xp_logs | Manuel, Nathan, Saturday afternoon: The Subtle Power of Allegory

Main hall at Xavier's. The halls are quiet, almost unnaturally so for this time of day. Manuel, clad all in black, is slumping from the front door back down the hall towards the kitchen.

Inside the kitchen, Nathan is sitting at the table, staring fixedly at a glass of water, the sandwich he had just made himself forgotten. The water is shimmering oddly, as if there are little lights moving in it, and he can't seem to look away.

After a couple of minutes, Manuel finally trudges into the kitchen. He stops dead when he sees Nathan, though, looking at him with real fear in his eyes.

Nathan is peripherally aware of someone standing in the doorway, a presence that feels oddly flat and wrongly so, as if it shouldn't be. "Don't worry," he murmurs, not looking up. "I'm just watching these--firefly things."

~Firefly things?~ Manuel says in Castillian. "That's a glass of water." he continues in English, edging around the room towards the sink and the cupboard with the glasses in them.

"Yeah, but the lights--" Nathan blinks and looks up, a flicker of--something puncturing the haze of the drugs as he sees who he's talking to. "You," he says a bit uncertainly. "I didn't--" He stops again, noticing the young man's body language. "You don't need to be--nervous, Manuel."

Manuel's got a metal collar around his neck, and LEDs on it are blinking on and off like a Christmas tree or a disco ball. He freezes, holding himself as still as he can, barely even daring to breathe. "Are you going to kill me now?"

Nathan laughs tiredly, even though he doesn't find the situation at all funny. "I wasn't trying to kill you the last time, kid. Thought Rahne explained that to you."

"Lorna and Marie-Ange want me dead. Thought you might as well." he says quietly, still trying not to move or breathe overmuch.

Nathan eyes the collar. The inhibitor, obviously. "Right now," he says slowly, "I don't think you're much of a threat to anyone." He looks back down at his glass of water, frowning as he sees that the lights have gone.

"Only to myself, apparently." he says quietly, daring for now to reach behind him for a tumbler.

Nathan snorts softly, lifting the glass of water and taking a sip. He's supposed to drink plenty of water, taking these drugs, but he hasn't been good about it so far. "Getting in touch with the self-pity, are we? Join the club."

Manuel fumbles the tumbler, and it goes crashing down to the floor, where it explodes into a large number of shards. ~Shit~ he says in Castillian as he nearly jumps out of his skin.

"Don't move," Nathan says with a sigh, telekinetically gathering the pieces. Some of the smaller pieces have been propelled to the other side of the kitchen, but he finds those too. For a moment, as he pulls the shards together, the glass is almost visible again, but he compacts them further, then floats the mass over to the garbage. "I guess you didn't hear me when I said you don't need to be nervous."

"I heard you. I don't believe you." he says, voice flat and dull. "You have your chance, and I wouldn't blame you for taking it. So do it, but please, if there's anything inside you, please just make it quick."

Nathan raises an eyebrow. "Don't be overdramatic," he says, more coldly than he intends. "I don't kill on a whim, boy." He smiles humorlessly. "I need this place, probably as much or more than you do, and I'm not giving it up just for the dubious pleasure of preemptively offing you. Especially since what happened was as much my fault as yours."

Manuel actually manages to perk up a little at this. "Your fault?" he asks, voice not quite as flat as it was.

"I initiated the conversation," Nathan says, drinking some more of his water and wondering why the hell he's bothering to explain himself. He really isn't in the mood. "I wasn't in control. It was bad strategy on my part."

Manuel ahs to himself, and (for once!) stays quiet. He does, however, turn his back on Nathan to find a glass that isn't shards in the trash.

"Although," Nathan says dryly, "why you kept trying to control me when every attempt you made resulted in more of the room ripping itself apart escapes me. You're not overburdened with common sense, are you?"

"I wanted you to stop. You're, what, a quarter-meter bigger than I am, and outmass me by a hundred kilos? Empathy's the only tool I had." he explains, voice once again going flat.

Nathan shakes his head. "Not much of a tactical sense at all," he murmurs. "Retreat didn't occur to you?"

"You're telekinetic, and there was things flying all through the air. Wasn't safe." he replies, voice now back to being flat and dead. "I took my chances where I was."

"What if I had been smaller, weaker than you?" Nathan asks, a flicker of curiosity making him pursue the topic. "Would you have kept trying with your empathy?"

"You're not." he says flatly by way of a response. "Your question doesn't make sense."

"I'm trying to understand what you were thinking," Nathan says with a faint smile. "I'm a soldier, Manuel. If I manage to survive something that nearly kills me, I want to understand what went wrong. All of it, not just my side."

