Amanda/Manuel - Tueday night
May. 25th, 2004 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsAmanda's unconscious repays Manuel for this visit into his future with one into her past. And who knows, he just might learn something…
Horror and schmoop in the same log. Be warned. ;)
how can you see into my eyes like open doors,
leading you down into my core, where I've become so numb.
without a soul, my spirit sleeping somewhere cold,
until you find it there and lead it back home.
***
Closing the book with a sigh, Amanda looked over at the bed where Manuel lay asleep. The link was quiet and peaceful in her head, for which she was grateful, for Manuel's emotional state been rocky with since the Attack of the Clones, between the trauma of feeling their deaths and the resurrected nightmares that came with it. The witch lay her spell book aside - 'Strange will just have t' be happy with that,' she thought to herself - and, taking off his robe, which she'd taken to borrowing, nudged him gently over so there was room for her to climb back in. He made a slight complaining noise, muttering thickly in Castillian: Amanda had picked up enough words in Manuel's first language to recognise 'cold' and 'feet'. Ignoring his grumbles, she curled up against him, letting his warmth and the regular sound of his breathing soothe her to sleep.
Manuel rolled over away from the intruding cold presence, but a warm snuggle soon calmed him back down and deepened his slumber. Inside his mind, it was just him and ... Lorna? No. Amanda? No. Domino! Yes, Domino would do nicely. And so there she was, all artfully tied up in the Japanese rope harness that she had mentioned, all warm bare skin and a nice riot of colors that alternated between fury and a deep wellspring of lust. She didn't say anything, which suited him just fine, but her contortions as she struggled provided him with quite a bit of amusement, and his own aura flashed to match hers, his own lust slamming to the forefront. Or was it hers? Really didn't matter, he decided over a warning twinge from somewhere deep in the back of his mind.
A flicker of movement caught the corner of his eye, and he turned his head to see a girl, a child, standing in the shadows. The blonde of her hair caught the light, as did her white shift, and she looked at him impassively, large blue eyes wearing an expression far too old for her years. She raised her hand and beckoned him, small pointed face solemn.
Manuel looked back to the writhing Domino, and then to the small blonde girl. "Now this _is_ a switch. But I don't involve children in my sport. I, at least, draw _that_ line quite firmly." So Domino disappeared, with something of an outraged expression on her face before she disappeared. "Who are you, and what are you doing in my mind? I don't remember you..." he asked, pulling himself up to every inch of his fourteen-year-old mental self's imaginary height. The shadows she stood in were illuminated by the red glow coming from Manuel's eyes.
"She needs you," the child said, her voice unafraid. She reached up and took his hand. "She needs you to see," she repeated, tugging him into the the shadows, towards a door that suddenly appeared.
"Who needs me? And to see what?" Manuel said, forgetting his mental disciplines for now and allowing himself to be pulled along by the child towards the door.
"You'll see." The door opened silently under the girl's small hand, and she led him through close, musty-smelling darkness. Then a glimmer of light filtered through a narrow gap, and Manuel could see they were in a wardrobe, peering out into a small, dingy room, sparsely furnished. Manuel opened his mouth to speak, but the girl laid a finger over his lips. "He'll hear!" she whispered, even as heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs, and a man's voice was heard:
"I told you not to make me come up there, blossom." Despite the endearment, the tone was harsh, stern. The girl's hand tightened on Manuel's.
Manuel didn't speak as was requested, but instead he stretched out with his empathic power. Theoretically, there should be no need for him to physically see someone to scan their emotions. And since this wasn't real, and he believed that he could do it, he decided to risk it. The voice he didn't recognize at all - something European, that much he could puzzle out.
The man looked around the room impatiently. "Hiding, are you? How stupid are you, girl? I've told you, there is no hiding from me, not now, not ever." And with that he turned and strode across the small room to the wardrobe. As the doors were flung open, Manuel caught a glimpse of sandy hair, a pleasant, unremarkable face, and eyes like chips of blue ice. He reached in, not heeding Manuel's presence, and grabbed the girl by the hair, dragging her out.
"Now wait just a second!" Manuel shouted at the man, stepping out of the wardrobe and grabbing for the little girl to start a tug-of-war. When his hand passed right through the girl, he brain finally engaged and he realized that he wasn't here, not truly, and that this was Someone Else's Mind. And he wasn't liking what he was seeing.
"Daddy, please, I don't want to..." The little girl clutched at the hand wound in her hair, trying to resist as she was lifted bodily off the floor.
