xp_logs | Nathan and Madelyn, Thursday morning

Nathan's painting the nursery when Madelyn arrives at his door with some news from the taskforce. As it turns out, finding his birth certificate in Mistra's database was only the beginning.

Compromise was a beautiful thing, Nathan thought happily, carefully coating the wall of the nursery with the blue paint. There was a can of soft purple over by the door - the combination would be quite nice, he thought. And no pink. Anywhere. Humming to himself, he concentrated on getting the paint on as evenly as possible. Once he got that done, he and Moira could settle finally on a wallpaper border. Or maybe stencils. There were a few possibilities...

"That looks nice," Madelyn said, from the doorway with a smile. At Nathan's slightly surprised look, she gestured. "Door was open. Um, do you have a minute? I've got some news for you."

It was a sign of just how relaxed he'd been on the honeymoon that his shields were solid enough that he'd been able to get caught up in the painting and miss Madelyn's entry into the suite completely. "Sure," he said amiably, then paused, giving her a closer look. "Um. The kind of news I ought to put the paintbrush down to hear?"

"Probably," Madelyn said, resisting the compulsion to start bending the slim file in her hands nervously. She tried a joke. "It seems I've got another bombshell for you, and I'd much rather I didn't get paintbrushes flung at my head for spoiling a good day."

Nathan blinked, then set the paintbrush down carefully. "In the living room, then?" he asked, checking to make sure he didn't have paint anywhere that was going to get on the furniture if he went out and sat down.

Madelyn nodded. "Sitting down comfortably is a good thing, even if a tad cliched," she agreed, following Nathan out of the nursery. She perched a little uncomfortably on the edge of an armchair, unable to help wishing that it wasn't always her with the life-altering news. Then again, better her than someone else from the taskforce who didn't know him.

Nathan sat down on the couch, wincing a bit as he straightened. "Damned back," he said amiably. "Still complaining perpetually..." She had her nervous face on. "So," he said a bit wryly. "Hit me?"

"Sounds like maybe you should come down for another check up..." Madelyn began, and then realised she was trying to put off the inevitable. "Um. So. You know how we found your birth certificate in your Mistra file?" Of course he did, she'd damn well given it to him. Madelyn winced internally at how idiotic she was sounding. "There were some, ah, follow up checks."

Nathan's expression went from mobile to stiff in the space between two heartbeats. "I... sort of figured there would be." Although he had been doing his absolute best not to think about the implications. "They turned up something more, then?" The birth certificate would have led to other things almost inevitably. It just depended on what...

She was making a mess of this. Again. Still plain honesty was always the best policy, or so her father had told her. "There are... you have living family," she said at last. "Your father."

Nathan went absolutely white. His thoughts stuttered to a stop, all at once, and all he could do was stare at Madelyn, utterly unable to find his voice.

Dad, you suck, she thought briefly, before leaning in to touch his hand. "Nathan, I'm sorry to spring it on you like this. Are you... Do you want a glass of water or something?"

It took him a long moment to find his voice, and some stray shred of composure so that he could answer. "Please," he croaked, and watched her get up and move to the kitchenette. "Are they... are they sure?" he finally forced himself to ask. You didn't just get thirty year-old questions answered like that, did you? He's alive. I didn't... "That... it's him, I mean. They're sure?"

"As sure as they can be without DNA testing," Madelyn said, bringing back a glass of water and making sure he had a good grip on it before letting go. "All the paperwork checks out, and you can believe it was gone through with a fine tooth comb. We wanted to be sure, you see."

Drink. The water. Nathan took a careful sip, then a few long, deep breaths before he tried to respond to that. "Does he know?" he asked, a bit hoarsely still. "That I'm alive, I mean." His eyes focused on the file she'd set on the coffee table. "Is that..." Words failed him again, but he fought stubbornly for composure. "About him?"

"No, he doesn't," Madelyn said promptly. "And he won't, not unless you want him to. Especially given your... history with him, that was a priority when investigations started." She followed his gaze, and nodded. "It is. There's not much, but we've got the basics. His name, where he's living, what he does for a living..." She took another breath. "Nathan, your mother... she's... she died, about ten years ago."

"...oh." His voice came out sounding hollow, and oddly, he couldn't react like he should have to that. Still frozen... Nathan set the glass carefully on the coffee table and picked up the dossier, opening it. He took a deep, unsteady breath at the picture on the front page.

"It... is him." Decades older or not, it was unmistakably his father. Hair faded and face lined with age - although less than Nathan would have thought, after thirty years - but definitely him. He had seen that face in his nightmares for too many years to ever forget it. "Maddie, I..." He faltered again, his hands trembling as he laid the dossier back on the table. "I don't know what to do here. I knew this was a possibility, but..."

