House of Wind: From beneath a starless sky

[x-legion.livejournal.com]

On the Blackbird and safely on the journey home, Haller goes into Nathan's mind to assess the damage and finds himself in the company of strangers. From a certain point of view.





It was quiet here.

White sand stretched out before him, glowing beneath the starless sky. Jim closed his eyes, drinking in the scent of salt, the feel of the gentle breeze against his skin. A perfect night, warm and serene. Empty.

Jim rose slowly, giving his center time to find itself, grounding his senses in the reality of the beach. He willed himself to sink into the mask, let it settle over him, become him; an old friend on a distant shore. White sand pooled beneath his feet. All around him the ocean sighed like an exhaled breath.

"This isn't where I expected to be," Jim said.

"Well," came a familiar gruff voice from behind him, sounding vaguely amused, "these things happen. The mind is a strange place. Would dolphins make you feel better? I suspect I could do dolphins."

Behind Jim, sitting crosslegged on the sand in the shadow of the trees that hadn't been there a moment before - along with the forest, and, come to think of it, the mountains - was an image of Nathan, all in black, and smiling rather sardonically.

Jim turned, and in the air behind him faint afterimages turned with him. Echoes of self a step out of sync, individual and distinct. "Dolphins are not necessary," he said, returning the smile. "Which part are you?"

"Now, if that's not a question deeply rooted in your own experience, I don't know what is." One hand was moving, tracing Askani runes in the sand, as if unconsciously. "I'm sorry," he said after a moment, a bit abruptly. "I'm a little out of sorts at the moment. Closer to the surface than I should be, mostly because he needed me. It's been a while since he's been tortured."

The telepath smiled slightly, placing his hands in his jacket pockets. "That's okay. It was a fair assessment, and these are extenuating circumstances." There was a house high in the mountains, a flash of white in the green. Jim let his mismatched eyes fall back to the man sitting in the sand. "My experience isn't so different from the rest of the world's. Only the degree. What is it you do for Nathan?"

"Challenge him. Bring out his stubborn streak. The 'I will not break and you can fuck off, world' impulse." The black-garbed Nathan unfolded himself from his cross-legged position, rising from the sand with an easy grace for someone his size. "I used to be very different than I am now. Not nearly so free to do my part. But losing the conditioning changed things."

Jim laughed, and for an instant the sound took on a different undercurrent -- younger, girlish. "Sometimes our similarities are truly breathtaking," he said, the harmonics of the laugh lingering for a few syllables before dying away. "You get him through it, is that it? Or rather," he corrected, "help him so he takes himself."

"We're not separate, no. Although once upon a time we were." Nathan gave him a crooked smile and started walking down the beach, leaving Jim to follow. "I was created by very bad men in a nasty white room."

"By Mistra." The young man fell in behind the avatar, images trailing after him, ghostly and indistinct in the darkness. With each step he took, four footprints remained. "They . . . cultivated you?"

"I was the tactical personality. Part of Nathan's mind, segmented off from the rest and manipulated into the next best thing to a battle computer. Then," he said with a slight smile, "the conditioning fractured and things start to shift. Just a little. Like a ray of light into a dark room."

Jim nodded. "Adaptive compartmentalization. Maybe artificially induced, but with the same result. It allows us to do the job required of us in the way most effective for the situation. The job changes, the part adapts." His voice was joined by a second, deeper one. "Necessity drives us to all kinds of lengths."

"I would think Nathan's fortieth birthday present to himself would be a perfect example of that." The other Nathan paused, staring intently down the beach. "What you're looking for isn't here, I don't think," he said. "I can feel the wrongness, but it didn't reach here. He keeps this place because of her, even though she's gone."

He thought of Ushuaia, and the blinding presence that had rippled across the astral plane like a star going supernova. "This was Askani's place?" Jim stopped, looking again at the white shore, the empty sky. A place beyond the reach of Gideon's influence. His mind put me somewhere . . . safe. "I'm here," Jim said slowly, "because this is where he wants me to be."

"How much do you think any of this was really about a precognitive vision that stopped just before the critical moment?" Nathan - Cable laughed softly. "That was just the excuse to do what he wanted so badly to do anyway. This was about too many losses and too much fear. And he hasn't processed that it's over just yet. So he's still trying to protect."

Jim squatted in the soft white sand and reached down to cup a handful. "He'll process," he said, watching the fine grains trickle through his fingers. Again his voice was joined by a deeper tenor. "He made a choice. He followed it through. And the people he loves are safer because of it. His risk. His payoff. He'll learn to handle both in time."

