It had been exactly one day since Evelyn decided to try and find her friend Sylar and ask his advice about a few things that had been bugging her. Exactly 16 hours since she wandered into the sewers of Manhattan to try to locate the once sewer dwelling mutant. Exactly 14 hours since she got the crap beat out of her, and had to be rescued by said sewer monster. Exactly 13 hours since she was dropped off by a police car and had to talk her friend out of a sticky situation.

It was exactly 12 hours since she dragged herself back to her room, took a shower, and crashed in bed. And it was exactly 2 hours, fifteen minutes since she woke up with terrifying playbacks of the whole event, got dressed and plopped herself down at her desk to draw.

One hour ago, she started feeling the effects of how drained she was. Playing around in the sewers was apparently not good for her immune system, and she was sniffling and sore all over still. Glancing at the mirror on the wall, she wondered if she should go talk to Mirror yet about the day before. The whole Mansion probably heard what happened on the news. She buried her face in her drawings. There were still plenty of hours in the day. Maybe she could stall longer...

It was a nice cold day outside for archery practice.

Gawain huffed little clouds of hot breath as he did his best to focus on the target. His best, as it happened this morning, was not even in the neighborhood of being enough.

The entire mansion was echoing with rumors about how Evelyn arrived home in a cop car the night before. It was just a matter of time before Sam descended all over the issue, and then he was going to come for Mirror's ass next. Him, and probably most of the X-team. Mirror had saved the tryout information in the DR computer to prove that Evelyn passed the tryout fair and square, but he never expected to have to use it. Not this soon, anyway.

Right now, he just allowed himself the luxury of being upset. Really, honestly pissed. After having to apologize to Evelyn for so many things he had messed up, this one was all on her. Tracking around in the sewers of New York goddamn City, demolishing half a street, being picked up by cops... did not look good for an X, and definitely did note bode well for the girlfriend s/he had repeatedly warned to stay out of trouble.

Another arrow hit the target with a dull thud, and Gawain reached for a new one. Archery was supposed to calm the nerves down. He could definitely use some of that right now.

In the end, Evelyn finally got dressed and dragged herself from her bedroom. After all the apologizing Mirror did, it was Evelyn's turn to do some damage control. She knew she screwed up. The whole school knew she screwed up. The police department weren't pressing charges against her specifically for the incident, considering much of the fight had been pegged on the 'rogue mutant', but she still had little ground to stand on. She really had no good reason to be in the sewers in the first place. Sylar didn't even live there anymore. And that was just failure number one...

After all Saphirus' complaining about her reasons for being an x-men and her defense to continue training, she pretty much burned the handbook with her recklessness. As she went to find Mirror, the only comfort was the tiny foxsquirrel that greeted her at the door and gave her a comforting lick on the cheek before prancing off to find a perch to nest on. Saying goodbye and shutting the door on the little creature, she started her hunt. Eventually it ended on the school grounds where Gawain was practicing archery.

Why did he have to be armed?

"Hey..." Evelyn said softly. After racking her brain all morning, that was still apparently the best she could come up with. "So, I...kinda...screwed up..." It was hard to talk with the echoes loudly broadcasting Gawain's body language. She tried not to look at the ground, but it made her head hurt more than it already had.

>>"Hey... So, I...kinda...screwed up..."

Gawain let the arrow fly and it hit the target, although nowhere near the bullseye. lowering the bow before he turned around, he gave Evelyn a long, searching look. Obviously she was nervous, which made her more awkward than usual. But at least she showed up to talk.

"No kidding." he sighed, his sigh coming out as another puff of warm air. Screwed up, that was an understatement.

"So... what exactly happened? I only caught the tail end of it... you know, police car and all."

>>"What exactly happened?"

All things considered, she wasn't sure the police car was even the worst of it. The look on Gawain's face seemed tense. She half expected him to blow up as soon as she started talking. Talking... always worked better when you could breathe.

"It's...a long story." She leaned against a nearby tree and stared at her hands for a moment, then forced herself to just get it over with. Like a band-aid, right? Just...yank.

"I was trying to find Sylar, my...sewer monster friend. And, well, there was only one place I really knew to look, so I went there. But, I guess he recently vacated and there was a new...occupant. Because, how many sewer monsters live in New York?" Apparently, at least two. "Sylar was in the area though, and he tried to defend me, the two of them got in a fight, I got in a fight, there was lots of...fighting. Long story short, sewer got broken, there was a car, it exploded, cops showed up, cops took us here. Sylar left, I'm here." Perfectly crystal clear.

Gawain sighed, and shook his head. As much as he knew Evelyn was to blame this time, he was still not looking forward to the conversation. Whoever's fault it was, fighting was never fun.

"I... really don't know what you want me to say, Eve." he said, folding his arms, the bow slung across his shoulder "Has Sam talked to you yet?"

It was not like Mirror had not been in trouble with the cops before. But he had learned from that lesson, and it was time Evelyn learned the same. Post riots, being an X, uniform or not, was more of a responsibility than it used to be...