Madelyn reached over and took both his hands in hers. "There's no rules of behaviour for this sort of situation," she told him with a small, ironic smile. "Right now? You don't have to do anything. It's a hell of a shock, I can only imagine, given what you've told me about your family. I just wish there was an easier way to have broken this to you. But whatever you decide to do, it doesn't change what you have now, the family you've found."

Her hands were cool, their gentle pressure on his steadying. "I know," he managed. He couldn't imagine what his reaction would have been to this even six months ago, but Jack and he had dealt with this so often, talked about it in such detail... there was a little distance possible that there wouldn't have been before.

There was also a part of him that wanted to dive for the nearest corner, curl up in a ball, and pretend that picture wasn't sitting on the coffee table. But he should be able to overcome that. He...

"He doesn't look... like the bogeyman, does he?"

"Not really." Nathan actually resembled his father somewhat, which probably made it all the more disconcerting. And it was Madelyn's experience bogeymen of this sort seldom looked the part, but she wasn't about to say that - or think it too loudly. "Would you like me to tell you more about him? Instead of reading it?"

Nathan nodded jerkily, but spoke before she could go on. "Thank you for bringing this to me yourself," he said, his voice barely audible. "It... makes it a little easier. Coming from you."

"It was the least I could do, hon." She didn't let go of his hands just yet, giving them a gentle squeeze. "Ani and I had a talk at one point, about packs. I couldn't let a stranger give you this news, it wouldn't have felt right." Now she did let go, to give him the space to collect himself, and picked up the file, even though she knew the contents backwards now. "If it gets too much, tell me and I'll stop. You don't have to hear all of it right now."

There were definite pros and cons to either approach, Nathan thought. Pace himself... but then he'd have to hear the rest of it at some point... or bite the bullet and get it all over with now. "I will," he said quietly, resting his chin on one hand and reached out with the other for the glass of water again. Composure was good. Even if it was a very thin facade. "Go ahead."

Madelyn took a deep breath to steady her own nerves and flipped open the dossier, paging past the picture on the front page. "His name, as you already know, is Saul Morrow, and he's currently living in San Francisco," she began.

"San Francisco..." Nathan shook his head slowly as Madelyn paused. "It's strange. The coincidence. That's where I lived on the street for the two years before I was picked up by Social Services and sent to Mistra."

"I've found there's very little that surprises me in the way of coincidences in this place," Madelyn said dryly, although she had her doubts about that particular one. Nothing concrete, and Nathan didn't need baseless suspicion. "He owns a company called Samara Data Recovery. It's reasonably successful, too, so he's rather well-off, financially."

"A data recovery company?" Nathan frowned, shaking his head. "That makes... no sense," he protested weakly, thinking about the commune. "We had so little technology in Alaska, they didn't believe in it..." He gave a shaky sigh. "I suppose people change. In thirty years..." But it nagged at him. The inconsistency.

"Yes, that struck me too. However, that's how it is." Madelyn flipped through the dossier, although there wasn't a lot more to tell. "He didn't marry again, after your mother died, and seems to live pretty much on his own. Some friends, well, business acquaintances. Nothing really close."

Nathan looked up at her, half-terrified at the idea of asking her this, although surely she would have mentioned it already if... "And... what about the other child?" he asked, his voice breaking. He hadn't told her that part.

Madelyn blinked. This was new, both from Nathan and in terms of the information they'd dug up. "What..." she reined her surprise in, and shook her head a little. "There's no record of another child being born to your parents, Nathan. I'm sorry. The records show just you."

"She was..." Nathan faltered again, then forced himself to go on. "My mother. She was pregnant, when I left... it's why I left. He told me that I'd have to help... teach it, if it were a boy. And I just snapped." His eyes shifted sideways to meet Madelyn's, troubled. "I... attacked him and ran to the highway. Hitched a ride south with a trucker." He swallowed. "I guess there are any number of things that could have happened... to the other child."

"I wish I had an answer for you, hon, but there's nothing. Checks were made, to see if there was any record of... a death, but there wasn't even that. I could run some checks of hospitals in the area you lived, if that would help...?" Madelyn's face was filled with sympathy. This was all beyond her experience of family, but she knew if there was the slightest possibility she had a sibling out there somewhere, she'd want all steps taken to find them.

"We were so far away from anything resembling civilization. If he or she was born, and..." Nathan stopped, with a jerk as if someone had hit him, and he couldn't shake the sensation of being cold suddenly. Cold as if he was outside, a child alone in the Alaskan winter. "Damn," he finally said, his eyes burning. "Can I leave that with you? I don't think.... this is hard enough without trying to think about the possibilities."

