*17*
The twinkling Christmas-style lights that had been strung in the lower branches of the trees edging the yard reflected off the top layers of snow and made it look as if it had been sprinkled with an extraordinarily fine glitter... or shed Quicksilver. Xavier shifted slightly, noting the cup of coffee he'd nursed until tepid was now empty, but he still wasn't ready to head back inside into the warmth and light; not yet willing to rejoin the somewhat somber familial atmosphere within. Someone, probably one of the kids, had thoughtfully swept the gazebo, so while chilly, the seat of his pants was not being dampened by swiftly melting snow.
He'd come out here shortly after his conversation with Fawkes, but that wasn't what he was brooding over. Protecting Alyx's children was a decision Xavier had made the day before, and it had been easy to affirm the promise. The fact that it been Fawkes making the request, apparently on his own initiative, had been a surprise and a source of confusion. Why would Fawkes bother? Why would a thief, who could easily profit by selling the location of the kids and what they could do to the highest bidder, protect them?
That, of course, brought Graywolf back to his real problem... the engagement. He had to keep telling himself it wasn't Shari all over again. That this situation was completely different from what had happened eight years ago. The past was not repeating itself, no matter how his heart kept trying to tell him different.
He had been the one to stay away, college and then his new job in the CIA keeping him out of contact for long months. By the time he'd been settled, felt himself to be in the right place to make it all work, it had been too late. Shari, even with the tentative promises made, had moved on.
"Damn it," Xavier muttered softly, his words creating a thick fog upon the late evening air. Hindsight had shown him all the hints and signs he had missed, or perhaps simply chosen not to see. The increasing vagueness in her letters, her unavailability for phone calls, her distance when he would visit and her increasing reluctance to set a date to announce their betrothal. She had tried to tell him several times, but he had refused to listen, refused to believe until he'd gone home just in time for the couple to announce their plans to marry to the entire village. Xavier would never believe that Philip Whiteraven was good enough for Shari but... That but. The couple was still together and had three wonderful children. Children that Xavier had occasionally dreamed were his own. Shari had not loved him the way he had hoped, though they had remained good friends over the years. It would appear that the situation with Alyx was playing out similarly, but he wasn't certain being friends with her could ever be enough.
"Why can't you love me?" he asked the night breeze at a hoarse whisper.
"She does," the soft voice startled Xavier, and he nearly drew his weapon in reaction. It took him a moment to ascertain who stood in the shadows, and when he did he frowned in irritation.
"Shouldn't you be in bed?" he grumbled.
"Probably, but who can sleep while Uncle Mike stirs up mom's gray matter?" Rose stepped closer and lifted herself onto the wide ledge in the opening one over from where he sat.
Xavier grunted in agreement with that. He could only hope Alyx would get through this intact. For some reason he continued his musings for several minutes with little concern about the child that sat nearby. When he finally spoke it was with a question in the vein as the one Rose had overheard him muttering when she first arrived. "How can she love him?"
Rose scrunched her nose, making it plain she understood exactly what he was asking. "How can she not?"
Graywolf snapped his head about to stare at her. "But he's..."
"What?" Rose interrupted boldly and without a trace of fear. "A thief? An ex-con?" She snorted in derision. "Trust me when I say that's a major step up for mom."
He shook his head, not understanding what she could possibly mean with that utterly confusing statement. His eyes narrowed slightly as he wondered if, perhaps, she was manipulating him with her abilities. That idea sickened him, as he seriously doubted that Alyx would raise her children to have such a lack of ethics or conscience that they could ever be capable of even contemplating behaving in that manner. The child met his eyes with an enigmatic look that gave no hint as to what was going on in that young mind of hers.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean Jess, our father," she sneered the word in a precise, if high-pitched, imitation of her mother, "abused mom regularly."
Xavier found himself unable to respond, as it was the last possible thing he had ever expected to hear.
"Come on, do you really think any of us kids could accept Darien if he was anything other than the kind-hearted man we know him to be?" She raised one mitten-covered hand and broke off an icicle from the eave of the gazebo. "It's not like he can fool us, after all."
With a great reluctance, and most assuredly without letting Rose know, he agreed that even if Alyx might have been blinded by Fawkes' good looks and easy-going charm, her children would not have been. "That still does not mean he's the right... person for her to be with," Xavier stated emphatically, truly believing that Alyx could do so much better than a two-bit thief turned a freak of nature that had been forced to work for the government. He winced when he realized what had just passed through his mind. With the exception of the whole thieving thing, Alyx fit the exact same criteria, and there was no way he would ever consider her a freak.
