http://x_cable.livejournal.com/ (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
x-cable.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
xp_logs2005-12-02 08:17 pm
x-cable.livejournal.com) wrote in xp_logs2005-12-02 08:17 pm
Skeleton Coast: Aftermath
The cavalry arrives.
"Get us down, David!" Bridge said over his headset, shaking his head in disbelief at the view of the mess below. Craters. A couple of them, and ground that looked like it had been melted. This particular patch of desert might as well have been wearing a sign saying 'Nathan was here'.
"Hold your horses, GW! Need to find us someplace stable to set down!" Protests aside, David landed the Blackhawk fairly quickly, not far away from where a familiar large form was struggling out of what looked like quicksand, and looked very displeased about it.
"CAIN!" Bridge bellowed, jumping down from the helicopter and leaving the others to fan out and secure the area. What he needed right now was information. They'd seen vehicles bugging out in every direction.
Cain heaved, bracing his hands against the side of the slowly-solidifying pit and thrusting himself upwards until he could get a leg on stable ground. Spitting out a mouthful of wet sand, he started scraping the slime from his face. "Goddamn telekinetic weasel motherfucker..." he swore, glancing around.
The helicopter caught his attention, bringing him leaping to his feet. That was Nate's buddy Bridge, the cavalry had arrived. And Nate - Nate was face-down in the dust. "Shit!" Cain called out, shedding his quicksand-covered shirt as he knelt by Nathan, glancing around. "MEDIC!"
Mina was past Bridge in a shot, her field kit in her hands and swearing under her breath in Spanish as she knelt down beside Nathan. The swearing slowed, then stopped as she looked up at Cain and Bridge, startled. "It's a tranquilizer dart," she said, dark eyes wide as she pulled it out, wincing at the size of it.
"A tranquilizer dart," Bridge said, eyebrows raised. He looked around at David. "Fan out," he said. "I want this place secured." He turned back to Cain. "Wasn't expecting to see you," he said as Mina checked Nathan for other injuries. "Where's Wisdom?"
"Looking for Domino," Cain answered, continuing to shake quicksand out of his clothes once Mina assured him Nathan was stable, if unconscious. "Moira insisted Alison and I tag along to keep Nate out of trouble - you know how women are. Uncle Fucker tried something to blank out Nate's powers, didn't work. He turned the ground to quicksand under me, but man... I could feel Nate kicking his ass, even from down there."
He peered over Mina's shoulder, looking down at Nate as a glob of wet sand fell from his hair to splatter on his friend's boot. "He'll be all right, yeah?"
"I'd like to know what was in this bloody dart," Mina said, looking up, "but he's breathing all right and his pulse is steady. He should be fine."
Bridge scanned the area, his eyes narrowing. "Keep an eye out for Faraday," he said, raising a hand to his headset. "Anyone with powers, stay in pairs. Let's not have any last-minute casualties here." He stopped, eyes widening just slightly, and then grinned at whatever he was hearing. "Nash says he and Matsuda see the other three."
Cain looked at the small bloodstain on the back of Cable's clothing, then stood up, perusing the marks in the dust that hadn't been obliterated by the copter's approach. Stepping gingerly over his fallen comrade, he paused by a half-crumbled wall and knelt down. "Some son of a bitch shot him in the back. Damn setup. And given that Uncle Gideon's involved, dollars to donuts says that rat-bastard father of Nate's is in on it as well." Cain spat into the dust. "Shot his own son in the back. Damn."
There was a crackling sound, and Mina squeezed one hand into a fist, the energy dispersing. "Electrocuting one's patients by accident is bad," she murmured. "But we'll make it to the next family reunion, right, GW?"
"Sounds like a plan to me." Bridge knelt down and picked up the psimitar, brushing the dust off the weapon. "Should we move him?" he asked Mina.
"I don't see any reason why not. Better places to wake up than lying in the dirt, and I'm assuming we're going to be here for a while."
Cain shrugged, easing Nathan up into a sitting position with one hand, letting the small woman check his vitals. Through the dust in the air, he could see three forms moving through the compound toward them. "Oh man," he said, "anyone want to bet who's going to be pissier? Nate when he wakes up, or Alison when she realizes Nate got himself conked out AGAIN."
