Log - Alison & Manuel

[x-dazzler.livejournal.com]

Tuesday, late afternoon. Manuel and Alison have a talk about life in general and their plans for the future.

Dynasties and Legacies...

Manuel sat in the Rec Room, wearing his good grey suit. It made him feel good to be dressed better than his contemporaries at the Mansion, and after his driving lesson with Scott, he could use all the feel-good tricks in his arsenal.

But the television was boring (when it wasn't incomprehensible) and it was a half-hour before any decent financial news would come on. In a word, he was bored.

The rustle of paper and high heels clicking on the floor in the hallway warned far in advance that someone was passing by. "Miles is going to go show Artie his new book now!" was followed by quick trotting off in the distance, but the rest stopped at the doorway. Setting her shopping bags down, Alison grinned at his attired.

"Hey! Looks like I'm not the only one who dressed up today." And my, did he ever look bored, at that. "You look ready to throw yourself into a pool full of frogs just to see what happens." Miles had the oddest concepts of what might break someone's boredom sometimes, but this one always had amused her.

Manuel quirked an eyebrow at Alison. "And you look acceptable as well. All cleaned up and everything." he said with a smirk. "And yes, for your information, I am bored. Financials won't come on for another hour or so, and I'm looking for something to do. Do you happen to have any suggestions that do not involve amphibians?"

"I clean up okay," she chuckled while claiming a seat on the other couch, amused at the remark more than anything else. Crossing her legs she pondered the question. "Well, I won't ask you if the homework is all done," which was more of a joke than anything else, "so tell me what you usually do when you're at loose ends?"

Manuel grinned ferally. "I usually go find Amanda or Jubilation. However, both are currently indisposed." he said with a very knowing wink. "There are a few other things that can amuse me most of the time, but those avenues are closed to me right now. I am sure that the, what do they call you again - ah, now I remember, the Devil Woman never wants for something to do." he said, leering.

Well, that was laid to rest in one fell swoop. Alison grinned at his words, shaking her head. "I don't think jogging would be your first choice to relieve boredom." A distant crash in the distance caused her to pause, listening for a moment - no cries followed, so she relaxed. "Try to write music, guitar practice, work out new words with Miles and other little boy related activities, deal with the label issues, train... and sometimes shop." Which involved use of the image inducer if she was with someone, so she didn't actually go as often as people thought. And then there were all her team tasks, which had been taking far more of her time of late, but she didn't feel a pressing need to go into that.

Manuel shrugged. "See? I was right. You don't normally want for things to do." he said with a grin. "I'm all caught up on homework, and fencing holds little appeal right now. And I don't have the option of training with my power." What he really wanted right now was a woman, but his two regular choices were off-limits either by choice or by biology.

"Did you ever think to ask people if they'd agree to help you with that, under controlled circumstances?" She had added the last merely for the fact that unsupervised power practice and Manuel were two things that would send most people in the mansion in an uproar, to say the least.

Manuel looked disgusted with Alison for a brief moment. "Of course I have." he said in an offended tone. "I got the reaction that you would expect - anywhere from a polite rejection to a bald no. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that I have to look out for myself because no one else will." And he was having the oddest flashbacks to his conversation with Scott, and look how well that went.

"Aah." That did have something to do with Manuel himself more than his power, she thought, but the memory of his offer to email Charles right away after the incident in the music room was still quite clear. As such, there was a simple answer to that and she wondered who she'd be able to convince into being the one to supervise the sessions. "You haven't asked me." And he hadn't at that, which was likely why her response was so matter of fact.

Manuel blinked. "You? I hardly think you'd be willing. And I do not, contrary to popular belief, enjoy looking like the fool. So there's a reason I have not asked you." he said firmly. "Because you would decline, but in such a way as to extract maximum humiliation and embarrassment. Your reputation is well-earned."

Now she was curious. Intensely so. "What are you basing that judgment on?" she asked, settling deeper in the seat, clearly not leaving anytime soon. She couldn’t recall ever being crushing to him, and if he was going from reporters' bitter rants about being told to shove off, well, that was hardly anything to go by at all, in her opinion.