"That's her decision to make, doncha think?" Rose sounded remarkably like Hobbes, and Gray idly noted she had quite a talent for mimicry. "She is perfectly capable of using her head, even in matters of the heart. Darien had a major uphill battle to win mom over."
Xavier shook his head, not entirely certain how much he wanted to hear, while at the same time he was desperate to understand the near-stranger he was partnered with. "What happened? With her... marriage?"
Rose kicked her feet for a couple of seconds, then shifted to sit sideways with one leg dangling down either side of the sill and leaning back against the post. She slid the icicle back and forth between her hands, the ice taking on a brilliant sheen as the surface layers melted under the continuous friction, as she seemed to contemplate how to begin. Finally she shrugged. "Exactly? I'm not sure. It wasn't like they went out of their way to advertise what was happening, and mom won't talk about it with us kids."
"So then how do you know... anything untoward was going on?" Xavier asked, not doubting her specifically, but honestly wondering how she knew, especially if her parents went to such pains to hide whatever was going on. He was surprised when her brows knit together in thought.
"We all suspected something, even me, and I was all of four at the time. I can remember one morning after everyone else had left for school, I walked into her room as she was getting dressed." She closed her eyes, tipped her head up and swallowed hard. "Her back was covered in welts, and I somehow knew it wasn't the first time. I told Dani what I'd seen that night."
"Did he... hurt you kids?" Gray's voice was hoarse, even the thought of anyone harming these children bothered him terribly.
"No, he was a remarkably good, if somewhat distant, father. Never raised a hand or his voice to us. Not back then anyway." She opened her eyes, but turned her head to stare out over the yard. "After mom... left, he tried his best to manipulate us, tried to keep us away from the rest of the family, and tried to convince us we were part of some grand plan. But since my and Dani's gifts had kicked in, we didn't fall for it and we made sure Chris and Manda didn't either."
Xavier rubbed his hands together to try and warm them a bit, even though he knew it was far more the child's words than the cold air causing them to feel chilled. At least now he knew who this mysterious Jess was that Alyx had been having nightmares about in Lincoln, and why. Her injury must have subconsciously reminded her of all she had suffered at the hands of her so-called husband. "How could she love someone like that?"
"He wasn't always the violent brute he eventually became, or so mom has assured us. In fact, he was a sweet, kind man who never lifted a hand against her until after Dani was born." Rose met his eyes and blinked slowly as if fighting back tears. "He may have provided the genetic material to create us, but we haven't considered Jess our father for a long time."
Graywolf was surprised at the bitter chill he could hear in her words. "Why?"
"Kinda hard to even like a person who thinks of you as little more than the successful result of a breeding experiment."
He was quite literally unable to comprehend what she was saying. He didn't doubt her words, and was willing to bet she or one of her siblings had overheard the comment at some point in their young lives. He couldn't imagine how Alyx had lived that way for so long, how she had managed to survive all the cruelty and pain for so many years. "I'm finding this difficult to believe based on what I do know about Al... your mother."
"Ask her. Now that you know about us, she'll probably be willing to talk to you, but keep in mind she won't say a single denigrating word about Jess in this house. Far as she is concerned, he is our father and deserves respect no matter how much of a bastard he ultimately was."
Xavier shook his head in confusion; that attitude was perfect Alyx, keeping her problems and point of view hers and letting others form their own opinions without her influence. "She can't still have... feelings for him?"
"Why not?" Rose countered and then gave him a wry grin. "Which brings me back to the reason for freezing my butt off."
Gray groaned, not wanting to discuss Fawkes or the engagement again, especially not with this at'ééd. "My opinion won't change."
"Not telling you to change it, but... Do you care about her?" Rose asked with a surprising innocence about her.
"If I do?" he challenged.
"Then you should care about her happiness more than your own," she stated emphatically.
He stared at her in disbelief as she managed such a smooth and yet cutting reprimand. "A point, I will grant you."
"Graywolf, she cares about you very much, and it's tearing her apart that she may be forced to choose between you and Darien." Now, she was nearly pleading and he found it difficult to ignore said plea.
"She's made her choice," Gray growled softly, standing up to end the conversation.
