LOG: Manuel and Lusanya - Troubles Come In Batallions

[x-empath.livejournal.com]

Manuel, desperate for someone to talk to about the distressing turn his life has taken, talks to Lusanya. They cover Alphonso's assassination, Amanda's departure, and ethics.



Manuel was out of the Box, but he was far from cheerful. He could take no joy in anything, it seemed. Even music, normally a balm to his troubled soul, felt lifeless and flat to him. So he sat in his room, idly tinkering with his synth setup, looking for golden notes and getting only lead.

Over by the windows, the sunlight brightened for a moment and Lusanya appeared. She looked around and then down at herself uncertainly. Manifesting this far from Nathan was uncommon, and more of a drain on his energies than she liked, given his current condition. But Manuel was not asleep, and not meditating, and he had wanted to see her.

Manuel looked over at Lusanya, feeling her manifestation, and smiled wanly. He looked terrible, with bags under his eyes and a haggard, exhausted look on his face. "Hola." he said listlessly. "So he let you out to come try to cheer me up?"

She nodded and then came over to sit on his bed, folding her legs beneath her. "Well," she corrected herself quietly, "not to cheer you up. He... and I... understand that there is no such possibility, facing the loss of bloodkin. But to give you a listening ear... a friendly face, yes."

Manuel smiled thinly. "He was a bastard. An unmitigated bastard." he said. "I know this. I know all the reasons why the world is a better place with him gone. But he was my _father_!" he said, finally displaying a little passion. "And she couldn't understand that. How could she, having no father of her own?"

"It was too personal for her, perhaps," Lusanya suggested quietly. "He did her harm. Given her background..." She shook her head. "I did not come here to speak of Amanda. Unless you wish to."

Manuel smiled thinly again. "I think I could almost bear this, if she was there to stand by my side." he confessed. "It is hard - very hard - to try to keep my pain bottled up inside. It screams to be let free."

"Do you blame her for not being here?" Lusanya gave him a frank look. "And why do you... bottle your pain?"

"YES!" he said, at almost a shout. "She should be here! Now! I need her, and she's off fucking around somewhere. I do not know where - at a guess, I would say London." he seethed. "And I bottle my pain because I do not want to be responsible for a wave of mass suicide." he grumped. "I must control myself."

Lusanya tilted her head, remembering seeing through Nathan's eyes the email that had left him so depressed. "Did you not tell her to leave?" she inquired softly. "And there are other avenues to allow your pain out into the light. The Box. An inhibitor."

Manuel grumbled. "It was for her own safety. I ... I need her here. Now." he said softly. "She was the only one I could draw strength from. The only one who cared. Now? I have terrified her, driven my only supporter away from me."
"Feuds among families." Lusanya shook her head. "It seems not unlike a war between Clans."

"She's not a member of my family. My family is gone. Only I remain, to forge a new line or to disappear into obscurity." he snapped. "And weren't you all one big happy Clan?"

"Among families," Lusanya said very patiently. "Your family, and hers. Because of what the two of you share." She smiled very faintly. "And of course we were one big happy Clan. But we warred with other Clans."

Manuel ahhed. "Yes, certainly. But my family is now gone." he said with a barely-repressed choke. "Two thousand years of history, gone. And no convenient psionic ghosts to remember them."

"You remember them."

"It doesn't matter if I remember them!" he said. "There is no Heir! The line is gone, broken after so long ..."

"Why do you choose to respect his wishes in this matter?" Lusanya asked. "After what he attempted to do to you... putting you in that aslyum, attempting to rewrite your mind..."

"He was my father." he said simply. "I did not like it, but it was his right to do so. I disagreed with him on so many things, but we both recognized the importance of family. I think that was behind what he did to Amanda - in his own way, he disapproved of the match I had made for myself."

"A parent has no rights," Lusanya said. "Only responsibilities." She sighed. "But I will not argue the point with you. He did you much harm, unnecessary harm, but that does not change the central fact of your love for him."

Manuel grinned as a thought occurred to him. "I am sure that your Clan Warlord might have something to say on that topic." he noted drily. "And I did love him. Despite everything. And no-one respects that."

"Perhaps they do," Lusanya said after a moment, almost speculatively. "But perhaps because it is a given, it is less important to them than the harm done by your father."

Manuel sighed. "If it were not for the asylum, I would not be here now." he pointed out.

"Here at the mansion?" A darker thought occurred to Lusanya. "Or here at all?"

"Both." he said with a strange look at Lusanya. "Can you use Nathan's talents to see what I saw, feel what I felt?" he asked curiously. "I do not believe I have ever shared those memories with you. With the emotional content stripped, they should be safe."

