Interrupted Elegies

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Nathan, as he discussed with Jennie, is trying to write something about GW for public consumption when he makes the mistake of checking the email account he used to communicate with GW when he was in Africa. Waiting patiently to be read since the previous week is an unexpected email - from Gideon. Nathan goes out to the quarry to blow up some rocks, and is eventually coaxed back inside by Angelo. He finally breaks down on Moira, and then, much later, has yet another ghostly visitation.


It was a good thing he wasn't actually working, Nathan reflected, or Moira would have been down here dragging him out of his office by the ear hours ago. He was officially taking time off, after all. She'd poked at the link a while back, wanting to know what he was doing, but had then given him the telepathic equivalent of a caress and left him to it.

It was going to take a while, Nathan told himself, to figure out how to phrase this right. How to convey enough about GW to tell the kids here how important what he'd been doing was, how important he'd been, without giving away too much in the way of operational details. He wished he could figure out a way to do it that didn't involve the long 'confessional' post, given what a cliche that had become, but on the other hand, he was hardly confessing his own sins, was he? No, this was an elegy. Something entirely different.

Quotations? Nathan thought whimsically, reaching out to turn on his laptop. He'd been working on paper - it was easier, when the subject material was so emotional. One of the reasons Jack had him keeping a handwritten journal. But on the laptop, he had saved many, if not all - and how he wished he'd saved all - of the emails GW had sent him over the last few months, while the Pack had been working in Africa. Maybe there was something in there, something that would be just right for these purposes. It was an enticing thought, though. GW's story in GW's own words...

Nathan logged into the right email account, reminding himself that he needed to go through and clean it out. Save the emails as separate files. Someday, Rachel would want to read them, he told himself. He hadn't logged into this particular email account since the third of January, when he and GW had been sending emails back and forth before he'd left for Kazakhstan and the Pack had headed to Mali.

The most recent email should have been the two-line note chastising him for his smugness over GW's not-so-innocent question about jewelry-making. Nathan remembered every word of that email and the others in that exchange, would probably remember them until the day he died.

But there was another email. One he didn't recognize.

Dated the 11th.

Nathan stared at it for a moment, and then clicked on it.

Good evening, nephew...

~*~


The boulder exploded with a dull roar, rock shrapnel scattering across the quarry in every direction. It didn't bounce off Nathan's shield, because he wasn't shielding. The nimbus of fire surrounding him was something else, and when the bits of rock intersected it, they melted.

He wasn't seeing the quarry. Or even the individual rocks. The gray of his eyes had been swallowed up by solid, glowing gold, and all he saw were patterns in light, shredding around him as his power surged outwards in waves driven by anger and grief and pure, vicious hatred.

He was barely managed to keep himself in check. An earthquake would be bad. Blowing up rocks was one thing, but an earthquake would be bad. There were tremors already, the ground shaking just slightly beneath his feet. He hoped they were localized.

There was steam everywhere. Why was there steam? The snow evaporating, he realized, his hands clenching into fists at his side. As if on cue, there was a loud crack, and a zig-zagging strip of earth was suddenly rippling into glass.

I don't expect you to understand.

A noise somehow forced itself out through the tightness in his throat and his gritted teeth, something that was half-growl, half-moan, as his damned photographic memory presented him with the email, there in front of his eyes as if he was back in his office sitting in front of the laptop.

If it's any consolation, your friend was an impressive individual...

Of course there had been an email. It had been an object lesson, hadn't it? Nathan's fists clenched tighter, and power washed over the ground around him in waves. Not just streaks of glass, this time. All glass. Earth shimmered and went hard and rippled, then shattered under the next wave of force. An object lesson was no good, Nathan thought wildly, without context. Without follow-up.

...for a human.

No.

Nathan took a deep, shuddering breath, overwhelming rage faltering, disintegrated into helpless, angry pain. Not an object lesson. Not a fucking object lesson. He wasn't giving Gideon that, wasn't letting him have even the status of a twisted teacher.

"He can't teach me anything." It came out in a hoarse whisper, but Nathan's jaw clenched and he said it again, louder, even if his voice broke as he went on. "He can't. Teach me. Anything."

And the power around him died, all at once. He could have kept right on going. Turn every bit of rock and dirt and blade of grass around him into glass, tear it all apart on a molecular level... leave a crater, like he and Tim had left in Canada. So easily. The anger was still there, like a volcano just waiting for the word to blow again.

