xp_logs | Nathan on Muir (Reply)

Snapshots in the wake of setting a plan in motion: Nathan gets a pep talk from MacInnis, takes a walk with Domino, and gets a request from GW's ghost.

"This has the potential to be a right royal clusterfuck, son."

Nathan leaned on the railing, wondering precisely when it had stopped bothering him to hear MacInnis call him that. "I know that," he said, staring out at the water. The older man gave a rusty chuckle, and Nathan looked sideways at him, frowning a little. "When did you start smoking?" he asked, watching MacInnis trying to light a cigarette in the strong wind up here on the balcony.

"When did I start?" MacInnis snorted. "I never quite managed to quit, that's more accurate. Stress sends me right back to it." He shook his head as the lighter took a couple of attempts to actually create a spark. "I was going through a pack a day that last week before Youra."

"Yeah, I bet," Nathan murmured, looking away. "Not good for you, old man."

"In case you haven't noticed, I haven't lived what you'd call a virtuous life up to this point, Nathan," MacInnis said with another of those grating chuckles. "If the smoking doesn't kill me, something else will." Nathan heard him sigh. "I'll do what I can," he said after a long moment. "You have more than I thought you would on Faraday and his business interests."

"Strategic break-and-enters." Nathan rubbed at the back of his neck, rolling his head from side to side to release some of the tension. It had been a long evening, explaining what he had in mind to MacInnis and the Pack. "Wonderful things."

MacInnis scoffed lightly. "You didn't get all of that from the night you and LeBeau went into the Eris office."

"No, I didn't," Nathan said, a bit more curtly than he'd intended. "I know a number of people in interesting places who weren't at all happy about what happened to GW." He smiled tightly. "I didn't even have to call in any favors." Just a few phone calls, and a handful of emails.

"It was a mistake, you know," MacInnis said quietly. Nathan looked around at him, seeing him puffing away placidly on the cigarette. "Faraday killing GW. Don't know what the hell he was thinking when he did it, but there wasn't a move more dumb to be made." From anyone else, it might have sounded like bluster. From Mac, Nathan reflected a bit bemusedly, it sounded like a statement of fact.

"Why?" he asked after a moment, a bit warily.

"Pack dynamics," MacInnis said. "Pun not intended. I know you don't want to hear this, but we made quite a study of it back at Mistra." He tapped the cigarette on the railing, bits of ash glimmering in the dimness as they fell. "Faraday killed the wrong man to destroy your Pack, son. GW wasn't the stabilizing influence-"

"-he wasn't?"

"No. He was the mediator. Totally different thing. He smoothed away the rough edges so that all your volatile personalities didn't cut themselves to pieces." MacInnis coughed. "Losing him's a blow, but the recoil's going to push you all closer together, not drive you apart. If I had to guess. The key'll be who steps up to take his place. My guess would be Theo or Gavin - David's got the wrong temperament entirely."

Nathan shifted, unsettled and irritated at hearing GW's life... reduced, like that. "He was a lot more than a... mediator."

"Of course he was," MacInnis said quietly.

"And Gideon didn't kill GW to destroy the Pack," Nathan persisted stubbornly. "He was trying to get at me."

MacInnis merely raised an eyebrow. "Funny thing. You don't look crushed to me. He definitely picked the wrong man in that case. You're going to keep it together just because GW wanted you to." The laugh was a bit dour this time. "I don't think your uncle understands you at all."

Nathan stared back at him for a moment, and then looked away again, grumbling. "This is one hell of a pep talk."

"This is me you're talking to, Nathan. What did you expect?"

--

Domino was hopping from rock to rock with a fluid sort of grace, and Nathan watched her for a long moment from the end of the path before he finally moved forward, striding down the beach to join her. "You look like you're playing hopscotch," he said quietly.

Dom gave him a brief smile from atop a particularly large boulder. "They're properly placed for hopscotch, aren't they?" she mused, then jumped down, landing lightly at his side. "You come out to take a walk with me?" she asked, sliding her arm through his and then leaning her head on his shoulder.

"If you want." They started walking, heading in the direction of the cliffs, and Nathan was quiet for a long few minutes, not wanting to break the peaceful silence right away. "So," he finally said, "what did you think?"

"Of the plan?"

"Yes, the plan."

"You had Pete go over it, didn't you?"

Nathan snorted softly. "Yes, I did. That obvious, huh? Alison might have glanced at it too, come to think of it."

"Yeah, I figured as much. It was remarkably free of holes." Her head hadn't moved from his shoulder. "I thought he might come with you this weekend," she said idly.

"I didn't ask him." Nathan looked down at her with a faint smile. "Should I have?"

Domino gave an eloquent half-shrug. "Might've been nice..."

"I'm sure the two of you can arrange a rendezvous if you want it," Nathan said dryly. "You're both resourceful."

"Oh, hah." Domino straightened finally, but didn't remove her arm from his. "So what are you going to be doing while we're off doing dastardly but pointedly non-lethal things on Moira's dime?"

"Something I'm fundamentally unsuited to be doing," Nathan said with a bleak sort of amusement. "Taking the indirect approach."

--

"You're drunk again."

"I am not," Nathan told the ghost with a great deal of dignity, "drunk. Seriously, not at all." He teetered a little before he decided that the ground was a good place to sit down. "And even if I was," he reminded GW, "we were drinking to you, so you shouldn't call me on it. Billie broke out the good Scotch again."

"Unfair, hmm?" GW asked, crouching down next to him and staring thoughtfully at the gravestone. "What made you pick that?"

"What, the poetry?"

"Yeah, the poetry."

"I thought it worked."

"Walt Whitman," GW murmured, shaking his head.

"You would have preferred something else?" Nathan rested his chin in his hand, gazing at the gravestone. "I like this one. Oh captain, my captain. Etcetera. It seemed very appropriate."

"I would have preferred something of yours," GW said with a slight smile.

Nathan looked around at him abruptly. "You deserve good poetry," he said a bit thickly. "Not my doggerel."

"Bullshit. Do me a favor? Write me a poem. Write it for me, but show it to Rachel, when she's old enough to appreciate it." GW's expression was very serious, but affectionate too. "Tell her that her father's a poet, at least, if you don't do that."

"Why?" His throat felt tight.

"Because. Sometimes the words matter."