"Sure, hon," Madelyn said immediately. She closed the dossier, lay it on the table - there wasn't much more to it. "I'll have a word with some of the taskforce, see if we can't find anything definite for you..." She bit her lip, and reached forward again. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Well..." He forced himself to smile, although it probably wasn't very convincing. "I know I'm going to be okay eventually, because, well, I have too many reasons to be. Right now, though..." He stared back down at the dossier for a long moment. "I didn't expect this," he admitted painfully. "Not really. Even knowing there was a chance now, that if he was still alive the taskforce might find him... and there are reasons to talk to him, I know that." Nathan closed his eyes for a moment. "Even setting everything else aside, I'm going to have a child, and I have no idea of the medical history on my side of the family. If I don't do anything else with this information, I should maybe do that." He only wished he could sound more certain about it.

"But in good time," Madelyn said, patting his forearm reassuringly. "It's waited this long, it can wait a bit longer, until you've had time to process it. I can't imagine what must be going through your head right now."

He very doggedly pulled himself a little farther back together, tried to smile at her again. "Bet you didn't foresee this as part of the job when you took on the work with the taskforce."

"Not exactly," she admitted, thinking of Talia with a small sigh. Telling people their families were alive, that they were dead... it was all such a mess. "But this isn't just a job for me, Nathan. You're my friend... if anyone's going to turn your world upside down, it should be a friend that does it."

He reached out and took her hand, squeezing it for a minute. "Although this isn't Mistra," he pointed out with a sigh. "Nothing to do with Mistra at all..." His eyes flickered to the dossier. "I know you love your family," he said, "so I'm not going to ask any stupid questions. But if you were in my place, and had no... connection, no real knowledge of where you'd come from, would you try and find out more? Even with what you did remember."

Madelyn was quiet for a long moment, seriously considering the question, trying to put herself in his shoes. Of all the people to ask... even that little witch of his had a better perspective than she did. "I think I'd want to know," she said eventually, tone soft. "One way or another, I'd want answers." Her expression was wry asn she looked up at him. "Then again, you're talking to both a doctor and an ex-FBI agent. Answers are sort of my lifeblood."

"You can't make decisions if you don't know." He almost managed the smile this time, although it was still very strained. "I've always hated being in the dark. I think that was inevitable, after Mistra... all the things that happened because there were critical details I didn't know. But this..." He shook his head slowly. "This is different," he said very quietly. "And I'm scared to death of the idea of actually... just seeing him, again. I know I gave you some idea of how bad it was, but I don't... know how I survived it, really. How he didn't kill me accidentally, any of those times he got so angry."

"You don't have to, see him that is," Madelyn said. "There's ways of finding out more, even communicating with him, that don't involve you seeing him in person. And I wouldn't recommend it, given what you've told me about him. Definitely not straight away. Remember, Nathan, you're in control here. Nothing will happen unless you want it to."

"Jack's going to start bringing a flask to our sessions, you know." A helpless laugh slipped out before Nathan could stop it, and he rested his head in his hands for a minute. "'So, anything interesting happen this weekend, Nathan?' 'Yes, I found my long-lost father.' I can just see his face now." He was silent for a long moment before he tilted his head to look back at Madelyn. "I could... email, maybe."

"It could be a start, yes," Madelyn agreed, nodding. "But in your own time, hon. All the information's there, you choose how and when you want to use it. If at all." She gave him a brief smile. "I'd suggest after talking to Moira and Jack, at the very least."

"Yeah. Not something I want to leap into." He rubbed his hands over his face for a moment, breathing deeply. "Gah. I'll be okay. I will." He straightened, wincing again at the twinging pain in his back. "It's like you said. It doesn't have to change anything that's here."

"Exactly." Madelyn patted his arm again, face sympathetic. "Do you want something for your back? Stress isn't good for it, I know."

"I think that might be a good idea. I can feel the muscles seizing up already." Nathan snorted softly. "Guess I'm done painting for the day." He paused, struggling to focus back on the simple, happy task he'd been engaged in before this. "Stencils or a wallpaper border?"

Madelyn was already fishing through her pocket for the bottle of muscle relaxants she'd grabbed, just in case of such an eventuality. She got up and refilled the glass, since Nathan had pretty much finished the water in it, and gave the nursery, visible through the open door, a considering look. "Both, maybe?" she suggested. "Wallpaper border around the bottom, just above the skirting board, and then stencils along the top?"

"That'd be pretty," Nathan said a bit dimly, taking the pills and glass of water as she handed them over. "The whole thing's going to be pretty. You should see the furniture we picked out..." He trailed off, his eyes stinging again, and swallowed the pills to buy himself a moment. "It doesn't change anything. I'm never going to make the mistakes he did."

"That's because you're not him," Madelyn said softly. "You never were, Nathan. And this doesn't change that."