Skeleton Coast: Lost in the Fog

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Thursday evening. They decide to stay the night in Luederitz, for lack of other options. Nathan and Pete share a moment of frustration out on the balcony of the hotel, staring into the fog. A subject they're going to have to talk about at some point comes up, but then the future intervenes.


Fog. All he could see, standing out here on the balcony, was fog. They were still a good two hours from sunset, but the fog had rolled in midafternoon. He couldn't see the sea, couldn't see the town. Even the outlines of the buildings surrounding the hotel were blotted out.

It was ironic. And oddly appropriate. He was blind here, and blind to the future when it counted.

The door behind him slid open - again - and Nathan tried not to bridle. "Getting interrupted constantly?" he snapped quietly. "Surprisingly, not conducive to concentration."

"Yeah, well, sitting about the place with nothing to do isn't conducive to not interrupting people, either, so that makes us even." Pete shrugged as he shut the door behind him. "That's some serious fucking weather out there."

"Typical for here," Nathan said, his words clipped as he stared out into the fog. "I was here... seventeen years ago, for almost a month. We were hanging out waiting for some bastard who was selling diamonds to finance a few terrorist groups in North Africa." He leaned on the railing, waving a hand in the direction of the ocean. "His bones are out there somewhere, about a mile offshore, along with those of the rest of his security detail."

The fog out over the ocean shifted a little - wind, probably - and Nathan shook his head. "Nothing, Pete," he finally said. "I'm getting nothing. Maybe I might have been able to see this particular piece of the future a few weeks ago, maybe, but when Askani went, my precognition went dead. I'm not even getting a flicker."

"Then we'll work out a way to get this done without it. Even if that little turd this afternoon didn't know anything, there's someone around here that does. Your uncle isn't fucking clever enough to run an operation without any leaks."

"You'd probably know that better than me, too," Nathan said, staring fixedly out into the fog. "Given that you've operated with him." It came out a little more accusingly than he'd intended, and Nathan shook his head. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "This isn't the time." Especially since what had happened now made rather more sense than it had.

There was something moving, out in the fog? No... just wind, but the way the fog curled made Nathan stare, long and hard at that spot. Movement like running. Like horses, running in the desert, part of him thought, and Nathan's hand clenched around the railing as he saw it, suddenly. Horses running in the desert. And someone else.

Pete sighed. "Yeah, look, about that-" He broke off suddenly noticing Nate's distant look, looking first out into the fog himself, then back at Nate.

Wild horses. Two of them. White, and black, racing across the desert under the setting sun, and she was there too, running away. There was something else, too, something more elusive that slipped out of his grasp even as he tried to focus on it. But that was enough.

His heart pounding, he forced himself to release his death-grip on the railing. "There's a place east of here, in the desert," he said, looking at Pete. "Abandoned. The only reason people go there is to watch the wild horses."

Pete blinked hard, then nodded. "Right. Let's go and hammer on Curly and Larry's door's, and go and check it out. Better than sitting around, whatever happens, anyway."

~*~


Driving's impossible until the fog clears, so they stay the rest of the night. When Cain and Pete are asleep, Alison and Nathan finally get the chance to talk, at least about the matter at hand. There's a lot more not-talking on other topics.


He ought to be sleeping. They had a difficult drive ahead of them tomorrow. Should have been tonight, Nathan thought. But the impossible, impenetrable fog was lingering determinedly, making driving impossible. It should clear with the sun. The weather was predictably bizarre, here at the end of the world.

His thoughts were getting darker and darker, and he didn't think it had anything to do with his foreknowledge that they needed to get their asses to Aus promptly tomorrow, for a reason he hadn't shared with Pete. Nathan shifted on the couch, wondering if he ought to break out the evil little green pills. Moira would probably have said yes. But he just... didn't want to sleep. His head was too empty.

"You're being loud," a voice broke the silence lowly, a slightly peevish undertone to it though it faded entirely over the next words. "Can't sleep. Too noisy." And she'd perhaps talked too long to Haroun over the phone earlier, but at least that bill wasn't one she was going to pay so she'd indulged and then some, to say the least. "You frown anymore than that, your eyebrows will permanently attach and have babies..."

Not sitting up, Nathan eyed Alison as she moved forward out of the bedroom she'd claimed here in the suite. She was still leaning fairly heavy on that cane. "I have a lot on my mind. Or too little. Depending on your perspective."

"I may be all foggy brained myself, but you should really know better than to give me that sort of opening," was the mildy amused reply. The amusement faded to concern though and Alison navigated her way to the side of the window, leaning on the wall for a moment before giving up on that habit and sitting on the nearby chair instead. "What's wrong."

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "You've got to be kidding me," he said. "What's wrong? Where would I start, Alison?" He kept his voice low, not wanting to wake up Cain, who would grumble, or Pete, who needed the sleep and had finally passed out. "Would you like an itemized list?"

"I meant 'what's wrong that I don't know yet and that has you awake and grumpy' actually," she replied peacably, stifling a yawn and shaking her head slightly, as though to clear it of the cobwebs of tiredness. Nathan was still being noisy, or so she thought, but pointing that out now would just serve to make him more grumpy, really.

"It needs to be something new?" But she wasn't going to snap back at him, he knew, however much he growled at her. She could be very annoying that way. "It's too light," he said finally, tightly. "My head. I'm all off-balance. Up in the air. Every single pattern... broke, on Friday night."

