Marc's mind finally snapped back to the present when Dinah went down. Until then, he'd been so enamored of the metaconcert possibilities he'd just seen, and what with the day he'd had, his reaching for Dinah had been more autopilot than planned. And then he'd ... Oh, god. He'd gone into her mind.

He bent down and checked her. She seemed to have fainted, so, what with the chaos around him he picked her up in his arms and zapped them to his office.  He laid her gently onto the sofa that was there and sank down wearily to the floor beside her. He checked again that she was breathing normally and gave her time to awaken naturally.

Dinah moaned and struggled against the fog that seemed to be enveloping her, even as she registered the cacophony raging in her mind, like there were fifty radio stations playing at once.  It was the noise of that brought her fully back to reality, terrifying her, the scream trapped in her throat strangling her, trying to get out.

Marc reached out and enveloped her in his arms. "I'm sorry. I .. Let me show you..." he said. With that he began to build a wall in her mind to filter out the noise to show her how to protect herself, and how to control what she sensed and how she sensed it.  "Like this..."

She wanted to fight him, but didn't. The noise was worse than the sense of not being in control of her own mind, of not being alone there somehow, but only barely.  It brought with it the fragment of some distant memory, elusive and fleeting.  But when he was finished there was silence again, and, blessedly, only her thoughts.  She sucked air through her nose, deep into her lungs and watched him, her eyes huge and liquid, twin storms raging in her face.

His head sank down to rest on his arms, which were leaning on his knees, now that he'd let her go. "I'm sorry. I... I was distracted. I was unthinking. I invaded your mind, and I saw... I don't really remember Dinah. I wanted to talk to you. And your mind was fine, fully awakened but for one small thing. So I .. I fixed it. It didn't even occur to me...."

Confusion bloomed in her eyes, stilling for the moment the storm.  "Fully Awakened?  What...what are you talking about?"

"You. Your mind. You are fully operant. There was some sort of blockage. I'm not sure what the structure was because I removed it so unthinkingly. You can do ... well, most of the things other Awakened can do. It's just a matter of a bit of practice."

"Oh, Jesus...oh god, please, no!" she whispered and burst into tears, her hand reaching for him.

He gathered her up in his arms. "Why... I can reverse it if you want... Put you back the way you were... I'm so sorry, Dinah."

Struggling to control her sobs, she shook her head against his shoulder.  "You...oh god, it can't...you can't..."  She clenched her fists in the fabric of his shirt, rage replacing disbelief.  She gulped and tried again to stop crying, "It isn't...it's that...it's that it is at all," she finally got out.

He kissed the top of her head and held her closely. "What. Tell me. I'd say show me, but I've violated you enough already... Your shields aren't very strong yet."

She snuffled against him and drew back a little not letting go of his shirt, trying to find words to explain.  Finally she said, "It not whether, well...whether it works."  She gulped again and fought back the tears.  "It's that it's there at all.  It's that...that I'm like...my father."

He searched her face trying to understand her. "He... you thought you were just.. you were normal....not talented."

"Yes."  She had herself well enough in hand now to consider complete sentences.  "Always.  It's why...or so I was always told...why my father left.  I wasn't good enough is how she put it.  My mother, I mean.  She blamed me for it."

"I'm sorry, Dinah. I didn't think.. It ... I used to do this.. Fix minds. Change them to let people use them better. It.. I wasn't thinking..."

She sniffed.  "Have you got a kleenex?"  She took the handkerchief he offered her and blew her nose, before wiping her eyes.  "It's not you.  It's not your fault.  It's me.  I mean, I don't know about...all this.  I just...it's been so long since I even thought about it all, but after she killed herself, I was glad I wasn't like him, because it meant he never came around, he just forgot about me and left me with my grandparents."  She sighed.  "It's complicated, it's how I met Stephen, when she died.  My father didn't want me so Stephen made sure that my grandparents would raise me.  I hated him, for killing her.  I didn't want any part of him.  Do you see?"

"Yes, a little.  I'm beginning to." He took the wadded up handkerchief out of her hand and wiped her face tenderly. "And I just brought it all back up again. But, you know, you're nothing like him. You're you. Your grandmother raised you, so you are like her. Being Awakened, or being talented doesn't make that any different. It's just that ... You have an ability and there's no reason not to make the most of what you are given, of what God gave you, and made you..."

She nodded, staring at his chest, toying with a button on his shirt.  "I know.  But see...well, it means that...he did more." She stopped and drew breath, before trying again, willing her chin not to tremble, the tears to stay gone.  "I was five when she died and he came back once after that, about a week or so after.  Stephen made him, so he could give up all his rights to me.  And he...oh god...he must of done it then or done more...because...well...before Stephen could stop him...he, he....and it's why...why I can't have children," she finished, losing the battle against the tears.

