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xp_logs2006-03-30 11:48 am
x-cable.livejournal.com) wrote in xp_logs2006-03-30 11:48 am
House of Wind: Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Nathan picks up his father, and drives to the brownstone from his vision, where Gideon is waiting. The two of them try the father/son talk again in the car. It doesn't go very well. When they get to the brownstone, the 'summit' is short, unpleasant, and comes to a violent end - just like Nathan knew it would. To Saul, however, it comes as an unpleasant surprise.
Nathan pulled the car up in front of the hotel, giving the concierge a sharp shake of his head when the man would have moved towards the car. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. One minute early. If he didn't miss his guess, Saul would be coming through the doors precisely on time.
He raised a hand from the steering wheel and rubbed his eyes. He'd been driving around for hours, ever since he'd left the mansion, in an attempt to calm his nerves a little. Or maybe to convince himself that he really wanted to do this. It had taken some doing. He had come very close to turning the car right around and heading back to Westchester.
He wasn't sure what had stopped him.
Saul walked out, precisely as the clock above the hotel's door clicked five minutes past the hour. Looking back and forth briefly, he walked directly to Nathan's car, stopping by the passenger door without any preamble. His voice was tense, barely loud enough to be heard inside the car. "He's waiting, Nathan."
Nathan, in response, unlocked the door. "You'll have to give me directions," he said without thinking as Saul got in. "I know what the place looks like, but-" He stopped, looking around at his father with eyes slightly wider than they should be. "Precog," he said before Saul could ask. "Directions?"
"Your mother never had to ask for directions," Saul said gruffly, drawing his coat tightly around himself as he buckled his seat belt. "The expressway, south. Past the harbor, off 29th. Mind the construction."
They drove for a few minutes in silence before Nathan finally broke it. "They don't know I'm here," he said. "I figured it was best to keep it in the family. Less complicated that way."
Saul just stared forward out the windshield, his expression inscrutable. "Yes," he finally said, "they do complicate things. These friends of yours. Under every other circumstance, I wish you and them all the luck in the world. But this... Vladivostok has affected Gideon rather severely, Nathan. I do truly think he wants to kill you." Saul made the announcement as plainly as if he'd been commenting on the weather, rather than his brother's intent to murder his son.
"He raised the stakes, Saul. Not me." Nathan's hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel as they got onto the expressway. "I probably would have been content to run around after him trying to fix the messes he makes if he had, you know, refrained from murdering my best friend with my own powers." A lie, really. Or maybe not. Maybe he could have been satisfied with the chase, with doing what he could, if Gideon hadn't backed him into a corner.
"Gideon has always chosen his own dramatic ways to make a statement," Saul said, a tinge of sadness in his voice. "As, I suppose, do you. The bird of fire, though. That's something new, isn't it? Something you've adapted, a new application of your powers. You see, Nathan, you may despise what I do - but every day, you continue to vindicate my beliefs, even if you won't share them."
Nathan managed not to grind his teeth. "The firebird," he said very clearly and very coldly, wondering if it had been such a good idea to indulge his whim in Vladivostok after all, "is in memory of two more dead friends. Two more people I lost before their time. I suppose that's why I'm here," he said, his tone absolutely unchanging even as he started to lie through his teeth. "I've lost too much, a lot of it because of the two of you. Aliya, Tyler, sixteen years of my life to Mistra... every real memory of my childhood."
"Every real memory?" Saul asked, motioning towards a side street. As Nathan turned, Saul glanced up out the window, the morning sunlight casting a glow on his face that seemed to catch every line, every wrinkle of age. "A pity. I taught you how to ice fish, do you remember that? We would sit out there for hours, but I think I felt closer to you when we would both receive a tongue lashing from your mother for coming back three hours late. If you can remember at least that she loved you, Nathan, then you cannot say you've lost everything."
Nathan swallowed, recalling the half-remembered memory of sitting out on the steps at night in his mother's arms, watching the northern lights. "It doesn't bother you at all?" he asked tightly. "Knowing that I don't remember the fishing, or any of these other good father-son moments you and I apparently had?" The sight of the brownstone sent a chill through him, and he pulled up to the curb. Just like in the vision. "It doesn't bother you that he tore them out of my mind and left me with holes that I filled up with nightmares?"
"Every day," Saul said quietly. Then with a sudden quickness, he slammed his palms into the dashboard of the car, face contorted in a grimace of unrecognizable emotion. "Every moment, Nathan! You think I am some monster, incapable of remorse, incapable of pain. I carry this like an albatross, son. This weight I have to bear because of the things I have done. And I could not bear this pain if I did not believe with every fiber of my being that this pain brings with it a strength the world cannot begin to comprehend. You are the proof of that strength, Nathan. And yes, if you wish to know my mind, then I tell you that it is a knife in me every time I think of what you have been put through."
