Nathan and Adrienne (and Rachel and Juliette and Amelia!)

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

Backdated to Saturday.

Adrienne goes to visit Nathan for a discussion on Elpis and breaks her brain on his memory crystal.


"Sorry for the mess in the office. We're still not quite over Rachel's
attempt at redecorating," Nathan said, moving into the kitchen to get
Adrienne a drink. "I thought it might be nicer to have this
conversation in here, where there aren't files everywhere. It's not
all Rachel's doing, either - we just got another bulk shipment of
files from the Ukraine. I've got to get those sorted and stored." He
leaned out of the kitchen, frowning slightly at the living room.
"Well... okay, so she's been redecorating in here, too. It's not as
bad?"

Adrienne raised an eyebrow at the toys and the... 'redecorating', as
Nathan called it. She had to admit the mess in the house was
better than the mess she'd seen in the office, but only just. And the
looming threat that a child might make itself known at any time
terrified her, making the businesswoman wish they'd stayed with the
Ukraine files. "What happened in the Ukraine to warrant you a windfall
of so many files, Mr. Dayspring?" she asked with mild curiosity,
picking a toy pony up off the floor with a gloved hand and placing it
upright on the coffee table in front of her.

"Bizarrely enough, I'm not sure yet," Nathan said. "There are some
suggestive pieces of information that smell like 'exploring military
uses of children' again, and I have kind of a thing about that."

The door to the back bedroom opened, and the small, red-haired child
that emerged looked curiously at Adrienne for a moment before various
toys started to levitate and float in the direction of the bedroom.
Nathan noticed, and grinned approvingly. "Good girl, Ray, you'll get
the hang of this clean-up thing yet-"

"Quiet!" his daughter commanded, big gray eyes flashing.

The sudden appearance of the child and the levitation of toys had
startled her, but upon hearing the command Adrienne gave a nervous
flinch and accidently knocked the toy pony she'd placed on the table
off again. "Christ, Dayspring," she muttered with a half-smile as she
bent to pick up the toy again, "'sounds like you snatched that one
from a facility that was 'exploring military uses of children'... and
she was a commanding officer." She picked up several toys, pleased
that her powers seemed to be under control today, and placed them on
the coffee table, lining them up on the edge closest to the bedroom
door to see if Nathan's daughter would levitate them.

Rachel eyed her for a long moment. "Hello," she said, politely enough,
and the toys levitated smoothly upwards, heading for the bedroom door
like a row of ducklings. There were three such lines, coming from
different directions in the living room, and Nathan watched, impressed
at her control as the toys vanished into Rachel's bedroom.

"Very nice," he complimented her, and got a sunny smile in return.

"I'm going to play."

"You do that. Lunch in a while," he said, and grinned as she headed
into the room, the door closing behind her. "She takes after her
father," he said to Adrienne, "although to be honest, her mother barks
orders like a drill instructor too, when she puts her mind to it."

"Hello," Adrienne had replied with a nervous smile for Rachel,
grateful when the levitating procession of toys ended and the child
disappeared. "That's impressive," she said to Nathan in regards to
Rachel's telekinetic control, uncharacteristically polite without
having an ulterior motive to be. "How old is she?"

"Almost three. Her mind's developing fast at this stage - it's hard to
keep her to a reasonable pace for a three year-old." Nathan glared
hard at the coffeemaker. "Uh, one of my critical pieces of kitchen
equipment appears to be malfunctioning. Can I get you something else?"

In an attempt to help- not due to charitable nature but rather a
desire to keep the visit progressing instead of stalled over a
malfunctioning coffee maker- Adrienne rose from the couch and went
into the kitchen. She pulled off a glove and touched the coffee maker.
Keying in to the mechanical device was a more vivid experience than
Adrienne would have liked- almost physically painful- but after only a
few seconds she was able to determine that the appliance was, indeed,
malfunctioning. "It's fried," she confirmed, replacing her glove.
"I'll take tea instead." While the water boiled, she could poke around
Nathan's living room.

"Anyway," Nathan said as she went to do just that, leaving him to root
around in the cupboards for tea, "the stuff in Ukraine is just me
following a hunch. May not pan out, but oftentimes the only way to
track this sort of thing down is to follow your gut. Countries don't
often come out and announce that they're weaponizing children."

