Ty needed some time away; some time to think, to gather his thoughts. Nothing else seemed to work, and his time at the gym hadn't exactly gone as planned. So, he decided maybe something for his mind, rather than his body would help him more.

The redhead sat in a chair in the library, feet propped up on a table. His shirt was gray, with a raven on it, and his legs were crossed, left over right as he used the table for a footstool. His favorite green-laced black shoes were visible for all to see, but he wasn't really focused on anyone else in the room. As far as he was concerned, he was the only one there

One thing about the young man seemed...odd. Something that, at first glance, or even those who knew him wouldn't have pinned him for. The young man was reading, but in his taped left hand was a copy of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Over his eyes was a pair of blue-tinted aviator shades, covering a recent black eye.

Ty let out a sigh, usually he loved Shakespeare, but after recent events, for some reason he just couldn't really get into anything he enjoyed. The words on the page became clouded by memories of his childood; being beaten by his father. Then his mind drifted to maybe a week ago, when the man--if he could be called that--found him again, which ended in an ambush.

Suddenly, Ty let out a frustrated growl and flung the book across the room.

The daylight hours were always the most difficult for Amber. As a dinosaur, she tended to stand out too obviously in the city and that had an unfortunate tendency to cause panic. As a human, well, as a human going outside was largely not an option. At least in winter it was better given the fact that the daylight hours were shorter and it was more likely to be overcast. Her skin simply couldn't stand the light of the sun, causing it to blister and burn within minutes of direct exposure and a little longer than that given indirect exposure. As such, during the daylight hours she was largely confined to the indoors.

It hadn't been such a long time ago that Amber had returned from her months living in the streets of the city, hunting and foraging to survive. It was an interesting life she now lead, living half of it in the wild and half of it among human luxuries. There was a period of adjustment, still, in getting used to such changes but that was getting easier with time.

The library was a place Amber had always spent a great deal of time in and, now that she was back among her fellow mutants, things hadn't changed much. Food was the first order of the day and the library was the second. There were things she needed to learn and technologies she needed to remember, both of which could be found in the not insubstancial library of Sanctuary. She had lost more of the past 2 years of history in her predatory form living as a natural creature and that was something she needed to get back. A lot could change in two years time.

Almost immediately after entering the library a book, unexpectedly, came flying to the air narrowly missing Amber's face, which isn't to say it missed her entirely. The book hit her shoulder and clattered to the ground. "Ow!" She looked around, trying to find the culprit who had accosted her with precious reading materials.

"Ow!"

Oh this was terrific...Just freaking terrific. He'd been reading a hard-back edition, too...But that was just Ty's run of luck, it seemed. A light blush tinted his cheeks, followed by that sinking feeling in his stomach: the all too familiar realization that he screwed up. Again.

Seeing as how he already had enough things he was running from, the young man sighed, brushing his hair out of his face, then stood up from his seat. Making his way across the room, he knelt in front of the girl he'd hit and picked up the book, dusting it off as he stood up.

"Sorry about that..." he murmured awkwardly, not making eye contact through his shades. "I didn't mean to, I just got alot on my mind right now..." His long red hair fell back into his face, and he brushed it away again, this time knocking his shades to the floor, revealing the shiner on his left eye.

His blush deepened as he quickly picked the shades back up and hurriedly returned them to his face. Oh yeah this week was the time of his freaking life.

Amber understood only too well what it felt like to have a lot weighing on one's mind and even more so what it was like to feel the urge to take it all out on something in frustration. Not everyone had the option to take out one's frustrations on deer and rabbits and so, it seemed, books were one of the other options.

"Sorry about that...I didn't mean to, I just got alot on my mind right now..."

Amber smiled at him, trying her best to show that she wasn't angry. "It's all right. I'm not hurt." She studied him not bothering to hide her unnerving black eyes. What was behind those dark glasses of his? Being inside Sanctuary, it was a safe bet that he was a mutant and not one she had met before. He wasn't around when she had left but, after all, she had been gone for a long time so that wasn't surprising.

"Is it anything you want to talk about?"

After his little...run-in with Roach, the girl's black eyes didn't really seem so bad. The young man was still getting used to the idea of being around so many other mutants, of different shapes and sizes, but the fact that he hardly stayed around Sanctuary long enough to see was probably also to blame.

He took his glasses off, studying her face, specifically where he had whapped her with that book. Okay so luckily he didn't hit her too hard; a glancing blow at best.

"I probably need to..." he mumbled, his finger tracing his eye, his glance growing cold as he did so. "I don't really wanna drag you into my problems, though...I mean I'm staying around here because I'm more...angry....colder. I don't wanna hurt anyone...no one I'm close to. Hell, I don't wanna hurt you and we just met...."

