Angel and Nate

[x-firestar.livejournal.com]

Following Jean's advice, Angel finally goes to see Nathan. It's not quite the conversation she had been expecting and while growing up is always hard to do, Angel is still Angel.



After a quick swim, Angel decided to finally head out to the boathouse and maybe catch Mr. Dayspring. She half hoped he wasn't home but that was the coward's desire. Though the coward's way out was sounding better and better. Hopping up to the door, she knocked loudly and then stepped back, hopping slightly from foot to foot. Maybe that third Redbull was a really, really bad idea but she'd been pretty thirsty earlier.

She'd picked a good time of day; everyone else had departed the boathouse for the day, and Nathan was sitting on the couch in the living room, reflecting that he really needed to get off his ass and go rescue Rachel's babysitter. The knock drew him out of his tired reverie, and he looked up, frowning. "Come in?"

Blast it! He was home! If she ran away, he was a telepath -- no pranking his door. Angel went in, shutting the door behind her. "Mr. Dayspring?" she called out, poking her head only partly around the corner, so that just the top of her head and eyes appeared. It was probably really bad form to ask if he was crazy that day...or if he had any Godiva hot chocolate.

Not a redhead he was used to seeing down here at the boathouse..."Angel," he said curiously, not standing. "Come on in, if you want. What's up?"

Hiding behind the wall was probably out so she stepped out, playing with her hands. "Um, has Dr. Grey-Summers talked to you about...oh, I don't know...me?" she asked, tapping her two middle fingers together.

Nathan opened his mouth - and then closed it again, since 'I haven't spoken to Dr. Grey-Summers since I stomped away from our last conversation in a huff' wasn't precisely what he wanted to say. "No," he said somewhat tentatively, straightening. The ache in his back wasn't quite so bad today. "Is there something wrong?"

Well, poop, that would have made things so much easier. "No...well, maybe." Angel sighed and then located a chair she could straddle backwards, propping her chin on the back of it. "It's about the week that everyone was, well, nuts? Sorry, there's really no nice way of saying "My teachers went insane in the brain", you know?"

Oh, shit. Nathan gave a slight, strained smile. "Ah. Yeah, well, don't worry too much about the lack of a euphemism. Nuts pretty much covers it." He stopped for a second, but forced himself to go on, keeping his voice as light as he could. "I'm guessing something happened. Did you run into my crazy self? I'm afraid I don't really remember much from the week..."

Angel sulked, just a little bit. "This keeps getting harder," she muttered, playing with the ends of her hair. They fizzed slightly between her fingertips as she thought. "Yeah, I was walking by and I heard John's voice so I popped in and you were acting really weird." She took a deep breath. "You kept telling me I was an idiot for agreeing to their terms and what I'd given them to wear what I was wearing and then you made everything levitate. Not the worst thing that happened that week, I know but..."

Oh, hell. Hell, hell, hell. Why had they let anyone in the room with him? But Nathan kept his voice low and even as he went on, even if he didn't quite meet her eyes. "I'm sorry you had to see that," he said quietly. "I really am. I wish I could remember what I'd said... whatever it was, it probably didn't have anything to do with you, really. I was hallucinating really badly."

Angel grimaced slightly. She'd been hoping he would remember what he'd been talking about, maybe that would have helped her figure everything out in her head. "I know you guys were pretty much knocked out for the count," she replied, twisting her hair between her fingers. "I think maybe that is what is making this kinda worse. I've been skittish around telepaths and Dr. Grey-Summers was helping me but I figured...talking to you since, you know, that's what started this..."

"How is it making it worse?" The question was level, patient, the precise opposite of the quivering tension and near-nausea the conversation was actually provoking in him. The irony of this... kind of defied belief, really. "It might help to try and put it into words."

"Being a mutant is weird," Angel said. "We can do all these fantastic things but sometimes, it's like no matter how destructive or scary our powers can be, there's always something bigger out there." She wiggled her fingers towards him. "When I first got here, I was totally blown away by telepathy. A bit jumpy, yeah? And now, realizing something else can screw with you guys and make you all act out?"

Nathan thought as carefully as he could about what he said next. It wasn't really the telepathy, he tried to tell himself; it was something bigger, that the telepathy-issue touched upon. "There's always something bigger... someone stronger," he finally said, quietly. "It's hard to make that mental adjustment. We already go beyond what human society thinks should be its... limits, I guess. When you think about your place in the world, it's hard to handle both that and knowing that there are people as different from you as you are from Joe Baseline Human off the street."

