xp_logs | LOG: Manuel and Nathan - Revenge is A Dish Best Served Not At All

Who: Nathan Dayspring, Manuel de la Rocha
Where: Commons rooms
When: early Thursday evening.
What Happens: They talk about the specifics and the nature of revenge.

--

Manuel was, in a phrase, Not Happy. It showed in the way the muscles in his neck tensed and relaxed rhythmically, it showed in the way his grip on his iPod was white-knuckled, and judging by the volume and tone of the music coming from his earbuds, it showed in what he was choosing to listen to. Even his foot got into the act, tapping rhythmically against the floor in time to the music.

Nathan stood in the doorway, watching Manuel for a moment. It had been supremely easy to follow the trail of his agitated thoughts, even with the pain medication fogging up his mind. Narrowing his eyes, he reached out telekinetically and shut off the iPod.

Manuel looked at his iPod, then swore feelingly in Castillian. Then he looked around the room. "What do -you- want?" he asked snippishly.

"The dubious pleasure of your company, actually." Oh, yes. This was exactly what he had been afraid would happen if he let Moira talk him into taking any of those damned pills. If he made it out of this conversation without wrecking the situation completely, it would be a miracle. He sighted on an empty chair and made his way over there carefully. His side didn't hurt quite as much, but his equilibrium was definitely a little off. "I told you I was going to come looking for you, didn't I?"

"You mentioned something like that yes. Look, maybe this isn't the best time. I'm really not in the mood for anything you so obviously want to say." he hissed. "Now quit fucking with my iPod and _go away_. Catch me another day, when I can at least try to be civil."

"I've seen you when you're trying to be civil. There's no discernible difference," Nathan said, keeping the iPod off. "And I don't give a flying fuck about what kind of mood you're in." His eyes narrowed as he regarded the obviously irritated young man. "What the hell is it with you and Angelo?"

Manuel smirked. "It's very simple. I want him to suffer. I want him to feel anguish neverending. I want to repay him for what he did to me. It is a very simple equation. Humiliation for humiliation, pain for pain. But since I cannot move openly, I amuse myself in other ways."

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "You do a very good imitation of a sociopath. You know that, right?" He went on, deliberately shifting into a contemptuous tone. It wasn't that much of a stretch. "What did he do, spit in your Cheerios? Look the wrong way at your girl?"

Manuel smirked again. "There is that, but really, he just took advantage of an eidetic emotional memory to make me relive my experiences in the asylum. Worse, he was glad it happened. He's also threatened my life, and I never take that lightly. He is also entirely too close to Amanda for me to be happy. He's probably got any number of filthy diseases. His kind usually does."

Nathan had opened his mouth to respond to the first item, closed it again at the second, shaken his head at the third, and couldn't help a glower at the fourth. "So you clearly have issues," he said as dryly as he could. "But 'anguish neverending'? Melodramatic much, boy?"

Manuel shrugged. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. I owe him a very bad turn for what he did to me."

"And you're very big on paying your debts, aren't you?" Nathan said, his eyes narrowing a little further. "Your sense of honor, such as it is, is very important to you."

Manuel nodded. "Of course it is. It is what separates me from them, ultimately." He then frowns at Nathan. "I can see where this is going - you're going to cast aspersions on de la Rocha honor, call me an infantile child, mock me for standing up for myself, and then insist that I play nice and let the insult go unavenged. Tell me, am I close?"

"I'm still debating, actually," Nathan said easily. "But if it's any consolation, I wasn't actually planning to cast aspersions on your sense of honor. I may not agree with some of your underlying preconceptions, but you're at least consistent. Which is more than I can say for most people."

Manuel smirked again, and bowed to Nathan from the waist. "You do me credit, sirrah." he said with a flourish.

"As for calling you an infantile child... actually, no again. You're not a child by any definition, and 'infantile' is not really an appropriate description for the behavioural patterns that get you into so much shit. 'Adolescent', maybe, but that's sort of redundant." Nathan eyed him for a moment. "As for letting the insult go unavenged... I'm still thinking."

"You surprise me yet again. You should get stabbed more often, it makes you most biddable." he says, without a trace of irony. "Or should I thank your doctor?"

"It's probably the pain medication, so yes, thank Moira," Nathan said carelessly, staring at Manuel. The room was tilting very slightly around him, even though he was safely in a sitting position. "We ought to shut the two of you in a room and let you have at it," he said after a moment, almost absently. "Get all of it out of your system... worked back at Mistra."

"I would like nothing finer - but you'd either have to put a collar around his neck or take this dampener off of me to make it a fair contest." he said, not reacting to the name Mistra at all.

Nathan gave him a quizzical look. "Maybe the former," he said, not entirely sure why he was discussing this in the first place. "But if you took the dampener off it couldn't be a fair fight."