It was in his. "I keep my ears open. I read the journals - much better now than I used to, granted. I feel things." he said. "You can't tell me that you derive no satisfaction from tormenting those who annoy you. Not after that unholy satisfaction from you and that doctor in Medlab. I could feel that from my room, that's how strong it was."

She was staring at him, she knew. Stunned at his leap of logic and oddly sad at the same time. That was a frightening ability to misjudge a situation based on incomplete facts that he was showing. Then again... maybe it shouldn't be such a surprise, considering the nature of his power and how he evidently viewed things, she realized. "It's a lot more complicated than that, Manuel," she murmured, looking at him contemplatively. "But I can tell you I don't enjoy tormenting anyone here," she added an emphasis to the word.

"I'm sure it is." he said with a patronizing smile. "And if we are going to continue this conversation, we need drinks. Will you wait here for a few moments?" he asked Alison curiously. "I'll be right back."

Well, he didn't sound bored anymore. "Okay." Alison nodded absently, not certain she was going to get out of this conversation without feeling somewhat unsettled by it.

Manuel stood up and walked off, reappearing a few minutes later with a bottle and two glasses in one hand. He placed the glasses on one of the end tables in the Rec Room, and poured two glasses. "There you go!" he said, passing one glass to Alison and claiming the second for himself. "Now this is a much better way to have conversation." He said, very satisfied with himself.

Ah, now wine she should have expected. "Thank you," she said, accepting the glass while not planning to have more than the one. "So, on with the conversation."

Manuel took a sip from his glass and sighed in sheer pleasure. "A civilized drink for civilized pastimes, wouldn't you agree?" he said, gesturing with his wineglass. "This bottle came in a letter from home. So considerate of Alphonso to open up his cellar and send me a few bottles, don't you agree?"

Just because she preferred not to drink didn't mean she was a neophyte. It was, Alison knew, a very good bottle of wine indeed, one her father would have approved of instantly. The small sip she took confirmed that and she smiled a bit - it had been a while since she'd had this kind of vintage. She wasn't sure how considerate his father had meant to be in sending him those bottles, however. "One of the classics, I'm assuming?" she asked, tilting her head but unable to see the label on the bottle.

"Private stock." he said with a nod of his head. "Something from the better part of the cellar. Not the best, but then again I hardly expected it to be. You do not speak of your family besides the one you made for yourself with Miles - why is that?" he asked curiously.

"We haven't spoken since I left home." There was, she was glad to see, little grief left at the memory of that particular day. "Mmm. My father wasn't very happy with the choices I made, since they weren't the ones he wanted me to make." She lifted the glass up, looking at the way the light reflected through the wine. "I've had a little contact with mother now and then. But nothing since I came here."

"How unfortunate." Manuel said, sipping at his wine. "My mother is, I am afraid, quite dead. As for my father - I hear from Alphonso infrequently. He gives me scraps of news, I return the favor to him. So what did your father want for you to do with your life?"

The only response she could think of to offer about his father was that it all sounded very distant and that was hardly anything she could comment on, so instead she just answered his question. "Harvard. Law. To follow in his footsteps and those of my grandfather and all that. I even passed the admissions exams. That was one of the choices - of course, it was the one he wanted the most."

"You passed on Harvard Law? To be a singer? After passing the opening exams? I can see why he'd still upset." Manuel said with a low whistle. "Have you no love, no duty to him? Or don't Americans care about such things?"

"I cared. Enough to go that far to please him, because I realized it had to stop and I had a choice to make. About who I wanted to be, as opposed to who he wanted me to be." She had no doubt they were about to hit one heck of a cultural dissonance. "I didn't want to sublimate my entire life and self into being something that would have left me miserable. Besides - how could I have been a truly good lawyer if I'd hated it every single day of my life? Malum discordiae." She tacked on, lips quirking at her very rusty latin.

Manuel looked skeptical. Another suspicion confirmed - Americans just didn't have the same emphasis on family that Europeans, or at least Spaniards, did. "Far be it from me to criticize your choices." He murmured, then sipped at his wine to wet his throat. "Family is very important to me. I could never dream of doing what you did."

