LOG: Haroun and Nathan - Conversations

[x-jetstream.livejournal.com]

Haroun's sitting on the back porch enjoying some tea and the view of the back yard when Nathan joins him to talk about Domino.



Haroun was sitting out on the back porch, all bundled up against the cold and cupping a nearly scaldingly-hot cup of tea in his hand. The vapor coming from the cup did much to soothe him, as he was still bruised from his little encounter with Domi ... with _Nadia_ down in the weight room. Light duty only, no lifting until the bruises healed. He could live with that.

"Are you all right?" The question came from the doorway, and Haroun looked around to see Nathan, wearing a light coat and a look that suggested he hadn't gotten much sleep last night, watching him patiently. "I heard you had a mishap with a weight bench last night."

Haroun nodded. "Just bruised. I'll be fine in a day or so." he said, sipping from his cup of tea. It was delicious, and he sighed in sheer pleasure. "When you leaving for Muir?" he asked.

"First thing tomorrow morning. Another charter flight - the munckin's aerial tendencies complicate the whole commercial flying experience." Nathan closed the door behind him and came over to sit down in the chair beside Haroun's.

Haroun grinned. "You're gonna have your hands full with that one." he said, laughing. Then he coughed as his bruised chest muscles protested. "But the break should do you some good. Get out of the madhouse."

"Speaking of madhouses..." Nathan murmured with a slight smile, giving him a sideways look. "About the weight bench and the associated conversation..."

Haroun sighed. "What about it?" he asked, dreading the answer. Nate when pissed was, quite frankly, frightening. When he lost his temper things tended to get ... energetic. As in potential to kinetic. "I see you talked to Domino."

"I woke up at about two am when she started pelting my bedroom window with pebbles to get my attention." Nathan's voice was mild, oddly unreadable. "We had a little talk out in the snow. Wound up with her sobbing her heart out in my arms for the better part of an hour... and asking me a question I never thought she'd ask." He looked at Haroun, his expression calm, reflective, almost wistful. "I've known... GW and I have know, rather, who she is and where she came from for years. Almost as long as she's been with us. But she never wanted to know. Screamed at me and threw things at my head the last time I tried to tell her. Of course, she was seventeen at the time..."

Haroun nodded. "Good." he said, after a _very_ long pause. "She listened." He then turned to face Nate more directly. "I know she's your ward and practically like a daughter to you. You care for her, and she cares for you. But fuck it, Nate, I'm _not_ sorry for being a sadistic little dick to her." he said stridently. "It needed said, and she needed to hear it."

Nathan looked back out at the snowy grounds, his eyes distant. "I'm not sure I agree with your take on her psychology... but I'm overly soft-hearted when it comes to her. I always have been."

Haroun sighed. "She's a whore, Nate. I know you don't want to hear it but there it is. Her first instinct is to drop flat on her back." he said uncharitably. "I called her on it, and she broke on me. Which would seem to indicate that something in that girl's head is fairly profoundly broken." he said calmly. "The weight bench just clinched it."

"I don't think she's a whore. I think she's been pretty profoundly damaged, yes. Maybe GW and I should have shoved her into therapy instead of trying to send her to school. But fuck, Haroun, I was badly off in my own way, and GW I think was just trying to keep the both of us together as much as he could."

"I'm not blaming you." he said calmly. He _pushed_ his thoughts at Nate - clumsily, but he wanted to establish _that_ straight off. "Like I told her. I don't like Domino. I never have, and I doubt I ever will. Nadia, on the other hand, is a different story. Her I don't know at all, and apparently neither does she. That's ... sad, although coming from me probably hypocritical."

"Why hypocritical?" Nathan asked after a moment, his eyes lingering on Haroun.

"Because of my own issues with letting go." he said. "I really don't have much ground to stand on to tell other people about their shitty self-image when mine's fundamentally broken in some ways." he said. "Hence hypocritical."

"It's not hypocritical if it's the truth," Nathan said finally, sighing. "Even if you're having trouble wrestling with a truth, it doesn't make it false. If that makes any sense whatsoever."

"Not really, but I'm an engineer, not a psychologist." he said with a shrug. "You know, outside of the whoring you two are a lot alike." he commented.

Nathan sighed again, not commenting on Haroun's fondness for a certain word. "How so?" he asked patiently.

"You're both dedicated to what you do. You're both martyrs to your respective causes, and you both will do whatever it takes to get the job done." he said with a sour expression. "And you both have spent so long establishing a cover identity that you've lost track of who you really are underneath. Or you've never had the chance to develop who you are underneath. I sound like Charles now." he said, trying to wash out the taste of Earl Grey Tea with his mint tea.

