xp_logs | LOG: Manuel and Alison - Empathy Training

Manuel and Alison have another empathy lesson. Or is it?

(OOC: First person to make a cheesy Star Trek joke gets Force-choked into unconsciousness.)

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Manuel walked over to Alison's new room, and knocked on the door gingerly. Daily Healings had done wonders to the state of his ribcage, but the bones knit slowly, and he was still very tender. But at least now he could dress himself, and walk where he wished as long as he went slowly and took things easy. Still, she had said that she wanted to do this lesson, so here he was.

After a moment the light above the door blinked once, the door then unlatching apparently on its own - yet another small feature that had been installed to make things a little easier for Alison. She wasn't getting up today if she could avoid it really, the light brighter than it had been in the previous days. Maybe offering to do this today wasn't the wisest thing, though if the pain was too much for Manuel to shield for the entire session, Alison figured she could always plead fatigue or something and shoo him out.

Manuel very nearly staggered as the door opened, and to shield his eyes he reached into one pocket and fished out his sunglasses. Putting them on, he stepped into the room. "Hello, Alison." Manuel said quietly, squinting just a bit. "You really feel terrible. Are you sure you're up for this?" he asked her.

She was getting very good at lip reading - she'd been good before but with all the practice she'd had in the past few days... tapping out on the console beside her slowly, she worked out a reply which then flashed on the nearby screen. "I stay here alone or I try and do something. But I'm here anyway. And we might as well get something good out of this, training wise." A pause, and another message flashed. "Thank you for asking, though."

Manuel waved that off. "I have just the thing to try." he said, taking a seat on one of Alison's guest chairs - oddly enough, the one that Haroun usually favored when he came a-calling. "Today's lesson will be in pain." he said flatly. "No, not yours. Well, yes yours, but not like that. More like an endurance test for me. We will sit and talk of light things, and I will touch your mind empathically - to take the pain into myself, to endure it without breaking the conversation or myself or you."

Tilting her head to the side, Alison considered that for a moment, fingers hovering over the console. "I admit I had thought of it more as a possibility for you to practice blocking pain out, myself. But it makes sense for you to need to be able to function even when in the presence of something you can't block out." It was, in fact, a rather important aspect of things.

Manuel nodded sadly. "My gift is strong, and my shielding less so. It will be good practice." His eyes glowed faintly red as he made the initial contact, and then he hissed as he took Alison's pain from her and into himself. "So - what would you like to talk about? Music, perhaps?" he suggested.

She stared for a moment, feeling the pain diminish, actually going lower than it had ever been since she'd left the isolation room. "Well, music is always good." The answer was automatic, Alison steeling herself as she tapped out the message, glancing at him now and then to make sure she wasn't missing anything. She had the white noise generators off so that Manuel could at least hear himself talking, but Haroun had told her how flat his own voice sounded whenever he spoke in the room, because of the vibranium walls. And the thought of the pain fading only to return at full strength later was something she wasn't sure she wanted to think about.

"I had thought you would say that. I've started a project to collect as music from my fellow students as I can, put it all in one place so we can share it. I try to force myself to listen to twenty new tracks a day." he said, unable to conceal his distaste. "Some of it has been very interesting." he said diplomatically.

Everything was easier, with the dimming of the pain. She knew better than to turn her own sound dampener off by far, the hood and earplugs staying firmly in place as well, but her typing was much steadier if a touch awkward still and some of the tenseness was easing away from her slowly. "Try being the music teacher. I have to listen to it all." She managed a wink at that, feeling amused - and only too aware that not having the constant ache nagging at her was helping a great deal. "It's a good project."

"I am trying." he said simply. "Some of it's actually not too bad. Paige has an astounding collection of classical, and some of it is very well-done indeed. I'll have to ask her where she got her classical CDs." he commented with only a faint wince as he endured a swell of Alison's pains for her. "Amanda's got some truly wretched punk in her collection, and she loves to inflict it on me."

