Summary:Chinese Food and a discussion about dreams, sort of, ends the day for two Paragon Investigations employees Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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Nick does not always take his dinner at work, though he does it often enough that people might be forgiven for thinking that's the case. There are several restaurants within walking range though and today the brown furry PI has gone to get chinese. Of course, going to dinner without his most helpful - according to her - employee is something of a risk. Because said employee will demand their due one way or the other.
So it's a dinner for two with pan fried noodles and sweet and sour pork. And rice. Lots of rice.
And tea. Which Nick is now pouring into those tiny, tiny cups.
Nick should have bought dinner for three, the way that Isis is tucking into the noodles in front of her. For a slender woman, the feline-like mutant certainly packs the food away. "This is good. Why are you working late tonight?" It's not clear if Isis does leave, or if she just sleeps in the bunks upstairs.
She's watching the cups as Nick pours the tea. Will he remember not to put them too near the edge of the table?
Nick learned not to do that after the first few times so, yes. He does remember. He puts one down near him and one down in front of Isis.
"I'm following up on some of our work today. There's a few more e-mails and messages to leave. Then I have to contact one of the courts and try to get some documents." Mostly places are closed now - its dinner time and after business hours - but leaving messages does mean he doesn't have to do all this in the morning.
"Why are YOU still here?" He asks, smiling as he takes some noodles for himself. Before they're all gone.
Isis pouts a little as Nick doesn't give her the game she likes to play. Knocking cups from the edge of the table always gets such a response. "Thank you."
"I could do the court documents, you know that right?" She says. She knows how busy Nick is and she does try to help. Perhaps surprisingly, she doesn't protest when he takes some noodles but he's going to have to be quick, she's nearly finished her.
"Me?" she says carefully. "I … was making up those files you wanted and by the time I was finished, I knew all the rooms at the hostel in M-Town would be full." She's going to sleep on the premises, isn't she?
"Ah. Yes and you did finish those. Thank you." The files require a lot of compiling information and putting it into the correct order. Standard formatting lets them find things more quickly and Isis is surprisingly good with organization when she wants to be.
Just not with cups. Which Nick doesn't want to have to pay for if they break.
"If you want to take the requests that'll get me done with work sooner and into bed." He'll probably be staying the night here as well even though he does have his own place. It's just easier sometimes.%r"Mail came from the School today. They were checking up on you. A reminder for your next appointment."
"It will give me something to do." Isis always manages to make it sound like she's doing a favour for someone, no matter the circumstance. "I'll do them when we get back." At least the cups are forgotten for the moment. Nicks wallet is safe.
Well almost. She'll want more feeding soon.
"You staying the night?" Her cats eyes seem gleam at the thought. It wouldn't be the first time he's woken with her curled next to or around him. She sniffs though at the mention of the School and looks into the middle distance.
"Did you tell them I didn't want to go?"
"No, I didn't." Nick says calmly as he eats a bit more. "You know the therapy sessions help, Isis."
He understands that she doesn't want to go. Its inconvenient to start and it brings up a lot of old memories. Painful ones. But she'd been rescued with a broken mind and they'd only half put her back together. The therapy is important to making sure that they at least maintain the progress they made. If not improve on it. A little. Sometimes. Occasionally.
"Why don't you want to go?"
Isis gives Nick a rebellious look, dropping her eyes at the cup in front of her. "But I'm doing better than ever." She says to the lycanthrope, pushing the plate of unfinished noodles away. That's unusual.
"I don't like it, Nick. It makes me remember things and after Kyle … I don't want to see the yellow suits again. They're bad."
Nick sighs and reaches over to pat Isis hand. She's willful. That's a nice way of saying stubborn or rebellious. She does her own thing and sometimes she'll do something she doesn't want to do just to spite someone who told her to do something else. It creates challenges in managing her.
"They can't hurt you, you know. Not here, anyway." Well… Nick hopes they can't. Seeing Kyle has made him wonder if they're really as safe as he likes to think. True, Kyle is from Canada and a long way from home but all the same. The 'Empire' he and Isis speak of sounds… chilling.
Isis hunches her shoulders and lets Nick pat her hand. When they first retrieved she would have scratched and bitten and ran away. It had taken months to break that behaviour and even longer to get her to sit with any aplomb.
She sighs and shakes her head "They can and you know it. I wasn't the only one like me they made."
They made her. Genetically engineered her and made her grow in a facility. And she's not talking about her feline mutation. She's got a much powerful and scary mutation.
Why would she worry about this now though?
"They'd have to find you again." Nick knows which mutation she means. The reason they kept her. The reason they made her to begin with. They reason they fought so hard to keep her when the X-Men came for her. Yes he knows of what she speaks.
