xp_logs | Nathan and Marie-Ange

A meditation session goes very badly wrong as Marie-Ange takes a turn for the deranged. Nathan tries to talk her down. Angie gets violent. Nate tries to calm her down. Something very odd happens, and it all ends with him carrying her down to medlab. Deja vu.

Much nicer day today, which Nathan liked, because it allowed him and Angie to do their meditation outside on the deck again. There'd be fewer and fewer days where they could do this, so he intended to take advantage of what little good weather they had left to them, because generally, being outside when they meditated seemed to help her concentrate.

Today, though, seemed to be an exception. He opened his eyes, frowning in concern as he gazed at her, seeing the tension in her expression, sensing it in her mind. "Angie, what's wrong?"

Lord. Not -another- person trying to get her to talk about it. Even if it was Nate. "I am just -tired-. It makes it hard to think." Not to mention that what she had to think about was nonsensical and ... well, it just made no sense, at least today.

The frown didn't go away. "You haven't been sleeping again?" he prodded gently. They'd missed a few meditation sessions lately, with everything that had happened. His fault, again. "Seeing something in particular?"

"Nothing that makes -sense-. Broken eggs, shredded paper, monkeys.. " It would've been better if any of it had made sense in context with -anything-. "And no, I have not been sleeping. Not that it is ever any different. We have a lot going on, and I do not sleep for one reason or another. I am convinced I should just accept it and move on."

Nathan let the petulant tone pass. She had a lot to be petulant about, he reflected. "You should talk to Moira again," he suggested. "If it's getting particularly bad again. Have you been doing your meditation even when we've missed sessions?"

Hrm. Marie-Ange thought about that for a minute. Lie to the telepath, who was almost as good at telling when she was lying as Doug, and get a scolding, or tell the truth, but -still- get a scolding. It was just a matter of how much scolding she wanted to put up with. "Dr. MacTaggart does not know what can be done for it without drugs."

The frown deepened. That had been a very... odd sort of reply. Avoiding his questions on a number of levels. "Angie, I'm not much for drugs myself, but I've had to resort to them to sleep quite a bit these last few months. Sometimes there's no alternative." He paused, then went on, a bit more firmly. "And you didn't answer my question about the meditation?"

Merde. He'd noticed that. "The drugs could do things to my powers, and I have enough problems there as it is." Marie-Ange sighed. "And no, I have not been meditating. I have not had -time-. Between getting up early and papers for the classes and my classmates are -idiots- and my study group for history at the university are uneducated goons... "

"You need to make time." Rather unfair of him to say, when he hadn't been available to meditate with her so often, but it wasn't as if she needed him there. "You've been under enough stress lately that you need it."

"Oui, because it is helping -so- much." Marie-Ange said. "I meditate and do not sleep. Or, I do not meditate, and I do not sleep, and I have an hour for revising papers." And if that had come out a little more sarcastic than she intended, Marie-Ange wasn't really caring at the moment. The meditation was a time sink. A -big- one.

"Angie, your precognition is still in the process of emerging," Nathan said. After he took a deep breath. "You need to look at the meditation as psychic conditioning. The benefits of it aren't immediately or rapidly clear."

Now standing, with fists clentched Marie-Ange gave Nathan a cold look, staring him down. "Psychic conditioning?" She practically snarled the phrase. "So I can be a gun-obsessed assassin and get locked away and learn to kill people? I -already- killed one person, Nathan. I would like to keep my body count at a single entity, thank you."

Nathan gaped at her. He couldn't stop himself. "Angie..." His voice actually broke, out of pure shock. "Conditioning, like the sort of physical conditioning an athlete might do... not that type of conditioning." He rose, and only then realized that might not have been such a good idea. She didn't like the looming.

"Of course." Marie-Ange managed to drop her voice into that tone that indicated that not only did she -not- believe Nathan, but she thought he was talking out his arse. "Because naturally, we should just believe that we are not going to end up learning how to kill." She hrmed mock-thoughtfully and then shrugged. "Only, let me see. In the last few months, I have killed my classmate's evil twin, learned how to make large messy holes in someone with a sword and enjoy it, and of course, it is not at all your influence that I actually volunteered for those morning runs. But then, who else could have influenced me into it? Because half the school -certainly- seems to think I am not doing this on my own!"

