xp_logs | Amanda and Nathan, Monday evening (Reply)

Backdated to Monday evening. Nathan stops by Amanda's room to talk about what happened with Manuel.

He couldn't wait any longer. He had talked Moira into letting him go down to see Amanda, promising that he would go to her room and come right back, and 'shout' down the link if a vision tried to sideswipe him along the way. Managing the stairs was something of a feat - he couldn't see quite straight tonight for some reason - but he persevered stubbornly. He had to see her, Nathan thought almost feverishly. Had to explain to her why she couldn't do that again, ever...

Reaching Amanda's door, he knocked, only then wondering (and only distantly) if she would be alone. In the next moment, though, he decided he really didn't care. "Amanda," he called out hoarsely.

'Oh fuck.' As soon as the thought occurred, Amanda realised Nate possibly would have 'heard' it, and groaned. From what she'd seen on the journals, he was pretty pissed off, and she didn't really fancy being on the receiving end of a pretty pissed-off mercenary's lecture. Especially a stressed, pissed-off merc. But it wasn't as if she could hide under the bed. At least Paige and Jane were down getting food - they'd discovered Jane's problem with the kitchen hiding from her, and had resolved to take her there personally if they were there at rough meal times.

"Come in, Nate," she said. "Door's open." At least the headache had largely receeded, although a twinge now and then reminded her of just how much she'd overloaded her magic.

Nathan came in, lingering in the doorway for a moment and staring at her. She was sitting cross-legged on one of the beds, one of her enormous old books lying open in front of her. "Your headache must be better, if you're reading," he said, the words coming out gravelly. For some reason, faced with her, his urge to shout at her was dwindling. The concern was still there, the anger and the seething sense of urgency, but he didn't feel on the edge of snapping under it any longer. She was so young, he thought with a flash of real pain.

"Tryin' t' figure out what went wrong with the spell," she said, closing the book. She was still in her sleepwear - a pair of men's pyjama pants and a too-large white t-shirt she'd 'borrowed' from Manuel and forgotten to return. "The headache's gettin' there - one of the hazards of usin' yerself t' channel unnatural forces is yer brain tryin' to crawl out yer ears on occasion. Ain't as bad as it was after that demon dimension - I was seein' double an' havin' nosebleeds for almost a week." Her tone held a note of bravado - see? I'm fine, nothing to stress about - but the paleness of her face and the dark circles under her eyes gave her away.

Nathan shook his head. "I'm sorry I snarled at you in your journal," he said heavily. "I... misunderstood, I know that. I was just... I don't know how I heard you in the first place, Amanda, and you were in so much pain..."

Her _expression softened a little, although she was enough of a teenager to want to hold onto her huffiness just a little longer. "Sit down before you fall down," she said, nodding at her desk chair. "Last thing I need is Moira blamin' me for makin' you worse." A thought occurred to her. "I didn't, did I? Make you worse? I didn't even think, all I knew was we needed help an' you were the only one I could think of that might hear me."

"You didn't make me worse," Nathan said with a sigh, going over and sitting down gratefully. "You woke me up, yes, but you're not responsible for the fact that I was muddle-headed from yet another 'Flatliners' experience and leapt to conclusions."

"Another..." Amanda looked confused at the reference, but then comprehension dawned. "Again? Yer heart stopped again? Fuck, Nate, you shouldn't be down here talkin' t' me, you should be restin'." Amanda looked ready to hop up and drag him back to Moira's suite by force, if necessary. The sudden worry stirred up the headache again, and she winced, rubbing her forehead. "Ow."

"Stay put, kiddo," he said as wryly as he could. "And I'll have you know, this is the first time my heart actually stopped. Last time, I just stopped breathing." She didn't look like she found the distinction at all comforting. "As for being down here talking to you... I couldn't not," he went on, more softly. "You scared the shit out of me."

"Weren't exactly a barrel of monkeys for me, neither," she muttered, looking down and fiddling with the leather binding of the book in front of her. 'Healinge Fpellf and Charmf' the cover read. "I'm really sorry, Nate, last thing I wanted t' do was hurt anyone. I thought I was helpin' - I could see the pain he was in, from the link bein' broken, an' I thought maybe if I fixed it, I wouldn't feel so bad 'bout it happenin' in the first place." She looked up. "After it worked so well for you, I thought maybe it would work for him."

"That's usually when you fuck yourself up," Nathan said, not without sympathy. "Trying to help someone. One of the real ironies of life."

