xp_logs | Welcome To The Fallout (Nathan, Haroun, Jean)

Sunday afternoon, Nathan runs into Haroun, who hasn't glanced at the team board yet today. Haroun's response to the news is not altogether unexpected, but it doesn't meet with much enthusiasm from Nathan's direction.

He suspected that he wouldn't have been coping with this at all had it not be for the small, squealing, red-haired person who needed him to keep it together and the bigger red-haired person who was liable to take one of her rifles and go hunting for her paternal in-laws if he didn't. Spending some time with Rachel this morning as he and Moira continued to introduce her to the concept of 'bath' had helped, Nathan thought, leaning his head against the edge of the railing. Then she'd gone nicely to sleep, and Moira had laid down to do some reading... and he'd promised to get some fresh air and come back soon.

Only now he was sitting on the back porch steps and not really wanting to move again. It was catching up to him again, Nathan thought distantly. It seemed to, whenever he let himself think about it for more than a moment at a time. Like he was still in shock, and whenever he let himself remember that... boom, semi-functional Nathan.

Haroun touched down in the back yard with a wild grin on his face. "Hey, Nathan!" he said cheerfully, walking over to the big man. "How's life treating you these days?" he asked, plopping himself down on the bench. "What a glorious day. Sky was just so nice I couldn't help myself." he said, taking his shirt out from where he tucked it into the waistband of his shorts and shrugging into it.

"Is that a trick question?" What, had Haroun not read the team board yet today?

"Hadn't intended it as such, no." he said with a puzzled look. Then he actually looked at his friend, and sighed. "All right, who peed in your cornflakes?" he asked with an amused snort. "You look like crap, man."

Okay, so apparently he hasn't. Nathan didn't look at him, just reached out and yanked the sleeves of the long-sleeved, if light shirt he was wearing up. He'd picked it deliberately, not wanting anyone to spot the copious numbers of bandages covering the glass cuts on his arms. "That lunch I had with my father in town yesterday," he said slowly, "ended with me throwing myself out a forty-seventh story window."

Haroun quirked both his eyebrows. "Even for you, that's a new low." he said. "Do you normally end family gatherings by diving out the window? And why didn't you telekinetically blow it first so you didn't cut yourself to ribbons like that? Sloppy, old man, damned sloppy."

"I was a little distracted. By my uncle. Did I mention that Saul brought along my uncle so I could meet him?" Nathan pulled his sleeves back down. "Except I already had."

"Oh joy. More family for you." he deadpanned. "At the rate you're going, your second cousin is going to be Satan Himself." he chuckled. "And you've already met him? Where?"

"Philadelphia. And Chad." He was suddenly bitterly resentful that he was having to go through this for Haroun separately.

"Chad? Wait. Are you saying that your uncle is that big bastard that happily let you suffocate yourself and spanked our entire team?" he said incredulously. "Damn, Nathan, what IS it about your family? Quit hogging all the good genes, save some for the rest of us!"

Nathan methodically laid down another layer of shields over the link with Moira and the thinner, but steadily increasing one with Rachel. "Gideon Faraday is actually Gideon Morrow, yes. And I'm glad you're finding this vaguely amusing, Haroun, because I'm really not."

"Hey, getting all bent about it's not going to help anything. But damn. Guess we'll have to update the threat files and get Intel cranking on that bastard. Presuming, of course, that you want him taken out?"

"Take him out? For what?" Nathan looked up at him, his expression pale and set. "For defending himself when Remy and I broke into his office? Or when I attacked him at that hotel? Or maybe for selling information, most of which is probably publicly accessible. That definitely counts as criminal behavior, doesn't it?"

"Multiple assault and battery extending from Chad? Attempted murder?" he suggested. "And I'm not talking about going through the courts and sending him to jail." he said meaningfully.

He couldn't get a grasp on the niceties of the situation, legal or otherwise. Ironic, all things considered. But nothing in the way of concrete plans would form in his mind, and he knew why, of course, knew that it was because...

"They're why I was at Mistra," Nathan said, his voice clipped. Might as well tell him the rest of it. "Gideon worked for a think tank in New Mexico that consulted on the project when it was set up."

"That sounds like as good of a death sentence as any," Haroun said calmly. "You want me to take care of it, or do you want to pull the trigger yourself?"

Nathan picked at the end of a bandage extending out from beneath the edge of his shirt. Simple answers. Of course Haroun would go for the simple answers. "And when I ran," he went on slowly, as if he hadn't heard, "Gideon told Mistra where my wife and son were."

Haroun whistled. "So this guy's behind just about all the shit in your life ... since ever." he said. "Good enough for me. He needs to go, to pay for his crimes. Do we have any idea of the guy's limits, power-wise? His durability, his stamina, his ability to withstand damage?" he asked quietly, so that the kids playing nearby would not overhear.