He just held her and waited for the tears to let up again.

"I'm sorry," she said finally, sniffling again and reaching for the handkerchief.  "It's all a long time ago, and now your shirt's wet...just please, don't blame yourself.  It wasn't you."

He nodded as he handed her the handkerchief and watched her mop her face again. "Want me to take you to your room? Or anywhere else? Give you some time to get used to all of this?"

Her eyes flew to his, chagrinned.  "I'm sorry. I...you...I didn't mean to keep you."

"it's okay, Dinah. Really. I just... I want to _do_ something to help you with this and I don't know what I _can_ do. It's not that I need to be anywhere it's...I'm lost Dinah."

She found a weak smile for him.  "Me too.  I don't suppose you've a drink somewhere around here?  And if you're really not busy...or need to...well, I'd really rather...I don't actually want you to go...if that's ok?"

"Things can wait. Stay there."  He got up and went to the sideboard behind his desk and extracted two glasses and a bottle of scotch.  "Will scotch do?"

She nodded and then held the glass while he poured some in.  She swallowed some and mopped her face again.  "So," she asked lightly, "does this mean I can lose the body guard?"

"I'm afraid not. There was a bomb." When her eyes flew open he hurried to reassure her. "Tommy was badly hurt but when last seen Doni and Stephen had .. uhm, fixed him up. That's why I.. I was worried you were there in the crowd, hurt."

"Here?" she asked.

"Yes. Just outside."

"Do you know who did it?" she demanded, her own situation forgotten.

"It appears that I did it," he said, meeting her eyes.

She choked on her scotch.  "You?  It's not possible.  So, what are you saying?  That people think you did it?"

He sighed and drank some of his scotch. "The bomber believed it. I looked in his mind, Dinah. He wasn't lying. He thought I was behind it.  I'm... I... I'm not sure what to think."

"People think a lot things that aren't true.  And the Council meeting?"

"The Reverend denounced Margaret and Maya and had a thought or two to denounce me I suspect. Margaret and Maya are dead. Stephen and I are the only permanent council members left.  Oh, and Michael came flying in with his host and smote them. He didn't look hung over either."

She gave an involuntary gurgle of laughter.  "Well, sounds like we've both had quite a day.  And your plans for the evening?  Some culmination for all this, perhaps?"

"God. Plans. Other than checking on Tommy I've got none.  And you?"

"None, other than what I'd been doing, waiting for you back at your place.  But, uhm, if you're still interested in sharing the evening with me, I'd rather not go back to waiting alone...if that's ok with you?"

"It's fine with me. How about you go get a shower and a nap or whatever. Let me see about Tommy and give Reno a few orders, and we meet at the main doors at six."

She nodded.  "Works for me, but only if you kiss me first."

Dinah stood with her back against the door of her rooms long after Marc left her there, her mind blank, trying to assimilate what had happened to her, thinking she should feel differently somehow. But she didn’t. She still felt like herself. Didn’t she? She was still herself, wasn't she?

She examined, cautiously the wall she’d built with Marc’s help in her mind, finding her way around it, taking a piece out here or there and considering the result. It would be, she supposed a permanent fixture there from now on, standing between her and the sensory output of the rest of the world.

She ran the litany through in her mind of the gifts of the Awakened…the –pathic gifts and the specific gifts. Marc had said she was fully Awakened, so that must mean that she was - how did it go? – aware, emergent and gifted. He’s said she could do almost everything an Awakened could do. Would it also turn out that she…her mind shied away from the possibility, refusing to go there, already reeling from what she knew for sure.

She pushed herself away from the door and headed to the bedroom, dropping her clothes in a hamper before turning on the shower. She stood there a long time, too, letting the water flow over her, washing away the day and the tears and even, she hoped some of the emotion. She’d had enough of emotion for one day, at least the sorts she’d dealt with so far…grief, anger and the lingering scars of childhood.

She could see in her mind the day her mother had died, overdosing and then dying, not from the pills, but from choking on her own vomit. She could see Stephen showing up not long after, a man who’d been around off and on as far back as she could remember, keeping an eye on her mother she’d found out later, and trying to find her father on the orders of the council.

He’d taken her to her grandparents, whose address he’d found on an envelope in the back of one of her mother’s dresser drawers, forgotten until then. She been too young to understand anything except that her mother was gone, the mother that somehow, she’d always known had never loved her and had always been angry with her.

