xp_logs | Manuel and Rahne, Sunday evening: Peacemaking and the Need to Know (Reply)

Set after this but mostly referring to this "inauspicious meeting". Manuel comes to talk to Rahne about his ~~disaster~~ conversation with Nathan, some misunderstandings are (hopefully) cleared up, some may not be, and prospects of further communication are discussed.

Manuel, now cleaned and dressed appropriately, took a deep breath and walked down into the common areas. He was looking for someone, and this time he wasn't going to accept a no for an answer. His iPod's earbuds were firmly planted into his ears and if he flinched at the dirty sideways looks he got from some of the other students, well, he accepted it as his due.

Rahne was curled up with one of the field-medicine books she was trying to work through, shifted just a bit to keep a better ear out for any change in the noise from the smaller children's game in the other end of the room. So she noticed Manuel in time to look up directly, not sideways, and shut her book when he was clearly heading for her. She had to admit she was annoyed, but she also had to admit that trying to calm down a highly agitated psi by any means available wasn't exactly an unreasonable impulse.

Manuel was indeed heading straight for Rahne, and stopped well before her personal space. "Rahne." he said, trying to keep his accent down to a dull roar. "I would like to talk to you. Do you have a moment?"

"Aye, I do." She gestured toward the next seat. "Want to sit down, or go someplace quieter?"

Manuel smiled. "No, here will be fine. It's not too loud for you, is it?" He snagged a chair and sat in it, still respecting her personal space. "Do you know MacTaggert?" he asked brusquely.

Rahne nodded. "Aye. She's the one told Reverend Craig about the school, actually."

Manuel nodded. "I thought so, but I was not sure." He then swallowed heavily before continuing. "I have a problem with her new patient, the mercenary. Nathan, I think his name is. I cannot approach either him or her about it."

"'Tis Nathan. I heard ye talked to him yesterday and things didna go verra well." She sounded neutral because she was honestly trying to be; to Manuel's senses, perhaps a little torn would have been the better description.

Manuel picked up on the emotion easily - even with all the other distractions in the room. "That is an understatement. But I have to know what he knows - he is the only one here who has any direct experience with a power like mine! I've gone as far as I can go, I think, by myself. And how am I supposed to practice, anyway?"

Rahne couldn't help but smile a little at that, though it actually wasn't funny. "That's a hard question, I ken," she admitted. She thought if he promised to put everything back if someone let him practice on them, he'd keep it, but the idea of doing it still made her nervous on a gut level and likely would most people, she thought. Telepaths practised, and didn't have to change minds to do it, but Manuel mirrored in a way they didn't seem to.... Rahne jerked her thoughts back on track. "Nathan -- I've seen him since," she said carefully. "I think he'd be willing to tell ye some things -- I could ask, anyway -- but aye, maybe better through somebody else. Ah... ye do know he truly didna want to harm ye? I've no idea how much ye've been told since, and 'twasn't an easy time to stop and analyse."

Manuel looked puzzled. "If he wasn't, he has a strange way of showing it. I could have died very easily. I was thinking more that he's an incompetent assassin ... easier to believe than your theory. And everyone is so scared of my power. I try not to use it on people, but I think I have the right to be me, don't I?"

"Ye do, but others have the right to be themselves too. I'm grateful ye try not to use it on people too much; I ken it must be hard. The thing is --" Given Manuel's involvement, she judged that telling him this was probably all right, but she kept her voice down. "The other empaths he's met were -- part of training for something, I think he said. Seems their -- his and their -- employers had something... planted in his mind to stop any other empaths from controlling him, and when ye tried to calm him that got set off." She pulled her knees up and put her arms around them. "He hit himself on the head a-purpose to stop it. He was verra worried about if he'd hurt ye."

Manuel turned very, very pale at this news. "Oh," was all he said for a good long moment. "That would explain that odd thread structure. All looped in on itself - I know I couldn't do anything that complex. I don't even know where to start. There's so much I don't know..."

"...I'm not even sure what ye're describing," Rahne said ruefully. "I got the notion he'd truly be willing to help if he can, like I said, but ye might want to be talking to him some other way." A pause. "Of course, I'm no sure just how much of how they worked he does know. He didna, about that... trigger, he called it."

Manuel hrmed for a second as he thought, then took a scrap of paper out of his pocket. "OK. Pretend that this is an emotion. Let's say it's a nice shade of warm red, like your hair." He then takes the scrap of paper, twists it into a line, then ties the line into knots several times. "Now this is what I was sensing in Nathan's mind. It doesn't make any sense. I didn't even touch it!"

One edge of Rahne's mind brightened over the compliment to her hair, however little it had to do with anything else. Much of the rest of her mind was occupied in trying and failing even to conceptualize what doing that to an emotion might mean -- though it certainly didn't sound comfortable. "They did a lot of whatever they did, then, I suppose?" She looked up from the paper to Manuel. "...Ye've said different emotions are different colours; is it important here what the red is?"

