Locke stretched, trying to get the tightness in his muscles out. The Institute had rather large, and rather comfortable couches, and falling asleep on one didn’t leave you feeling as cramped as say, curling up in the backseat of a car. However comfortable the couches were though, it’s hard to avoid getting a crick in the neck when you fall asleep on top of a three inch thick text book and a binder digging into the back of your knees. On a regular basis Locke still returned to the Institute, choosing to practice with his powers in the safety offered by the Danger Room, or now that the weather was turning warmer, out on one of the greenest patches of earth that he could find in New York City. It was really the only break he got from his dorm outside of his college courses. Keeping his laptop running at night wasn’t an issue anymore. Those he shared his dorm with kept the cramped apartment building noisy enough that Locke didn’t need his music to keep the silence away, but the light offered by his screen saver was a comfort to him. It also alerted him when someone was in his room because he woke up the second the light moved away from him. Such conditions made studying for any exam that much more difficult, and today, for the first time, Locke had brought some of his schoolwork with him to try to finish after his session. His biggest mistake was sitting down on that couch. His exhaustion kicked in and he had fallen asleep without even noticing.

Yawning silently, Locke had to blink a few times to clear the fuzziness in his good eye. It had been how many years now and he still had a moment of relief to see anything, even if it was blurry and only two dimensional? Some things are just harder to get past than others. One hand went behind his head to pull the textbook out, while the other grabbed onto the back of the couch. How long was I out? he wondered, swinging his feet down and sitting up. Locke always felt better when he had contact with the ground, and to have his powers not working made him ill at ease. He’d grown use to, no, dependent, upon that earth sense telling him where things were in the world. He also needed it to keep himself from being tossed over the fence of the apartment’s backyard again. It was easier to avoid being hassled by the frat boys was to keep out of their way. They could not bother what they couldn’t find, and Locke’s powers allowed him an advantage in keeping one step ahead of them.

It also let him know that he was not alone in the living room, prompting a rapid flood of embarrassment. Did he drool in his sleep or snore anything? It’s not as though one can tell what they do once they fall asleep. ”Hey,” he croaked, his face creasing into a frown briefly before breaking into another large yawn. Gina was the one in the room with him, and Locke was pretty sure that she hadn’t been there when he first sat down. In that still half awake stance Locke stared at Gina, trying to make sense of what she was doing with a ball of yarn. ”Whazzat?”

Gina sat curled-up on the couch, a ball of yarn seated in her lap. It was another sleepless night, which Gina had decided to spend attempting to knit. She didn’t have the light on her, and was doing it all by touch, her fingertips lingering towards the tips of the needles and on the yarn. At the other end of the couch, someone was slumbering—hopefully a guy, judging by how sonorous their snores were. They coughed awake, sighed, and shifted about. The gargoyle didn’t direct her attention towards them, too busy counting-off stitches to partake in that courtesy. Besides, she only had a sneaking suspicion of who it was, based on what she’d deduced from the blurry shape on the couch—it was like trying to interpret an impressionist painting that a rhino had rolled on, while the paint was still wet.

>> “Hey.”

She knew that voice. Gina smiled.

“Good morning, Locke,” Gina answered lightly, “Have a nice nap?”

It wasn’t really “morning”. It was at the time of night when the younger students had gone to bed a while ago, and the older students were contemplating sleep, unless they had homework to keep them up. Gina wasn’t even bothering attempting to sleep. Every night, she woke-up, fully awake, anyways. There really was no point in trying.

>> “Whazzat?”

“I’m trying to knit,” Gina confessed, as she reached the end of the row and setting it down. Her fingertips grazed the unevenly knitted piece, some of the stitches too loose, some too tight. But at least she was doing something to keep her mind busy. Gina gave a faint chuckle, “It’s supposed to be a scarf.”

"It's morning?" Locke asked, pressing the button on the side of his watch. A small electronic voice stated the time in military terms. He could look at it of course, seen the little PM next to the hour, but Locke had grown use to taking the easy way out. While other young adults his age may steal a peek at their iPhones to see what time it was. Locke just let his watch do the talking for him. ”No. Night. Too late to take the sub back...” He tried to keep the smile out of his face, as though the possibility of having to spend a night at the Institute was less desirable than heading back to his dorm. After all, he was no longer a teen who felt that they were so done with school. He was an adult now, doing something to further his education and make himself better suited or a successful life. Shouldn't he be loving the campus living arrangements? Having never discussed college with his dad, Locke's perspective was slightly skewed. He had been taught, through a combination of media and freshmen orientation seminars, that one of the most memorable aspects of college was campus life, including the companions he would make with his roommates, and dorm activities.

He hated it though. Hated that somehow he was still stuck with these people, hated that as a lowly freshman his chances to change his dorm location for next year was limited by whatever was left after everyone else had chosen, and that of the freshman class he would be in the later half of the alphabet to pick. All in all, it looked as though Locke would be spending next year in the unofficial frat house. Maybe he could spend the night at the Institute. Ms. T was pretty cool, and they had let him into the school when his step-mom was still treating his disappearance as a matter for the police to get involved with. And it wasn't as though he were a total stranger here.