Manuel smirked. "Yes, a pity he had to cross swords with an empath, with his mutation being physical." Not for the first time or the last, he cursed the filter, cursed Xavier, and cursed himself for getting into such a state that filtering was a necessity - all within the privacy (ha!) of his own mind.

"I love your priorities," Nathan said, slouching in the chair. It was going to be a pain in the ass to get back upstairs, he realized, and Moira was probably going to shout at him for not staying in bed. "Blame the inanimate object, then the man who called you on the carpet for being a loose cannon, and only then yourself for the lack of self-control."

Manuel cursed inside his head _again_ for forgetting that Nathan was a telepath, albeit a weak one. He strengthened his shields as best he knew how, to give himself more privacy. "The filter is a symbol of my weakness, my shame. Xavier implemented it, and I allowed it to happen in the first place."

Nathan felt the younger man's shields solidify. Not that he'd been probing in the first place, of course. He had spent quite enough time inside Manuel's head. "Can I ask you a question and get an honest answer?" he asked a bit absently.

Manuel stopped to think about it for a second, then nodded. "I usually answer honestly. Without my power, I am not a very good liar."

Nathan nodded slowly. Made sense. "Okay. Why do you think I helped you and Amanda with the link?"

Manuel stopped to think for a couple of very long moments. "I'm really not sure. Probably because you like Amanda. I know you don't like me."

"Amanda... could have coped," Nathan said, thoughts spinning disjointedly through his mind. He'd had a better idea of what he had wanted to say to Manuel this morning. "Would've taken a while, and maybe she would never really have healed completely, but she wouldn't have suffered like you. Not a psi and all." He paused to rub briefly at his eyes, then focused on Manuel. There; better. "But either way. How does it fit in your safety and sex dichotomy?"

Manuel hrmmed at Nathan. "Safety, mostly. Your own emotional safety, and hers. You care for her, I think, if I'm seeing that rightly. You tell me it's not for sex, and I don't see any lust for her in your colors, so either you're an accomplished liar or you're actually sincere."

"I don't actually lie well either," Nathan said with a limp wave. "Not to other psis, at least. The headblind I can fool completely."

"I'm no psi, not like this." Manuel complained. "I'm barely a mutant at this rate. May as well go stretch my skin or fork my tongue or do something equally as useless."

Nathan let his head sag back against the back of the chair for a moment as he stared at the dampener. "Why do you still have that on?" he asked. "After all this time..."

Manuel leaned back in his own chair and exhaled deeply. "Because it's too strong. I can't handle the input, really, so I have to start changing people around me to protect myself. And that didn't work out so well, really."

Focus, Nathan told himself, squeezing the bridge of his nose for a moment. "Know you probably don't want to hear this," he muttered, "but I know. Well, not about the changing people thing. About it being too strong... I have to be careful. About losing control. Otherwise..." He made another helpless gesture. "Craters and glass trees."

"See, craters and glass trees, I am led to believe, are acceptable. Emotional domination to make the feelings STOP and to carve out some semblance of one's own life is _not_ acceptable. I am being punished for picking the wrong way to try to develop my sense of Self at the expense of Others." The capital letters are clearly audible as he speaks.

Nathan gave him a long, thoughtful look. "And if it was a choice between you and Amanda?"

"Then as sad as that would make me, I have to choose me." He looked profoundly disturbed by this thought. "I have spent too long under the thumb of someone else. Now that I am developing a self, I won't let that Self be taken away. By anyone."

"But if you chose to... risk your self, for the sake of someone else, isn't that giving something, rather than having it taken away?"

"The choice is the key, isn't it? I can choose to lessen myself, to share myself with others. But to have someone _take_ it? That's punishable." he said thoughtfully. "I think that's it. I have been listening to Xavier too much. Shows, doesn't it?"

"Not too much," Nathan said with a faint smile. "It would probably surprise you to know that I agree with you, about a... response being necessary if someone tries to rob you of your self-determination. But I spent far too many years not in control of my own actions to feel otherwise."

"See? We do agree on _some_ things. I believe that there are some who the phrase "Never again!" has a special meaning, yes? Well, for psions like us, it also has meaning." he pontificated.

"Of course," Nathan said, "there's also the question of a response appropriate to the threat." He smiled again, a little dryly. "I know you don't like having conversations with me where I start talking in military terms, but the analogies fit a little better than you give them credit for. You are fighting a battle here, Manuel - with yourself, and with everyone around you, trying to create a different world for yourself. If you wear yourself out with the peripheral battles, the skirmishes, you'll have less strength left for achieving your core objectives."

