xp_logs | Nathan and Jake, Saturday afternoon

Nathan happens across Jake, who's hiding from Remy. The two of them have a talk (you get three guesses as to the subject of conversation, and the first two don't count). Nathan is reasonable, thoughtful, and asks a few questions. Jake begins to wonder if he shouldn't have taken his chances with Remy.

Getting dressings changed on burns was no fun. Absolutely no fun, Nathan thought, rather white-faced as he made his very slow way back towards the elevator, wheezing a little as he went. And he'd thought the burns he'd gotten on Youra were bad.

As he turned the corner, he saw the door to the secured X-Men area, down at the end of the hall, slide open. The person that stepped out was somewhat of a surprise. The fact that Jake was looking furtive? Not so much.

No Remy here... Hopefully he'd been duped by the trail leading out of the mansion and to Cairo. Jake had no faith that his dodging would last for long, but he hoped he could keep it up until Remy got most of his violent impulses out of his system. People could be so unreasonable. Jake sighed, glanced to the other side and froze. Oh. Damn.

Nathan paused, raising an eyebrow at the deer-in-the-headlights look he was getting. Rightfully so; he'd caught up on the mission reports from Peru and some of the associated goings-on, and if his powers hadn't still decidedly been on the fritz, he so would have been bouncing Jake around like a ping-pong ball.

"Uh. Hi," Jake tried. If he was very, very lucky, Nate still hadn't read the mission reports. Wow, Nate was really a big man, wasn't he? Jake judged his escape route to be pretty firmly blocked. "How're you doing?"

"I'm alive," Nathan said, not bothering to hide the displeasure. "Breathing on my own - which is an improvement over a few days ago. You?"

"That's good. That's... I'm good. You know. Working, and speaking of, I really have to..." Jake tried to edge away. He was a keen judge of character and that eyebrow twitch didn't bode well at all.

"You know, you're very talented, Gavin," Nathan said, almost evenly. "Most men would only be able to get involved in the inappropriate way with one person of concern to the place he's currently supposed to be helping protect. You managed two. I'm impressed."

"Yeah, you look it," Jake muttered. His life would probably be easier if he would apologize and beg on his knees to be forgiven and promise to never do it again, and all that rot, but, well, that would be a lie. "I guess Scott gave you the files, huh?"

"Not the files that you presumably came up with, but I've read the mission reports from this week. Scott was typically Scott-like and very objective about where the information came from in the first place, but we all know what he probably really thinks, don't we?" Nathan eyed Jake for a moment longer, then shrugged, a show of apathy that wasn't entirely convincing. "I don't have much room to criticize, I suppose. You may, possibly, have contributed to my, uh, accident, but I'm the one who decided to run out into traffic."

Jake paused. "I didn't do anything," he said, bemused. "I mean, not really. I shouldn't even have... well. Too late for that."

"No, you didn't do anything. You just facilitated, if I'm reading the situation right." Nathan's expression was more tired than anything else as he gazed down at Jake. "Facilitated things for two people who are far too many steps ahead of us as is. I imagine you've probably caused problems for yourself by coming up with those files even after the fact, which really makes me wonder what's really driving you here." He smiled humorlessly. "And I can't even find out for myself, because shock, my telepathy takes a while to recover after I've been psionically electrocuted."

Possibly he should just have taken his chances with Remy. "I AM a Courier, it's not something I've hidden from you all," Jake said. "Dad's letting me stay here because between shifting through tons of information here, I get to take off and do my proper job as well." He could feel himself getting agitated, and was probably one step away from waving his hands into Nate's face, which did not seem like a brilliant move at the moment. "I couldn't tell Wisdom I couldn't courier for him, that would-- Dad would kill me!"

"Just answer me one question." Sure, be a lawyer at him, Nate. See how much good that does. "If either Pete, or the murdering son of a bitch I'm ashamed to call my uncle, wound up asking you to courier something that you knew - not just thought might, but knew would hurt the school or someone in it, would you do it?"

Jake blinked. "That's a really hypothetical situation, especially now." Nate looked unimpressed. "I... I don't really know."

Nathan could almost feel his expression going colder. "Hypothetical? Why? I don't imagine you're going to stop being a courier anytime soon."

Jake gave up reigning in his hands and started waving them around. "Well, no, I meant, Wisdom's gonna find out what I did, if he doesn't already know, so someone else will end up couriering for him. Therefor, hypothetical."

"Stop waving your hands at me," Nathan said. Quietly. "Maybe you're right about Pete. Gideon, on the other hand... if he could sit across the table and tell me he basically had my wife and son killed, I doubt he's overly concerned if we know you were couriering things for him. But I suppose I should have phrased the question more generally - when your job there and your job here come into conflict, which wins?"

Jake stopped waving his hands. "My.. Well, my..." He blinked. "Most of the time I wouldn't even know if it did, you know." And he was dodging again, and he should definitely have taken his chance on Remy who'd be less likely to ask difficult personal questions.

"Did you know you were couriering for Wisdom and Faraday, when you did it?"

"...Yes."

Nathan raised an eyebrow again. "Uh-huh." He was too tired for this, he thought with an inward sigh, leaning against the wall behind him. Nice wall. "Just do yourself and the rest of us a favor and think about these things the next time a similar situation comes up. Us leather-wearing types can generally take care of ourselves, unless we chose not to, but the kids are another story."

"I will. Really." Jake tried to look sincere and not like he was pondering escape.

Nathan pushed himself away from the wall with a pained noise. "And Jake?" he said, staring slowly towards the elevator again. "I'll let Remy handle whatever the hell you were up to with Pete. But. If anything you couriered for my uncle comes back to bite me in the ass, or God forbid, you get involved with him again, we're going to have to have another talk. Of the sort that involves more hitting than talking."

"Uh-huh." Jake believed him.

"And one other thing," Nathan said, stopping and giving him a hard look. "Just in case the two of you happen to run across each other out there in the world sometime soon... Dom does not find out about what happened between me and Pete. Ever."