"It's what I bought you for, Blossom. Now be a good girl and hold still. This won't hurt that much, I only need a bit..." A certain malicious glee filled the man's voice as he said a string of harsh-sounding words - Manuel had been with Amanda long enough to recognise a spell when he heard one - and pushed his hand into the girl's chest. Red light erupted from the place his flesh entered hers, and the girl wailed, a long keening sound.
Manuel's eyes popped as he watched this whole horrific affair. "My God." he blasphemed. "What the hell is this?" And forgetting that he wasn't really here once again, he walked up to the man and punched him in the head, then cursed as his fist passed harmlessly through the man's cranium. He studied the man's emotions, and realized that he was looking into the Abyss. A single-minded devotion to Evil in all its forms, an appreciation of pain and suffering, and a joy in cruelty.
Power crackled in the man's eyes as he pulled his hand from the girl's chest. "That's a good girl," he said, running his hand over her face in a caress that was almost obscene in the face of the emotions Manuel was reading off him. Then he turned, still carrying the girl, who was hanging limply from his hand now, and walked out the door. Manuel followed...
...and found himself in a muddy field. Night had fallen, the air chill and damp. Torches flared in a circle around a rough wooden table, held by figures cloaked in black, chanting softly. The man, now also in a black robe, but his edged with red, strode into the circle and dumped the girl on the table, her clothes abruptly disappearing as he did. Torchlight gleamed on the knife the man held raised above the girl, his voice rising in the chant.
Manuel blinked as the scene shifted, and then strained to alter the man empathically, to drive a wedge into his emotions, anything he could think of to stop him from sacrificing the girl on the altar. He brought his mindbreaker training into play, fuelled by outrage, to find those weak spots and push.
The knife descended, but instead of plunging into her heart, it merely sliced into her skin - arcane symbols, ancient languages... As he carved, the man spoke the words aloud, the torches flaring higher and above the table a vortex of darkness and fire, swirling below them: "By the blood and by the fire this child is so bound. By the power of earth and hell, her soul is so bound. By the will of man and demon, her life is so bound." Long taloned claws emerged from the vortex, reaching up towards the girl, biting into the soft skin of her legs as they tried to pull her downwards into what was becoming a gateway into hell. The man's words were echoed by the inhuman hissing of the claws owner.
Manuel rushed up to the altar physically, having _FINALLY_ twigged to what was going down here. He was in Amanda's mind, reliving some of her more intimate and painful memories. It did not seem that he had the power to stop this sort of thing from happening - but in the privacy of his own head, reservations forgotten, he swore that one day he _WOULD_. But one thing he _could_ do was give comfort - so he began projecting into the girl on the altar, aiming to make her feel protected and watched-over.
The scene jumped, changed, as if the feelings Manuel was projecting prompted it. The altar, the torches, the man - Rack, Manuel knew him to be now - they were gone, although the field remained. One of the black-robed figures held the girl in gentle arms, murmuring the vaguely-familiar words of the healing spell Amanda used most. The cloak's hood was thrown back, and Manuel could see it was a woman, dark-haired and small. He stepped forward, and she looked up, fixing him with a piercing blue-eyed glance. The look, the intensity, the emotions... it reminded him of someone. He couldn't think of who offhand, so he tabled it and went to look after Amanda - he knew it was her, now, to make sure she was going to be OK. She had said something about the tattoos, but he had never really _believed_ until now. He continued his warm/safe/protected/cared-for projections, not bothering to even try to hide his eyeglow.
"Thank you, Manuel," the woman said, nodding at him. "But this is not your time. Not yet."
Manuel _BLINKED_, and then looked at the woman more closely. "Who are _you_, and why are you in this dream? And how is it that you can see me here, when _they_ could not?"
"You're not the only one bound to her," the woman replied, smoothing back blood-clotted blonde hair from the child's white face. "And we'll meet, soon enough. A young man should meet his beloved's family." She smiled, enigmatically, and gestured with her free hand. The scene swirled, changed... Manuel blinked, and found himself in a small sunlit room. Amanda was there, Amanda as he knew her, huddled on the floor, and Angelo, standing frozen as the man Manuel recognised as the man with the knife advanced on her.
So _this_ was what happened. He knew this was serious business, knew that he needed to learn what had happened for himself, but he couldn't resist it. He walked over to dream-Angelo, grinned evilly, and kicked him in the dream-crotch. "That was far too satisfying." he said, smirking, before turning back to the Serious Business that was at hand.
