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xp_logsWorried, Marie-Ange tries to read for Amanda and Angelo, gets one for Manuel instead, panics, runs to his room, and saves him from drowning. Frank also makes an apperance.
Monday was looking to be one total useless wreck of a day. Insomnia had plagued Marie-Ange all night, and she thought she might've gotten an hour of sleep around 3am, but she wasn't sure. More annoyingly, she thought, there had been no dreams, which meant the insomnia was for nothing. Which meant it was due to stress and worry, because Amanda and Angelo had been due to be home hours before, and she'd been the one to tell Angelo to go with Amanda in the first place, way back when they were in Brighton.
Now, she was sitting, bored out of her mind, in what looked to be another useless study period, for a class she couldn't study for, because it was Speech, and just how do you study for something like that anyway?
On instinct, or perhaps out of boredom, or perhaps just because it was becoming habit and routine, Marie-Ange removed her cards from their suede bag, and shuffled absently. Perhaps she could get a glimpse - a hint of what Amanda and Angelo were doing, -why- they were late, what was going to happen, anything.
She shut her eyes - no Ms. Frost to castigate her for napping in class, or appearing tired, no Manuel to make perverse comments about -why- she was up all night, no Angelo to worry over her. Automatically, she started laying down cards. A simple three-card spread, easy to interpret, easy to discard if the results needed to be reexamined.
Before she even finished, she knew the cards felt wrong. Too slick in her hands, like they were being placed too quickly, sliding through her fingertips. On opening her eyes, she frowned. ~The Fool? Reversed? What? Neither Amanda nor Angelo is innocent, though, perhaps... a new beginning? An ending, perhaps? That makes no sense, not with the seven of swords.. " She rubbed at the bridge of her nose in irritation and brushed the cards away, pushing them back into the deck.
Marie-Ange shut her eyes again, and tried to concentrate - to bring to mind the image she used in meditation. As it did before, the mirror-her was flat, two-dimensional like a card, or a stained-glass window. She counted in her head - in French, then English, then Latin, and then in Spanish, just for good measure. ~Angelo. Who is not here, and should be. Why? Why is he gone? Why is he not here in class, where he should be, looking bewildered and frustrated and glaring at Manuel when he thinks Ms. Frost isn't looking?~
She again shuffled the cards, taking three from the deck as her thoughts wandered and laying them down in the same simple arrangement as before. This time, the nagging feeling that the cards felt -wrong- was lessened, though it still felt distinctly odd, like she was bumping up against one of her images, like she was trying to read through cellophane.
Feeling more confidant this time, Marie-Ange opened her eyes, only to roll them in exasperation. ~Of course. I ask for Angelo, and I get Manuel making a change in his life.~ She scowled. The Ace of Swords, and Death, and The Tower. Well. If Manuel was going to have a change imposed on him, and a major one, she certainly wasn't going to tell him about it. He could muddle through his own problems by himself.
Roughly, she shuffled the cards back into her deck, and dealt again. Just feeling the cards move in her hands was relaxing, it let her concentrate on something other than the cockroach that was Manuel de la Rocha, and just why wouldn't he apologize to -her- anyway, when he had to Bobby, and Lorna. She sighed, and pulled the top three cards again, blinking in shock when she turned them over. The Ace of Swords, The Tower, Death.
She shook her head, and dealt again, laying three more cards on top of the first. As she turned the first over, she let the rest of the deck fall from her hand. ~The Ace? How on earth?" Marie-Ange stared in disbelief at the card she had just turned over, then moved to flip the next two. They were the same as before. The Tower, and Death.
For many long seconds, she did not know how to react. How could she have dealt those cards again, when she hadn't shuffled them back into the deck? Once her hands stopped trembling, she lifted up one of the cards, to find that underneath it was The Two of Wands, from the first reading.
Marie-Ange shook her head fiercely. It was probably symbolic. It had to be symbolic. .. It hadn't been symbolic when Nathan's heart stopped, she reminded herself. But this was Manuel, and she could just let it go, and let whatever was meant to happen, happen. It was certainly make some of her classes -easier-, and god knows, it would help everyone's stress levels, and really, shouldn't she be -not- trying the change the future, and if the cards said that, then she should just let it happen.
And before Marie-Ange knew it, she was at Manuel's door, not really aware that she had bolted from the Speech classroom, scattering her cards. She pounded on the door once before remembering that Manuel didn't -have- a lock.
"Manuel? Are you in here?" She called, loudly after opening the door.