"No." Nathan stared out flatly at the kids. "This is what he wants, I think. This is why I know, now, when I didn't before." Saul's motivations were one thing, but Gideon's... he suspected there was a difference there. Subtle, maybe, but important. "He wants to see what we do. The school, the X-Men... he's fascinated, we're just another social experiment. Ball's in our court. He won't come after us."

"Then let's take the ball and run with it! Fifty-cal from a mile off, get him while he sips his morning tea. Bomb in the car, get him on his morning commute. Find out what he likes to eat and where, then switch a server and poison him. Ground glass in his creme brulee or whatever. Find his family, bleed them, take their heads. Gas leaks were an old favorite of mine."

"No." It shocked him that he meant that, but as soon as it was out of his mouth, Nathan knew that he did. "I am not," he said, his voice low and suddenly shaking, "going to turn back into what I was just because he... and Saul..." His voice broke, but he forced himself to go on. "I'm not going to play their game. And neither is anyone else here, not on my behalf. Not unless he comes after us. We're supposed to be better than that. I won't be what they made me." His hands were shaking hard, and he clenched them into fists, trying to slow down his breathing. "I'm not theirs. I'm not."

"You're better than that," Haroun said flatly. "Me? I got no problem with that. Guy's gonna keep coming, you know that, right? He's going to poke you and prod you and everything you care about - everything you love - is under the crosshairs. You got a family now, man! You don't want to take the shot, that's fine. Keep your hands clean. Let me take the shot. He's begging us to, I say we indulge him! But if we leave him out there, if we don't put him out of sanction, then someone here is going to die. Or worse. Which one do you want to sacrifice on the altar of high ideals, Nathan? Moira? Rachel? Yourself? Charles? Amanda? Who's it gonna be - who goes down when your family takes their next shot?"

"You think this is just because I don't want to get my hands dirty?" Nathan got up. "I don't know what to do, but... it's not that." His precognition was nagging at him, the patterns spinning in his mind, and he knew vaguely that this was all about foundation stones, that Gideon and Saul and what they stood for was one, but so was this place and the people around him now. They would do as much damage to their own cause by not standing fast. "If we crumble, he wins. Slippery slope," Nathan said, the look in his eyes blank as he looked briefly in Haroun's direction. "I can't think. I see what I see, but I can't..." He closed his eyes, as if trying to shut out the world, just for a moment. Reduce the input, from all his senses. "I can't even be angry," he said more quietly, sounding a little more like himself. "Because if I let myself feel it, I'd never stop."

Haroun thought fast. "Take a step back. Go play with your daughter, take your wife to bed. Let it go for twenty-four hours or so. Don't try to make a decision now, when you're all bent. It's not critical that you make that call right here, right now. So ... walk away. Go climb a cliff or something, do whatever it is that you do to relax."

Nathan rubbed at his temples for a moment, unaware that his expression was slipping, that shattered, devastated look he'd seen looking back at him from the mirror yesterday taking shape on his features. "I told Moira I'd come back upstairs... they're safe here. Now. They are." Nathan started to move back towards the door leading inside.

"Exactly. We've got the will and the means to keep them all safe." he called to Nathan's back. "Don't lose sight of that!"

--

A little later, Jean follows up on her decision from last night and comes upstairs to check on Nathan. She is horrified to find out what happens, but manages to master the homicidal urges and offers a few words of wisdom.

Jean was not exactly scowling as she headed down the hallway, but the knowledge that Something Was Up with Nathan and that, unsurprisingly, it involved his father was guaranteed to put a quash to anything like a smile. The fact that he was clearly hiding out, having missed yet more of their practices, didn't improve the chances that whatever was going on would not make her want to hunt Saul Morrow down and make him suffer.

But it was too important to keep her mind under something resembling control, especially since going to find Nate meant going to his rooms, and upsetting Rachel was not acceptable. Jean kept her thoughts locked up as much as she could as she approached his door, and settled herself into a calming pattern before knocking.

Nathan was sitting on the couch, scribbling with a sort of dogged determination in his paper journal. Jack would be here tomorrow, and he wanted to have thoughts, impressions... something coherent to show him when he did.

He looked up at the knock on the door, noting the familiar presence, and sighed. #Come in, Jean,# he sent, his eyes flickering to the closed door of the nursery. Rachel was sleeping in there. Moira was still napping in the bedroom.

The door was opened and closed softly, and Jean leaned back against it to get a good look at Nathan. "Hello. How are you?" It didn't seem like the right question, but it would have to do.

Nathan tried to muster a smile. "Lousy," he said, keeping his voice down. "Come on in. I was just..." He stared down at the journal, then shook his head, closing it and leaning forward to set it on the coffee table. "Rambling."