Dinah shut off the water abruptly, rejecting the beckoning memories, knowing there was no point in rummaging through them anymore. It was a long time ago and she’d been a different person, a child with the feelings and understanding of a child. In the years since she’d let go of most of it, grateful to the grandmother who’d raised her, and cherished her, something her mother had never done. She was aware of the fault lines the past had created but no longer so concerned with defending them against all comers.

But the intensity of her reaction to Marc telling her she was...had the gifts of...that she was an Awakened...that surprised her.  She probed the feelings cautiously, moving around the edges of them, trying to track them to their source and winced at the strength of the aversion she felt in her gut to going anywhere close to root of them.  So she set it aside to sort out later and shoved away with it the cringe she felt as she recalled how she'd lost control with Marc when he'd told her what had happened.  She also ignored the thought that she never talked about her father, never, to anyone.

She finished toweling and pulled on a pair of lacy panties and matching French bra, resettling the pendant she never took off on its fine gold chain between her breasts so it lay flat.  As she did, she opened her mind cautiously, just a sliver.  She tried to probe outward and discovered why so many had described it as a kind of reaching, as if her mind had similar properties to her hand or arm. She did it again, examining the result, the expanded senses, and the new kind of knowing as she dried her hair and dressed.

She left the sliver open, curious now to see what might happen.  As she finished dressing she felt, or heard or some combination of both on the edge of her awareness, Marc wanting to know if she was okay.    Assuring him she was, she considered the implications of -pathic communications and decided that perhaps there was something to be said for it.  She just had no idea what that might be just yet.  She didn't know what any of it meant, really, and that scared her.

Leaving to meet him it occurred to her that if nothing else getting from place to place would be easier...and certainly cheaper.

Dinah was early enough meeting Marc that she caught the tale end of the clean up from the bombing. Eli’s front lawn was ruined where it had landed, and they were going to have to fix part of the walk up to the door. It took her a minute to understand what was bothering her about the view, but then she realized the dark pool near where it appeared the blast had hit and the matching spots elsewhere were blood, still tacky and glittering in the fading light. The understanding hit her stomach with a jolt of adrenalin that raised the hair on the back of her neck and drained the color from her face.

She gulped in air and turned around, trying to wipe the image from her mind. She’d almost succeeded when she saw Marc heading towards her. She found a smile and plastered it on her face, saying brightly, “Hi? How’s Tommy?”

The look on his face warned her he'd seen enough to guess at her disturbance of mind. But he said, quietly and without much emotion, "He's still critical, but Doni, so Stephen tells me, says he's over the worst of it."  He paused then said, "We were very lucky. It could have been much worse."

"What's that?" she asked to change the subject a bit, gesturing to the bag in his hand.

He grinned.  "Dinner. I raided the larder. There's food at the house but I'm not much in the mood to cook."

"Oh, good idea.  Tabitha must dote on you or something if you got the kitchen to do carry out.  What's your secret?  There might be a fortune in it," she teased.

He laughed aloud. "She keeps giving me meaningful glances. She's up to no good."  He paused. "So, are you up to providing transport to the aerie? Or would you rather watch as I do it?"

She hesitated and then shook her head.  "It might be a good idea if I watched.  God knows where we'd end up if I tried it.  It's going to...take some getting used to...being Awakened.  It must be horrific in the normal course of events."

"Yes, I suppose it is. All right, I'll do this so you can watch."  He opened his mind to her, showing her that he pretty much pictured the place where he wanted to be, then he sort of threw a switch in his mind, and just like that they were there.

"It's pretty automatic once you get used to it. Just think go to wherever. So long as you've actually been there, it works. Just looking at a picture, though, for someplace you've never been doesn't work very well."

She followed him through to the kitchen.  "It'll certainly make getting back and forth to the hotel easier, when I need to."  She leaned against the counter, trying to figure out what she wanted to say and couldn't.

He busied himself with the food, and getting plates and opening a bottle of wine. "On the deck?" he asked.

She nodded.

Once they were seated and the food was in front of them, he met her eyes and said, "I know it's hard. But there are benefits. Travel among them."

She sighed and moved some food around on her plate.  "I know.  I mean I know I'll get used to it, but right now...I don't know...it like somehow I don't know myself anymore or something.  And I keep thinking that if I'd been asked if I wanted this I'd of said no, that not being talented was just fine.  I mean it never bothered me that I couldn't do all those things.  I don't know.  I'm not making any sense I suppose."

