xp_logs | Truths My Father Told Me (Nathan, Saul, Gideon)

Nathan, still somewhat euphoric, heads into New York to meet his father for lunch and show off baby pictures. That is, after all, the sort of thing that new fathers do. Saul is very appreciative. Then the third and unexpected member of their party arrives, and Nathan is introduced.

To his Uncle Gideon.

Things go downhill from there.

Saul did definitely seem to like seeing the city from on high, Nathan thought, walking out of the elevator on the forty-seventh floor of the Marriott. The restaurant - hell, it was even called 'the View' - was revolving, something that had provoked a slightly disbelieving laugh from him when he'd been on the phone with Saul making plans for today. Saul had merely chuckled and told him that "the food's apparently marvelous, son, so indulge me." The hotel overlooked Times Square, and the restaurant was considerably more busy than the one in Saul's hotel had been last week.

Nathan let the waiter lead him over to where Saul was sitting - at a table for four, rather than two, oddly, midway between the windows and the door. "I brought pictures," he said with a grin, sitting down after greeting his father. "I swear she was posing for the camera."

Saul's exuberance was obvious, as the big man clasped his hands in excitement. "My granddaughter just couldn't wait to enter the world, to get out and seize the day. Ah, she's a Morrow, for certain." His unanswered laugh cut off shortly, as he managed a weak smile, composing himself. "Or a Dayspring, as you'd have it now. Regardless, I'm certain she is indeed a wonder."

Maybe he wouldn't mention the whole Kinross thing just yet. "Everything went just fine," he said, still smiling, although he had told Saul as much on the phone. "Moira's a little tired, still, but I think there's a whole host of people taking over waiting on her hand and foot during my temporary absence." He took the envelope of pictures out and handed them to Saul. "She looks a little indignant in the first few," he said, grinning rather helplessly. "But then, like I said, the posing..."

Saul smirked at the first few photos, fanning them out on the table. Quietly, he observed them, giving a quiet chuckle when his eyes would pass over Rachel making one of the many 'baby faces' that she was prone to. "She definitely has her mother's hair," he finally said with a smile. "and your attitude. You were easily as mercurial in your moods when you were born."

"Just as he was as a teenager, I'm sure you haven't forgotten," a voice cut through the conversation, a wry undertone to each word. Having come up from behind Nathan, Gideon then moved that one last step allowing him to rest a hand on Saul's shoulder. "Good evening, Saul. I see the baby pictures have already made an appearance." Glancing down at them for a moment, he raised an eyebrow slightly, then claimed the chair besides Saul with a certain careless grace, idly accepting the menu the waiter hurriedly brought over only to set it on the table to rest with the two others already there.

It was as if someone had turned him to stone. Nathan sat there, his smile gone, staring at Gideon, nothing even approaching a coherent thought in his mind. Just shock.

Gideon. Was here. And...

After a moment that could have been an eternity, he managed to shift his gaze, back to his father, who was gazing back at him calmly. His voice, however, did not make a miraculous return.

"Gideon," Saul said calmly, "you've met Nathan, I presume. Although I believe some appropriate introductions should be made nonetheless. Nathan Dayspring, meet my older brother, your uncle, Gideon Morrow. I don't recommend the lobster in this heat, by the way." Saul's face was impassive, as if he were either totally unaware or unconcerned with the nature of Nathan and Gideon's acquaintance.

"We have indeed met. Nathan." The remark about heat drew one of those bladed smiles from Gideon, aimed directly at Nathan before it faded away as quickly as it had appeared. "Well, the seared North Atlantic salmon has always been exquisite here," Gideon murmured, without the slightest of emphasis on the word 'seared'.

Uncle. Uncle. Nathan watched his hand reach out, close around the water glass, only very slightly white-knuckled. He raised it to his lips, took a sip. His brain, after that total and complete stall, was slowly beginning to work again, process the tactical situation.

Which was bad. Very, very, bad. The memory of how casually Gideon had destroyed that hotel in Chad, using his telekinesis, came right back, of course, and Nathan swallowed. "I hadn't realized we were going to have company," he said to Saul, his voice a bit faint. Part of him wanted those pictures off the table. Now. Or to have never brought them in the first place... oh, fuck, what I have done...