Manuel nodded. "Color is vitally important, but I was using red as an example. Red is the color of love, but also the color of anger. I ... don't have the words to describe it more fully. Thinks like how bright the red is, and if the red is mixed with other colors, and even how they are mixed are all important. And although I was trying not to go exploring, it seems like there's a lot of that going on in there. The other odd thing was that, in most people, colors are sloppy. They bleed into one another, they mix and separate freely. In him, the colors are very clearly separated. Almost ... artificial-looking, if that was even possible."

"So his emotions are all sorted out from each other neatly and tied up in knots... maybe to keep them that way?" Rahne frowned a bit. "Maybe artificial is possible," she says slowly, "if 'triggers' to set off his powers without his wanting it are. Do ye mind if I tell him about that, what ye saw? He might want to know, and he might be able to explain." She blinked. "And I wonder -- I doona ken if all that's healthy altogether, but do ye think something like the keeping separate would help ye keep other people's apart from yours? Or is that not something ye could tell that way?"

Manuel shrugged helplessly. "I don't know," he said with real frustration in his voice. But his control was good, and he kept the frustration to himself. "This is why I need to see him. He is the only one who knows anything. Even if he doesn't, I can still look and maybe see how it was done..."

"I'd be verra surprised if Nathan wouldna like to know how it was done himself," Rahne said. "Maybe if ye talk in other ways for a while then 'twould be possible to get together for ye both to find things out, without everything going mad." She adds with a wry smile, "And I can tell ye've got the separation all right one way now. Just... maybe try not to give him the idea ye want to do the same things ye're looking at, even if ye want to know how? I didna get the idea 'twas very pleasant at the time."

Manuel looked offended at the suggestion. "I would never do that to anyone." His face twisted, as if he were lost in a memory for a few seconds, but he recovered and schooled his expression. "Why do people always assume the worst of me?" he whined in Rahne's general direction. "I never wanted to hurt anybody."

Rahne rubbed the back of her neck. There were times that didn't quite seem to be true, but being around different people changed the way he acted so much, and some of it was probably just not hiding natural selfishness the way most people did. "I doona think ye do want to do that to him -- and honestly, 'tis knowing ye that makes me think of the chance the ones who did might not have truly wanted it either, might've been being used themselves. But if they did, or if it even seemed that way to him, then yuir eagerness to learn might make him think -- or feel -- that ye meant something worse. Most people spook at the idea of being experimented on, I think, and thinking on your first comment to him on that one journal entry... well, ye talked of mending, and I'm thinking ye meant by experimenting that ye'd try to fix it, but I can see how it might not have sounded that way to him."

Manuel stopped to think (and to parse through Rahne's accent) and then nodded slowly. "I see - I think. Because I wanted to learn, and I asked for help, it is interpreted as me doing something bad or wrong and I should stop immediately. Is that it? But you don't feel that I meant any harm, and that I should try to find out what I want to know a different way."

"Well, the first part isna quite it. The second is, aye. The first...." Rahne stopped to think herself, then found an example and brightened. "Ye ken there are a lot of stories and movies and such about mad scientists, aye?"

Manuel shook his head. "No. Why would a scientist being angry change anything at all?"

"Ah -- sorry. Mad can also mean insane. Insane scientists. There really have been some people who've... done frightening things just to see if they could, or because they didna care about doing harm in the process of trying to find things out. And 'tis something people make a lot of stories about because...." Rahne paused, not really sure why, then shrugged. "I donnae really know why, but they do. Anyhow, the idea that somebody might get carried away trying to learn things or learn if they can do things seems to be a... a common fear. And I know 'tis partly trying to translate, but things like saying ye wonder if ye could cause a psychotic break are a wee bit unnerving to somebody who's already worrying about one."

"I was just trying to be honest. Emma tells me that people appreciate it, although in my experience people would rather operate within their usual comfortable ignorance. And I could fix a psychotic break, if I could see one happening. I'm sure of it. I have the power, I just don't know how." he says. "But I have something else to do coming up, so I must go. We do not talk anymore. This is ... unfortunate."

"Being honest is good. Sometimes saying everything that's true is a wee bit much." Rahne bit her lip. "If ye have one more minute, try and think of it this way -- I think with his... experiences, yuir offering to help by empathy maybe made him feel the way you would about somebody asking if they'd be able to help ye control yuir own powers using drugs. Ye could know they meant well and still be uncomfortable about it, aye? Especially a stranger ye didna yet know would leave it yuir own choice." She looked hopefully at him; it wasn't a nice thing to bring up, but she had the feeling it might be accurate. "And...aye. I miss talking with ye. I'm glad ye did today."

Manuel hrmed at that, before he turned to go. "We should talk again. Soon," he said before he disappeared back into the milling mass of students.

Rahne settled back down with her book, but her mind was more on her next talk with the Lady Moira and Nathan.