From inside the room came only the sound of ... water? No music, which was unusual for Manuel. And a slight smell of ... something sickly-sweet.
Marie-Ange looked around the room wildly, then paused to catch whatever that noise was - water? Running water - which meant, the bathroom, and oh, holy hell, Manuel had gone and done something moronic like he'd said. She bolted for his bathroom, throwing the door open, then going pale and swallowing back bile at what she saw.
Manuel floated in the bathtub, a truly horrendous fractal burn pattern going up his left arm from the dampener all the way to his armpit. His expression was locked in one of absolute horror, and _his chest wasn't moving_. The sound of running water was the waves lapping over the sides of the tub to splash onto the floor.
Marie-Ange gaped, unable to move for a second, before she realized how still and quiet Manuel was, and then on reflex, heedless of the water soaking through the sleeves of her shirt, she pulled him upright and placed her hand on his neck. He had a pulse - she could barely feel it, and wasn't sure if that was to be expected or just because she was doing it wrong, but it was there. She took a deep breath, and bent to start CPR - the lessons from the Red X meetings coming awkwardly, and haltingly - in part simply due to the subject being Manuel. She counted in her head - ~un, deux, trois, quatre~, and pushed air into Manuel's lungs, trying to listen over the splashing water, and feel his pulse and desperately holding onto the churning in her stomach.
Manuel responded to Marie-Ange's valiant attempts at CPR by emptying the water in his lungs all over her. Once the coughing and gagging fit was done, he drew a ragged breath, but did not recover consciousness. The more frightening aspect, however, is that his eyes were glowing red beneath the cover of his closed eyelids.
Marie-Ange gritted her teeth, fighting against an urge to run and not stop until she was not here, not anywhere near Manuel, and possible not even in the same city as him. It wasn't half as hard as she thought it should be, and she simply refused to meet his eyes, her own fears preventing her from looking. She wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling him up, and out of the tub, and heaving him not-entirely-gently onto the bathroom rug, which was just as soaked as everything -else-, including at this point, her clothes.
She looked around frantically. Manuel was still practically a skeleton, but she wasn't entirely sure she could get him from his room to the infirmary, and while she was almost certain he hadn't broken anything - sitting up and vomiting nasty tub water on her tended to indicate a lack of broken -spine- at least, she didn't want to try to drag him through the school by his ankle. Even if was tempting.
Manuel flinched violently when Marie-Ange touched him, almost a convulsion, but after that reacted not at all to her dragging efforts. His eyes still burned red, even under his eyelids. Frank the lizard stared at Marie-Ange with cold unfeeling lizard eyes from his place on his desk. Stacked up next to Frank were several CDs, the jewel boxes open.
Marie-Ange left Manuel reluctantly, bolting over to the desk to scatter the CD's messily in an attempt to find something - anything - she could use to help get Manuel out of the room. One of the CD's caught her eye - familiar - something she had probably heard, or owned herself. She pulled it out, frowning at the cover. One of the louder-then-they-were-talented German bands, she vaguely recognized it as one her cousin was distressingly fond of - but more importantly, it had a drawing, and not photographs.
She concentrated, barely noticing the strain of making such a small image big enough to help her move Manuel over the throbbing pain in her skull. Next to her, a cartoonish black-and-white creature, some kind of vampiric cartoonish thing appeared, and at her direction, helped to lift Manuel off the floor.
Frank looked at the new creation and hissed silently before stepping down off the desk, onto Manuel's chair, then to the ground to curl up in the Warm Spot where Manuel's computer's power cords plugged into the wall.
Marie-Ange ignored the lizard. That, or she wasn't aware it was there, which was also just as possible. She let her construct hold Manuel vertical long enough to wrap a waterlogged towel around his waist - she might have had to see him undressed, but it did not mean that anyone else had to be traumatized - it also meant she didn't actually have to touch any parts of him she preferred to never think about again. Ever.
Towel firmly in place, bits covered, and Marie-Ange's stomach still rolling, she stood, one of Manuel's arms over her shoulder, the other over the 'shoulder' of the image she'd created, and slowly, they walked the unconscious empath out of the room, down the stairs, and to the infirmary.
Once Manuel was under the care of the doctors, Marie-Ange let herself be ill - once in a trashcan in the infirmary, once in the bathroom, and once in the trashcan in her room while she changed out of her soaked clothes and into ones that were warm, dry, and comfortable. Then, headache overtaking her senses, and unable to control the urge to just curl into a ball and cry, she let herself crawl into her blankets and pull a pillow over her head.