Amber was somewhat surprised to discover that the young man didn't have anything overtly inhuman hidden behind his dark glasses. Then again, perhaps she was just spending too much time with mutants lately and especially those mutants of a physical variety. Just because someone wore sunglasses didn't mean they had something to hide.

"If you need to talk, I'm good at listening," Amber stated. "Who knows, I might even understand some of what you're going through." She smiled in what she hoped was a friendly and encouraging manner. There had been some hard lessons in her short life, one of which was the fact that grinning as a dinosaur with a mouth full of pointed teeth wasn't ever taken as a friendly gesture, even if friendly was her intent. Human smiles tended to work a lot better.

"I think its admirable not to want to hurt people. Is what you do, is there a risk of hurting people?" The words were spoken without judgement. Who was she, after all, to judge another mutant?

Ty brushed his hair out of his face. "I'm not sure about talking right now....it's not something I just...do. Though I think no matter what I do, someone's gonna get hurt," he said softly. "It's just...complicated...I mean I recently discovered I had a sister...things with my girlfriend are kinda....volatile...and my old man decided to make his way back into my life to give me this." He emphasized the black eye, sighing softly.

"Then to top it all off I nearly take your head off with a book....Let's just say Lady Luck doesn't like me very much..." Ty put the book back on the shelf, sitting down. "It's just one thing after another...and somewhere during all this chaos I need to take time to focus on controlling my powers...Fun times...Though maybe I should just open up....I mean I've lived here a couple months and have hardly interacted with anyone...just doing my own thing..."

"We talk when we feel talking is right," Amber answer, understanding. She, who had speech taken from her for almost two years, understood the power of speech and, conversely, the power of not speaking at all. She sat down, deciding that for not talking was more important than anything else she might desire to do. This young man may not have been part of her pack, but he was a mutant and the morals of her pack leaders stated that she should be helping mutants, however she could. Perhaps she couldn't help him much, but that didn't mean she shouldn't try.

"Don't worry, I've been hit by much worse than books," Amber smiled with a hint of humour in her eyes. "Do you know the panic a living dinosaur can cause in the streets? Trust me, books were the least of my worries." She even managed to laugh at the memories which hadn't been nearly so funny when they had actually happened. Now, however, looking back on them and given the direction her life had taken she was better able to appreciate the novelty.

Amber sobered before speaking again, hands folded in front of her. "I don't think you can be held responsible for all of it. Sometimes bad things happen and sometimes we're involved but as long as we're doing our best, that's what's important, right? Being a mutant, especially one new to your powers is hard but there are people here to help you with that. I know they helped me control my powers." Not that anyone had ever gotten hurt because her powers spun out of control, at least not anyone other than herself. The advantages, she supposed, of being a shapeshifter and not someone who, for example, shot fire from her hands.

"Yeah...I guess so," he murmured. "I'm just feeling so...angry. Actually imagining myself killing him every time I see what he did to me. I mean....maybe I killed once before...but that was an accident. Now here I am thinking up ways to hunt someone down just to slaughter them," he murmured, letting it all out. They say that helps, but this time it just made Ty focus on it more.

Living...dinosaur? Okay that sort of explained the eyes. But he nodded, barely able to imagine the pandemonium that would cause, especially in New York. "Maybe, but I still feel like it's my fault. Like I should be able to do something....but I can't." Ty looked down at his hands, the fingerless glove on his right, and the bandage on his left. He began to sort of pick at the bandage idly as he spoke.

"My powers aren't anything like that. In fact the only person I hurt is me...It gives me headaches after I use it. That and sometimes I touch the wrong thing....and see something maybe I'm not supposed to..."

"I'm no stranger to taking a life by mistake," Amber answered darkly, thoughts going back to her time in the rain forests of South America. Those memories were fuzzy and, in truth, she wasn't really sure what happened. She suspected, however, very strongly that a life had been taken by her hand during that time when she had forgotten the human side of herself. It was not a happy memory.

"But you don't have to let one mistake rule your life. What kind of person do you want to be?" Amber couldn't simply condemn taking lives, not being as close as she was to her sister Aura and knowing that, if there was no other option, she would choose to do the same. That didn't mean she entirely supported it either. To do so should have a purpose behind it and, ideally, no other alternative.

"You see something," Amber asked, curious. If he wasn't willing to share then she wasn't going to pry but one question couldn't hurt. "My power has mostly only ever hurt me. It hurts every time I shift but I'm used to it by now." She shrugged, hoping sharing that drawback might coax him into being more open about his own abilities.

