Mirror was pretty sure that somewhere in the Mansion house code there was a rule against people sleeping in each other's dorm rooms. Or beds.
He was also pretty sure that she did not care.

Gawain was a deep sleeper, especially after the midnight shifting. Even though Evelyn had a tendency to stay up late or sometimes not sleep at all, he would still take every chance he got to spend the night in her bed. Eve still had nightmares sometimes, and he liked being nearby to comfort her when they happened.
Also. Girlfriend. Bed. Cuddles. Really, it was simple.

The young mirrorwalked made a soft snoring sound as he rolled over. It was hot in the dorm rooms, even with the windows open. God knows why the AC was not working; Mirror had made a mental note before going to bed to either make Sam fix it the next day, or make him become the AC. For now, it was sleepy time and crumpled bed sheets.

Even in his sleep, he could sense Evelyn next to him. She made soft sounds too, and her body shuddered. It was not violent or loud, but it had happened often enough for Gawain to recognize the signs early on. Pulled half out of his sleep he rolled over to loop an arm around Eve's waist and pull her close.

"Shhh, it's okay..."

Sleeping for Evelyn didn't really feel much like sleeping at all. The process was the same: shut your eyes, let the darkness claim you, and the lingering feeling of drowsiness took over. But the results were far different past that point. Where dreams would start, memories took over, with the clarity and crispness it was like waking back up in the past. The fear, the happiness, the pain... every detail was clear, strong...inescapable. Sometimes it was happy. On nights like tonight... she was strongly aware of why she hated to sleep.

The memory of a late night at work shifted, and suddenly, she was walking through sewers. She could sense something was wrong, even before the voice echoed through the tunnels. ""Food..."" the sound echoed, she was cornered...she shouldn't have come down here after all.

Even with Gawain's arm around her, Evelyn trembled. As the memory progressed, the fear started to overwhelm her. There was no getting away, no leaving the terror. No shutting down the images once they started. However, this time, something changed.

As Gawain touched her arm, the contact opened a feed, dragging him into the playback with her. The voices, the smells, and the fear...

His claws tore against the ground, the sound of blades carving chunks of stone as he ran echoing into the dark. He'd be upon her in no time, her top speed probably half of what his was. He was behind her, closing the distance every second. "Run Evelyn...run..." He whispered from behind her, taunting her as he prepared to catch her again. [...]

For a normal person, getting chased through the sewers by a monster would be scary enough. For Evelyn, it was tenfold. Her echoes brought everything to life, and gave in a new dimension. In the few seconds it took to run, the pace of her thoughts pointed out every tiny detail of her pursuer. Every impact of blade to rock, every slice of the earth, every satisfied smirk. The voice, with it's taunting nature and sinister edge. She glanced back, eyes taking in the form almost upon her. It didn't look like the mutant kid she knew. It was every essence of the sewer monster rumors spoke of. Hungry, animal, taking pride in his hunt. She was just a dumb girl whose curiosity landed was becoming her undoing.

Her foot clipped one of the rocks he dislodged earlier and she went crashing to the ground with a painful slam. It stung her legs, ripped a hole in the knee of her jeans and would reveal a number of stunning bruises in the morning. Unless he killed her. Then those bruises would never appear.

She lifted her head, light light of the exit just up ahead. She could still see the bag with the food she had brought, still feel the rungs of the ladder in her memories. She tried getting to her feet but she was too slow, too late.

He was there.

With a scream she sat up, scrambling out of bed in a disoriented crash from one reality to another.

Gawain pulled Eve in with the intention of calming her like he always had, but this time something was very different.
And definitely wrong.

Even half awake he could feel himself being pulled into some kind of a mental space, and it could almost have been mistaken for a dream, except it was too vivid and definitely not happening to him, not even in his own head. He could feel emotions, hear sounds, sense his heart beating against his ribs, except it wasn't his heart. He was drawn into someone else's nightmare, and there was only one explanation to who it was.

Evelyn screamed and sat up with a start. Gawain followed a split second later, gasping for air as he sat up too, covered in cold sweat.

"Holy ****" he gasped, staring at Eve with eyes wide "What the... what the hell was that?!"

It was definitely not a dream.

Evelyn's thoughts were still scrambled from sleep, and the images were still filtering through her head. Fear, panic, adrenaline...it all raced through her body in intense amounts. Gawain's question didn't make sense at first, and she leaned against the wall, trying to smother the fear still trapped inside her.

