Amelie looked down at the ground almost in guilt and backed up a step.

"What-?" he started and she backed up another step, colliding with the barrier to the pool. Her arms started swinging rapidly to keep her balance and she felt her body leaning over the pool.

"Shit!" she exclaimed and topped over into the water. Only, milliseconds after she lost her last grasp of balance, she was blown forward with a huge gust of wind. She fell forward onto her knees and palms, panting with fear.

"What..." she said, "what just happened?"

She looked up at the man with green eyes. Theo, she recalled.

He was standing further away than before, completely unmoving and silent. His eyes were wide and connected with hers. Suddenly he shook his head a little bit and blinked. "Are you okay?" he asked. His voice was smooth and deep.

She remembered she was still on her hands and knees and slowly rose to her feet. "Did you just do that for me? Thank you," she said.

He stepped towards her cautiously. "Um, actually, I didn't do anything. I....I think that was you."

She balked, "How could I have done it when I wasn't consciously trying? I've never used air magic before. Never even tried."

"Some people are more gifted at certain types of magic than others. If it's an element that speaks to you and your personality then you won't need to explicitly communicate your wishes for the magic to occur," he said, sitting down on one of the blocks. "Did they not teach you that at school?"

Amelie turned away from him. "I was never taught magic as a child," she said remorsefully. Hopefully he would assumed she had simply grown up isolated.

"Never taught magic?" he gaped at her. "That's insane. Were you taught to read? Did you go to school?"

"Yes!" she exclaimed. How to escape this situation? Adrien had told her not to tell this man about her parentage. "It's not something I like to talk about. But, I'm trying to learn now," she said, "finally."

"Never learned magic..." he said, as if playing with the words that should not go together, "Caumlen, that's horrible. To have the sense of magic and never know what to do with it." He shook his head, "Clearly you're powerful. That wind knocked me off of my feet too."

"What?" Amelie said, abruptly. "I'm powerful?"

"Yes," he said, drawing out the word.

She wasn't weak. Her Magic center of her brain hadn't atrophied at all. She was powerful. She could do this.

"Are you going to be here every day at noon?" Amelie asked.

"Yes, probably. I'm here until two most days," he said.

"Okay. I just want to warn you, I plan on coming at noon from now on," she said, assertively. She wanted to make sure he didn't know how much his comment about her being powerful meant to her. That she meant all business.

"Sure. Do you maybe want to work together? I might be able to help you gain control," he offered.

"Really?" she squeaked before she could stop herself. "I mean," she said, this time her voice lower and more controlled, "I would appreciate that. I can't seem to turn liquid into solid at this point, maybe you could give me some tips tomorrow?"

He smirked and she noticed how nice his eyes looked on a face that wasn't so stern. "I can definitely do that."

"Okay. I'll see you tomorrow then, Th—" she stopped herself before she said his name and revealed that she knew who he was.

"I'm Amelie, by the way," she said with a half-smile and reached out her hand.

"Theo," he said, and shook her hand.

She walked out the side entrance and nearly skipped the entire walk back to her lab.

________________

That night, Adrien had a meeting after training so she decided to take a bath and read a book for the first time since they had gotten together. He had come over nearly every night for the past month and on the nights when he had not, Amelie had taken the opportunity to hang out with Maggie or Charlotte if she was in town.

She wondered what Adrien was doing tonight at the meeting. She hadn't thought to ask but she wanted an update on what "his people" had found about her parentage. Maybe he was planning on speaking about it at this meeting.

Would he go out with the group from Prost after training? That thought made her terribly sad and jealous of Adrien. She missed that one night of community she had had with them. It was a small family and for one night she had felt, not like an observer, but like a member. She had been so busy the past month that she hadn't had much tie to miss the community, even if she missed the magic. But, with Adrien being gone her mind became an echo chamber that made her realize the longing she felt was also for the community.

Maybe she should just tell him she had already met Theo and had ruined his plan of protecting her?

