xp_logs | Emma and Nathan, Monday night

Emma stops by for a little chat regarding the Shaw family and the information Nathan provided. They also discuss Manuel, which is not nearly as awkward as Nathan assumed it would be.

Emma sat at her dressing table putting in her earrings, silently cursing the fact that she was living in a room that wasn't big enough to accomodate her wardrobe, let alone herself. After a weekend unwinding at her apartment in New York, she found it draining to be back here in her little box.

She had changed for the evening. She didn't have any plans, but she'd been raised in the sort of household where that was what one did, and she'd never wanted to shake the habit. So she'd put her suit away for dry cleaning, showered, and changed into a slip dress. Now she was ready for cocktails and dancing.

But there would be no cocktails, and no dancing.

Emma checked her watch. Nathan was expecting her. Finally, a chance to meet the big bad mercenary in the flesh. Emma slipped on a pair of strappy sandals and headed out into the hall.

Nathan was working with the coins when he sensed the startling, vivid presence coming down the hall towards Moira's rooms. His eyes snapped open, and the twisting fractal patterns of coins moving in the air around him started to slow as part of his attention was drawn elsewhere. His gaze moved sideways to the clock on the wall, and he swore under his breath, wondering precisely how he had misplaced the last two hours. The drills took a great deal of attention, true, but to lose his awareness of the passing of time was unusual, especially when this meeting had been on his mind all day. He rose to his feet, changing the focus of his telekinesis to stack the coins neatly on the coffee table. The job was halfway done when the knock came at the door. "Come in," he called, and concentrated on finishing.

Emma pushed open the door and stepped in with an exquisite smirk on her lips. She leaned back against the door to close it, before offering her hand. "Mr Dayspring? Emma Frost. Lovely to meet you at last."

Nathan finished stacking the last of the coins - the last thing he wanted to do was drop them and make himself look like an idiot in front of this woman - and then put on a carefully neutral smile and shook her hand, wondering at the offer of physical contact. There was no pressure against his shields during the handshake, though, and he let himself relax fractionally. "Ms. Frost," he said with a nod. "Would you like to sit down? I'm afraid all I have to offer you is Moira's coffee."

Emma winced only very slightly at the offer.

"Thank you, Mr Dayspring, I won't right now," Emma replied, grabbing the seat from Moira's desk and turning it to face in to the room. She was trying to be on her best behavior around this potentially useful new face, but she couldn't help being a little presumptuous. "You wouldn't happen to have any spring water, would you?"

"Let me check, actually." Nathan stepped into the suite's small kitchenette and checked, finding two large bottles that hadn't been there the last time he'd looked. Moira must have put them there before vanishing back to the lab the last time, he reflected. They were cold, so he took one out, found a clean glass, and went back out to join his guest. "Moira was either thinking ahead or under the impression that I was dehydrated," he said with a slightly awkward smile as he offered Emma the glass.

Emma took it with a smile and a thank you as she took her seat. She crossed her legs and looked up at Nathan with an openly appraising gaze. "But I have more to thank you for than the polite hospitality, don't I, Mr Dayspring?"

Nathan gave a slightly edgy laugh as he sat down in one of the other chairs. "It was--spur of the moment, offering Shinobi that file," he confessed, feeling that it was best to be utterly straightforward. Not he would be able to hide much concerning his motivations from her even if he tried. His shields were in no shape to be holding off a telepath of her caliber at the moment. "Don't get me wrong, he strikes me as a very impressive young man, but to be strictly honest, I saw a potential opportunity to cause trouble for his father and took it."

Emma laughed. "Well, you have excellent instincts, Mr Dayspring, and anyone who's prepared to stick the knife in to Sebastian Shaw is someone I think I'd like to know a little better." She tried not to scan him, because she suspected he might notice if she did, but a surface reading was hard to avoid, and everything she was picking up about this man was encouraging, including the obvious nervousness and fear.