With a series of calming breaths, Saul relaxed against the seat, eyes closed. "But I will not recant, and I will not pretend it has not been for the greater good, Nathan. Your pain, and mine. Stop here."
Nathan stopped the car, then took the keys out of the ignition. He eyed the clock for a moment, then looked at his father. "I wanted so much," he said, his voice low and uneven, "to believe in you, last summer. I wanted it so much that I ignored every person who was telling me to be careful, every person who told me that you were pulling the wool over my eyes and I was too desperate to believe you to see it. I think..." His throat was almost unbearably tight. "I think I do believe that you love me, as much as I hate you for the rest of it. But I can't... he took you away from me, don't you understand that? All I see when I look at you is the man who walked back into my life and turned it upside down. I don't see the father who took me ice-fishing, because the memory's gone. I can't... balance one with the other. I'm no innocent, Saul, I've done my share of despicable things. It means I'm more than moderately familiar with the whole concept of forgiveness, but with you, there's nothing to ground it in anymore. He made sure of that."
"I've no right to ask your forgiveness, son," Saul said as he unbuckled his seat belt. "I cannot make us a family again, that much is beyond me. I've come to terms with this. But beyond all else, you are my son. Everything you feel for Rachel, felt for Tyler -that is what you are to me. Call it a genetic imperative to ensure the survival of the bloodline, that's how your uncle sees it. He claims it distracts me from our purpose. He has no children of his own, he'll never know how that bond can provide such purity, such clarity of purpose."
Saul made a small motion that could have been a gesture of reassurance, or possibly the beginnings of a fatherly touch on his son's arm. But as soon as he had begun, he stopped, opening the door of the car instead. "He's inside," he said with finality.
"Right." Nathan unlocked the doors and opened his, not letting Saul see the way his hands were shaking. The feeling of impending doom was entirely stupid, he tried to tell himself.
The feeling that he could have said more to his father before they got out of the car, and maybe should have said more... he didn't know what to make of that.
---
There was no one else in the house but Gideon - that much Nathan knew from a cursory scan. He still let Saul lead the way in. This was his father's show, in essence. For now, at least. The inside of the house seemed entirely unfamiliar until they reached the end of the front hall and stepped into some sort of sitting room that Nathan recognized instantly from his vision.
And Gideon was standing there, staring out the window into the backyard. Nathan swallowed, and said nothing. He was not the errant child being called to task here, whatever Gideon wanted to think.
Still staring out the window, his reflection barely visible in the darkened glass, Gideon smiled thinly for the briefest of moments. "I don't think you're going to get what you wish from this, brother mine," he said, speaking softly and, perhaps incongruously so considering the matters at hand, fondly so as well.
"Well, at least we're all being upfront about things," Nathan said, before Saul could reply. "I don't think he will either. Also, I'm highly amused by the fact that you can dish it out but you apparently can't take it." He gave his uncle a tight smile. "You kill my friends, I damage your reputation. It's one of those classic lose-lose situations."
Gideon turned this time, giving Nathan a grave look, holding his gaze unflinchingly. "It would seem to me, Nathan, that you lose far greater a gift than I, in that particular balance of things." He blinked once, impassively and slowly, before returning to looking out the window.
"You have no idea," Nathan said, softly but viciously, tensing at the memory of GW sliding bonelessly to the floor.
"For I have never seen a person I value, both for their skills and all that they are, pass away as well?" A soft, hissing sound followed -quiet, sardonic laughter. "Really Nathan. You're not the only one to have known loss in your life." The last sentence was spoken in a remote, cool tone of voice. "But loss is not what we're here to talk about, is it."
"To the point, Gideon," Saul ordered gruffly, "I am tired of seeing the two of you working at cross purposes. If this continues, one of you will kill the other and I will not see years, generations even, of work thrown aside because of some vendetta between the two of you!"
He paced between his brother and his son, eyes riveted on nothing. "I am not so naive as to expect familial relations, or even that you put aside your animosity. But Nathan, you must look at the larger picture. Your grief, spurred on by Gideon's actions, is blinding you to the greater good for which we work. And you-" Saul turned to his brother with an accusing finger, "you have begun to lose sight of our aims! Test the strong, separate wheat from chaff, these are things that must be done. Remember what you told me after Esther died: we must be monsters, so that no one else must be. But you, Gideon... you have begun to enjoy the monster. That is not strength, it's sadism."
