someone important." said Alphonso. "It's very important that you be at your absolute best. Making friends with this man can set the de la Rochas up for _life_, do you understand me?" he stressed.

"Yes, sir." said Manuel obediently. Another formal function, yuck!

"Juan Carlos isn't all that bad of a sort, really." Alphonso commented. "Older than you, but there's nothing that can be helped for that."

The context was unfamiliar to Amanda, but the essential lesson was the same - behave the way I wish you to behave. Rack had beaten that one into her. Alphonso perhaps used words more than fists, led the child along such paths that he was willing to do anything for parental approval, but in the end, the aim was common. Both men had wanted a child shaped in the image they preferred, obedient and malleable. Amanda frowned. There was something she was missing here, an import that sailed right over her unpolitical head. The name - Juan Carlos? Was that supposed to mean something?

There had been times when Amnda had thought the references to knowning royalty, the wealth, had been attempts on Manuel's part to impress people. Not now - the evidence was before her, a life of wealth and privilege and connections, completely alien to her. A hard life, for all its comforts - Manuel was prized, not for who he was, but for what he was, a de la Rocha, scion of an ancient line. No wonder it was so important to him. His entire life, his identity, had been built on that foundation.



Blur.

Manuel at fourteen. Sitting in the chair outside of his father's study, listening to the raging argument going on within. The screaming, then the sounds of breaking glass and flesh striking flesh. Then a flash of red, stobing angrily, overwriting what fragile peace Manuel had managed to erect. Snarling, then-Manuel stood up, clenching his hands into fists. Paralyzed by indecision, for a simple reason.

He can't tell which one of them he hates more.

He hated them, but he loved them too - even Amanda could see that. And feel it too, through the link. It wouldn't hurt so much if he hadn't. Family love, the kind that persists even through the hate - she can see that now.

Blur.

Manuel at fifteen. Homeless on the streets of Seville. His eyes almost permanently glowed red now, to keep himself alive, deflect the attentions of the cops, and to beg what he needed to survive. And the women - always with the women. Rich bored grand dames, housewives looking for a thrill, college students away from home for the first time, all of them fell prey to the dashing homeless Spaniard with the red eyes. They fed him, clothed him, gave him a place to stay. Even, for a time, they would give him love. But it would never last - invariably it would all fall apart, grow stale. Sometimes he got bored, cruelly breaking hearts just because he could.

And everywhere he went, everyplace he turned, there was music. Vital, alive music. Balm to a shattered soul, relief to a sense too-long exposed to torturous input. An entire room all on the same wavelength.

Finally, somewhere he belonged.

She'd gotten hints of this before, knew what life on the street could be like. But she hadn't realised the desperation of his situation, prey to not only the usual predators, but to the emotions of every single person he encountered. And the hunger, not for food, but for love, for someone to understand.

Blur.

Manuel at sixteen. He practically lived inside the clubs now, forsaking the life of a rentboy for the life of a club-rat. He loved it there - the happiness, the energy, all of it infected him, gave a spring to his step. One night, when the beats were coming hot and heavy and the crowd was into everything that was going on, he saw a discordant color.

A smear of unhappy among the frenzied kids looking for a good time.

He sought it out, tracked it down. It was a girl, mousy, overdressed and underdressed at the same time. Her pain was like vinegar on Manuel's tongue, sandpaper across his nerves. He talked to her, drew her out.

Led her into a back room. As he kissed her, removing her corset and stroking her hair, he plunged deep into her mind.

~Be happy. Let your cares fall away. Enjoy the night, feel its rhythms!~ he commanded, and she obeyed.

When she left that room, she had a bounce in her step and a smile on her face. Manuel had a crisp clean fifty.

In such ways was Empath born.

Too much - Amanda's mind whirled with the implications of what Manuel was showing her. It wasn't exactly new - here were all the seeds of the man she knew - and yet it was. Sympathy warred with a certain fear, that the way Empath had come about made a terrible sort of sense, given where he could easily have ended up; she remembered the shared dream, the Man in the Chair all too well. And yet she couldn't blame him - she would have done the same herself.

Blur.

Manuel was relentless. She wanted truth, she was going to get it. He showed her everything. Woman after woman, even a few men here and there. Old, young, vital, sickly, it didn't matter. He was reckless. He would give them what they thought they needed - happiness, sadness, pain to rival that of Lucifer being expelled from Heaven, pleasure like the goddess Aphrodite. Learning the trade of the DJ, spending time with the acts in the club. Learning everything he could. He spent _two years_ like this, until his only close friend betrayed him to the Spanish authorities.

They came with tear gas, they came with tasers, and they came with clubs. Even so, two of them would spend the rest of their lives in mental institutions, tormented by demons no one could reach, no one could touch.