Making her way through the living room, Adrienne responded to Nathan
by utering a noise of agreement but said nothing. She perused a
bookcase casually for titles, pausing when an object that looked
vaguely like a paperweight caught her eye. It had the appearance of a
tv psychic's crystal ball or some sort of snow globe, but there was
something about it that seemed to exude rarity. It was special;
abnormal. Curious, the businesswoman picked the object up from its
shelf in a gloved hand.

Images and sensations exploded into her head with so much force she
staggered back as if physically struck. She saw Nathan- a younger
Nathan- and a very sturdy-looking black man mountain climbing,
harrassing each other playfully, like brothers... Nathan holding the
glowing crystal, face washed out with grief, his sadness almost
palpable through the effects of the crystal... Nathan and the same man
facing down would-be attackers together, knowing that each could
depend completely on the other... Nathan with a different man, a very
handsome, rugged looking type, in some sort of barracks with many
others, their fear invading and crippling Adrienne's mind as if it
were her own... The security specialist at the school creating the
crystal... A rather dapper-looking but pale man Nathan was trying to
extract from the group called Mistra... The rugged man killed in front
of Nathan, the emotional effect Nathan's memory leant to it sending
blinding pain through Adrienne's head... Nathan and the black man
drinking beer together... A red-haired young woman holding the crystal
to see the memories her father had given her of three people whose
loss he felt every day... Nathan sitting with the crystal again as it
glowed, overcome with sadness, bitterness, regret, pain. So much
pain...

The emotionally-overwhelming memories contained in the crystal and the
psychometry of the object's history coupled together to assault
Adrienne's mind more violently than anything she'd ever experienced,
yet she couldn't seem to send a signal to her brain to let go of the
object and make it stop. She felt as if she'd been hooked up to two
charges of a car battery; caught in the centre of an electrical surge
scrambling everything inside her head so completely that she possessed
no ability to think for herself, to think of a way to end the torment.

The effect the crystal was having on the psychometrist peaked in a
brilliant flash and, mercifully, her mind shut down to end the
onslaught, leaving her in blissful dark silence; unconscious.

Nathan was halfway out of the kitchen even as Adrienne started to
slump to the floor. She was caught telekinetically and eased
downwards, the memory crystal returned to its usual place on the shelf
with the same thought. Nathan crouched down beside Adrienne, checking
her pulse, then very tentatively scanning her. Unconscious, but the
patterns of her thoughts were reforming even as he looked. Some sort
of self-defense mechanism, mostly likely. But he needed to get her
inside so that Charles could check her over.

Rachel's bedroom door opened and his daughter poked her head out, eyes
gone wide at the sight of Adrienne on the floor. "Dad? She fell down?"

"She did indeed. Never let it be said I have the patent on these
little episodes - Juliette!" he called. After a moment, the partition
door opened and Juliette stuck her head in, looking first inquisitive
and then shocked. "Look after Ray for me, will you?" Nathan asked,
even as he lifted Adrienne, projecting what had happened to Charles
and Amelia both.

"Of course. What-"

"You'd think someone with psychometry wouldn't be quite so prone to
touch other people's things," Nathan said with a wry sort of humor.

--

Feeling as if her brain was ten sizes too large for her head, and with
lingering images of Nathan with his three friends still swirling like
tendrils of mist throughout the corners of her thoughts, Adrienne
regained consciousness. It was almost like a nasty hangover, even
though she hadn't been hung over since she was nineteen.

What the hell had happened? Her damn powers had malfunctioned again,
that much she knew. She'd touched Nathan's bauble with her gloves on,
but she'd keyed in to the stupid thing as if she'd picked it up with a
bare hand. The bauble was some sort of memory storage device, she now
understood, and Nathan had some pretty fucked-up memories.

With a groan the psychometrist rolled onto her side, feeling nauesous,
curling up into a ball with one hand putting pressure on her
stomach-as if that would keep her from heaving all over the floor- and
the other under her pillow, holding it tightly against her aching
head. She had no idea where she was, though she supposed the pillow
meant a bed somewhere, but she wasn't about to open her eyes to find
out, worried they might fall out of her head if she did. "Fucking
Nathan's fucking fucked-up memories," she cursed quietly to herself.

"I've been known to say the same thing myself," Nathan said from the
doorway of the infirmary room, smiling very slightly at the curled-up
Adrienne. "And hell, I came by them honestly."

