xp_logs | Manuel and Lusanya, backdated to last Wednesday

Backdated to last Wednesday. The night over his argument with Nathan about whether or not his lessons with the Askani can be continued somehow, Manuel finds himself with a visitor in his dreams. Lusanya, as always, is very good at listening. She and Manuel talk about debts of honor, living with empathy, the difference between family and Clan, and Lusanya tells him something about her past that leaves him rather shocked. Then she offers a solution to the problem of the debt he feels he owes Nathan.

Manuel's mindscape had definitely changed. Instead of the club with the driving beats and the empathic lightshow, this time it was a gallery. Subdued lighting, life-size portraits hanging on the walls. Manuel stood in front of a particular portrait - one of a wind-driven beach with a lighthouse shining and the suggestion of a carnival in the background. Out of all the paintings in the gallery, the one Manuel was staring it was by far the best developed - a golden frame elegantly carved in an abstract pattern, the lighthouse's beam sweeping back and forth across the beach.

A white bird materialized mid-air, fluttering down to a stop on the low wooden bench behind Manuel, as if it was regarding the same painting he was studying. It ruffled its wings after a moment, then shifted into Lusanya in her white robe. "It's beautiful," she said hesitantly.

Manuel looked at Lusanya and then smiled. "It's my link. I've been redecorating a bit, trying to get my thoughts in order. Something a little quieter, a little more organized. The club was fun, but it wasn't working for me anymore." he said. "So what brings you here? Come to talk me into indebting myself to Nathan, or is this purely a social visit?"

"I merely wanted to see you," Lusanya said with a faint smile. "I wasn't certain if you would have left the door open."

Manuel grinned. "For you, I leave that door open. But you have _got_ to find something better to wear. White robes make me wonder if you're some kind of pagan priestess or something." He started to smile, but then it collapsed. "Of course, for all I know, you _might be_ a pagan priestess or something."

Lusanya blinked down at her garb, then smiled again, more whimsically this time. "Not a priestess," she said firmly. "A Speaker... a diplomat."

"Diplomat, huh?" he said musingly. "That's right, you'd mentioned that before. Not liking the priestess comparison, I can feel that much."

"We had no religion," Lusanya said with a shrug. "Can you blame us? When the Canaanites considered it a religious duty to destroy us, certainly we may be pardoned for being somewhat atheistic."

Manuel snorted. Loudly. "You can proclaim that as loudly as you want, but to me you people have all the signs of a religious cult. But I don't want to argue with you tonight." he said with a sigh. "So what's on your mind?"

"Do I need a reason to visit a friend?" Lusanya asked almost wistfully. "And Nathan's mind is not a welcoming place, tonight." She was still quite upset with her father.

"I don't know." he admitted honestly. "I'm guessing that you don't, as you are here now. Do you want to go for a walk, or did you have something _else_ in mind?" he said with just a small leer.

Lusanya blinked. "A walk?" she said hesitantly. "Perhaps you could show me... the rest of your paintings?"

Manuel nodded. "I can do that. Most of them you already know - they're the people who have had the most influence on me, in one way or another. Amanda here is, of course, first. Then we've got Nathan - you'll have to forgive the steel bars over it, I'm not very charitably inclined towards him right now. And I thought the hammer and sickle was such a nice touch, too. Anyway, moving on..."

Lusanya trailed along after him, smiling faintly. "Were you ever?" she inquired, but then shook her head as Manuel looked back at her. "Never mind. Show me more?"

"Once, for a time." he answered seriously. "Now we've got Emma - I thought the older, more elegant style would be appropriate for hers. Without her, I wouldn't be here now. And there's Charles - a little blurry and out-of-focus, as I do not know him and he shields his mind too well." He pointed out more paintings as he walked down the endless hall - Angelo, Marie-Ange, a few others well-defined, the rest sketches or even finger-paint (in the case of Miles).

Lusanya paused in front of a portrait of herself. "I look this young, to you?" she asked a bit distantly. "Interesting... we take the shape in which we see ourselves, when we manifest. I would have thought I would be older than that."

Manuel shook his head. "No, that's just about how you appear to me." he said. "Do you find it unflattering? I thought you'd appreciate the realism."

