xp_logs | Nathan and Lorna, Sunday afternoon

Nathan goes to find Lorna to talk about the wedding cake. They actually wind up talking about certain fears. Yes, those.

There was a first place you looked for Lorna at all times, even when you weren't a telepath and could find her anyway. "So," Nathan said cheerfully as he wheeled himself into the kitchen and she looked up at him. "You mentioned cake options?"

Lorna set her mug down on the newspaper she was reading and grinned, "Many many options. I have lists." She pushed the chairs next to her down the table so Nathan could roll up to the edge. "How do you feel about orange raspberry?"

"Orange raspberry," Nathan mused, bringing the wheelchair to a stop beside the table and putting on the brake. "That's an interesting combination... I think Moira would like it."

She ran her hand through her hair as she tried to remember where she'd left her notebook then just shrugged and took out a pen instead. "I was thinking of a six tiered cake. Each one would be a different flavour and the top obviously would be the groom's cake, so something dense. What's your thought on fruitcake?" She sketched rapidly on the newspaper to illustrate what she meant, adding stick figure Nate and Moira's on the top.

"Uhh... fruitcake?" Nathan tried very hard not to look as dubious as the idea actually made him feel. "Isn't that the stuff you get at Christmas that no one eats?"

"Traditionally the groom's cake is a dense cake. Something that will freeze well. Fruitcake fits the bill. And clearly you've never had my fruitcake." Lorna circled the topmost tier in her drawing. "You save it from the wedding and have it on your first anniversary along with a bottle of wine from the reception. I'm a fan of tradition."

"Oh," Nathan said, in the vaguely intrigued tone of someone who'd never heard of that particular tradition. "Well, I'll take your word for that. What about the other layers...?"

"There are more options than I have layers. Ideally I'd like you to sample them all but basically, I wanted to hit as many different flavours as possible, give everyone a little something. Orange raspberry, champagne with strawberry, marble, chocolate mint, etc. I've got reams of notes already but of course, not here." Her voice was briskly professional, clearly she'd given this a lot of thought and just as clearly she knew exactly what she was doing.

"I can't see Moira complaining at the idea of sampling them all," Nathan said wryly. "Her cravings are leaning towards the sweet these days." He looked intrigued. "Champagne with strawberry sounds appealing..."

"Once she gets back I'll start baking. I'll have to give you the master list first but once you narrow it down to about twelve, I can bake them off for samples." Lorna sat back in her chair and tucked the pen behind her ear. "Then there's just the whole rest of the menu to decide on. She's not going to want Scottish food right?"

"Unless she mentioned something specific to you...? I was kind of letting her handle most of the food-related stuff," Nathan confessed. "The three of us will have to get together and talk about it once she's done doing a favor for that friend of hers..."

"She hadn't said anything yet but brides always have ideas. Usually with a capital I." Lorna shrugged, "Oh well, it can wait. It's not like I've got anyone else's weddings to plan unless Scott and Jean are reconciling a lot faster than it appears."

"She's been very decidedly un-Bridezilla about the whole thing," Nathan protested, then grinned. "As for Jean and Scott... well, that would be trading inside information and I couldn't do that..."

Lorna grinned, "Of course you can. It's not at all cheating to tell the chef. I mean, I'm the one who will have to feed the descending hordes, right?" She gave him an ingratiating smile.

"Information for information," Nathan suggested, a glimmer of an idea occurring to him. "Since I was curious about something myself."

Lorna thought that over and decided it was a good deal. "Sure. Ask away, what's on your mind besides a nation of dead people from the future? Hi to them by the way."

Nathan smiled. "Well," he said conversationally, careful to keep his voice light, "I was sort of wondering what that was all about in my journal last night." He paused, but then went on before she could answer. "At first I thought you were handling it very well, but when you decided to turn it into an argument I was... concerned." He met her eyes steadily. "I can't help but remember myself last summer, trying to push myself to teach him despite the fact that I was terrified of empaths." A faint smile flickered across his face. "I used to throw up before every lesson. Not many people know that."

Lorna's face wiped carefully blank. "I'm sorry. It won't happen again." She took the pen from behind her ear, fiddling with it. "No, I didn't know that. Why were you scared? And why would you teach him if you were?"

"Why was I scared?" Nathan blinked at her, then tilted his head. "Lorna, did you not read back into the Mistra files to the ones on the conditioning process?"

