xp_logs | Nathan and Madelyn, Monday afternoon (Reply)

Nathan's back from San Francisco, and Madelyn has a few very pointed things to say to him. She gives him some food for thought. He's not particularly happy about it, but he listens.

It made sense that Nathan would be avoiding her, Madelyn reflected. Hell, even Hank wasn't exactly avoiding her, but he was making reasonable noises at her in an effort to get her to stop stomping around so much. But there were only so many places he could be, and while Madelyn wasn't psychic, she was methodical. Rapping on the door to his office, she waited for a reply.

Nathan looked up from his computer, gazing at the door. Well, he'd expected this moment to come, and hiding under his desk would be thoroughly undignified. "Come in, Madelyn," he called, eyeing the window a bit longingly. He could have jumped out of there, easily.

"Well, at least you're not hiding under the desk," Madelyn said dryly as she let herself in. She didn't take a seat, however, choosing to stand with her arms crossed over her chest. "So, I was willing to be sympathetic with you feeling like everyone was raining on your parade, but what happened to letting the people with some perspective check things out for you before doing anything? Like, say, inviting him to the school?"

"Part of the reason I did invite him to the school," Nathan muttered. At Madelyn's raised eyebrow, he explained. "To meet Charles," he said with a sigh. "Only it didn't matter, because apparently he's not telepathically readable most of the time. My father, I mean." Running a hand over his too-damned-short hair - and he needed to stop that, damn it. As if he needed a new nervous mannerism! - he looked up at her half-defensively, half-unhappily. "And we kept him away from any of the secured areas. He didn't get the grand tour."

"He could have met Charles anywhere," Madelyn pointed out. "Neutral ground? And yes, Charles would have suggested that if there was a real risk, but still, there's the kids..." She frowned. "I don't the fact he's not readable. What did Charles think?"

"He's a mutant. Saul," Nathan said, then smiled very faintly at Madelyn's startled look. "My mother was a telepath and telekinetic, and he's got some kind of enormously complicated cellular-manipulation ability going on. Moira called him a 'walking stem cell' - he let her run a few blood tests and the like. His thoughts were like... psychic TV snow, I suppose you'd call it."

"That's not exactly making me feel any better, Nathan. Nor is the fact you knew this and still went haring off to San Francisco. On your own." Madelyn shook her head. "We've been attacked by mutants as well as humans and cyborgs." Making a frustrated growl, she half-glared at him. "You're impossible, you know that? What about the kids?"

"What about the kids? Unless you're here to tell me that you found something that makes him a real threat, which I think you probably would have done via email or a phone call as soon as you did, rather than waiting, how is it dangerous to have him around the kids?" Stop. Sounding. Defensive. "Even if this is all an act and he's actually the abusive bastard from my memories, there's nothing he could have done here. Nothing I would have let him do." He paused. "Well, there was some weirdness with Betsy, but that's because she decided to project dirty limericks at him for some bizarre reason..."

"It's not what he could do while he was here, but what he could find out. Knowledge is power, right? And you brought him here and introduced him to some of the kids. Many of whom are just ordinary kids with way too much trust and they'd assume that is was okay to tell Saul anything they felt like, because you'd asked him there." Madelyn ground her teeth in an effort to not yell. Yelling was bad. "He's in the information business, right? That means he's at the very least used to using every situation to gather the maximum amount of date, and frankly the less information there is out there on the school, the kids, and their powers, the happier all of us should be!"

"He's in the data recovery business," Nathan said, his voice a bit tighter than it had been. "When computers go boom, his company fixes them." He was not going to remember how much like intelligence-gathering some of Saul's questions had seemed. "I did not leave his side the whole time he was here, except when he and Charles were having tea and Charles told me to run along." Not that he'd phrased it that way.

"And what did he ask the kids? And what did they tell him? It's not like you could gag him or them." Madelyn knew fully well Jean and Betsy had felt uncomfortable with Saul, having spoken to them. "This... it's all too neat, Nathan. Too simple. The world doesn't operate this way and I don't like it."

"What the hell is it with people thinking any of this is neat or simple?" Nathan demanded, more in bewilderment than out of any real anger. He got up out of his chair, moving over to the window. He wasn't going to yell at Madelyn. He wasn't on principle, because she was his friend, and specifically wasn't in this case because she'd just been away for a week trying to help him. "Haroun said the same thing to me before I left for San Francisco. If this is true, it's messy, Madelyn. Because if it's true, either Mistra did a whole lot more damage to me than I ever imagined, or I'm a hell of a lot more fucked up in the head than any of us realized." He looked around at her. "The only way any of this is simple is if he's lying to me, and the more I talk to him, the more I just don't think he is."

"You read Wanda's and my reports? On Alaska?" Madelyn replied, taking a breath and telling herself to remain calm. She'd struck a nerve, and he hadn't answered her question about Saul's interactions with the kids. "We found nothing, nothing to comfirm what you remember. Anyone who could have told us anything was gone or dead... I don't like it, Nathan. And it is simple - father turns up, conveniently tells you all you remember of your life is a lie, offers you another chance? For you, for what it says about your mind, maybe it's not that simple, but from an outside perspective? It doesn't work."

Nathan folded his arms across his chest, the gesture more protective than defensive. "So what would you suggest?" he asked, trying to ignore the tightness in his chest. "Walk away? Just because we can't be sure?" He laid down another layer of shielding on the link, just in case. "It's not as if anyone's been able to find anything to disprove what he's saying." His voice was increasingly unsteady as he went on. "And he didn't just turn up out of the blue. I would have been suspicious of that."

