Reboot. Great. Much better. Because rebooting your girlfriend's brain was exactly how one started a great morning.

>>"Sit before I have to pluck you off the floor. Don't need both of you injured. It looks like she's starting to come around more though..."

For the next half a million years Gawain sat and chewed on his bottom lip, waiting for Eve to come to.

>>"You know how we decided my powers don't like electricity? I don't think playbacks like adapteds..."

The young knight finally let out a breath he had been holding and stumbled over to the bed. Eve looked worse for the wear, but definitely awake.

"Eve, I'm so..."

>>"Gawain, maybe get her a glass of water or something..."

"Oh. Yeah." Gawain walked away in a hurry and returned with a glass of water, sliding one arm around Eve's shoulders to help her sit up. "I'm sorry... it was my idea and it was stupid. We should have been more careful."

"If I had a penny for every time kids say that around here..." Doc muttered with a frown.

Evelyn took a sip of the water, and shook her head at Gawain. It hurt a little, but she hated hearing the mirrorwalker beat himself up. "No way of knowing it would happen. Echoes were fine, and up until I slept, nothing went wrong. Idea half worked anyway. I slept really well, like I said. I just... took a second nap as soon as I walked out of the aura..." She flinched slightly at the building head ache, and leaned back against Gawain.

Watching her closely, Doc walked over to the cabinets and returned a few moments later with some strong headache medicine. "Here, take those." He remarked, and Evelyn obediently swallowed down the pills with some of the water. As the last of the playbacks faded, she tried sitting up on her own, trying to reassure her hovering audience.

"I swear I won't pass out or anything. Perfectly ok now, just a little bit of a headache." She tried reassuring Gawain, then glanced at DocProf hoping she'd be given the go-ahead to leave. While waking up and faceplanting into the carpet was a less than desirable way to start the morning, having her powers turned off for a night had almost been worth it. If Gawain didn't look so mortified, she probably would have made a slight joke. Instead she finished off the water and let the echoes look around the room.

>>"No way of knowing it would happen. Echoes were fine, and up until I slept, nothing went wrong. Idea half worked anyway. I slept really well, like I said. I just... took a second nap as soon as I walked out of the aura... I swear I won't pass out or anything. Perfectly ok now, just a little bit of a headache."

Gawain, naturally, did not believe a word she was saying. Waking up and then passing out into some kind of a biological blue screen coma was not okay, not in his book. It also raised a whole bunch of new questions, namely, would Eve pass out every time she passed Miss T in the hallway?...

Doc seemed cheerfully unbothered by those concerns.

"You two kids can leave now." he declared "Just make sure to take it easy today, Evelyn. Or not, but that's on you. And probably Gawain. And be careful where you sleep."

Gawain huffed. Great way to start the day.

"Eve, can you walk?"

Evelyn didn't need the echoes to see the doubt on Gawain's face. There wasn't much she could do about that right away though. It was... odd, having someone feel that protective over her. It was different than having a bodyguard hovering and making sure she didn't do anything stupid. Making sure she was ok was more personal to Gawain. She felt like she mattered. Which was enough to keep her from rolling her eyes at his question.

"I can walk. Not the first or the last time my powers will do something like this, honestly." She gave a thank you to Doc, and moved out into the hallway trying not to flinch at the headache she still had. It would take a little bit for the medicine to set in. "It's not worth fussing over. After all, part of the brochure for living at a place like this is understanding your powers better. Apparently, something about my playbacks means shutting them off is a bad idea. Noted. We started the morning learning something new about my mutation."

She was fairly certain it wouldn't be that easy to get rid of the mirror-walker's concern though. She reached out and caught Gawain's hand, giving it a squeeze and smiling reassuringly at him. Heck, she got more sleep today than she often did in a week. It was a silver lining.

>>"I can walk. Not the first or the last time my powers will do something like this, honestly."

She said she could walk, and Gawain let her walk. This was not the time to start up the damsel argument again. They left DocProf's office and walked down the hallway.

>>"It's not worth fussing over. After all, part of the brochure for living at a place like this is understanding your powers better. Apparently, something about my playbacks means shutting them off is a bad idea. Noted. We started the morning learning something new about my mutation."

She squeezed his hand, and he smiled a bit at her. He had to admire Eve for her optimism. She had been living with her mutation for a long time... she was a lot tougher than she looked.

