Marie-Ange, Manuel, Wendsday evening.

[x-tarot.livejournal.com]

Marie-Ange runs into Manuel in the kitchen. They talk - well, first, they both talk to Frank, because they are silly, and then they talk because Manuel is in a terribly good and open mood. Some reconciliation is made, though not a lot.



Manuel was sitting on the kitchen table, tearing into a ridiculously-large salad. Frank the Lizard was on the countertop next to Manuel's plate, with his snout stuck into his salad. Looks like they're both hungry, judging by the rate that the greenery is disappearing.

Marie-Ange's footsteps faltered only slightly as she noticed the occupants of the kitchen. However, hunger, and the need to find something with chocolate in it won out over her want to avoid Manuel. She raised an eyebrow briefly at the iguana, rapidly inhaling a large spinach leaf, then continued on to rummage through one of the cabinets, obviously looking for something specific in the jumble of containers.

Manuel, for his part, managed to completely ignore Marie-Ange's kaleidoscopic emotional state in favor of stopping his stomach from rumbling. "Well Frank, looks like we're on our own for this evening." he says to the lizard, who ignores him resoundingly. "Oh, now don't be getting like that. There are no girl-lizards here, and you got salad."

Marie-Ange nearly dropped the pair of cookie boxes she was holding at the sound of Manuel's voice. Then, she sighed, and shoved the boxes back into the cabinet roughly, and began looking through the contents of the next shelf up. "You are talking to the iguana. Of course, since obviously, you cannot be bothered to talk to the rest of us, you must talk to the lizard," she muttered quietly, and shifted around some more of the contents of the cabinet.

Manuel smirked at Frank. "Well, OK, _one_ girl-lizard." he says to the iguana. "But she won't want you. She likes skinny blondes."

Marie-Ange rolled her eyes. "What is that expression? I believe, that is the pot calling the tea kettle black?" She smirked, and folded her arms. "At least Doug -has- some weight on him," she added, still quite smug.

Manuel ignored Marie-Ange for the moment, still directing his conversation towards Frank the Iguana. "It's OK, try not to take it personally. She doesn't see that you're an iguana of wealth and taste."

Realizing that her end-goal of finding Doug's secret stash of those chocolate cookies with the peanut butter in (and she wasn't going to admit to liking those, ever.) was not going to be accomplished with her arms folded, Angie returned to her search, though not without the necessary returned banter. "The iguana and I had a rather long meeting already. He takes wonderful photos. I only object to his current choice of companions."

Manuel grinned at Frank. "Frank, you _dog_ you! Nude photos already? I'll bet you didn't even negotiate for a share of the residuals. Silly lizard. Was it worth it? Was it? Yeah, I think that it was. Somebody needed to be taken down a peg."

Marie-Ange just barely suppressed a snicker, before remembering that she was Still Mad at Manuel, then frowned and shoved aside a box of some kind of wheaty-looking cracker. Those cookies were -somewhere-. She knew it.

Manuel, still looking at Frank, said "Bottom drawer, right hand side, in the back. Blue plastic bin."

Marie-Ange blinked in surprise, then bent to look in the drawer that Manuel indicated. Sure enough, inside a plastic bin labeled "Onion Crackers." were the cookies, though not in their familiar red box. Angie made a small happy noise, then managed to remember her manners. "Merci." she said, quietly.

"D'accord." Manuel said to Frank, still not looking anywhere near Marie-Ange. "Well, Frank. hope you liked the salad. It was ... okay." Frank, in response, sneezed salt crystals all over Manuel and the plate of salad. "Aww, YUCK!" Manuel said, then goes to search for paper towels. Frank manages to look - amused?

Marie-Ange screwed up her face in silent agreement with Manuel's statement of disgust, then reached over, removed the roll of papertowels from the holder above the sink, and placed them on the table silently. "Frank, your table manners are lacking." she said, giving the iguana a very brief scritch behind the eyes. "You should not sneeze on people who feed you. It is rude."

Manuel took several paper towels, and cleaned the salt crystals off of himself and the counter. The salad went into the trash, the plate into the sink. "Bad lizard! BAD!" he said as he waggled his finger warningly at Frank.

Marie-Ange snickered once, and then turned back to dump her 'acquired' cookies onto a paper plate. She paused briefly, then picked up the pen and pad of notepaper usually used for the grocery list. "Doug. Owe you cookies. -JL" she wrote, in a very, very tidy block print, then folded the paper, and put it in the bin, and the bin back in the drawer."

Manuel looked at Frank for a second, then at the counter-top. "Well, Frank, guess there's no time like the present." He then spins around in his chair to face Marie-Ange. "You are angry with me." he tells her.

Marie-Ange hastily finished shutting the drawer with a loud -clunk- and turned around to face Manuel. "That is a mild way of stating it, yes." She scowled at him. "Though to be complete, you should add 'disgusted with' and 'confused' as well. "

Manuel makes a gesture in the air with one of his hands. "I am in an uncomfortable position. I am told I have you to thank for me not dying in that bathtub." His other hand begins to pet Frank intermittently.