The man spoke, or at least, his lips moved - Manuel couldn't hear what was said, almost as if Amanda was holding something back. There was no mistaking the look on the man's face, though, as he pulled her up by the hair and plunged his hand into her chest, that same red glow bursting out.
"Get a new trick already - and stop copping a feel! That's disgusting!" he ranted at Rack, knowing that Rack couldn't hear him and that he was powerless to do anything while watching this scene. "Drain the Mexican, he deserves it far more than she does! LEAVE HER ALONE!"
Even though he knew it was useless, Manuel reached forward, tried to grab Amanda's shoulders and wrench her away, and it was like an explosion had gone off behind his eyes. When he opened them again, the room was gone, instead he was standing on a narrow strip of pebbled beach, watching as Amanda was drawn, step by step, towards a gaping void, the Void. Only a slender silver chain, wrapped around her wrist, was stopping her from being pulled in. ~Manny!~ she cried out, turning back from the blackness reaching for her, and the chain jerked and loosened, as if whatever anchored the other end was being dragged forward too.
Manuel looked at this new mindscape with some confusion. "I'm here!" he said to her, trying to make her hear him. He tried very hard to avoid looking at the Void, knowing well its siren song of oblivion and loss. He'd been spending the last few days kicking and clawing his way away from that Void, trying to reach some safer ground of his own.
Feeling the chain give, Amanda visibly dug her boots into the pebbly sand, pushed away from the Void. ~Not having him too,~ came the thought, even though the effort clearly cost her strength. Then Emma's voice cut through the confusion: "You are Ramon Gonzalez. You are Roman Gonzalez..." and for an instant, Amanda's form wavered, changed, became that of a Mexican taxi driver in his forties, paunchy and balding. And in that instant the force pulling on her stopped, just enough for her to throw herself forward and up the beach, away from the abyss, her true identity returning even as her knees hit the stones.
Manuel blinked as he watched the entire thing unfold. "OK, that was a little weird." he said to no-one in particular. "No, make that a _lot_ weird." And he settled back to watch and wait, to see what unfolded next.
Thunder pealed across the darkened sky of Amanda's mindscape, and there was another starburst of light. When his eyes cleared, Manuel found himself face to face with the little girl again. The older version of Amanda had disappeared.
"You stopped us," the child said. "You stopped us from going after Daddy. She wouldn't let him take you too, and that made her hold on long enough."
"I did this?" he asked, misunderstanding. "I was responsible for this? For her pain, for her desolation?" The sadness took a hold of his soul and would not let go, claws of icy indifference spreading their poison throughout him. "I should have known that I would hurt her."
The child laughed, an unusual sound in the desolate landscape. "No silly. Daddy did that." She held up her wrist, where the fine silver chain jangled softly. "You held us back, stopped Daddy taking everything. Wouldn't have mattered what Uncle Pete and Auntie Emma did if that had happened. There wouldn't have been anything left. Daddy wanted all of it."
"A manacle." he said with a twisted sour grin. "I should have guessed. I am glad it has done her well, to counteract all of the ill. I need the bond far more than she, it would seem. Her past, my future. Odd how that works out, doesn't it?"
"You're not very good at listening," the little girl told him solemnly. "Or seeing what's in front of you. She wanted you to see all this, because she wants it to stop, and she doesn't know how to ask. She wants it to stop so she can feel the same way as you do about her, so she can stop being scared." She looked up the beach, to where the dim and ghostly figure of Rack appeared. "She wants him to go away. And I do too."
"What do I need to do, then?" he asked the little girl. "I cannot take her pain from her, not with my power. I can't make permanent changes like that." And now moreso than ever the bitterness creeps out of his voice. "What can I do?"
With another of those eldritch smiles, the little girl patted his cheek. "It's not always about power," she said. "Just remember. Try to understand. She wanted you to see this." And with that she gave him a gentle push, and there was a feeling of falling, of tumbling through warm darkness endlessly until he landed, on something soft and yielding and very bedlike...
Manuel woke. Beside him, Amanda was whimpering in her sleep, body tense, the blankets clutched in her hands. "Can't..." she muttered, her voice that of a hurt child. "Stop... hurts..."
Manuel looked at Amanda, and then it finally just _clicked_. Smiling with a tender smile that, if anyone had ever asked, he would have denied utterly, he kissed her gently. "Hey, it's OK. I'm here. I'll keep them away. Rest now. You'll need your strength. No one's going to hurt you anymore." And not even the echoing shards of death that permeated his thoughts and called him towards sweet Oblivion could deny the sincerity of his feeling.