"There's good and bad in nearly every type of music." Tappity tap tap. She hadn't been this quick in her replies for well... they'd set up the console, really. "And in everyone's taste in music. Where you there when I gave out the very first class assignments? The object was to analyze in a constructive way the absolute worse kind of music - each student had an individualized assignment." She paused, feeling a bit odd, her hands not quite matching up the speed she wanted to type at. Ah - her body being unable to warn her about its limits. She resolved to slow down, removing her hands from the console for a moment to give herself - and Manuel - a rest.

"I think I missed that assignment." he said slowly. "How diabolically fiendish. There are so many choices - this stuff called Country and Western, or perhaps some of the folk-rock stuff."

She smiled far too serenely, waiting that much longer before reaching out to deliberately type out something. "Alvin & the Chipmunks." Because really, that had been the absolute worse she'd come up with and Jono had just howled so very beautifully.

"Who?" Manuel asked with some curiousity. "Never heard of them. Sounds like a mod band, if not a punk act. Did they ever play CBGBs?"

The combination of much lessened pain and a very amusing prank (with practical applications) meant that Alison was grinning just a touch giddily. "Server. Just go in the music one I set up for class. Past assignments. Should be there." She paused, stretching out her hand to try and get more flexibility before stopping herself with a small frown. No pain, no warning. Gah. "Take anything else you want there too for the project."

Manuel grinned. "Already done. You were in no condition to protest, and you were going to say yes anyway." he said with a hint of a pain-filled smirk. "I'll have to give this Alvin and the Chipmunks a listen sometime. Can't be any worse than bloody Siouxsie and the Banshees."

"Would have said yes anyway, true. No condition to protest - not best reason though. Imho." She resorted to the net acronym because her hands were stiff and that possibly meant all sorts of bad things - such as Madelyn scolding her again for one. And damn, she'd promised herself she wouldn't go for anything ethics wise with Manuel, leaving that to Charles, but they were talking! "There is worse than Siouxsie and the Banshees. Really." There. Opening left right there.

"We'll see. I have a very small tolerance for overly-melodramatic goth-wannabes." he said with great finality. "Your pain - it is very interesting. All-over blacks and greens, but bright. Most pain like this is dull and throbbing. Yours is energetic, almost eager."

Alison went very still at that, holding her breath for a moment. "Power is always active. Neural damage still there. Transmute sound into light via nervous system. So. Always active." She took a slow breath, letting it go slowly. He asked questions - that's all it was. "And I want sound now. Probably am trying to draw some in, even if my power isn't under control." The last key was pressed lightly, Alison staring at the screen for a moment before looking at him again.

"It is my understanding that feeding you sound right now would be a bad idea." Manuel said blandly, far too accustomed to being with a junkie and their specific needs. "A very bad idea indeed."

After a moment's reflection, Alison shrugged a bit - catching herself in mid-gesture, then relaxing a touch as it didn't hurt too much. "Audiovore. I am literally living off sound. Right now the white noise generator keeps it to a specific type and level so that I won't overload, but that I won't die from sound deprivation either."

"That doesn't mean that we need to feed your habit and watch you turn into a glowing ball of Alison. Seems to be a popular option, the glowing ball. Anyway - back to music. The collection project is going fairly well. I'm not receiving anybody who's fighting me - that's a pleasant surprise."

A slow blink greeted the first statement, Alison more than a little taken aback by the way Manuel had interpreted things. Addict? What...A change of subject seemed like a good idea, although Alison didn't think the notion would leave her anytime soon now. "Music is universal." She thought for a moment, tapping out the message slowly, measuring her pace. "When on tour, it rarely mattered if I could speak the local language or not - the music was enough to bring down nearly any barriers."

"I've seen that for myself - I could sing in English long before I understood the words." Manuel said. "Folks would come into the clubs, play in Russian, English, French, Basque, whatever. Didn't matter. If it had a beat and could be danced to, folks were happy."