--
Friday evening. Nathan wakes up from his enforced nap to find someone unexpected watching over him. Bridge 'rescues' him. Then, the laptop Alison liberated turns out to contain potentially invaluable information about the network of training camps for young mutants that Eris helped set up in Africa.
He felt odd. Very odd. Like his skull was packed with cotton wool. Nathan forced his eyes open, registering a bit dimly that he was lying on some kind of cot. A blurry shape leaned over him, and he blinked up at it. "What the fuck?" he said, or tried to. What came out was something closer to a groan.
The shape folded its arms across its chest, tilting its head. "I can't leave you alone for a minute, can I, son?" it asked in MacInnis's voice.
"AUGH!" Nathan was sitting up, scooting back into the corner and realizing the walls were canvas - a tent? - before he really knew what he was doing. "Don't... DO that, damn it," he muttered, all too awake all at once. Although his head was definitely still foggy. MacInnis just looked vaguely amused. "What... how did you get here? Where are the others?"
"Succinctly? With the Pack, how else. And everyone else is here and fine. Including young Domino." MacInnis actually looked relieved. "I've got to tell you, Nathan, I was worried about her. Knowing what Faraday's capable of..."
Nathan breathed in, then out. Dom was fine. The others were fine. The Pack was here, and presumably also fine. It was over. Everyone was...
"My father shot me," he heard himself say, and looked up to see MacInnis raising an eyebrow at him. "With-"
"-a tranquilizer dart, yes. You should have heard Mina grumbling about not knowing how it might interact with your antivirals. She wants you back in your wife's capable hands ASAP, by the way." MacInnis leaned back, looking contemplative. "So your father was here, too. Any idea what this was all about?"
"Gideon thought he had something that was going to incapacitate me." And he really needed to talk to Pete, because Gideon had been working on inaccurate information and he had a strong, strong suspicion as to where it had come from. "Maybe... but no," Nathan said with a sigh, rubbing at his temples. Clear, head. "If he'd wanted me, why would they have left me lying there when I was out cold?"
"Any number of possible reasons," MacInnis said patiently, and looked around as the tent door was pushed aside and Bridge stepped in.
"Hey, GW," Nathan said with a sigh, blinking up at his friend. "Everyone's okay, Mac says?"
"Fine. Pete and Dom are off 'talking', Alison's catching up with Ani, I think... and Cain and Theo found a stash of beer. Color me all different shades of surprises," Bridge said with a smile as he came over to stand beside MacInnis, his posture echoing the older man's uncannily as he gave Nathan a long, measuring look. "By the way, I don't like getting out of the chopper and finding you sprawled on the ground. Stop doing that."
"I didn't plan to," Nathan grumped. "My father shot me."
Bridge's eyebrows headed for his hairline. "Uh-huh. Have I mentioned lately that I don't like your family?"
"Never hurts to reiterate." Nathan extended a hand, and GW took it, pulling him to his feet. "Whoa," he muttered, swaying. Bridge took a step closer, grabbing his arm. "No, I think I'm good..."
"Mina said take it slow."
"Mina's a mother hen." Nathan blinked as the tent door opened and Garrison stepped in, carrying a laptop and looking aggravated. "Gar?"
"Frustrated!" the Pack's resident techno-geek pronounced dourly, setting the laptop down on the makeshift table where the medical supplies were laid out in a neat arrangement that had Mina's obsessive-compulsive hand written all over it. "Can't crack this damned laptop Alison found without wiping the drive. I managed to get it to ask me for a password... I think, because this is SO not English."
That was the most Nathan had heard Garrison speak at a time in... well, months. "You're not much of a linguist," he pointed out, tottering over to see. Bridge followed, not letting go of his arm.
"Hey, I speak three languages!"
"Whoop-de-shit. Let the grown-ups look," Nathan said, sensing MacInnis moving in behind them. Between the three of them, they probably spoke closer to twenty.
What was facing him on the screen, however, came as a shock. "Oh, God." The murmur slipped out before Nathan could stop himself. "It's Yu'pik."