Amelie put down her book, realizing she had been reading the same paragraph for ten minutes, and dunked her head under the bath water.

When she finally emerged from the now cold bath water, she had a text from Adrien.

Adrien: How can I miss you after less than 24 hours?

She smiled and felt her heart warm.

Amelie: I feel the same way. What's wrong with us?

Adrien: I don't know. My heart feels like it's being pulled towards you right now.

Amelie sucked in a breath and sat down. Adrien sent another text.

Adrien: You're making me so cheesy, I can't believe I wrote that down.

Amelie: I loved it, you cheesy fool <3

Adrien: Can't wait to see you tomorrow. This meeting is so tense. Theo won't shut up.

Amelie pondered that text. The Theo she had met did not seem like someone to run his mouth. He seemed more reserved than anyone in the group.

Amelie: I'll have to find some way to help you with that tension ;)

Adrien: Ouch you're making my heart hurt with all that pulling <3

______________

Amelie shot a furtive glance behind her before she ducked into the gym entrance. She knew that no one would follow her here from work, but she still felt inherently worried showing up somewhere she had promised she wouldn't be.

The big gym was completely empty save for a sweating Theo in the far back corner. He was standing directly beneath a block of cement that was in the shape of a three-dimensional star. As she watched, his muscles flexed and the star began to change shape. It made horrible crunching and groaning sounds as it melded into a new shape, finally ending as a perfect sphere.

She wanted to shout to alter him of her presence but was also scared to do so while he had a gigantic block of cement hovering over his head.

She walked over to the pools of water instead and decided to see if she could life droplets of water while she waited.

Two minutes later her back tickled as she heard Theo approach. She grit her teeth to help ignore him as she focused on keeping the water droplets dancing around her.

"Any pointers?" she asked, once she was confident she could keep the droplets suspended in air.

"Not really," he said, flatly. She continued swirling the droplets around. "I wish there was music playing," he remarked, "They seem like they're dancing."

The droplets faltered in the air as Amelie in took a shocked breath. "That's what I always thought they were doing too." She paused and allowed her droplets's dancing radius to extend to encircle the two of them, "What music would you play?" she asked.

Theo approached her so he was standing at her side rather than behind her. She smiled and let the ring of droplets follow him.

"Not sure... I think you're making them waltz around each other so maybe a violin and cello," he said.

"Hmm, maybe," Amelie replied. She slowly lowered the orbs of water back to the ground and let them pour into the pool.

She turned to Theo and he offered her a tiny, soft smile. "So, how does one start leaning about air magic?" she asked.

Theo tilted his head and looked up, as if searching for the right words to use to explain it. "Air magic, as you call it, is all about control. Control and intention."

Amelie nodded.

"With liquids and solids, the particles are all touching each other so it's easy to direct how you want the magic to work. In air, or things in the gaseous state, the particles are much farther apart so you have to be incredibly specific about where you want the energy to be directed," he said.

"But yesterday..." she trailed off, unsure how to explain what had occurred yesterday with her air magic.

"Yes, it was strange that you were able to control the air around you without trying to send energy out. Sometimes in times of extreme peril, kids are able to do that with their magic, but I wouldn't call tripping into water extreme peril...and you're not a kid," he said the last bit like a question.

"Okay," Amelie said, once Theo had been quiet for a full minute, just to break the awkward silence, "What do you think I can start with?"

"Well," he said, "usually we have kids start by doing puzzles or something without their hands as an exercise in control. Do you think next time you can bring a puzzle?"

"Yeah, definitely, like one hundred pieces?" she asked.

He chucked, "We can decide after you've tried to move something today. I'm really not sure with you. Normally we have ten year olds do ten-piece puzzles made for toddlers and it takes them an hour."

"Okay," she stood up straighter and puffed up her chest, "Consider me warned. Low expectations."