"Damn it, Xavier, she doesn't want to. She can bloody well love more than one person at a time." Rose dragged her leg back over the sill, hopped onto the floor of the gazebo and tipped her head back to glare up at him with fisted hands planted firmly on her hips. "She loves Bobby nearly as much as Darien. She loves Mikey even though he's been forced to do awful things to her to keep her alive and healthy." She paused to suck in a breath. "She loves Dani even though she got stuck with Jess' eyes and hair color. And me, bred in an act of violence." Her voice dropped to a near whisper, and Gray found himself listening carefully to her words. "She needs you, Xavier, and you want to push her away because she had the gall to fall in love with the one person who was able to show her she could risk caring again. To love again." When he said nothing, due the fact he was having a hard time comprehending the statement that this lovely child before him was conceived in an act of rape, she threw up her hands and stormed off with a grumbled, "Men! Here's hoping I'm gay."
Graywolf suppressed a chuckle and the sudden urge to admonish the girl, when he recalled she was only nine years old. The fact that he'd spoken so frankly with a child caused his mood to darken noticeably as well as show her astonishing maturity. His momentary upset was apparently not lost on the ability-burdened child, for as she stepped onto the main deck she cursed just loud enough to be heard and caused every icicle still hanging from the gazebo's eaves to shatter into a fine dust.
***
"Michele, I'm done. Wake up."
The return to consciousness was a sudden thing, like a switch had been flipped in her darkened mind, flooding everything with light. Or it would have if she had made the effort to open her eyes. Instead she took stock; tentatively probing with her internal senses in an attempt to gauge how much stronger they were.
"'Chele, come on, I can't hold these shields on you much longer." There was audible strain in Mike's voice and in his mind.
With a mental grumble at herself she grounded, centered and, step by step, built a wall in her mind that would filter out extraneous thoughts and emotions while still allowing the ambient energy that was her main ability to continue to function without interference. They had discovered the hard way that if she attempted to block that facet of her abilities entirely she would pass out cold... or worse. She could potentially shut down all brain function, which would kill her in a matter of seconds if nothing were done to jump-start her. That had happened once back at the lab, before they truly understood what she was. She had learned to dampen the excess, shunt it about herself, while the rest continued on its merry way, flowing through her as if she were no more than a simple circuit and giving her a unique awareness of the world about her.
She heard and felt Mike sigh in relief when she completed her mental work and had the shielding in place. She made some minor adjustments to banish the few not unexpected voices that leaked in past the newly resurrected shields. They faded to nothingness; securely locked out of her mind until such time that she chose to let them back in.
"'Chele, you okay?" She couldn't help but feel his worry, their family connection sneaking around her shields as always.
She opened her eyes, expecting to see nothing more than the off-white ceiling of the med-lab, but instead saw... colors. Glowing colors that crackled and shifted as the infinitesimally small movement of the supposedly solid surface flowed and moved to her sight. For some reason, her ability to see the energy signatures of nearly everything was overlaid upon her normal vision.
"Oh wow," she let escape in awe. The colors, the depth to which she could see was magnified a hundred times, and she knew she could get lost for long hours just watching and trying to understand the permutations of just one square inch of space.
"What? What's wrong?" Mike was at her side in an instant, the worry oozing off him in sharply crashing waves.
"Nothing," she assured him, noting he was surrounded by a lovely sea-green halo. Michele shifted to sit up, and he placed a hand on her back to assist her, being careful of the trailing wires trailing from the electrodes still attached to various points on her head. His gentle touch caused the nerves beneath his palm to fire like crazy. The pressure of the soft cotton of her shirt into her back felt almost like sandpaper to her, apparently, even more sensitive flesh.
"The energy signatures are so much crisper. It... it's so cool."
Mike chuckled softly and relaxed noticeably to her senses. "That type of enhancement should be expected across the board. That includes your sense of touch. It may take some adjustment."
"So how'd it go?" 'Chele asked as she flipped that internal switch and returned her sight to normal. She glanced about the room, choosing items at random to focus on, and found even her above average eyesight was greatly improved.
"So far so good," Mike answered, stepping back so that she could see the wave form monitor that had been hidden behind him. Not even she could see through things... yet.
'Chele eyed the monitor critically, confused by the readings. "Uh, that can't be right, can it?"
"Actually, it is. I had to recalibrate the machine. You were off the scale," Mike explained with a momentary hint of fear, which he quickly buried, though not before she caught it. "But as you can see, your power levels have evened off. No more spikes."
