xp_logs | Bridge and Alison, Thursday evening

After speaking to Charles, Bridge wanders a bit in search of someone else at the mansion with whom he's always gotten on. Alison gets to hear some of the things he didn't tell Nathan.

Reading was a welcome distraction, certainly a mundane thing to be doing, in so many ways. But it was one of the many small things Alison relied upon as reminders of a previous life and as a touchstone for a normality she didn’t' seek anymore, but still tried to enjoy whenever possible. She'd done both more and less of that lately. More in trying to read, less in actually succeeding, though today was actually one of the better days, she reflected, having actually worked her way through nearly half of the book since the previous day when she'd started it.

There had been something about the slightly pained look on Nathan's face when he'd asked him where Alison might be found that made GW ever so slightly suspicious. Mostly because it reminded him of the look Nate had used to get whenever someone had asked him about Domino, those first few months after the whole kidnapping incident. So he was a little noisier than he would have been, coming up towards the open door to the reading room one of the students he'd flagged down in the hall had pointed out. He even cleared his throat, several steps away.

"You made noise all the way coming down the hallway," Alison remarked idly, slipping the bookmark from between the back cover and last page and setting it in the book before closing it. Her soundscape had gotten particular in the past few weeks, marked by the way 'those who knew something' walked up to her, compared to 'those who didn't' know something. And noisy wasn't GW's normal walk. She did not, however, assume he knew anything more than well… something.

Nathan wouldn't have told. She rose to her feet to greet him properly. "How's Lien doing?" she asked, which tended to be the regular question now when Lien herself wasn't present, whenever they met.

GW took her hand gently, the look he gave her assessing but not intrusively so. "Calmer than she was a few days ago," he said. "I had to talk her out of storming a certain hotel in New York and killing Nathan's father. In fact," he said a bit dryly, releasing Alison's hand and moving to sit down across from her as she settled back into her chair, "I had to talk a number of people out of doing that. Ani and Ian were having one of those ostentatiously loud conversations about slow dismemberment."

"Yeah," she murmured, sitting down with something of a wry grin on her face, briefly so. "I think skipping those is a good thing. Nathan's still ambivalent, under it all. Getting a double set of signals he's not sorted out yet." Because his father was nuts if you asked Alison, but pushing right now wouldn't… help. Somehow. "He needs a bit more time to sort things out I think." Her lips quirked, just a bit. "Rachel helps. Baby therapy. Heh."

"She's beautiful, isn't she?" GW said softly, smiling a little. "Not that I didn't expect her to be." He relaxed back into the chair, eyeing her for a long moment. No, he decided, he wasn't going to push. If it had been something that could be shared, Nathan would have told him. And while he and Alison had always gotten along, they weren't really close, per se. "So I just came from a rather lengthy conversation with Nathan and Charles," he said, lightly.

"She's very pretty," and since someone was bound to rat her out soon, "and babies terrify me utterly." It was said cheerfully enough, at least. She recognized the assessing look, just as she did the minute signs of relaxing and not pushing. Relaxing herself, she gave him a curious look. "Charles too? You have something to share, don't you?"

GW nodded. "Need to go dig up LeBeau before I leave," he said, "make sure he's clear on what we're proposing to do, see if he can help out at all. Nathan couldn't tell me much about what sources he had in Africa, but then, Nate never had much of a head for intel. That was always my job." And was he trying to put off telling her, or what? There was part of him that was still a little sheepish about the whole thing. It sounded... odd. However right it felt. "This possible network of training camps in Africa? The one that Dom got wind of when she was looking into the one in Chad?"

Attention sharpening at that, Alison nodded slowly, a bit bemused at GW's odd reaction. "Yeah, I remember those just a bit," she said, with a light touch of irony to her voice. "We couldn’t even begin to scratch the surface while we were there, just the one camp we already knew enough about to go after…"

"You won't have to," GW said quietly. "We'll be looking after that situation for now. Looking into it, rather." He smiled a bit whimsically. "Talked to the others. We decided that this was a far better and more productive way to spend our times than plotting ways to off Nate's psychotic family."

Alison raised an eyebrow a bit at that, smiling just a touch. "That sounds like something more than just the odd job, somehow." She leaned back in the sofa, reaching up to tug her blouse back into place absently.

"It... well, it's a very involved job, or it will be, most likely," GW muttered. Women and their knowing looks. "But it's..." He stopped, sighing. "It's Nate. And Mick, and Ani, and Ian... and Tim, for all that I never got to meet him without his conditioning. And hell," he said with a sigh, "it's Dom, and Theo, and Vasily, and Mina and David for all that their stories aren't quite as nasty as the others. My mutant friends and how the world has screwed them over. I'm sick of it," he said, some vehemence slipping into his voice again. "I'm sick of feeling ashamed of the human race for the things they do to the people whose genes have been given a twist or two."

"Sounds like any person wanting to stick up for their friends, to me." The absence of the word 'mutant' was on purpose, Alison's take on being a human who was simply able to do that little thing more still very much present. "You have nothing to be ashamed of, you know. It works both ways. People who happen to be mutants aren't all good or all bad. And people who happen to not be mutant are the same. And black people, and Asians, and..." She ducked her head a bit, shaking her head, remembering the speech she'd made so long ago, yet not, when coming out as a mutant. "We're all the same. And you're a good friend to have, you know?"

GW smiled a her. "I just... can't sit by the sea in Tunis and think about things anymore," he said softly. "Although I suspect all the sitting by the sea is partially responsible for this in the first place," he confessed, after a moment. "It's been... a very hectic eight years, you know. Very little time to stop and think. But now I can... now we all can, and I think coming to the conclusion that our lives could be going in a better direction has been coming for a while now. For all of us."

A small grin still etched on her face, Alison nodded. "I think I'll be looking forward to hearing about it, if you don't mind keeping me updated." She'd never, ever asked that of him before. Personal details about him and the others, yes - about Mick at the time, too - but never workwise.

But things seemed to be changing, now, really. And now she could ask.