"Not unflattering," she said quietly. "It merely makes me curious." She reached out tentatively to take his arm. "It's quiet here," she said, remembering the last time she had been in his mindscape. "Are you happier?"

Manuel looked at Lusanya and shook his head. "Not really. Step forward, step backwards." he admitted. "But I am not a happy person by nature - if such a term even applies to people like us. And, of course, to some I'm unredeemable and an idiot to boot. Manuel Logic is not Earth Logic, I believe I've heard it described as."

"Things are better with Amanda, at least?" she asked hopefully.

"Very much so." he grinned. "If anything, things are better now than they have ever been. She is my bright spot, my shining hope." he said with a big dumb smile on his face. "Things fall apart in other areas."

Lusanya beamed back at him, honestly delighted. "I am so glad, Manuel," she said with nothing but happy sincerity. "So very glad."

Manuel just grinned. "She, at least, understands me. She can tell me I'm being an idiot without making it a personal challenge to my soverignty."

"This idea of sovereignty," Lusanya said as they continued down the gallery. "It confuses me." She looked up at him, almost shyly. "I do not say this to criticize. I merely do not understand."

"Well, maybe I can help you understand. Have you ever lost control over yourself? Had your every feeling decided by the whims of someone else?"

Lusanya nodded. "Frequently," she said simply. "Most often in training, of course. But at other times..." She trailed off, her expression darkening a little as she looked away.

"You know, then, what I will do to avoid that happening again." he said quietly. "To be the master of my own fate - although I'm not sure you understand that concept either, as you live in a Clan dominated by a strong central figure of authority who has dominion over life and death."

Lusanya shook her head. "Possibly not," she admitted. "Although I do not think you fully understand our Clan, either." Her smile was almost whimsical. "But so long as we accept the lack of understanding, there is no obstacle. Only mystery."

"I know very well that I don't - and I am fighting anyone enlightening me by dumping the data into my brain." Manuel said. "But to get back to the point - I do not wish to put Nathan in charge of myself again. I want to make my own mistakes, to be my own person. Not to be indebted for my very sanity to a man who fears me to his very core. I already owe him - and you! - too much."

"Then why not release him fully from his obligation?" Lusanya asked after a moment. She hadn't come here with the intention of speaking about Nathan, but if he wished to talk, she would. She was his friend, after all. "You refuse the offer, yet you cling to the bitterness that he walked away in the first place. As for the fear..." She stopped, shivering involuntarily. "If we were not harmless, my father and I and the others, he would fear us. The thought of existing there in his mind, amid that..."

"Because I am a de la Rocha, and we _pay our debts_." he said tiredly. "I incurred the debt, I will repay it. I do not have much, but I have that much. He loves to tell me what a fool I am. I come from a place where a debt is an important thing, to be used as a bargaining chip. If you incur one, you pay it off as soon as possible, lest it become something that forces you to do something you would rather not."

Lusanya gave him a mildly severe look. "You avoid the question. Ah, well..." She smiled a bit, almost impishly. "I could help you plot."

"I am not avoiding the question!" he protested."I cannot release him from the debt because to do so means that my word is _nothing_. And my word is all that I have left! And plot ... what? How to repay him? Or did you have something else in mind?"

No, they were not going to argue semantics, or points of honor, Lusanya told herself firmly. "How to repay him," she said determinedly. "So that this is no longer a concern for you - I dislike seeing you upset, you must realize that by now." She tilted her head at him. "Must he know, and accept, that the debt has been repaid?"

Manuel grinned. "You catch on quickly. I like that. It depends - for a debt of this severity, I think that he would at the very least have to know. Acceptance is, since he is not an ally, irrelevant." he said with a grin. "Unless reprisals are likely?"

"It would depend on the nature of the repayment," Lusanya said mock-somberly. "Embarass him and he will almost certainly find a way to exact revenge. In some ways he is as prideful as you." She winked at him, to take the edge off the comment.

Manuel grinned. "I am listening, if you have ideas." he said. "Embarrassment is out. Should I praise him, then?"

"Mmm... would he not believe you were attempting to ridicule him?" Lusanya asked, half-sadly, half-in amusement. "No... it is a thorny question. If I understand correctly, you must repay it in kind? Or at least in magnitude?"