"Yes, well," Saul casually wiped down his water glass with his napkin, taking a long sip, "since our family has grown in the last week, I decided that it would be a good time to introduce you to your other surviving relative. And since Gideon let me know he was in New York this week, I arranged to extend my work here for a few days."

Nathan looked at Gideon, letting his perceptions slide down to see if - of course he was synched to his powers already, he thought dimly, even before he saw the visual evidence. It only made sense. Deterrent and all.

"Well. I walked right into this, didn't I?" He made himself take another sip of his water. His hand wasn't quite steady, and he could hear his heart pounding in his ears. Somehow, though, he was managing an almost conversational tone. Old habits died hard. "There are going to be... a number of people back at the mansion lining up to tell me they told me so."

"Considering none of them are the long term precognitives, that would be a mite arrogant of them." It didn't sound as though Gideon thought that arrogance was bad thing, however - still, as a fact it was worth stating. "You should try the goat cheese terrine as an entrée. Quite good," he added urbanely, as the waiter wandered by to take their orders, apparently immune to whatever was going on at the table.

Saul stared at his water glass, turning it slowly in his fingers, not looking at either his son or his brother. "You're angry with me," he finally said to Nathan, "you're disappointed and I don't have to be a telepath to pick up on that. Right now you're probably feeling trapped, betrayed, and more than a little paranoid."

Glancing up, Saul tapped his fingers on the tabletop, one at a time, a slow drumbeat, ten counts before continuing. "Given your lifestyle, Nathan, I can expect a degree of paranoia. All I offered you was openness, an honest sharing of anything I can tell you." He motioned to Gideon, and then let his hand rest on the pile of photographs of Rachel. "This is no lie, Nathan. No betrayal. This is family."

Nathan stared at Gideon for a moment, and then looked back at Saul. "Do you know the sort of thing he's involved in?" He managed to keep his voice level. "Wait, what am I saying. If you know we met in Chad, of course you do. Honesty?" He made himself take another sip of his water. "You sat across from me a week ago and told me you ran your company ethically."

"Don't compare Samara to Eris, Nathan," Saul snapped, his hands shaking momentarily. "Everything I engage in, as I told you, is fully above board. Gideon and I keep our business interests separate, to avoid any such conflicts of interest. Isn't that right?" he said, finally looking at his brother, muttering "and your tie is ridiculous..." under his breath.

"It's a fine tie," was the serene reply, Gideon his brother an amused look. "Esther would have liked it. And for all that we keep our business interests separate, I do believe the general business philosophy remains the same," he added archly.

"Philosophy..." Nathan's eyes unfocused as Askani shifted in the back of his mind with a suppressed cry of helpless rage. Gideon had her checkmated, too, he thought dimly. "So," he said to his father, "you approve of what he was doing in Chad?" The faces of the children in the camp flickered through his mind, and his jaw clenched. "It's no different from what was done to me. You realize that."

Saul's expression passed from uncomfortable to a sort of shocked bemusement, as if his son was a child who had just informed him that yes, the stove was hot. "And which part would that be, Nathan?" he asked. "The use of mutant children as soldiers? The de-socialization exercises? The pack mentality? Loathsome idea, that." Saul rattled off the factors as if from memory, information that Nathan knew wouldn't have been in any file the FBI had shown him.

"Environmental adaptability training? Teaching them - you - survival? Taking a mass of nascent potential and putting them to the test, separating the wheat from the chaff, the weak from the strong? No, my son, there is one scintillating difference between what was done to them and what was done to you."

Saul's eyes practically sparkled with revelation. "You were a success."

Nathan looked up at him, unable to find his voice again for a long moment. It was hard... nearly impossible to keep any kind of a neutral expression on his face. It was too much, Saul knew too much. How could he, how...

"You knew."

"Of course we did," Gideon replied, as though speaking to a child slow in understanding something very simple. "How could we not?" Giving Saul a sidelong look for a moment, Gideon's expression shuttered slightly and he pushed his chair back, a few inches. The show was Saul's now, as far as he was concerned.

