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[x-celsis.livejournal.com]

Emma and Marie-Ange have a late night rendezvous. Set about a week before the Hellfire party.

3:40am. Emma sits in her office, going over a couple of stolen Pentagon memos and seeing what they can tell her. She knows Shaw has friends at the Pentagon, but she doesn't know all their names. Yet.

Satisfied that she's eked as much as she can from the documents, she slides them into a brown paper envelope and tucks it into the pocket of her jacket. Cain has taken offense at her disabling the smoke detector in her office, so she'll have to destroy these down in the kitchen. And while she's there, there's a bottle of Pinot Grigio down there she's been meaning to deal with.

Emma plucks the crystal handled corkscrew from the pen tidy on her desk and heads out of the office.

In the kitchen, there is s a table, and under the table is a red-haired girl and her sketchpad. She is there to complete a homework assignment on perspective, and shadow; two assignments in one drawing, which should satisfy Piotr and give her more time to concentrate on more personal tasks. Even at this time of night, the mansion is never silent, and so the sound of footsteps only brings Marie-Ange out from under the table to see who else is awake and wandering.

Emma reaches in to the fridge and pulls out the bottle of wine. "Bon soir, Marie-Ange," she says without turning around. "Having trouble sleeping, dear?"

"Some, yes." Marie-Ange pulls herself out further from under the table, but remains seated, cross-legged on the floor. "I think I am used to it by now."

Emma reaches up to the high shelf for a couple of large wine glasses. She turns and sets them down on the table. "Will you join me for a glass of wine, then Marie-Ange? It probably won't help you sleep, but I find it makes staying awake much more bearable." She starts pouring for herself.

Marie-Ange pauses for some time before responding. Finally, after some thought, she unfolds herself from the floor, and sits in a chair. "Yes, please."

Emma smiles only very slightly, and pours a second glass, filling it as full as her own.

"I would ask you if you'd like it diluted," she says, "but that wouldn't seem very French." Emma pulls out a chair and sits, then raises her glass. "À votre santé." Emma takes a long sip, her eyes fixed on Marie-Ange over the rim of the glass.

"No, I suppose it wouldn't. " Marie-Ange responds, raising her glass briefly in return. "Merci, et au votre aussi."

Emma sets her glass down and crosses her ankles, still watching Marie-Ange intently.

"What is it that keeps you up at this hour, dear?" she asks. "A girl your age needs her sleep, you know."

"Insomnia. Doctors McCoy and MacTaggart have not found a explanation, but tell me that it is likely related to the dreams." She waves her hand in a vague gesture of frustration. "I have taken to napping at lunch, which helps some."

"Ah, the dreams,"

Emma leans forward slightly across the table. "Are you keeping a diary, Marie-Ange? If the dreams are causing you distress, it might help you to write them down. To help you make sense of them."

Marie-Ange nods in agreement, and flips open her sketchpad to a page with several rough sketches of Manuel, Emma herself, and an older man with long sideburns. "I have, for quite a while, actaully, both writing and sketching the images I see." She points to the date on the page, several months in the past. "They aren't very good, but it sometimes helps more than words do now."

Emma studies the picture with interest. The pictures are actually quite good. Certainly good enough that she can recognise the subjects.

"You had this dream while I was... in Paris?" Emma asks. "How much could you see? Could you understand it?"

"Yes. At the time, it was just a very odd dream, one that I remembered days later. I did not understand it at all until you returned, and even then, I did not recognize what I saw until Manuel recovered." Marie-Ange frowns at the memory. "He looked rather rough when he arrived, no?"

She shakes her head, obviously still somewhat bothered by the entire subject. "Doctor MacTaggart is still running tests, and seems to think I can channel it."

"You mean she thinks you can learn to choose what to see?" Emma asks, turning the pages to see what else is in there - and to see if she's in there again. Or Shaw. "Maybe I can help?" Emma suggests. "It is, at least in part, a psionic gift. If nothing else, I may be able to help you understand why these visions appear to you the way they do."

"I do not entirely know what Dr MacTaggart means. I believe she wants me to try to choose when I see things, and not what. Or perhaps, to just prevent the insomnia, although that has only gotten me headaches so far."

"But what do you really want from these dreams, Marie-Ange?" Emma asks. She stops on a picture of Manuel and lays the book down on the table, facing towards Marie-Ange.

"It is a gift. Do you want it to go away?"

Marie-Ange shakes her head. "I am not sure what I want from them, more than to understand them. To know which ones might happen and which ones won't. It is too useful to want it to go away, but I have not had much success in controlling it. The once that I did, I had a migraine for two days." She frowns thoughfully at that last. "Manuel might have mentioned that, actually. He said I was very odd that day."

Emma tops up her glass, then Marie-Ange's, pleased to hear her acknowledge that her dreams are too useful to lose.

"Are you and Manuel getting on well? I'd like to think the little bastard is making some friends here. Other than fuck buddies." Emma keeps her eyes on the glasses, and suppresses her smile. She knows it's a vicious line of inquiry.

Marie-Ange's eyes tense at the term "fuck-buddies", but only for a passing moment. It seems the Speech class lessons in bluffing are having some positive effect.

"We have some disagreements, but we get along most of the time." Marie-Ange's voice is bland when she answers.

Others might be fooled, but Emma can still recognise a novice attempt at a poker face. Marie-Ange's expression and tone are both a little too neutral.

"He's an interesting case," she notes. "Even by the standards of this particular asylum. He'll never be normal, of course, but who wants to be normal? We're meant to be spectacular. It's in our nature."

Marie-Ange frowns. "Doctor Essex said something like that too. I think he might have approved of how Manuel acts sometimes." Her neutral expression fades, she's not practiced enough yet to hide this much irritation. "Sometimes he is a perfect gentleman. Sometimes, he is quite an ass."

"Dr Essex and I could have agreed on a great many things, if Dr Essex hadn't been so wholly convinced that he was a grandmaster playing chess with intellectual munchkins," Emma says, waving a hand dismissively. "As for Manuel... well, yes, he can be unpredictable. But you ought to have the advantage there, n'est-ce pas?"

Marie-Ange shakes her head sadly. "I can't quite make it work that way, yet, and I am not sure that understanding Manuel is worth the headache." She quirks an amused smile. "Although, he is a headache by himself already."

"Oh, darling, you don't have to tell me." Emma spins the wine in her glass. "But I'm doing what I can for him. And if you need me, darling, I'll do what I can for you, as well. You have an extraordinary gift, Marie-Ange. Even by the standards of the students here."

Marie-Ange shakes her head, prodding at the sketchpad with one finger. "If I could use it, it would be extraordinary. If I saw anything that was not completly miserable. I'm tired of only seeing my friends get hurt." She take a long drink from her glass, and leans back in the chair. "What good is seeing the future if I cannot predict anything useful?"

"All knowledge is useful, Marie-Ange. It's just a question of application. Anything you can't make sense of, you should discuss with Moira or myself, or with whomever you please. A fresh pair of eyes never hurts, and some of these faces will be familiar to others, but not to you. Some of these 'warnings' clearly aren't intended just for you."

Marie-Ange nods. "I have, some. I don't get many clear answers. I've decided to post them publically, when I see people or things I recognize."

"Well, I shall follow your progress with interest," Emma says pleasantly. "You are a very gifted girl, Marie-Ange. You deserve all the help you can get."

Emma tops up her glass, then rises to her feet. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I should get back to the office. Feel free to finish the bottle, dear." Emma still has papers to burn, and it looks like she'll have to disable her smoke detector after all.