"I'm not asking you to walk away, Nathan, just... be careful. More than you have been. Nearly frying your own brain, inviting him here without any warning, going there on your own... All your natural caution's just been thrown out the window and if things go wrong..." She bit her lip, not wanting to guilt him, but the thought was clear: It might not be you that has to suffer the consequences.

Nathan went a little white around the lips, but his expression stayed rigidly controlled. "Point taken." It was the one thing that no one had actually come out and said to him - or thought at him - and maybe because that was the one thing they knew would... He bit his lip, hard, and turned away. Fair enough. Someone had needed to call him on it, they really had. He wasn't the only person who mattered here, and...

"It's not fair." It took him a moment to realize he'd said it aloud, and his expression crumpled, even as he struggled to keep it level. "Do you think I wanted this? Wanted to have to deal with this one way or the other... and I knew it was coming, I just knew it, as soon as you told me they found my real birth certificate." He took a deep, shaky breath, not meeting her eyes, and the words kept spilling out. "I was so terrified. I don't think I even admitted how much to myself, when I was trying to decide what to do... and then he was there, and he was so different. He wasn't like I remembered at all. And when I started to believe that maybe he was different, then I was terrified all over again because how could he not look at me and be horrified by what I've been? But he doesn't." His voice broke. "He's not running away as fast as he can, like any normal person would do if they found out their long-lost child spent the bulk of their life as a trained killer."

"I know, hon. You want this so much, he's saying all the right things, doing all the right things..." Madelyn's tone softened, but she didn't regret one second for bringing it up. "And maybe it's real. Maybe he's the perfect long-lost father, willing to start again from scratch. And maybe it's not. Maybe..." Madelyn shook her head. "You're heard all this before, I've said it before. You know this."

Back to reality. The thought was like cold water in the face, and yet it hurt, too, a dull, yearning ache laced through with bitter resentment that he managed to keep well in check. It wasn't Maddie's fault. She was right. They were all right. He was being an idiot. Wanting too much, too fast.

Being selfish. His expression wavered again, and he rubbed at his temples for a moment, wrestling it back under control. "I'll go over the reports again," he said, his voice dull. "And I won't forget I've got more significant responsibilities here." Some things were more important. He crushed the hurt down as hard as he could. They were right, he was wrong. And maybe whether Saul was telling the truth didn't matter as much as the chance that he might not be. The truth only mattered to him. The lie had implications for everyone.

Madelyn sighed. It was always down to her to be the bad guy, she who stomped on people's feelings and dreams. "I'm sorry, Nathan. I don't mean to..." Spoil it for him? It wasn't even Saul himself, it was the way Nathan himself was behaving. Like one of the kids. And there was just too much at risk for that. "I'll go. Ah, let me know if there's anything you want to ask?"

"It's all right," Nathan said, distracted enough that he was responding to her thoughts as well as what she was saying aloud. Inwardly, he was still stomping on the emotional reaction as if he was jumping up and down on it to crush it flat, but there were things that needed saying because he didn't get to send Madelyn away feeling guilty. "I don't want you to feel badly just because you reminded me of what's important here. When I chose to stay I gave up the right to think of my own wants first, and deep down I probably get that on a level that a lot of people here don't." He knew she'd know he meant the pack-based thinking patterns, because she'd known what to appeal to, to restrain him. "Thank you for everything you did last week. I'll look over the reports again and if any questions pop up you'll be the first to know. I'm just sorry there wasn't any confirmation to be had after all the effort you and Wanda put in."

"I just wish we'd had answers for you, one way or another." Madelyn shrugged a little. "It's not about me. Although the time away gave me a chance to think some things through, make some decisions, so I wouldn't call it wasted." A small smile crossed her face despite the lingering feeling of being the bad guy here, going for Nathan's buttons so effectively. Coming clean with Hank about certain things had been hard, but worth it in the end. But she pushed the thought away, not wanting to broadcast her love life at Nathan, not when his shields were so obviously slipping. "Patience, please, Nathan? There's answers out there somewhere, and we'll get to them. And if it turns out we're all being paranoid for nothing, I'll be the first to say you get to say 'I told you so'." It was a lame attempt at humour, but at least it was an attempt. Now to make her escape and go cuddle Billy until she felt like less of a bitch.

He managed an equally small smile in return, but a real one. "Well, so long as there were a few fringe benefits to the wild goose chase..." It was about as weak a joke as hers had been, but so long as they were both trying, hey. "And when it comes to patience... well, I guess this is the next phase of the lesson, no? I've finally gotten it through my head that it's all right to want the emotional attachment, but now I need to learn not to let the pendulum swing too far in the other direction." Now, convince yourself of that, Dayspring. He turned back towards her, laying a hand on her shoulder for a moment and making himself meet her eyes squarely. "I'll be all right," he told her. "And thank you. I mean that."

"Never happy in the middle, hmm?" Madelyn patted the hand on her shoulder reassuringly. "And there's no harm done, so stop with the thanking me already. It wasn't a big deal. A bit frustrating, but not the end of the world. We'll just have to think of a new tack to try." She turned towards the door, but paused halfway there. "I'm sorry, Nathan. That we started all this. Seeing you this way... I can't help but think maybe it would have been better to bury that birth certificate."

"I hope that when's all said and done and discovered that you wind up feeling differently," Nathan said very quietly. Thinking about some of the talks he and Saul had had over the weekend. "I hope we all do."