When Evelyn did glance at his displayed arm, Ai flushed a little with self-consciousness and tried to drop it back nonchalantly. He probably shouldn't have bothered. It wasn't as if he was going to fool someone like Evelyn.

He swallowed before answering, and then spoke slowly, digging up the words as best he could as he went along. "Somehow... yeah. When... when there's snow around, the rest of me gets like this." He rubbed his scar and tried to count the number of books on a shelf briefly. "It was snowing when... when I got these. And there's... something different. When I make it snow. I don't know if it's the same thing. I, well, I'm not that keen to experiment."

Of all the mutation concepts he'd heard of, healing had to be the worst to learn. Learning required pain and suffering, especially when it showed no signs of being affected by will or even consciousness and only seemed to affect the individual. The ability to understand all the details and limitations and opportunities of someone else's abilities would be a useful trick to have around, especially in a place like this. How many people on the grounds really understood everything, even about themselves?

Aiden was clearly uncomfortable with his ability to heal. As he explained though, she started to understand. It wasn't necessarily the healing itself, it was the incident that created it. His eye, his arms, both were memories he had to face when he looked in the mirror. She felt a surge of empathy, and gave a small smile.

"Hey, it's not that big of a deal. I mean, I still don't know much about my powers and I've had them my whole life. I think all of us are always learning. And I--" She tried to stop herself, feeling her powers pushing her towards remarking on something he hadn't necessarily said. She shifted then said it anyway. "I know what it's like to have memories you'd rather not have to deal with. Hopefully you don't have to have too many of those. Knowing you can heal is one thing but it's always better to never have to." She toed the ground, and shifted from foot to foot as her own memories pressed at the back of her mind.

Aiden relaxed a little at Evelyn's words. He wasn't entirely sure he believed her - really, having powers for your entire life but never really learning about them? It just didn't seem particularly probably - but it felt like a nice touch. The pause in her dialogue worried him, though, and a moment later he found out he'd been right too.

Transparency was never something Aiden had tried to cultivate. He'd always been more inclined to obscurity, to shrouding himself in enough layers that people couldn't pry too deeply. He wasn't used to people just reaching in and taking things, and he didn't like it. Maybe that was Evelyn's real power, and her observation skills were just tools towards it: looking at people and ripping out all the things they didn't want to talk about so that everyone could see the twisted, writhing mass.

"I have enough," he said quietly, though his tone was a bit harder than he really intended. Yes. Socializing. Great idea! It let everyone play Rip Out Someone's Heart and Make it Dance in Front of Them! What a great game!

Aiden relaxed, but as Evelyn kept talking, the agitation returned. She was really good at upsetting him it seemed... She looked down at her feet and rubbed the back of her neck. Not that she really had meant to be mean. Or had he thought she was meaning to? She didn't know anymore. She was tired of listening to the echoes today. They just seemed to make a mess of things. She tried to think of some way to remedy the situation...

"So, maybe sometime we can train together or something. Maybe you know, not just awkwardly trying to talk would help with the not stepping on each others emotional toes..." She said slowly. Ok, maybe that was a really dumb idea. But she didn't want to just keep upsetting the younger mutant. If they got caught on the same team bad feelings were going to cause problems in the long run.

Air in. Air out. And again. Okay. Evelyn wasn't attacking him. She didn't look especially interested in seeing him squirm. She probably hadn't mean to make him think too much. That was all. Accidents happened. She might be observant but by her own admission she wasn't good with people. This was just the backlash of it. He was just used to being on the other end of it.

Okay. Change of topic. Moving onwards. Breathe. And. Go. "That could be good. I mostly train with Cafas, and sometimes Persi, but some change could be okay." Beyond change generally being nasty, of course. That was beside the point, though. The point seemed to be that Evelyn was apparently trying to patch some of the awkwardness between them.

Was he really that obvious, though? He couldn't go around showing every little emotion. His sunglasses. They must hide enough of his face that people couldn't see his expression clearly. He should put them back on - no, he couldn't. Not right now, anyway. That would be even more rude to Evelyn than anything he could think of that he'd already done so far today. At least, he thought so. So he shouldn't. At least not yet. Later. "Having something else going on.. would probably make things easier," he said, trying to lighten his tone enough to at least show he was trying to find humour in their present situation.

>>"Change could be ok."

The echoes picked up on his lack of believe in that statement. Evelyn gave a small shrug and fiddled with the end of her hair. "Whether or not it's ok, it's probably something we will have to learn eventually. Although I'd probably drive you up the wall training to. The echoes have a habit of being bossy." She felt like she was just going to be a problem one way or the other. Inwardly she kept second guessing things. The echoes felt they were logical and right. She wasn't always sure.

"So, you find any good books while you were here?" Another dumb question. Why were they trying? She should go draw...

Oh no, did she think he was saying he didn't want to train with her? Well, he wasn't exactly keen on training with other people, but it wasn't her specifically! It was just, you know, other people. It was hard enough training with Cafas around, much less Persi, and Cafas was the guy training him, so he really had to be there.

"I mean I, uh, well, it's just the change part," he said quickly, trying to mash his thoughts into some sort of order before the situation derailed into offensive land all over again. "It's not specifically working, er, working with you -" He gave up and shut his mouth.

Oooohhh change of subject Evelyn was wonderful and amazing and smart. "Nothing spectacular, but some things worth reading. Don't really have that much time to read lately, though, but it's something."

Ok, so maybe he didn't hate the idea of working with her. Well, at least right now he didn't mind. Maybe once they actually started training he'd regret it, and then they wouldn't get along and would make the x-men regret recruiting them both.

