xp_logs | Nathan and Haroun, Friday afternoon

Haroun runs into Nathan after one of his exams and finds out about yesterday's encounter with Gideon. He then gives Nate a piece of his mind about how he's handling things these days. Turnabout is fair play.

Funny, to have gotten up this morning and gone about giving the exam for his law class as if it was just another day. Although he hadn't been paying much attention to his students as they wrote - he hoped that the usual 'my teacher is a telepath' deterrent had prevented any serious cheating. Now, Nathan decided dimly, he would go back to his office and read through the papers. Get that done.

Haroun was, for once, in a good mood. Another pain-free day and a couple of quality hours scheduled with Alison while she scurried around doing her holiday shopping. He was looking forward more to the company than the shopping - this wasn't his favorite time of the year. Too Christian. But he had a tall glass of OJ and when he saw GrumpyNate walk by, he decided to do his part and spread a little seasonal cheer.

Nathan stared at Haroun for a moment as he approached, flatly, and then kept on walking towards his office without another word. Not in the mood. Not in the mood for more having to pretend that this was just another day.

He was whistling - badly - and had a smile on his face. "Hey Grumpy! Happy Holidays!" he said to Nate, toasting him with the OJ glass.

Grumpy? Oh, he was grumpy now? Nathan thought a bit wildly, shaking his head and walking right on. In his office, lock the door. That would be the best course of action.

"Oookay." he said as Nate completely failed to get into the proper spirit of things. "They run out of Tickle-Me Elmos or something?"

If Haroun hadn't looked at the database since last night, he wasn't going to explain. He didn't want to think about it, let alone explain. Nathan reached his office door, opening it and stepping inside, fully prepared to shut it in Haroun's face.

Haroun stuck his foot in the door. "All right, Mr Grumpy Pants, 'fess up. Is it because they didn't have the Tickle-Me Elmo dolls or because Santa has you on the Naughty list this year?" He was still feeling way too whimsical and good to put up with Nate's brooding.

Nathan stared at him for a moment, the signs of sleeplessness and tension more visible now that he was facing Haroun head-on instead of trying to walk away. "Shut up." The words came out, seemingly of their own accord, and were followed by more. "Just shut up, for God's sake..." He let go of the door and turned away before his carefully neutral expression could shatter. "I'm not in the mood," he said as he laid the pile of exams down on the table. "I have work to do. Go away."

"I noticed, grump." he said, then he sipped from his glass of OJ. "Maybe I'll go play with your daughter, babysit for a while. Sure Moira'd like that." he said

"Moira and Rachel are spending some quality time together," Nathan said hoarsely, not looking back at Haroun. "Probably discussing what bad luck they have in husband and father."

Haroun blinked at that. "Ah, the I-suck pity-party. That one I know well." he said, but didn't take his foot out of the door or leave. "What kicked it off this time? You forget her favorite color?"

"No. I have psychotic relatives who stalk them." Maybe if he told Haroun, he'd go away and read the report and he wouldn't have to think about it too much. "Apparently it's too much to ask to do Christmas shopping in peace these days."

Haroun considered that. "He turned up again?" he said disbelievingly.

Nathan started to sort the exams into alphabetical order. "I had Ray in the pet store. She liked the fish. He waylaid Moira while she was on her own." His hands weren't quite steady. "She's fine. You would have heard about if it he'd done anything."

Haroun nodded. "How many times does he have to scare the shit out of you before you go turn him into free-floating oxides, or have Cain dismember him or something?"

"I tried in Africa, remember?" Although that was glossing over that stupid, stupid moment where he'd stopped to talk with the bastard. "Then my father shot me."

Haroun tisked. "C'mon, Nate, you went in there with no real backup and no plan. I'm not surprised your old man got the drop on you like that." he said. "You're reacting, not acting. Get a plan together, get a team and go flatten the sonofabitch before you lose something you'd rather not lose again!"

Alison would kill him if he blew Haroun through a wall. Nathan took a deep breath, ignoring the steel bands around his chest, and kept sorting the exams. "That was a low blow," he said very quietly. "And Cain is 'no real backup'?"

Haroun paused to consider that. "He didn't do you a terrible lot of good, now, did he? Sank into a mudhole, if I remember correctly. Either you send Cain out solo or you leave him behind. If your darling uncle synchs to someone nearby, Cain's neutralizable. Deny him that option, and he'll fold like a wet sack of shit."

"You know, I do so love it when you give me tactical advice from your years upon years of experience." The words came out almost conversationally, but his hands were shaking harder. "Moira kept the link shielded so that I wouldn't sense what was happening. To protect Ray and me, to make sure we didn't get close enough to synch... He could have killed her, and I wouldn't have known until I felt it."

