Amanda, Nathan - Friday lunctime

[xp_daytripper]

The long awaited Talk. Amanda meets with Nathan after her interview with Emma Frost and they attempt to have lunch. Given the topic of conversation, not much eating is managed, but there's a lot of food for thought.



It had been a long day already, and it was only just noon. Nathan checked his watch, then picked up his coffee cup and sipped at it, squinting through his sunglasses at the people who walked past the patio cafe where he was sitting. He had a full hour for this rather unusual sort of lunch meeting, and then another meeting at the UN with another of Charles's contacts. Not a prospective candidate for the board this time, but someone who could fasttrack the paperwork to get the new organization proper standing with the UN's NGO liaison service.

Shite, she was running late... The interview had gone on rather longer than anticipated - not that she'd had that many interviews, mind you - and now she was hurrying. Bugger. Not how she wanted to start this off, on the back foot. Still, she was here now, and there he was, looking the same as ever. Maybe a little more worn, but that was to be expected given the year he'd had. Slowing her pace a little, she snuck a glance in the window of the building she was passing, checking out her reflection. The clothes Marie-Ange had helped her pick - black dress pants and jacket with a blue blouse - were still nicely pressed, her hair only a little windblown during her scramble. Smoothing it down, she mustered all the calm she could and approached his table. "Sorry I'm late," she said, her accent definitely softer than it used to be. "Been waiting long?"

Nathan looked up at her, and for a moment the cognitive dissonance as he took in her current appearance was just a little bit too much. Only for a moment, though, because then a crooked grin tugged at his lips. "Not long. My last meeting ran late," he said, waving in the direction of the chair opposite his at the small table. "Sit down. You look... well," he said, and then could have laughed at himself. "And I sound like a pompous twit. I've been dealing with bureaucrats all morning, you'll have to excuse me..."

"Not much more than me - I've been at a job interview and I'm still in 'impress the boss' mode. Except that doesn't work so well when you're being interviewed by a telepath. My head feels all tense from shielding." She sat, hanging her bag over the back of the chair. "You look... good. All official. Must be the suit."

"It's my new uniform. I'm masquerading as a wealthy philanthropist. It's actually working rather well - possibly because all of a sudden I am a wealthy philanthropist, but that's a long story." He looked inquisitively in the director of the hovering waitress, then back at Amanda. "Lunch? I could do with lunch."

She smiled, and there was the girl she'd been, underneath the new hard-won maturity. "Lunch sounds great. Nothing makes you hungrier than justifying yourself for a couple of hours." She glanced quickly at the menu. "The chicken salad sounds good," she said at last. "I'll have that and a water."

"And I'll have the club sandwich and more coffee," Nathan told the waitress. She nodded and vanished to fill their orders, and Nathan turned back to Amanda, sliding off his sunglasses to get a better look at her. "It went well?" he asked lightly, after a moment. "The interview, I mean."

"I think so. It's hard to tell with Ms. Frost." Amanda had never been able to call her 'Emma', being too intimidated by her. "But I think I managed to convince her I'd be useful." Her fingers, always an indicator of her inner state, played with her napkin nervously. "So, what's with the new career?" she asked, changing emphasis away from her a little. "Win the lottery or something?"

"Something like that. My father left me everything. It's not quite Moira-levels of disgusting wealth, but there were long strings of zeroes everywhere I looked in the initial paperwork," Nathan said. "Seemed to me that the best thing to do was to plow most of it right back into the work Angelo and I have been doing, and expand operations. So we're going to be official." He laughed a little. "I've even hired David and the others on to staff an office in Tel Aviv. We're all going legit. It's kind of a scary thought."

"The overseas aid work?" she asked, but it was more rhetorical than anything. "That's just... wow. Terrific. You're going to be able to do so much now," she said sincerely. "No wonder Ange's been so busy lately. How far along are you with setting everything up?"

"About midway through the formalities. A little farther behind with the necessary infrastructure and new staff and all, especially here." He made a face. "Things have been a little hectic. But if I'm going to balance this with teaching and, uh, leather work, I should start as I mean to go on." Nathan grinned suddenly. "And Angelo's been a trooper. Speaking of suits, I think he's getting used to wearing one to work."