"In magnitude." Manuel agreed. "I need to do something for him that is just as important as what he did for me. And that is where I am choking. I cannot reach into the grave, I cannot punish his tormentors, and he already has a woman." he said with some frustration.

"Must it be planned?" she asked thoughtfully. "There is always the possibility that a situation may arise where you provide him with help of that magnitude." She sighed. "I suppose that does not help, does it? Waiting to see if a chance to repay the debt presents itself does not solve the problem of its existence."

Manuel nodded. "It does not." he agreed. "I am not challenging that I incurred the debt. That doesn't bother me. I just don't want to make it any WORSE - and especially not have to bathe in his fear every other day."

"It isn't you, you realize," Lusanya said, poking him gently in the side. "Not you, Manuel. You should see the fear in him when he sits down with Xavier."

"He's not offering to be Charles's practice dummy, either." Manuel replied. "He fears empaths. You know it, I know it. Let's stop ignoring that inconvenient little fact and start accepting it as a given and moving on."

"Why does that bother you so much?" Lusanya asked curiously. "Oh, don't mistake me, I understand why fear of empathy concerns you on a general level. But from someone who is not Clan--kin or friend, rather?" She tilted her head at him. "Do you think that people do not fear even the most disciplined of empaths?"

"Because he's the only real chance I have about learning _anything_ about my power." Manuel said, arms crossed across his chest. "People don't fear telepaths."

Lusanya's eyes widened. "They don't?" she asked in wonderment. "Here, you mean? How fascinating..."

"I've never felt it. Charles is one of the strongest telepaths anywhere, and people don't piss themselves about him the way they do about me." he pointed out.

"Xavier is also disciplined, though," Lusanya pointed out. "Most of them, I would think, have only ever known him as disciplined." She patted Manuel's arm gently. "The same cannot be said for you - and you know I do not mean that as a slight."

Manuel's face twisted, but he acknowledged the point. "No, that's true." he admitted glumly."Ever wish you weren't an empath? That you had some other power, something not quite so hazardous to your mental health?"

"Often," Lusanya admitted freely. "As a child, I envied the telekinetics most, to be truthful. There was so much they could do, often so easily, and they seemed to take such joy in it."

Manuel nodded. "Seems like a great power to me." he agreed. "Not like this one."

"There was something I realized as I grew older, though," Lusanya went on as they walked. "I was right about telekinesis. It was a wonderful gift. But I did not realize, as a child, that the telekinetics went straight to the front lines, upon the conclusion of their training." She looked up at Manuel gravely. "It is a glorious power, but perfectly suited to battle, almost more than anything else. It was... disillusioning for me." She shook her head a little. "I was happier, in the end, I believe," she told him. "Happier as a Speaker than I would have been as a soldier. Although I suppose, in the end, I was a soldier after all." Her gaze went very distant as she reviewed her memories of her death.

"See, you grew up in a warzone. I didn't, and I'm not. So being sent to the front lines doesn't bother me - there are no front lines to be sent to." Manuel said. "And I don't think I have what it takes to be a diplomat - stupid people piss me off."

"So what do you want to do?" Lusanya asked. "With your life, in the end."

"I have no idea." he admitted. "I always figured that I'd inherit and find some way to keep the de la Rocha line alive, and pass along things to my heir when the time came. But that doesn't seem likely since I was born a mutant."

"You are not any less a de la Rocha because you are a mutant," Lusanya said, sounding surprised and a bit upset.

"Explain that to my father, or to the line of ancestors who came before me." he said bitterly. "If he ever manages to sire another male child, I predict I will be disowned and cast out so fast that my head will spin."

Lusanya stopped, staring at him hard. "You have your family's blood in your veins," she said, "their traditions and values in your mind. Is he not the one being foolish, breaking the chain of your kinship like that? Dishonoring your Clan?"

"He _is_ the Clan, right now - to use your terms." Manuel explained. "The equivalency would be if Askani herself cast, say, you out of the Clan."

"But I would not have done anything to deserve it," Lusanya argued stubbornly. "And she is not permitted to be arbitrary. You have done nothing to deserve being cast out - why should he have that right, barring sufficient cause?"