"What was...?" She stared back at him, and then other memories pushed forward. Sylar's look of horror, commenting on what he had seen. She clung to the wall for support. Her legs felt weak. "What did you see?" She whispered suddenly. The fear from the playback was pinching into a new type of anxiety.

>>"What was...? What did you see?"

Gawain swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat there, trying to make sense of the images in his head. His heartbeat was slowly getting under control, but the look of pure horror on Evelyn's face was still distressing.

"I..." he shook his head "I saw a sewer... and heard voices... and then I was running..." he looked up at her "But that was you, wasn't it."

That was the only thing that made sense.

"What was that? A playback?... And how was I seeing it?"

A sewer...voices...running...

Evelyn shut her eyes for a moment and tried to stay calm. But the terror in that memory was still strong, and accompanied by a new fear. Somehow, people were seeing her playbacks. First Sylar, now Mirror... It wasn't just a fluke. And it wasn't Sylar who caused it to happen. The only thing worse than seeing the images herself was knowing she was forcing them on someone else.

"It was a playback..." She nodded finally, clearing the images from her head and moving back over to the bed, sinking into it and burying her head in her hands. "And I don't know how you saw it, but it's...it's happened once before. I thought...I hoped...I don't want to force anyone to feel that." The echoes were picking up on Gawain's emotions: his confusion, and then the effects of the actual playback working through him. It was one thing to casually mention one of her friends tried to eat her. It was another to have him know just how close the incident had come...and how much it scared her.

>>"It was a playback... And I don't know how you saw it, but it's...it's happened once before. I thought...I hoped...I don't want to force anyone to feel that."

As Evelyn sunk onto the bed, Gawain wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. She looked scared, not just by the playbacks but also by the possibility that she made him see them too. Gawain remembered her telling about the sewer monster... but never realized how scared she had been. He rested his chin on top of her head.

"Shh. It's okay. We'll figure it out." he murmured "So... it's something your mutation has started doing recently?... Mutations do change, you know." he rubbed her back to calm her down. His head was still reeling, but probably not nearly as much as hers.

Evelyn felt her shoulders sense slightly as Gawain moved and pulled her closer, but he didn't seem to act differently, so she relaxed. She had no way of knowing when or how her powers would do what they did... It was an unwelcome sensation of sharing. Right now it was a playback, but what about the echoes? She knew how to deal with the voices in her head, but she didn't want to see what they could do to someone else. Especially someone she cared about.

"Last time my powers decided to change, I got the playbacks. I find it hard to hope that this could be a good thing..." She swallowed. The echoes were sifting through information casually now: pointing out drawings, things that had moved in the night, some new damage to the curtains her foxsquirrel has created before sneaking off somewhere else.

>>"Last time my powers decided to change, I got the playbacks. I find it hard to hope that this could be a good thing..."

There was really nothing to say to that. She was right. Playbacks were scary at best, and she had to learn to deal with them, and now if she was giving them over to people around her, things were going to get even harder. Gawain sighed and kissed her on the forehead.

"It's never easy, is it."

There was a shift in their environment. Gawain blinked as formerly unknown little voices in his head started assessing the room. He was suddenly hyper aware of Evelyn's heartbeat against his side, and the breeze coming through the curtains, and the drawings on the desk.

"Uh... Eve?... Try not to freak out, but I think I'm having echoes now."

Try not to freak out, but I think I'm having echoes now.

Frickin...

"Trying not to...not sure if I'm succeeding." Evelyn whispered. But the panic was starting to rise. It wasn't just the playbacks. It was the echoes too. What was going to happen in the future? One touch and they were seeing her memories, hearing her echoes. The information was everywhere, like a monsoon constantly battering down on her. And now it was spreading.

Try not to panic... She felt like she was already past panic...But she shut her eyes and tried to calm down. She had to focus on something positive before she came unraveled.

"Guess the echoes would at least be useful in a fight or something... not the worst thing to share..." Her voice squeaked slightly. The echoes chimed, pointing out the doubt in her voice. They sliced open her emotions and laid everything out for Gawain to see.

>>"Trying not to...not sure if I'm succeeding."

Now the echoes were reading her reactions, and telling him that she indeed was panicking. Gawain blinked, trying to wrestle the voices into submission. He pulled back to look at Eve as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

>>"Guess the echoes would at least be useful in a fight or something... not the worst thing to share..."