Marc waited until he swallowed the food he'd just eaten then said, "I'm sorry it happened as it did, Dinah. It's... your mind was so perfect and there was this tiny flaw... It's what I did for a long time, help beings to achieve the full use of their minds. My interest at first was strictly theoretical. I was introduced to some very young children who were dying.  Their minds were rejecting a device that allowed them to do what you and I are doing naturally. They were in great pain, dying from the pain. We devised a way to help them. Most of the time we were able to raise them to operancy and they no longer needed the device. It freed their bodies and their minds. So, when I saw yours...I'm very sorry I didn't ask."

"No, please.  I understand what happened and I know you didn't plan it.  It's okay, really.  It's just the strangeness...in some ways it's like thinking all my life I'm a girl and suddenly finding out I'm a boy...maybe not as drastic, but...  In the end, I don't really think a whole lot will change, because...well because my life's not about whether or not I'm talented or Awakened or whatever." She forced herself to take a bite and chew it before asking.  "Who were the children?"

"They were children of an alien species crossed with humans, mostly, although some were pure alien. The race was quite interesting. They'd developed a device to enable their minds to do what we can do naturally. Sadly, having come to depend on the device, their minds adjusted to it and there was little hope in the natural course of events they would evolve into a fully operant race. Of course none of that made any difference to the tiny things who suffered, or to their parents who loved them."

She just managed not to gape at him.  "Uhm...is it allowable to ask...er...who the aliens were and how you met them?" she asked, her eyebrow quirked.

"You can ask, but I'd have to kill you if I told you," he quipped. "It was a long time ago. I... sort of wandered off the reservation a time or two."

"Only a time or two?" she teased.  "I'd have thought you were more likely to spend more time off the reservation than on it."

He laughed and after that it was easier.  She told him tales of the hotel and tourist season at the beach.  Then she described her unique approach to staffing and the oddities of her long term residents.  He wasn't fooled and she knew he wasn't, but was grateful just the same.

They got up and together took the things back into the kitchen, threw away the trash and he opened another bottle of wine. They walked back out onto the deck to watch a waxing moon rise. "You'll stay the night?" he asked. It was definitely a question, no sense to it that he felt it was a foregone conclusion. Yet there was the merest hint of a plea in it too. Not so much that she might feel she had to.  She wondered then, if somehow her abilities might be helping her hear more in his voice that she otherwise might.

She met his eyes, something of the fear she felt at the thought of a night alone mingled with some hint of the whole tangled skein of her feelings for him showing in hers.  "I was hoping you'd ask."  She grinned at him. "If you hadn't, I'd have found a way to proposition you."

"Oh, damn. Next time." He put down his wine glass and stepped closer to her. He kissed her softly and she heard in her mind,  'There are additional advantages to those you've learnt already.'

'Oh?' her mind asked.

He picked her up in his arms and carried her into the bedroom, dumping her unceremoniously and distinctly un-gently onto his bed.

"Was that one of them?" she demanded aloud, struggling to raise herself on her elbows as she watched him strip, efficiently and rapidly.  "Or just a service of the house?"

He grinned. "No, but this is," he said as he lay on the bed next to her and ran a finger along the outside of her arm. Her skin tingled, and she swore she could sense his own doing the same. Then he was reaching for her blouse and undoing the buttons as he bent to kiss the hollow in her neck.

She arched towards him, and suddenly she was tasting what he was tasting.  Her mind formed his name, a silent question she knew he heard. A smile in her mind confirmed what she was suddenly realizing. A two way sensory conduit. He must be getting just as much feedback from her senses as she felt from him.

He met her eyes and said, "Yes. It does tend to heighten the experience."

Then his mouth began to follow the trail his fingers had been blazing with the buttons on her blouse and she was helpless to do anything except feel...his hands on her, his mouth moving on her skin and layered in with it all, what she felt and what he felt, a looping exchange of pleasure that held her in thrall.

She finally surfaced some hours later, exhausted emotionally as well as physically.  He lay beside her, asleep, having held her for quite some time while she'd been unable to put words to thoughts. She'd sensed it was fine with him.

She studied his face, relaxed in repose like the first time she'd watched him sleep and tried to sort through what she felt, about what had happened, what they'd just shared and what she felt for him and found that her mind was refusing to cooperate.  It had no interest in rationality.  She propped herself up on an elbow and fell to tracing his jaw, content to look at him.

He opened his eyes then and smiled at her. "Doing all right? Sorry to have nodded off. It's been a long day."

"You're allowed to sleep.  It's in my best interests after all."  She bent and kissed him lightly.  "And I'm fine.  Stunned, but better than fine actually." She brushed a stray lock of his hair aside and smiled at him, one of her dazzling smiles that was all pleasure and contentment.

He got up on an elbow and brushed her lips with a kiss, before he fell back, wrapping an arm around her as he sank away back into exhausted sleep.