She gave him a wry smile, more ashamed than anything. "I couldn't. I started to look through them but they were just too… I gave up. Meant to go back but I haven't yet."

"Ah. Well," he said, the cheery tone a little false, "not much need to go back and look at them now. But in terms of why I was scared," he went on, more briskly, "well... I'll try and be succinct."

He leaned back in the wheelchair, taking a deep breath. "You know it was psionic conditioning, right? That didn't just mean telepaths. The telepaths implanted posthypnotic triggers, messed around with our memories, created the tactical imperatives by segmenting off a portion of our subconscious, that sort of thing." He paused. "The empaths... well, what they did was very different. They started..."

It was more difficult to talk about this, still, than it should have been. He forced his tone to stay level as he went on. "They started by basically wiping out your own natural mechanisms for controlling your emotions, and then creating new ones. Artificial compartmentalization - it let us control our anger and fear more easily, that sort of thing. The empaths did work on the artificial pack instinct, too."

Lorna shuddered. "And even after that you agreed to teach him? Christ, why would you do that?"

"That's a good question," Nathan said a bit wryly. "In retrospect, I'm not really sure. It was... so hard, and after I was recaptured and reconditioned in August, the phobia was worse. So much worse. I could hardly bear to let Charles inside my head, let alone teach Manuel. That's why our lessons came to such an abrupt end..."

"And why Alison took over." Lorna sighed. "I just, I can't even imagine that. That's worse that just facing a fear. That's like…being afraid of clowns so you join the circus and volunteer to help them out." She scrubbed her hand over her face, "Not to be insulting Nathan but you're nuts."

"It wasn't just facing my own fears," Nathan admitted quietly, rubbing at his still somewhat-numb left hand. "Do you know anything about Manuel's background? The asylum?" He shrugged a little, uneasily. "What they were training him to be was the sort of empath I knew at Mistra. When the Askani dropped in and suddenly, they had ideas as to how to prevent that from happening... I wouldn't have felt right to prevent that just because the idea terrified me. They were..." He hesitated. "Angry, when I stopped the lessons. A few of their empaths, I mean, the ones who'd been teaching him. They nearly managed to drive me back to it. Fortunately," he said, his lips twitching wryly, "for my sanity, at least, Manuel wasn't having any of that at the time."

"Manuel and I have never really had a heart to heart. I only know what I've overheard." Lorna's expression said that little of it had been good but even less had been worth her sympathy. "Luckily for me, I don't have any psis in my head to force me to do things. Once was plenty, thanks."

She was talking about it. Which meant that he didn't dare push, or she'd stop. "I never really felt... safe," he said, slowly, "until I'd mastered the defense against empathy that Askani - female, singular, that is - could teach me. It keeps my emotions out of the reach of any empath. Takes concentration, but I'm a blank slate these days when I want to be."

"Sounds nice." Lorna replied and meant it. It did sound nice, to be closed behind a shield that couldn't be breached and couldn't be forced. Her own mental defenses were good for someone headblind but no where near perfect. It must be nice to be a psi. "That probably is very helpful."

"Funny thing, though. The longer I've had that option, the less I've been afraid. Even when I don't have it working." He shrugged a little. "In fact, the phobia's pretty much gone, now, although I attribute that to working with Charles two times a week for a year to develop my own telepathy." Nathan gave her a slightly twisted smile. "There weren't many telepaths among the operatives at Mistra," he said. "Those of us who were... well, we were less lucky than the ones who weren't, because we were aware of it all. Not just the original six months of conditioning, but the bi-monthly tune-ups, too, when they'd drag us back in to make sure everything was still working properly..."

Lorna nodded, still focused on the pen in her hands, "Thing is, I'm not scared of empaths. Dani's an empath. An uncontrolled one at that and she doesn't frighten me."

Still talking. Take it slow, Dayspring... "Meggan has some form of empathy, too, it seems," he said with a smile. "Funny, huh? The way psis of various kinds seem to grow on tree around here..."

"You'd think this was some kind of school for mutants or something." Lorna replied absently. "Makes me yearn for the good old days when all we had to worry about was that kid who changed the channel by blinking at it." She was barely paying attention to him, most of her attention focused on the pen so that she wasn't thinking about empaths or psi-breaking or Manuel.

"I always thought it was very ironic. Teaching Manuel how to build up his shields when I was having so much trouble with my own... sort of like the blind leading the blind." He chuckled softly. "No wonder it didn't work so well."

