Nathan and Lorna, Later Tuesday Afternoon

[x-polarisstar.livejournal.com]

Nathan and Lorna meet in the sunroom to talk about training as per these emails. Lorna brings cookies. Powers are discussed, plans are made and Lorna freaks out the Askani a little bit. It all goes well though.


The sun was just beginning to head down so the light in the room was a soft gold. According to Lorna’s watch, she was a few minutes early but she didn’t really mind. It gave her a chance to set down the plate of cookies she was carrying on a small side table then arrange a pair of armchairs around it. Once she was satisfied with the arrangements, she snitched a gingersnap for herself and folded herself into one of the chairs to wait.

What was it with the sunroom and significant discussions? Nathan thought, arriving a few minutes later. Well, this one would have to be better than the one with Angie's mother. Or Manuel's father. Lorna could break furniture over his head and it would still be a better conversation than the one he'd had with Manuel's father.

He smiled a bit tentatively at Lorna as he looked up at him. "Hi."

“Hey,” Lorna responded, waving him toward the other chair, “Sit. Cookie? The cranberry oatmeal are still warm, I think. Just finished making them.” She waited while he sat down. “Thanks for coming.”

"You're welcome." He smiled again, more wryly this time. "Talking I can manage. Actual putting my money where my mouth is will probably have to wait until next week. If I disobey doctor's orders once more, my favorite doctor is probably going to leave me."

“Can’t have that.” She grinned, “Luckily, you can tell me what I need to be doing without actually straining your brain.” She frowned at him briefly, “Do you not want any cookies?”

Nathan blinked. "Sorry," he said with a crooked smile. "They do smell good." He leaned forward and took one, taking a bite, chewing and swallowing before he went on. She was trying to make him feel comfortable. He could appreciate that. "They are good," he said. "And I'm going to be really perverse, before I say anything, and ask you what you think you need to be doing."

Lorna relaxed minutely when he finally took a cookie. It made her feel better about having one herself. “Thanks. One does one’s best. Actually, I could use some more fine control work. I can see EM fields if I concentrate hard enough and I feel them all the time—makes solar storms a pain—but actually doing fine work with them is tougher. It’s still easiest to get a grip on ferrous stuff, most other things generate fields too weak to bother with.” She looked down, suddenly very interested in the hem of her jean shorts. “That’s not to say I haven’t. I threw one of the Mistra agents around and managed to lift myself too. But I’d like to have more control on that. And shields too. If they were stronger, I could have avoided some unpleasantness.”

Nathan ate the rest of the cookie before he said anything. "You had to kill one of them, didn't you?" he asked very quietly.

She gave the barest suggestion of a nod, “My shields were failing. I ran an EM shock through his head. It’s possible that he might have survived.” She shrugged, “If I could have held the shield longer, I might have come up with a better solution.”

Nathan nodded, reaching out for another cookie. "Fine control I can probably help you with," he said after a moment. "I can work right down to the molecular level these days. The EM fields might be harder." He paused, trying to think of how to explain this. "Moira and I did a training exercise a couple of weeks ago - it's what resulted in me spraining my brain originally. I was seeing the EM spectrum, and I think I might have pushed a hard limit." He smiled a bit. "Shields I can definitely help with. Testing them, if nothing else, and some of my visualization exercises might work as well for you."

“That would be good. It’s a bit of a pain, trying to approximate training but since the only expert in my powers tried to commit genocide, he’s not really a resource.” She shrugged again, dragging her thoughts away from the dead agent. “It’s not that difficult for me to see the EM spectrum and it takes a bit more work but I can actually see things solely as EM fields. That’s when it’s easiest to manipulate them but it’s harder to tell what I’m doing to the real world then.”

“You and I have something in common." Nathan looked at her for a moment, then decided he could risk it. It wasn't telekinesis, after all, and as the link itself wasn't hurting at all, it was safe to try a little telepathy. "Can I show you something?" he asked. "Telepathically, I mean."

“That’s not going to result in you falling over and Moira trying to kill me, is it?” Lorna asked, not really concerned that it would but maintaining at least some skepticism that Nathan wouldn’t try to stretch his limits.

