LOG: Manuel, Marie, and Shinobi - Suicide Watch

[x-empath.livejournal.com]

Who: Manuel, Marie, and Shinobi
Where: Manuel's Room
When: Wednesday, March 24th, around 7PM or so.
What Happens: After Manuel's talk with Angelo, he locks himself in his room to relive the misery of the asylum over and over again.



Seeing Angelo settled talking to Shinobi and having put away her laundry, Marie heads down to Manuel's room to check on him. She'd have gone earlier but his post was fairly emphatic about not wanting to talk. Still, she had promised she'd check in when she was back, so it isn't just interfering. She knocks on his door when she gets there and calls his name. "Manuel?"

Manuel's voice floats out of his room from behind his locked door. ~Go away~ he said in Castillian.

She knows the tone and even if she didn't know enough Spanish it would be no trouble to figure it out. "It's Marie and I'm not going away until I see you."

~You'll be there for a long time, then. I am not coming out. Ever.~ he says, still in Castillian. "Please, go away." he adds, this time in extremely heavily-accented English.

"I'm worried about you." She leans her head on the door wearily. "Manny, let me in. We don't have to talk, just let me get a look at you and see if anyone bothered to make sure you ate while I was away."

"I don't want to eat. I don't want to open the door. I just want to die away from everyone." he says, his voice sounding a little stronger - like he had his head pressed against the other side of the door.

Marie closes her eyes, wishing she had some way to comfort the young man on the other side of the door, something that would work. "Manny, if you truly wanted to do that, you wouldn't be locked in your room where someone could just go get the key and haul you out, honey. I told Shinobi I'd see if you were okay. He's worried too."

A sound that could only be a choked sob comes from behind the closed door. "Are you bringing me that Mexican's balls on a plate?" he asks, sounding like the prospect would cheer him immensely.

Marie laughs, and a wave of affection for him washes over her. "God, you're impossible, Manny. No, you cannot have any of Angelo's bits, no matter how mad at him you are, and he can't have any of yours." She presses her hands against the door, as though she could reach through like Kitty.

"He blamed me for the asylum. For Bobby bringing it all back to me when he was checking out my ass. And there's nothing I can do, no place to hide..." he sobs before breaking down completely. "God, I can't stand it anymore."

"Oh. Manny... don't make me take this door off the hinges. Please." Marie strikes the door with the flat of one hand, gently. "We can work this out. I know we can."

There is no answer for what seems like an eternity, then the doorknob to his room twitches and the lock clicks. But the door does not open.

Marie pushes the door open slowly, just enough to wiggle inside.

Manuel is curled into a ball on his bed, and by the smell he's lost the contents of his stomach somewhere in the room. He's unkempt and unshaven, and generally looks like Hell warmed over.

"Oh, for the love of Christ, Manny." Marie closes the door behind her and looks around for something to clean up with as she comes over to the bed. "You're a wreck. I'm... I think I might need someone to help me out here." She sits down beside him and reaches out slowly to put her hand on his back.

Manuel flinches violently from the physical contact. "Don't touch me. I'm bad. I was made to enjoy it, and that makes me Bad." he mumbles, half in English, half in Castillian. His one arm is sticking out - the arm with the empathic filter on it. Looks like he vomited on it.

"Honey, you are not bad," Marie says firmly. She grabs a crumpled t-shirt from the floor and starts cleaning him up. "You're a hell of a mess, but you are not bad. We need to get you clean. And you need help. I'm done watching you suffer like this."

Manuel shakes his head. "No, I hurt Bobby. Made him feel bad. Brought back painful feelings. My fault. Mustn't make anyone feel bad. Only Manuel gets to feel bad. Bad Manuel. Bad." he mutters.

"No, that's not true. You and Bobby had an accident." Marie's tone is that of a mother talking to a child. She reaches in her pocket for her phone and pages Moira with an urgency code, then sets the phone aside. "You didn't mean it. Sometimes things happen." She pulls a half-full bottle of spring water toward her with one foot, then picks it up and opens it. With that and another t-shirt, this time from the chair, she keeps cleaning Manuel up as best she can.

Manuel shakes his head again. "No, Angelo was right. He hates me. I mustn't protect myself like I did. Bad Manuel. Have to learn to block them all out. To not feel."

"Honey." Marie moves him gently, easily, so she can see his face. "That is not true. You need to learn, but not that. Can we get you out of this awful shirt?" The phone is silent, so she pushes in another code.

Manuel sits up slowly, and peels the shirt off of himself. He's a mess - even skinnier than he usually is, his ribs jutting out prominently.

"Can you see how I feel right now?" Marie asks, helping him undress.

Manuel stares at her oddly, like he's envisioning her in the nude. "Kind of." he admits. "It's very fuzzy, and I do not see very well. And it's hard to think."