"Mistra was not our brainchild," Saul corrected, returning his brother's glance, "yet it fit our philosophy quite well. Taking such potential, molding it, refining it... yes, there was pain - but does the iron mourn the flames that forge it into steel? Nor should you, Nathan." He took a casual drink of his water. "I told you the truth when I said that the things you went through - they pain me. I am your father, how could they not? But to make you into the man you are today... as I've told you, I couldn't be more proud."

"They made me," Nathan said in a low voice that was almost, if not quite, a snarl, "an attack dog. An animal." Some of the patrons at surrounding tables were beginning to notice that there was a little bit too much tension in the conversation; Nathan directed their minds away without thinking, automatically. Don't see. "Me being a tool, without free will - that fit your philosophy?" His eyes shifted to Gideon for a moment, and for a moment he was wrestling with rage that he knew wasn't entirely his. "I saw enough in his mind in Chad to know what he is. What both of you are, I suppose. The logic is escaping me, here."

"An animal?" Saul's mouth quirked in a smile. "A tool? A machine? Is that what you are? Certainly it is what they would have made you, but you proved stronger? Like I knew you were capable of, son. You're no animal. You're a man, Nathan." Slowly, he collected the photos of Rachel, selecting one and sliding it into his pocket before handing the rest across the table. "A complete one, now."

"After twenty-five years." Nathan made himself pick up the pictures, slip them back into his pocket. "After sixteen years of doing what they told me, of..." He bit the rest of it off brutally. Not going to lose it here. "How did you know?" he demanded, his voice hoarse. "Were you--" His gaze shifted back to Gideon. "Were you collecting information on mutants even back then?"

"We all were," Saul interjected. "Gideon, Esther, myself. The rest of the project heads as well, Nicodemus, Ishmael - although they abandoned the project before we made the move to Alaska. Pity, really, we'd made such advances." Saul stopped, turning his hands palm-up in a gesture of supplication. "Look around you, Nathan," he insisted. "Look at these people. They go through their lives, unappreciative of the things they take for granted. Like ciphers in the system, just cogs in a machine. But you..." He pointed a finger at his son, voice filling with confidence like a revival preacher, "you know what it's like to truly live, to savor every moment, to seize life by the throat and make it yours. THAT has been my gift to you, Nathan Christopher Morrow. THAT has been your inheritance. I'm sorry that you question the manner in which I provide it, but it is yours nonetheless."

"And how many people," Gideon said in an almost meditative tone of voice, "can lay claim to that?" Leaning back in his chair he steepled his hands and nodded to himself slightly, as though coming to a conclusion of some sort. "Like it or not, Nathan, the decisions we've made and the situations that you have been exposed to, have lived through where most would have been killed or would have given up from sheer grief or despair, most certainly have all contributed to shape you into the man you are, today." He paused, for a moment. "We have contributed to shape you into the man you are now." His voice acquired a hint of coolness to it though, and he regarded Nathan through slightly narrowed eyes.

Nathan looked from Saul to Gideon and then back again. "So how much of it was true?" he asked his father tightly. Trying to focus. The lines of force were shifting around Gideon, enough to tell Nathan that his uncle was ready to counter him, whatever move he might make. "What you tried to tell me, about how my childhood wasn't what I thought it was. About how I left."

"How many ways can I say it, Nathan?" Saul asked, voice tense with the beginnings of impatience, "I have not lied to you, not now, not then. We did not fight, and you left in the middle of the night. I never knew where you went, I intentionally sequestered that information from myself and your mother, for fear of tempting us to locate you. To take you back into our arms, to satisfy our selfish desire to raise you in comfort. Instead, Gideon watched over you, from the moment you left us until the moment you returned."

Saul finally smiled, placing a hand on his brother's arm and squeezing gently. "He took that burden, so that I would not have to."

The angry, snarling part of him wanted to say something about what a model of fatherhood Saul was, but too much of the rest of him was still in shock, still frozen. "Was that all you did?" he said, to Gideon this time. "Watched? How did you even know what to watch? Mistra at that time was beyond black. The only outside group that knew anything was..." He froze. VULCAN, the think-tank that had consulted on the program's set-up. What better place for an information-broker...