And he knows she's right. But…
"And I wouldn't let them hurt you without a fight. None of us would." Nick murmurs patting that hand. She would have never stood for that before no. And even now he imagines the temptation to trap his hand and claw at it is… well not high, but extant.
"And what if they have, Nick?" Isis growls a little those cats eyes of hers looking up at him. "What if they've found my dreams already?"
She shakes her head and actually turns her hand, catching his but not clawing at it.
"I know you wouldn't let them hurt me, but I wouldn't let them hurt you either. And they're looking for me Nick and they nearly found me."
"Wouldn't they have made play by now if they had?" Nick asks gently. He's trying to soothe her. Logically he knows that she's right. They might have found her already and it would be very difficult to know. Unless Isis can detect intrusions into her own dreams. Which she might be able to do but it's not certain.
Nick, in any case, doesn't move his hand.
"I'm harder to hurt than you are." The brown werewolf points out with a bit of a smile. "But thank you. If you think you're in that much danger we could always ask my friends for help?" Though if she doesn't want to go to her appointments she might not much like that.
"They … try." comes the quiet answer. Try. "I'm strong in my dreams and I can change things. Use it to sneak away and hide till they go." Nick had experienced some of that, but not all. "And seeing what they did to Kyle. I don't want them to find me at all."
Nick might not be aware of the full extent of Isis' abilities. It's possible the School isn't either.
Eating with one hand, shovelling noodles in her mouth, the feline-like mutant is quiet for a bit. She doesn't let go of his hand either - that's hers "I don't want to put them at rise because I'm weak."
The school didn't really have enough time to plumb the depths of Isis' abilities. They were more concerned with putting her back together and that took a while even though she was there for three years. Nick watches with quiet amusement as Isis both earnestly continues the conversation, clinging to his hand, and stuffs food in her mouth.
It's really, really very Isis.
"Have you told anyone? Anyone at the school?" While Nick can't help in her dreams there are telepaths who know her. They're not dream walkers themselves but they can locate minds and they might be able to do something about that problem. Then again he knows well how much she doesn't like leaning on those telepaths. Probably a result of what was done to her. One of the things they'd done was make her fearful and resentful of anyone who could help her.
Nick and Piotr had a hell of a time with that, for a while. Piotr more than Nick. Nick wasn't always AT the school.
"What happens if you get taken again? Then everyone's at risk when they get what's in your head."
The school had barely been able to patch Isis back together and then she'd turned eighteen and left. They couldn't hold her really. That she'd come to work for Nick had been a relief for everyone concerned - except Isis, she didn't think about it like that.
"It's only been recently." Those slitted cats eyes of hers meet Nicks. If he only knew that he could help in her dreams. He'll learn though, in time. "So no…" Maybe that's why she's been prowling about the office at night. "And they'll want to play about in my head. It hurts when they do."
"I know…" she answers the last "Have you set up those interviews in M-Town?" She's trying to change the subject, it's unlikely that Nick will let her.
"I know." Nick says soothingly. "I know. And I am sorry." But playing about in her head is often the best way to get information out of her and that information could make the difference between being safe and prepared and being caught off guard by a dream attacker or some insane mad science.
"Yes, I have. We'll do them tomorrow. And you should still talk to the school. You need to get your next appointment in anyway so you might as well."
Apparently Nick's not going to let her get away with that either. He knows she doesn't like it. He sympathizes but…
She's still gotta do it.
Isis is … good at disguising her feelings. Sort of. There's always telltale signs and if she's really annoyed, she'll just walk off. That she doesn't now, might amaze Nick. Maybe she's learning to be a little more human. Or maybe it's just that it's Nick. Or there's food.
She squeezes his hand again as he says she need to go to the school and looks down at her plate that's nearly empty.
"Come with me?" How much did it cost to ask that of him? Isis isn't one for asking. She normally just tells.
Nick smiles and relents a little. He squeezes her hand back. For all that she doesn't like to project weakness he knows that there are quite a few things she's scared of. Being feral, and being tough, are her coping mechanisms. Being more human is being more…vulnerable.
"I will. Shall we go after the interviews tomorrow?" That at least lets her make a choice. Or seem to be making a choice.
If not then, they can go down when he has to teach there next.
Being feral often means that others leave her alone. Which is fine by the feline-like mutant.
The squeeze back gets a look from under her eyelashes. "We can go tomorrow, if we have time." Of course, she caveats it. Nick might notice when she tries to delay them, though.
Her eyes drop again and look at his plate "Are you going to eat that?" she asks? Hey! At least she didn't just take it.