xp_logs | Manuel - Thursday afternoon

Happy anniversary: Amanda has a gift for Manuel that just might change the way things are now

The box sitting in the doorway of Manuel's room was small and plain brown, tied with string. No card, no letter, just the box, sitting there. It had appeared overnight, without warning, sitting there innocently when Manuel opened his door.

Manuel nearly tripped over it walking into his room after lunch. He had an hour until his next class, and usually he spent it trying to recover some equilibrium, so that he could continue with the rest of his classes without traumatizing them beyond his mere existence. "~What's this?~" he said in Castillian, picking up the box and looking at it. Shrugging, he opened it carelessly.

It was heavier than expected, upon lifting it, and the reason became obvious once it was open. Sitting in a nest of tissue paper was a small crystal orb, about the size and shape of a golf ball. The crystal wasn't pure - there were hints of a reddish tone in its depths, the same colour as Manuel's eyes when he was using his power. There was a post-it note stuck to it, with two sentences in Amanda's careless, child-like scrawl:

'No more secrets. You might want to sit down for this.'

Manuel blinked. "No more secrets, my _ass_." he said. He was tempted to smash the crystal, or throw it away, but something stopped him. Clamping down hard on the ice-cold link, he gently took the crystal out of its box. It felt warm, which was surprising. He half-expected it to feel as cold as his mind did. He lifted the crystal up to eye level, to stare at it and through it. It was just then that the visions started.

They were more than simple visions, like in the movies. These were memories, with all the associated feelings and thoughts. The first ones were fuzzy, uncertain, mere glimpses and impressions. A small girl on a too-big horse, her brother walking beside her, making sure she didn't fall off. A sensation of arms holding her close, a woman's voice singing a lullaby in Rom, a smell of woodsmoke and herbs. The vaguest impression of a tall man, blonde like the girl, of midnight-blue skin and flashing yellow eyes and a tail to be pulled. And then those memories vanished, swallowed up by a harsh, familiar voice: "You're mine now, girl. Bought and paid for."

The subsequent memories were mercifully brief, but detailed. Impressions of pain and loneliness and fear, beatings and drainings blending into each other. A cold night in May.

Manuel tried to pull himself away, but overwhelming that impulse was his need to _know_. Why had she _done_ this? Was this supposed to change anything? Still - he had started it, it would be a shame not to see it through all the way. It was a very convincing illusion, he thought with a smile. She'd obviously been practicing.

Waking in a hospital, feeling like she's been flayed, but worse than the physical pain was the realisation that she'd been left, abandoned, with nothing more than a new name printed on the bracelet around her skinny wrist. Amanda Sefton. The endless procession of social workers and student doctors, all wanting to see her, talk to her, find out what made her tick... Early on she'd learned to hide the magic, hide what and who she was, giving all the right answers. Then the foster homes, each one a little worse than the last. Each time the increasingly-faint hope that this one would be home, until that hope was gone, buried under the layers of anger and resentment and tough attitude.

Manuel hrmmed as he came to this part of her life. It was really tragic - she knew, almost exactly, what he was dealing with, but she wouldn't see it. Wouldn't empathize. With a flash, he realized why. She'd _never had a family_. Ever. Family was something to be cursed, something that changed every few years as one set of "parents" would reject her, throw her back with the increasingly-desperate foster kids. For a brief second, he wished he could do one of these himself, for her. Swallowing the knot in his throat, he let the crystal continue its playback.

Finally it got too much - there was an incident in a toolshed, impressions of grasping hands and pain and a voice saying 'no-one else will touch you, freak, so you might as well let me'. She'd been thirteen, and she'd run that night. Picked up a week later, the police unsympathetic. A pattern established, each amount of time on the streets progressively longer, until she managed to avoid the police and Social Services altogether. London, Brighton... learning to live and fend for herself, the things she had to do, the things she did any way. And always the magic running through her like her blood, warmth when she was freezing, getting more and more powerful with no idea how to contain it and no-one to ask. Until Romany reappeared.

Manuel watched impassively. This much of the tale he knew, in one form or another. She liked to think her story was special, but take out the magic and it was a tale told time and time again every day around the world. He'd lived it himself, in a similar form. ~A shame Romany got old. She wasn't quite so bad looking back then.~ he thought with amusement.

Suspicion, allayed only by the use of magic to explain. A feeling of kinship, quickly stifled when she realised that Romany wasn't going to keep her, that no-one wanted her. A plane trip, and then the school, all the while building up the walls again, making them impregnable, or so she thought. It took a scruffy dark-haired man in a rumpled suit, treating her like family, not letting her get away with murder but not blaming her for everything, valuing her for herself and not what she could do, to breach those walls. And then the love potion, the soul-searing fear that she'd gone too far, destroyed too many people this time, that she'd gone beyond forgiveness, and yet, brief moments of exactly that. Jake pushing cookies under the door. Shinobi bringing her cigarettes and comfort. Remy and his acceptance regardless.