"Then what are you afraid of?" She called him on the emotions he'd tried and failed to hide from her.
Mike shook his head. "You, sis, but for you and not of you. This is a huge change, Michele, and you still have apprehension about using your abilities..."
She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, which was enough to halt Mike's words. "Considering everything I've done, I damn well should have a healthy fear of what I can do. I..." She shook her head. "I'll deal. Least I have control this time 'round."
"'Chele, you have to forgive yourself sometime," Mike commented softly.
"Forgive... yes. Forget? Never." She pulled her legs in to sit cross-legged on the bed and began peeling off the electrodes.
Mike moved over to assist, careful to keep the sticky pads from catching in her hair. "Your abilities are not something to be feared. The kids need to be taught to respect the potential dangers of their powers, yes, but they should not see them as something to be afraid of."
"Agreed." Michele handed him her collection of wires. "Which is why I've tried to emphasize my situation was the extreme and not something they're likely to ever deal with."
Mike snorted as he piled the wires atop the monitor, switched it off and rolled it back into its corner. "Never say never, sis. Life has a way of smacking you upside the head when you're not looking. Current situation a prime example." He returned to her side with a wry grin on his face. "All right, lets see if you're working up to spec. Telepathy first."
"Do I hafta?" she whined in a fair imitation of Darien, which caused Mike to raise his eyebrows in obvious amusement.
"Yes, you hafta," Mike mock ordered. "I'm glad he makes you happy."
*Me too,* she agreed.
Mike flinched, his hands clapping vainly over his ears in reaction. "Youch."
*What?* 'Chele queried in confusion. She could feel that her brother was in pain, but was unsure of the cause.
*You're blinking loud,* he explained, his hands lowering to his sides.
"Loud?" she repeated, not any less confused now that she had her answer. Her sending to him had felt perfectly normal to her, but considering the residual ache she could feel from him, she didn't argue and adjusted her 'volume' accordingly. *How's this?*
*Better, but still too much volume-wise.* This time, at least, it hadn't been so loud that it caused him pain.
"Well... hell. I feel like I'm whispering." She adjusted her levels down another notch and tried again. *And now?*
*Perfect. You'll get the hang of it, just give it a few days.* He was careful to make sure she could feel that he had every confidence in her. "Empathy next. Try the kids."
'Chele nodded and focused on the children, who should have been blissfully asleep, but were, of course, wide awake. All four were radiating varying amounts of worry and exhaustion; the concern for their mother overriding their natural need for sleep. Three she was able to sooth and reassure, being careful of her output level, but Rose... Rose was seething with anger along with the concern, and 'Chele wondered what had happened while she'd been out. After spending a few minutes exchanging emotional commentary, she broke the link and focused on her twin, who had been waiting patiently as he eavesdropped on her use of power. She couldn't help but feel his satisfaction with her accurate dampening of her power in order to keep from overwhelming the kids' minds.
"What's got Rose so ticked off?" she asked in consternation. Admittedly the child did have a temper, but she had been in a reasonably good mood as the joy of the engagement had outweighed the burgeoning concern for her mother.
"'Chele, I was here with you," he reminded her, causing her to roll her eyes at herself. "And it can wait until tomorrow."
'Chele shook her head, the contact with her youngest child had revealed something none of them had been aware of. "She has my abilities. Not as strong, but the same. That's probably why you've been having so much trouble training her. She's not a telepath."
Mike went perfectly still in obvious surprise. "You got that from a couple minutes of empathic contact?"
"Yes," she told him. "I... I guess it should have been obvious, but they... feel different now. It's subtle, given her abilities have not come into full power, but it's there."
Mike didn't argue. "I'll modify her training. She'll be ready when the time comes," he assured her. "Y'know, that would explain quite a few things, like why she'll still pick up thoughts even when shielded. It's not her being a nit, it's the wrong shielding."
Michele nodded in agreement. There had been any number of discussions, both with and without the child in question, about her seeming unwillingness to maintain proper shields. It was looking like they owed Rose an apology or two. "And here we thought she inherited about three times my natural stubbornness."
"Oh, she did," Mike said with a laugh. "Later with this, I still need to make you jump through a few more hoops. Telekinesis if you would."
'Chele grumbled under her breath about 'obnoxious slave drivers' even as she fully realized the necessity. Still, she was finding herself growing more annoyed by the second, as she was supremely confident that all of her abilities worked just fine, if at a markedly increased level. Knowing this facet of her talents would be just as souped up as the rest had been, she used only a tenth of her usual effort and lifted every loose object in the room, including the bed she sat upon, a foot into the air.