"Personally," Nathan said as steadily as he could, "I have yet to see any proof of this 'greater good' you both say you're working towards. All I see is unnecessary suffering and death. And I'm sorry," he said, more of a bite to his tone as he stared at his uncle, "if your ability to bring that about has been compromised by the fact that you walked like an idiot into that set-up in Vladivostok. Oh, wait - I'm not."
"I didn't think you'd be." Gideon's tone was calm, near serene. Then he stiffened for a brief instant, eyes widening slightly, glazing over -an expression Nathan would have been familiar with, had he not been always the one wearing it, during moments such as these. "How... interesting. I see." He focused on Nathan, suddenly, with a steady and unwavering gaze. "That's all right. Neither am I, really," he offered, before waving one hand casually.
There was a moment where Nathan could have reacted. Gideon's mind had gone mirrored, a dead giveaway, and instinctively Nathan's own perceptions had slipped downwards until he could see the patterns of power gathering around Gideon.
And in that split-second, he did nothing. The lash of telekinesis hit him squarely, lifting him off his feet and slamming him against the wall - and right through it, driving the air out of his lungs. Nathan hit the floor on the other side hard, landing awkwardly on rubble. His vision going black around the edges, he managed to lift his head enough to see the hole in the wall - big hole, the telekinetic attack must have been less focused than it felt.
Slipping into unconsciousness, he thought he heard his father's voice.
"Damn you, Gideon!" Saul bellowed, stepping in between his brother and his fallen son. "I did not bring Nathan here to be a judas goat to satisfy your idle whims! We must resolve - look at me, Gideon! We must resolve this before your madness brings down all we have accomplished!" To emphasize his point, Saul stepped forward, grabbing a fistful of his brother's coat. He had an odd sense of wrongness about the whole affair - despite his power being purely physical, he'd never been the type of man to use his strength or size to intimidate others, yet here he was laying hands on his own kin. Was this strength, as Gideon saw it?
"Leave him be," Saul insisted, shaking Gideon. "You'll not harm my son."
"You are overwrought," was the still calm, near peaceful answer. "You should, I think, rest a little, brother mine." The words were spoken even as Saul tilted to the side slowly, eyes drifting shut in seconds. His body drifted slowly to the floor, gently deposited there as Gideon shook his head tiredly.
"So much drama. There's hardly any need for it," he spoke, musing out loud to himself. "After all..." He smiled a bit crookedly, looking at the prone figure through the hole in the wall. "It was Nathan's own vision that has brought us to this point."
Nathan pulled the car up in front of the hotel, giving the concierge a sharp shake of his head when the man would have moved towards the car. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. One minute early. If he didn't miss his guess, Saul would be coming through the doors precisely on time.
He raised a hand from the steering wheel and rubbed his eyes. He'd been driving around for hours, ever since he'd left the mansion, in an attempt to calm his nerves a little. Or maybe to convince himself that he really wanted to do this. It had taken some doing. He had come very close to turning the car right around and heading back to Westchester.
He wasn't sure what had stopped him.
Saul walked out, precisely as the clock above the hotel's door clicked five minutes past the hour. Looking back and forth briefly, he walked directly to Nathan's car, stopping by the passenger door without any preamble. His voice was tense, barely loud enough to be heard inside the car. "He's waiting, Nathan."
Nathan, in response, unlocked the door. "You'll have to give me directions," he said without thinking as Saul got in. "I know what the place looks like, but-" He stopped, looking around at his father with eyes slightly wider than they should be. "Precog," he said before Saul could ask. "Directions?"
"Your mother never had to ask for directions," Saul said gruffly, drawing his coat tightly around himself as he buckled his seat belt. "The expressway, south. Past the harbor, off 29th. Mind the construction."
They drove for a few minutes in silence before Nathan finally broke it. "They don't know I'm here," he said. "I figured it was best to keep it in the family. Less complicated that way."
Saul just stared forward out the windshield, his expression inscrutable. "Yes," he finally said, "they do complicate things. These friends of yours. Under every other circumstance, I wish you and them all the luck in the world. But this... Vladivostok has affected Gideon rather severely, Nathan. I do truly think he wants to kill you." Saul made the announcement as plainly as if he'd been commenting on the weather, rather than his brother's intent to murder his son.
"He raised the stakes, Saul. Not me." Nathan's hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel as they got onto the expressway. "I probably would have been content to run around after him trying to fix the messes he makes if he had, you know, refrained from murdering my best friend with my own powers." A lie, really. Or maybe not. Maybe he could have been satisfied with the chase, with doing what he could, if Gideon hadn't backed him into a corner.