"No, don't think like that," he replied, quickly. "Keep your head up, I think if you expect low things from yourself, you'll get low results. Expect greatness, and work hard to achieve it when that's not the immediate result."

Amelie nodded and turned her face away from him. His philosophy was the opposite of how she approached life. Expect the worst, be pleasantly surprised when it's not. She wasn't sure if she could adapt to his method, but she didn't want to disappoint her new teacher so she just remained silent.

"Here," Theo said. Amelie turned and saw him holding out a feather.

"You could also try to make a small tornado like you make with the whirlpools in the water, but I worry that it could get dangerous in here if you're too successful," he said, and winked.

Amelie raised her eyebrows. "Is that a challenge?"

He shrugged, but she could see a small smirk on his face.

"Challenge accepted my friend," she said. "But I do need some directions for how one would make a tornado."

"Just concentrate on finding the tethers that connect you to the air around you. Then strategically pour energy in the same direction so that air begins to move," he said.

She closed her eyes.

"Can you find the tethers?" he asked

She reached out her energy to bind to the threads she had felt to the water. The current to the water was easy to find and she could have grabbed onto that, but kept feeling around.

"I call them threads in my head," she said softly, "And no, I'm still searching."

"It will feel more fluid that what you've felt with solids or liquids. There will be more tethers or threads, but they will be thinner," Theo responded.

She pulled back some of her energy. Maybe she had to search with less energy and more precision to find the threads for air? Her mental arm swept out and was met with what felt like the lightest touch of the soft fur of a cat. Multiple tiny threads all clustered together.

"Got them," she whispered.

"Okay, now push. All at the same angle, put a slight amount of energy into them. And be sure it's the same amount for each," he said.

She pushed just the smallest amount and felt a cool breeze on her face. A grin bloomed involuntarily.

She pushed again, this time with a slight angle and felt the air begin to circle. It was very soft so she focused on winnowing a small morsel more of energy into the threads.

The air sped up.

She fed more and more energy into the threads until she could hear the blow of the wind around her. She opened her eyes, careful to keep pushing on the threads.

The wind around her was spinning so fast she would see the difference in the air. She and Theo were in a tiny clearing surrounded by a whirling storm of air. She reached out her hand into the storm and almost fell over from the shock of the force against her.

She turned to Theo who was smirking.

"Oh my God," she whispered in disbelief, "This is all me?"

"It really is," he replied and reached out his hand in a high five. She slapped his hand, grinning wildly, and in that moment forgot to keep pushing on the threads. A massive gust of wind broke off from the tornado and flew towards the pools of water.

The wind caused a wave to soar up and crash over the side of the pool. She gasped and immediately pulled back all her energy and knotted her hands together under her chin.

She looked at Theo, bug-eyed and he chuckled. "I'm so sorry," she said.

"Don't worry at all. This is minimal destruction," he said and walked over to the pools. The water now littering the ground seemed to rise up like a thin sparkling piece of cloth being lifted from the ground. Theo tilted his head towards the pool and it all syphoned back in.

"Amazing," she said.

He turned to her and cocked his head. She had forgotten that he did not know her backstory. He must assume she had been around magic all her life.

She steeled herself to make up excuses but he just walked back over to her quietly, smirking once more. He sat down on one of the mats and she followed suit.

"The first time I lifted one of those lead blocks over there," he said, pointing to the area where she had first seem him practicing, "I smashed a hole through a ceiling two times higher than this one. The gym was closed for a week and everyone knew it was my fault.

"Your destruction has nothing on mine," he said.

She laughed.

"So tomorrow, go for the one hundred piece puzzle. It may take us a while, but I think you're going to catch on fast," he said.

Amelie thought her face might explode from her grin. "Okay!" she replied.

Theo looked down at his watch.

"Shit," Amelie said, looking down at her own watch. Twelve-fifty. "I have to go," she said. "I'll see you here tomorrow?"

"Sounds good. See you then," he replied.