LOG: Manuel and Askani - Accomodations

[x-empath.livejournal.com]

Who: Manuel de la Rocha, Mother Askani
Where: Manuel's dreams
When: Friday night
What Happens: An accomodation is reached.




Manuel had dozed off while listening to his iPod, so his dream was that of the clubs back home in Spain. The pounding music, sure, but more importantly the auras of the people partying, the hot reds and yellows and greens, the threads shooting off crazily in all directions, the warping that recreational chemicals always gave the emotions - and at the front of it all, Manuel himself behind the turntable, making it all happen. Around the edges of the crowd stood various figured robed in black, faces concealed behind deep hoods, but the revellers paid them no mind, and the
emotional threads and auras never touched them.

Askani looked around at the setting thoughtfully, then made some alterations to her appearance, so that she was garbed as the images around her were. A white robe did not fit, in this place. Such minor changes she could do without drawing any further on Nathan's telepathy, which was good, because she was borrowing quite enough already to make this unauthorized jaunt. Much more would run the risk of awakening him, despite
the amount of alcohol he had consumed, and she didn't wish to do that. They were still not on comfortable terms again, as of yet. Slipping through the crowd, Askani frowned, not liking the feel of this dark, constricting clothing.

Manuel looked straight at Askani, noting that her emotional signature didn't fit the dream, and that her emotions were wound tightly, masked from his gaze by ease of long practice in her own time. He let the music die, and as it did the club, the revellers, and the auras disappeared slowly. Only the black-robed figured, Manuel himself, and the interloper remained. "You do not belong here. Who are you?" he called to Askani, not recognizing her for who she was. The black-robed figured also turned their heads to face Askani, but kept their features hidden.

Askani raised an eyebrow. How possessive men could be of their dreams. "How quickly you forget the malevolent unborn who 'tried to kill' you," she said dryly. "Is my disguise truly that good?"

Manuel, in his 14-year-old eyeglow'ed self-image, walked towards Askani slowly. His boots did not ring as much as they should have on the polished floor, nor does he look entirely solid and _there_ as he should. "Get out of my mind, Nathan. And take this _thing_ with you." he said to Askani, as one of the black-robed figures stepped even closer to Manuel.

"Nathan is sleeping," Askani said mildly, folding her arms across her chest and not moving. "I am here of my own accord, using his telepathy to appear to you." She smiled thinly. "And I would be careful whom you call 'thing', boy. To me you barely classify as a thinking human yourself."

"Ah, so you're stealing his powers _again_ to come and mess with me. You have the advantage, as the others do not recognize truth when they hear it. And this is _my_ time, my place. Yours will not come for a very long time. So do not lecture me on what is or what is not."

"You have a piece of the truth," Askani said, turning in place and banishing the ridiculous clothing, since there was no need for it. She replaced it with a robe, but red, rather than white. White for the clanmother, red for the warlord. And there was a battle to be fought here, even if it would be done through a proxy. "That does not make you any less a posturing child, any less a young destroyer whose story must be rewritten."

"Rewritten? I don't like the sound of that. I think that ... AHHHH!" he screamed as one of the black-robed creatures extended a skeletal talon from under its robe and grabbed Manuel's arm. "GETITOFFAME! GETITOFF!" he screamed as he flailed at the figure.

Askani frowned, tilting her head and regarding the struggling boy for a moment before she acted. If Nathan awoke, he awoke, she thought and drew deeply on his telepathy, using it to reshape the dreamscape, to knock the black-robed being away.

Manuel, via Askani's assistance, wrenched his arm out of the skeletal grasp. Where it had grasped him the color, the vitality, the very _life_ had been seeped from him, leaving a small part of himself cold and dead. "That ... was just plain creepy." he said, keeping a wary eye on the other black-robed figured and the other on Askani. "I could have handled it."

"Undoubtedly," she said dryly, unable to help a faint smile at the adolescent bravado. She had trained generations of children, so it was quite familiar. "Do you know what they are?" she asked curiously.

"Death." Manuel shuddered, peering at the black-robed figures more closely. "They're echoes. Most of them are gone now. These few are all that remain."

"Ah," Askani said, nodding to herself. "The replicas who died. They will fade in time." She could have removed them now, herself, but that would have involved a further drain on Nathan - who was still asleep, but more unsettled now, slowly rising back towards consciousness - and to be truthful, she was not feeling particularly charitable. Perhaps the experience would inspire the boy to greater efforts in his attempts to master his power.

"I figured that out." Manuel said testily. "I won't let you reprogram me." he said to Askani, his voice and posturing giving away both his determination and his inexperience.