"Cultural gap," she agreed calmly. "It doesn't keep me from being happy for his own successes. He was selected as a judge a few years ago." She smiled a bit at that - it was what he'd always wanted for himself, after all. "For myself, I simply intend to support Miles in whatever career choices he makes, when the time comes. I want him to be happy with what he's doing, whatever it may be. It works both ways."

Manuel scowled at that, but said nothing for a time. Clearly, the woman was deranged. No ambition at all. He sipped his wine and thought about her words - he'd been oft-accused of not thinking things through, and he was trying to break that habit. "So - you plan to leave him nothing of your own, nothing of your family?" he asked tentatively.

It was, she thought, a damn good question. A hard one to answer too, since he was talking about cultural heritage among other things. "If you mean things, he'll be my sole heir, yes. But you mean more than that," she added, taking a deep breath. "I don't know how my parents would react to him and I'm not ready to risk that yet. So I'm working on my own, on that one." She knew how her father would react, in fact.

"I guess -  I'm just hoping to leave him with a knowing of his own worth and abilities. With the tools he'll need to be a complete and happy person, regardless of how things go in the future. The obvious sides of his mutation won't make things easy for him." A simple, bald fact. "He'll need to know himself inside out." She took a deep breath, trying to still the worries and fears. "I know I can't live his life for him and I can't make everything right and perfect." Even though she intended to try, at that. "But I can try and give him everything he needs to do that for himself. They're all intangibles, these things, but they're the most important when you get down to it. Pride in himself. The strength to face adversity and come out the stronger for it. The ability to grow and change, and adapt. There's so much more too..." she looked down at her glass of wine, shaking her head.

Manuel nodded. "Valuable things, for as far as they go. It's curious, though, how Americans do not seem to want to build dynasties, to leave a legacy to last throughout the Ages." he said, then sipped at his now half-empty wineglass.

Dynasties, in Alison's opinion, tended to crush people in their wake. But the word legacy she could comment upon. "That depends on the legacy we chose to leave for our children, Manuel. The one I'd like to leave behind for Miles... I don't even know it's possible. But I have to try."

"And what legacy would that be?" Manuel asked with a smile and a nod of his head. "The music?"

She grinned at that, taking a sip of her wine. "Actually, you could argue that I've already taken care of that little ambition of mine - broke into the music business already, after all." And there were so many things in the way of going back to that - not all of them bad. "But if Miles decides he wants to learn music you can be sure I'll be thrilled about it." Alison looked out the window, her smile fading a little, becoming more muted. "No. I just want to change the world for him."

"No one can accuse you of aiming small." Manuel said with a note of admiration. "But realistically, do you think you can do much in one generation?"

"No. But it has to start somewhere." She looked back at him, shrugging a bit. What had been a choice prompted by not having many other choices had become something else, since Miles had entered her life. "You know, when I left home, my father told me I'd never make it. That it was all just a stupid phase and I should do as he said. But I made it to the top of the charts a year and a half later."

She ran a finger along the rim of the glass, stopping just before it started to sing back to her. "Changing the world is a little bit bigger as goals go, but you never know if you can do something until you try." Even if you were scared witless most of the time while trying, she added to herself wryly.

Manuel shrugged. "Everyone should have a life goal. I know I have mine." he said with a nod. "But it sounds like you've actually bothered to give it some thought, which puts you above many in this country."

"Being a parent makes you think a lot," Alison answered. She had her own doubts and uncertainties every day, but wanting to gives Miles the very best was never one of them. "Well. Not always everyone, but it makes most people think a lot," she amended.

"I had not noticed." Manuel said. "The path my life was to take was decided long before I was born." he said. "I am the eldest, I am the Heir. My role is to inherit, perpetuate the line, and to hand the next generation more than what I received from my father."

"And you've decided what you're going to hand the next already, I'm guessing." She wasn't sure she wanted to hear what it might be, just yet. "I envy you your power you know, when it comes to that, actually. You'll have the chance at an experience no other parent other than a telepath could even guess at."

Manuel laughed. "I have absolutely no idea what I will pass down, as I have not yet inherited from my own father." he said. "But I know that when that day comes I would like to pass along - everything."

"You still have time to think about what you'll be giving in addition to everything else." There was more to life than tradition, although Alison wasn't about to say that out loud. "But everything is a good start," she had to concede.