"Show off," Mike muttered. "Now put 'em down and Quicksilver for me."
Michele knew better than to argue, and since the ultimate control system for both sets of abilities was the same, there was always a chance, slim, but there, that the change could have affected her being able to Quicksilver effectively. She willed the Quicksilver to flow and it responded like always, oozing out of her pores and crawling across her flesh like some living thing. Within seconds she had vanished from sight. She held it for about a minute, and then let it flake away only to start it going again, this time to run through part of her basic fine control routine with no obvious problems or adjustments. The biggest change was due to the increased sensitivity of her skin, making the Quicksilver feel even odder than it normally did.
"Looks good. How does it feel?" Mike moved to her side, penlight at the ready to check her pupil response once her eyes were visible again.
"Feels fine." She resisted the temptation to control her iris response and allowed them to react normally as he shined the light into her eyes one at a time. "I expected the increased hypersensitivity, so, while weird, it wasn't a big deal. Gives me an excuse to buy more silk, though."
Mike continued checking over her vitals even as he chuckled. "Like you need an excuse." He listened to her heart, and then hung the stethoscope about his neck. "Well, everything checks out. If you even think something is wrong..."
"Yeah, yeah, I know what to do," she groused, not needing to be mother-henned right now. She was about to detail this to him, but when she opened her mouth to speak, instead of words a massive yawn escaped, surprising her.
"Go get some sleep, and that's an order from your doctor." Mike held out a hand and assisted her off the bed. "'Sides, I'm quite certain Darien is waiting for you."
'Chele cast her mind about for the man in question, to discover he was indeed awake and awaiting news about her. "Okay," she agreed.
"Okay? No argument?" Mike sounded shocked, but she was quick to pick up it was mostly feigned.
"What? I'm not allowed to be tired?" She gave him a lopsided smile. "Thanks, bro."
He drew her into a quick hug. "Anytime."
She let his confidence that everything had gone just right ease any lingering doubts and worries that remained. She pushed herself away and, after meeting his eyes for an instant, trotted from the room with single goal of heading upstairs to assure Darien she was just fine.
***
"King's Cross! I apologize! I love your singing dear."
"The idiom is 'King's X,' Ish. Pax, it is. Grab robes for all of us, Hammy, that's a good girl. Long Legs, while I was singing---perfectly on key---I figured out that idiom that was bothering me. It's not what Minerva though t it was; a 'hook shop' is a bordello. Which makes the Born Loser's sister a hetaera---and the last piece falls into place."
"Why, of course! No wonder she could subsidize her brother---artists always get paid more than anyone else."
Hamadryad returned with robes, laid them on the massage table. She said, "I didn't know that idiom was bothering you, Galahad. I understood it the first time I heard the song."
"I wish you had told me."
"Is it important?"
"Only as one more clue. Ham, in analyzing any culture, its myths and folk songs and idioms and aphorisms are more basic than its formal history. You can't understand a person unless you understand her culture..."
"Yeah, right," Darien mumbled aloud as the lesson being banged into his head by the book met a wall of utter resistance. There was little chance of him wanting to understand Graywolf's culture in order to find some common ground. Not tonight anyway.
"Would you prefer left then?"
Darien just barely managed to control the twitch that was his body's response to those softly spoken words. In fact, he continued to stare at the page before him even though the urge to jump off the bed and rush to her was extremely difficult to resist.
"You didn't have to wait up for me, ya know."
Darien lifted his head to see Michele leaning against the entrance from the sitting room. She appeared to be perfectly fine, if looking tired; and considering everything that had happened today, it wasn't all that surprising. "Like I could sleep?"
She shrugged, pushed away from the wall and headed for the bathroom. "I'm gonna take a quick shower."
Darien grunted noncommittally, completely blown away by her seeming casualness of the entire situation, and pretended to go back to reading the book even though the words seem to blur before his eyes. Her sudden gasp caused him to snap his head back up with worry. "What?"
Her hands were wandering across her forehead as if in search of something. "Oh no," she cried out and Darien felt his heart rate crank up another notch. Then she dropped her hands to her sides and tipped her head slightly to one side. "Dare, I'm fine. No third eye, no drooling mess, just... me."