"Yu'pik?" MacInnis asked, frowning.
"The Inuit dialect the village spoke, in Alaska..." Nathan stared at the prompt on the screen. A question. It was a question. He closed his eyes, trying to pull the fragments of the language out of his damaged, patchy memory of those years.
"Qanikcaq," he finally said, then spelled it out for Garrison. "Try that."
Garrison glared at him for a moment, then typed it in. "Whoa," he said softly, as the password was accepted and directories opened up like magic. "Um. Whoa again."
"This," Bridge said, staring hard at the screen, "is going to take a while to sort through."
"Does anyone else see," MacInnis said quietly from behind them, "the directories entitled Camp 1 through Camp 12? Or is it just me?"
"No," Nathan murmured, wild hope and fearful caution warring for primacy within him. Too good to be true. Really, too good to be true. Unless it was true. "I think we're all seeing them."
--
Later, Alison brings Nathan the letter she found. A number of questions get answers, and yet more are raised.
Desert sunsets. There really was nothing comparable, Nathan thought, absently rubbing at his side as he sat on the rock and watched the sun go down. He was a little woozy still, but his head was clearer than it had been, his metabolism having burned off most of the tranquilizer dose. Mina had checked the puncture wound from the dart and muttered something darkly about using elephant guns on one's son not being particularly paternal, and then looked very disturbed when Nathan had laughed in her face.
"Mina done being all fearsome at you?" The sound of crunching dirt and pebbles had given ample warning of Alison's approach, as well as the rhytmic thud of the cane on the ground as she drew near. "She was bossing Cain around last I looked." With a slight grumble at the way her muscles protested the motion, Alison sat down on the ground next to the rock, staring ahead in the same direction he was.
"She fussed about not having the equipment to do a blood test to see what Saul shot me with," Nathan said, "but I told her to settle down. If I was going to keel over from a bad interaction with my antivirals, I'd have done it already." Besides, he doubted that Saul would have been that careless. "And mothering Cain? I bet that's going over well."
"Oh, he grumbles and puts up a fight, but he loves every second of it. There isn't anyone there whose fooled by the growling." Alison's lips twitched, faintly. "Considering he's doing pretty much what she tells him to do while grumbling." She turned to look up at him, silent for a moment, then reached into her pocket and pulled out the envelope, and then handed it to him, without a word.
Nathan took it slowly, staring down at his name written on the outside of the heavy envelope. The ink was badly faded, but the elegant handwriting was familiar, a match to what had been on the map. "Where did you find this?"
"On the outskirts of the camp. It was under a rock, fair heavy one." She paused, a small breath of air escaping her. "Sealed in a protective case. Probably to protect it from the weather and stuff. No one would have known to look for it, unless they knew... Askani glyphs."
Nathan opened his mouth, then closed it again, his eyes sliding back to meet hers. She had just said... yes, she that was what she had said. Askani glyphs. Okay, so now I know why you were all right with the idea of sacrificing yourself, he thought wildly at the void in his mind. You didn't want to have to explain THIS!
Askani glyphs. Pointing the way to a letter.
From his mother.
"I'm afraid to open it," he said, his voice faltering.
"I was afraid to look under the rock, myself." And it had had nothing to do with the chaos of the camp's occupants evacuating in all haste, too. "I know. You don't have to look at it now if you don't want to. I just thought you should have it." She paused, then leaned on the rock. "But if it helps any, I can stay while you read it."
He stared down at the envelope in his hand. "It's just a letter," he said weakly. "A piece of paper. Right? It's not anything I have to believe if I don't want to believe it..."
It was just too much, all at once. What had happened at the Hellfire Club, Askani's death, the frantic worry for Dom, the shock of finding the map, the fight with Gideon, everything... Nathan rested his head in his other hand, taking a deep, shuddering breath.
He wanted it to be something he could believe. Something he could hold onto. So much for no more wishful thinking.
"It's either everything or nothing, Nathan." Alison stared ahead into the setting sun, hearing the rustle of paper as the wind tugged at the letter in his hand, briefly. "It's up to you."