Truth for truth. She'd been just as remorseless in what she'd shown him. He'd used women the same way she'd used power, escaping from his reality, his pain, to make his life easier. It was ugly, but that was part of him, she knew that. Just as it was part of her, even now.

The arrest, the brutality of it, shocked and surprised her. He'd mentioned Eduardo's betrayal, but he'd never mentioned this... she felt every blow, every kick, the sting of the tear gas, the shock of the tasers, and the part of her that wasn't caught up in the spell ached to do something about it. But they were separated by more than just the rooms and halls between his suite and hers - there was more to come. And it would be the ugliest part of all.

The asylum.

Blur.

Manuel, strapped down to a table. Several men in lab coats are standing around him, drawing blood, examining charts. They ignore his screams with an ease born of long practice. "Theoretically, he should be able to go deep inside. To the core urges, the autonomous nervous system." one commented, studying Manuel's brain scan. "We can do better than that." commented another. "The perfect loyalty test. Loyalty bred into the bone, not just worn like a jacket." he continued. "When will the test-subjects arrive?"

Manuel screamed himself hoarse, and then kept screaming as they discussed how they planned to violate his mind. Death-scans, mind-breaking, brainwashing, loyalty tests - they wanted to turn him into an obedient one-man walking pogrom of all that was sick with soceity. All that was wrong. He was the scalpel they would use to cut away the dead flesh.

One doctor takes a syringe from a tray, taps it a few times to get rid of the air bubbles. Manuel goes into a frenzy, struggling against his restraints. "Hold him still so I can find a vein!" the doctor with the syringe orders, but it's fruitless. Manuel is young, in good shape, and highly motivated.

"There is a better way." said one of the doctors. "If he won't cooperate, we'll just have to force it. Turn him over." the doctor said, and the others unlocked and rotated the table Manuel was strapped two until he was staring at the floor. While two orderlies cut away his institutional sweatpants, another opened a drawer and removed a pill. "There are other ways of dosing him." he said with a sadistic smile, and then approached.

No. Amanda knew what was coming, and didn't want to experience it, didn't want to share it. Some things were too close, too visceral. But she'd started this, had felt a certain amount of satisfaction in Manuel experiencing her life with Rack, she couldn't stop not. The memory burned like acid, and she felt his terror, his fury, the howling against what was intended for him.

Blur.

Dosed again.

Blur.

Dosed again.

Blur.

Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Time lost all meaning. Feelings dropped away or surged to the forefront, depending on what they dosed him with. He got intimate, the most profound source of intimacy there is, with rapists. Murderers. Political prisoners. Lunatics. He felt their neuroses, felt them die in large numbers of cases. All the time, his progress was charted. Studied. Adjusted. Compensated for.

His excellent physique, such a source of pride for him, slowly wasted away. Fellow inmates came and went in blurs of dull brown and blue. He lost all body-modesty, lost any feeling for his own body, his own mind. Deep inside his mind, in his secret place, he worked to save what he could. His name. His father. The good times he could remember. How to feel pleasure, how to enjoy being touched. What the sky looked like.

Inside him, something was fighting back. Pushing against the dullness, looking to get out. It pushed against the drugs, until they increased the dosage. Then it would chip away at the chemical fog until he could feel again, at which point they'd increase the dosage again. It kept the thorazine shuffle at bay, sometimes by sheer force of will.

Something that, one day, a gleaming woman in white touched.

Tears were streaming down Amanda's physical face, still sitting in its meditative position on her bed. Inside Manuel's mind, she strained to flee, to block the impact of what he was showing her. She had know it would be bad, but this was so much worse than her imaginings. At least Rack's binding spell had been short-term physical torture. What Manuel had endured... No wonder he'd been such a mess. And yet, he'd survived, he'd _fought back_, he'd hung onto the things that were important to him, and the nature of those things was so very telling in themselves.

And he'd said he wasn't strong.

Blur.

Physical therapy. Feeling normal, adjusted emotions for the first time in years. Not recognizing what normal people felt like, because it had been so very long. Everyone spoke a language he did not, so he latched onto the feelings. Ignore the words, focus on how they felt. React to that. Forget the babble.

Language lessons. Spoken straight into his mind, reinforced through usage. "Hello, My Name Is Manuel." Frustration lessens, but never fully goes away. Pride, hot terrible pride, all aimed inwards at the sore points. He was a de la Rocha, he spoke three languages flawlessly, one hopelessly obscure and the other dead entirely, and the most common, most popular language on the planet was giving him fits. He couldn't make himself _understood_. No one cared about the important things, the things they were supposed to. Instead, they fretted their energies on meaningless fripperies. Clothes. Boys. Girls. School.