Monday was looking to be one total useless wreck of a day. Insomnia had plagued Marie-Ange all night, and she thought she might've gotten an hour of sleep around 3am, but she wasn't sure. More annoyingly, she thought, there had been no dreams, which meant the insomnia was for nothing. Which meant it was due to stress and worry, because Amanda and Angelo had been due to be home hours before, and she'd been the one to tell Angelo to go with Amanda in the first place, way back when they were in Brighton.
Now, she was sitting, bored out of her mind, in what looked to be another useless study period, for a class she couldn't study for, because it was Speech, and just how do you study for something like that anyway?
On instinct, or perhaps out of boredom, or perhaps just because it was becoming habit and routine, Marie-Ange removed her cards from their suede bag, and shuffled absently. Perhaps she could get a glimpse - a hint of what Amanda and Angelo were doing, -why- they were late, what was going to happen, anything.
She shut her eyes - no Ms. Frost to castigate her for napping in class, or appearing tired, no Manuel to make perverse comments about -why- she was up all night, no Angelo to worry over her. Automatically, she started laying down cards. A simple three-card spread, easy to interpret, easy to discard if the results needed to be reexamined.
Before she even finished, she knew the cards felt wrong. Too slick in her hands, like they were being placed too quickly, sliding through her fingertips. On opening her eyes, she frowned. ~The Fool? Reversed? What? Neither Amanda nor Angelo is innocent, though, perhaps... a new beginning? An ending, perhaps? That makes no sense, not with the seven of swords.. " She rubbed at the bridge of her nose in irritation and brushed the cards away, pushing them back into the deck.
Marie-Ange shut her eyes again, and tried to concentrate - to bring to mind the image she used in meditation. As it did before, the mirror-her was flat, two-dimensional like a card, or a stained-glass window. She counted in her head - in French, then English, then Latin, and then in Spanish, just for good measure. ~Angelo. Who is not here, and should be. Why? Why is he gone? Why is he not here in class, where he should be, looking bewildered and frustrated and glaring at Manuel when he thinks Ms. Frost isn't looking?~
She again shuffled the cards, taking three from the deck as her thoughts wandered and laying them down in the same simple arrangement as before. This time, the nagging feeling that the cards felt -wrong- was lessened, though it still felt distinctly odd, like she was bumping up against one of her images, like she was trying to read through cellophane.
Feeling more confidant this time, Marie-Ange opened her eyes, only to roll them in exasperation. ~Of course. I ask for Angelo, and I get Manuel making a change in his life.~ She scowled. The Ace of Swords, and Death, and The Tower. Well. If Manuel was going to have a change imposed on him, and a major one, she certainly wasn't going to tell him about it. He could muddle through his own problems by himself.
Roughly, she shuffled the cards back into her deck, and dealt again. Just feeling the cards move in her hands was relaxing, it let her concentrate on something other than the cockroach that was Manuel de la Rocha, and just why wouldn't he apologize to -her- anyway, when he had to Bobby, and Lorna. She sighed, and pulled the top three cards again, blinking in shock when she turned them over. The Ace of Swords, The Tower, Death.
She shook her head, and dealt again, laying three more cards on top of the first. As she turned the first over, she let the rest of the deck fall from her hand. ~The Ace? How on earth?" Marie-Ange stared in disbelief at the card she had just turned over, then moved to flip the next two. They were the same as before. The Tower, and Death.
For many long seconds, she did not know how to react. How could she have dealt those cards again, when she hadn't shuffled them back into the deck? Once her hands stopped trembling, she lifted up one of the cards, to find that underneath it was The Two of Wands, from the first reading.
Marie-Ange shook her head fiercely. It was probably symbolic. It had to be symbolic. .. It hadn't been symbolic when Nathan's heart stopped, she reminded herself. But this was Manuel, and she could just let it go, and let whatever was meant to happen, happen. It was certainly make some of her classes -easier-, and god knows, it would help everyone's stress levels, and really, shouldn't she be -not- trying the change the future, and if the cards said that, then she should just let it happen.
And before Marie-Ange knew it, she was at Manuel's door, not really aware that she had bolted from the Speech classroom, scattering her cards. She pounded on the door once before remembering that Manuel didn't -have- a lock.
"Manuel? Are you in here?" She called, loudly after opening the door.
From inside the room came only the sound of ... water? No music, which was unusual for Manuel. And a slight smell of ... something sickly-sweet.