Nathan raised his head, staring out blindly at the sunset for a long moment. Then his hands were moving, almost automatically, opening the envelope and sliding the letter out carefully. Heavy, high-quality paper. To better stand the test of time?
Some perverse impulse, maybe just a need to make sure this was real, made him read it aloud. So that Alison would know that it was real, too.
"'Dear Nathan,'" he read, his voice low, very slightly unsteady. "'I find myself faced with a dilemma, writing this. How to prove myself to you, a decade in the future, when if what I've seen is correct, your father and your uncle will have done their best to convince you that your family can't be trusted? Fortunately, I had some advice on this score. I will say that I came up with the idea of marking the site of this letter with the glyph for faith on my own. It represents the faith I hope you'll have in me, and, much more importantly, the faith I have in you.'"
Alison was very still. Listening, and Nathan swallowed past the tightness in his throat, going on.
"'I have faith that things turned out as I saw. That you rescued this girl you love so dearly, and that you're sitting in the desert now, with the woman whom you call your sister, reading my letter.'"
Though she'd been staring ahead, gaze unfocused, Alison looked up at that, staring up at the piece of paper in brief surprise and mingled wonder. She didn't say anything though, letting Nathan read on while looking down with a small smile.
"'I only wish that I could use what I see to prove to you what really matters. But the future can't heal the wounds of the past. There's no way that sharing my visions can tell you how long I searched for you when your uncle took you away from me.'" Nathan's voice faltered, broke, but he forced himself to go on. "'I can't use them to tell you how hard it was to make the choice to stay with your father when he betrayed you, betrayed both of us, in such a horrible way. But staying was the only way to fight them, Nathan. It was the only chance I had to try and counter what they were doing. I had my victories, my defeats. I kept fighting, in the only way that I could. Gideon found it amusing, I think.'"
Nathan stopped, utterly torn as he stared down at the letter. The image it was painting... so attractive, so damnably tempting to believe it. But he couldn't help remembering those first conversations with Saul, how plausible it had all seemed then, too.
His hands were shaking, the letter creasing in his grip, and he jumped as Alison reached out and laid a hand on his arm. Not saying a word, just reminding him that she was there.
"'I wish there was a way you could know the truth. It breaks my heart to know that I'll be gone, and that Gideon will try and trap you, over and over again until he gets what he wants. I'm not even certain that I should have left the map, that he won't turn it against you in the end. But I had to try.'"
The elegant writing was sharper, more jagged, as if she had scrawled those last words with more force. Nathan blinked rapidly, but went on.
"'I'll have to take comfort in what I have seen. I've seen you fighting to save other children. There's a hallway full of golden light, and although I can't see more than a glimpse of it, I know that it's just the start. I've seen you with others, standing against everything that your uncle believes, destroying what he's built. And I've seen you with my granddaughter in your arms, Nathan. I've seen you free, and it's more of a blessing than I expected,'" Nathan said, his voice breaking.
The last few lines made him stop for a long moment, stricken right to the core. Alison merely waited, gazing up at him.
"'I won't sign this 'Mother', when I did so little to deserve the name. But I don't want to sign it 'Esther', either. That wasn't the name I was born with, but the name that was given to me in Alaska. My mother gave me a different name, and I'd like you to know it. Although perhaps you know it already."
The mention of the hallway had been enough to bring a brief sting of tears to Alison's eyes. Unmoving, trying to remain as quiet and unnoticeable as possible while Nathan read on, Alison smiled faintly nonetheless, even though beyond listening, the bulk of her concentration rested in being steady of both body and mind. She looked up as Nathan paused, slowly and carefully, and waited to see if he would resume reading.
"I didn't know," Nathan said faintly, but very clearly. "I knew the name... I knew what Moira and I were going to call our daughter, but I didn't know why." There were tears glimmering in his eyes as he looked down at Alison. "Rachel," he said. "Her name was Rachel. And the postscript... is in Askani."
"So, read it out loud," was all she said, smiling a bit though she felt raw and uncertain, for a brief, sudden moment.
He didn't, for a moment, part of him wildly unsure of whether he still... Nathan shook his head, swallowing past the lump in his throat. "Naharimhana, kedinay ven'harima," he murmured, his accent as flawless as it had always been. "Be strong," he translated, even though neither of them needed the translation, "but more importantly, be happy."