She didn't really believe that, but it was not a bad place to start.

"That's a good point" Gawain nodded, touching her face with one hand. Touch felt like it had something to do with the sharing of echoes, but there was no use backing out now anyway, and he did not want to hurt Eve even more by making physical contact awkward between them.

"This is... kind of amazing" he added, looking around as the echoes swept the room and provided him with way more information than he could process "I mean, with practice, this could be... very useful on the field."

Also, possibly make lasting mental damage.

"So... yeah, it looks like your powers are contagious now." he noted, looking back to Eve, and he leaned over to kiss her, to show that he was not afraid.

Contagious powers...because that wasn't a terrifying phrase at all. The x-team could all have voices in their heads. While it was true, it could be useful on the field, there was also the risky possibility of putting one of her teammates in a coma or something equally frightening. She barely kept her sanity sometimes, and she lived with the voices. She was scared. Gawain didn't yank away from the physical contact despite all the information she knew he must be getting. She accepted the kiss. trying to smile despite how rattling it was.

"You're dealing with this a lot better than I am... I guess I just...know what's in my head. I don't want to put you through that... Some of the memories are good, but..." A rush of images shot through her head. Getting mugged, the riots, thinking CS was dead. She yanked away from Gawain quickly, breaking the contact before too many of the memories invaded. "I'm sorry, I..." She shut her eyes, focusing on better things. Dates, work, paintings... Anything to clear her thoughts. "If it's going to stay like this, I need to learn how to control it. constantly sharing information would suck... Maybe this time my powers will come with an off switch..." She could hope, right?

>>"You're dealing with this a lot better than I am... I guess I just...know what's in my head. I don't want to put you through that... Some of the memories are good, but..."

Gawain caught a glimpse of some of the bad playbacks before she pushed him away and broke contact. He sat back, his breathing slowing down as he watched her.

>>"I'm sorry, I... If it's going to stay like this, I need to learn how to control it. constantly sharing information would suck... Maybe this time my powers will come with an off switch..."

"I am sure it will" Gawain said after some musing, and although he partly said it to make her feel better, it also made sense to him "Mutations are supposed to improve your chances at survival, right? I mean, generally they are useful in some form. I don't think your body would intentionally break you. You might need training, like, a lot of it... but I'm sure you'll get it under control."

He reached out to hold her hand.

"And we can practice as much as you want. It's part of being a team anyway. Whether or not little voices are telling me that there are exactly twenty-eight rings on the curtain rod right now, I don't want you to be afraid of touching."

Evelyn slowly accepted Gawain's hand again, waiting, wondering. For once, the echeos sounded louder than normal. She was processing all the information, wondering how Mirror was seeing it. Useless information shifted one way, like curtain rod rings and moved pieces of paper, while important things like emotions and facial expressions came towards the forefront. She was suddenly aware of how exhausted she felt. And also, in some ways relieved.

"No one ever knew..." She muttered suddenly, looking up at the ceiling and shutting her eyes for a second. "Nothing I said to explain my powers could really help someone understand what it felt like. Even if it takes a lot of training, I guess part of me is...grateful for that much. Is it dumb that part of me is glad I can share it? Part of me feels guilty, and scared... I don't want anyone else to go through things like I do...but in a way, it feels like I can share part of the burden..." She squeezed his hand, wondering how weird it must be. She must look like a nutcase. It must sound like a circus with all the echoes chattered all the time. She tried to corral them, cut off the 'feed'. But it was impossible to tell if it did anything. She couldn't feel the connection. The information just passed by quietly.

>>"No one ever knew... Nothing I said to explain my powers could really help someone understand what it felt like. Even if it takes a lot of training, I guess part of me is...grateful for that much. Is it dumb that part of me is glad I can share it? Part of me feels guilty, and scared... I don't want anyone else to go through things like I do...but in a way, it feels like I can share part of the burden..."

"It makes sense" Gawain nodded pulling her closer for a hug and leaning back so they could settle on the bed more comfortably "There are things, especially when it's about mutations, that are hard to explain to someone who's never felt them. Like, walking through mirrors, or shifting genders" he chuckled "It's... it definitely feels weird. How do you process all of this all the time?..."

The echoes were still whispering around him in a continuous feed of information. No wonder Eve found it hard to sleep.