”Knitting a scarf?” Locke asked, his mind after the nap clearly on par with Einstein. Knitting was a common enough activity with girls in different courses on campus, and it wasn't unusual to see someone break out wool and needles while debating the works of Descarte. Gina's attempts at knitting were, as far as Locke could see, lumpy and uneven. There was no reason for Locke to think there was anything odd about how Gina's scarf was turning out. He did not knit himself, and assumed that the girls who he saw in class were just more advanced or practiced at it. ”Guess it's a good thing it's not a whatcha call it... that thing girls wear on their shoulders? Too thin for that.”

Gina smiled and looked up as Locke spoke-up, his voice croaking with sleepiness. There was a faint beep, and a digital recitation of four numbers. The time. It was nighttime, and apparently, too late for him to catch the subway. Gina heard the tinge of smile at the edge of his tone, and she also smiled.

“You sound a little too pleased about that,” the gargoyle observed conversationally, not lifting her gaze from the project. What was the point in looking at someone to address them if you couldn’t freaking see in the first place? The answer was that there wasn’t any point. Locke took note of what Gina was trying to do, and inquired about it.

“Yeah,” Gina groaned faintly, “Trying to.”

Fingertips grazed the uneven bumps and loose stitches that shouldn’t have been there. She really, honestly was good at knitting. Back when she could see what the hell she was doing.

“A cowl?” Gina suggested, reaching the end of the row and setting her needles down, looking at Locke, “Yeah, if it was something that fat, I would’ve very well hung myself with the yarn by now. I’m so frustrated.”

The gargoyle breathed a sigh, “How are you?”

"The later it gets at night, the more you have to deal with crazy people on the subway,"Locke offered as an explanation. It was a reasonable one he thought, because there certainly were enough loonies on the sub at night that you questioned how safe it was to travel. Not only that, but Locke was pretty sure that the line he needed to take wasn't going to have a gate open close enough to the Institute to allow for him to get on the sub securely. Either way he'd be putting himself at risk.

Both of the teens had their attention on Gina's little project. Gina, because she didn't feel a need to look Locke in the face, Locke because he still wasn't sure that it looked right. A cowl didn't sound like the right term for the clothing piece that he was thinking about. In his mind he was picturing a shawl, but the word for it was not coming to him. Then again, this was the boy who thought that it was perfectly fine to have his plaid bathrobe and clashing checker pajama pants. "Doing alright I guess. Lot's of studying at college, little sleep."

The more he stared at the mess of yarn, the more Locke was convinced that it should not look that way. Weren't knitted things usually... flatter? It was so uneven that he had serious doubts that it was some sort of pattern that Gina had intended to use. "It's not looking that bad. Really. It's just a little, um, bumpy." For the first time Locke turned his head to face Gina. The last time the two had talked was when he had gone to her for advice on how to win the attention of his girlfriend. That had been awkward, to say the least, and now he was having to talk to her again. There was something odd not only about the scarf, but the girl as well. "You're looking good. Glad to be back?" There was something familiar about her behavior, the way that she was looking at him. The problem was that Locke hadn't seen what he was like before his mutation started filling in the world for him. He had been too busy hiding behind his hair to realize that he didn't look at people quite right.

Gina nodded as Locke briefly glossed over how college had been, a quiet silence inserting itself between different topics of conversation. When he first said that it wasn’t looking that bad, Gina had mentally not noticed the inclusion of the word “look”—she thought that he was still talking about studying a lot and not sleeping very often. Gina began to reply, but then, Locke assured her that the cowl was only a little bumpy.

An expression of sorrow and disappointment fluttered briefly across Gina’s face, drawn in by the tug of a frown. The stitching of the brows followed, and soon, Gina lowered the knitting needles, her hands settling upon her lap. Embarrassed, she passed both needles into one hand, picked up the ball, and set it aside. Locke commented on how well she looked, and asked if it was good to be back. Gina hummed and smiled halfheartedly in response, a stiffness in her cheek from where a bruise was still healing.

“It’s better than the hospital,” Gina replied, lifting her gaze towards Locke’s face, “DocProf has me grounded, though. I’m not allowed to leave until things calm down and my wings heal.”

The curly-haired girl didn’t preface her response with an explanation. Gina’s recent fame made such a waste of breath unnecessary. Gina sighed, shaking her head, “Things haven’t been all good, though. They must’ve knocked me on my head real good, because my senses have been all wacky.”

Gina looked at Locke, or towards him rather, turning her body and gathering her knees up to her chest. She remembered his scar, that one blind eye that he used to tuck behind his hair. If any of her friends would understand, he would. At least, he’d partially understand. Gina’s face tightened against the threat of tears, and she managed to hold them back, forcing down any anxiousness with gritted teeth and a pained smile.

“I haven’t been able to see right ever since I was released,” Gina confessed, “And DocProf can’t find any medical explanation for it. I’ve kinda been… mostly… blind for the past few weeks.”