"Feel free to kick me out if I'm intruding," Jean offered as she took a seat across from him. "Alternatively, want to ramble out loud?"

He looked at her for a moment, assessing. "Did Scott tell you what happened?" he asked quietly.

"Only in the vaguest of vague terms. Not even enough to justify potential homicidal urges towards your father." Although she had gotten the sense that she was not the only one in the mansion harboring such, which made it likely that whenever she did know what had happened she'd have an excuse for them.

Nathan shifted on the couch, rubbing his jaw. He was feeling sick and shaky, still, and he didn't know whether or not he could go through it all for Jean. In fact, he was fairly sure that he couldn't. Even telling Haroun had been... "You were all right," he said, his voice soft and hoarse. "Shouldn't have trusted him in the first place."

"Hey," Jean's voice softened, "I completely fail to be here to say 'I told you so'. I came to see how you were doing, and if there was anything I could do to help."

Nathan swallowed, unable to meet her eyes for a moment. Then, just as he'd done with Haroun, he pulled the sleeves of his shirt upwards, revealing the bandages. "Went through a window," he said a bit dully. "On the forty-seventh floor."

Really, it said something worrying about the school when she saw enough bandages to be able to tell at a glance which doctor had wrapped somebody up. But Madelyn did do good work. "Can I ask what propted your abrupt departure?"

Nathan was quiet for a long moment. "My uncle telling me he'd told Mistra where to find my family nine years ago," he said. They had shared enough mind-to-mind contact that Jean knew about Aliya and Tyler.

Because of the straightforward simplicity of the way he said it, it took Jean a few seconds to process exactly what Nathan meant, but even before the shock quite wore off she was already locking her mind down, shoving the knowledge away to be dealt with later when she had the luxury of destroying something. "Oh, God, Nathan..."

Nathan reached out with a shaking hand and took hers, opening his mind so that she could see the conversation if she wanted. He couldn't explain. Not again, not even to her.

Jean took his hand, glancing through the memories in a few seconds, trying to contain her shock at the offhandedness of Saul's casual cruelty. She tried to speak, but there were no words, so instead she simply held on to Nathan's hand for a moment, giving him all of the sympathy and understanding she had.

"He believes it," Nathan said very softly, "completely. That it was worth it because of what I am now. He's proud of me. And the damned thing is, Jean, he really means it. I could see that much."

"There is much to be proud of," she said, "you survived and escaped and have grown. But his methods..." She trailed off, not wanting to think too hard about what he had allowed to happen to his son.

"I want to be sick just thinking about it." He kept his voice low, running over calming patterns in his mind repeatedly. He wasn't waking up either sleeping beauty. Just wasn't. "But if I let myself really react... I don't think I could handle it."

"I know. But sooner or later you're going to have to. Not now, not by any stretch of the imagination, but... sometime."

"Do you know..." His voice broke and he stopped, swallowing. "Do you know how hard I've worked, trying to get through everything that's wrong in this fucked-up head of mine because of Mistra? Therapy sessions with the actual therapist every week for better than a year. Sessions twice a week with Charles that believe me, weren't just telepathy practice." Nathan took a shaky breath. "Facing my fears, helping slay the dragon... and twenty minutes in a restaurant and it's like it's all back in here again." He raised a shaking hand to his temple. "Everything I got out. All back."

"Some of that's the shock, Nathan. Now you know something you didn't before, and you have to find where that knowledge fits into who you are now, how it affects who you want to become. And it's going to take time, but I have faith in you, and you know we're all here for you."

Nathan gave her a wan smile. "Everything I was, and am... it doesn't make sense anymore. I don't know what to believe." That was the hardest part of all of this. All of the foundations of what he knew had been blown to pieces in the course of one afternoon, and in the wake of it, he wasn't sure... just wasn't sure what... Nathan bit his lip, taking another shaky breath and looking away. "I hate them," he said wretchedly. "Both of them."

That Jean could understand - the loss of self, the confusion, but... "You are who you are, Nate. It gets neither simpler nor more complicated than that. And I doubt any would begrudge your right to hate them. Certainly no one who cares about you."

"I just..." It was hard to breathe, again, as if someone was closing a vice around his chest, but he held stubbornly to the shields on the links. "They thought they were giving me something," he finally said. "Understanding, an appreciation of how they saw me... but it's like they took something away, instead..."

Jean's fine control was still not what it could be, and completely covering his mental presence would be more alarming than not, but she could and did lend strength to his shields, relieving some of the pressure on his mind. "There aren't words enough to explain just how wrong they have been, and I think even if we had the words they would not listen."

Nathan closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on breathing, staying calm. "I wanted... so much, for it all to be true. That I was loved, that it was all some horrible accident of fate, winding up at Mistra..."

"I know, and I know it's not the same, but take comfort in the knowledge that you are loved now." Jean pressed his hand between her own.