"It's my telekinesis I strained. Same brain, I know, but this'll only take a minute." He offered a hand, and Lorna, after a moment, took it. "I want to show you what I see," he said, letting his perceptions slip down a couple of levels, until the glow around the molecules of everything surrounding them, even the air, appeared. He linked briefly with Lorna, letting her see it through his eyes: the glow, the sparkles of energy that danced between the molecules, combining into a radiance that still struck him as being as eerie as it was beautiful.

It wasn’t exactly like what she saw—and felt—but it was similar enough to make her smile. Without really thinking about it, she reached out to nudge the web of light.

"Whoa," Nathan said sharply, letting go of her hand and breaking the link. The Askani were hissing, agitated in the back of his mind. "Those aren't EM fields," he said, "or at least, they're mostly not. I don't think experimenting is such a good idea just now."

“I didn’t push hard enough to do anything. Not here, at least,” she replied. “I just wanted to see how they felt. Sorry if I startled you.”

It started to sink in just how vehemently he'd reacted, and as the rush of adrenalin faded, he took a deep breath, feeling rather sheepish. "It's all right," he said. "Little twitchy lately. I didn't mean to raise my voice."

She shook her head, “I should have warned you. What is that? The EM fields are there but I don’t recognize the rest. It’s not anything I can see—or feel for that matter.”

"I don't really know," Nathan confessed. "Some sort of psionic field, I think. I haven't had the chance to sit down and really think about it yet - I only really started seeing it a few months ago, and well..." He gave her a wry smile. "I've had other things on my mind besides psionic theory."

“I can believe that.” She gave it some thought, “If it helps, I can show you how much of it is EM. It’s providing the framework, I think.” She made the offer diffidently, not sure he wouldn’t still be twitchy.

"We'll put it on our to-do list," Nathan said with a slightly edgy-sounding chuckle. "Don't think I should push the telepathy too far today... but I will take you up on that." He thought for a moment. "What do you do to work on your fine control now?"

Lorna gave him a slightly blank look then shrugged, “Scott’s got a few energy control exercises and I keep a few paperclips,” she shook her hand and three fell into her palm, “around to play with. I tend to just make it up as I go along.”

“Paperclips. How many can you manipulate at once?"

“I’m not certain. I’m carrying…” She paused and made a brushing motion with and several more paper clips wormed their way off various parts of her person and into her hands, “what is this, twelve? Probably about this many. I’ve never really tried.”

"I maxed out with my coins at just under two thousand, once," Nathan said. "I do fractal patterns - it's still just about the best everyday practice for fine control that I have."

“Two thou—whoa. I’ve never even thought about that many.” Lorna sat back in her chair, nudging the paperclips back to their places. “See, this is why I need your help. First off, fractals?”

"Fractals," Nathan said with a nod. "Patterns that can be subdivided into parts that are reduced-size twins of the whole." He smiled a bit. "Worlds within worlds," he said, somewhat whimsically. "They're good practice."

“If you understand them. I got through AP Calc on a wing and a prayer.” Lorna shook her head, “Is there a baby steps program? Juggling for dummies?”

"There are any number of more straightforward things you can do," Nathan said reassuringly. "The key is to make it a pattern of some sort - the spacing is an important as having a good grip on the objects you're levitating in the first place."

“That makes sense.” She chewed on her lower lip, thoughtfully, “How many did you start on?”

"My early training isn't a very good indicator," Nathan said with a sigh. "I didn't have that level of fine control until... well, until seven years ago, when Moira was trying to teach me how to control my virus telekinetically. Mistra didn't emphasize small-scale control. They were more into combat applications, large-scale destruction..." He trailed off, shaking his head, and tried to think. "It's hard to remember," he confessed. "I was so sick when I was at Muir the first time. I remember Moira holding a coin in front of my face, telling me to levitate it..."

Lorna winced, having not really considered where his training came from, “So Moira was the one who started your fine control work? How long did it take you? Just so I have a barometer.”

Nathan thought about it. "Six weeks to instinctive control of the virus. I think by that time I was levitating a few hundred coins at a time. I was delirious on and off, so I didn't really know what I was doing. Moira kept pushing the coins on me, and showing me computer simulations of the virus. At some point, it clicked." He tilted his head for a moment, looking thoughtful. "That may be why I don't have conscious control at that level, actually."

“When you are consciously levitating something, are you doing it by moving the object itself or changing the forces around it? I mean, personally, I don’t actually do anything to the metal or whatever, I strengthen and weaken the EM fields around it. Which, of course, if you can’t see them, looks like TK.” Lorna was as much thinking out loud as asking questions.