"You're right. So how about we continue with breakfast? I bet running all that extra information made you hungry, hm?"

He smiled. It was a start in the right direction and took some of the tension off her shoulders. She pushed her hair from her face and nodded gratefully at the idea.

"Breakfast would certainly be appreciated at this point." She was starving, and it would give the medicine a little time to settle in as well.

The hallways were fairly quiet still, and the kitchen was empty, which was nice. Her echoes did a quick sweep, trying to decide what there was to eat. "We can either make something, or settle for a lazier breakfast of cereal and toast." While making something would take longer, it would be a bit more worthwhile in the end. She glanced at the clock. It was barely 7, which was still pretty early for most of the children here at the school. The numbers swam for a moment and she shut her eyes, letting the wave of dizziness pass.

She didn't think Gawain noticed, and shifted to look in the refrigerator for either milk or ingredients to make something. Milk was looking like the likelier choice. If she got dizzy again, last thing she wanted was to pass out in front of a stove.

Because that would be a lot harder to just smile off.

>>"Breakfast would certainly be appreciated at this point. We can either make something, or settle for a lazier breakfast of cereal and toast."

Eve still looked a little bit dizzy from the sleep and the wake-up experience. Gawain looked around in the kitchen and scratched the back of his neck.

"Um... I'm not that great at cooking." he muttered.

It was not one of the required skills for the X-men, and pretty much the entire school had been spoiled since Miss T arrived.

"There is cereal" he noted, opening some of the cabinets "And milk. And... orange juice..."

Piling everything that did not require cooking onto the kitchen table still took a couple of minutes. Gawain also added glasses, plates, spoons and knives before he sat down next to Eve.

"There. Breakfast of champions."

>>"Um... I'm not that great at cooking."

Evelyn let out a light laugh and grabbed the milk out of the fridge. She picked up the orange juice as well, and set both jugs on the table while Gawain got the dishes. "To be honest, neither am I. The echoes tend to make it hard to concentrate on what I'm cooking sometimes, so it was always hit and miss whether the meal worked out or not." She tried not to be too relieved as she sank into one of the chairs and glanced at their supplies. There were a few varieties of cereal, and Evelyn abandoned the toast idea for now. The headache medicine was starting to kick in, but the memories moving through her head felt sharper than normally today, and the stray ones were giving her trouble still. That wasn't fairly unusual though. Mornings always took a little time for everything to settle in her head, today was no exception.

"Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Someone bough the name brand stuff! We're eating in style now!" Evelyn said with a grin, pouring herself a decent bowl and watching the cinnamon swirl around as she added milk. She took a few bites, and tried not to flinch as a stray memory sent pain through her shoulder. The distracting images of pictures and museum patrons were easy enough to brush off. It was the other memories that were harder to ignore. She fiddled with her spoon a little though, and tried to think of something to talk about.

"So...what are you up to today?" She took another bite, echoes noting the nutrition facts (or lack there of) on the box in front of her.

>>"To be honest, neither am I. The echoes tend to make it hard to concentrate on what I'm cooking sometimes, so it was always hit and miss whether the meal worked out or not."

"Well that's 50% better than my track record" Gawain grinned, joining her at the table. He had always been a fan of quick and easy breakfasts, followed by more time to do whatever he wanted to do for the rest of the day.

>>"Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Someone bough the name brand stuff! We're eating in style now! So...what are you up to today?"

"Um, not much" the young knight had to admit "It always gets quiet during the summer..."

They ate quietly for a while, enjoying the food and processing the events of the morning. Finally, Gawain looked up.

"Um, can I ask you something?... When you have those flashbacks... what do you see?"

Evelyn shifted the spoon in her hand at Gawain's question, and looked at the milk in her cereal. The cinnamon swirled for a moment, and she looked up, giving a small sad smile to her companion.

"Honestly... Everything. Every memory I have from the time I was 13 in just mixed together, and I don't really get a choice what I remember... Some nights I get to sit and watch a movie over again I haven't seen since I was 14, other nights I have to get injured all over again. I don't...forget. So there is a large variety to my playbacks...

Two nights ago, I dreamed I was sitting in the park reading a book. Still know what page I was on, all the words... My thumb was covering up part of the word 'mystery' when a lady and her poodle walked past. It had a leaf stuck in it's fur, right behind the bow she'd put in it's hair. Silly things, like that. And then...Not so silly things. Jensen got shot once, we were walking home from a movie and someone jumped us. He was protecting me... First night I woke up with nightmares here, that was what I saw. It never feels like a memory. It feels like I'm there."