"We've got to get this fixed. We need to get you showered too, and fed, and..." Marie bites her lip and blinks back unexpected tears. "Manny, what am I going to do with you?"

Manuel looks straight into Rogue's eyes, and without batting an eyelash says "Take it all away from me?"

She doesn't flinch, wiping vomit off his cheek with a clean spot on the t-shirt in her hand. "For how long?"

Manuel still doesn't bat an eyelash or waver in the slightest. "Forever?"

Marie pushes his lank hair back from his face with one gloved hand. "Try a little longer," she says quietly. "Forever'll still be waiting for you tomorrow or the day after. You deserve to get a decent chance at living."

"Why? I've done such horrible things...." he moans, before letting his body flop back onto the bed.

"Because you have a chance to do things differently. As /you/, not as Empath, not as anyone's tool," she says gently. She pushes some other buttons on her phone and tosses it down again. "You're here, Manuel. You've made it this far. I know you're in Hell, but for some reason, I can't help wanting to pull you out, somehow."

"How do you deal with the guilt?" he whimpers. "I can't make it go away, and I can't hide anywhere."

"I used to cut myself," Marie says honestly, looking for a clean towel for him so she could direct him to the shower. "Now, I work at being a better person and at healing what I can, making up for things where I'm able. Where I can, I've tried to make amends. I can't go back. All I can do is go on."

Manny looks subdued at this answer, but he hasn't collapsed back into a boneless sack. "Guess I don't have a choice. You ... need to know what happened. To me, and to Bobby. Do you have a few minutes?"

"Yes, I do. Shinobi is on his way to help me get this cleaned up, do you want me to tell him to wait?" She's found two towels and puts them down on the bed, picking up her phone in the other hand.

Manuel takes a deep breath and looks like he's going to sick up again before nodding once. "No, he should hear it as well, as he was there for the ... thing ... with Bobby. Unconsciously, he's playing with the dampener on his wrist, rotating it around his arm as much as he can, first one way and then the other.

"Okay." Marie grabs the wastebasket from under the desk and puts it by him. "If you're going to throw up, do it there, honey."

Shinobi's footsteps can be heard well before he gets to the door, apparently having run like hell as soon as he got the page. He pokes his head though the door - literally - and can't suppress a very quiet "Jesus Christ," as he steps in through the door and hurries his way towards the pair.

"Hey, S," Marie says quietly. "Manny wants to talk to us and then I thought you could give him a hand getting clean while I pick up in here."

Shinobi stops on a dime at the flinch, looking a little lost before nodding slightly to Marie. "If he wants the help, I'll give it," he nods, looking to the other boy with a worried frown.

Manuel takes a deep breath. "Do either of you know anything about where I was before I came here?" he asks, voice absolutely stone-cold dead and flat.

Marie shakes her head. "Not a lot, honey."

"A bit," Shinobi admits, casting a look down to his shoes and hazarding a very small step forward.

"I will explain. This is not easy for me. I was living on the streets from when I left home at fourteen to ... when I was seventeen or so." He takes a deep breath, and then continues. "At that point, I was arrested, prosecuted, convicted, declared to be insane, and sentences to life in a hospital for the insane."

Marie continues collecting things from the floor, sorting laundry and garbage. "Okay." She nods. "But you're not insane, so..."

Shinobi remains quiet, glancing between the bathroom door and the other two in the room, briefly frowning before moving to help Marie pick up the room a bit. Cleaning Manny up can wait 'til he's finished talking.

"In the hospital, I was removed from the other patients and put into a special group. All mutants, I think. We were being trained to break minds wide-open, to extract secrets. As an empath, my cooperation was essential."

Marie stops cleaning, her face paler than ever and her mouth tight, visibly furious. "Trained." She shakes her head and walks over to sit down on the bed near Manuel. "I see."

Shinobi, however, continues to clean, his mouth remaining tightly shut as he listens. He knows where the story goes.

"I was very good at it. But I wouldn't cooperate, not willingly. So they used drugs. Drugs to turn my power on, drugs to suppress it. They also used beatings, and starvation. There's a reason I am this thin." he says flatly.

Marie bites her lip and holds one hand out to Manuel if he wants the contact, not expecting him to accept it but making the offer nonetheless.

Silently, Shinobi eyes the rather full trash can before turning to pick his way towards the bathroom, to seek out another one to begin dumping trash into.

Manuel looks at the hand being offered to him, but he just can't bring himself to accept it. "They also discovered the mirror." he says quietly. "So instead of giving me the thorazine in IV format, or orally, they would remove my clothes, tie me down, and give me the drugs rectally. And, because of the mirror, I could not, could _not_, help but be aroused by it. They were, so I was."

Marie leaves her hand where it's just a small move for Manuel to seek any comfort he might find there. She looks over at Shinobi, eyes sad.

