Jean and Nate and Askani lessons

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

"I thought it would be best if we tried this outside," Nathan said, wheeling down one of the path that crisscrossed the lawn. "Not that I'm planning anything strenuous, but just in case. No need to give Cain cause to complain about us telekinetics, right?" He offered Jean a smile.

Jean nodded. "Agreed. I've already made my apologies to him once, I'd rather keep my record low. And probably we should give destroying the trees a miss, too."

"Ideally, nothing's going to get destroyed," Nathan said, rolling to a stop beside one of the benches and putting on the wheelchair's brake. "I just want to add a few more patterns to your repertoire."

Jean settled onto the bench, glad that most of the length of the front lawn separated them and the lake. "I'm in favor of not destroying anything, yes, am just being pessimistic. Time to stop that, huh?"

"It's understandable," Nathan said. "Lack of control wears on you. Trust me, I get that." He offered her a wry smile.

She smiled in return. "Right, then, teach, where do we begin?"

He reached out with the less sore of his arms. "Take my hand, close your eyes." The physical contact would mean less strain on him, putting the image of the pattern in her mind. "Deep breathing."

Jean pulled her legs up so she was sitting cross-legged on the bench before taking his hand. She closed her eyes and followed his instructions, letting her breathing settle into a meditative pattern, although she kept her mind focused.

Nathan closed his own eyes and visualized a very different pattern than the calming one he'd initially taught her. Gently, he made contact with her mind and reproduced the pattern there. #Do you see the differences?# The lines and angles of this one were bolder, sharper.

#Yes.# The thought still simply rested in her mind, available for him to read but with no force behind it, as Jean still hadn't found the pathway to reactivating her telepathy.

#What does it remind you of?# He traced the sharp angles, the more dizzying spirals, shifting the color of the pattern from silver to gold to show the progression of movement. #There's more force to it, isn't there? It's not meant to be steadying. It pushes...#

A smile flitted onto Jean's face. #Really, it rather reminds me of Hank, when he's bouncing off the walls. The... the energy and motion, with this sense that gravity has no hold on it at all...#

Nathan reshaped the pattern, put it in the context of a memory. Himself, in the Danger Room, fighting his way through one of those no-win scenarios. Ignoring gravity.

Jean's heart soared. #Flight!# There was a flicker of loss and an aching want attached to the thought, and her mind flashed through a vision of her first barrel roll in the Blackbird before coming back to the here and now. #Or, well, levitation...#

#In a sense. Real flight, telekinetically speaking, is inefficient.# Nathan drew the memory out, slowed it down to let her see how the pattern shifted to fit each twist and turn. #Oddly enough, that was how I was taught long before the Askani. You use your momentum. Better to run up a wall than fly up to the roof. More energy efficient.# Even slower-motion, to show her how the psi-energy required was actually comparatively low.

#Yes, I can see...# Her mind flicked to the complete energy shut down that happened each time her TK came on these days, although it quickly shunted it away before the pain memories which were attached to those thoughts became overewhelming.

#Charles is still working on that with you?# Nathan asked. #Askani keeps murmuring something about psionic injuries, but it's so complex... I think sometimes I ought to just tell her to go visit Charles in his dreams and see if they can't sort it out together. Then again, for all I know, she has...#

#Yes, we're working on it. A lot of my problem is that I can't seem to find my center anymore, so everything is just a little... off. So even when I can see how things ought to go, I can't get there.# There was a definite sense of frustration in her tone.

#The patterns might provide you with some help there. Did I ever tell you about how my precognition was fixed?# Bad that he couldn't remember whether or not he had, he supposed.

#Not in any detail, no.#

He flashed the memories to her. Of the patterns in his dreams and Alison's, building on each other until they were there, ready to anchor him the week that his precognition had come rushing back all at once, triggered by Angie's episode.

Jean nodded faintly. #Not so much finding a center as, well, making one, isn't it?#

#Exactly. Reorienting yourself, in a sense.# He gave her another pattern, a delicate, pulsing tracery of interlocking circles, ephemeral-seeming even for a psionic-construct. #There's no force to this one. If you pushed at it too hard, it would disintegrate.#

#It's just sort of an outline, isn't it?# She could see how it would fit over and around the calming pattern, sort of.