Nathan couldn't help a faint smile. "I don't know if Shinobi told you, but you almost had that file years ago, when I first got it." He shook his head, reaching out and picking a coin off the top of one stack, fingering it. "Should've followed my instincts there, but I let someone else talk me into letting things go." Bridge had shouted at him for the better part of three days, telling him that he needed to be satisfied with what small measure of revenge he'd managed to take for Dom and not provoke something worse. "It made sense at the time, I suppose; I doubt I would have survived a direct conflict with Shaw at that point in my career."

Emma ran a finger along the rim of her glass, avoiding eye contact for a moment. "Depending on when you'd given me the file, it may not have done you any good," she admits. "We deal with a great many devils in our time. It wasn't until Sebastian turned race traitor that I grew a conscience in that particular regard, I'm afraid."

"Does this have anything to do with the Sentinel program?" he ventured, studying her with some interest.

"I paid a great price for putting a stop to Donald Pierce's original Sentinel program," Emma said, looking back up and fixing Nathan with a direct and challenging glare. "I didn't pay that price so that Sebastian could profit."

Meeting her eyes levelly, but without any answering challenge, he nodded in acknowledgement of all the things she was undoubtedly not saying. "I hope the file proves helpful," he said quietly. "I can probably add a little to it, about contacts I know he's had with other mercenaries, some of the operations that have been run since that list was current."

Emma nodded. "Thank you. Will you be staying with us long, Mr Dayspring? I'm afraid the situation with Sebastian won't be over any time soon, but I would like to be able to call on your services. Perhaps a retainer...?" she suggested.

He smiled again, this time humorlessly. "I'm not particularly employable at the moment, Ms. Frost," he said. "A five year-old with a hockey stick could probably take me out if he tried hard enough."

Emma laughed again. "In which case, a school may not be the best place to hide. Especially this school. Our students don't even need hockey sticks, as you're well aware."

Nathan glanced at her a bit sharply, wondering if that was a reference to Manuel--well, perhaps it was, but it was also the plain, unadorned truth. Which was sufficiently depressing that he wrenched himself out of that train of thought and cast around for something else. "I've noticed," he said briefly. "In any case, Ms. Frost, I'm not certain how long I'll be here. Until I figure out what the hell has gone wrong with my precognition, in any case, or until my former employers discover that I have the gall to be back in the country."

Emma nodded and delicately licked her lips. "Well, I'll be glad to have you around," she said frankly. "And I'm in your debt now, Mr Dayspring, which is no small thing. If you find yourself in any kind of trouble, I'll be happy to help in any way I can."

"I suppose this is my cue to bring up the other subject," Nathan muttered, fighting the urge to rise from his chair and pace, or find something to do that would distract him from the fact that his tension level had ratcheted upwards several notches again. Any sort of 'retreat' would give that away to her--although she probably knew. Swallowing, he took a deep breath and met her eyes directly, steeling himself. "I feel I owe you an apology for what happened with Manuel," he said, the words coming out a little more formally than he'd intended, although perhaps that wasn't a bad thing. "I understand he's a protégé of yours. I would not have deliberately put him into any danger. I just thought that it was best--" He stopped, gritting his teeth as his voice wavered. Two days later, and he still wanted to hide in the fucking closet every time he thought too hard about it. "I was empathically conditioned as part of a government black ops unit," he went on, forcing the words out a little more quickly. "A comment Manuel made on the journals--alarmed me, and I thought it would be best to explain to him why. I believed I could keep myself under control. Unfortunately, I was mistaken, and in the process of trying to--calm me down Manuel tripped some sort of trigger I didn't know existed."

Emma watched Nathan with interest. It seemed strange to see a man like this, a man who could clearly handle himself and had been given plenty of opportunity to do so, so profoundly effected by Manuel's powers. She knew the boy could be terrifying, not least because he hadn't yet formed an appreciation for what was considered appropriate and what was considered violation.

"I doubt it was entirely your fault," she said plainly. "Manuel is a difficult case, and frankly, he could use a few short sharp shocks like that one. He'll learn from this. I'll make sure of it."

