Marie-Ange and Nathan, very late Monday night/early Tuesday morning

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Set before this log, Nathan finds Angie in the kitchen in the middle of the night, and the two insomniac precogs sort out where to go from here.



She had told Shinobi she would try to sleep. She had tried, that was quite good enough. Sleep was not coming easily - the growling in her stomach was not helping matters any either. The mini-fridge in the room she shared with Amanda had nothing appitizing, and so Marie-Ange padded down to the kitchen to examine the possibility of something easily digistible. Making herself ill would not help her mood at all.

The plate of cookies were tempting for the exact amount of time it took her to realize that chocolate would just keep her away longer. The bowl of fruit, however, had a banana, and bananas were soft, easily digestible, and had a peel that she could take out just a little frustration on.

"What did the banana do?" Nathan asked from the doorway, raising an eyebrow at Angie. He didn't get an answer, so he came in, moving to the fridge. He wasn't sure what he was looking for. He ought to have just taken another couple of sleeping pills and gone back to bed - his sleep schedule was getting all messed up again, two nights in a row now. But the restlessness had drawn him downstairs, and lo and behold, here was one of the prime causes of it.

"Nothing." Marie-Ange said, after swallowing a mouthful of banana. "It was better than taking it out on anyone else. I think there are a few people I have not angered left..." The peel really was looking fairly abused. Perhaps ripping it into long strips was a little excessive..

Nathan found a bottle of iced tea, looked at it speculatively, then took it out. To hell with the caffeine issue. "You haven't angered me," he said quietly, coming over and sitting down at the table across from her. "Made me feel... sad, guilty. Frightened me quite a bit. No anger, though."

"Everyone else was mad... You should not feel guilty. I was being stupid and a child. You did not do any of those things on purpose to get hurt." Those were the right words to say, even if she did not entirely believe them. She -wanted- to believe them. Marie-Ange knew that it had just been a lot of really bad timing. It was just so frustrating...

Nathan leaned back in the chair, slouching a little as he unscrewed the lid on his iced tea. "Not stupid, not a child," he said very softly. "But you have been neglected, mi'savra, and I'm sorry that I haven't been there for you." Calm. Focus on the meditative pattern in his mind, level everything out. Focus on her. "I'd like to change that. If you can trust me..."

"It was not your fault." If she kept saying it, she would remember it was true. "And I was stupid. I could have told someone that I was not feeling well and that I was frustrated before I went and blew up and made a scene." Marie-Ange let out a sigh and ran a hand through her hair. "I trust you. I just do not want to be a bother."

"You're not a bother," Nathan said, his voice still low. He was catching her stray thoughts, but... no. Focus on her. "Yes, it might have been better for you to tell someone, but we know now." He took a sip of his iced tea, to buy himself a moment. "Would the meditative exercises help? If we did them together again, more regularly - I'm learning more of the Askani lately." Why he was doing that, she didn't really need to know.

"I feel like a bother. I just have insomnia, and some dreams. I am not in constant pain, I am not throwing up or blowing up rooms." Marie-Ange half-heartedly nibbled at her snack, her appitite having left about halfway through the banana. She wanted to continue the excercises, they had helped, but there were people who were in far more need of attention than she was. It was unfair to take up everyone's time.

"It's my time," Nathan said heavily, hearing the thought as loudly as if she'd projected it right at him. "If I choose to spend it helping you, that's my business, and it's also time well-spent."

Taken aback, though she knew Nate was a telepath, hearing some thoughts voiced was still unnerving, Marie-Ange put her head down on the table and shut her eyes. "I am making a giant mess of things. I shouldn't have gotten upset. It -is- stupid. I just wanted someone to ask if I was all right, but I think everyone thinks I am, so no one asks... " The words barely made sense even to her.

Setting the iced tea on the table, Nathan got up and moved over to the chair next to hers, laying a very tentative hand on her shoulder. "I want to help," he said, softly but firmly. "I think you want the help. You're not going to turn me down because you think there are other people who deserve it more than you." He managed a very small smile. "Otherwise I would have to chase you up and down the halls shouting 'Angie! Meditate with meeeee!' And that would be embarassing for both of us."

Marie-Ange couldn't help but giggle. It was a immensly silly mental image, Nathan flailing wildly and running up and down the halls. "I think it would not be helpful to the meditation either. " She finally said, after managing to stop snickering.

Nathan smiled. "An awful lot of fun, though. At least for the people watching - I'm imagining you being very red in the face and me feeling like an idiot." More of an idiot than he did right now, even, which was saying a lot. "So is that a yes?" he pressed gently. "You will meditate with me? I won't have to stage the sillly and overly dramatic chase scene?"

"Yes, I will... " It was still really hard to not snicker at the idea of the chase scene. "No having to chase me, I promise. I should have said something to you before.. I just did not want to be a bother." Except she had already said that and everyone said she was not a bother. It was just hard to believe. "I know better than to not tell people when I am having nightmares."

