Shawn kept his gray-green eyes averted from the counsellors face as she spoke, chewing his lip nervously and studying his fingernails as if he were intensely interested in them. There wasn't many other obvious signs of his discomfort, perhaps his breathing had scaled up a little higher, and perhaps a slight tense look to his shoulders, but nothing one would notice on first glance. He felt like a trapped bird as she stared at him, her kind eyes the greatest threat in his world right now. He swallowed lightly and forced himself to look up, meeting the gaze of one who was currently the enemy. Inside his mouth he was playing around with the tongue ring, sweat beading on his forehead as he grew increasingly more pressured by the moment. She hadn't spoken since they'd dragged him here from the comforts of his dormitory, he'd just been relaxing innocently when the counsellor walked in and cornered him.

"Shawn, your grades are dropping. You're a hard working kid, we're worried about you."

Oh, so that was all she had wanted to talk about. He surpressed a heavy sigh of relief, that would make his previous distress obvious. He was afraid that she'd found out about what he'd been doing to his wrists for years on end, and they were going to try and get him some stupid therapy or something to help him out. The school he'd went to before the discovery of his powers had done that, they'd put him on Suicide Watch and everything. He'd hated that. He was relieved that he'd chosen to wear his wristbands today, else her surprise appearance in his dorm might have unearthed his secrets. But still, his grades were dropping? That wasn't good. But it was only to be expected, he'd been dumped by his girlfriend. She'd left him after he'd tried so hard, he'd actually thought she had been the one for him, that she really cared, but needless to say the minute she got what she wanted from him she'd dumped him. Another heartbreak, just the same as all the others. He'd been too depressed for the past few weeks to do much else but sit and sulk, breaking down every now and then.

"Shawn, are you listening?"

He snapped out of his silent recollections when her voice sounded again, and he saw her looking at him kindly, but with a bit of a stern note to her gaze now. He nodded once, a soft sigh accompanying the gesture. "Yes, I am. What should I do about it?" Most kids at the Academy would respond rudely to her questioning, but he was a good, kind kid. His only problem was his tendancy to put too much trust in a person.

"Well I have an appointment with another student right now, but if you'd be willing to wait, I can speak to you in about fifteen minutes or so. How does that sound?"

Translation in counsellor language; you're stuck in here until we let you leave. "Alright," he said in agreement, though he'd much rather just leave and go back to his dorm. He wasn't in the greatest of moods. She smiled at him and went into another room, leaving him to take a seat on one of the blue chairs in the waiting room. He did so and put his head in his hands with a defeated sigh.