"Because when I manifested, I embarrassed him. Badly." Manuel said. "And she's not permitted to be arbitrary? Oh, that's a laugh and a half!" he said with a chuckle. "But anyway - he is the House de la Rocha. He has stewardship over it, since he is the eldest of the line. The only reason I can call myself a de la Rocha and sit as a minor Lord Cardinal is because Alphonso allows it."

"Not arbitrary on issues within the Clan," Lusanya amended, and then shook her head. "It still seems perplexing to me," she confessed. "You've done nothing wrong..."

"But I have." Manuel said sadly. "I embarrassed him publically. I revealed his secrets to his enemies. I made him weak."

"And did he give you sufficient support when you manifested?" she asked sharply. "Did he understand the need, the demands empathy made upon you?"

"Of course not." Manuel said. "That's irrelevant. If I had been able to keep it together, I could have been a great asset to my House. Together, we could have restored it to glory. But, alas, I could not."

"A new empath cannot cope without proper support," Lusanya said flatly. "It is a fundamental, universal truth, upon manifestation. No matter how well they have been loved beforehand, how carefully they have been taught, how strong the child is, if they do not receive the help the gift demands when it is necessary, it is disaster. Always."

Manuel scowled. "I did okay." he said defensively. "I only went a little bit nuts."

"Then that merely shows you how strong you truly are. But how much better would it have been, had you received such support from him?" Lusanya shook her head, a little irritated. "Manuel, you do not believe that the Lady invented our training methods for psis, do you? She merely coopted what already existed, refined it. Psi is a successful mutation, in our future. Training has been formalized for centuries."

Manuel shrugged. "As far as I know, you're pulling all of this out of your ass. That's not an invite to come enlighten me, by the way. If the only way you can convince is by coercision..." he warned. "I've never met another living empath."

Lusanya pulled her arm out of his. "Distrust the Lady," she said heatedly, "distrust my father, distrust Nathan... but if I have given you no reason to trust me, Manuel, so be it."

Manuel sighed. "I didn't mean it like that, Lusanya. Don't be like this, please. Your Lady - I don't trust her. Not entirely. Your father, well, he's a crusty old bastard, that's for damned sure. Nathan - well, we all know how _he_ feels, now, don't we. I have no quarrel with you, and I think you know it. I don't have so many people to talk to that I can afford to throw them away." he pleaded. "As pathetic as that makes me, enjoying spending time with a dead woman from the far future."

She tossed her blonde hair back over her shoulder, glaring at him for a moment, but then relented. She had never been the sort to stay angry long, for any reason, and only partially because cherishing anger could be destructive for an empath. "If it makes you pathetic," she said dryly, "what does it make the ghost who enjoys time spent with you?"

Manuel stopped to think about that for a second. "Smart and a good judge of character?" he offered with a grin. "Come on, this is depressing me. We need to go do something _fun_. Did you Askani have clothing stores?"

"Clothing stores?" Lusanya considered, and then smiled suddenly. "I have a better idea," she said firmly, reaching out to take his hand. "Let me take the mindscape?"

Manuel nodded. "Be my guest." he said, turning over not only his mindscape but a fraction of his power to her as well. "Enjoy."

Delightedly, Lusanya reshaped the mindscape into another memory of hers. The gallery shifted into a large, low-ceilinged room filled with enormous tables, upon which were various musical instruments in various stages of completion. The air smelled of wood and varnish, and a warm glow seemed to fill the room. Lusanya looked up at Manuel, smiling impishly.

Manuel inhaled deeply. "Music?" he said with a grin. "Did you make these, or did you just visit the man who did?"

"My uncle," Lusanya said happily, indicating the door as an older man, gray-haired but pleasant-faced, came in and sat down at one of the tables, picking up one piece of what looked almost like a lute and examining it meticulously. "He was famous throughout the Protectorate for the quality of his work," Lusanya went on proudly. "Some of our most famous instrumentalists would use nothing but instruments that came from his hands." She chuckled, a little sheepishly. "Truthfully, there should be... oh, six or seven young apprentices in this room with us. But I always tired of their staring, when I visited."

Manuel grinned. "I knew you had to have a little grit in you! You made them go away and leave you alone, I take it?" he said as he moved among the musical instruments, trying to find something vaguely piano-like.