Shinobi isn't doing as good a job of keeping his emotions off his face as he might like. Mouth forming a tight line, he lugs the bathroom's trash can into the main room, dropping down into a crouch and returning to cleaning up, one forearm making a quick pass over his eyes as he works.

"I don't know how long this went on, but after a while, I started to believe what I was feeling. I didn't want to, but it was the only thing I was allowed to feel. And I would have, and did, absolutely anything they wanted me to if it meant that I could feel again, to get the drug-haze out of my mind."

"Oh, honey. You did nothing wrong there." Marie's voice is stable and soft, her attention divided between the two young men in the room with her.

It's fairly obvious that Shinobi wants to say something, but doesn't want to interrupt, instead opting to bite his tongue and continue cleaning. He glances towards Marie, offering a quick smile to let her know he's okay.

"It all came to an end when they tried to get me to break Emma. I still think, given time, that I could have cracked her. Instead, she offered me a way out."

Marie exhaled slowly, nodding. "And that's how you got to be with us."

Shinobi glances over his shoulder, pausing in his cleaning as he watches the pair.

"More or less, yes." he agrees with Marie. "Now, this all came back that day in the kitchen because when I walked in, I could feel Bobby's interest in me. Sexual interest." He takes a deep breath, and his hands clutch on his vomit pail, but he keeps his gorge down. "I am straight - I think. I honestly don't know anymore, because of the mirror. I think Bobby had something like what happened to me happen to him. He checked me out, I flashed back to what happened to me, he flashed back to what happened to him, and we got caught in a loop."

Marie closes her eyes and takes a moment to compose herself. "That wasn't your fault. You do realize that, don't you?"

"That what that was?" Shinobi mumbles to himself, blinking a couple of times before giving himself a mental shake and returning to his work.

"What made it worse is that he was aroused by the memory of his handling by his captors. I couldn't help but feel it." he says flatly, condemning himself for it.

“It was not your fault, or Bobby's," Marie reiterates firmly. "It was an accident and neither of you could help it. There's no question about that, Manuel. It was not your fault any more than Bobby coating the kitchen in ice was his fault."

"That's how rape works," Shinobi finally chimes in, frowning as he returns his attention to the pair. "Nobody can help what their body finds arousing, mate. Bobby can't, you can't, I can't. It's just the way the human body works, and why rape in any form is such a bloody sickening, traumatic thing."

Manuel shakes his head. "No. It was my fault. My projection, my memories, my weakness. Angelo has the right of it." he says. "And he believes it with all his heart, that I tortured Bobby for fun. Because I am Empath."

"That is utter bullshit, Manuel." Marie moves to where she can look in Manuel's eyes. "That's Angelo's problem if he believes that. I loved Bobby and I still do and if I thought for a moment that you did that to him on purpose, I would not trust myself in here with you and I would not be going to Charles as soon as I can to take a strip out of him for the state you're in. It was not your fault. Trust me."

"And you aren't Empath," Shinobi adds, pushing himself to his feet with a quiet grunt. "You're Manuel de la Rocha. Being an empath is only part of who you are. Not the whole package."

Manuel's eyes go wide at Marie's words. "Please, no! If I anger Charles, I will be blocked forever! I am trying, I am! I will do better, try harder, do whatever he wants me to. But do not do this, I beg of you."

"Anger him? No, Manuel, you won't anger him. Not if he's anything I think he is and if he's not... This is wrong. It's unacceptable. Your present state is not your fault. This is mad." Marie looks over at Shinobi for help.

"Xavier's being a thoughtless prick," Shinobi states bluntly, shoving his hands into his pockets as he looks towards the pair. "He knew the situation you were in before you got here, and he's making you go through it again. He's being a complete and utter obnoxious *prick*."

"There is more, but I do not think I am up to telling it right now." His knuckles on the trash basket are bone-white, and he lasts perhaps fifteen seconds before heaving the meager contents of his stomach into the trashcan.

Marie moves to rub Manuel's back gently while he's sick. "Shhh. We'll listen when you are. We'll get this worked out. You need to get clean and rest now."

"So I have been here, reliving the experience over and over again. I never forget a feeling, not even if I want to." Manuel says around convulsions of his stomach. "Do you think Angelo would be pleased to know this?"

Shinobi grimaces sympathetically as Manuel empties his stomach, slowly shaking his head and casting a look towards the door. "Angelo ... needs a reality check," he says after a moment's thought, frowning to himself. "He's being a bit of a prick, himself. It'll get dealt with."

Marie nodded and handed the towels to Shinobi with her free hand. "It'll be sorted. Meanwhile, you get cleaned up and I'll finish with the room. I've got to go for a while, if Shinobi can stay, but I'll be back tonight, Manuel."