"Programming," Askani sighed, reminding herself that patience was a virtue. "Programming is what those la'vieh'nahraia did to Nathan, young empath. No Askani would perpetuate such an obscenity."

"Sure they wouldn't." retorted Manuel, voice dripping sarcasm. "Stealing powers and murder are OK, but it's good to know that you draw the line at reprogramming."

"Who have I murdered, young empath? As for stealing powers, I am robbing Nathan of nothing." Askani studied him for a moment, not liking what she saw. Young enough to be foolish, old enough to be stubborn about it. It was not promising. "And we do not rewrite minds. You claim to be able to recognize truth. You appear to be bluffing."

"Well, OK, attempted murder. And you just threatened to do it again by "rewriting" me." he said defiantly. The fact that he could just barely see her emotions was really, really starting to bother him.

Askani rolled her eyes. "Rewriting your story, boy, not you," she said with some exasperation. He simply stared at her, and she sighed again. "Changing your fate. Or do you wish what you saw through another's eyes to become your future?"

Manuel couldn't help but pale at that, and the dark-cloaked figures took the opportunity to move forward again. "Who told ... of course. I should have guessed. No, I don't want that to be my future. But I have free will now, I decide which way I go. Not you, not Nathan, not Marie-Ange, nobody but ME!"

"And if your choices lead you to that room?" Askani murmured, raising a hand and stopping the dark-cloaked figures from coming any closer. "To that chair, to that long, dark torment and the death of all that you hold dear?" She smiled very slightly, very coldly. "Do you trust yourself, your judgement so deeply, that you will spurn help freely offered? Is your pride worth the death of love, the death of hope?"

"No-one's offering me a better road, so I have to make my own. And if it leads to the man in the chair, then ... then ... it won't lead to the man in the chair. I won't let it." he said with a shiver. "You don't offer me hope. You offer me slavery. A collar around my neck, a return to being a weapon, a thing for your amusement. I don't trust you, Askani. You give me little reason to."

"The better road is the harder road," Askani said, nodding to herself as she realized that yes, he did fear the future. It was something, if not much. "No one will hand you the stars for your own, Manuel. The empath's path is a dangerous one. I can show you the way - we can, through Nathan. Who is willing to help you, despite his fears. But it is your sweat, your blood, your pain that will buy you the way up the mountain." Her lip curled. "As for wishing to chain you... I fought for sixty years to hold my people from slavery and death, boy. I would be as happy to break your chains and have nothing more to do with you."

"So you say. How am I to believe you? You hide your emotions from me somehow. For all I know, you could have been the oppressors, with your boot on soceity's neck. You could have been the problem, not the solution. Show me something, give me a _reason_ to believe you." he said, his dream-self taking a seat on a screened-off and bejewelled throne. "Perhaps my future is the only way to make sure you and yours don't put humanity into a stranglehold."

Askani smiled mirthlessly. "Then look and be damned to you, boy," she said, unwinding her defenses, lowering her walls. The power built around her, took on its familiar shape, wings of fire unfurling across the floor. "See my world, my people, my war. Feel it."

Manuel leaned forward on his throne, extending out his empathic senses towards the bird of fire. The entire condensed experience of the Askani rampaged across his mind - every atrocity and counter-atrocity, every battle, every desperate rearguard action, all of it. He manfully didn't say a word until it was done, but when the onslaught did finish, he closed his eyes and swallowed heavily, not trusting himself to speak or think while he processed what he had seen.

Askani pulled in her wings and waited, rather more patiently than she might have a few moments ago. He had done well, to bear all that. Perhaps there was more to the boy than there seemed. Stubbornness was very often strength wrongly applied, after all.

After a few very long moments, he opened his eyes again. "I believe you now." he said quietly. "I don't _LIKE_ you or yours, but I know what you struggled for. What do you want me to do? I am strong, I know this. Perhaps I can change things for the better, eliminate the hate..."

"You want to find your limits," Askani said after a pause while she organized her thoughts. This was a delicate moment, and the right words needed to be said. "To be fully yourself, to sit in your power without fear."

"That is my goal, yes." he admitted. "To be able to use the power, not to have it use me. To walk without fear, to be myself."

"It can be done," she told him earnestly. "Among us, empaths were valued. The teaching was harsh, but failure was rare. We did not permit it, do you understand? The gift was--is too rare. Too precious, for all the good that it can do." She gave him a smile that was almost kindly. "Our empaths were meditators and diplomats, healers and leaders. And they, like I, live within Nathan."

Manuel gets a horrified look at the very thought, but schools his expression relatively quickly. "I've heard it described that diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggy" while you hunt for a rock big enough to brain it with." he said with a smirk.