OOC: Everyone go and tell Frito how wonderful she is for making such a gorgeous icon!
Horror and schmoop in the same log. Be warned. ;)
how can you see into my eyes like open doors,
leading you down into my core, where I've become so numb.
without a soul, my spirit sleeping somewhere cold,
until you find it there and lead it back home.
***
Closing the book with a sigh, Amanda looked over at the bed where Manuel lay asleep. The link was quiet and peaceful in her head, for which she was grateful, for Manuel's emotional state been rocky with since the Attack of the Clones, between the trauma of feeling their deaths and the resurrected nightmares that came with it. The witch lay her spell book aside - 'Strange will just have t' be happy with that,' she thought to herself - and, taking off his robe, which she'd taken to borrowing, nudged him gently over so there was room for her to climb back in. He made a slight complaining noise, muttering thickly in Castillian: Amanda had picked up enough words in Manuel's first language to recognise 'cold' and 'feet'. Ignoring his grumbles, she curled up against him, letting his warmth and the regular sound of his breathing soothe her to sleep.
Manuel rolled over away from the intruding cold presence, but a warm snuggle soon calmed him back down and deepened his slumber. Inside his mind, it was just him and ... Lorna? No. Amanda? No. Domino! Yes, Domino would do nicely. And so there she was, all artfully tied up in the Japanese rope harness that she had mentioned, all warm bare skin and a nice riot of colors that alternated between fury and a deep wellspring of lust. She didn't say anything, which suited him just fine, but her contortions as she struggled provided him with quite a bit of amusement, and his own aura flashed to match hers, his own lust slamming to the forefront. Or was it hers? Really didn't matter, he decided over a warning twinge from somewhere deep in the back of his mind.
A flicker of movement caught the corner of his eye, and he turned his head to see a girl, a child, standing in the shadows. The blonde of her hair caught the light, as did her white shift, and she looked at him impassively, large blue eyes wearing an expression far too old for her years. She raised her hand and beckoned him, small pointed face solemn.
Manuel looked back to the writhing Domino, and then to the small blonde girl. "Now this _is_ a switch. But I don't involve children in my sport. I, at least, draw _that_ line quite firmly." So Domino disappeared, with something of an outraged expression on her face before she disappeared. "Who are you, and what are you doing in my mind? I don't remember you..." he asked, pulling himself up to every inch of his fourteen-year-old mental self's imaginary height. The shadows she stood in were illuminated by the red glow coming from Manuel's eyes.
"She needs you," the child said, her voice unafraid. She reached up and took his hand. "She needs you to see," she repeated, tugging him into the the shadows, towards a door that suddenly appeared.
"Who needs me? And to see what?" Manuel said, forgetting his mental disciplines for now and allowing himself to be pulled along by the child towards the door.
"You'll see." The door opened silently under the girl's small hand, and she led him through close, musty-smelling darkness. Then a glimmer of light filtered through a narrow gap, and Manuel could see they were in a wardrobe, peering out into a small, dingy room, sparsely furnished. Manuel opened his mouth to speak, but the girl laid a finger over his lips. "He'll hear!" she whispered, even as heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs, and a man's voice was heard:
"I told you not to make me come up there, blossom." Despite the endearment, the tone was harsh, stern. The girl's hand tightened on Manuel's.
Manuel didn't speak as was requested, but instead he stretched out with his empathic power. Theoretically, there should be no need for him to physically see someone to scan their emotions. And since this wasn't real, and he believed that he could do it, he decided to risk it. The voice he didn't recognize at all - something European, that much he could puzzle out.
The man looked around the room impatiently. "Hiding, are you? How stupid are you, girl? I've told you, there is no hiding from me, not now, not ever." And with that he turned and strode across the small room to the wardrobe. As the doors were flung open, Manuel caught a glimpse of sandy hair, a pleasant, unremarkable face, and eyes like chips of blue ice. He reached in, not heeding Manuel's presence, and grabbed the girl by the hair, dragging her out.
"Now wait just a second!" Manuel shouted at the man, stepping out of the wardrobe and grabbing for the little girl to start a tug-of-war. When his hand passed right through the girl, he brain finally engaged and he realized that he wasn't here, not truly, and that this was Someone Else's Mind. And he wasn't liking what he was seeing.
"Daddy, please, I don't want to..." The little girl clutched at the hand wound in her hair, trying to resist as she was lifted bodily off the floor.