"Get us down, David!" Bridge said over his headset, shaking his head in disbelief at the view of the mess below. Craters. A couple of them, and ground that looked like it had been melted. This particular patch of desert might as well have been wearing a sign saying 'Nathan was here'.
"Hold your horses, GW! Need to find us someplace stable to set down!" Protests aside, David landed the Blackhawk fairly quickly, not far away from where a familiar large form was struggling out of what looked like quicksand, and looked very displeased about it.
"CAIN!" Bridge bellowed, jumping down from the helicopter and leaving the others to fan out and secure the area. What he needed right now was information. They'd seen vehicles bugging out in every direction.
Cain heaved, bracing his hands against the side of the slowly-solidifying pit and thrusting himself upwards until he could get a leg on stable ground. Spitting out a mouthful of wet sand, he started scraping the slime from his face. "Goddamn telekinetic weasel motherfucker..." he swore, glancing around.
The helicopter caught his attention, bringing him leaping to his feet. That was Nate's buddy Bridge, the cavalry had arrived. And Nate - Nate was face-down in the dust. "Shit!" Cain called out, shedding his quicksand-covered shirt as he knelt by Nathan, glancing around. "MEDIC!"
Mina was past Bridge in a shot, her field kit in her hands and swearing under her breath in Spanish as she knelt down beside Nathan. The swearing slowed, then stopped as she looked up at Cain and Bridge, startled. "It's a tranquilizer dart," she said, dark eyes wide as she pulled it out, wincing at the size of it.
"A tranquilizer dart," Bridge said, eyebrows raised. He looked around at David. "Fan out," he said. "I want this place secured." He turned back to Cain. "Wasn't expecting to see you," he said as Mina checked Nathan for other injuries. "Where's Wisdom?"
"Looking for Domino," Cain answered, continuing to shake quicksand out of his clothes once Mina assured him Nathan was stable, if unconscious. "Moira insisted Alison and I tag along to keep Nate out of trouble - you know how women are. Uncle Fucker tried something to blank out Nate's powers, didn't work. He turned the ground to quicksand under me, but man... I could feel Nate kicking his ass, even from down there."
He peered over Mina's shoulder, looking down at Nate as a glob of wet sand fell from his hair to splatter on his friend's boot. "He'll be all right, yeah?"
"I'd like to know what was in this bloody dart," Mina said, looking up, "but he's breathing all right and his pulse is steady. He should be fine."
Bridge scanned the area, his eyes narrowing. "Keep an eye out for Faraday," he said, raising a hand to his headset. "Anyone with powers, stay in pairs. Let's not have any last-minute casualties here." He stopped, eyes widening just slightly, and then grinned at whatever he was hearing. "Nash says he and Matsuda see the other three."
Cain looked at the small bloodstain on the back of Cable's clothing, then stood up, perusing the marks in the dust that hadn't been obliterated by the copter's approach. Stepping gingerly over his fallen comrade, he paused by a half-crumbled wall and knelt down. "Some son of a bitch shot him in the back. Damn setup. And given that Uncle Gideon's involved, dollars to donuts says that rat-bastard father of Nate's is in on it as well." Cain spat into the dust. "Shot his own son in the back. Damn."
There was a crackling sound, and Mina squeezed one hand into a fist, the energy dispersing. "Electrocuting one's patients by accident is bad," she murmured. "But we'll make it to the next family reunion, right, GW?"
"Sounds like a plan to me." Bridge knelt down and picked up the psimitar, brushing the dust off the weapon. "Should we move him?" he asked Mina.
"I don't see any reason why not. Better places to wake up than lying in the dirt, and I'm assuming we're going to be here for a while."
Cain shrugged, easing Nathan up into a sitting position with one hand, letting the small woman check his vitals. Through the dust in the air, he could see three forms moving through the compound toward them. "Oh man," he said, "anyone want to bet who's going to be pissier? Nate when he wakes up, or Alison when she realizes Nate got himself conked out AGAIN."