"And there's your answer. Why things are going well now." She smiled a bit at that, ignoring the wistfulness his words evoked. That wasn't her life anymore, plain and simple - and with Miles sharing it now, she didn't think she could get back to touring even if the option were still there. She pondered offering to make it an extra class assignment for him, and then decided not to - might as well let his effort stand on its own merit. "I think I will go out and get some new music, when I can."

"As long as you rip it and add it to the pile of stuff already gathered, you can go right ahead." he said, relaxing a bit as the pain levels from Alison grew less. As an experiment, he took more of it, as much as he could stand and still carry on some sort of a conversation.

For a heartbeat the pain dipped to nearly nothing before rising a touch again, steadying to something which compared to how things had been even an hour ago... he couldn't know. Alison stared at him for a moment, the lack of pain almost bewildering in comparison to what she had somehow gotten used to, to a degree, and the idea that it would soon come crashing all back was numbing. And he could not possibly realize what that entailed. "I'll do that. World music, some of the New Age. I'll see what out there kind of stuff I can find too." The only reason she knew she still hurt was from how uncoordinated she was still, if she wasn't careful.

"Be my guest." Manuel said graciously. "I'd like that. I've got a few thousand MP3s and a handful of OGG already. Once I'm done collecting, Douglas has agreed to write me a program to sort and label them all."

Hiding a grin, Alison nodded. Clearly someone hadn't sorted out through everything they'd swiped from the music class folders. And now that he was sealing away that much of the pain, she had no idea if she was reaching her limits or had already passed them. Think of something else. "I'll talk to Hank. Maybe we can get you a single server set up to host all of this."

Manuel shook his head. "There's really no need - I'm doing this all on public network space already." he said with a grin. "But if you want to get Hank to put up a machine to host all the music, I certainly won't question my good fortune." he said with a pained smile. Seems the pain was starting to get to him.

It was, after you'd experienced so much pain yourself, a bit easier to notice the degrees to which another felt it, Alison thought idly. It was also easier to think clearly when it wasn't there. "If you're damping my pain, why are you feeling it?" She frowned as she typed out the words, backing up to correct a few typing errors due to clumsiness before letting the message be displayed on the screen.

"I'm not dampening it. I can't do that. I'm taking it." Manuel said, fighting hard to keep his composure. "I feel it so that you do not have to. If I knew how to dampen it, I would, and both of us would be the better for it."

That drew Alison's attention, sharply so. It wasn't how things had been explained to her beforehand, in their other training sessions. "But - when you influenced my emotions before, you didn't have to take them in. You don't have to feel things to affect someone a certain way, not like when I do the emotional-influence light shows. And-" she stopped in mid typing, eyes widening. The pain she was feeling was a physical sensation. Not an emotion. "It's not an emotion. My pain. I thought you only affected emotions?"

"Pain is an emotion just like any other." Manuel said, leaning back to stretch out his abused frame a little. It helped, sometimes. "I can take it, amplify it, reduce it. I'm not very good with pain, but I can influence it like I can influence anything else." he added.

"Joy is not tied into a physical state, necessarily. Or arrogance or happiness." They'd seen those, after all. "Pleasure would be. Pain as well. But those aren't the same thing! This isn't in your files." She was typing too fast now, tripping over letters as she tried to sort it out. "You are not only affecting an emotional state, you're affecting a physical one as well. There's a difference."

Manuel looked at Alison with some pity. "I believe you are mistaken." he said quietly but firmly. "Joy, pain, loss, pleasure, happiness, arrogance - they're all emotions, and they're all mine to play with." he said with just a hint of pride.

She started to type out a message and the stopped, not quite grumbling to herself under the effect of the white noise generator, revising what she wanted to say. "Pain. Nerves damaged. Physical state of pain. I'm in no emotional distress and would you object massively to some tests in the medlab on this? I could arrange it with Moira." And well, the best source of physical pain they had now was Alison, after all. "Since we're here to explore all the possibilities in your training, yes?" And if she was barking up the wrong tree, well, that would be set out of the way at least.