"It's what I bought you for, Blossom. Now be a good girl and hold still. This won't hurt that much, I only need a bit..." A certain malicious glee filled the man's voice as he said a string of harsh-sounding words - Manuel had been with Amanda long enough to recognise a spell when he heard one - and pushed his hand into the girl's chest. Red light erupted from the place his flesh entered hers, and the girl wailed, a long keening sound.
Manuel's eyes popped as he watched this whole horrific affair. "My God." he blasphemed. "What the hell is this?" And forgetting that he wasn't really here once again, he walked up to the man and punched him in the head, then cursed as his fist passed harmlessly through the man's cranium. He studied the man's emotions, and realized that he was looking into the Abyss. A single-minded devotion to Evil in all its forms, an appreciation of pain and suffering, and a joy in cruelty.
Power crackled in the man's eyes as he pulled his hand from the girl's chest. "That's a good girl," he said, running his hand over her face in a caress that was almost obscene in the face of the emotions Manuel was reading off him. Then he turned, still carrying the girl, who was hanging limply from his hand now, and walked out the door. Manuel followed...
...and found himself in a muddy field. Night had fallen, the air chill and damp. Torches flared in a circle around a rough wooden table, held by figures cloaked in black, chanting softly. The man, now also in a black robe, but his edged with red, strode into the circle and dumped the girl on the table, her clothes abruptly disappearing as he did. Torchlight gleamed on the knife the man held raised above the girl, his voice rising in the chant.
Manuel blinked as the scene shifted, and then strained to alter the man empathically, to drive a wedge into his emotions, anything he could think of to stop him from sacrificing the girl on the altar. He brought his mindbreaker training into play, fuelled by outrage, to find those weak spots and push.
The knife descended, but instead of plunging into her heart, it merely sliced into her skin - arcane symbols, ancient languages... As he carved, the man spoke the words aloud, the torches flaring higher and above the table a vortex of darkness and fire, swirling below them: "By the blood and by the fire this child is so bound. By the power of earth and hell, her soul is so bound. By the will of man and demon, her life is so bound." Long taloned claws emerged from the vortex, reaching up towards the girl, biting into the soft skin of her legs as they tried to pull her downwards into what was becoming a gateway into hell. The man's words were echoed by the inhuman hissing of the claws owner.
Manuel rushed up to the altar physically, having _FINALLY_ twigged to what was going down here. He was in Amanda's mind, reliving some of her more intimate and painful memories. It did not seem that he had the power to stop this sort of thing from happening - but in the privacy of his own head, reservations forgotten, he swore that one day he _WOULD_. But one thing he _could_ do was give comfort - so he began projecting into the girl on the altar, aiming to make her feel protected and watched-over.
The scene jumped, changed, as if the feelings Manuel was projecting prompted it. The altar, the torches, the man - Rack, Manuel knew him to be now - they were gone, although the field remained. One of the black-robed figures held the girl in gentle arms, murmuring the vaguely-familiar words of the healing spell Amanda used most. The cloak's hood was thrown back, and Manuel could see it was a woman, dark-haired and small. He stepped forward, and she looked up, fixing him with a piercing blue-eyed glance. The look, the intensity, the emotions... it reminded him of someone. He couldn't think of who offhand, so he tabled it and went to look after Amanda - he knew it was her, now, to make sure she was going to be OK. She had said something about the tattoos, but he had never really _believed_ until now. He continued his warm/safe/protected/cared-for projections, not bothering to even try to hide his eyeglow.
"Thank you, Manuel," the woman said, nodding at him. "But this is not your time. Not yet."
Manuel _BLINKED_, and then looked at the woman more closely. "Who are _you_, and why are you in this dream? And how is it that you can see me here, when _they_ could not?"
"You're not the only one bound to her," the woman replied, smoothing back blood-clotted blonde hair from the child's white face. "And we'll meet, soon enough. A young man should meet his beloved's family." She smiled, enigmatically, and gestured with her free hand. The scene swirled, changed... Manuel blinked, and found himself in a small sunlit room. Amanda was there, Amanda as he knew her, huddled on the floor, and Angelo, standing frozen as the man Manuel recognised as the man with the knife advanced on her.
So _this_ was what happened. He knew this was serious business, knew that he needed to learn what had happened for himself, but he couldn't resist it. He walked over to dream-Angelo, grinned evilly, and kicked him in the dream-crotch. "That was far too satisfying." he said, smirking, before turning back to the Serious Business that was at hand.
The man spoke, or at least, his lips moved - Manuel couldn't hear what was said, almost as if Amanda was holding something back. There was no mistaking the look on the man's face, though, as he pulled her up by the hair and plunged his hand into her chest, that same red glow bursting out.