"Gideon has always chosen his own dramatic ways to make a statement," Saul said, a tinge of sadness in his voice. "As, I suppose, do you. The bird of fire, though. That's something new, isn't it? Something you've adapted, a new application of your powers. You see, Nathan, you may despise what I do - but every day, you continue to vindicate my beliefs, even if you won't share them."
Nathan managed not to grind his teeth. "The firebird," he said very clearly and very coldly, wondering if it had been such a good idea to indulge his whim in Vladivostok after all, "is in memory of two more dead friends. Two more people I lost before their time. I suppose that's why I'm here," he said, his tone absolutely unchanging even as he started to lie through his teeth. "I've lost too much, a lot of it because of the two of you. Aliya, Tyler, sixteen years of my life to Mistra... every real memory of my childhood."
"Every real memory?" Saul asked, motioning towards a side street. As Nathan turned, Saul glanced up out the window, the morning sunlight casting a glow on his face that seemed to catch every line, every wrinkle of age. "A pity. I taught you how to ice fish, do you remember that? We would sit out there for hours, but I think I felt closer to you when we would both receive a tongue lashing from your mother for coming back three hours late. If you can remember at least that she loved you, Nathan, then you cannot say you've lost everything."
Nathan swallowed, recalling the half-remembered memory of sitting out on the steps at night in his mother's arms, watching the northern lights. "It doesn't bother you at all?" he asked tightly. "Knowing that I don't remember the fishing, or any of these other good father-son moments you and I apparently had?" The sight of the brownstone sent a chill through him, and he pulled up to the curb. Just like in the vision. "It doesn't bother you that he tore them out of my mind and left me with holes that I filled up with nightmares?"
"Every day," Saul said quietly. Then with a sudden quickness, he slammed his palms into the dashboard of the car, face contorted in a grimace of unrecognizable emotion. "Every moment, Nathan! You think I am some monster, incapable of remorse, incapable of pain. I carry this like an albatross, son. This weight I have to bear because of the things I have done. And I could not bear this pain if I did not believe with every fiber of my being that this pain brings with it a strength the world cannot begin to comprehend. You are the proof of that strength, Nathan. And yes, if you wish to know my mind, then I tell you that it is a knife in me every time I think of what you have been put through."
With a series of calming breaths, Saul relaxed against the seat, eyes closed. "But I will not recant, and I will not pretend it has not been for the greater good, Nathan. Your pain, and mine. Stop here."
Nathan stopped the car, then took the keys out of the ignition. He eyed the clock for a moment, then looked at his father. "I wanted so much," he said, his voice low and uneven, "to believe in you, last summer. I wanted it so much that I ignored every person who was telling me to be careful, every person who told me that you were pulling the wool over my eyes and I was too desperate to believe you to see it. I think..." His throat was almost unbearably tight. "I think I do believe that you love me, as much as I hate you for the rest of it. But I can't... he took you away from me, don't you understand that? All I see when I look at you is the man who walked back into my life and turned it upside down. I don't see the father who took me ice-fishing, because the memory's gone. I can't... balance one with the other. I'm no innocent, Saul, I've done my share of despicable things. It means I'm more than moderately familiar with the whole concept of forgiveness, but with you, there's nothing to ground it in anymore. He made sure of that."
"I've no right to ask your forgiveness, son," Saul said as he unbuckled his seat belt. "I cannot make us a family again, that much is beyond me. I've come to terms with this. But beyond all else, you are my son. Everything you feel for Rachel, felt for Tyler -that is what you are to me. Call it a genetic imperative to ensure the survival of the bloodline, that's how your uncle sees it. He claims it distracts me from our purpose. He has no children of his own, he'll never know how that bond can provide such purity, such clarity of purpose."
Saul made a small motion that could have been a gesture of reassurance, or possibly the beginnings of a fatherly touch on his son's arm. But as soon as he had begun, he stopped, opening the door of the car instead. "He's inside," he said with finality.
"Right." Nathan unlocked the doors and opened his, not letting Saul see the way his hands were shaking. The feeling of impending doom was entirely stupid, he tried to tell himself.
The feeling that he could have said more to his father before they got out of the car, and maybe should have said more... he didn't know what to make of that.
---
There was no one else in the house but Gideon - that much Nathan knew from a cursory scan. He still let Saul lead the way in. This was his father's show, in essence. For now, at least. The inside of the house seemed entirely unfamiliar until they reached the end of the front hall and stepped into some sort of sitting room that Nathan recognized instantly from his vision.