Nathan opened his mouth, then closed it again, his eyes narrowing as he looked down at her. "Angie," he said as steadily as he could, "you're not making much sense. What does what happened with Jamie's twin, or in Asgard, have to do with our meditation sessions? Or your morning runs?"

"I am making perfect sense. I would not have done those things -before- you started trying to help me, and I am doing them now. And since the meditation does all of nothing except give me giant bloody headaches, it makes a great deal of sense that it is just you trying to turn me into one of those ... people." As Marie-Ange got louder, she got closer to Nathan, ending no more than a step or so away, fists clenched so tightly her knuckles were white.

Nathan's eyes widened. "I think you want to stop right there," he said tightly, "before you say anything more that you're going to regret." What on earth was the matter with her? She was sounding downright irrational.

"Of course. And now you tell me what I want to do? I suppose next you'll just decide you get to tell me how to -think-?" It made sense. If you were Marie-Ange. Nathan was a telepath, he'd been kidnapped before, and now he was trying to turn everyone into mutant assasians. Perfect sense. "Why should I stop? I figured it out, and either I let you know that I know or you figure it out eventually... "

Nathan shook his head. "I don't know what's wrong with you," he growled, more astonished than upset. "We'll take a break," he said, starting to turn back towards the door. He needed to talk to - Moira? Maybe Moira. Angie was sounding deranged. Possibly Charles too. He started to reach out telepathically on the link, figuring that Moira was a good start. "You need to calm down."

"I do -not- need to bloody well calm down!" It occured to Marie-Ange that maybe she wasn't making any sense, but that was probably just Nathan trying to confuse her so she wouldn't be able to explain. And going back to the mansion was not a good idea. Too many people he'd already gotten to, and she had to tell someone .. but first, she definitly had to get away from Nathan. Her arm was moving before she even recognized what she was doing, tight balled-up fist aimed just at the bend of Nathan's jaw, where Sif had said some people would just drop flat if you hit them there.

If there was one thing Nathan Dayspring had learned in almost a year at the mansion, it was to expect the unexpected. Evil twins. Demons from other dimensions. Incidental explosions of students.

The idea that Marie-Ange Colbert would actually slug him? Hadn't even made the list. There was no 'I'm going to hit you now!' screamed at the top of her mental lungs, either, nothing to warn him. Between that, and the fact that his mind was partially elsewhere, and he was looking away from her, the punch actually connected.

Nathan stumbled backwards, catching at the railing to regain his balance, and stared in disbelief at the seething girl. "What the fuck--" Ow. His jaw hurt. #Angie! What the fuck was that?# he shouted at her telepathically, instead.

Marie-Ange wasn't going to answer. First, because she wasn't sure she could explain, and second because she certainly wasn't going to let him get his telepathic hooks in her. So she bolted. Or tried to, at least, stumbling over her feet and flailing to try to break her fall.

Nathan made an aggravated noise and reached out to catch her. #Angie, settle down... what's the matter with you?#

"You're the matter! Hypocritical, sanctimonious .. liar!" Marie-Ange swatted at Nathan's hand and backed away. "You keep saying the meditation will help, and it has been as good as useless, you tell people how to live, but can't get it right yourself, and you had the nerve to yell at Doug for getting shot when you've been shot HOW many times?"

"Would you stop yelling for just a minute?" He couldn't get a clear read on her telepathically; her mind was a chaotic tangle of angry thoughts and images, and he knew better than to delve too deeply. "I am not the enemy here, Angie, I'm trying to help you--"

"The hell you are!" Marie-Ange backed away a few more steps and shook her head. "Half-effort help is no help at all. You know, I kept wondering why the Askani never offered to meet me, or to help. I guess now I know why. You don't -want- me to understand my power..."