But he couldn't. It wasn't solving anything. And he wasn't going to give in to the anger. He'd made a promise, and he'd keep it, no matter how much he wanted to rage at the world. Choking it back, Nathan staggered over to one of the still-intact boulders and sat down, burying his face in his hands.

The night, all of a sudden, seemed very quiet.


~*~


It wasn't too long before company found him, though Angelo didn't announce himself right away. Joyita had decided she wanted to go out, and Angelo had been awake, so he went along with it. Now, with the dog at his feet, he sat quietly down on another rock beyond the worst of the mess Nathan had made, lit a cigarette, and waited to be noticed.

Nathan was perfectly aware that he was there. It took him a while longer to raise his head from his hands, though, and look in Angelo's direction, blinking rapidly. "You're out late," he said hoarsely.

"Came out to walk the dog, an' she dragged me over this way. Then I saw you down here."

"So you didn't come because you heard me making a mess," Nathan said dully. "Good." He hadn't thought about that, about bringing people running. Explosions were bad and all.

"Didn't leave the house 'cause I heard you makin' a mess, no. Anyway, people do that here. Even at midnight."

Nathan rubbed his hands over his face, taking another shuddering breath. Joyita looked up at him, wagging her tail a bit uncertainly. "Was just out for a walk myself," he all but croaked. Angelo gave him that patient 'I know you're lying' look, but Nathan didn't retract it. "Not sure when I decided to start blowing things up."

"Guess you needed the venting," Angelo observed neutrally, watching him.

"Venting." He gave a broken little laugh, shivering as the wind blew a little more fiercely. It was starting to snow again. "I guess that's what you'd call it. Except that it doesn't do any good in the end, does it?"

Angelo was ignoring the snow, except to cup his free hand around the cigarette protectively. "Depends. Did it make you feel any better?"

"No. Not at all." Nathan swallowed past the tightness in his throat. His gloved hands were still shaking. He shook his head - denying what, he didn't know. "Don't think feeling better's in the cards."

"Right. Sure as hell aren't gonna do yourself any good stayin' out here in the middle of a New York winter, though, now you're done with the explosions."

"Don't nag at me," Nathan said restlessly. "Where did you learn how to nag like that?"

"Don't remember. Someone here, probably."

"What do you want?" Nathan rubbed at his face again. Where was the numbness from after Askani's death? He'd do anything to have it back. "Just to prevent hypothermia?"

Angelo shrugged, slightly. "For now, yeah. It'll do. Not leavin' you out here tonight, let's start there."

"I'm a big boy, Angelo. I can look after myself." There was no venom in his voice, no heat. Just exhaustion and a stiffness that had more to do with the attempt at control than anything else.

"Yeah. But how long would you've stayed out here in the snow if nobody happened to be around?"

"Five minutes. All night." He shrugged, trying for at least the surface impression of apathy. "I don't intend to freeze to death anytime in the near future."

"Good. Gonna go inside soon, then?"

"When I'm ready to go inside, I'll go inside," Nathan said, with a brief flash of exhausted anger. "Don't herd me. I have enough people trying to pull my strings."

"No herdin'", Angelo answered with a small shrug. "You go in when you want. But I'm not goin' a minute before you do."

"You are so damned stubborn. I don't want or need company." Numb. Why couldn't he be numb?

"Want? I'm sure you don't. Need's somethin' different, though."

"Go AWAY!" It came out as a shout, this time. Nathan's hands were shaking violently, and he sank his head into them again. "God damn it, just go away... I have to pretend I have it together inside, I don't need to be watched out here, too!"

"If you need to not have it together," Angelo said quietly, "then don't. Nathan, I'm just out here to make sure you don't stay out all night an' freeze to death. Not to see you prove anythin'."

"What I need..." He could hardly breathe, his chest was so tight, and he felt like he was holding his head together, as if everything that was inside would explode if he let go. "I need things not to be the way they are. I need my best friend not to have died in my arms because my bastard of an uncle killed him with my powers! I need my daughter to grow up knowing the people she's supposed to know, not just stories. I need to stop losing people!"

Angelo listened calmly until Nathan had finished, drawing on his cigarette, Joyita's leash firmly in his hand. "Okay. Some of that stuff might be possible t'change. Some isn't. So what're you gonna do?"