Nathan considered that for a moment. "There's a certain amount of truth to that. We've both got problems with disassociation," he said, thinking about his conversation with Domino. "Of course, so do you. Or did."

Haroun took a deep breath and nodded. "Not to the same extent - people are trying to hammer Haroun and Jetstream together, whereas for you and Nadia you have no damned clue who Nathan Dayspring and Nadia ... Nadia are." he protested. "I know exactly who Haroun and Jetstream are."

"Nadia Eleanor Sidorova," Nathan said after a moment, very quietly. "And yeah, there's some mixed ethnicity there." He paused for a moment. "Her mother was a British journalist. Her father was one of these reform-minded Russian politicians who stood up against the wrong member of the Mafia. They killed him, and had her and her mother sent to Hong Kong."

Haroun nodded. "And I know the story, or enough of the story, from there." he said. "Looks like I get to avoid being telekinetically ripped apart after all. That's good, I've spent a good bit of cash this holiday season."

"You really thought I was going to rip you apart?" Nathan asked with a quick, wry smile. "Come on, I'm not that unforgiving. And in a sense, you were right."

"Yes, you are, and yes, I wondered." he said. "You don't take it well when I poke at Domino. And I took the _mother_ of all shots at her yesterday." he pointed out.

"I'm trying not to be so judgemental these days." Nathan shook his head slowly. "If I'd thought you'd done it to be cruel," he said more softly, "yeah, there would have been ass-kicking. But you didn't."

"I won't deny that I enjoyed it early on." he admitted. It was useless anyway to try to lie to a telepath of Nate's caliber. "But it changed the deeper I dug and the more and more badly she reacted. I took no joy in breaking her down to tears." he said, feeling a twinge of internal guilt. "I respect women, I don't like making them sob."

"I know." Nathan laughed softly. "You're soft-hearted, deep down. Don't think I don't know that."

Haroun snorted, then winced as his chest protested.

"That was a kind thing you did. That note," Nathan said quietly. "She was still holding onto it when she came to see me."

"It's just the truth." he said simply. "As a Muslim - as a _man_ - I owed it to her. And it's the truth. I don't like Domino at all, but Nadia - she might have some potential to be someone I'd like to know." he said with a slight shrug. "And if you call me soft-hearted again I'll personally kick your ass from here to Mecca."

Nathan slanted an amused sideways look at him again. "Feel free, you big marshmallow," he said, then grew serious again. "Is the disassociation healthy, though?"

"You're asking me?" he said with a surprised tone. "Hell if I know, man. Ultimately, probably not. But I've been talking a lot with Charles over the last month or so. Basically, you can't do a merge when one side's an empty set." he said helpfully.

"It's like me and Nathan Morrow, I suppose," Nathan said, staring out at the grounds again. "I have no idea who he was. Can't know, because of what Gideon did to my memory."

"Exactly." he said. "In order to bring Nathan Dayspring and Nathan Morrow together into an integrated set, you need to define Nathan Morrow. Same deal with Nadia and Domino."

"You know, ordinarily, if you were sitting here telling me I needed to find my inner child, I'd be laughing at you," Nathan said after a moment. "But I suppose I've spent too much time talking to Charles and Jack myself. I know you can't just leave a whole part of your life missing. You have to deal with it somehow."

"Inner child my ass." he said with a snort. "You need to establish who both sides of your identity are, and how important they are to you. If Morrow's not important, then forget about him and establish Dayspring. That kind of thing. But again, not a Psych guy." he said with a shrug. "Me? I've gone too far down that road. Haroun's over here and Jetstream's over here and in order to do neat things like walk, run, fly, all that I need to bring the two men into one." he said.

"The gaps are the problem," Nathan said. "Human beings are afraid of the unknown - it's a natural thing. How much worse is it when the unknown is you?" He put his feet up on one of the other chairs, slouching. "I wonder about false dichotomies, though."

"Something like that." he said with a shrug. "How is Nadia doing today? I imagine she's probably still very much off-balance." he said.

"She was calmer when I finally got her back inside yesterday. I'm assuming she's with Pete at the moment." Nathan paused, then laughed. "You were so worried about me. Didn't occur to you to wonder about how he might have reacted if he was the one she'd gone to last night, did it?"

"I barely know Pete." he said. "And until right now I didn't know Domino was shacking up with him." he said with mixed emotions. "I ... I have too much fundamental dislike for Domino to be objective about who she chooses to get close to." he said.

"He loves her," Nathan said very quietly. "And she loves him. One of the things she said to me last night was that she had to... be better, be stronger, because he needed her to be. Because he deserved someone he can rely on. And she's scared to death that she can't be that person."

