Jean-Paul, Jeanne-Marie, and Nathan

[x-cynosure.livejournal.com]

The twins engage in a game of keep-away, with unexpected results.




"Woman, where is your dignity?" Jean-Paul scowled at his sister, hoping to quell the playful gleam in her eyes and -- more importantly -- get her to return his reading glasses. Unfortunately, the years left her with an immunity to certain of his moods. "I cannot spend my day chasing you all over Creation." He was very tempted to try tackling her over the edge of the roof, but the odds of accidental skin-to-skin contact made that too much of a risk. "And you can stop looking so pleased with yourself just for getting me outside."

"Perhaps I left it in Laval, I was rather in a hurry," Jeanne-Marie replied, twirling the narrow arm of the spectacles between her thumb and pointer finger. For all his complaints, their unhealthy lunch and their (perhaps somewhat childish) chase had coaxed a few fleeting smiles out of her brother thus far and so she considered her efforts to be something of a success. Jean-Paul needed all the distractions he could get. "You can and you may have to at this rate." She smiled and slipped on his glasses, "And that is not why I am pleased with myself."

"Is that a fact?" He edged closer. "Enlighten me, then."

"It is." His feminine reflection edged back, close to the end of the roof, her posture a silent threat that she might take to the sky with her captive. Jeanne-Marie lifted one hand and tipped the glasses further down the bridge of her nose, teasing, "Twenty years spent hunched over everything from Deuteronomy to Ecclesiastes and my eyes are still better than yours."

"Oh, please. I have read no less, only differently. And I took my twenty years on the older end of things." He snaked up and made a snatch for his glasses.

"And likely better material," Jeanne-Marie admitted, "Is it not time for a break, then?" She stepped back off the roof to evade her brother's grasp. For a moment she allowed herself the strange luxury of free fall, then shot up again, lingering in the air a few feet back and a few feet up from Jean-Paul. Flight always brought out that vibrant glow in her that he had once so appreciated and that had always been distinctly Aurora's. She slipped the glasses off and folded them carefully, then shifted her prize back and forth with her fingers with obvious meaning. Come and catch me.

"Jeanne-Marie!" Her brother huffed in agitation and tore out after her, diving gracefully off the edge of the roof and giving chase. "Get back here!" Not smiling, not even a little bit. This was not fun. Absolutely not.

The leading twin had no intention of slowing down, though the fact that neither of them wore their training garb did limit the speed at which she was capable of fleeing. She would do almost anything for Jean-Paul, but streaking across campus was one embarrassment she would prefer to avoid regardless of velocity. She flashed him a smile, led him high and dipped again, weaving easily in the open air as they darted further from the rooftop and out above a dense collection of trees.

Jeanne-Marie's brother swooped around her as they flew, Jean-Paul's dizzying spectacle designed to disorient his target and keep her busy trying to dodge his obvious attempts to get at the glasses in her hand. All the while he subtly herded Jeanne-Marie toward the lake. He might have to go diving for his prize later, but it would be worth it.

Perhaps she had been on the bench too long, because the dark-haired speedster played into her brother's movements precisely and unwittingly, evading his various swipes and darting toward the lake on the far side of the campus with a sense of playful gloating. "Poor brother, at this rate your students will have no lessons at all!" Jeanne-Marie chimed back to him as she managed to break ahead again...albeit only through her brother's veiled consent.

"Oh, yes?" Now Jean-Paul was definitely smiling...grinning, really, and in a way that should have put his sister on guard. A burst of speed, and suddenly Jean-Paul was half-blocking Jeanne-Marie's flight, causing a sudden deceleration on both their parts as he directed their flight not up, but down toward the water. "Well, if I am not to get my glasses back, the least I can do is mete out punishment for the theft. I do hope you remember how to dive."

His fingers closed around Jeanne-Marie's wrist, and world was suddenly erased by a flare of brilliant white light.

In the boathouse, Nathan had been turning towards the front windows, smiling as he sensed the twins at play over the lake. When the flash came, he swore and tottered backwards. "What the fuck-"

The light was followed by a terrific THUD! from the direction of the front door. Even hampered by his injuries, Nathan was outside in seconds, just in time to see a very unsteady Jean-Paul picking himself up from the porch, hand to head.

Blinking through spots and swearing in Askani, Nathan steadied himself on the railing, wincing. "Are you all right?" he demanded. "What the hell was that? Were the two of you attacked?" He looked around a little wildly for Jeanne-Marie.

There was no sign of her immediately, apart from the broken waves still rippling out across the surface of the water from where their direction and the the momentum of Jean-Paul's departure had thrown her under. It was a detail the panicked pair of men were unlikely to notice. But it did not take Jeanne-Marie long to emerge from the water, disoriented and coughing, with her dark hair matted against his face. She lifted herself to the air long enough to reach the edge of the dock and then dropped again, gasping and trying to clear the last of the water from her lungs before she lifted her pale eyes. "Frère...?"

"Jeanne-Marie!" Jean-Paul made a panicked dash for his sister, seemingly having forgotten Nathan's presence and any questions on either of their minds. The slight buoyancy of the dock caused the usually sure-footed speedster to stumble, falling to his knees hard in front of his sister. "Désolé...désolé...j-je suis si désolé." He started to reach for her hands, then stopped himself. After a moment, he got control of his own unsteady hands and gripped her elbow instead, helping her to her feet. "Ca va?"

There was no one else out here flying around, Nathan realized, which meant that the light had come from them. "Hey!" he said, forcefully enough to reclaim their attention. His chest throbbed at the attempt at volume. "If you're both intact... that was you, wasn't it?" He started moving slowly, haltingly, towards the end of the dock. "Since when do you produce a lightshow like that?"

"~I...I lost your glasses,~" Jeanne-Marie reported glumly after a considerable pause and between still evening breaths as Jean-Paul helped her to her feet. The shifting of the dock beneath them made her still reeling head slower to settle and she stayed close to her brother. She could see Nathan near the opposite end of the planks, but nothing else. No one else. She began to speak when the older man called out to them both, voice strained by shock and by his condition. Since when do you produce a lightshow like that? "Not since," she turned her eyes to her brother, seeming in search of an answer, then looked at Nathan again, "...We cannot do such things anymore."

Jean-Paul forced himself to look away from his bedraggled sister and at Nathan instead. "We could not. Not since Langkowski's experiment." His pulse was pounding in this throat hard enough that he thought he was going to be ill. "That...no longer appears to be the case." The temptation to reach for his sister's hand again, to reconfirm, was suddenly overwhelming, but taking the risk of blinding people in their agitated state was enough to curb him. "We...should probably go to the medlab." It was almost a question and Jean-Paul found himself glancing from Nathan to his sister and back as he spoke.

"I think you should!" Nathan's voice was still a little too loud. "It's not like the two of you are adolescents and powers wackiness is to be expected." If he'd had Langkowski to hand right this second he would have drowned the man in the lake, total stranger or not. "I'll tell you what, I'll even call ahead and let them know you're coming."