Adrienne gave a start, which caused a fresh wave of nausea to engulf
her. She forced her eyes open and glared her most severe glare at
Nathan, though she was at a complete loss as to what to say to him.
Should she apologize? It wasn't as if she'd intended to read his
memory crystal, so an apology didn't seem necessary. Yet she couldn't
really demand one from him for landing her in what looked like an
infirmary, since it hadn't been his fault her powers had
malfunctioned. "Where the hell am I and how long was I knocked out?"
she asked instead.

"Infirmary. And about an hour." Nathan came in, settling into the
chair beside the bed. "You're fine. Little bit of psionic shock,
that's all."

"That's your clinical phrase for 'had your brains fucking scrambled
between magic memory crystal and psychometric powers', right?" she
muttered with a groan, not moving from her fetal position. "I don't
feel fine. Who decided I was fine?"

"They who specialize in scrambled brains," Nathan said dryly.
"Seriously, I know you probably feel like death warmed over-" He was
in fact very aware that she did. "-but the worst of it should pass by
tomorrow. Hey, once it does, is it okay to walk past your immediate
vicinity with Ray? She was a little worried when you fell down and
started twitching."

Groaning again, Adrienne buried her face in her pillow. "You're
telling me I had some sort of fucking seizure? Sure, why wait 'til
tomorrow, why not bring her by now to witness some more of my personal
fucking humiliation? I hate to disappoint the children." She rolled
onto her back and stared at the ceiling. "I hope I didn't freak her
out too badly," she muttered quietly, all-too-aware of how
impressionable young minds were when it came to witnessing things that
were out of the ordinary. "I didn't mean for this to happen."

"It's okay. She was worried, not freaked out. I think she liked you
and would like to make sure you're okay, that's all," Nathan said, his
tone reassuring and conversational at the same time. "As for not
meaning for this to happen... I've had enough 'episodes' myself to
know that. Abilities on the psionic spectrum are terribly hard on the
old brain at times."

"Well, I doubt my brain's as old as yours," Adrienne responded,
relaxing a little at Nathan's tone, and his reassurances that she
hadn't mentally scarred his daughter. "I suppose I should speak to
your people who specialize in scrambled brains sometime soon," she
said with a sigh. It was difficult to stop convincing herself that she
could deal with what Emma had termed her 'powers problem' on her own,
but after this fun episode Adrienne recognized that it was time to set
aside her pride and get the help she knew she needed. "So what's the
most embarrassing 'episode' you've ever had, Mr. Dayspring?" she asked
with a smirk, shifting back onto her side to meet his gaze.

"Embarassing? Hrm." Nathan tilted his head, considering. "Probably
when I was on medication trying to control my ex-secondary mutation -I
was a precog of sorts, it's a long story. I had a nasty powers
interaction with one of the students and destroyed my office."
He made a face. "Yeah, I think that definitely classes as the most
embarassing."

Adrienne found herself grinning. "That makes me feel a lot better.
Sort of." Her head was swimming and she fought to keep her gorge from
rising in her throat. "You shouldn't have mentioned the word
'medication', 'cuz now I desperately want some. Are you the doctor
around here?"

"Amelia left some," Nathan said, rising to get them and a glass of
water from the bedside table for Adrienne. "Yes," he said, handing
over the glass and the pills, "yours was a fairly mild incident, as
Incidents go. No damage except to your own brain. And you can't really
get around that, when your defenses collapse like that."

Grabbing greedily at the pills, Adrienne forced herself to a sitting
position and swallowed two with the water. The brief sit up made her
woozy and she sunk immediately back down, making a face. "If this is a
'mild' incident, remind me never to have a serious one," she grumped.
"I'd rather not damage my own brain any more." What she'd seen was
still lurking at the corners of her mind, though most of the images
were beginning to fade. "Rachel's going to be a stunner when she gets
older," she informed Nathan with a half smile. "I'm guessing she takes
after her mother."

"Thankfully, yes." Nathan looked like he was going to say more, but
one of the redheads he wasn't married to appeared at the door,
sweeping inside and giving him a suspicious look and Adrienne a
critical one.

"Ms. Frost," Amelia said crisply, coming over to check her pulse. "I
see Nathan's dispensing medication without a license again. How are
you feeling?"

"Nathan's mercifully agreed to assist in my suicide by giving me
pills. I feel peachy," Adrienne replied, eying the newcomer
suspiciously. "I'm ready to waltz out of here and start skydiving
again. Except for the small issue of I can't move without wanting to
throw up and I'm having to fight to keep my brain from exploding."