"Not necessary," Lusanya said with an innocent look. "All I had to do to incapacitate them was smile back. Lorris was always terribly amused, and teased me that I would have to recompense him for their lost work." She watched Manuel move about, looking at the tables, and then realized what he was looking for. "Over here," she said, gesturing for him to follow her towards the far end of the room.

There, arranged along the wall, were three mostly-finished blesseyrae, keyboard-based instruments that were the closest thing to the pianos of his time. "They were almost always played by two people," she explained to him. "Hence the circular keyboards."

Manuel grinned, and sat down at one of them to look it over. "Ah, feminine wiles." he grinned, twisting to look at Lusanya. "The cure for, and cause of, much male distress."

"We do try," she said, mock-gravely, but couldn't help smiling as she saw how closely he was examining the instrument. "They are more like your harpsichords than pianos, if I understand the principles properly," she said. "The grandest of our instruments, truly. I can remember one performance in the hall of Bigraia..."

"I know. I've seen it." Manuel said distractedly. "People are really stupid that way. I've always thought you should just come out and say what you feel, but nobody agrees with me. When I've done it, I've always been smacked for it. So I don't do it anymore." He ran his hands over the instrument, and struck a chord out of curiousity, to see how it sounded.

The delicate sound wafted out through the air, and Lusanya smiled. "More honesty all around is probably not a bad thing," she confessed. "More forthrightness. But we are all human, and perhaps that isn't in our nature."

Manuel shrugged, and struck another chord, smiling at the sound that resulted. "We're also not human." he pointed out. "Shouldn't we stand for something better?"

"Ideally," Lusanya said. "But my people and I should be an example of what the world does to idealism." She paused, watching him play. "Manuel, why do you think that telepaths can lie, and we cannot?"

Manuel hrmmed. "Because they can, and I can't?" he said. "Ask Moira for the biology of it, I don't understand any of that. But I know for a fact that telepaths can lie. They're just like everyone else - better, in a way. They can craft their lies so that you don't have any choice but to agree."

"Their... lies," Lusanya said thoughtfully, "always have at least a certain amount of truth to them. What they see, they use. Is that truly much different than us?"

Manuel nodded. "Yes." he said flatly. "They can make you believe - all that we can do is make things feel convincing. We don't actually force anyone to do anything."

"Are all telepaths capable of that, though?" Lusanya shrugged. "Take Nathan. He receives very well, can project reasonably, but he would have a great deal of difficulty changing anyone's mind."

"Projection is changing people's minds." Manuel said firmly. "Putting in thoughts that weren't there before."

"And if a telepath projects 'Hello' or even 'Perhaps beware the large object falling towards your head', how does that truly violate the mind they're projecting into?"

"Well, gee." Manuel said sarcastically. "I'm guessing it's by the same logic that says "You're not allowed to feel your own emotions because you can't shield by changing the emotions of people around you."

"If you don't truly see the difference, Manuel..." Lusanya shrugged, offering a rueful smile. "I was a diplomat, as I said, and one thing I learned was that it does very little good to browbeat people."

"Since everybody always listens to sweet reason, of course." Manuel said sarcastically. "Some folks you just can't puzzle out. Emotion's a great way to reach them."

Lusanya frowned thoughtfully. "No, not really," she admitted. "In my work, I very often relied merely on what I received. I was not quite as strong as you, Manuel, but I was not much weaker. Still, it was easier in most cases to navigate the fields of emotions than to actively alter them." She laughed suddenly, almost whimsically. "My father once referred to it as 'letting them do all the work'."

Manuel just looked baffled, and didn't comment to that right away. Instead, he turned back to the instrument he was sitting at, and admired its construction a little more.

Lusanya took a deep breath, smiling around at the workshop. "I always felt so safe here," she murmured. "Lorris was my mother's brother. When my father was off on business for the Clan, I very often stayed with him. I would sit beneath the tables and watch him work - in the middle of it all, yet apart."

Manuel nodded. "I don't have any relatives. They're all dead." Manuel said quietly. "Plenty of cousins born on the wrong side of the blankets, as well as a few half-siblings that I never knew."