No one cared about passion, no one wanted to know about his family, his lineage. No one had even _asked_.

These memories were almost a balm after the horror of the asylum, but Amanda didn't let her concentration waver, didn't lose anything of what he was giving her. There was no way she could process all of it at once, but she could try and grasp the reasons for what he was showing, and how. The emotions. She could sympathise with the stranger in a stange land feeling, the sense of dislocation, the frustration at her differences from everyone else, even as she recognised it had been that much harder for him, at the mercy of everyone's emotions the way he had been.

Blur.

He met a girl. Plain, thin, covered up too much with too many piercings and a horrible, horrible accent that made her even harder than the others to understand. But there was something to her - the way she felt, the way she moved, _something_ ... that intrigued him. Inside of her was a core of pain, wrapped up in guilt and lies and secrets, covered in bad attitude and spiky rejection.

He could empathize with that.

And she spoke Latin. Admittedly with the same horrible accent, and she munged a few words here and there, but she spoke it. And she was far better a conversationalist than the blond boy - he was so repressed, so uptight that just being around him made Manuel feel the same way, and he didn't like it.

Strange, seeing yourself from someone else's perspective. And the interest had been there, even without the power high - that surprised her. She accepted that Manuel loved her now, but then? She'd always thought he'd just been riding on the happy vibes she got from Cain. The knowledge she'd been wrong touched that self-loathing part of her, the part that saw herself as nothing more than an easy fuck, and told it that maybe things had been different after all.

Manuel's mind-self grinned. With an effort, he sent his thoughts to her. "There was that too, but that wasn't all." he admitted with a laugh. "Since we're being honest and all that." Then he bent his attentions to rifling through his memories once again.

Blur.

Bobby. Lorna. Doug. Marie-Ange. Kwannon. He pulled no punches, offered no explanations, just showed things from his perspective, what he felt, what he was doing. Every petty impulse, every frantic attempt at self-defense, every confused utterance was hers to examine as she saw fit.

No explanations, no justifications. Amanda accepted the memories without commenting on them, glad he was being honest with her but still processing everything. One fleeting thought came through: ~we both really fucked things up back then, didn't we?~.

Manuel's mindself grinned. ~No, really?~ he said with a mental laugh. But he showed her everything from his point of view. He pulled no punches, left nothing out. Every ugly, petty, vain thought was hers to peruse if she saw fit. Every generous impulse that went awry, every thought to protect, to help someone (usually her) heal - that too was hers to examine.

In the real world, Manuel opened his glowing-red eyes, walked over to his fridge, and grabbed a Red Bull. Cracking the can over, he slammed down its contents. Given the intimate bond with Amanda - almost a true sharing at this point - she got to experience how he tasted the drink, the rush of the caffeine and gurana and everything else as it hit his system.

In a way, this was more confronting than the darker memories. Perhaps because she wasn't able to distance herself as much, considering she featured in this part of his life. She'd shared the emotions through the link, true, but emotions were only part of the story - this way she was getting what he'd thought, the reasoning, the intentions, and it made certain events so much clearer. Then the taste and sensation of the Red Bull hit her, the rush firing along her nerves endings and reflecting in a certain sparkle around the edges of her astral form. ~Headrush,~ came the amused mental whisper - part of her was grateful for the boost, given the amount of power she was expending.

Manuel grinned and then sat back down on the floor. "Anything else you want to see?" he asked mentally and physically. It was just easier than trying to keep to just mental. "The rest I think you know. But feel free to look around, go see anything you want to see. I've showed you what I wanted to show you." he said.

~Oh, I think I've got plenty to work with here,~ she sent back with a faint touch of humour, beginning to let the spell unravel. She had to be careful to disengage properly, make sure she didn't leave anything behind - the last thing she wanted was the Professor having to get involved. ~Thank you, for showing me. I think I understand some stuff a bit better now.~ A slight understatement there. She felt a certain amount of shame, for various things, and a certain envy, mixed with sympathy, for the loss of that foundation in his life, his family. There was a lot she still had to process, though.

At the same time, Manuel slowly backed down the level of power he was projecting. He wasn't under any strain or even breathing hard. "If you have any questions, you know where to find me." he said, and then let the link subside back down to its normal size and shape. "That is, if you still want to."

She caught that last just as she pulled herself out of his mind completely, and sent back a brief feeling of reassurance through the link. "It'd take more 'n that t' scare me off," she murmured to herself, voice hoarse and scratchy - the whole process had taken several hours, and while she wasn't feeling too much of a power drain, her legs had gone to sleep under her and her mind felt... tender. Briefly she considered going to his room, but decided against it, even if she would be sleeping alone tonight. They both needed processing time.