"I am an empath." he said, using the idiots-and-small-children tone with Alison. "But if it would make you feel better, then I suppose that I can indulge this fantasy of yours. But only for a short time." he said, waggling a finger at her. "How do you feel, right now?" he asked her.

"Thank you for indulging me," she replied via the monitor, not at all sarcastic. "I'll set things up with Moira." She took a deep breath, holding it in and pausing to track how she was feeling in regards to the pain levels to give him a proper answer. "Much of the pain is absent right now. It feels a bit odd because my coordination is still as bad as it was before. Body can't let me know I'm hurting when I do things, I'm guessing." She was not bringing up the possible aftermath.

Manuel nodded, a quick jerky motion that made him wince as his stolen pain and his own natural pain merged for a moment. "Do you want your pain back, then? Is your reprieve over now?" he asked her. "I can do that, if you would rather have the pain. Or I can keep it for a time. Your choice."

He'd had enough, obviously. And she was used to dealing with it constantly now she told herself firmly, stamping down on the small pleading voice in the back of her mind begging for just a few more seconds. "Slowly. Very slowly, please. But yes, you should start returning it now." Her hands trembled a bit as she typed in the last words but she made herself do so without pause.

Manuel looked over at Alison. "Are you sure? Part of you wants a little more time." he said, leaning back in his chair again and looking straight at her. "I am good for a while longer yet."

"It will have to come back sooner or later. Not so later than that." It was giving something away but the understanding was to be clear about things during the training sessions. "If you make it very slow and gradual perhaps? Since waiting until the last minute might make that a bit more difficult..." She wasn't going to insist though, after this. She just didn't have the heart for it.

"I am not sure I can do slow and gradual - not with a feeling this intense. Still, I will try." he said as his eyes flashed red again. Slowly, the pain came back - for about fifteen seconds or so. Then the remainder all snapped back as Manuel cursed in Spanish. "I am sorry. I lost my hold on the thread." he said by way of an explanation.

Alison never saw the explanation however as pain flooded her again suddenly - eyes tightly closed she fought for control, the light radiating from her unchanging but not hiding the effect this had on her in the least. Taking short, shallow breaths she moved her hand just a bit in a silent plea for time before having to do anything.

Manuel sat quietly, his own guilt simmering in his mind, as he waited for Alison to recover. "I am sorry." he said quietly. "I will report my carelessness to Charles so that appropriate action may be taken.'

She waved her hand sharply, once, in silent negation. And took that much more time to lock down on the pain before opening her eyes slowly, knowing every line in her face was now showing how she felt - especially since Manuel had seen her not so long ago barely feeling any pain at all. "Training." The letters were typed out with pathetic slowness. "I knew might happen. Responsibility mine. I accept. We both learn. Move on. Keep training."

Manuel quirked an eyebrow. "As you wish, then. I am fairly certain that out of concern for your delicate health that this session should be over." he said, standing up. "I thank you for your time and generosity."

The session being over was a Good Thing and Alison wasn't even considering refusing that offer. "Welcome." And heaven help her, she didn't have the will power to type in the confirmation for next week's session - maybe an email in a few days, and she could pretend it wasn't happening until then. "Good afternoon."

"Good afternoon." he said, settling the tattered shards of his dignity about him like a cloak. He nodded to her formally, and then turned to leave without a second word or a glance backwards.

As soon as the door closed Alison thumbed the control on the console which would start the room's white noise generators and then curled up on the bed slowly, shivers starting to race through her.

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Current Mood: indescribable

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From:

x-dazzler.livejournal.com

*snickers a lot at the cut-tag*

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x-pete.livejournal.com

Pete would like to make it clear that anyone complaining about Siouxsie Sioux in any way in his hearing will be taken out and shot. Apparently, you don't ever really get over your first crush. :)