"I don't know yet." Something. Something unexpected. "Not the revenge thing... I can't do that, no matter what some of the others think. It's..." He stopped, his voice breaking again. "I did that once. It didn't help. And I think that if I do it now, with Gideon... it's what he wants. Me to make choices like that. And maybe the people I love would be safer if I killed him, but how do I come back from that? I did it once and it took me years... years to come back from it, and I didn't know any better when I first made those choices, so it was easier not to care about consequences. But I learned better." Nathan rubbed his eyes again, his voice tired and hurt-sounding as he went on. "I know better now. I know what I'd be throwing away if I went back to that."

"Exactly. You're not the guy you were then."

"Simple answers. There aren't any." His eyes blurred again, and he couldn't keep the despair out of his voice as he went on. "And GW made me promise not to. He was dying, and he used his last moment to make me promise... worried about me, when I'd gotten him killed..."

"You didn't get him killed," Angelo contradicted firmly. "Not unless you're blamin' yourself just for callin' him a friend. Gideon got him killed. So what you do now is what he wanted from you."

"I've got to think. Figure it out... talk to people." Nathan took a shaky breath, tears escaping finally. "It just hurts so much. I felt him die... I was in his mind when he died, trying to hold on. I couldn't. I couldn't hold on."

Angelo nodded, not commenting on the tears for fear of... something. "Yeah. Just... don't expect too much from yourself yet."

"I have to," Nathan said with a weak, ghostly smile. "That's the one thing I'm sure of, Angelo. I have to expect more from myself than I ever have before, if I'm going to make it through this without letting him win."

"...okay. But... you need to take time to regroup first."

Nathan wiped at his eyes, taking another breath, perhaps a little bit steadier. "I should really go back in. Shouldn't I?" He was starting to realize that the shakes were as much about the cold as the emotional stress.

"It's probably a good idea, yeah."

Joyita, as if she'd detected the shift in the conversation, got up and came trotting over to Nathan with a little whine, head-butting him. Nathan stroked the top of her head for a moment, and then heaved himself to his feet.

~*~


He had promised Angelo he would go right to bed, and parted ways with him on the second floor before climbing the stairs to the third floor, slowly if doggedly. So tired, Nathan thought dizzily, swaying a little as he reached the top of the stairs. Tantrum, he thought. You threw a king-sized tantrum. Of course you burned through your energy.

There was no one abroad in the halls, thankfully. Nathan headed down the corridor to his and Moira's door and slipped inside as soundlessly as he could. As he closed the door behind him, Moira walked out of the bedroom and stood there gazing at him, her eyes slightly wider than usual and concern written all over her face.

She didn't speak. Nathan, sliding out of his coat and laying it on the back of a chair, glanced in the direction of the nursery door. Closed all the way, and a quick telepathic check told him that Rachel was sound asleep, safe in her shielded crib.

It still didn't mean...

He couldn't...

Nathan focused on taking each step, crossing the distance between him and Moira. For some reason, when he reached her, he was on his knees, and she was sinking down beside him, her arms going tightly around him as he cried.


~*~


"You ought to be over there."

"Where?" Nathan murmured softly where he was slouched in the one of the armchairs by the bedroom window. Had to keep his voice down. It was almost 4am, and Moira was sleeping.

GW, sitting in the other armchair, the one facing his, shook his head. "Over there," he said, softly but pointedly as he inclined his head in the direction of the bed. "With your wife."

"I will." Right now, he was watching the moon. He felt calm, exhausted but peacefully hollow in a way as well. He'd started crying and hadn't been able to stop. Moira, bless her, hadn't done the predictable thing and gone for the sedatives. She'd just held him, murmuring comforting words that he hadn't really registered. Her tone had been enough. Eventually, the storm had passed.

GW's expression was almost unreadable in the dimness. "You said he can't teach you anything," he murmured finally. "You're not going to let him pretend that he can. I'm fully in favor of that, bro."

"But?"

"But how about not letting him hurt you?"

Nathan gave him a faint smile. "But he did." He swallowed, his eyes stinging again, just a little, although he couldn't feel the breakdown waiting out there for him anymore. He'd already stepped off that precipice. "I miss you so much."

"Miss me," GW said, his voice light, but something very serious beneath it all, "mourn me, but smile when you remember me."

And Nathan did, almost involuntarily, as a few stray tears escaped. "I'm trying."

"I know you are."

"Don't go yet?" It wasn't quite a plea.

GW smiled back. "Not yet," he agreed softly. "In a little while."