The b-word was hissed. It was a difficult word to say. Gina wasn’t totally blind, she wasn’t surrounded by darkness—it was like when you poked yourself in the eyes until your vision was rimmed with darkness, dimmed, and full of spots… except Gina didn’t need to press on her eyes to achieve that effect. She could see shady silhouettes, but she couldn’t read. Her depth perception was trashed. But that wasn’t “blind”.

“And we’re not entirely sure as to why.”

Locke wondered what he had said wrong about the cowl that would make Gina frown so much. She hadn’t ever really been the type to have a sad face on. He didn’t think that he had insulted her knitting project, he’d been a little more kind about it than she had, or at least, that’s what he thought he did. Giving her what he thought was an encouraging smile, when in doubt about what you said- keep quiet, he listened to her go more into detail about her condition. It wasn’t as though he expected her to feel as though she had just scraped her knees and palms on the sidewalk. After all, she had been shot before and that required some time for recovery, both physical and mentally. She had just gotten attacked by the people that you expect to protect you. Gina hadn’t done anything illegal, and even if she had, which was a laughable thought in itself, police give warnings before trying to hurt you. Surely had Gina had a minor moment of insanity pared with a criminal streak, she would have headed a warning.

Locke raised his eyebrow as Gina described how she had changed since the incident. So the reason why he felt so strange talking to her was because she couldn’t see him really? She didn’t say that she was entirely blinded, but she didn’t clarify just how blind she was. He also noticed how she put such venom into the word blind, and Locke really couldn’t blame her. Even after all these years Locke had to sleep with some sort of light and noise for fear that while asleep the darkness would totally envelope him. Those first few months after the accident the terror had been the worst. Until his eye had been able to repair itself without infection Locke had had to wear bandages over both eyes. “Did they say what sort of percentage your visibility is at?” Locke asked. He knew that without his powers, his was less than seventy five percent, hovering somewhere above sixty. “Did they test to see how far away you have to stand from an object in order to see it? How about the ability to register light and dark?”

They were questions that might be hard for Gina to answer. He didn’t like talking about his own disability, in part because of how it had occurred, and also because he was so self conscious about it. Asking Gina how bad her blindness was hadn’t been to make her talk about it, not like with his dorm mates who wanted to pry into his personal affairs. He was looking at in in a practical sense, trying to establish what her medical condition was, and what kind of therapy she was having to go through.

Gina shook her head at Locke's inquiry, the corner of her mouth tugging discontently. The weeks since the attack had charged by hastily, one minute melting into the next, unoccupied with her normal activity. Because of her spotty sleep schedule, it was difficult to remember which day it was, what conversations she'd had, and with whom...

"I don't think I've been tested..." Gina admitted, "Or perhaps I have been. I don't remember."

She didn't say this in a tone that denoted defensiveness, but rather, she sounded genuinely confused.

"I've only really seen DocProf about, and he's not as well=versed when it comes to eyes... all he told me is that it's not something he can heal," Gina murmured. Which meant that it wasn't an ailment or infection... it was something else.

"It's better in darkness," Gina said absently, "Light makes my head hurt, makes it more difficult to see."

Gina straightened the needles on the arm of the chair, using her fingers to feel how lined=up they were.

"DocProf says it might be hysterical blindness... that's a conversion disorder, where your brain is so freaked=out that your body starts to react..." the gargoyle continued to murmur, "But, seeing as he's not an optometrist or a psychiatrist, it can't be much better than a guess..."[/color]

"If they tested you for that you'd know," Locke said, remembering his own experiences with it, despite the haze of heavy pain medications that he had been under. At the time there were two big crises to deal with, the first being the death of his father. It left a large hole in him that would take years to start healing up. The other was an overwhelming fear that he was going to be lost forever in darkness. He needed those tests to prove that he wasn’t going to be totally blind. Gina had one up on him at least, and he could offer that fact to her as comfort. ”That’s not too bad. My eye isn’t even light sensitive. I get migraines with bright lights too, but it sounds like you can at least tell when light’s on you.”

DocProf was willing to admit that whatever had afflicted Gina’s eyes was beyond his healing capabilities. That didn’t surprise Locke. Eyes were extremely sensitive things, impossible to recreate with dirt, and prone to having all sorts of issues go on with them. Maybe it was for the best that DocProf hadn’t messed around with Gina’s vision. It would be horrible if in trying to heal her, he made things worse. “Sorry if I made you,” he hesitated, trying to figure out what the right word was. Insult? That wasn’t quite it. ”Uncomfortable.” Uncomfortable was probably the best fit. Most of the time he felt uncomfortable about his own blind eye. Had anyone ever thought that maybe it wasn’t just a hysterical thing? Maybe it was something more serious.

If it was something more serious then someone had to show Gina how to handle a new lifestyle. Though in the end Locke did not loose the vision in both eyes, back when the accident was still fresh he had to be taught some basic coping techniques for a life without vision. He could spell words out in Braille, kept his money folded in ways that he didn’t need to look to see what the bill was, kept different shaped buttons on the inside of his shirts to tell the color. There were many different ways of making life easier for the visually impared, and Locke wondered if anyone had thought to show Gina them.