Nathan took another deep, unsteady breath, breaking eye contact. "Still. I feel rather idiotic about it. I'll be more careful in future, I assure you." He hesitated for a moment, but then forced himself to continue. Better to get it all out at once. "One of the students--Rahne, has taken it upon herself to play go-between. Manuel apparently hasn't been scared off by the fact that he couldn't stop me from ripping the room apart around him. He would like to consult with me further about my experiences with other empaths. Rahne claims he's quite determined to know what I know." Nathan stopped again, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment and wrestling for composure. "I'm--not unwilling to share what I know - which is quite a bit, incidentally - with him, but I'm not sure I can handle doing it in person," he said, looking back at her. She was sitting quietly, her eyes intent as she listened. "I don't think any of us want him poking around in my head again. My empathic conditioning is very extensive--it was done over the course of several years. I didn't even know that trigger was there, like I said. It's clearly some measure designed to keep me from being coopted by a hostile empath. There's no telling what else is buried in my mind, waiting for Mr. de la Rocha if he takes it upon himself to go exploring."

"Mr de la Rocha needs to be told that you're not a science project," Emma said, glancing across at the night sky through Moira's window. She found Manuel very frustrating at times.

"We can help you both, Mr Dayspring, but if you tell Manuel about what other empaths have been able to do to you, there's a danger that he'll see it as a tutorial in how to be a shit. He doesn't need that. His best interests do not lie in learning how to be a powerful and unscrupulous empath, but in learning how to be an intelligent and generous one. You could talk to him directly in the psi-damp lab, but whatever you say to him, I would like to know about it, and ideally I would like to be there to hear it. I can't have my work with him undone. You understand?" Her tone brooked no misunderstanding.

"Of course," Nathan said, unable to keep the sudden, bizarre quiver of mirth out of his voice. "I hope I didn't give you the impression that I actually liked the idea of having another conversation with the young man." He took a deeper breath, more steadily this time, and allowed himself to relax a little. "I suppose I was thinking defensively," he said, a bit heavily. "Give him what he wants and maybe he won't feel obligated to take it. Hell, to be perfectly honest, I haven't been thinking clearly since it happened."

"Then take your time," Emma replied. "Recover. Manuel can wait. If he bothers you, tell him that you're under orders from both Moira and myself to avoid any psionic agitants, and if he has a problem with that, he can raise it with me. I expect he'll take great offense at being labelled an agitant, and come and see me directly to spit and bluster about the honor of the de la Rocha family name, which, between you and me, lies somewhere between Borgia and Kennedy when it comes to respectability."

The laugh did slip out, this time. Nathan rubbed at his eyes as his vision blurred, something it had been doing with a little more frequency since he'd knocked himself out in an effort not to rip Manuel limb from limb. Moira had diagnosed a mild concussion, but mild was bad enough, considering the state his head was already in. "Good advice," he said wearily. "Thank you."

Emma smiled as kindly as she could manage. "My pleasure. Now, I'm afraid I must go and find something to eat. You're welcome to join me, of course, but I don't want to break curfew on your self-imposed exile here."

He looked up at her, unable to help a quick, sardonic smile at the relatively gentle, if unmistakable jab. "Picked up on that, did you?" he asked. "I don't think I'm ready to emerge from hiding just yet, Ms. Frost, but thank you for the offer. I'll take it you up on it once I've figured out what more I know that can be of use to you and Shinobi."

"Well, then." Emma set down her water glass on the edge of Moira's desk and rose to her feet. "It's been lovely to meet you at last, Mr Dayspring. I do hope to see a lot more of you in future." She offered her hand again. "And make no mistake, I am in your debt."

Nathan shook her hand. "It's been good to meet you as well, Ms. Frost," he said, and was slightly surprised that he meant it, despite the awkward discussion of Manuel. "And believe me," he said, that sardonic smile coming back of its own accord, "once I get my head straightened out I'd be delighted to offer you a nice, healthy discount if you want me to blow up something of Shaw's."

"I'm always in the market for an offer like that, Mr Dayspring," she said with a sly wink. Without another word, she opened the door and stepped back into the corridor, then offered up one last amused smile before closing the door between them.