Marie-Ange nodded. "Yes. You vomited on me. Again." She shut her eyes, and sighed. "I do not suppose you have an explanation for that at least? If you still refuse to explain the.. " She struggled to find a non-painful way to state it, and then decided that -all- the ways to refer to it were painful. "The other incident."

Manuel eyes his left wrist, and rolls back his shirt-sleeve to reveal the slender white bandage that covered his scar. "I will bear this for life, I am told." he says quietly. "I had settled into the bath when I felt my link forcibly reopened. The surprise, and the feelings I was getting through it, took me by surprise. I don't remember much after that - I think that the water and my flailings must have cracked the case on the dampener."

Marie-Ange sighed, then nodded, looking faintly ill. "You had nearly drowned when I found you, and there were... rather bad burns." She -had- flinched briefly at the mention of a link, but pushed aside her instinctive fears. "Your link.. to Amanda, yes?"

Manuel nods. "I am not linked to you. That was an overlap. A temporary condition, as I thank God for nightly." He idly scritches Frank between his eyeballs while he talks to Marie-Ange. There must be something soothing about it.

Marie-Ange visibly shuddered. "And you are still not willing to explain what that overlap did?" She made a fist, digging her fingernails into the palm of her hand. "I nearly suffocated Doug because of that 'overlap'!"

"I am not entirely sure. As far as I can tell, our powers - crossed. You expressed my empathy, and I got both of your lovely powers." he says softly, still scritching the lizard. "There is no punishment you can devise that will be worse than that. I have seen my future."

Marie-Ange shook her head slowly. "You.. refuse to talk about this for so many weeks, and now, you .. are willing... why?" She sighed, feeling more confused than she had in a while, and not half as angry as she wanted to be. Seeing someone nearly drown seemed to kill her ability to be truly angry at them.

"Dying does that to me." he says drolly. "It is something that Samson has been urging me to do for some time. Not only my death, but hers as well ..." he trails off.

Marie-Ange grew more confused. Much more. "Doctor Samson has been urging you to die? Or to talk about.. your death?" She rubbed her temple, feeling the beginning of a annoyingly familiar headache.

Manuel shook his head. "No, he's been urging me to talk about what I saw when I crossed you, and what happened, and why. The deaths were ... motivation, if you will."

"Wait." Marie-Ange held up a single finger. "Deaths?" She frowned. "Manuel, no one else -died-."

Manuel smiles thinly. "I felt Amanda die over the link." he admits. "Hence my rather non-involved state of late."

"Amanda is not dead." Marie-Ange stated plainly. "She was very much alive and whole when I saw her last, and she has posted to her journal since, I believe." She frowned. "Death is not in her future any time soon, Manuel. Nor in yours, at least, not anymore."

"I know that - now. For a time, I didn't. I couldn't feel her over the link. My mind blocked it subc ... subco ... without me willing it to be blocked." he says.

"Subconsciously." Marie-Ange said, absently, and went silent for quite some time, thinking over the implications of what Manuel had said. Amanda had died, he had felt it, and that was just more than Marie-Ange was willing to try to comprehend all at once. "And.. yet you still want this link?" She peered at him curiously.

Manuel lets out a deep breath, and nods. "I do. It does me a world of good, to know that there is someone who can _know_ me. She and I are surprisingly alike, despite the differences in our stations."

Marie-Ange smiled faintly. "If I did not know better, I would think you were in love, Manuel." She smirked. "And, yes, I know. You do not do love. Amanda said the same thing a week, or, perhaps two, ago." On a whim, she mentally prodded at the rough place in her mind where she could feel the beginnings of a headache starting to form. The prod brought back with it a vague impression of grass and sun and ... good red wine, oddly. She shrugged, then smirked more.

Manuel doesn't immediately snort or scoff at the idea, which is highly disturbing. "I do not know. Once, I would have laughed at the idea. Now? I am not so sure. I wish I could see my own palette - I would know then."

Marie-Ange raised an eyebrow. "You cannot use your power on yourself?" She made an odd little face, then pushed away the idea of even -considering- asking Everett to use his power. Ev was still a big chicken. Everett Thomas, king of the Chicken Men. "I had .. no idea you could not see your own emotions. I suppose I just assumed that you were -not- operating with as much confusion as the rest of us."

Manuel shakes his head. "I cannot use my power on myself, and I cannot see my own colors. Nor can I see my own threads. It is - frustrating - to me. And no one will teach me." he whines, an old, familiar complaint.

Marie-Ange shrugged briefly, then made a vague gesture with her hand at towards the suede bag on her belt. "No one will teach you -now-. At some point, when I am less angry with you for trying to break my head open, if you like, I will check if you like. The future is not set in stone, no matter what you saw when we shared powers."

Manuel pales at the idea. "No thank you." he says quickly. "My futures are rarely pleasant, and I'd just as soon not know. I already know too much."