--
Friday evening. Nathan wakes up from his enforced nap to find someone unexpected watching over him. Bridge 'rescues' him. Then, the laptop Alison liberated turns out to contain potentially invaluable information about the network of training camps for young mutants that Eris helped set up in Africa.
He felt odd. Very odd. Like his skull was packed with cotton wool. Nathan forced his eyes open, registering a bit dimly that he was lying on some kind of cot. A blurry shape leaned over him, and he blinked up at it. "What the fuck?" he said, or tried to. What came out was something closer to a groan.
The shape folded its arms across its chest, tilting its head. "I can't leave you alone for a minute, can I, son?" it asked in MacInnis's voice.
"AUGH!" Nathan was sitting up, scooting back into the corner and realizing the walls were canvas - a tent? - before he really knew what he was doing. "Don't... DO that, damn it," he muttered, all too awake all at once. Although his head was definitely still foggy. MacInnis just looked vaguely amused. "What... how did you get here? Where are the others?"
"Succinctly? With the Pack, how else. And everyone else is here and fine. Including young Domino." MacInnis actually looked relieved. "I've got to tell you, Nathan, I was worried about her. Knowing what Faraday's capable of..."
Nathan breathed in, then out. Dom was fine. The others were fine. The Pack was here, and presumably also fine. It was over. Everyone was...
"My father shot me," he heard himself say, and looked up to see MacInnis raising an eyebrow at him. "With-"
"-a tranquilizer dart, yes. You should have heard Mina grumbling about not knowing how it might interact with your antivirals. She wants you back in your wife's capable hands ASAP, by the way." MacInnis leaned back, looking contemplative. "So your father was here, too. Any idea what this was all about?"
"Gideon thought he had something that was going to incapacitate me." And he really needed to talk to Pete, because Gideon had been working on inaccurate information and he had a strong, strong suspicion as to where it had come from. "Maybe... but no," Nathan said with a sigh, rubbing at his temples. Clear, head. "If he'd wanted me, why would they have left me lying there when I was out cold?"
"Any number of possible reasons," MacInnis said patiently, and looked around as the tent door was pushed aside and Bridge stepped in.
"Hey, GW," Nathan said with a sigh, blinking up at his friend. "Everyone's okay, Mac says?"
"Fine. Pete and Dom are off 'talking', Alison's catching up with Ani, I think... and Cain and Theo found a stash of beer. Color me all different shades of surprises," Bridge said with a smile as he came over to stand beside MacInnis, his posture echoing the older man's uncannily as he gave Nathan a long, measuring look. "By the way, I don't like getting out of the chopper and finding you sprawled on the ground. Stop doing that."
"I didn't plan to," Nathan grumped. "My father shot me."
Bridge's eyebrows headed for his hairline. "Uh-huh. Have I mentioned lately that I don't like your family?"
"Never hurts to reiterate." Nathan extended a hand, and GW took it, pulling him to his feet. "Whoa," he muttered, swaying. Bridge took a step closer, grabbing his arm. "No, I think I'm good..."
"Mina said take it slow."
"Mina's a mother hen." Nathan blinked as the tent door opened and Garrison stepped in, carrying a laptop and looking aggravated. "Gar?"
"Frustrated!" the Pack's resident techno-geek pronounced dourly, setting the laptop down on the makeshift table where the medical supplies were laid out in a neat arrangement that had Mina's obsessive-compulsive hand written all over it. "Can't crack this damned laptop Alison found without wiping the drive. I managed to get it to ask me for a password... I think, because this is SO not English."
That was the most Nathan had heard Garrison speak at a time in... well, months. "You're not much of a linguist," he pointed out, tottering over to see. Bridge followed, not letting go of his arm.
"Hey, I speak three languages!"
"Whoop-de-shit. Let the grown-ups look," Nathan said, sensing MacInnis moving in behind them. Between the three of them, they probably spoke closer to twenty.
What was facing him on the screen, however, came as a shock. "Oh, God." The murmur slipped out before Nathan could stop himself. "It's Yu'pik."
"Yu'pik?" MacInnis asked, frowning.