And Gideon was standing there, staring out the window into the backyard. Nathan swallowed, and said nothing. He was not the errant child being called to task here, whatever Gideon wanted to think.
Still staring out the window, his reflection barely visible in the darkened glass, Gideon smiled thinly for the briefest of moments. "I don't think you're going to get what you wish from this, brother mine," he said, speaking softly and, perhaps incongruously so considering the matters at hand, fondly so as well.
"Well, at least we're all being upfront about things," Nathan said, before Saul could reply. "I don't think he will either. Also, I'm highly amused by the fact that you can dish it out but you apparently can't take it." He gave his uncle a tight smile. "You kill my friends, I damage your reputation. It's one of those classic lose-lose situations."
Gideon turned this time, giving Nathan a grave look, holding his gaze unflinchingly. "It would seem to me, Nathan, that you lose far greater a gift than I, in that particular balance of things." He blinked once, impassively and slowly, before returning to looking out the window.
"You have no idea," Nathan said, softly but viciously, tensing at the memory of GW sliding bonelessly to the floor.
"For I have never seen a person I value, both for their skills and all that they are, pass away as well?" A soft, hissing sound followed -quiet, sardonic laughter. "Really Nathan. You're not the only one to have known loss in your life." The last sentence was spoken in a remote, cool tone of voice. "But loss is not what we're here to talk about, is it."
"To the point, Gideon," Saul ordered gruffly, "I am tired of seeing the two of you working at cross purposes. If this continues, one of you will kill the other and I will not see years, generations even, of work thrown aside because of some vendetta between the two of you!"
He paced between his brother and his son, eyes riveted on nothing. "I am not so naive as to expect familial relations, or even that you put aside your animosity. But Nathan, you must look at the larger picture. Your grief, spurred on by Gideon's actions, is blinding you to the greater good for which we work. And you-" Saul turned to his brother with an accusing finger, "you have begun to lose sight of our aims! Test the strong, separate wheat from chaff, these are things that must be done. Remember what you told me after Esther died: we must be monsters, so that no one else must be. But you, Gideon... you have begun to enjoy the monster. That is not strength, it's sadism."
"Personally," Nathan said as steadily as he could, "I have yet to see any proof of this 'greater good' you both say you're working towards. All I see is unnecessary suffering and death. And I'm sorry," he said, more of a bite to his tone as he stared at his uncle, "if your ability to bring that about has been compromised by the fact that you walked like an idiot into that set-up in Vladivostok. Oh, wait - I'm not."
"I didn't think you'd be." Gideon's tone was calm, near serene. Then he stiffened for a brief instant, eyes widening slightly, glazing over -an expression Nathan would have been familiar with, had he not been always the one wearing it, during moments such as these. "How... interesting. I see." He focused on Nathan, suddenly, with a steady and unwavering gaze. "That's all right. Neither am I, really," he offered, before waving one hand casually.
There was a moment where Nathan could have reacted. Gideon's mind had gone mirrored, a dead giveaway, and instinctively Nathan's own perceptions had slipped downwards until he could see the patterns of power gathering around Gideon.
And in that split-second, he did nothing. The lash of telekinesis hit him squarely, lifting him off his feet and slamming him against the wall - and right through it, driving the air out of his lungs. Nathan hit the floor on the other side hard, landing awkwardly on rubble. His vision going black around the edges, he managed to lift his head enough to see the hole in the wall - big hole, the telekinetic attack must have been less focused than it felt.
Slipping into unconsciousness, he thought he heard his father's voice.
"Damn you, Gideon!" Saul bellowed, stepping in between his brother and his fallen son. "I did not bring Nathan here to be a judas goat to satisfy your idle whims! We must resolve - look at me, Gideon! We must resolve this before your madness brings down all we have accomplished!" To emphasize his point, Saul stepped forward, grabbing a fistful of his brother's coat. He had an odd sense of wrongness about the whole affair - despite his power being purely physical, he'd never been the type of man to use his strength or size to intimidate others, yet here he was laying hands on his own kin. Was this strength, as Gideon saw it?
"Leave him be," Saul insisted, shaking Gideon. "You'll not harm my son."
"You are overwrought," was the still calm, near peaceful answer. "You should, I think, rest a little, brother mine." The words were spoken even as Saul tilted to the side slowly, eyes drifting shut in seconds. His body drifted slowly to the floor, gently deposited there as Gideon shook his head tiredly.
"So much drama. There's hardly any need for it," he spoke, musing out loud to himself. "After all..." He smiled a bit crookedly, looking at the prone figure through the hole in the wall. "It was Nathan's own vision that has brought us to this point."