xp_logs | Kitty and Nate, Thursday afternoon

Kitty and Nate run into each other and talk a little about how she's doing.

Extra meditation was something that Charles had suggested. The chances that it could do something to alleviate the effects of the psionic overcharge was... unlikely, but not impossible. His eyes closed, Nathan floated in a cross-legged position two feet off the sunroom floor. He was balanced in the air, but his mind was still racing.

Overclocked. He'd overclocked his brain. The image provoked a tiny, humorless smile. Entirely too apt.

Kitty had, at least, stopped hiding in Jamie's room. She'd gone out and gone to class, although they'd come back to Westchester as soon as their lessons were over, and she was doing better. Proving she could walk around after the sun was down the other night and hold onto her mental capabilities helped, too. But she did still tend to move around with her hands buried in her pockets and her shoulders sort of tense. And then there was the scarf wrapped around her throat - the bite wasn't that alarming looking, but she didn't like seeing it in the mirror.

#Kitty...# Nathan thought, letting the thought drift outwards like a wisp of smoke as he sensed her passing by in the hall outside. #Hello.#

Kitty started slightly, although it wasn't a terribly intrusive mental touch, as they went. Turning to peek her head into the sunroom, she nodded a greeting before realizing his eyes were closed. "Hello," she said.

Nathan sank back towards the ground, unfolding into a standing position with practiced ease. "How are you feeling?" he asked, giving her a slight smile. "You're out and around more. That's a good sign."

Kitty sort of half perched on the edge of one of the chairs, shrugging vaguely. "I'm doing better, yeah. Talked with the Professor, and with Dr. Samson, and Jamie's been helping. I even went to school today."

The smile grew a little as he settled into one of the chairs. "You're doing well," he said. "After something like this..."

"I'm doing ok," she corrected him. "Well, I think, would be a rather massive overstatement." Well would probably involve less staring around campus, wondering where Vlad had been, how long he'd been watching...

"Still working on the feeling safe, I'm guessing," Nathan said, his voice light but the look in his eyes very serious. "It'll take a while, Kitty, but it'll come."

"Yeah." She shrugged again, pressing her hands a little farther in her pockets. "Samson says it's good progress that I haven't gone all intangible, that I don't really even want to. Maybe he's right. I don't know. Seems like there're a lot of things I don't know, just now."

"Just don't overthink it too much." His tone was gently teasing. "I know the tempation is probably overwhelming. But it's all right just to feel your way through things, in a situation like this. Or so my therapist keeps telling me." Nathan snorted softly. "I've always overintellectualized things."

Kitty's look was dry. "I think the day I don't think too much, the world may well end. It'd be right up there with me actually not studying or something on the list of Things Which Will Never Happen."

"There is that, yeah." Nathan tilted his head at her. "He was strange," he said, almost distractedly. "You'd think, with that type of compulsion... but when I took it out, it was just gone. Don't get me wrong," he said with another sudden, brief smile, "that's very good."

"He was insane." There was a definite savage certainty to her words and, realizing she'd spoken more harshly than she intended, Kitty turned away from Nathan, looking down at the ground. "Sorry," she mumbled.

"Don't apologize. And of course he was." Nathan extended a tendril of wordless comfort to her, hesitantly. "Kitty," he said thoughtfully, "how much of the shielding training did you have?"

"Some," Kitty said, looking back as his projection soothed her tumbled thoughts a little. "Have lived here for four years, and I took the classes, and all that. It's been a couple years, though."

"Would it make you feel better to know a little more? Get back in practice, if nothing else?" Nathan kept up the reassuring projection, if at a very low level. What she didn't need to feel was manipulated, right now. "I've been working with a few people one-on-one intermittently. I'm sure the Professor would be equally as happy to have some impromptu classes with you." He didn't mention Jean.

"Yeah, maybe." Kitty finally settled back more solidly onto the chair, relaxing as much at the suggestion than because of the projection. "I keep thinking there wasn't anything I could have done, but that it's more because I don't know enough than because I'd have been helpless regardless. Don't know what's really true, but, well... yeah." It was easier to believe that it was just a matter of having been unprepared.

"Why don't you let me ask Charles about it," Nathan suggested, "and we could figure out what would help, and who would be best to do it. I mean," he said with another tiny smile, "logically you would go to the expert, but Charles does seem to like farming out these things occasionally to we disciple-types."

Kitty actually laughed slightly at that. "Ok, thanks," she said. "I already asked Ms. Braddock to help me with, um, feeling less completely helpless, but more not-helplessness is also good."

"That's what we'll do, then," Nathan said firmly, wondering precisely what she'd asked Betsy. "It might be really interesting for you, too. Even the techniques for non-psis are fascinating..."

"Even if it's not fascinating, having something else to think about at all's a good thing." Sighing, she stood up. "And I should probably... There's homework I'm behind on, and now that I can actually think I should probably work on it."

"All right. I'll talk to Charles and get back to you," Nathan said, smiling again. "Constructive distraction, if nothing else."

"Exactly." Kitty nodded. "I'll see you later, then. Let you get back to your meditation."