"Sad," Lusanya said, reaching out a hand to the other side of the keyboard, picking out the melody of one of the funeral laments. "To have no Clan..."

Manuel, always a musical quick study, picked out the same melody on his side of the keyboard. "We were giants, once. A line unbroken stretching back to the Roman Empire. It ends with me."

Lusanya frowned at the keyboard, perplexed, as she shifted into the harmonic line. "Are you not very young to make that decision?"

"It has already been made." Manuel said. "I expect that I will not be a de la Rocha for very much longer. I can't imagine why he hasn't already moved, since I will not be a weapon and I cannot be Heir."

"Oh." Lusanya looked up, blinking. "My apologies... I thought you meant you would have no children."

Manuel laughed. "I can't imagine that I will. Amanda is terrified of the very idea. Did you have any, before you were ... you know?"

Lusanya hesitated, her hands stopping, poised over the keyboard. "A son," she finally said, quietly. "He was nine months old when our settlement was attacked. I have some hope that he survived... my death bought them time to flee, and my sister swore to me that she would guard him with her life."

"He is not with you, then? Inside of Nathan's head?" Manuel asked, somewhat thoughtlessly. "Was he an empath like us?"

"There are many who are not there," Lusanya said, a bit vaguely. "Only those of us who died before the Lady did were brought back with her. And as for my son..." She shrugged a little. "He would not have manifested for years. His father was a psi, as well, a telepath and telekinetic. He is here, because he died in battle while I still bore our son."

"Some manifest at birth." he pointed out. "But I am sorry that your son is not where you are."

"It gives me hope," she said more crisply. "That neither he nor my sister are here. If their column survived the trip north..." She paused again, shrugged. "You do not need to hear this. You are not interested in our history, I know."

Manuel grinned. "I am interested in you, but not your Clan. Someone has to remain unaltered and unfettered." he said with a grin, to take the sting away. "Your Clan - means a lot to you, doesn't it?"

"Very nearly everything," she said simply. "Strangely, my son was as good an example of that as any. Many women chose to bear children, and men to father them, to those like my son's father and men and women like him. We needed the psis and other mutants whose powers were suited to battle." She shook her head. "Do not take this to mean I did not care for my son, or for his father - Huson was a dear friend since childhood. But it should demonstrate to you the lengths to which I was prepared to go for my Clan."

Manuel tried very hard not to let his jaw drop. "That's ... quite something." he said as disarmingly as he possibly could.

She smiled a bit wryly at him. "It is a good thing you consider me a friend," she said lightly, "or I would be accused, now, of being a whore for a breeding program, wouldn't I?" She shook her head, before he can answer. "You can have no idea what it was like," she said slowly. "Pregnancy, in my time, was so very dangerous. The environment was so contaminated that few births were viable. And yet, everyone we sent onto the front lines died, eventually. If the Clan was to survive, we had to bear as many children as possible." She looked back down at the keyboard. "I was pregnant again, when I died," she murmured. "Only just, although had it been obvious I doubt it would have stopped them from doing what they did before they killed me."

Manuel blinked. "You'll have to admit that's what it sounds like." he said slowly. "I just cannot wrap my brain around the idea. I think I will try not to think about it, or the things you've done, and take you for what you are, now, in my time."

"But I am an echo," she murmured, her hands moving over the keyboard again. "Merely an echo, of what I was. Am I Lusanya, or just the memory of Lusanya? It is something that many of us are trying to determine, in this new existence."

Manuel nods. "I know." he said. "You're not real, you're an echo lost in time. But you've got enough coherence to talk to and to laugh with." he said with a faint smile.

"And I am fortunate," she said, smiling down at the keyboard, letting herself shift into one of the ballads she had so loved. "To have a friend. I know this, as much as I brood sometimes."

"A friend. I didn't realize how important they were until I came here. It was a friend who betrayed me to the authorities, and in the asylum anyone caught being friendly with me was tortured." he said. "So I had to believe that friends were for lesser people."

"But you no longer believe that," Lusanya said. "I hope?"

Manuel grinned. "Friends do have their uses." he said with a smirk.

"Say rather, benefits," Lusanya advised him, her smile wry again. "You would be amazed at the different reactions a simple choice of words can elicit."