"Ange must love that. Who'd have thought a couple of years ago either of us would be doing business wear?" She laughed, expression softening slightly at the thought of her best mate doing so well. "It sounds like it's a great opportunity for everyone. Not to mention the good you'll be able to do. Seems like a good use of the money, considering the grief you've been through because of your family." And if there was a shade more meaning to the last than just Gideon and Saul, well Amanda had never been very good at subtle.

Nathan's gray eyes were very serious, but he didn't say anything until the waitress had come back with his coffee and Amanda's water and then departed again. "We were going to talk, weren't we?" he asked. "Not just catch up."

"Um." Amanda's mouth was suddenly dry and she sipped at her water, marshalling her thoughts. And her courage. Come on, Sefton, don't be such a bloody coward. "Tante's big on accepting responsibility," she said at last. "So I figured if I'm going to be around the place at all, I should probably try and well... not fix things, 'cause I don't know if it's fixable. Some things you can't fix. But I didn't want to spend the rest of my life avoiding you. 'S not fair on Moira or Angelo or the rest." She looked down. "And I don't really want to. Avoid you, that is."

"Funny coincidence, because I don't really want to avoid you either." Nathan rested his head on his chin, his eyes straying back to the street for a moment. "Moira probably didn't tell you this, because I didn't really tell her flat-out, but there was a moment in Patagonia where I really thought I was dead. Just before everything exploded, when I finally knew what was happening and understood what I'd seen - I thought that I was about to die, and that's why I hadn't seen anything past that moment. But then I woke up in the wreckage," he said, looking back at her, "and it was like... a gift. Suddenly I had my life back, and things just... started to look very different." He waved a hand. "I went around being stupidly mushy at people for a solid two weeks. I might not be embarassing myself on quite that level at this point, but that's doesn't mean I don't feel the same way."

"I survived," he went on, knowing he was rambling but suspecting Amanda would put up with it, "and the person who kept taking the people I love away from me, who warped my whole life, didn't. So I suppose it made me want to hold onto harder... I don't think there's quite as much that needs fixing as you seem to think there is, at least from my perspective." He smiled a bit sadly. "I can't speak for what I might need to fix, though. See above comment about being a little mush-brained lately."

Amanda bit her lip, throat constricting a bit. "Back at the Hellfire Club," she said at last. "When Alison was... dying. I thought the only way to fix things, to make up for what I'd done, was to die. My life for hers. But it didn't work out that way. I felt so guilty. Still do, sometimes. Someone died because of my choices." She held up her hand as he seemed about to speak. "And I know she was going to die any way, that she was killing you, but it still comes down to me taking Askani away from you. Taking away the time you had left. Because I made a deal with the devil. Askani was... well, saying she was important to you doesn't really cover it. And I took that away from you, because I was afraid and alone and wanted to be able to control something in my life for a change. Because it felt like everyone in my life had outgrown me." She snorted softly. "Hell of a way to throw a typical teenage tantrum."

Nathan stared at her for a long moment, then reached across the table and took her hand. "I want to tell you something," he said, his voice very low. "About what happened that night. It might change how you feel about what happened, or it might not. It might actually make you very angry at me, I'm not sure. And it actually relates to something that happened in Patagonia, too, so if you're going to listen to it, you need to wait and hear it all out."

She hesitated a moment, and then squeezed his hand back. "We're here to talk, aren't we?" she said, smiling faintly. "And that involves listening too. If you want to tell me, I'll hear you out."

"All right." He took a deep breath, then let it out, briefly letting his mind wander in the direction of their waitress. Ten minutes for their lunch. That would do. "That night, what she told you... she wasn't entirely truthful. About what she was doing to me. There would have been more time, you're right. Possibly quite a bit more. But she knew, she knew precisely what you were thinking, what your reasoning was, and so did I. And neither of us were going to let that happen."

Amanda's expression flickered, reflecting the turmoil of her emotions. She'd been lied to. Again. The flash of anger was followed by a certain weariness. Of course they had. Last year was all about lies. "All right," she said evenly.

He saw the flash of anger and winced inwardly, but went on. Hoping that the rest of the story would do... something, at least. "She knew what you were going to do," he said, something close to pain in his voice, "why you were going to do it... and she couldn't let you, Amanda, she just couldn't. She loved you, and she loved Alison, and she had lost so much. It was the only way she could see to save both of you, and I was..."