Nathan summoned up the calming pattern, putting the two together. #All you can govern is the inner pattern,# he sent. #The world beyond that is as fragile as glass.#

#Sometimes it feels like the inner one is, too.#

#No, it's resilient. It can be bent, broken, shattered... and put back together.# After a moment, he projected a very familiar image to Jean - his mind, as Charles had shown him back in September, long before the psionic scarring had been blown out. It was no trouble at all to summon up the image of the cracked, damaged stained glass window, liquid streams of energy running beneath it, leaking through hairline fractures.

Jean breathed in sharply, her heart going out to the man he was, although it was clear from the feeling of him that he had recovered from this. #I don't think I even want to know what my mind 'looks' like these days...# Although there was a part of her that was intensely curious about it.

#Ask Charles. But keep in mind that in six months you might be able to do what I'm about to do,# Nathan sent back, a ripple of amusement coloring his mental voice as he projected an image of his mind as it was now. The colors bright and unmuddied, the patterns clear and undamaged, the light shining out from within steady, brilliant. Oh, there were new scars; he knew he could attribute the worst of them to the fight with Tim in Canada. But it was the barest fraction of what had been there before. #The 'after' shot.#

There was definite amusement and hope in Jean's mind. #I'm all for the 'after' shots.#

#I wouldn't recommend the method I used.# Light, blinding light blazed through his mind in a flash, but he pushed the memory away, hard. #But you need to know that it is possible.#

#Yes. Possibilities and hope are helpful. Thank you.#

#Concrete help, however, is more so.# He shifted to the next pattern in the series. It was meant to be a representation of the healthy flow of energies in a telekinetic mind. #What about this one? What impression do you get from this?#

The feeling of this pattern was so far from the feeling of Jean's mind when her telekinesis activated these days that it took her a few seconds to sort through her memories and find something that matched. #Oh, right. That's what it ought to feel like.#

#Remember this one,# Nathan said. #Keep it in the forefront of your mind when you meditate. Action follows thought.#

Jean nodded. #I will. Do you have one for shielding, too?#

#One, no,# Nathan sent back with a flash of amusement. #Twenty-seven, yes.#

#Please? Out here the noise isn't as bad, but I would still like to be able to be alone in my head without the inhibitor.#

Nathan started to go through the shielding patterns one by one, and then in groups. #See how they interlock? They create a larger structure... that's important.#

The fitted together remarkably like puzzle pieces, Jean decided, and she could see how they would build together in different shapes and sizes and even a sort of mental-material. There was a series which felt remarkably like a mirror, but when you switched just a pair of the pieces seemed more like a think window, which could be thinned by removing that piece there. Those five felt like a solid, brick wall to her mental senses, but these other ones when added to it gave it the feeling of something sharp and unyielding. And when you put them all together the way Nathan was doing... #Ohhh...# That would -definitely- keep the noise out. And just about everything else.

#That's not the magic wand,# Nathan warned her. #It's an option. Charles okayed it when I started to use it, but it took months to build up the actual shields. It's very energy-intensive, that's the problem.#

#I can see how it would be, yes. It would take a lot to just get it up and going, let alone keep it running. But it's interesting. These patterns... Your mind just sort of flows over them.#

#That's the idea. It's psychically ergonomic,# Nathan teased lightly.

#Heh.# Jean's mind traced over one of the shielding patterns which felt the most like a base. #Now, if only I could manage to actually reach my powers...#

#I wish I understood more,# Nathan said, studying her mind through the link. #Askani's been trying to pass along more of her knowledge to me when it comes to... well, psi-medicine? But the scope of it escapes me. I'm not sure I have the right foundational concepts.#

#For which? The medicine or the psi-base?# The idea caught Jean's attention and her curiosity.

#The medicine,# Nathan sent. #It needs a highly specialized knowledge of how our mutations work, and I don't have that.#

#Well, for a lot of reasons, I'd be glad to help, if I can. Kill half a dozen birds with one stone, or something.#

#Hmm. There's a thought... I really wish we could get Askani into your head for a while...#

#It would be doable anytime I'm not wearing the inhibitor, wouldn't it? Which simply leaves out dreams until I get ahold of my nightmares.#

#The problem would be if you lost it while she was in your head,# Nathan sent back a bit tentatively. #I'm not sure what it would do to her when your powers winked out.#

#Ah... yes. That would be... most problematic.# The possibilities were numerous, and only a very few of them were pleasant. Or safe.

There was a soft laugh from the back of his mind. #We'll find a way, children,# Askani said, her voice echoing out from that interior starscape and down the link to Jean. #Once the time is right. For now, the patterns are still a very good start.#

Jean smiled. #Well, you can't blame me for my impatience. At least not so long as it stays on this side of recklessness.#