Marie-Ange exhaled slowly. "Manuel, that I saw you die and then stopped it should be proof enough that any future can be changed." Her fingers twitched towards the bag once before she stopped them. "I changed things. Myself. Because of what I saw." She shrugged. "If you saw something that horrific, perhaps you can change it."

Manuel smiles thinly. "What I saw has already come true in some respects. If you really want to help me, have your cards tell me the best way to take revenge on that filthy fucking Mexican without riling the Powers That Be."

"Angelo?" Marie-Ange's eyebrows shot up. "Angelo is harmless, Manuel. Leave him be. I offered to help you see your future, not to help you hurt someone who spends more time than not in the infirmary." she chuckled dryly. "Doug is more harmful to you than Angelo."

"Doug? Feh. Only thing he can do is tank my grades, and I really don't care about those too much. Angelo - has earned my enmity. He is far from harmless." he rants.

Marie-Ange grinned unashamedly. "Doug has done at least one thing you could not." she said. "What on -earth- could Angelo have done to you to earn your hatred? He ... " she made a vague gesture. "He is .. possibly more broken than you are. You smile sometimes, and are -still- doing better than he is in Speech."

"Frank does better in Speech than Angelo does. And he forced some very unpleasant recollections upon me. I do not enjoy reliving my asylum experiences, and I especially do not like that he liked it that I did." Manuel seethes. "I owe him something lingering and terrible."

Marie-Ange held up one finger briefly. "First, I will give you two of my cookies if you bring Frank to Speech class tomorrow. Second, Angelo -liked- that you were miserable?" She scowled. "I think you are mistaken, or that you misinterpreted why he was pleased. I do not think Angelo is that malicious."

"He is." Manuel says flatly. "He also threatened to kill me, but I have grown sadly used to that. And what kind of cookies are those?"

"He threatened to -kill- you?" Marie-Ange gaped, and absently handed over one of the cookies, which she did not know the name of. "In a serious manner, or in the same manner that I used when I threatened to remove your testicles with a dull spoon?" She paused, then quickly added. "Which was not a serious manner at all. I have no intention of removing anyone's anybits with a spoon, nor do I want to see yours ever again."

Manuel can't help but pout a little at that. "You were quite enthusiastic to see them at one point. But I try not to take such things personally. And he was very serious. I can still See some, you know."

Marie-Ange rolled her eyes. "Then you can see just how much I do not want to see them right now." She said, -not- adding that she was trying to ignore just how much she would not mind seeing someone else's, because that was still scary, and there was no way he was ready, and she was fairly sure she wasn't ready. Damn, damn, damn Kwannon. "You should have told someone. Though, I believe he does not want to kill you now, since he would not help me throw you in the lake a few weeks ago." She said, slightly wryly.

Manuel merely smirks. "You're female, you'll change your mind in ten minutes or so. Ahhh, even I can see that one. You want him, but ... it's not as simple as you'd like. Lots of frustration there. I'd tell you I was sad for you, but I'd be lying. And I did tell someone. Several someones. As usual, no actions were taken. Hence my desire for my own retribution."

Marie-Ange sighed. "Yes, a lot of frustration. Rather a lot, and I still am not going to do anything about it. Nor do I want anyone to step in." She grimaced, disliking the subject, and being blunt about it, and the fact that it was a talk about that subject with Manuel. "I am still not helping you get revenge on Angelo. It is unnecessary." She shrugged. "Perhaps they did not think Angelo was serious."

Manuel smirks again. "Your loss." he grins, apparently reliving an entirely pleasant set of feelings in his own brain. "I honestly didn't think you would, but you might have surprised me. I will find something suitable." On the table, Frank hisses silently and climbs up the back of Manuel's chair to perch on his shoulder.

Marie-Ange frowned. "No, not really. Doug makes up for it in countless other ways." She watched Frank climb over Manuel for a moment, quite amused at the iguana. "Do you want copies of the pictures? He really -does- photograph very nicely."

Manuel just shakes his head. Clearly, the French girl has completely lost her mind. "I would like a copy of the pictures, now that you mention it." He then stares off into space for a second, and gets a truly fiendish grin on his face - one Marie-Ange has seen before. "And judging by what I just felt, someone just finished her eye-of-newt homework. C'mon, Frank, let's go."

Marie-Ange shook her head, shrugged, and as the beginnings of a peace offering, dug a small handful of cookies out of the container. "I -still- do not know what these are, but I did say you could have some if you brought him to class. And I will email you the pictures."

Manuel looked at the cookies, and shook his head. "Pass, thanks. I'm not all that fond of American cookies. But I'll bring Frank to class tomorrow anyway - as a favor. No recompense expected or accepted."

Marie-Ange nodded. "If nothing else, Ms. Frost's reaction should be worth it. " She put the cookies back into the container, not offended - she wasn't entirely fond of most American cookies herself, and was half convinced this particular fondness was All Doug's Fault.

Manuel smirked at Marie-Ange, and twitched his butt at her. "If you ever decide ... no, you won't, will you? A pity. But, still, if you decide that you are tired of waiting for him to sort himself out, you know where I am." And then he and Frank swept out of the kitchen to head upstairs.