Evelyn looked at the ground. Her toe found a rock to jab, pressing it into the dirt and smudging dirt across her shoes. She tried to tune out the echoes, but they just seemed to be yelling at her loudly in her head. [Disappointment.] Yeah, well. There was a bit of that. She wished she could sit down. She was still feeling the effects of blood loss, and her immune system was drained.

>>"Has Sam talked to you yet?"

"No... Not looking forward to that either. I just... I know this reflects back on you and I can't say how sorry I am. But Gawain, I just, I needed someone to talk to who wasn't on the team, and Sylar was the only one I knew who might be able to help. Regardless of what happened, I mean, he did sort of help... I just didn't mean for things to blow up like that." Blow up...hahahalikethecar.

Deep breathe. "I'll do what I can to fix it... street, cops, whatever." She looked at the ground again and jabbed the rock. She really didn't know what to say either.

>>"I'll do what I can to fix it... street, cops, whatever."

"This is really not about the property damage" Gawain sighed again "We do our fir share of that, comes with the job."

He was only half paying attention to the fixing part, anyway. He was more hung up on what she said before that.

"So... you needed to talk to someone, about what, exactly?" he looked at her, tilting his head "I'm sorry. It's just, if you go that far to talk to someone, it sounds like it's important."

And the unspoken part: Why didn't you talk to me?...

Evelyn frowned. She half wished it was about the property damage. That was easier to fix in the end. She crossed her arms and hugged her torso, then looked back at him. The echoes could read the unspoken question, and that just made it worse. She trusted Gawain, really. But she was still afraid of admitting the things going on inside her head. She was afraid of screwing things up between them, but the longer she was at the mansion, the more confused she was getting. She looked at the target and the echoes absentmindedly calculated what corrections Gawain could have made to hit the bulls-eye.

If only life worked that easily.

"When I first joined the x-men, Saphirus had a training session with me. He said he didn't like my reasoning for wanting to join the team. He said I had self-centered goals, and we argued. But part of me thinks he might have been a bit right. To be honest, I don't remember part of that training session now. Something went bad, I don't think my powers liked it, and awhile back, I had someone...I had someone erase that memory. I couldn't handle it, Gawain. I've had tons of close calls and bad memories, but something about that scared me and I couldn't handle it.

She didn't look at him, trying to finish what she was saying before she lost her nerve. It was far too much admitting at once, but once she started, she couldn't quite stop. "When the museum got attacked, Forte gave me a choice whether the guy who did it would live or die. And you know what? I hesitated. For a moment, I wasn't sure what I wanted. X-men aren't supposed to be like that. They aren't supposed to take revenge or kill people. I didn't talk to you because I talked you into letting me join the team, and if I'm not x-men material, people would question your judgement..." She kicked the dirt again. The rock moved a few inches.

"Sylar...Sylar knows what it's like to kill people. He knows what it's like to have a monster inside him, and knows what it's like to question who he is. He's also learned to accept who he is though and control his mutation instead of letting it control him. I just, I wanted to see from his point of view. He's more...neutral, than some of the x-men. I don't see things in shades of black and white, and everything is a lot of gray. I just kind of wanted to talk to someone who could see things that way too." She looked up, trying to keep her emotions in check. She felt guilty for not going to Gawain, but she also felt afraid of what he would think of her.

Well that was... a lot. Gawain tried to process it all at once, which threatened to give him a headache, or break something inside his head, or, honestly, just blow up with a bang.

She was right about people questioning his judgment, but to hell with that. With everything she said, she was questioning his judgment.

There are moments in life when you realize that the person people see when they look at you is a stranger you have never met before. Mirror, raised on a mutant code and then later on the streets, Mirror semi-adopted by a mutant-hating drunk zealot, Mirror constantly sporting shiners and getting in trouble, Mirror constantly messing up with women and making the news for all the wrong reasons...

... Mirror was too good for Evelyn.

It hurt, and that was surprising, people were not supposed to feel bad when other people told them that they were good. It just did not make any sense. And yet, Gawain found himself looking away, his grip on his own arm tightening with the emotion.

She had talked to Saph, she had her memories erased, and Forte, freaking ****** Forte, made her judge over the life or death of a man. Gawain didn't know if he wanted to yell or just throw everything down and walk away. He was probably more angry at Forte than Eve. But Forte was not here.

"Well, that's... quite a story." he forced the words out finally. "I... don't know what you want me to say. I just... I guess I wanna know, did it occur to you at any point that at some point I would find out all this?..."

The tension in the air was palpable, and Evelyn felt like she was choking on it. The echoes were clinging to the edges of her mind, each observation, each fact cutting deeper and stinging more. She could see the anger, the frustration, even the little traces of hurt. She did that. And she hated herself for it. She didn't want it to be this way.

>>"I... don't know what you want me to say."

That stung, but not quite as much as what followed.

>>"Did it occur to you at any point that at some point I would find out all this?"