"The Inuit dialect the village spoke, in Alaska..." Nathan stared at the prompt on the screen. A question. It was a question. He closed his eyes, trying to pull the fragments of the language out of his damaged, patchy memory of those years.
"Qanikcaq," he finally said, then spelled it out for Garrison. "Try that."
Garrison glared at him for a moment, then typed it in. "Whoa," he said softly, as the password was accepted and directories opened up like magic. "Um. Whoa again."
"This," Bridge said, staring hard at the screen, "is going to take a while to sort through."
"Does anyone else see," MacInnis said quietly from behind them, "the directories entitled Camp 1 through Camp 12? Or is it just me?"
"No," Nathan murmured, wild hope and fearful caution warring for primacy within him. Too good to be true. Really, too good to be true. Unless it was true. "I think we're all seeing them."
--
Later, Alison brings Nathan the letter she found. A number of questions get answers, and yet more are raised.
Desert sunsets. There really was nothing comparable, Nathan thought, absently rubbing at his side as he sat on the rock and watched the sun go down. He was a little woozy still, but his head was clearer than it had been, his metabolism having burned off most of the tranquilizer dose. Mina had checked the puncture wound from the dart and muttered something darkly about using elephant guns on one's son not being particularly paternal, and then looked very disturbed when Nathan had laughed in her face.
"Mina done being all fearsome at you?" The sound of crunching dirt and pebbles had given ample warning of Alison's approach, as well as the rhytmic thud of the cane on the ground as she drew near. "She was bossing Cain around last I looked." With a slight grumble at the way her muscles protested the motion, Alison sat down on the ground next to the rock, staring ahead in the same direction he was.
"She fussed about not having the equipment to do a blood test to see what Saul shot me with," Nathan said, "but I told her to settle down. If I was going to keel over from a bad interaction with my antivirals, I'd have done it already." Besides, he doubted that Saul would have been that careless. "And mothering Cain? I bet that's going over well."
"Oh, he grumbles and puts up a fight, but he loves every second of it. There isn't anyone there whose fooled by the growling." Alison's lips twitched, faintly. "Considering he's doing pretty much what she tells him to do while grumbling." She turned to look up at him, silent for a moment, then reached into her pocket and pulled out the envelope, and then handed it to him, without a word.
Nathan took it slowly, staring down at his name written on the outside of the heavy envelope. The ink was badly faded, but the elegant handwriting was familiar, a match to what had been on the map. "Where did you find this?"
"On the outskirts of the camp. It was under a rock, fair heavy one." She paused, a small breath of air escaping her. "Sealed in a protective case. Probably to protect it from the weather and stuff. No one would have known to look for it, unless they knew... Askani glyphs."
Nathan opened his mouth, then closed it again, his eyes sliding back to meet hers. She had just said... yes, she that was what she had said. Askani glyphs. Okay, so now I know why you were all right with the idea of sacrificing yourself, he thought wildly at the void in his mind. You didn't want to have to explain THIS!
Askani glyphs. Pointing the way to a letter.
From his mother.
"I'm afraid to open it," he said, his voice faltering.
"I was afraid to look under the rock, myself." And it had had nothing to do with the chaos of the camp's occupants evacuating in all haste, too. "I know. You don't have to look at it now if you don't want to. I just thought you should have it." She paused, then leaned on the rock. "But if it helps any, I can stay while you read it."
He stared down at the envelope in his hand. "It's just a letter," he said weakly. "A piece of paper. Right? It's not anything I have to believe if I don't want to believe it..."
It was just too much, all at once. What had happened at the Hellfire Club, Askani's death, the frantic worry for Dom, the shock of finding the map, the fight with Gideon, everything... Nathan rested his head in his other hand, taking a deep, shuddering breath.
He wanted it to be something he could believe. Something he could hold onto. So much for no more wishful thinking.
"It's either everything or nothing, Nathan." Alison stared ahead into the setting sun, hearing the rustle of paper as the wind tugged at the letter in his hand, briefly. "It's up to you."
Nathan raised his head, staring out blindly at the sunset for a long moment. Then his hands were moving, almost automatically, opening the envelope and sliding the letter out carefully. Heavy, high-quality paper. To better stand the test of time?