She pushed the cereal around in her bowl, and shrugged a little, thoughtfully. "Sometimes I don't mind the playbacks, really. I get to relive some of my favorite memories. I can see all my favorite sunsets again, draw all my favorite pictures. And then sometimes, I hate them. I wake up cold, or I wake up hurt. I guess you can't have one without the other... There is good news though." She looked up, and gave a little shy smile to Gawain. "I do have a lot of better memories to look forward to since I met you."

Gawain listened to her talk, and once again realized that he could not even begin to understand what it was like to be Evelyn.

>>"Sometimes I don't mind the playbacks, really. I get to relive some of my favorite memories. I can see all my favorite sunsets again, draw all my favorite pictures. And then sometimes, I hate them. I wake up cold, or I wake up hurt. I guess you can't have one without the other... There is good news though. I do have a lot of better memories to look forward to since I met you."

The young knight blushed and leaned over to kiss her on the forehead.

"So... it's just a matter of statistics then, right?" he grinned "The more good memories you have the less likely the bad ones will come up."

It made all kinds of sense, in his mind anyway.

"So, what we gotta do is work on getting you good memories." he nodded, sounding as determined as he usually was before missions. "...Do you have a swimsuit?"

The echoes took note of the color on Gawain's cheeks before he leaned and his lips pressed against her forehead. It was such a simple gesture, but one she was growing to appreciate. There was something sweet about it; it was a gesture that showed he cared. She was a spoiled little rich kid with voices in her head, but he still cared. It felt... reassuring.

"A matter of statistics... well I never thought of it that way before." She admitted with a slight chuckle, returning his smile and taking a sip of some orange juice. She was glad she finished swallowing before he continued though, because it would have ruined the moment if she choked on her drink in surprise. she still blink a little in confusion, tilting her head to the side.

"Yeah, I have one. Why?" She heard there was a pool here, so she made sure to pick up a new one just in case. She rarely got the chance to swim, so it had been something she looked forward to but never got around to. She had at least washed it and taken the tags off though.

>>"Yeah, I have one. Why?"

Gawain grinned. He liked that about Eve, the way she went from know-it-all to confused teenager in a heartbeat. That made the two of them so much the opposite of boring: one moment one of them way way ahead of the other, and the next, they switched around.

"I'll see you at the front door in ten" he said, drinking the rest of his milk before he walked out.
A few seconds later, he poked his head back in for clarifications.

"Wear the swimsuit."

Slightly bewildered, Evelyn finished her cereal, tidied up the dishes and headed back towards her room to get dressed. The residual effects from this mornings 'reboot' had faded, and now she was just her normal, slightly awkward, self.

Her bathing suit was easy enough to find, and she got dressed in the turquoise bikini. It was fairly new, with pale silver strings and one of the skirted bottom pieces with a little blue bow on the side. Somewhat cute, somewhat attractive, and fitting for her personality. Her skin was pale enough she didn't have any awkward tan lines at least, and her stomach was as flat as always, so she didn't have to worry about that. That didn't mean she didn't feel odd wandering through the school in the outfit though. So she grabbed a towel and tossed on a tank-top before heading towards the front door.

The halls were empty, and it was still early so she didn't know why she was so worried. Her flip flops sounded loud though, and she was glad when she made it to the door and only had to look for Gawain. She had enough time to wonder if she should have put her hair up. She felt silly. Maybe she should have at least braided it...

The echoes started debating whether the picture on the wall was crooked or not.

It took Gawain a total of two minutes to change into his swim trunks, and then an additional eight to regret inviting Eve out to the pool.
What was he thinking?! She was shy to begin with, and, well... swimsuits.

When he heard the sound of flip flops he turned to look, half relieved she decided to show up, and half... shy.
Dammit.

"C'mon" he opened the door for her and then led her on the path around the building to the swimming pool, filled with fresh clean water and delightfully empty at this time in the morning. Apart from the swim trunks Gawain only had a towel thrown across his shoulders. He dropped it by the pool.

"One of the perks of living in a posh mutant private school." he grinned at Eve "And having all the fish kids on vacation. So... you can swim, right?"