Lusanya hesitated. "I am not a telepath," she said finally. "I can't do that, not here and now... perhaps the next time I visit you in your dreams."

Manuel nodded. "You should see them." he said. "He gave me everything. My will to live, the name I can no longer carry, a home for a time, an education..."

"Can you appreciate him for what he did give you, while recognizing what he tried to take away?"

Manuel shook his head. "I was not a very good son to him." he admitted. "I know this now."

"And that justifies what he did?" Lusanya asked a bit sharply. She would not sit back and watch Manuel blame himself for any of this.

"No." he said after a moment. "But it does explain a few things."

"So what do you need, Manuel?" Lusanya pressed gently.

Manuel sighed. "I just want someone to understand. To not condemn the father, but to feel something - anything! - for the son."

"I feel a great deal for you," Lusanya said softly. "I know it's difficult to see, because I'm not real... but I do."

"At this point, I will take anything I can get. My linkmate, as you would call her, abandoned me to my own devices. I suppose she is only being obedient, as I told her to get out of my sight." he sighed.

"He may have taken that from you, as well," Lusanya said very softly.

"If anything, I took that from me. I should know she does not respond well to criticism, especially when I am being who I am." he sighed. "I bitterly regret snapping at her, but I was blind with grief. It does not matter, though. I am an empath, I am supposed to rule my own emotions, not let them dominate me."

"Criticism?" Lusanay asked in some bewilderment.

"Criticism. If you tell her she has done well, she laps it up. But a harsh word, a criticism of her or the fragile little constructs she has made for herself, and she implodes. It is still a house of cards, despite my best efforts." he sighed. "Another failure for me. Perhaps Doctor Grey was correct and I don't have any business whatsoever trying to help people."

"I do not think what happened between you can be classed as criticism," Lusanya said gently. "Catastrophe, perhaps. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for her, these last few weeks..."
"She lied to me." Manuel said, trying to fight off the wave of anger and sadness that permeated him. "I have never lied to her. Not even when it would have been simple and much more convenient. But she lied to me! She lied to me for WEEKS! Maybe even longer! And when I got the news about Alphonso, and I tried to grieve as a son grieves for his father, she felt GLAD he was dead! GLAD! A human being is GONE, never to walk the Earth again, and she _dances_ for it!"

"And again you come back to your central problem," Lusanya said, very softly. "It is difficult to grieve for those who have harmed you. Even if they are dearly loved by those whom you love."

"She never even tried." he said softly before breaking down completely.

"Oh, little brother..." Her manifestation was too tenuous to touch, and she sighed, angry at that. "Can you keep the good memories?" she asked. "They may be those that cause you grief, but they will be the ones that allow it to heal in the end, if you let them."

Manuel pulled himself together and wiped angrily at his face. "The good memories of what? Amanda, or Alphonso?" he said bitterly. "I am alone once again. I should realize this and act accordingly." he said flatly.

"Your father," Lusanya said, still softly but very firmly. "Amanda is alive and well, and the situation with her may be dealt with later. It is your father's death that you must reconcile yourself to now."

Manuel ahhed. "Yes, I have some. And I cling to them as best I can. I fully realize that he was a despicable human being and the world is better off without him. But he was my _father_. But that means the sum total of Jack and Shit to Amanda, since she's never had one." he said coldly. "Never the man, always the deeds."

"You are perhaps the only one here who ever knew the man," Lusanya pointed out kindly. "Perhaps that is why you are the only one who can remember him."

"But I am Manuel de la Rocha, and my word is as dust." he said with a sigh. "I have given reason for people to believe so, considering how mad I was when I first arrived with my power out of control, but I am not trusted, I am not loved, I am at best barely tolerated. And I have been trying to fix it, with limited success."

"This is not the time to be concerned with how other people regard you, or your father," Lusanya pointed out. "Perhaps you do not have the support you wish, but if you focus on the lack of support rather than on the grief itself... it is merely delaying what must be, Manuel."

"This is going to sound really stupid, and doubly so coming from an empath - but I don't know how." he admitted. "How should I grieve? I have to keep such a tight grip on myself that I am finding it difficult to express anything of my own without slipping and sharing my feelings with everyone."
Lusanya tilted her head, considering. "Perhaps in writing," she suggested. "Write down the things you choose to remember about your father, relive the memories that way. It may allow you some distance from the force of the emotional reaction."

Manuel hrmmed. "Samson had me try that. It did not work well then, but perhaps it will work well now. You were the fully-trained and fully-functional empath, you would know." he said, with just a _small_ trace of jealousy. "How did you keep your grief inside?" he asked curiously.

"I meditated, when it was necessary to keep it locked away. Which was often - my responsibilities dictated so."

"I tried that." Manuel said. "Give me something else."