Some perverse impulse, maybe just a need to make sure this was real, made him read it aloud. So that Alison would know that it was real, too.
"'Dear Nathan,'" he read, his voice low, very slightly unsteady. "'I find myself faced with a dilemma, writing this. How to prove myself to you, a decade in the future, when if what I've seen is correct, your father and your uncle will have done their best to convince you that your family can't be trusted? Fortunately, I had some advice on this score. I will say that I came up with the idea of marking the site of this letter with the glyph for faith on my own. It represents the faith I hope you'll have in me, and, much more importantly, the faith I have in you.'"
Alison was very still. Listening, and Nathan swallowed past the tightness in his throat, going on.
"'I have faith that things turned out as I saw. That you rescued this girl you love so dearly, and that you're sitting in the desert now, with the woman whom you call your sister, reading my letter.'"
Though she'd been staring ahead, gaze unfocused, Alison looked up at that, staring up at the piece of paper in brief surprise and mingled wonder. She didn't say anything though, letting Nathan read on while looking down with a small smile.
"'I only wish that I could use what I see to prove to you what really matters. But the future can't heal the wounds of the past. There's no way that sharing my visions can tell you how long I searched for you when your uncle took you away from me.'" Nathan's voice faltered, broke, but he forced himself to go on. "'I can't use them to tell you how hard it was to make the choice to stay with your father when he betrayed you, betrayed both of us, in such a horrible way. But staying was the only way to fight them, Nathan. It was the only chance I had to try and counter what they were doing. I had my victories, my defeats. I kept fighting, in the only way that I could. Gideon found it amusing, I think.'"
Nathan stopped, utterly torn as he stared down at the letter. The image it was painting... so attractive, so damnably tempting to believe it. But he couldn't help remembering those first conversations with Saul, how plausible it had all seemed then, too.
His hands were shaking, the letter creasing in his grip, and he jumped as Alison reached out and laid a hand on his arm. Not saying a word, just reminding him that she was there.
"'I wish there was a way you could know the truth. It breaks my heart to know that I'll be gone, and that Gideon will try and trap you, over and over again until he gets what he wants. I'm not even certain that I should have left the map, that he won't turn it against you in the end. But I had to try.'"
The elegant writing was sharper, more jagged, as if she had scrawled those last words with more force. Nathan blinked rapidly, but went on.
"'I'll have to take comfort in what I have seen. I've seen you fighting to save other children. There's a hallway full of golden light, and although I can't see more than a glimpse of it, I know that it's just the start. I've seen you with others, standing against everything that your uncle believes, destroying what he's built. And I've seen you with my granddaughter in your arms, Nathan. I've seen you free, and it's more of a blessing than I expected,'" Nathan said, his voice breaking.
The last few lines made him stop for a long moment, stricken right to the core. Alison merely waited, gazing up at him.
"'I won't sign this 'Mother', when I did so little to deserve the name. But I don't want to sign it 'Esther', either. That wasn't the name I was born with, but the name that was given to me in Alaska. My mother gave me a different name, and I'd like you to know it. Although perhaps you know it already."
The mention of the hallway had been enough to bring a brief sting of tears to Alison's eyes. Unmoving, trying to remain as quiet and unnoticeable as possible while Nathan read on, Alison smiled faintly nonetheless, even though beyond listening, the bulk of her concentration rested in being steady of both body and mind. She looked up as Nathan paused, slowly and carefully, and waited to see if he would resume reading.
"I didn't know," Nathan said faintly, but very clearly. "I knew the name... I knew what Moira and I were going to call our daughter, but I didn't know why." There were tears glimmering in his eyes as he looked down at Alison. "Rachel," he said. "Her name was Rachel. And the postscript... is in Askani."
"So, read it out loud," was all she said, smiling a bit though she felt raw and uncertain, for a brief, sudden moment.
He didn't, for a moment, part of him wildly unsure of whether he still... Nathan shook his head, swallowing past the lump in his throat. "Naharimhana, kedinay ven'harima," he murmured, his accent as flawless as it had always been. "Be strong," he translated, even though neither of them needed the translation, "but more importantly, be happy."