That was a little on the pessimistic side. The echoes returned to reading his body language. He relaxed as the subject changed and remarked on the books. "I enjoy reading... I probably have too much time to read though. Happens when you give up sleeping..." She shrugged. Not that she missed sleeping that much. Considering the dreams she had the concept of just 'sleeping' didn't really seem to occur to her anymore. Well, she had gotten to rest that one time when she was next to the adapted room. But the general 'knocking yourself out with your own powers' repercussions afterwards made it so she preferred not to try the experience again.

Okay, things seemed to be getting better. Books weren't going to offend anyone, were they? They didn't seem to be at risk of that so far, at least. Hopefully it would stay that way and this conversation could stay out of awkward territory for a while. That would be so nice...

"Give up sleeping..?" he repeated, somewhat confused. He managed to bite down on whatever idiocy was about to follow though. Maybe his LOOMING GIANT SOCIAL BLUNDER detector was finally starting to work. At any rate, he was not going to ask for more details. It would probably just depress both of them even if no one got offended. No one needed to be depressed right now. Stay on neutral ground, stay on neutral ground.

"Is there anything in particular you like to read?" he offered. That should be neutral enough. And not depressing. Or offensive. Or walking straight into some other social blunder territory he hadn't run into yet. Please let there not be any more of those. He didn't want to learn about them, and he definitely didn't want to learn about them right now.

>>"Give up sleeping...?"

The comment was immediately followed by the echoes picking up on his realization that was probably a bad question to ask. It took Evelyn from her sensation of dread quickly to relief, with little transition between the two. She was going to have emotional wiplash after this conversation. She wondered if there was medical treatment for that. Or emotional treatment. Maybe they'd both just suffer emotional concussions for awhile...

>>Is there anything in particular you like to read?"

Evelyn gave a wryly grin. "I'm partial to the works of Arthur Conan Doyle. But I enjoy a variety of things." She said, wondering if he'd recognize the famed Sherlock Holmes author or not. He seemed like a reader so probably.

Arthur Conan Doyle. The name was familiar. And distinctly western.

It took him a moment, but eventually his brain flailed around aimlessly and happened across a connection. "Sherlock Holmes?" At least, he thought that was the right connection. Sherlock Holmes was famous, of course, but mystery wasn't his most common genre.

"Most of the western stuff I read isn't mystery," he admitted. "It can be good to pay attention to other genres, though. I mean, it was completely accidental when I came across H. G. Wells' actual stuff. The movies really changed a lot..." Wait, movies were bad. Movies would make this like the last time they'd talked. Back to books back to books back to books! "There's good new stuff too, though. Do you know E. E. Knight?"

It took Aiden a bit to process the name, and Evelyn could see the wheels turning in his head. Evidently, he was enough of a reader that the author was familiar, but not so much that it came to mind readily. Evelyn was once more grateful for her echoes. She didn't have to deal with such long delays remembering typically.

>>"Sherlock Holmes?"

Evelyn smiled. "The one and only. I'm a bit partial to most detective novels though. I sort of like the problem solving. Although the echoes can take some of the fun out of the poorly written ones. It's like having a backseat driver pointing out all the mistakes." She shrugged, surrendering to the fact that there was little she could do to teach the echoes tact.

"I actually haven't watched enough movies to understand the changes. I find movies are even worse about accuracy and drives my powers crazy. I have heard of E.E. Knight. Don't think I've had the change to read anything by them yet." Don't think Was a phrase that came more out of reflex then anything. The echoes were certain she had never read a book by E.E. Knight. But that was something fairly easily remedied.

"That must be a pain," he agreed neutrally. How was Evelyn supposed to enjoy anything that required a suspension of disbelief or the subtle oversight of minor details that would recur later, and only trigger memory then?

"Well, if you have to watch one of The War of the Worlds, at least make sure it's the old one. The new one's horrible without even getting into accuracy." He shuddered at the thought of whatshisface, but almost immediately caught himself almost... smiling? No, he was mistaken.

"You should give them a try. Reign of Fire. It takes dragons in an interesting direction, and from what I remember they weren't too bad on accuracy. To me, anyway." He had no idea if Evelyn's echoes would pry the books apart and dump their rotten dust in the garbage, but he at least didn't recall any glaring issues.

>>"That must be a pain."

"You have no idea. Someday it'd be really nice to be able to at least turn off the echoes for a short amount of time. There are some times you just don't want a backseat driver in life." And that was what it really came down to. Whether or not the voices were 'hers' didn't matter. Sometimes, she just wanted to have a little more quiet to her thought process. Then again, maybe her own thinking was so used to having the echoes she'd still get the chatter.

That would suck... she stopped thinking about it.

"Maybe one of these days I'll find a copy to watch when I have time to kill. Although hopefully things will be a little more busy adding training to the mix." She was both dreading and excited for the prospect. Training had mixed results for her. Sometimes she felt more confident in what she was doing. Othertimes she learned new weaknesses and that made her worried. It was hard to know what would happen.

The books part of the conversation was a lot easier to get into. They were in a library after all. "I'll keep an eye out for it next time I'm in town. Books and I get along much better anyway." Less hard for the echoes to critique her own imagination.

"I think being able to take a break from anything would be nice at times," Aiden said softly. A break from overheating. A break from looking different. A break from being different?

Training was a good subject. "It does take up a lot more time," he agreed, "but there's usually still time for other things." Especially when homework was dismissed as a waste of time. So useless. What point was there to doing the same thing over and over and over anyway? Really! Classes were such a pain. They'd all be better off if the teachers just gave out lists of topics for people to research and let them do things on their own.

Oh wait - class! He winced. "I just remembered - I'm really sorry, but I was supposed to be getting back to class and now I'm probably late-" and he was totally rambling and just generally spewing words out, but HE WAS LATE/GOING TO BE LATE. "I'll see you later, okay?"