Lusanya thought. "Create something," she said. "Music, or art... it doesn't need to be anything you show to anyone else. Merely something into which you can channel your emotion."

Manuel thought that over, and then grinned. "Music therapy. All of the best works were born in pain." he mused. "That is an _excellent_ idea!"

Lusanya smiled a little. "The first such thing that came to mind," she said. "You know how musical we were."

Manuel grinned. An old, familiar game, this. "Yeah. A shame most of it _sucked_. All that knowledge, and you couldn't have invented the synthesizer?" he teased.

"I never said we weren't backwards." Lusanya smiled, but there was something almost like yearning in her blue eyes. She moved over to where he sat at the synthesizer, and concentrated, until she could lay her hands on his shoulders and have him register the contact physically. "I wish... well, I wish many things," she murmured. "Right now, I simply wish that I was really here."

"Your Clan Chief manages it quite nicely." he said, massaging his throat in memory. "But I'm guessing that's because she was a telekinetic, as is Nathan. And I wish for a lot of things too." he said with a sigh. "I wish I hadn't said what I said to Amanda. I wish my father was still alive. I wish I could still call myself a de la Rocha. I wish I had friends who were alive."

"Not all of those are impossible wishes," Lusanya reminded him gently.

Manuel snorted, and held his head in his hands. "I don't see a way out." he admitted. "She was bonded to me for MONTHS and she still doesn't know me. If that won't do it, how can mere speech?"

Lusanya managed to swat him, lightly. "Stop making this about her," she said, more sternly. "I know you see her as your only true source of support. But her support is compromised, Manuel. It is not her fault, and not your fault, but things are as they are. You cannot expect her to grieve with you, but she may grieve for you, given the chance."

"She was all that I had." he said. "And now she is gone, and I am forced to fall back on just me. And I worry that that means I'll have to use my power to get anything at all done, as I have all the charm and persuasiveness and likability of a dead rodent without my power."

"Then it should give you further incentive to explore how to get along without your power," Lusanya said, still gently but somewhat inexorably. She had never liked the tinge of dependence to the relationship.

Manuel sighed. "It is frustrating!" he said with a growl. "Unbelievably so! I grow weary of constantly beating my head against that particular wall!"

"What is the alternative?"

"The man in the chair. And right now, he looks pretty damned good!" Manuel snapped without thinking.

"Do not be foolish," she murmured, perhaps a bit coolly. "You should have realized by now that he will never come to pass."

"Will he?" Manuel asked with a black grin. "It's never too late. He is something I will be wary of - and tempted by - until the end of my days."

She patted him gently on the shoulder. "Never," she told him softly. "Although it does you no harm to remember him, I suppose. A cautionary tale."

Manuel sighed. "I am trying. I have tried. Some few have warmed to me slightly, but most still ignore me or pretend I do not exist."

"One does not unlearn the lessons of a lifetime in a year," Lusanya pointed out. "Or undo the mistakes."

"It's hard, Lucy." he said, referring to the Askani ghost by her Americanized nickname. "I don't know if I can do it."

"I have faith in you," she said firmly, "but you need to likewise have faith in yourself. Even when it seems impossible."

"I have little faith these days. My faith in my own judgement, in the decisions I've made and the things that I've done, just hopped a plane to Europe." he said sadly. "And, if it ever comes back, will never be the same again."

"Then develop some of your own," Lusanya said, a hint of exasperation in her voice for the first time. "If all the faith you have in yourself is embodied in her, Manuel, how much different is it from the method of shielding that nearly doomed you?"

"I am open to suggestions." he said bitterly. "My ideas are universally fairly rotten."

"Focus on yourself for now," she said, more forcefully. "Find out who you are, without your father, without the name if you choose to respect his wishes and bear it no longer. Write music, Manuel." Her voice grew almost impassioned as she went on. "Excel in your studies. Continue to reach out to people. Explore who you are. Do not rely on anyone or anything to define who Manuel is."

Manuel smiled thinly. "I have no idea. I am going to change my name, though. That much I'm perfectly confident in. I don't have the right to wear the de la Rocha name, and now I have even less. What if who I am is incompatable with those around me?"

"Ah, but you're missing the point. You can choose to define yourself in a way that makes you compatible with those around you," Lusanya said, sounding much older than her apparent age. "It is a compromise, yes, but compromises make life liveable, Manuel. And in the end, the compromise is your choice."

"How can I compromise a decision that's not even made yet?" he asked rhetorically. "And I won't be here forever, so defining myself by what they want me to be seems short-sighted to me."

"Oh, Manuel." She laughed, but not unkindly. "You will see many places in your life - do you propose to leave whatever friends you make behind, forever, every time you leave a place?"