She blinked at him, leaning forward slightly in the chair. "I guess...I guess I just felt small," Angel murmured, voice as quiet and low-pitched as she ever got. "Everyone was caught up in this big thing and I couldn't do anything. I set things on fire, that's what I do. But this whole head thing was just waaaay out there."

Nathan forced a smile. It was a little weak, as smiles went. "Is it? Or is it just out there to you?" He went on, since it was more a rhetorical question. "The problem was on the astral plane, which is 'out there' to me, telepathy or no telepathy. But for people like the Professor, it's as... real as the physical world."

At that, Angel wrinkled her nose in thought, face scrunched up tightly, the chair tipping even more as she balanced herself. "So, okay. So, for him, it's like a normal thing...almost like we're blind and he has sight, so seeing for us is weird and for him, not so much?"

"I wouldn't think of it as a handicap," Nathan said after a moment. Carefully. The last thing he wanted to be doing was contributing to anyone's perception that there was a psi-superiority complex, or some such damned thing. "You're not deaf because you can't hear everything Terry or Kyle can hear, right?"

"True and I know that one power isn't better the another." She paused. "Unless it's something like being a Bubble Boy because that? Is lame. But other than producing gaseous bubbles, it's all different." Angel was beginning to relax as her brain started to work through the conversation. She still wasn't one hundred percent comfortable with brain matters but it was starting to be worked through. Caught up, she began to get excited. "Even Shiro, John and my powers are different, like -- holy crap!"

With a shriek of surprise, Angel suddenly tumbled forward as the chair protested from being on two legs and tilted. She ended up sprawled on the ground with her legs tangled around her feet.

Nathan winced, leaning forward. His reflexes were definitely not what they should be - he'd managed to slightly cushion her impact with the floor, but he should have been able to catch her. "You okay?"

Angel remained on the floor, face buried in the carpet, and sighed. "Mortified beyond existence," she told the carpet, "but daddy says I'm a teenager and, really, should be used to that at this point."

Nathan had a mental image of Rachel at Angel's age, and surprised himself with a real, if brief smile. "Nothing like having the furniture break your train of thought." The chair righted itself, and Nathan shifted forward on the couch, offering Angel a hand.

It would have been far to easy to ignore the hand and climb up. But that would have been rude and, well, backsliding. After getting her nose out of the fibers of the carpet, Angel grabbed the offered hand and managed to get to her feet. "You have a very nice carpet," she offered sheepishly.

"I've always found it worthy of appreciation." The dry tone was gone from his voice as he went on, though. "For all that I just said, Angel, I know that telepathy's different from enhanced hearing, or something like that."

She nodded. "I know. Talking about it helped -- think it's more a combination of things than just jitters around the whole brain talking thing. Don't think it would have been so bad if you were my age and not teachers. But it's good that you guys are better." Angel gave a small smile. "Or getting there, anyway."

"You wouldn't be the first to have jitters around the whole brain talking thing." Nathan's smile was slightly strained. "Don't worry. It's always better to do the talking than not, at least if you're coming at it wanting to understand."

"I don't want to be afraid," Angel said firmly, "of anything. So, I didn't have much of a choice because I'm not about to let myself continue to be afraid."

Young. Very, very young, Nathan thought without rancor. But you couldn't help but appreciate the sentiment. "You know who would be good to talk to, then?" he asked. "The Professor. I know you students occasionally find him a little intimidating, but he understands this sort of thing like no one else. Not just because he's been dealing with it for longer than anyone else around here."

At this rate, Angel thought with a mental giggle, she was going to end up chatting with every telepath in the mansion. "Would I have to drink tea?" she hedged, because he was right. The Professor could be very intimidating in his own, quiet very powerful head way. And seeing him sometimes caused her inner three year old fingers to twitch and want to draw on his head.

But only sometimes.

"Quite possibly. He used to make me drink buckets of it." Nathan's smile was slightly pained, and he looked away for a moment, thinking. "But he's good," he finally said. "At... helping you see it for what it is. Or what it's not."

"Aw, man, I prefer coffee." Angel scuffed the toe of her shoe on the floor before nodding. "Okay, I'll ask him if I can stop by and talk to him about this. And try not to mentally draw on his head....whoops, mental dialogue!"

"You're a very strange girl."