"Of course it occurred to me, Gawain. I wasn't trying to hide it from you. But trying to talk about everything I was thinking when I didn't even know what I was thinking... it would have confused both of us. Plus, when I erased my memories, I didn't actually....remember what I erased. I just sort of woke up on a park bench somewhere texting Jensen and I didn't even remember why I was there. Which, is pretty frickin terrifying when your used to remembering everything."

She uncrossed her arms and ran a hand through her hair. "I wanted to talk to Sylar and think through it with a friend before I talked to you, because part of me was wondering if I should even keep going with the trainee thing... I don't know, I thought we could just sit down and... work it out." She looked at the ground. Maybe she should have waited to have this talk until after she rested more. She wasn't sure if she was just dizzy from the emotional stress or from blood loss still. The echoes weren't helpful distinguishing the source.

>>"I wanted to talk to Sylar and think through it with a friend before I talked to you, because part of me was wondering if I should even keep going with the trainee thing... I don't know, I thought we could just sit down and... work it out."

"Work what out?" Gawain felt his self-control starting to crack and he tried to do his best to keep it under, although he could not tell how long that would last. "You know, people have left the team before. You start training, it's not for you, you quit. It's not unheard of. You didn't really commit to anything, especially not as a trainee."

Thems were the rules...

"It's just... I want you to trust me, Eve. I really do. I want you to trust me enough to come and talk to me when you have doubts like that. I mean, come to me before Saphirus, or before, I don't know, before getting your memories erased, or before ***** Forte, or a random guy in the sewers."

Okay, so at Forte he seriously started to loose his cool. Damned guy was not even here and he was pissing Gawain off.

"And I really, really tried to make you trust me like that, but honestly, Eve, I am running out of ideas of what more I could do. You wanna know something? I really don't care if you are on the X team or not. And maybe you have this great idea of how good I am and how black and white I see the world, which by the way is bullsh*t."

He took a deep breath, slowing himself down.

"But it's just, if you can't talk to me about things that bother you, I really don't know what I am supposed to do to change that. Apparently you think I am something that I don't think I am."

Whoa. Wording.

Evelyn's brain stumbled over all the words, and she let herself lean against the tree again. It was like a car exploded in her face all over again. She put a hand to her forehead and blinked. It was like she was desperately trying to hold together a sandcastle and water just kept pouring over the whole thing.

"I didn't go to Saphirus! After I joined the team, he called me to the Danger Room and wanted to see if I really should be on the team! And I didn't go to Forte. We already had that argument before. I didn't want to just turn to you and say 'hey, I'm quitting the x-men!' if I was just having cold feet or something! I'm sorry. I really really am."

This was just spiraling out of control. The bark was digging into her back, but she only felt it because the echoes kept clamoring about it. "I'm not saying you see the world in black and white! I'm saying the team in general does. I think I can trust you, and I think you understand me, but I that was sort of the problem! I needed someone who wasn't in the situation to just help give me an impartial look at things. And as much as I care about you, you can't be impartial about this."

It was like she was getting thrown around the sewers all over again. All the color had gone from her skin and she just felt defeated.

>>"I'm not saying you see the world in black and white! I'm saying the team in general does. I think I can trust you, and I think you understand me, but I that was sort of the problem! I needed someone who wasn't in the situation to just help give me an impartial look at things. And as much as I care about you, you can't be impartial about this."

"How do you know that?" Gawain snapped back at her from looking away. "Hm? It's not like I dragged you into being on the team in the first place. That was your decision. And how do you know I don't have my own doubts about being on the X-team? I have been doing this longer than you have, and hell, the first time I walked in here, I thought all these people were crazy. Honestly, I am still not sure why I stayed, apart from Sam catching me stealing booze when I was sixteen."

She said she did not think he thought it black and white; the team did. At the same time, she was also putting him together with the team.

"Also, I get it that you have to talk to someone impartial. That doesn't mean you have to wander into the freaking New York sewer system without telling anyone! They've got alligators in there!"

Or, you know. Mutants.

Evelyn felt exhausted, and she was pretty sure this wasn't getting anywhere good. The more she tried talking, the less things seemed to come out right. She was watching that car blow up over and over again. It was like they were trying to say the same thing in two different languages. He was saying she was wrong. She was saying she was wrong. She was just wrong... couldn't they leave it at that.

Gawain was also looking a little fuzzier... She squinted at him slightly, but he didn't come back into focus. The explosion in her head sounded louder than before.

>>"That doesn't mean you have to wander into the freaking New York sewer system without telling anyone! They've got alligators in there!"

"Well, he kinda moved out of the sewer anyway, so guess that solves that problem anyway..." She sighed under her breathe. Probably the wrong answer anyway. He said she was wrong, she said she was wrong...

"I should have talked to you."

"I'm sorry, Eve. I really am. I hate hurting you. I'd never do it on purpose." That sounded awfully loud for a memory...

And then she slid the rest of the way to the ground and the playbacks spun to life.