"Hey, no recriminations," he murmured, squeezing her shoulder gently. Not on her part, at least. "They don't do any good. We know now, which is what's important. Let's concentrate on moving forward, okay?" He smiled again, a bit wearily. "Not that we don't have quite enough of our brains oriented towards the future already, huh?"

Marie-Ange sighed. "It is not -that- easy. I cannot just say "Oh, well, I should have said something but did not, and now it is all better." Shaking her head, she half-smiled. "For someone with half my head in the future, I certainly get stuck on what happened before a lot..."

"Perils of the mutation," Nathan said seriously. "We get stuck on events, cause and effect, consequences. I don't think there's a way around that."

"And I suppose the closest we can get is to try to tell others what we see?" Marie-Ange had the worst feeling those notebooks were rapidly going to become public. Which was perhaps not so bad, but she thought maybe an edit was in order first. Some of those entries were not really appropiate for a general audience.

"Sharing is good, yes," he said as wryly as he could. "Taking too much responsibility upon yourself for what you see is not." He eyed her for a long moment, then decided that yes, he had to broach the subject. "You're angry with me," he said simply, not a question. "About having stopped you from exploring your visions about me more fully."

"I might have stopped you from getting hurt.." Marie-Ange said, almost automatically. "I could not even tell what was going to happen, and I thought I was so close, and then you and Doug stopped me." Damn. She was angrier about that than she thought. "So many people died. A headache on my part, even for a week is not worth people dying.."

"I just can't get it out of my mind how you were that night when you came to see me," Nathan said, his voice very low. "Hindsight is twenty-twenty, yes, but you didn't just have a headache, Angie, you were raving. Even knowing now what happened, I'm not sure I could have made the choice to push you even farther. You're too... important to me," he said, a bit uncertainly. "I like your mind relatively intact, you know."

"Nothing I can say is going to change your mind, is it?" Marie-Ange frowned, and broke the remainder of her banana in half forcefully. "I do not know if I can choose to not do something, Nathan. I cannot just sit here and see things and not try to stop them. Half the time I do not even know what I should and should not try to stop!"

"Then let's focus on figuring that out," Nathan said. "I promised you after Asgard that we'd talk to the Askani about their precogs and how they handled things. Then I went and got myself kidnapped, admittedly, but I'm back now. We can look into that." He tried to smile again. "I figure that any people with a whole verb tense to cover precognition has to have a fairly well- defined ethical code regarding what precogs do. I'm not saying that you need to adopt it, when we figure out what it is - just that it might be food for thought."

"Or maybe some way to know better how to cope with precognition at the least?" Marie-Ange asked hopefully. "If they had precognitives, and knew what would happen to them, maybe they had some way to help their precogs not go so crazy seeing bad things happen?"

"We won't know unless we try," Nathan said. "The precogs are... quiet, usually. It might take a while to get them to open up to us."

"I am patient." Marie-Ange said. "I wanted a long time to have a nervous breakdown, I can wait a while to get my head better." She half-smiled, hoping that making small jokes would distract her - and Nathan, perhaps, from how she really still felt like she had been a gigantic jerk.

"One step at a time," Nathan said, smiling back wearily. "We'll sort it out, Angie. Don't worry too much about what happened tonight - that's easier said than done, I know, but it's better to focus on being productive, rather than kicking one's self." He chuckled faintly. "Or so I've been told."

"Why do I get the feeling you do not believe it either?" Marie-Ange asked, a little warily. "I keep coming back to that I yell at Manuel for the same thing. Making a big scene just to get someone to pay attention."

"Don't," Nathan said very steadily, "compare yourself to Manuel. One little... snap of your self-control is not comparable."

"I do not think I am like Manuel. I just should have know better." This was not going very well, she thought. Not at all. "I will try not to beat myself up about it. It is just hard.."

"I know. Just keep trying." He leaned back finally, studying her. "You really need to sleep, Angie, or at least try," he said with a sigh. "Sounds cliched to say that things will look better in the morning, but they will."

"Sleep is another thing that is hard." The sort-of-smile was obviously tired though. "But I will try, and if I cannot manage sleep I will at least rest and not make any more posts or beat myself up too badly."

"That's a start." He got up, giving her a significant look. "Try, for the rest of tonight and tomorrow night, to get some rest. We'll start with the meditation again on Wednesday, all right? It's going to take me some time to get straight answers out of the Askani, I think."

Marie-Ange frowned slightly. "I can do that. I can try at least. I have class in the morning Wednesday. If I am tired, my professor will decide to single me out in class. He is a sadist, I think. If I do not sleep tonight, I should sleep tommorow. Even if I have to talk to the doctors.."

"Good." He let his hand rest on her shoulder for a moment. "I'll do better," he said a bit hoarsely, then reached out to grab his iced tea again. "I promise," he said as he turned to head for the door.

"But..." Oh, this was a mess. Nathan had not done anything on purpose. Marie-Ange watched him go, trying not to continue to protest. She did need sleep, and any more argueing would just result in not sleeping, and not getting anywhere either. Once Nathan had left the room, she finished the last remants of her banana, made sure to throw out the shredded remants of the poor abused peel, and headed towards her room, to attempt something like sleep.