Ty nodded, understanding. She at least had a gist of how he felt then. Or maybe he was the one who somewhat knew how she felt. It was confusing, but encouraging at the same time.

"I don't know what kind of person I wanna be," he admitted. "I mean...I wanna do what's right...but I'm at a point where I don't even know what right and wrong is anymore. I mean...everyone pretty much understands that killing is wrong. But if you do it to help someone in need, does that make it less wrong? Or, I have thoughts of vengeance. Taking the life that ruined mine....it's confusing."

When she mentioned her power, Ty focused more on that subject, figuring it would be easier. The redhead settled onto the couch. "I have my hands like this for a reason," Ty explained, showing her his gloved right hand and his bandaged left. "I can't control my powers very well. I like to think it's a little more under control than two months ago, but it's still....random. I can touch an object, and its entire history flashes before my eyes. Major events stick out more than others. Some parts stick to my memory forever, like I'm sure it's all up there somewhere, but....some images I just can't shake. And depending on the age of the object, I get anything from a light to a severe headache....I even passed out once," he explained, staring into space as he toyed with the bandage a little.

"What's right can be difficult," Amber agreed. "No matter what people say, sometimes things just aren't that clear cut. If you're helping one person does that justify hurting another? I don't know, I don't really have an answer for you." She shook her head, drifting off into her own thoughts for a moment. Following the ideals of her family, she knew, was going to be difficult. Their cause was her cause but that didn't make some of those tough decisions she knew she'd be confronted with any easier.

"I don't know what it must be like to see things like that, but I think I can image, at least a little bit. I bet you sometimes see things you shouldn't, don't you?" Amber could well imagine some of the horrible things that some objects might have seen in their time. It wasn't something most people considered; mere objects witnessing dark secrets and darker acts and someone being there to see them all laid bare. She had few secrets of her own, largely choosing to discard that part of her human side, but she had a pretty good understanding of the power of secrets.

"I don't think I'd be nearly so good a spy as you could be." Despite the fact that no one had yet mentioned that as a possibility. "But I think I could be good enough when need be. No one notices the tiny lizard hidden in the corner listening in on everything being said." She smiled, wondering if she would ever be called upon to use her talents in the fight her pack had taken on. Probably.

"Yeah...part of me wants to just do what benefits me and those I consider friends, but that might be selfish...Or I could follow my heart, how I feel, but the way I feel right now, there would be days where there'd probably be bloodshed and violence...." He let out a deep sigh, shaking his head.

"Oh yeah. Not having control means sometimes it activates when I really don't want it to. Or I try to use it and find something out I didn't wanna know. Though it has helped me out before. My girlfriend got arrested awhile back, and I was able to use my mutation to find out exactly what they did and where they took her. Maybe with practice I should be able to get more positive results and less of the ones I really didn't wanna see...hopefully." He shrugged.

"Heh...well, the lizard could see while it was going on. I'd have to find out later, after the fact. So you might have a leg up on me," Ty replied with a smile.

Amber listened to the young man talk, a serious expression on her face. She nodded thoughtfully, considering his position. The state of human morality wasn't exactly her strongest suite, but that didn't mean she couldn't try. Some might consider her perspective skewed but who was to say that the difference wasn't in fact something of a strength?

"Why can't you follow how you feel and benefit your friends at the same time," Amber asked. "I know a lot of people consider violence universally bad, but I don't think that's true. If you're fighting for something worth fighting for, sometimes violence is the best way to achieve those goals. Not all the time and not to excess, but sometimes its the right thing to do."

Amber grimaced, remembering her own experiences with the loss of control of her powers. "I used to change whenever I was afraid. Trust me, not so great when you can't talk and actually explain yourself. But it gets better." She didn't know if it was appropriate to offer a consoling pat on the back, so she restrained herself. Comforting those who needed it was...complicated.

"Each of us have our strengths and weaknesses. Make the best of what you have and try not to dwell on what you don't have." Amber shrugged. It had worked for her at her most insecure.

Ty nodded. "Yeah...it's like I was told as a kid," he said, sort of flinching at certain memories this brought up. "Don't go around starting fights, but don't let anybody beat the living crap out of you either..." He paused, tracing his finger over his eye; that was the one piece of advice his father had given him that could actually prove to be worth a crap.

"I guess the real problem is, how much is too far? I know, that's probably an issue of personal judgement. One of those things I gotta find out on my own." He shrugged lightly, brushing his hair out of his face.

"I'm starting to wonder...well, I think mine tends to work better when I'm more relaxed. If I remember right, more accidents happen that way. And when my girlfriend was taken from her apartment, I was panicking and trying to use my power, but until I calmed down...it didn't work."