"Well, these things tend to happen when you let your own inborn mutant
ability embark into mortal combat with a mechanical equivalent."
Amelia's voice was crisp and completely unsympathetic as she peered in
Adrienne's eyes. "You've hardly been here for long enough to absorb
the customary lack of self-preservation of some of your fellow psis on
the premises. It must be natural talent."

Making a face, Adrienne muttered "self-preservation is my middle name"
before trying to squirm away from the doctor's ministrations. "I
wasn't trying to make my head blow up," she grumbled. "And how do you
know about my mutant ability? 'You a telepath?"

"I required Nathan to explain himself fully when he carried you in.
With him, we're never sure if he's accidentally assaulted the
unconscious person."

"Hey," Nathan protested, actually flushing as he sank back into his
chair. "That is not true, Amelia. Be fair."

Adrienne grinned over at Nathan, amused by his flush to such a degree
that she didn't flinch at the mention of 'assault'. "We were actually
just talking about 'episodes'," she told Amelia. "He seems to think
it's a good thing I only damaged my own brain instead of other
peoples'. I didn't do any permanent damage to my own brain, did I?"
she asked curiously.

Amelia shook her head immediately. "Nothing physiological at all.
Essentially, you have a migraine. So long as you don't do this
repeatedly, you should be fine." She eyed Adrienne once more, then
nodded curtly. "I'll want you to stay here until you're able to move
around without nausea, however."

"This is definitely my best day ever," the psychometrist grumbled,
returning to her comforting fetal position. "I didn't plan to do
'this' the first time, so how can I be sure I'm not going to do it
repeatedly?"

Amelia gave her what Nathan would have been able to identify as her
'You're very slow, but you just blew up your brain, so I'll give you a
pass' look. "You work with qualified people to find a solution to the
problem, Ms. Frost," she said simply, and swept back out of the room
before Adrienne could respond.

Nathan, slouched in the chair, raised an eyebrow. "She's got a point."

Adrienne gave Nathan a withering look. "I wasn't actually being
serious. I think I've figured out by now what I have to do." She
wrinkled her nose to display her distaste. "I have to talk to the
Professor." Xavier made her very nervous but she supposed a
conversation with him couldn't be avoided any longer. "I suppose I
should thank you for bringing me to the infirmary instead of leaving
me twitching on your floor."

Nathan made a monosyllabic noise, eyeing her. She'd said she knew what
she had to do, he reasoned with himself. So she wouldn't take it
badly, if he told her what he'd sensed. "I mentioned something to
Charles already," he said, not quite hesitantly. "What I saw, when you
collapsed - bear with me, this won't make a lot of sense on the
surface. I tend to see people's mind as a collection of patterns, for
reasons I won't bore you with right now. Psis in particular, because
our mental patterns have adapted to our abilities. Yours are very
distinctive." He raised his hands, palms up, in what was almost a
lecturer's gesture as his eyes went distant for a moment. "When your
abilities overloaded, those patterns in your mind collapsed - but that
was probably a good thing, to save you some of the psionic shock you
might otherwise have had. It's like your mind shut itself off for a
moment. Rebooted."

"All I hear is 'blah blah blah', brain rebooting," Adrienne mumbled,
burrowing down into her pillow as the edges of her mind started to go
fuzzy from the medication Nathan had given to her. "I've never had any
training for this, other than what I've read myself. I dunno about
patterns, or about psionic shock. Maybe you can help me with this
stuff, instead of the Professor. You're not as scary..."

"I'm not the right person," Nathan said, almost under his breath. "Not
the expert. But if this is really about your powers overwhelming your
defenses... well, Charles has a good track record, helping with that."

"Scary," the psychometrist reaffirmed, beginning to slip off into the
comforting darkness of sleep. "You were scary too, 'til I read your
stupid bauble and saw your kid grown up. You're not gonna leave me
here alone with Nurse Ratched, are you?"

Nathan's mouth twitched. "I suppose not," he said. "So long as you
don't mind if I telepathically tell my administrative assistant to
bring me my laptop. I may not be scary, but I am a workaholic. I
promise to type quietly."

Eyes closed, Adrienne gave an almost-imperceptible nod and mumbled a
vague "mmmkay" before succumbing to unconsciousness again, not
allowing herself to question why she'd asked Nathan to stay instead of
kicking him out for mentioning her collapse to Charles.