He stopped, looking away with a combination of shame and remembered grief. "I almost stopped her. I hated all of you that night, so much. You, Alison, Pete, Askani, everyone whose choices brought about that moment when I was standing there... but I couldn't. I couldn't stop her. Not when it would have meant losing you." He swallowed past the lump in his throat. "So I concentrated on keeping the backlash from blowing up the Club, and let it happen. You remember what I said to you? That she'd died for her people once, and to let her do it again?"

Amanda nodded, not trusting her voice just then. She remembered everything from that night as if it was yesterday. In a way she owed it to everyone to do so.

"She didn't care. Whatever choices you'd made. Some of the things she'd done, in her future, were horrible. Some of the compromises she made would turn your stomach. She used to say that the only thing she condemned was hatred, Amanda, and that wasn't what was driving you last year. Since it wasn't, you were worth anything, to her..."

His eyes were stinging and Nathan leaned back in his chair. "I didn't understand it then. I didn't have that same... absolute purity of love she did. I don't think I ever will. But I knew I couldn't have let you die, no matter what. Not if there was a way, not when you had a chance to pick up the pieces and go on with your life..." He took a shaky breath, then picked up his water glass and took a sip. "And the kicker, Amanda, is that I think she was meant to leave when she did. So that she could come back."

He laid it out for her then. Gideon's fascination with Askani, in the summer and early fall. Her disappearance in November, and what had happened afterwards, the changes in his precog, the way Gideon had tried to manuever him into specific reactions, to get him to manifest his own vision, so that he would wind up in the situation where Gideon could synch to him, trying to get that same long view that had allowed him to see Askani in the first place.

"But he never stopped to think that she would see him."

"She..." Amanda frowned, but then realised. "From the future? So that's what happened, when everything went boom? It was her?"

It was all so much to take in. In one way it relieved some of the guilt, which wasn't as soul-crushing as it had been in the weeks directly after her departure, but was still there, still fresh. Askani had made her choice and Amanda wasn't responsible for that. But in another way, she couldn't help feeling a stab of resentment, anger. Had all the pain, all the guilt, the efforts spent trying to come to terms with what she'd done... was it all pointless? Because it had just been part of the grand plan? She was so tired of being someone else's pawn - all she'd ever wanted was some control over her life and here she was losing it again.

Oh, God, this hurt. Had he done the right thing? Or had he replaced guilt without something else, something worse? "I talked to her," Nathan said, trying to keep his voice steady. "When I was unconscious, under the, um. house. There are things she told me that I don't understand, that I don't think I'll ever understand. Things about my mother, and how she knew her... how she knew me right from the moment I was born." His throat nearly closed. "Part of me thinks I was a game piece, and wonders if I should be angry. But I don't know, Amanda. I don't know how much of this she knew and how much of it just... happened. I don't know how she could have used me and loved me at the same time. I don't know if anything that happened with you was part of it, or just chance... I'm never going to have those questions answered, just like I'm never going to get the memories of my childhood back."

Rambling again. "But there's that side of it," he went on, trying to slow down a little, "and then there's the other side. For both of us. We did what we did, good and bad, and we rebuilt what needed to be rebuilt... when we don't know, should we doubt? The only thing we know for sure is that we fought, and if we can't believe it was a good fight no matter what, I think we're screwed."

She sat quietly, looking at her hands that were twisting the napkin over and over again. A good thing it wasn't a paper one, or there'd be confetti everywhere.

"I was so angry," she said at last. "After Pete told me what had really been going on. It seemed like everyone had been lying to me, everyone who'd cared. Him, you, the Professor, Alison, Marie-Ange even... But I couldn't stay angry, because after what I'd done I didn't think I had the right. And that wasn't healthy for me. Going to New Orleans, having Tante take the magic away... it was as much for my own good as it was because I was trying to punish myself. I just couldn't live like that."

The back of her head twinged, a reminder of her own lies. Manuel. "I tried, Nate. To put myself back together. But there was still a part of me that felt like I didn't deserve to. I did so much damage, hurt so many people... when my powers came back I was blocking them so hard I nearly blew my brain up. Moira talked me into seeing it as another chance, to get it right this time." She sighed. "I want to be worth it. But I'm not sure I am."