Oh, fuck. This just got worse and worse...

"Yes." Gideon tilted his head to the side briefly at that, a quick gesture that was accompanied by a slight smile, short lived as all of them seemed to be. "That was an interesting experiment, there. Of course, the people who attempted to run it were flawed, leading to critical errors in the program itself, but that was unavoidable, really. It still served our purpose... admirably well."

Saul nodded, then turned to Nathan. "Son, you have to trust me. The experiences and trials you have undergone, they are what forged you into the man you are today. Until you accept them, you cannot truly accept yourself. I know it's hard - at my age, I still struggle." Saul cocked his head, looking genuinely paternal and concerned. "You must come to terms with these truths, for yourself, for your daughter."

Only the suspicion that Gideon would stop him kept him from reaching across the table and just... Nathan swallowed, his hands clenching and unclenching under the edge of the table. "While we're on the subject of truth," he said slowly, "and families..." He looked at Gideon, stared hard at the telekinetic lines of force surrounding him, processing the pattern. "If you watched me, all those years, maybe you can answer a question for me. I never understood how they found me. When I ran. How they found my family."

Saul's smile vanished. Glancing back and forth between his son and his brother, he finally spoke to Gideon. "Answer him." A moment or two passed, with Gideon still staring at Nathan, absolutely emotionless and cold. Finally, Saul shrugged, spreading his hands in an apologetic gesture.

"You have to understand, Nathan. Aliya and Tyler... you loved them. But you were not ready. It wasn't the right time, and sacrifices had to be made." He turned to Gideon, eyes cold. "Tell him, Gideon. He needs to hear it."

"It is simple enough a concept," Gideon said, expression remote and closed, "the most elementary of all, really." He brushed at the sleeve of his suit, lightly, flecking away an imaginary speck of dust. "Had it been the right time, they would have survived. And that she never even thought to verify the security of the location spoke volumes as to her... suitability. Informing Mistra of her location was obviously, as such, the right decision to make at the time."

The last word was barely out of Gideon's mouth when Nathan was moving. Up out of his chair, his mind lashing out with ruthless precision and blocking Gideon's half-formed telekinetic response. Patterns in light, all of it, just patterns, and he saw how they were going to shift the instant they began - saw, and countered it.

Gideon might be an accomplished powers thief, but he hadn't been trained by the Askani.

The restaurant wasn't large. Five running steps and he was crashing through the glass of the window, ignoring the screams from restaurant patrons waking suddenly from their telepathically-induced ignorance.

Quiet words following him though on his fall, the broken glass trailing after him twinkling almost merrily with reflected light.

#Rest assured, nephew, that we have no designs on your place of residence.# A brief, open minded moment, sharing one single thread of thought and belief. #It is far too interesting a long term project to not watch develop on its own. Especially since you're been added to the equation.# The presence withdrew at that, leaving behind no sense of itself at all.

He didn't manage to break his fall completely. Ninety-five percent of the way or thereabouts, enough that he only hit the ground at the same speed as if he'd jumped out of a second or third story window. The impact briefly knocked the breath out of him, but he rolled back to his feet before he got it back, ignoring the reactions from the passers-by in Times Square who'd just seen a man fall out of the sky.

Hadn't blown the window before he'd hit it; there were cuts all over his arms. At least he'd managed to shield his face. Wheezing, staggering a little, Nathan forced himself to run.

Distance. Distance now would be a good thing.

Saul kept his back to the window, simply listening as the patrons began returning to their seats, the noises of the restaurant returning to normal as Gideon began restructuring memories as easily as the shattered window. Attention was not something either of them craved, and he wondered where exactly his son had acquired such a sense of ... drama.

As the waiter approached, still bearing a slightly poleaxed look, Saul glanced upwards, his furrowed brow the only show of his frustration.

"Separate checks, please."

(OOC: Huge, huge thanks to Willow and Nute for socking Gideon and Saul. I think this was very close to the most fun I've ever had in the game. I still maintain that they're the incarnations of pure evil, though.)