Marie-Ange looked around the room wildly, then paused to catch whatever that noise was - water? Running water - which meant, the bathroom, and oh, holy hell, Manuel had gone and done something moronic like he'd said. She bolted for his bathroom, throwing the door open, then going pale and swallowing back bile at what she saw.
Manuel floated in the bathtub, a truly horrendous fractal burn pattern going up his left arm from the dampener all the way to his armpit. His expression was locked in one of absolute horror, and _his chest wasn't moving_. The sound of running water was the waves lapping over the sides of the tub to splash onto the floor.
Marie-Ange gaped, unable to move for a second, before she realized how still and quiet Manuel was, and then on reflex, heedless of the water soaking through the sleeves of her shirt, she pulled him upright and placed her hand on his neck. He had a pulse - she could barely feel it, and wasn't sure if that was to be expected or just because she was doing it wrong, but it was there. She took a deep breath, and bent to start CPR - the lessons from the Red X meetings coming awkwardly, and haltingly - in part simply due to the subject being Manuel. She counted in her head - ~un, deux, trois, quatre~, and pushed air into Manuel's lungs, trying to listen over the splashing water, and feel his pulse and desperately holding onto the churning in her stomach.
Manuel responded to Marie-Ange's valiant attempts at CPR by emptying the water in his lungs all over her. Once the coughing and gagging fit was done, he drew a ragged breath, but did not recover consciousness. The more frightening aspect, however, is that his eyes were glowing red beneath the cover of his closed eyelids.
Marie-Ange gritted her teeth, fighting against an urge to run and not stop until she was not here, not anywhere near Manuel, and possible not even in the same city as him. It wasn't half as hard as she thought it should be, and she simply refused to meet his eyes, her own fears preventing her from looking. She wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling him up, and out of the tub, and heaving him not-entirely-gently onto the bathroom rug, which was just as soaked as everything -else-, including at this point, her clothes.
She looked around frantically. Manuel was still practically a skeleton, but she wasn't entirely sure she could get him from his room to the infirmary, and while she was almost certain he hadn't broken anything - sitting up and vomiting nasty tub water on her tended to indicate a lack of broken -spine- at least, she didn't want to try to drag him through the school by his ankle. Even if was tempting.
Manuel flinched violently when Marie-Ange touched him, almost a convulsion, but after that reacted not at all to her dragging efforts. His eyes still burned red, even under his eyelids. Frank the lizard stared at Marie-Ange with cold unfeeling lizard eyes from his place on his desk. Stacked up next to Frank were several CDs, the jewel boxes open.
Marie-Ange left Manuel reluctantly, bolting over to the desk to scatter the CD's messily in an attempt to find something - anything - she could use to help get Manuel out of the room. One of the CD's caught her eye - familiar - something she had probably heard, or owned herself. She pulled it out, frowning at the cover. One of the louder-then-they-were-talented German bands, she vaguely recognized it as one her cousin was distressingly fond of - but more importantly, it had a drawing, and not photographs.
She concentrated, barely noticing the strain of making such a small image big enough to help her move Manuel over the throbbing pain in her skull. Next to her, a cartoonish black-and-white creature, some kind of vampiric cartoonish thing appeared, and at her direction, helped to lift Manuel off the floor.
Frank looked at the new creation and hissed silently before stepping down off the desk, onto Manuel's chair, then to the ground to curl up in the Warm Spot where Manuel's computer's power cords plugged into the wall.
Marie-Ange ignored the lizard. That, or she wasn't aware it was there, which was also just as possible. She let her construct hold Manuel vertical long enough to wrap a waterlogged towel around his waist - she might have had to see him undressed, but it did not mean that anyone else had to be traumatized - it also meant she didn't actually have to touch any parts of him she preferred to never think about again. Ever.
Towel firmly in place, bits covered, and Marie-Ange's stomach still rolling, she stood, one of Manuel's arms over her shoulder, the other over the 'shoulder' of the image she'd created, and slowly, they walked the unconscious empath out of the room, down the stairs, and to the infirmary.
Once Manuel was under the care of the doctors, Marie-Ange let herself be ill - once in a trashcan in the infirmary, once in the bathroom, and once in the trashcan in her room while she changed out of her soaked clothes and into ones that were warm, dry, and comfortable. Then, headache overtaking her senses, and unable to control the urge to just curl into a ball and cry, she let herself crawl into her blankets and pull a pillow over her head.
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