Manuel shrugged. "Same difference." he said.

"A use is something valuable to you," Lusanya said with a soft laugh. "A benefit is something valuable to both you and your friend."

"What benefits me benefits my friends." he countered, and then grinned. "They use me, I use them. Everybody wins."

"Sometimes, my friend, I think you are the rarest of things," Lusanya said with a certain amount of mirth. "A cynical idealist."

Manuel sketched a bow from his seat at the bench. "Why, thank you." he said, pleased with her deduction.

"I never did assist you to come up with an option for the repayment of your debt, did I?" Lusanya said, her hands continuing to move over the keyboard. She chuckled again. "I tell you, Manuel, I was never this easily distracted in life..."

Manuel grinned. "I will take it as a compliment that I can fluster even one so unflappable as you." he said with a grin.

"Enough," she said with a laugh, raising a defensive hand. "I believe you do yourself a disservice. You have the potential to do quite well at diplomacy. After all, much of the work is merely the proper application of charm."

"As Alphonso has said many times, diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggy" while you search with your other hand for a rock big enough to kill it with." Manuel said with a grin. "So, about this repayment..."

Lusanya nodded. "Quantify it for me," she said, almost briskly. "See if you can sum up the debt, in a few words and as objective a fashion as possible, with no references to Nathan or how you feel on the subject. This person owes a debt to that person... what does that debt consist of?"

"Life." Manuel said simply. "The person we speak of would not be a functioning whole reasoning being without the person owed the debt."

"The greatest of debts, then," Lusanya said, beginning to realize just why this was concerning Manuel so deeply. "The person owed," she went on thoughtfully, "recently did something very foolish."

Manuel quirked an eyebrow. "And what might that be?" he asked.

"Spoke to the father of the person owing the debt, and allowed certain information to be revealed that would have been best concealed," Lusanya said. "And do not think that many of us did not scold both the Lady and my father for such ill-considered intervention."

Manuel ahhed. "Yes, I heard about that. That was very unwise. Nothing I can do, unfortunately. Unless you have something ... ?"

"I have a thought," Lusanya said slowly, looking back down at the keyboard. "That no matter how tangled the futures have become, that this Hellfire Club is still a dark thread. That because of this, because of you and Amanda, because of the young Shaw, because of his own past experiences with them, Nathan will come into conflict with them again. Perhaps not soon, and I am far from a precog, but... I have this thought."

Manuel hrmmed. "I am listening." he said slowly. "I am only the White Knight, and not in a position to dictate policy. Yet."

Lusanya sighed, removing her hands from the keyboard. "You incurred the debt over time," she said. "Day by day, accumulating. It would doubtless be more satisfying to you to repay it quickly, all at once, but unless disaster strikes and you find yourself in the position to save his life that seems unlikely." She looked up at Manuel. "Consider this a long-term opportunity, barring fortuitous circumstance? Do what you can. Watch and listen, if nothing else. Information can be as much of a shield as anything else."

Manuel hrmmed. "Yes, I can see that. I think that would be a fair trade. There are many things I could learn, both about the dangerous woman in question as well as her associates. Do you think it would work?"

"I think it would be something of great value to him," Lusanya said. "I think that having us wrenched from his mind, again - " She stopped, shivering. This creature Selene was frightening even in description. "I think it would destroy him utterly, even if he himself was not harmed." She turned her attention back to Manuel. "And I think," she said more firmly, "that it would allow you to pursue the repayment of this debt in privacy. Without needing to wrestle with him about him, or put your sense of honor forward to be attacked."

Manuel grinned. "I like this the more I think about it. There is risk, but that should make the debt discharge faster. I accept your advice. I will act upon it the very next chance that I get."

"Then this has been a productive conversation," Lusanya said, more happily. "Do you wish to see more of the workshop, now?"

"Certainly." he said, standing up to extend his hand to Lusanya. "It is a very good thing the father of your child is not here." he said with a mischevious look. "Or perhaps it does not matter to you either way."

Lusanya gave him a wry look. "Huson, were he here, would be applauding me enthusiastically. We were not linked, after all."

Manuel rolled his eyes. "Anyway - show me the rest of the workshop, please." he said, extend his arm for her to take. "I'd like to see it."