Manuel started to say something, then bit back his words and thought for a moment. "That makes sense, I suppose." he said. "I don't like it, but it makes sense. But it _burns_ me to let insults go unavenged. It's ... unseemly."

"Have you ever heard the saying 'The best revenge is living well'?" Nathan snorted softly. "Manuel, as you point out frequently, you have wealth and connections that many of your classmates can only dream about. Once you get your problems with your empathy straightened out - and I say when, not if, because I don't have a doubt in my mind that you will - you have an enormously valuable, powerful mutant ability at your beck and call." It sort of stuck in his throat to talk in such pleasant terms about empathy, but it was only the truth. "You are linked to a young woman who cares for you deeply, even when you're being a shit."

Manuel grinned. "Living well is a good revenge. But staying warm from the burning bones of those who crossed your path is sweeter still." he said with a smirk. "My fath - Alphonso is an inspiration that way. A businessman once bought an entire valuable mine in North Africa out from under him once. When it was all said and done, the man's family was impoverished, his wife was entertaining Alphonso, his child was addled with drugs, and the family name ruined. Now _THAT_ was revenge!" He actually sounds excited and pleased at the memory. "I was just a boy then..."

Nathan counted to five, deliberately, before answering. "Priorities, Manuel," he said calmly. "I'm sure it would be an absolute delight for you to ruin Angelo's life in some elaborate and satisfying way. But the time and energy you put into something like that is going to be time and energy you don't put into solving your own problems." He raised an eyebrow. "If carrying out your revenge against Angelo leaves you in that dampener for an additional month, because people around here don't see the demands of honor the same way you do and decide that your actions mean you're still untrustworthy, is it worth it?"

Manuel hrms. "That's what I am still trying to decide."

Careful, Nathan told himself. He didn't want to be encouraging Manuel to simply delay his 'revenge' against Angelo, but then, trying to get him to drop it entirely would probably be a futile effort. He would have to be satisfied with the delay, and work further on persuading Manuel in the interim. "Again with the military analogies," he said, "but I would be more concerned with getting myself in shape before marching off to battle. Hard to win when you've got one hand tied behind your back."

Manuel smirked. "I know what you are trying to do. I can even appreciate it for what it is. But the Mexican is going to pay. Rest assured of this. It is a question of when, and how - not if."

Nathan smiled tightly. Okay, enough with the carrot. "I do have that boon," he reminded Manuel.

"You do." he admitted. "And you are going to call it in on _this_? Are you sure you want to do this?"

Nathan thought about it for a moment, seriously. One set of instincts told him to hold onto that boon for as long as humanly possible, but another suggested that this might indeed be the time to call it in, that holding it over Manuel's head like a club for too long wouldn't help matters. And Angelo was a worthy cause, certainly. Still...

"I don't think it would work," he said candidly, after another few moment's consideration. "Simply asking you to leave Angelo alone wouldn't leave us 'even', Manuel. Nor would it actually solve the problem."

Manuel smirked. "You're not as dim as you appear. Well played." he said warmly. "So, if you will not force my hand and yours, then what do you propose? I _will_ have my revenge - sooner or later. He has done too much for me to just forgive him. His every breath is a reminder of my shame, my failure."

"I think," Nathan said slowly, "that I am going to stay out of it." Playing peacemaker was all well and good, but as he'd said to Manuel, sometimes you couldn't talk or threaten or will conflict away. Sometimes it had to play itself out. Angelo, despite everything, was a fairly hardy young man - he wouldn't have made it this far if he wasn't - and Manuel was likewise a survivor, if a little more fragile. "Always assuming," he amended, "that the two of you don't do each other any lasting physical harm. If there's any blood spilled, you are both going to wish you'd never met me." He smiled thinly. "And just so that we're very clear, Manuel, I am staff now, even if I haven't started teaching yet. Which makes it very much my place to intervene if things get out of hand."

Manuel smirked. "Very well. I am not without my own friends on Staff. And there won't be any blood spilled - I can be fairly sure of that. It generates too much sympathy for him. No, when I do take my revenge, it will be something - suitable. Something appropriate."

Nathan pondered that for a moment. Yes, building up Angelo's self-esteem a little in advance of this was going to be necessary, he reflected, managing not to roll his eyes. "Keep in mind that revenge isn't a neat thing," he said, pushing himself up out of the chair and managing not to pitch forward onto the floor as a wave of dizziness hit him. "It has unintended consequences. And although you might not like Angelo, someone you do care about does. Make sure you factor that into the equation as well."

Manuel nodded. "I know. I learned a lot from my fat - Alphonso. Including how to keep my friends and allies happy and blissfully ignorant."

"Another free piece of advice," Nathan said, starting towards the door. "Women are actually much smarter than we are."

Manuel just smirked at that, but held his tongue.