Nathan stared at her for a moment. There was so much that needed responding to there, and he would, but there was that one thing that he just couldn't... "Amanda," he said a bit unevenly, after a moment, "did you think that I knew? About Pete?"

"No," she said quickly. "There's no way you would have let me go on the way I was if you did. But..." She paused and looked him squarely in the eyes. "That wasn't a traffic accident you had, was it?"

Nathan took a deep breath, then let it out. "No," he said. "I was... in the way, between Pete and something he needed." He couldn't get into the whole story here. "Believe it or not, it turns out he was trying to protect me, too." He made a noise that might have been a laugh. "By putting me in the hospital. I know. Only your uncle..."

He stopped and shook his head, swallowing. The waitress arrived them with their lunches, giving them both a concerned look, but Nathan waited until she'd gone before going on. "I won't make excuses for why I didn't tell you. I know how you feel about being told the truth about things, and part of me wishes I'd remembered that then, instead of being so terrified about how you'd react. It wasn't even my choice, at the start. The 'accident' was Moira's idea. And it wasn't just you... she was afraid Dom would go after him if she found out."

Amanda picked up her fork, but her appetite had fled. She poked at the salad, choosing her words carefully. "I wish you had told me the truth," she said at last. "I'm not saying I would have done things differently, but... I needed to know. I understand why you couldn't tell Dom, but Nate, I'm not her. I knew you weren't being straight with me and then you started avoiding me - because you didn't want me to find out the truth, I s'pose - and it hurt. I thought you'd gotten tired of me and my crap." Again it seemed he'd protest and she held up a hand. "I don't think that now. But that's how it was back then."

"That wasn't the only secret I was keeping, back in the fall. It was just... the straw that broke the camel's back, after my father told me the truth about Gideon, and all of it..." Nathan swallowed, picking up his coffee. "It wasn't just you I was withdrawing from. But I withdrew... further, because we were closer to start with. There were whole stretches of time that fall that I was..." He stopped, shaking his head again. "I can't describe it. There aren't words. I didn't handle it well. I didn't handle any of it well. What happened with Pete... involved Gideon, and it was too much. I couldn't compartmentalize anymore."

"It felt like I'd lost you," she said softly. "That me not being able to cope and leaving in April had ruined things between us. You didn't trust me any more and I just... I couldn't cope. And then the thing with my powers and Meggan happened and it seemed everyone was angry at me. I thought I was turning into a monster. That's why I went to Selene. I needed help. I needed to be strong, to be in control, so I could be what people wanted me to be." She smiled a little wistfully. "So I could help you. I knew it was wrong, but I had convinced myself it was the only way."

"I'll be honest. April was a factor, in not telling you. I know there was a lot more than just me getting hurt that sent you off that time, but there I was, getting hurt again, and by someone else you loved. And the one time we did talk, after it happened, you were even more distant. Angry at me, like I'd proven myself unreliable again. I suppose," Nathan said quietly, "I thought you were entitled to that, or part of me did."

"I left because Manuel threatened to use his powers on me to make me tell him about his father," she said, still quietly but very clearly. "Because he was writing to the man who tried to have his personality wiped and no-one seemed to think that was a problem. Because I knew if I stayed, he'd end up doing something that would mean he'd never be able to come back from it and I loved him too much to let that happen. The fact you'd been hurt again just meant I felt even worse about going, that I was letting you down too and that made me angry. It felt like I was being pulled in so many directions I couldn't cope, so I did what I always do. Did. I ran away. When I got back, I was so ashamed of myself I couldn't get close again. I let you down." Her voice quivered. "And I kept letting you down. You and everyone else."

Nathan reached out and took her hand again. "It's so strange, you know," he said painfully, "because I thought I was doing the right thing. The thing I'd never done with Dom. She'd always wanted distance, space, me to recognize that she could stand on her own - and I held on so tight because I wanted so badly to protect her. But you... I knew you weren't Dom. I just... thought you wanted the same thing." He squeezed her hand gently. "But you didn't let me down. I won't try and speak for how anyone else might feel, but you didn't let me down. If you had, Jubilee would be dead. Break it all down, and it's that simple."