He groaned and resisted the temptation to rush from the bed and give her a solid walloping for scaring him half to death. "Damn it, Michele," he grouched, but relaxed somewhat as she grinned at him. "Go. I'll try to stay awake," he muttered, knowing damn well there was no chance in hell he would sleep until he had her in his arms and could see for himself up close and personal that she was indeed 'fine.'
'Chele didn't comment, pushed away from the wall and went straight to the bathroom. Within moments, Darien heard the sound of the shower running and attempted to fall back into the story, but knowing she was mere yards away kept him from actually reading. He was about to set the book aside when he realized he'd read the same page three times without absorbing a single word, when the door swung open and the scent of steam and fresh citrus wafted out to tease his olfactory senses into full awareness.
He glanced up surreptitiously and found himself unable to look away. It wasn't that she was striking some sexy pose - to his eyes she was always sexy - or trying to draw his attention. She was gently towel drying her hair as she padded softly across the wood floor to the foot of the bed. She was wearing one of her typical long-sleeved pajama tops that she often paired with the matching pants during the colder winter nights; absolutely nothing unusual or overtly enticing. Yet, she looked... sweet, tempting and irresistible. She tossed the towel aside and he watched it drape itself perfectly over the back of a chair in such a way that meant she'd used her abilities to do it. Then she crawled across the bed towards him.
"Hey, bub," she purred as she sidled right up next to him and pressed herself against his side.
"Hey," he managed in response, allowing his eyes to slide away from the unread page to rest upon her. "Everything go okay?" He hadn't planned on asking, but found himself unable to prevent the words and the concern from escaping.
"So it would seem. All of the prelim tests came out just fine. It's simply a matter of adjusting to the increased sensitivity," 'Chele explained in a soft voice as she shifted so that her chin rested on his shoulder. Reaching out, she gently tugged the book from his grasp, closed it and left his side long enough to return it to the nightstand.
"Umm, I was reading that," he pointed out needlessly.
"Well, pretending to anyway." She was back then, her lips brushing along his temple as she spoke. "I have other things than reading in mind for tonight."
His arm curved around her back as if it was the most natural thing in the world and he turned his head to kiss the hollow of her throat. "Like what?"
"Oh, I felt like celebrating." She was still close enough that her lips brushed along his skin with every whispered word.
"Celebrating? What are we celebrating?" He was quite surprised when she pulled away from him at his question. She eyed him speculatively for several long seconds before answering.
"Our engagement. Unless you've changed your mind and wish to withdraw your proposal, of course." There was no hurt or anger in her voice, since she had made it very clear earlier that he could change his mind at any time without it directly affecting their current relationship.
Darien felt the sudden urge to smack himself in the head for not considering that she might want to... commemorate the moment somehow. "No. No way. No how. You ain't makin' me change my mind, girl."
She gave him a sly smile. "Good." She then allowed gravity to act and pull her far smaller mass towards his greater until they were mere centimeters apart - almost, but not quite touching.
He stilled, all except his heart, which pounded in reaction; their mutual attraction inevitably drawing them towards each other. One hand closed the distance, curving about her jaw, the fingers trailing in the damp hair hanging at the back of her neck. "Sweets, your back. I don't think..."
"Good plan," she interrupted. "Thinking is not what is needed right now." Then her tongue was hot against his throat and he found himself able to do little more than groan, close his eyes in reaction and do whatever she wanted. It was the noticeable tingle of static electricity wherever her skin that met his that drew him back from the euphoria he'd been feeling. Her lips were making their slow way back towards his ear while one hand roved in slow circles across his abdomen, every slight movement leaving a trail of heat and heightened sensitivity along the nerve endings. It was far more intense than anything he'd ever experienced before with her.
"Open your eyes," she murmured, the words sounding clumsy as the impressions suggesting the same came through with her touch.
It took a moment for him to gather himself and find the strength to actually act upon her request. He was so caught up in touch that sight seemed an unnecessary burden to everything he was already enjoying. When he did finally manage to crack them open, they widened instantly and he stared about in awe. The room glowed. Everything, every surface - the walls, the bed, the mirror, the curtains, hell, the air itself, and each with their own distinctive varietal of colors and pattern of movement.
It was like an LSD junkie's ultimate wet dream of a trip, and he knew it showed in his voice when he uttered just two words, "Oh wow." Seconds later, everything had gone to grayscale, and Michele chuckled, quite obviously amused at his reaction.
All Darien knew was that if this was a side effect of her increased abilities he was going die a very happy man.