"You have seen us, if only briefly," Askani said with a smirk of her own. "You know we were a warrior people. Very often our diplomats bought us time to regroup, to recover, before fighting broke out again."

Manuel quirked an eyebrow and couldn't help but grin at that. "All right, then, I think we have an understanding. If your people can help me with my empathic ability, then when it is all said and done I shall work on your behalf to make sure that none of you are born into that world. But I am one man, even with my power. Possible futures notwithstanding, there is much that is probably beyond me."

"Then you have my word, as clanmother, warlord, and Lady, that we shall offer you what knowledge you will have from us," Askani said, and then grimaced slightly. "It must come through Nathan, however. He is our voice in this time, and truthfully, there are things about your power that he can teach you, as well."

Manuel rolls his eyes. "NOW you tell me. Why can't you just do what you are doing now?"

"Why do you distrust him so?" Askani asked with a touch of honest curiosity. "Did he not repair your link?" She shrugged, smiling wryly. "And truthfully, yes, this would be easier. I or one of our empaths may visit you in your dreams from time to time, but I am here without his knowing, using his powers, and that is a violation of propriety and trust for which I will have to make amends."

"Because he distrusts me." he said, not realizing what that simple statement really meant. "Because he gives away what I struggle so hard to obtain. Because he is involved with Amanda, and I _need_ her. Because he enjoys ridiculing me."

Askani made a thoughtful noise. "Addressing one matter at a time - have you given him reason to trust you?"

"He distrusts empaths in general. I frighten him - even as I am now, I can sense it, and before that I frightened myself when he was around. I have done little to him was not measured revenge for actions taken against me." he said, making the throne disappear and returning to merely standing in front of Askani.

"I would be interested in knowing what harm he has done to you that is worthy of revenge," Askani said, her voice a bit chilly, but went on to the next of Manuel's statements before he could respond. "As for him giving away what you fight to obtain - aside from the fact that it is incorrect, this 'surrender' of his will benefit you in the end, will it not? The knowledge we are now here to provide you?"

"Perhaps. So far, we have talk. When the talk turns into action, and I learn, then ask me that question again." he said cynically.

"Hmm. As for Amanda..." Askani paused, letting her defenses down again, so that he could see the truth in her words, "He thinks of her as a daughter, Manuel. He is not your rival. There is no room in his soul for anyone but Moira." She couldn't help a pleased little smile as she savored that truth herself.

"A daughter?" Manuel said, clearly confused. "What _IS_ it with her and acquiring so-called relations, anyway? Ahhh, it is of no matter. I have seen the bond he bears Moira, but it is hard to remember that when the two of them are as thick as thieves."

"You may wish to try to keep that in mind," Askani said without the slightest touch of sarcasm. "Your Amanda strikes me as one for whom jealousy is a repellant, rather than an attractant. As for the last..." She spread her hands wide. "Ridicule is a thin veil over fear," she said simply. "You have him cornered, Manuel. He cannot lash out at you with his full strength, not without destroying himself as well as you." Her expression grew more serious. "And you have knowledge that terrifies him more than you do. He gave it to you himself, and has spent every day since regretting it."

"He gave me _nothing_! No knowledge, no useful information! Nothing!" Manuel seethed. "And he knows damned well there's nothing I can do to him. This is _bullshit_."

Askani contemplated the situation for a moment, wondering if this was what Nathan referred to as watching one's point "sail merrily" over its target's head. "He gave you something that tipped the balance of power between you," she said. "It rests more strongly in your hands, now. Eventually the value of the weapon he handed you will fade, but for now, he fears you will use it. It will make him prudent, as a teacher." She smiled thinly. "Which is one of the only reasons this will work, I suspect."

Manuel proceeded to just look baffled. "What the _hell_ are you talking about? What weapon? The power is all his - I'm dampened _and_ I owe him a boon. I have no leverage, no points of influence. He's nuts."

"Think on it," Askani advised, sensing Nathan begin to stir in earnest. "I must return. He and I will speak of this." She raised a warning hand. "He will teach you, Manuel. He will not merely dispense knowledge. It will not be enjoyable for either of you."

"Same thing, really." Manuel shrugged. "And it never is, especially for me. People delight in teasing the empath."

Askani shook her head. "Forget self-pity, young empath," she said as she withdrew from his mind, "and the road will be somewhat less hard."

"Why not? No one else will." he called after her, then stood and looked at his now-empty dreamscape, and the robed figures still in it. "Oh, don't _you_ start!" he said to one of the robed figures, then stopped to think for a second. "Umm, OK, how do I wake myself up?"