Cable grunted and looked upwards at the empty sky. "This place doesn't feel quite right anymore," he said. "Empty. It shouldn't be empty. The sky used to be full of stars." There was a rustling in the trees behind him and he sighed in what sounded like aggravation, looking in that direction. "Other things shook loose and wound up here because it's safe," he told Jim. "It's a pity you're not Alison. He'd recognize her."

Jim rose, turning to follow his gaze. "Oh," he said, "I think I can guess which part this is."

The little boy stepped out onto the beach, wide gray eyes wary as he looked around. He looked to be five or six years old at the most, and was dressed as if he'd just stepped out of the middle of winter.

"What happened to the snow?"

Cable rolled his eyes. "Could you try and be a little more self-aware? Please?"

Jim shot him an unimpressed look. "It's not nice to taunt your inner child," he said, the statement reinforced by the plaintive harmonics of a young boy. The telepath focused his attention back on the child. "Hey there," he said, smiling. "You're Nathan, aren't you?"

"Yeah." The boy stared out at the water. "I don't get it," he said almost plaintively.

"Isn't this better than the snow?" Cable asked, trying to sound diffident but not quite managing it. "Especially since the snow is a total fabrication..."

"A what?"

"Made up," Jim supplied, casually cuffing the other man across the back of the head. He indicated the shore around them. "Sometimes you can go to different places depending on what you need or how you feel. You're here now because this is a safe place." He grinned slightly. "It's different, huh?"

"Yeah..." The boy moved out slowly onto the beach, frowning a little. It was a strangely adult expression on such a young face. "Why's the light funny?"

Cable, who was rubbing at the back of his head and giving Jim a narrow-eyed look, shrugged. "Dark and safe and quiet."

"But it's not dark." The boy pointed out at the water. "Look. The sun's coming up."

Cable looked shocked, his head whipping around in that direction. "The what is coming up?" But there was indeed light on the horizon. "Well, holy shit."

Jim looked out across the brightening sky, a look of faint amusement on his face. He swung his head around to regard Cable with one arched eyebrow. "I think he's processing more than you give him credit for," he said.

"Oh, sure. Let's all pile on the poor fragment." But Cable was staring at the horizon, an odd and unreadable look on his face.

Beside him, the little boy laughed, a purely happy sound. "I like it a lot more than the snow," he said, and the sunrise fast-forwarded, light blazing across the water and the soft blackness of the sky bleeding away, replaced by vivid blue.

Jim grinned again, sticking his hands back in his pockets. "Yeah," he agreed, that younger voice joining in again, "the ocean's a lot more fun." He glanced at Cable and nodded towards the sun overhead, still smiling. "How about that. The sky's not empty anymore."

"I'm sure Jack's going to have a lot of fun helping him untangle the symbolic meaning of this," Cable said dryly. The image of the child Nathan had been suddenly giggled and kicked off his winter boots, running down to the edge of the water. "Don't drown," Cable called out after him. "I don't like the symbolic value of that very much!"

"I don't think drowning can happen here," Jim replied, fishing out a pack of cigarettes and lighting one. "As for the symbolism, that's not hard. Nathan doesn't need anyone else's guiding star. He's found his own." He gave the avatar a lopsided smile. "It's not just in her memory. This is his place, now."

"... he's going to be all right, I think," was the verdict. Cable took a deep breath, then let it out. Then raised an eyebrow at Jim. "That's a nasty habit."

Jim gave him a one-armed shrug and took a drag. "Can't help it. Kept me sane for many years. It's okay, I won't ruin the beach. Astral props don't produce litter." He exhaled a long stream of smoke, watching the child splashing through the waves. "It's good that Nathan brought him here. It's a safe place. He deserves a chance to play in the sun."

"True. All he's known are the nightmares. Endless iterations of Saul leaving him in the woods..." Cable trailed off for a moment, his expression distant. "Maybe they'll fade. It would be nice."

Jim blew another column of smoke. "They'll never completely disappear, but they'll be easier to bear. He knows something better now." The telepath sighed, closing his eyes against the weight of light on his face. "I have to dig out the inhibitors. I can feel them from here. It's going to be painful. I'm sorry."

"Keep him unconscious," was the construct's quiet advice. "The pain is the least of it." He looked over to their left, then inclined his head in that direction. A door had appeared, floating an inch or two off the surface of the sand. "He's always had a taste for surrealist art."

Jim smiled, starting for the door. "He's under. Deep under. I can't help for the memories, but his subconscious is going to have plenty of time to sort through them. Hopefully by the time he wakes up the foundations will have been laid." Under, but not out. Thank you, Nathan, for showing the way.

"Mmm. Do what you've got to do," Cable said somewhat wryly. "I'm going to go make some dolphins for the kid."