"I am not a soldier." Manuel says, in the Understatement of the Millennium. "But if you were smaller and weaker than me, I will probably still use my empathy."

Nathan regards him for a long moment, thoughtfully. "Not trying to be arrogant here," he says, "but I'm probably as strong a telekinetic as you are an empath." He toys with the idea of trying to explain the virus to the kid, but decides against it. No need to muddy the waters, and he's not sure he wants to let Manuel know just how close a thing it had been. "But when I'm in the field, I carry conventional weapons. Guns, explosives, that sort of thing. I don't do it for show, either. More often than not, that's what I use." He swirls the water in his cup, half-hoping the lights will reappear. They were interesting. "You may not be a soldier, Manuel, but for people like us, life itself can do an awfully good impression of a battlefield, even on a perfectly ordinary day. And if there's one thing the years have taught me, it's that you don't reach for your gun when you can get out of a situation using your wits."

Manuel's face scrunches up in confusion. "I do not understand you. What are you talking about?"

Nathan sighs. "You have a brain, don't you?" he asks. "That thing above your ears. Is it really only an--engine for your empathy? I mean, you're walking, talking, at least partially absorbing my words. That suggests to me that you've got more at your disposal than the ability to manipulate other people's emotions."

"The collar makes it hard to think." Manuel says before thinking about what he just said. "Makes it hard to really care, too."

"But you can think," Nathan says, feeling a reluctant twist of sympathy. Manuel has his collar and he has his drugs. What a pair the two of them make. "Even with the collar, even though it's hard, you're capable of it. Which makes me wonder why, when you didn't have the collar on that day in my room, you didn't show much evidence of that ability." He studies Manuel for a moment, wondering if this is doing any good or if he's just wasting his time. "You didn't notice that I was calm? That command of yours worked, you know. Even when you kept pushing into my mind over and over again, trying to get me to obey, I couldn't feel any of the anger I should have been feeling. That alone should have been enough to tell you that something else was happening, if you had been paying attention."

"I was a little distracted trying not to die." Manuel says, voice flat. "And I got angry because you wouldn't do what I wanted you to."

"You panicked," Nathan murmurs. "You ran into something you couldn't control, and you panicked." He shakes his head again. "There were any number of ways out of that situation," he says, "but you kept hammering away with the one that wasn't working. If you don't see the point I'm trying to make, I give up."

"Well, I'm sorry for not living up to your mercenary expectations." he says. "I wasn't expecting for you to try to kill me."

It takes a great deal of self-control not to roll his eyes. "Right," Nathan mutters. "I'll save the tactical advice for when you're not feeling quite so sorry for yourself."

"I would count my life complete and well-spent if I never, ever needed any tactical advice from anyone like you." Manuel says sadly. "Unfortunately, it seems that I will."

The protective haze shrouding his thoughts fractures a little further under the surge of aggravation Manuel's words provoke. "Someone like me," Nathan says, raising an eyebrow. "You're a bit of a shit, aren't you?" Manuel doesn't answer, and Nathan goes on, an edge of real anger entering his voice. "I will say this one more time, de la Rocha. I did not try and kill you. People like you put something in my head, probably before you were born, that took away my ability to make my own choices in a situation like that. It took everything I had to keep my telekinesis from touching you. You could have walked up to me and hit me over the head yourself and I couldn't have done a thing to stop you."

Manuel smirks. "How dumb do you think I am, anyway? Nevermind, don't answer that. You wanted me to hit you so that you'd be perfectly justified in ripping me apart. Because you hate empaths, and I'm an empath."

The sign of life is, oddly, as encouraging as the words are vexing. "Sorry," Nathan says as mildly as he can. "Next time, I'll let the programming do what it wants and you won't have to strain your brain dealing with all these complicated questions afterwards."

"You call it programming. I call it what you want, but you won't admit it to yourself." he retorts. "There are no complicated questions in this matter. It's really very simple, even to me, even right now."

"We don't always get what we want," Nathan says, still keeping the conversational tone. "A lot of times, that's the way it should be. And before you say anything, Manuel, I'm not talking about altruism. I'm talking about right and wrong, and looking outside your own needs to see the bigger picture." He pauses. "But maybe I'm expecting too much of you. If you've been using your empathy as a crutch, that sort of distinction is probably beyond your understanding."

Manuel proves Nathan's point by staring at him blankly, without comprehension.

Nathan stares up at the ceiling for a long moment. "Never mind," he says heavily. "I'll be clearer. I have absolutely no desire to kill you, Manuel, which actually surprises me." He meets the young man's eyes, holding them for a long moment. "If I had to put a name to what I feel right now, it would be pity."

Manuel stared back at Nathan for a few moments, then dropped his own eyes. "I'm glad I can't see it." he says somewhat cryptically.