xp_logs | Nathan, late Monday night

Nathan's up very late, feeling a little maudlin and more than a little drunk. His hallucinations keep him company.

"Two visits in one night, after a few months of being all neglectful. I know. It's overcompensation."

Nathan sighed and managed to sit down with some dignity, instead of collapsing on the grass. It took some doing. After meeting Madelyn up here for a few quiet minutes and a little reminiscing about Mick, he'd headed down to Harry's and managed to catch Cain for beers eight and nine. He himself had indulged in beers one and two, so he was more than a little tipsy at the moment.

He wasn't sure why he'd come back up to the memorial stone, instead of heading inside when he and Cain had parted at the boathouse. His head was fuzzy, and the Askani felt odd. Have you been going visiting? he asked, and got no response. There was definitely something up with them these days.

"I suppose you would have laughed at flowers, or something," he said to the memorial stone. "Well, you would have, Tim. Mick, you just would have given me one of those perplexed looks." Oh, so this was why he'd doubled back. He'd wanted to be able to talk to his dead friends in peace without people wondering if he'd cracked.

Or did people talk to gravestones, generally? "After all," he said aloud, very precisely, "if you can't raise the dead how else do you talk to them? Logic!"

"You're drunk, D."

Nathan blinked as Tim sat down beside him. "Well, no shit," he said amiably. "Two beers. Remember, no alcohol tolerance for me anymore." Tim merely grinned, arching an eyebrow at him. "Don't make fun of your elders," Nathan said severely.

"But it's such easy fun."

Nathan looked around him with exaggerated care, and then turned his head to the right. Nope, no one there. "Just you?"

"What, you're not satisfied with the single hallucination?"

"Oh, pish." Had he just used the word pish? "Single hallucinations are old hat. Dull."

"Dull. Well, love you too, old man." Tim studied at him thoughtfully. "I thought you might have brought the munchkin up at some point this evening."

"Next March," Nathan promised a bit hazily. "And 'munchkin'?"

"I am a projection of your subconscious, Nate. But I also think it's cute." Tim tilted his head at him. "Why next March?"

"Because then it's a year. And I think that's more..." Nathan took a deep breath and drawled the next words out. "... socially acceptable an anniversary. More traditional. Rather than just remembering that it's been six months because..."

He trailed off, confused, and Tim gazed at him, his expression far more patient that Tim's expression should be. Maybe being dead was mellowing him.

"Jack tells me these things don't go in straight lines," Nathan muttered. "That it's not normal if they do. And I wasn't brooding and getting drunk with Cain because I'm feeling bad about myself. I just..."

"Miss us?"

"Miss you," Nathan said more softly. "All of you."

"But life goes on."

"Yes, it does." Nathan reached out and picked up the small box Haroun had left there at the base of the memorial stone six months ago. Metal, so that it wouldn't be affected by the elements. He opened it, and the two sets of X-Men collar tabs winked up at him in the moonlight. "In another life," he murmured. "You think?"

"What, you think Summers would have put up with three of us? His head would have exploded." Tim smiled. "Alison, on the other hand..."

Nathan couldn't help a smile. "Quite possibly there would have been exploding heads. Messy, that. But I think it could have worked," he said, thinking of Ani and the others, in Africa with the Pack doing something that Mick and Tim and every single one of the friends who'd died six months ago today would have applauded. "And it would have been fun."

"Different lives, then. It doesn't always hurt to consider what might have been."

Nathan closed the box and set it back down where it belonged, patting it clumsily. "I'm a little drunk," he said with as much dignity as he could. "I think I need to go walk it off."

"Good idea. Try not to fall in the lake."

Nathan huffed in mock indignation, hauling himself upwards and tottering a little as he started back towards the mansion. But when he paused to look back over his shoulder, there was no one sitting on the grass.

"My ghosts are fickle things," he mumbled, shaking his head a little.