Haroun looked faintly embarrassed that Nathan would spill Domino's intimate thoughts so easily. "I see." he said, mentally biting his tongue. Domino could _still_ bring out the worst in him, and despite last night's breakthrough he still wanted to see concrete progress before he let go of his ill-will towards the mercenary.

Nathan raised an eyebrow, looking mildly amused. "And yes, she would probably hit me if she knew I'd told you any of that, but you were the one who decided to get involved. It's harder to hold so firmly onto certain opinions when your understanding is deeper, isn't it?"

Haroun just managed to look embarrassed. "Or even easier." he said, partially to be contrary, partially because it was true. Domino was one screwed-up little girl, and that was the opinion he came to years ago when he met her for the first time. It was odd, that his own version of a woman scorned would still have its grip on him to this very day.

"Speaking of false dichotomies... part of you looks at her and sees your friend. Or an affront to your cultural sensibilities. Or a whore. I think part of the reason you can't leave it alone is that you know she's more than that. You can't reconcile that with the woman who alerted us to that first training camp, who's been helping rescue other kids ever since." Nathan smiled again, very slightly. "It's your innate sense of justice. You're getting mixed signals and you're not absolutely sure how to handle that."

Haroun shot a flat stare at his friend. "Be careful." he warned. "I can readily concede that Domino is skilled at what she does. She should be, she's been doing it for most of her life." he said. "But that doesn't excuse or account for her dissolute ways." he said stridently. Or for leading one of his closest friends towards putting himself into the ground on her behalf.

Nathan raised an eyebrow and then projected a couple of carefully chosen images at Haroun from the X-Men's trip to Libya to rescue the Pack and the kids they'd snatched out of the latest camp. Domino, striding through the desert as if she was tireless, her eyes fierce as she held the child in her arms protectively. Then again at the airfield in Tunis, her gently coaxing one of the other children out of the Blackbird after the wild flight, then carrying the exhausted girl to the truck.

"It's not her skill that's made you start looking at her as more than just the person you blame for your friend's death," Nathan said steadily. "Give yourself a little credit, all right? You might be a stubborn ass, but you have more insight into people than you let on."

Haroun cheerfully shot his friend the finger. "Is that supposed to change my mind? I _know_ that she's dedicated. That she's good at what she does. I've never doubted that. What I don't like is her ... immodesty. Her whoring, although I know you don't like it when I call a spade a spade. Her drinking. All the things she does to debase herself."

"And what's most important in the grand scheme of things? In the end, what matters more?" Nathan gave Haroun a long, contemplative look. "How much of this is about you holding the line, not wanting to give any more ground on how you think the world should be? Because I know you've... compromised a lot, and I don't mean that in a negative way."

"Ends or means?" he asked softly, staring out over the back yard. "She would be happier if she gave up her self-destructive habits. Learned to channel them in other ways. Positive ways." he said softly. "Tell me I'm wrong."

"It takes a lot to decide that you deserve to be happy," Nathan said, deciding not to point out that Haroun hadn't answered his question. "When so much of what you remember..." He trailed off, his expression briefly pained as he shook his head. "You'd think I'd have this all figured out."

Haroun shrugged as he looked out over the back yard's snowy expanse. "So it comes down to that. I haven't been there, so I don't have any right to pass judgement?" he said distantly.

"No. We need to hear it from people who haven't been there, because it's literally not something we can tell ourselves. We need faith from someone else that we deserve more than pain, the belief that it's possible to find a better way, because you can't be your own anchor."

Haroun blinked. "You've giving me way, way too much credit." he said with a full-on blush. "Seriously. I cannot and will not take responsibility for turning your protege into a decent human being. Shit, Nate, I haven't turned _myself_ into a decent human being, remember?" he said in protest. "I drink, I fornicate, I've killed ... I'm no mullah."

"Did I ask you to?" Nathan countered gently. "What you can do, you're doing already. And I give you the credit you deserve, for that, whether you want it or not." He shook his head a little. "It doesn't take close and complicated relationships to give someone in that situation hope, Haroun. Sometimes all it takes is a moment of forgiveness. One offered hand."

Haroun paused and thought about it. "Think of it as repaying a debt." he said cryptically, and then tried his damndest to blank his mind. Some thoughts were too private to be shared, even with a friend. "But I mean it. I'm not ready to forgive her yet."

"I imagine," Nathan said, stepping on the temptation to chase down that half-suppressed thought, "that you'll forgive her around the same time that you're ready to forgive yourself."

Haroun looked at his friend, but didn't bother to respond verbally. Instead, he focused on the austere beauty of moonlight on the snow.