Nathan sucked in a sharp breath. "Angie, they have been trying to help. The meditation exercises, the visualization I've been having you do... that's how they train their precogs. Your precog's still emerging. I'm--" He stopped, clenching his jaw despite the way that it was aching. "I don't know why it's not helping more, but it's all any of them know to do."

"Of course. Angelo gets to meet them, Amanda gets to meet them... " Marie-Ange waved a hand in the air and in a fit of anger taking over her thoughts, switched to French. "Manuel got to meet them, everyone I know, except, of course, the person they might be able to help! "

Calmly. Just because she'd lost control didn't mean that he got to do the same. Reinforcing his shields, Nathan swallowed and gave that the best answer he could. "I told you," he said wearily. "Months ago. The precogs won't manifest, and they barely talk to me. They're traumatized from everything they saw and everything they couldn't do in their own time. Even Askani temporizes when I try to talk to her about her precog in any depth. It's got nothing to do with you."

"And they think that their meditation will help me?" Obviously, he was understanding her just fine in French, and Marie-Ange didn't see a need to change back to English. "They nearly killed you, and now you are either trying to kill me or turn me into a killer. It is no wonder I have insomnia and headaches! The precognitives who did see things refuse to help, and the one trying to help was a shit precognitive to begin with!"

Nathan winced. "Angie..." He raised both hands almost defensively as she flinched back away from him again. "I know you're frustrated," he said, his voice low and pained. "I am the only other person in this house who knows what it's like to be at the mercy of precognition. I know there are a lot of differences between your situation and mine, but there are a lot of similarities, too." He took a deep, unsteady breath. "So I'm asking you, please... please trust me. At least trust that I would never try to hurt you, or turn you into a killer. Please." He looked her right in the eyes in a silent plea.
He had the gall to suggest that their situations were -anything- alike? Marie-Ange was having none of that, thank you very bloody much. It wasn't enough to just turn her back, and yelling wasn't getting through his thick skull, so -with an open palm, she smacked him across one cheek, and then stood defiantly, arms crossed, glaring back. "Do not even -presume- to think I am going to believe that."

He could have stopped her that time, easily. But he didn't move to intercept the blow, half-afraid that she'd interpret it as him trying to hurt her. "That's enough," he said very quietly and reached out telepathically, already forming the 'suggestion' to walk very quietly beside him down to medlab.

But touching her thoughts was like touching a live wire, and Nathan swayed, a strangled noise of pain catching in his throat as he tried to pull away and couldn't. Images burned through his mind, all bordered in the Askani patterns glowing incandescent. Most terrifyingly, there were lights in his peripheral vision suddenly. Familiar, flickering blue lights...

She knew it. Knew eventually he'd try something like that. Marie-Ange tried to run, but the buzz in her head knocked her off-balance, and the ground lurched forward under her feet. She doubled over, clutching her waist, struggling not to empty her stomach as the world span dizzily around her. ~What are you -doing-~? she asked.

Break contact... break contact! Nathan severed the connection as gently as he could - which wasn't particularly - and tried to straighten. His head was spinning, patterns flickering in and out in his mind's eye. "I--" His voice broke and he pressed the heel of one hand against his forehead, willing his head to clear. "I think we need to go down to the medlab now," he said a bit dazedly. "You're--there's something wrong with you, and I think we need to go now." The lights were still there. The same damned lights...

Not the infirmary. Not -again-. The last time, they'd just made her work with Nate even more and taken away her books and cards. It was a struggle to get back to her feet, but Marie-Ange managed it. For all of about a half-second before her knees buckled and she landed hard on her rear, having not even been able to break her fall with her hands.

"Okay, that would involve not running away, Angie," Nathan said, his voice a bit strangled as he reached out and pulled her to her feet, scooping her up into his arms. "Don't you hit me again," he said feebly as she started to struggle. "I don't want to drop you."

The world flip-flopped when Nathan picked her up, and Marie-Ange went pale, trying not to sick up. Even if she was getting dragged off to the infirmary, she wasn't going to throw up on Nathan. It might make things -worse-, espically since it wasn't like she could get away from him now..