Off balance was one way to put it, though she didn't say as much out loud. "Precognitive flash or lack thereof, d'you mean?" Focusing on the discussion was one way to keep things quieter, she realized, and so threw herself into it whole heartedly, focusing her entire attention on Nathan.

"No," he said, his voice very low and cool. "Askani or the lack thereof. Although the precognitive flash didn't feel all that good, come to think of it." Although it was strange, how it had come as soon as he'd stopped trying to force it. Not at all characteristic.

"Ah." It was all she could think to say of that, still off balance herself by what had happened. And there were... other things, glimpsed from the corner of her eyes or dreams she couldn't quite remember upon awakening that she wasn't sure she wanted to look at too closely, just yet, the implications far too disturbing for her to linger upon them until there was no other option left.

"So do you feel any different?" Nathan asked bluntly, lacing his fingers together behind his head as he regarded her. "Not everyone can say they've been resuscitated by the life-energy of a ghost from the future. Then again, in the course of the last year, you were also saved from death by a demon dimension, and healed by pieces of a big enchanted ruby. We could probably forgive you for getting blase at this point."

Alison blinked hard at that question and stared at him, mouth opening slightly, eyes widening a touch. "Are you trying to make a joke or is this the part where I throw things at you?" she asked, sounding far more bemused than angry. She went on though, assuming he was trying to make a joke. Throwing things would be... tiring. Especially when they were being thrown at Nathan. "I'm in total avoidance of course, what did you think I'd be doing?" The fact that someone had, well, died of a sorts (again) on this particular occasion was an aspect of things she didn't even want to go near.

"It's a joke. I think. Avoidance is good," Nathan murmured. He looked away, but still didn't sit up. "I'm sorry you got dragged off to play minder like this. You've hardly had a chance to catch your breath."

"Avoidance is going to end up with me drinking so much tea I'll blow up," Alison retorted, shaking her head a bit. "I... told Haroun pretty much everything and then some, soon as I woke up after we got back." She didn't specify any further - nor did she need to. "I figure giving him a few days to take it all in isn't the worse possible idea. Except when I'm calling him up and talking for hours to him," she added in a softer tone a voice.

"Talking is good." He was beginning to sound like a broken record. "I knew. I'm not sure if you knew that. Not what was going on, but that there was something. Askani dreamwalked into your mind one night and came back talking about an iceberg. Didn't take much reasoning to figure out that Charles had to be the one who put it there."

"Yeah..." Alison looked out the window for a moment, the only memories she had of what had happened involving heat, fire... an odd sense of serenity and resolution along with a howling sorrow that hadn't been from the same person somehow.. it wasn't really hard to seperate who from who and Alison didn't want to go deeper into that, not for a while. So she took a short breath and turned to look at Nathan. "That's what was giving me all those migraines. I'm not a telepath, so it took a lot to anchor the thing in place and... well, we think maybe some of that was also psychological on my part."

"I imagine you see it as worth the migraines. Since it worked." He looked back at her, finally. "Both of you. You and Pete. I respect what you did. If there are any... repercussions, when we get back, you can count on my support." It came out rather flatly, for a declaration of support. He imagined she'd know he meant it, even so.

"It... worked." Alison nodded, simply, breathing in and out slowly in the heaviness of the room. She would not, no matter what, ever belittle what Pete had had to go through. They had attained their goal - neutralizing Selene, with the help of two extremely powerful magicians, Romany and Strange. And in the process, Amanda had passed whatever test of coming of age those two had foreseen for her in this. What had happened, with Askani...

"Thank you. It means a lot, that. I think... I don't know how it'll go through, I admit." She shook her head, a bit ruefully. "Coming here was also running away from that, in a sense."

"At least it's a form of running away that's productive. Or hopefully," he said, staring up at the ceiling. The silence dragged on for a long moment. "There's something I didn't tell Pete, about what I saw. Because we can't leave until the fog lifts anyway, and because I think we'll still be in time. It's not that long a drive to Aus."

She had the odd, deeply rooted feeling that even mentioning Askani's name would result in a sharp, knife like wave of control from Nathan's mind. She had no idea why the thought was there, nor why she was so certain it would be so (or why it was so familiar) but it felt right nonetheless. So she just nodded, quietly, looking sad despite the sadness that pervaded everything underneath the more unstable feelings, despite a conversation that wasn't about Askani and in fact danced around her in every way possible, while still being about her as well.

"Dom's going to die," Nathan said, his gaze still locked on the ceiling. "If we don't get there before she escapes again, she's going to die doing it. And I can't tell Pete, Al, because she's what he held onto while he was gone." That conversation by the lake had told him all he needed to know on that score.

"We'll get there on time," she replied with a certainty which felt odd to her, yet familiar. She had no idea why or how and assumed this was yet more leak over from Nathan's still... wounded mind, as it were. It felt odd, to say the least, yet comforting as well to be able to say something like that without thinking, just because she knew.

"I hope so," he murmured, part of him registering, if only peripherally, that what she said hadn't sounded quite like a platitude. Odd. "Because if she dies..." The thought of a world without Dom in it hurt suddenly, like a knife in his chest, and he shifted on the couch, trying to force the pain away.

She looked at him steadily, half in the shadows and half in the moonlight streaming from the window, and smiled faintly. "She won't die. So let's start focusing on how to keep her from killing Pete after we all find her, mmm? Cause Pete dying after all of this? That'd be embarassing as all hell."