"Get a new trick already - and stop copping a feel! That's disgusting!" he ranted at Rack, knowing that Rack couldn't hear him and that he was powerless to do anything while watching this scene. "Drain the Mexican, he deserves it far more than she does! LEAVE HER ALONE!"
Even though he knew it was useless, Manuel reached forward, tried to grab Amanda's shoulders and wrench her away, and it was like an explosion had gone off behind his eyes. When he opened them again, the room was gone, instead he was standing on a narrow strip of pebbled beach, watching as Amanda was drawn, step by step, towards a gaping void, the Void. Only a slender silver chain, wrapped around her wrist, was stopping her from being pulled in. ~Manny!~ she cried out, turning back from the blackness reaching for her, and the chain jerked and loosened, as if whatever anchored the other end was being dragged forward too.
Manuel looked at this new mindscape with some confusion. "I'm here!" he said to her, trying to make her hear him. He tried very hard to avoid looking at the Void, knowing well its siren song of oblivion and loss. He'd been spending the last few days kicking and clawing his way away from that Void, trying to reach some safer ground of his own.
Feeling the chain give, Amanda visibly dug her boots into the pebbly sand, pushed away from the Void. ~Not having him too,~ came the thought, even though the effort clearly cost her strength. Then Emma's voice cut through the confusion: "You are Ramon Gonzalez. You are Roman Gonzalez..." and for an instant, Amanda's form wavered, changed, became that of a Mexican taxi driver in his forties, paunchy and balding. And in that instant the force pulling on her stopped, just enough for her to throw herself forward and up the beach, away from the abyss, her true identity returning even as her knees hit the stones.
Manuel blinked as he watched the entire thing unfold. "OK, that was a little weird." he said to no-one in particular. "No, make that a _lot_ weird." And he settled back to watch and wait, to see what unfolded next.
Thunder pealed across the darkened sky of Amanda's mindscape, and there was another starburst of light. When his eyes cleared, Manuel found himself face to face with the little girl again. The older version of Amanda had disappeared.
"You stopped us," the child said. "You stopped us from going after Daddy. She wouldn't let him take you too, and that made her hold on long enough."
"I did this?" he asked, misunderstanding. "I was responsible for this? For her pain, for her desolation?" The sadness took a hold of his soul and would not let go, claws of icy indifference spreading their poison throughout him. "I should have known that I would hurt her."
The child laughed, an unusual sound in the desolate landscape. "No silly. Daddy did that." She held up her wrist, where the fine silver chain jangled softly. "You held us back, stopped Daddy taking everything. Wouldn't have mattered what Uncle Pete and Auntie Emma did if that had happened. There wouldn't have been anything left. Daddy wanted all of it."
"A manacle." he said with a twisted sour grin. "I should have guessed. I am glad it has done her well, to counteract all of the ill. I need the bond far more than she, it would seem. Her past, my future. Odd how that works out, doesn't it?"
"You're not very good at listening," the little girl told him solemnly. "Or seeing what's in front of you. She wanted you to see all this, because she wants it to stop, and she doesn't know how to ask. She wants it to stop so she can feel the same way as you do about her, so she can stop being scared." She looked up the beach, to where the dim and ghostly figure of Rack appeared. "She wants him to go away. And I do too."
"What do I need to do, then?" he asked the little girl. "I cannot take her pain from her, not with my power. I can't make permanent changes like that." And now moreso than ever the bitterness creeps out of his voice. "What can I do?"
With another of those eldritch smiles, the little girl patted his cheek. "It's not always about power," she said. "Just remember. Try to understand. She wanted you to see this." And with that she gave him a gentle push, and there was a feeling of falling, of tumbling through warm darkness endlessly until he landed, on something soft and yielding and very bedlike...
Manuel woke. Beside him, Amanda was whimpering in her sleep, body tense, the blankets clutched in her hands. "Can't..." she muttered, her voice that of a hurt child. "Stop... hurts..."
Manuel looked at Amanda, and then it finally just _clicked_. Smiling with a tender smile that, if anyone had ever asked, he would have denied utterly, he kissed her gently. "Hey, it's OK. I'm here. I'll keep them away. Rest now. You'll need your strength. No one's going to hurt you anymore." And not even the echoing shards of death that permeated his thoughts and called him towards sweet Oblivion could deny the sincerity of his feeling.
OOC: Everyone go and tell Frito how wonderful she is for making such a gorgeous icon!