Haroun rolled his eyes at his friend. "You've gone soft, Nate. You don't want to make the hard calls anymore. Christ, I'll go take him out? Take a nice 50-cal, track his movements, and do him when he steps out to go to work in the morning. Boom." he said, miming an explosion with his hands.

"And I'm sure Alison will be very diligent in visiting you in jail. She's that type of woman." Nathan stared down at the exams for a long moment. Then, his arm moved almost of its own accord and they went flying everywhere, falling on the desk and on the floor.

Haroun ignored the blizzard of paperwork. "Be worth it to end the risk, to deal with the uncertainty." he said.

"And become exactly what he wants me to be. Someone who makes decisions about when to end a life because it suits me. Or let someone else do it, and be just the same, except a coward about it." Nathan knelt down and started picking up the exams.

Haroun shook his head. "It's progressed beyond that now." he said. "He's taken shots at you, at Domino, and at your wife and child. Any day now he's going to connect." he insisted.

"He connected nine years ago," Nathan said, not looking at Haroun. "And what I turned into because of that is not anything that belongs in the world we're trying to build."

"And he's going to connect again and keep connecting until you get so filled with hate that you'll be his perfect instrument or somebody puts him down!"

Nathan rose unsteadily, setting the pile of exams back on the desk. "You think it'd be that easy? You think I can't not dance to his tune?"

"You've already picked up the basic steps, even if you're doing an admirable job of fighting the next level of moves." he said. "I'm not saying that you're his puppet. But what I am saying is that he knows you inside and out, and knows where your buttons are. And he takes great delight in pushing them."

"He's sadistic. We know this," Nathan said, moving around the desk and sitting down. He clung doggedly to his fragile composure, even while part of him wondered just the hell how he'd wound up having the conversation he hadn't wanted to have.

"And as far as that world we're looking to build - yeah, we both want a nice, safe place for those we care about. But there will always be shitheads out there who want more than their share, or who are so deranged or damaged or precognitive that they think they've got all the answers." he said. "And there will always be a need for people like me - and like you - to stand on that wall so that everyone can sleep peacefully in their beds."

"It'd be so seductive, to listen to you," Nathan said dully. "Go out, buy a sniper rifle, take him out from a mile away some day, somewhere..."

"You want to just stand by and let him do what he wants?" he said incredulously. "Just .. let him go?"

Nathan stared flatly at him. "I understand that you've been a bit preoccupied the last few months," he said, "but I am very definitely not doing 'nothing'."

"Chasing him all over Africa in a wild goose chase? Letting him chat up your wife? What you're doing doesn't seem to be working very well." he pointed out.

Nathan reached out for his laptop, opening it. His hands shaking, he turned it on, not replying to Haroun for as long as it took to boot. He entered the proper password to open the Envoy database, and then turned the laptop around, his motions jerky, shaking, so that Haroun could see it.

Haroun wasn't missing all the distress signs Nathan was throwing off. "You're scared shitless." he said with a moment of revelation. He knew it because he looked at that same face in the mirror some days. "You have a start here." he conceded. "But looking at mutant birth rates in Asia or child-soldier camps in Chad isn't going to put your father and uncle away. Either in Ryker's or in a box, either way. They'll still be out there, pulling the strings. In Engineering, in fault analysis, we look for root causes, not symptoms. What you're doing? Treating the symptoms."

Nathan leaned back in his chair, his hands clenching on the edge of the desk. "Why hasn't Charles killed Magneto?" he asked. "The bastard can't wear that goofy helmet 24/7."

"Wouldn't surprise me if he did." he said. "And, well, at a guess I'd say that he assembled a lot of bright young boys and girls with powers to check Magento and what he represents."

"And they can't 'check' Gideon? Or my father?"

"We're doing such a grand job of it with the gloves on." he grumbled.

"You know the difference between you and me?" Nathan asked. His voice had gone odd, detached and somehow strained at the same time, the look in his eyes utterly blank. "You decided of your own free will that killing was sometimes necessary."

Haroun nodded. "Yeah." he said. "Sometimes, it is."

"Do you think I ever got the opportunity to make that choice? When Gideon had me sent to Mistra, so that they could turn a fourteen year-old kid into an attack dog? Killing was just something I did, because I was told to do it. Over and over again, until it was second nature, until it was easy." Nathan's hands clenched and unclenched on the edge of the desk. "That's what he made me. That's what I've spent the last two years trying to turn away from... and I almost threw it all away in Africa!"

"That's your right. You don't want to take the final step, that's your call to make and I'll respect that. But they won't respect that. People like your uncle and your father don't respect that. Magneto doesn't respect it. Omega Red doesn't respect it." he pointed out. "They're not going to pull punches before you used to be a dog off his leash."