Manuel snarled at this part of the dialog. Sure, be born down on your luck and with tits, and people would fall all over themselves to be nice to you. Be male, be frightening to the established order of things, and the reception was quite different indeed. He had no use for Jake, and Remy, well, he remembered how well that conversation went. Shinobi - that surprised him.

The crystal flickered, as if sensing his emotions, and the visons halted, in favour of something else. Emotion, pure and unadultered, aimed specifically at him. At first mere sympathy for someone as adrift as her, tinged with the giddiness of her power-highs and the heady rush of lust. Then the dark period of the addiction, of Lorna, and Remy's rejection, the need, the feeling that only Manuel could help her, but underneath the self-loathing and the cravings, the sense that here was someone who understood, someone who cared, who wouldn't throw her away. The link pulsed briefly from Amanda's end, tendrils of feeling sneaking through the block - nothing concrete, just a sense of her presence.

Manuel blinked as the dialog changed. Hello, this was certainly interesting. He knew, explicitly, how she felt, but it was one of the great frustrations in his life that he could not tell _why_. This certainly helped explain a few things. Unfortunately, it ripped open the fragile detante with his own emotions about how he had driven her away, and the emotional wound he'd caved into himself bled anew. Because he did understand, and he did care, despite all of it. He just never knew how to get it through to her, and just letting her see it, letting her feel it, wasn't getting it done anymore. He lessened the block on his side of the link as far as he dared, in case she wanted to feel him feeling her.

Another pulse from the orb, and there was the night on the roof, when she couldn't stand using him any more, couldn't stand what she'd become. Lorna's pain-filled words, telling her she was a monster for going back to Manuel, that she might as well kill herself and be done with it. Angelo not letting her give up, even after she'd verbally shredded him.

Manuel sighed. "Lorna is right." he said softly. "I am a monster." If anything, her pain about using him to hold the darkness at bay should have been his first clue. Lorna, Bobby, Doug, Marie-Ange, Kwannon. A litany of failures. Even the events beyond his control, like Lorna's hand burn, just pointed the way. In the back of his mind, the image of the Man In The Chair beckoned. Sure, he'd done a little bit of good here and there, but what good was it now? None. It wasn't enough to overcome everything else he'd done.

England, and long nights of study, meditation sessions, the cleansing ritual and the nagging feeling something had been lost. The desperate need to prove herself, to show she wasn't a hopeless case, to be allowed to go back. And the worry about Manuel, the feeling of helplessness at reading his journal entries and not being able to reply, of emails sent but never answered.

He didn't want to think about those dark days, he decided suddenly. It hurt too much. The bond, brutally blocked at the source. The numbness, not being able to feel, and then not wanting to. Being _crippled_. Every time he thought of it, he was reminded of the years spent in a thorazine haze, being chemically switched on and turned off like a light switch. The circumstances he was in now were almost, in their own way, crueller. This time, he was falling flat on his own, with no assist from anyone else.

The spell, once started, refused to halt. He'd wanted no more secrets from her, and she was doing that, the only way she knew how. Words lied. Magic, this sort of magic, didn't. When you got right down to it, the magic was the most honest thing in her life, however hard it was, whatever the price. This understanding too permeated the visions he was getting. Things were moving faster now, the chance given by her return overlaid with growing hope that things with Manuel weren't as bad she she'd thought. Reaching out, trying to make a connection, to be honest with feelings that made her feel so vulnerable and afraid. And then Rack's return, and the sheer terror she'd felt at the letter, the sense of hope lost again, that the months of happiness in the mansion had only been a brief respite, a dream. She'd gone to Rack wanting an end, any kind.

Manuel tried to pull himself out of the spell. Too much truth, too quickly. He wasn't have any problems assimilating the material on a purely mental level, but emotionally it was a whole 'nother ball game. This wasn't just honest, this was _naked_. This was her, warts and all. Good, bad, indifferent. Insecurities, strengths, weaknesses, they were all here for him to peruse at his leisure. The depth of it staggered him, and it shamed him at the same time. For doubting her.

The spell held him remorselessly, as if the caster hadn't wanted to give him the chance to stop, that the choice to know once made, couldn't be reversed. Fear that perhaps he'd stop too soon, and not see what came at the end. Flashes of life at the school, of Nathan and Moira and the feeling of safety she got from them, edged with the eternal worry that one day she'd lose them too, heightened with every time Nathan ended up in medlab. Life with Manuel, in all its comlicated glory, trying to trust when trust came so hard, the Man in the Chair always in the background. And then September, and the full extent of her jealousy of Jubilee, the loss of Angelo's friendship, the loss of Manuel, everything driving her to the only solace she knew.

Nathan. When it came to the big mercenary, Manuel's feelings always got into a snarl. Jealousy, fear, fascination, disdain, all of it wrapped up in an extremely powerful package. But this wasn't about him, it was about her. It was startling, how she felt about Angelo verses what he knew. Very startling. It didn't make any sense, but as he had come to discover, so much about his power and about life in general did not.