"Hmm," Lorna agreed, having progressed to doodling. "Anyway, I'm sorry about last night. I know I shouldn't antagonize him. Like he pointed out, that's how I screwed up before."

Nathan frowned a little. "You're under the impression that what happened is your fault?"

Lorna glanced up at him, eyes a little wide like she hadn't realized what she'd said. "Of course not. But if I hadn't been teasing him, he wouldn't have pushed back. I've got to take responsibility for my part." There, that was reasonable. It was what everyone seemed to think. "And you know, he was trying to help." That hurt to say but as often as it had been repeated, well it must be true.

Nathan gazed at her for a long moment. "Lorna," he said, "are you telepathic and hiding it?"

She stared at him, baffled. "What?"

"Manuel, particularly back then, was... deceptive. I don't mean personally deceptive," Nathan explained quietly. "I mean, it would have been possible at that point for someone who didn't talk to him much, or didn't read what he wrote on the journals, to think that this was someone more functional than he was." He paused for a moment. "Had you interacted with him much, before that?"

She continued to stare at him and shook her head. "No, not really. I think that was the first time we'd met in person. Other than passing in the halls and what not." She bit her lower lip, the implication that she'd not only provoked a new acquaintance but an unstable one just making it more clear how badly she'd screwed up.

"Then how were you supposed to know?" He shook his head. "I don't believe you were trying to be cruel to him. You don't strike me as the type."

"Clearly you've never witnessed the depths of my bitchiness." Lorna said and sighed. "Like I said, I won't do that anymore. I was just…upset. Tired of letting him scare me and all."

He tilted his head. "Did it ever trickle down the grapevine what happened the first time I met Manuel?" he asked, opting for the indirect route again.

She sighed again and thought back. "I remember there was scariness and property damage. I don't think I was in much of a state to really notice anything though. I mean that was when? Just about a year ago?"

"Just about. Pete..." Nathan paused, smiling a bit oddly. "Well, he suggested to me that I talk to Manuel about the fact that his existence, not to mention him asking me whether he could study me when I had my psychotic break, was scaring the hell out of me. We talked... I couldn't quite keep the fear under control, and Manuel, at that point, didn't have much in the ways of shields. He tried to calm me down." Nathan grimaced. "He hit one of my posthypnotic triggers, one of the ones designed to stop enemy empaths from coopting me. It turned on my telekinesis, and I tore the room apart." He sighed. "Manuel tried harder and harder to make me obey, and the reaction go worse and worse. I finally managed to knock myself out with part of the bedframe."

Lorna flinched and probably would have found some reason to run if she had been at all capable of moving quickly. This was entirely not something she wanted to talk about. Misery may love company but this struck a little too close to home. "I didn't know that." Her voice shook slightly though her expression remained fairly calm.

"It wasn't widely known." Back off a little, Dayspring. He smiled ruefully. "I'd been in the mansion for all of a week or two. Would've put a major crimp in what passed for my social life back then if it had gotten around that I'd nearly killed a student, don't you think?" He sighed, rubbing at his jaw. "It seems like so long ago," he said. "Not just a year."

"We're pretty forgiving about near death around here." Lorna relaxed slightly though she was still figuring out the best way to get out without making it look like she was running away. "We're even pretty good about actual death with good cause. Logan nearly killed Marie once or twice, I think and look at how they turned out. Connubial bliss in the Great White North."

"Mmm." He'd done all he dared, he suspected. Gotten Lorna to talk a little about it, let her know that he was willing to listen if she wanted to talk more... and he'd almost pushed too far here. He could sense her urge to flee. "I think cake is a better subject than death, all things considered. How does the champagne come into it?"

Cake. Cooking, yes, cooking was vastly better. "It's flavouring. You only use about half a cup so it's just a suggestion of the champagne. It's a very light white cake. One of my favourites and a heck of a lot easier for me to get ingredients for now that I'm 21." She was babbling slightly but figured it was okay.

"Bubbly cake," Nathan quipped. "Are there bubbles?"

"Tell you want, I'll go get my recipe book and plans and let you try it." And buy herself some time to breathe. She still hadn't talked to Alex about this and…God, why wouldn't this just go away. "Stay here, I'll be back in fifteen minutes, give or take needing a break at the top of the stairs."

"I'll be here," he said quietly, smiling reassuringly at her.

Great. She smiled back and grabbed her crutches. "Right. Thanks." She left as quickly as she could and tried not to think about what kind of damage she'd just done in there. At least there was baking to be done.