"Magneto and Omega Red, maybe. But my uncle and father?" Nathan was still staring into empty air. "How much willpower do you think it takes not to hunt them down for what they did? And they're all about will, Haroun."

Haroun gritted his teeth. "And your act of will, while admirable, leaves them free to do whatever they want, confident that you won't take the shot."

"Are you trying to make me angry?" Nathan asked, finally focusing on Haroun again.

"Anything'd be better than this balls-less listless funk you've been in." he shot back.

Nathan stared at him. "Balls-less... listless... funk," he repeated, pausing on each word. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You walk around with no fire." he said. "You get this blank expression, like you're hiding or something. You don't laugh, you don't go out and have fun, you don't do -crap- but work."

Nathan pulled the laptop back across the desk, securing the database and shutting it down. "Askani's gone," he said. He still hadn't written that report.

"Yeah? You looking to follow her?" he asked Nate cruelly.

"Amanda used her to save Alison's life at the Hellfire Club, after Selene drained her. Don't goad me," Nathan finished, very softly. "Not about this."

"Fuck that. You need a goad. You need something - anything - to break up your pity-party and to get you to LIVE again!" he said. "Take your wife out for a getaway. Go down to Harry's and have a beer. Pop some caps at the range. Whatever floats your leaky boat."

Nathan shrugged a little. "Jack says I'm disassociating. He's probably right. At least the different parts are doing what they're supposed to do."

"You're damned right you are. But hey, like I got any right to give you shit about pulling back when I don't have the balls myself to let go. We're quite the pair. You won't hold on and I can't let go. We should just trade for 24 hours." he said with a grimace.

"Bodyswitching. That's all we'd need." Nathan rubbed his hands over his face. "You're right. I'm shared shitless. Or I would be, if I let myself feel it. But it's just too much. Amanda and Askani, my mother, Gideon... I can't do it."

"Par for the course for this place." he grumbled. "And join the crowd. Me? Shit, if I let go I might never be able to hold on again." he said. "Be the Man in the Chair for life. And you? You're so overwhelmed you'll throw up any block you can just to get a chance to just be you - whoever that is - for a while."

Nathan pushed things absently around his desk, rearranging them. "I don't know who I am," he said. "So much of what I rebuilt myself on got yanked right out from under me. And I've given up on ever really knowing where I came from. Gideon stole that from me, too."

"Seems you've got a couple of choices. You can completely fall apart - after everything you've been through, nobody'd begrudge you it. Or you can fight." he said. "Your call."

"I seem to have found a middle ground. For now." Nathan gave him a faint smile. "I suppose you're surprised not to see me out turning the quarry into glass."

"Hey, at least it'd be something to let us know you're still alive in there." he commented.

"I'm still here. I just can't fall apart again... I can't, Haroun. I don't like being the crazy unreliable one."

"If you need to fall apart to be put back together, then dammit, fall apart." he said sternly. "You can get enough help here to make sure you come out the other side stronger, healthier, and as close to balanced as you'll ever get. I know, I KNOW, cheap fuckin' words coming from me, but it's still true."

"Really ironic words coming from you, actually," Nathan said, but there was no heat in his voice. "But then, we both do that, don't we? We don't practice what we preach half the time."

"It's very Christian of me. Do as I say, don't do as I do." he muttered.

Nathan rubbed at his temples, slumping back in the chair. "Ironic. Really ironic..." He eyed the exams. "I don't feel like marking," he said. "Did you see what I said on the journals about not teaching next term? Although a couple of the little darlings want independent studies..."

He shrugged to that. "Do what you have to, man. I'm not gonna give you static. I'll still do Arabic and Flight, but that's all I really want to do. That and my independent study course in advanced hand-to-hand."

"I have lots to do. The team, and this." He laid a hand on the laptop. "And legal work for Charles. Enough to keep me busy." Nathan's smile was a bit weak. "I'm no teacher. Not really."

"Apparently the psychotic little darlings think differently." he said. "I'm the one they avoid like the plague. They like you."

"They'll grow out of it." Nathan was silent for a moment, and then got up. "I'm going back upstairs. The exams can wait for another day."

Haroun nodded and stepped aside to let Nathan pass. "Happy holidays." he said, hoisting his glass of OJ once again.

Nathan paused. "You should have seen Rachel with the fish," he said softly. "They were all congregating by the glass, I swear." He shook his head, smiling a bit. "I bought her a stuffed fish. It was actually a very good day..." He trailed off, then laid a hand on Haroun's arm for a moment, squeezing briefly, before he walked out the door.

Haroun watched Nathan walk away for a moment. ~We can help each other, brother.~ he said in very formal Arabic, younger-to-elder. ~Do not shut us out.~

"I'll meet you at Harry's. Tomorrow night, maybe. If you promise not to let me get drunk."