Manuel stopped to think about it. "In all honesty, yes." he said. "I left everyone I knew behind when I moved here. When I move on from this place, I anticipate doing the same. Perhaps I will not, do you think?"

"Do you remember me telling you that my people were nomadic, before the war?" Lusanya smiled. "Places are nothing. People are everything. And truthfully, Manuel... given how much effort it takes to make friends, would you truly choose to leave them behind and start all over again each time it struck your fancy to live in another place?"

Manuel frowned. "I have a vast dislike of moving. Even changing suites was traumatic. I got used to the feel of my old one, then they told me to move."

"Then perhaps you should not be so quick to write off this place," Lusanya suggested. "Who knows? You might find a reason to stay."

Manuel laughed at that. "Crisis of the week, bloody insane students, sadistic teachers, and troops tromping through about once a year or so. I'll pass, thanks!" he said.

"People who took you in when you were insane," Lusanya reminded him. "Who did not throw you onto the street, or into a prison, when your inability to cope with your powers led you to do wrong." She raised an eyebrow. "Should I go on?"

"Maybe they should have." he said. "Sure, Amanda would likely be dead and/or addicted, but there would be much less trauma around here." he said. "But I can't leave - not now. I am completely dependent on Senhor Xavier."

"The greatest way to repay that generosity, since I know you wish to, would be to use it to build yourself a life that you can be proud of living," Lusanya said. "I know enough of Xavier to know that is the truth."

"Funny, I was thinking of cold hard cash." he smiled. "I should have enough credits to graduate in a year or so. And then I have a few notions on where to go from there. Maybe. If I survive my father's assassination. I cannot help but believe that I may be next on the list."

"Speak to Nathan of that."

"Why? He's not the assassin." Manuel supplied helpfully. "And I still cannot be sure if he would welcome such an attempt, or try to stop it. Or both."

"He has an answer for you," Lusanya said. "An answer and a message... and as he is a telepath, he can vouch for the truth of it."

Manuel frowned. He hated it when he used Lusanya as an Errand Girl. "So what's this message?"

"It is not my place," Lusanya said with a slight grimace. "He would have given it to you as soon as the news came, had he been well and whole."

Manuel rolled his eyes. "I've had quite enough of people celebrating my father's death, despite what I posted." he said coldly. "He can keep his message if all he intends is to mouth platitudes at me."

Lusanya swatted him again. "Don't be foolish," she said. "You trust me, don't you? So when I tell you that this message will answer your question about your place on this hypothetical list, and perhaps ease your fears if you choose to let it, you will believe me. Yes?"

"I trust you in most things." he clarified. "But I cannot let myself forget that you serve two Masters."

Sometimes... "Then believe me, or do not," Lusanya said with an exasperated sigh, going back to her perch on the bed. "But perhaps you will believe me when I say that Nathan will not celebrate your father's death. Or any death. Death has brushed him too closely this season."

Manuel sighed. "Fine, fine, I'll believe you. I like to think that empaths, even dead ones like you, would never lie to a brother empath. But you could always surprise me. At least you've honored my request not to have your language and culture shoved into my brain."
Lusanya shook her head at him. "Occasionally I wonder why I bother with you, when you go out of your way to be unpleasant so often," she said dryly. "Perhaps I am merely overly tolerant. I take after my mother."

"I'm an unpleasant sort of a fellow." he admitted. "See, where I come from, that's a _joke_. And a warning." he said. "I don't understand how you could get offended."

Lusanya tilted her head, considering the question. "Perhaps because I have known you for nearly a year," she said thoughtfully, "and I do not believe I have done anything to harm you. I have visited your dreams, listened to the thoughts and worries you share with few others, and attempted to counsel you to the best of my abilities. Yet you still believe that I can, at some point, turn on you."

"Everyone does, sooner or later. It's the nature of the world." he said matter-of-factly. "I would be most put out with you if you were to betray me at this juncture. I think it is unlikely, but we all know what _my_ judgement is like." he said with self-loathing.

"Then I will simply have to continue on with not betraying you, then."

Manuel nodded. "It will come as no surprise to you that I feel that you are the closest thing I have to a real friend, now that Amanda has betrayed and deserted me." he said. "Which makes me truly pathetic and sad, but I am beyond the point of caring. I am too desperate."

Lusanya started to reply, but felt a very distinct tug, and sighed. "I must return," she said. "We cannot drain Nathan's energies too far, not now." She touched his shoulder again. "In your dreams?"

Manuel nodded. "My dreams are not pleasant, of late. My discipline is hard to stick with." he said with a sigh. "So I cannot guarantee a pleasant journey. But yes, please. There is much to see."

"Until then," Lusanya said, and vanished.