Suddenly, you're a trapped animal...
Mar. 1st, 2004 02:29 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logs[Nathan, Monday afternoon. After he reads Manuel's reply to this post.]
This journaling system was going to become addictive, Nathan reflected, especially if he wound up being not-so-mobile for any length of time. It was a bit strange, having conversations like the one he was having with Marie in this sort of medium, but it had its pluses. It had been surprisingly easy to share the information about his precognition, probably because doing it like this allowed him to do it from a bit of a distance. He wasn't standing in front of a stranger and admitting it, and then waiting to see how they were going to use it against him.
As he checked another, newer reply, his hands stilled on the keyboard. A new person, one who hadn't 'greeted' him in that first flood of emails...
..."Shit," he whispered aloud, his blood running cold as he read the thoughtful little ramble on psychotic breaks and the apparently-serious request to use him as a guinea pig. "Over my dead body, kid." His hands starting to shake, he checked the name on the journal. Manuel de la Rocha--not the son of that de la Rocha? Is Xavier starting a collection? First the Shaw kid, now this...
And he was an empath. Probably a strong one--and if he was a de la Rocha and yet here at Xavier's, he probably needed help. An empath, possibly powerful, possibly struggling with control issues. "Great," Nathan said faintly, putting the laptop down on the bed beside him and getting up, ignoring the dizziness.
He went over to the windows and stood there, staring out blindly at the grounds. What the hell do I do? he thought disjointedly. The safest response wasn't an option. Besides, the kid hadn't actually done anything. No, he just scared the shit out of me with a few lines of text.
A polite warning, maybe. But then, an empath who would seriously ask that question was probably not overburdened by ethics. Threaten him, then? Oh, that would go over well, Nathan thought with a certain amount of desperate humor. Not to mention the fact that tossing threats around might just provoke the kid to try something, to spite him. You didn't avoid a fight by throwing down a challenge.
Think tactically. He had to think tactically. He could be making a mountain out of a molehill. Maybe the kid was making a joke. "Funny ha-ha, not funny peculiar," he said aloud, the words sounding strained even to his own ear.
Logic wasn't winning out just now, though. Empaths, fucking empaths--why do I have to keep running into them? He turned too quickly, and grabbed at the back of the armchair to steady himself. Panic was not going to help, he told himself savagely. But between the empaths who'd been trainers in the program and that pair who'd been on the first retrieval team, he'd had more than his fill of that particular mutation. At least with another telepath, he had a hope in hell of keeping them out of his head!
Nathan glanced wildly at the door, locking it telekinetically, and then forced himself to go over and sit back down on the bed. More information first, he told himself, picking the laptop back up again. Information was a good thing. Saved one from making rash decisions one way or the other.
This journaling system was going to become addictive, Nathan reflected, especially if he wound up being not-so-mobile for any length of time. It was a bit strange, having conversations like the one he was having with Marie in this sort of medium, but it had its pluses. It had been surprisingly easy to share the information about his precognition, probably because doing it like this allowed him to do it from a bit of a distance. He wasn't standing in front of a stranger and admitting it, and then waiting to see how they were going to use it against him.
As he checked another, newer reply, his hands stilled on the keyboard. A new person, one who hadn't 'greeted' him in that first flood of emails...
..."Shit," he whispered aloud, his blood running cold as he read the thoughtful little ramble on psychotic breaks and the apparently-serious request to use him as a guinea pig. "Over my dead body, kid." His hands starting to shake, he checked the name on the journal. Manuel de la Rocha--not the son of that de la Rocha? Is Xavier starting a collection? First the Shaw kid, now this...
And he was an empath. Probably a strong one--and if he was a de la Rocha and yet here at Xavier's, he probably needed help. An empath, possibly powerful, possibly struggling with control issues. "Great," Nathan said faintly, putting the laptop down on the bed beside him and getting up, ignoring the dizziness.
He went over to the windows and stood there, staring out blindly at the grounds. What the hell do I do? he thought disjointedly. The safest response wasn't an option. Besides, the kid hadn't actually done anything. No, he just scared the shit out of me with a few lines of text.
A polite warning, maybe. But then, an empath who would seriously ask that question was probably not overburdened by ethics. Threaten him, then? Oh, that would go over well, Nathan thought with a certain amount of desperate humor. Not to mention the fact that tossing threats around might just provoke the kid to try something, to spite him. You didn't avoid a fight by throwing down a challenge.
Think tactically. He had to think tactically. He could be making a mountain out of a molehill. Maybe the kid was making a joke. "Funny ha-ha, not funny peculiar," he said aloud, the words sounding strained even to his own ear.
Logic wasn't winning out just now, though. Empaths, fucking empaths--why do I have to keep running into them? He turned too quickly, and grabbed at the back of the armchair to steady himself. Panic was not going to help, he told himself savagely. But between the empaths who'd been trainers in the program and that pair who'd been on the first retrieval team, he'd had more than his fill of that particular mutation. At least with another telepath, he had a hope in hell of keeping them out of his head!
Nathan glanced wildly at the door, locking it telekinetically, and then forced himself to go over and sit back down on the bed. More information first, he told himself, picking the laptop back up again. Information was a good thing. Saved one from making rash decisions one way or the other.
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