"Depends on what it is," Nathan said, "and how it needs to be levitated." He smiled wryly. "Take the Blackbird on Friday. The smart thing to have done, on my part, would have been to push, with even pressure, at the whole surface of the plane. Instead I basically grabbed whatever was handy, trying to keep in the air. That's why the plane was so badly damaged."

“Don’t let Haroun get to you. Check out the files from last year and see what Magneto did to the Blackbird. You’ll feel better, I swear.” Lorna sighed a little enviously, “Though, Christ, the things that man can do with magnetic fields. It’s a pity he’s a homicidal madman.”

"He's not getting to me," Nathan said, a little too quickly. "Or not now, at least," he amended when she raised an eyebrow at him. "But yeah... I'm not the optimum training partner for you, this is true." He stopped to think for a moment again. "On the other hand," he said slowly, "my visualization exercises might really do you some good. If you're manipulating fields that you can see..."

“Then I can judge it on a more fine level,” Lorna finished, nodding, “Getting to the point where I can overlay the fields on the what I’m seeing will give me more control. I still think that some of your control exercises wouldn’t go amiss but you’re right, visualization is really the key.”

"Training your concentration isn't necessarily the same thing as training your powers," Nathan said with a smile. "In fact, they're pretty much two different things; it's just that one is extremely handy when it comes to the other."

“It can’t hurt to see what I’m doing instead of just feeling it.” Lorna grinned, delighted to have some kind of game plan. “Training my powers is going to be a long and tedious process that hopefully will not leave me with a tendency toward silly hats and genocide.” She picked up the plate again, “Cookie?”

Nathan smiled again and took a cookie. "My head gets officially reassessed, medically speaking, this weekend," he said lightly. "So I should be able to make definite plans with you by then."

“I think I can wait that long. In the meantime, I’ll see how many paperclips I can toss at Alison’s head at once.” Lorna smiled mischievously, “She can laser ‘em. It’ll be good for her.”

"See? These exercises can be mutually beneficial." He took a bite of the cookie, relaxing back into the chair. "It'll probably do you and I good, too. Once we've got you working with a decent number of metallic objects, you can start taking them apart and rebuilding them like I do my coins."

Lorna tilted her head to the side, “You deconstruct the coins?” She usually focused on pulling things together or reforming them. Pulling them apart made sense, just not something she’d done.

Nathan nodded. "That's the next step of the coin exercise. Take them apart, complicate the pattern, then put them back together again."

“Neat.” Lorna selected another cookie for herself and nibbled on it, “I think I’m also going to see how faint a field I can grip. Any magnet can polarize a iron filing. I’m capable of more. There are trace metals in everything.”

Nathan grinned. "Moira had me practicing with red blood cells a few weeks ago," he said. "Still bigger than the virus, but at least I was manipulating those consciously."

“I’m going to hope that I never have to have that level of control. I’ll work towards it but Christ, doesn’t it freak you out?” Lorna rarely asked about personal issues but Nathan’s virus fascinated her…in an ew, scary kind of way.

"Having that level of control, no. Manipulating on that level unconsciously, yes." His mouth twisted a little. "Turning... things into glass without meaning to. That freaked me out." He shrugged. "As for the virus... well, I control it or I die, so there's not much reason to obsess over the weirdness of it."

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Plus, weird is such a relative term around here.” Lorna glanced at her watch, “I hate to do this but I really have to run if I’m going to get dinner done in time. I’m making Chicken Mediterranean. Did you and Moira want any?”

"That sounds good," Nathan said with a quick smile. "I'll have to go fish her out of the lab." He peered across at Lorna for a moment, the smile coming back, brightening. "I... think I'm looking forward to this. Here's hoping they tell me I'm no longer a lamebrain on the weekend."

Lorna laughed and stood up, “Definitely. I’ll set some aside for you two. It should be ready in…oh, give me an hour and a half.”

Nathan couldn't help a chuckle of his own. "It should take me almost that long to get her out of the lab, I'd think," he said. "Thanks, Lorna."

“No problem. Thank you for agreeing to help me out.” She gave him a wave and headed out of the room. “Eat the cookies!” she called over her shoulder.

Nathan chuckled again, and took the plate with him as he got up. They were very good cookies, after all.