"Someone could have mentioned that before I went on this self-improvement kick," she replied wryly. Realising she was stating to pick bits off the book binding, she folded her hands back in her lap, only to have one creep up and start playing with Romany's pendant. "I ain't never had anythin' like that happen before - even when Manny an' me was linked, I never heard him in me head like that. An' I could understand what he was sayin', even in Spanish. It was right weird."

Nathan listened to her, feeling cold inside. "It sounds like you overlapped," he said very quietly. "Remember what I warned you about the last time we talked about links?"

Amanda nodded, biting her lip. "I thought, sinceI wasn't tryin' t' make a link it'd be all right. I've done that spell dozens of times an' never had anythin' close t' that happenin'. Then again, I ain't ever had a link with nobody before." She sighed and rubbed fretfully at her head. "Most I can tell from this, is healin' is a transfer of energy, between the caster an' the patient. Guess that was close enough for Manny's power t' try an' latch on."

"You just... have to be careful," Nathan said. "I'll talk to Manuel. There are things he can do, to... manage." He tried vainly to smile. "It's not a catastrophe, Amanda, but it is a problem. You just have to learn how to deal with it, to--" Someone was growling in his mind, spitting curses, and Nathan winced, hand going to his head. "It'll be a little easier for you," he said. "He has to--" Roaring, hundreds, thousands of voices shouting some kind of battle cry in unison.

"Nate?" Amanda leaned forward as he swayed and grabbed at his head. "Nate, you all right?" He didn't appear to hear her, muttering under his breath in a fluid language she'd never heard before. "Bloody fuckin' Christ." A vision, it had to be. And here she was without her magic. If this went the way of the most recent ones... She jumped off the bed, lunging for the phone and punching in Moira's beeper number. "Doc? 'S Amanda. Get your arse t' room 201 _now_." Dropping the phone, the girl crossed to Nate. She grabbed his hand, remembering how it had helped him focus before. "Hang on, Nate, stay with me 'ere. I ain't exactly runnin' on all cylinders at the mo'," she said.

Nathan shuddered, surfacing partway from the vision asher alarmed thoughts washed against his. "Keep--keep talking to me," he gritted out, even as he repeated a mantra to himself. *Me.. Nathan... I'm Nathan...*

Amanda wasn't a psi, but she had always been a fast learner. Combining everything she knew from being in Manuel's company more than almost anyone else in the mansion, and what she'd tried last night, she projected calm/strength/reassurance at him as hard as she could. "'M right here, an' so are you, Nate. Yer in me room, an' I got t' say, you ain't at good at givin' someone a bollockin' as Pete. He's scarier than you," she said, saying whatever came to mind. Her head pounded again with the effort, but she held on, both physically and mentally. "Moira'll be on her way, quick as a blink, an' you don't want her findin' you all dead now, do you?"

"No," he muttered, almost desperately. He didn't want that. It scared her so badly, and he wasn't really liking the whole cardiac arrest thing, either. "And... you don't know me well enough t-to say I'm not as scary as Pete." He had to force the words out, but he kept laboring, struggling to concentrate on her instead of the battle brewing inside his mind. "Ask him about... Istanbul, sometime..."

"You tell me now," she said, gripping his hands tighter. "C'mon Nate, focus. What happened in Istanbul?" She guessed that getting him to remember his own past was the best way to stop him getting swept off into the vision fully. "That way I can compare who's the best liar."

"Job... ran into him on a job, we were both going after the same place..." The voices were softening as he concentrated, the images fading, and he was suddenly fully conscious of how tightly she was squeezing his hands. "You--actually probably n-need to be--of age to hear this story," he said, managing a wan smile.

"There you go again, gettin' all fuddy-duddy on me," she said, mock-pouting. She eased her grip on his hands, but didn't let go, looking up at him intently from where she was kneeling on the floor beside his chair. "You back with me?"

"I--think. Most of the way, at least." He concentrated on breathing deeply for a moment, not sure just how he had managed to pull out of that vision. He and Charles hadn't done all that much work today, to account for that kind of progress. "You'll make your headacheworse," he murmured, only now becoming aware of how forcefully she was projecting.

Amanda made a good show of shrugging that off. "Ain't the worst I've had, an' I've got that willowbark tea, remember?" She winced as she pushed herself back upright, however, pausing to press her hands against her temples. "Ow. Fuck."

"Quite a pair we make," he said with a sigh, leaning back in the chair and sending a reassurance along the link to Moira as he sensed her coming closer, in a hurry.

"That we do," the girl replied, with a grin. "Did I do good?"

"Yeah," Nathan murmured, rubbing at his own temples, but feeling the smile flicker across his face again as he watched her. The vision had very neatly changed the subject of conversation, he reflected. But maybe, just this once, he could let it.