Loss. Utter loss, and not even the power was helping. Pete again, and Nathan and Moira, trying desperately to help, and the knowledge that even this failure wasn't enough to drive them away. Anger at the sense of helplessness, the lack of control in her life, that she was as much a victim now as she ever had been when she was with Rack. And then a moment on the dock, cruel words from the one she loved, and the feeling that she deserved it, all of it. That she always would.

She had deserved it, every word. Sometimes she needed pushing to work beyond her own miseries, to break her out of the self-looping destructive modes of thought and feeling. But, as usual, his motivations got lost in the shuffle. How _could she_ have been bonded to him for so long and never understood anything about why he did what he did? This bore thinking upon.

Three words. Three simple words that she'd wanted to say, but something had always held her back. Resentment that it had taken yet another fight to wrest them from her, that he'd had to say those things to her, but aimed at herself, not him. And then months of honest happiness, of difficulties worked out and progress being made, hopes of something approaching a normal life, until Halloween and then the Hellfire Club, wrecking everything in an instant. Every detail of what had happened, what it had cost - the surge of dark power riding through her, lingering even past Strange's efforts, only driven out by the site in Arizona, but still doubts lingering, heightened by the incident at Muir and then Berlin. Honest fear that a certain path had been taken.

Manuel honestly didn't see any way he could help her with this - assuming she even wanted it in the first place. He knew her much better, now, but he still wasn't prepared to just surrender quite so easily, admit that he was wrong to drive her away. That she was likely correct about his father, that the name didn't matter, the blood didn't matter. He had sacrificed so much, what was one more principle, one more aspect of his old life?

More doubt, more confusion, desperate worry and frustration all underlaid with nagging cravings, the urge to make everything go away just this once... Reminders that there were people who needed her, that she'd hurt more than herself. And then warm artificial light, and sand underfoot, and a bottle of sunscreen - hope reborn again, more fragile than before, but persistently hanging on. Rebuilding things, the foundation more firm this time, learning more about him, about herself, but a sense of fatalism now, a feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop. A DVD and a crate of cider and a girl unable to put the pieces back together this time, not properly, just patchwork.

Manuel raged at the circumstances around his life. It really wasn't _fair_! He had gone there to _give it all up_, and it still reached out and fucked up his life. Not for the first time, Manuel cursed Alphonso's shade to a deeper and blacker pit of Hell for his crimes. Blood or no, the man had made a dog's dinner of Manuel's life, and just once he'd like to be able to tell him off. Unfortunately, that avenue of expression was closed to him.

Only one thing left now - Pete. Every conversation, every feeling, the desperate need to tell Manuel and the equally desperate fear that it would mean the end of everything. The fight with Paige, and the sense of betrayal her threats incurred, even at the same time feeling guilty about what she'd said herself. Backsliding again, losing the ground she'd gained. Guilt permeating everything, as well as a growing resentment that it all came down to her. Again. And then the breaking point, the fear that she'd lost Manuel for good the instant he'd threatened to use his powers on her - she didn't care for what it would do to her, only what it would do to him.

Manuel growled his protests. Only in her own mind did she believe that it had all come down to her. He couldn't help but resent her selfishness for a moment or two. No wonder he hadn't gotten through to her - she wasn't interested in looking.

And then the hate, down the link, the command echoed by the empathic nudge. So close to breaking point, it was a handy excuse for her to leave, to get the breathing space she'd been so desperately needing since October. A frank admission that it had been all about her.

Manuel couldn't help but feel that tiny little spike of triumph. It _was_ all about her! But the feeling was drowned by sympathy and guilt. She was _bleeding_ inside, as badly as he was if not worse. What could he do to help her, when he himself bled so badly?

The orb pulsed again, and the visions ended, traces of sheer exhaustion lingering as the spell ended. Everything had been there, every thought, every feeling. Amanda's life, in its entirety. The crystal weighed heavy in his hand, the link hung, partially unblocked and a feeling of... anticipation? resignation? hope? touching the edges of his mind. 'This is me, do with it what you will', the moment seemed to say.

Manuel dropped the blocks on his end of the link entirely, welcoming her back in if she wanted to. After honesty like that, it was the absolute least he could do. He didn't push anything at her, he didn't fling poisoned words or toxic feelings at her, he didn't even offer any defenses for his recent behaviors and decisions. He simply - opened the link. Let her do as she would. If she wanted a reapproachment, she could have one. But it had to come from her; he knew this now. To push her would be to lose everything forever.

There was the briefest sensation of surprise, like she hadn't been expecting that, and then a hesitant touch, the block on her side coming down more slowly. The reason for that became apparent when the wave of exhaustion hit him, no longer restrained by the block. In making the crystal, she'd literally given him all she had. But there was determination there too, a sense that she wouldn't give up, not this time. On them, or on herself. #I'm sorry, love# came the barest whisper of a thought - she'd always been better at projecting words than him.

Manuel, in his room, smiled with bright eyes, Blinking, he projected just a tiny little sliver of feeling down the link to her. A greeting, and a warm note of concern. ~Get some sleep.~ it seemed to say. ~I'll still be here when you wake up.~