xp_logs | Valentia's Lullaby: Manuel, Amanda & Valentia

Valentia tries to communicate to Manuel using empathy, but she finds a road block, frustrating her, escalating Manuel's own emotions and Amanda's until something is broken.

"I do not know what that means," Manuel gestured to the little girl as she signed to him. "It could be a name! It could be numbers!" Valentia gestured harder, sometimes repeating a symbol, parts of her hand slapping together to make him understand. Her frustration was his frustration. There was something blocking between them and he couldn't get by it. He couldn't understand her and yet he knew he should be able to.

"Stop doing that!" he yelled and she broke in cry that slowly escalated, grabbing for Amanda. Helplessly frustrated, Manuel raised his hand and in mid gesture, he dropped it down on the table, turning away from them. "I do not know what she wants," he scowled, staring out of the hotel room. "It is a mess inside of her!" He turned around at the sudden impact of more emotions and raised his voice again, his tolerance and patience dropping to an all time low. "I do not know! I cannot understand!"

Amanda found herself with a lapful of wailing child and automatically pulled her close, stroking her hair and trying for calm, just as she had used to with Meggan, fresh out of the cage. "Hush love, shhh," she murmured, before looking up to Manuel. "Slow down, Manny," she said soothingly. Two agitated empaths in a small room echoing each other was a recipe for disaster. "You just need to be patient with her. We're all trying here."

Manuel turned around, leaning towards Amanda as if to emphasize what he was saying. "I cannot understand her," he said, his eyes brimming with tears. He balled his fist and placed a hand on his hip, turning around to gesture at the girl angrily. "I should be able to, but I cannot. I can only feel like everyone else feels. She is making me a helpless idiot!" To which Valentia only cried harder. He knew he couldn't help her as he couldn't help himself. "Can you not put a shield around me? Anything! Just to shut her up! This is worse than the mansion!"

Under the onslaught of two upset empaths, Amanda's own emotions were fraying and she had to draw on all the training she'd gotten over the years just to stop from bursting into tears herself. "Wouldn't help," she managed. "She goes straight through my shields, remember? You're going to have to try and calm the fuck down yourself, otherwise we're all going to go bloody balmy!"

"How can she be four years old and have this kind of power? I did not manifest until I was older!" Manuel brushed the tears that began to flow and the little girl cried harder, her wails pounding into his head like a hammer. He raised his hands to his face, dragging them over his skin until he turned around and knelt down, taking the girl by the hands and shaking them. "_Listen_ to me. Control yourself," he said in Spanish. "Stop crying. No-" he shook his head. She pulled her hands from his and began to sign again, to which he could only repeat the word no.

Their emotions were rising again, swelling in his chest nearly suffocating and his temper escalated, not realizing it was _hers_ and not his. In one motion, she turned to him, grabbed him by the hair and tore through him emotionally. Manuel opened his mouth to protest as he did with Dani but only a grunt came out. She fixed herself into him, her eyes blazing red with his and collided with the loop that was the source to their inability to communicate. It was cut through like a dismissal of a fly and crumbled within him. A wave of dizziness overcame him and he nearly toppled for a second time on this trip before the fog in his head cleared. It was like night and day and he grasped his shields that were free, throwing them up around them, around Amanda from him and breathed a sigh of release.

A long moment passed when she released it, her crying ceased and his too. "She has broken it," he said finally in disbelief. "She broke the loop."

Amanda sniffled and raised a shaking hand to wipe her face - with the emotions cascading between the two empaths, she'd been caught in the crossfire. It took a while to focus on the fact he was talking, let alone what he'd said, so focussed was she on the fact she was suddenly back in control of her own emotions. She'd forgotten what it was like, to be in the middle of something like that. "T-the loop?" she managed, taking a shuddering breath. "H-how?"

"I do not know. However, I do have my shields back. Do you not feel it? No. You would not be able to. And that is what I am speaking of. I was right." He was right. There _was_ a loop. He'd only speculated, could only assume that was what was happening and now that it was broken, relief washed over him, the silence and multiple displays of colours settling vastly improved his mood.

"The loop, I believe, started when I was with Jennie and Marius," he explained. "It possibly continued in my coma. It could be why it took me so long to emerge from it. Perhaps it needed to be exhausted - I do not know - I have been unable to control for this long." He sighed again, relief was new to him, better than the shields Morgan put around him or anything from Amanda's spells. "Being in the mansion only seemed to feed the loop. Make it stronger and worsen the moods of those around me." He snorted. "It shows what animosity does when amplified."

Her calm was returning and with her, the ability to think. "So it's gone? You can shield again?" She looked down at Valentia, seemingly calm now. "But how'd she do it?"

"That is something I do not know. Perhaps shared empathy? A link similar to ours? I can merely speculate. It is something I will have to ask of Jean when we return." And at this point, they couldn't return to New York sooner.

At the mention of the link Amanda inwardly flinched - the memory of her yanking it out was sometimes still too vivid - and Valentia looked up at her for a moment. "Possibly," she agreed, feeling a little stab of guilt - she was going to have to screen herself a lot better than that. "Thank goodness for small mercies, anyway."

Manuel's gazed flickered down to the little girl and she regarded him with a worried expression. She conveyed her confusion and question through their shared empathy and he found faint comfort in a link that was once torn out from him. She seemed satisfied with some of his answer, despite the fact that he did not understand how he conveyed such an answer so easily without words. "Yes, indeed. Perhaps Jean will be able to explain why she cannot talk. I believe they lied to us, Gemile. She is not a mute. She is an empathic communicator."

For once she didn't correct him on the use of her old name. "An empathic communicator? Bloody hell, we sure know how to pick 'em." She gave him a wry smile. "Most people just bring home a straw donkey back from Spain, you know. We have to go find a small mutant prodigy."