Jubilee wouldn't have even been there if it hadn't been for me," Amanda pointed out, then shook her head. How many times had she had this argument with Remy, with Tante? "And Manuel might still be at the school. Getting the help he needs."

"Manuel...." Nathan sighed and leaned back in the chair, not a gesture of distancing so much as just buying himself a moment to think. "I tried to help, after. I've had broken links before, remember."

"I thought I was helping him," she said bitterly. "Cutting him loose so Selene couldn't get at him. But really I was just so desperate to get free, I lashed out. I loved him... but I hated him sometimes. He was always pushing me, always making it about him, wanting so much from me, needing so much. I was so fucked up - I had business being in a relationship, let alone with someone as damaged as he was. And now... well, that prophecy's coming true, isn't it? Without me, he's going down the road to being the Man in the Chair." There was a kind of hopeless anger in her voice, her face. She'd always had to take the responsibility for Manuel, and even now she still was.

"No, he's not," Nathan said almost under his breath, pushing at his sandwich. "I don't see the future anymore, Amanda... I haven't since Patagonia, and I think that's the end of it for me. But I understand how events work, how they build on one another. We make the future with our choices. What's true one moment can be impossible six months later, because of everything that's happened in the interim." He shook his head. "Manuel changed too much. Whatever his future is now, it's different from anything Angie saw. You can't get to point C when point A is miles away from where it was when you first saw where events were going."

It was comforting. In a way. "I never meant to hurt him," she said. "I really didn't. I just felt... trapped. He loved the link, not me, in the end - I could never be enough for him.

Nathan bit his lip, hard. "It's done," he said finally. "I don't know if you really understood what he was trying to tell you, when you broke the link... Jean and I had to try and help him right afterwards, because the Professor wasn't there. We saw all of it. I think you both... hurt each other more than you ever intended."

"I know he was trying to show how much he thought he loved me," she replied. "But two minutes before that he told me I was a whore, that I was sleeping with Pete. That was the thing with Manuel, it was always contradictions. He'd do something awful, and then make some ridiculous romantic gesture to make up for it and tell me how I was everything to him. It wasn't healthy, Nate." She shrugged a little. "I should have gone to someone, got it taken away instead of ripping it out. Like I said, I wasn't really thinking straight. I just wanted to get away and he got in the way." She bit her lip. "Maybe I am the monster people think I am, that I can't feel worse about Manuel. But he chose to leave, to throw away his chances at the school. That wasn't my doing."

"But you couldn't have gone to anyone," Nathan said with an odd half-smile. "I think you probably knew that, too, at that point. If any of us had gone in to remove the link properly, we would have seen her."

"And she wouldn't have let that happen." Amanda could appreciate the irony. "Either way, I was fucked and so was Manuel. We were doomed the minute I made that deal. That old bastard Alphonso won after all." Her hand tightened on the fork and she breathed sharply down her nose, fighting for control of her anger. "I'm so angry at him, sometimes. Manuel, I mean. There's so much good there and he chose to throw it away. But I worry about him, too. Where he is, what he's doing... whether one day it'll be him that has to be taken down. I wish..." She laughed a little bitterly. "Well, I wish a lot of things, but wishing doesn't change anything. There's nothing I can do for him now, not even to fix the damage I did."

"I... don't," Nathan said after a moment. "Think of him much at all, to be honest." He was quiet for a moment. "He crossed the line, just before he left. Willingly, knowingly. The link-shock can't account for that - I should know. Don't hold onto too much guilt for him. You did something horrible - I won't lie to you about that, either, but that wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back. The problem is that he never learned. Lusanya would have been horrified to see what he did after she was gone, and when he wasn't even honoring the one person he listened to, Amanda, what were the chances of him listening to anyone at all?"

It stung, him putting it as plainly as that, but she appreciated the honesty more than any kind of sugar-coating. "Probably pretty slim," she said with a sigh. "It's just... he's proving everyone right. Everyone who said he was a monster. And if they're right that means I was wrong about him and that doesn't say very much about me. Or my taste in boyfriends." She poked at a chunk of chicken with a little more force than it probably deserved. "At least Remy's been good enough to not say 'I told you so.'"

Nathan made a noise that might have been a grunt, a laugh, or something considerably more derisive than both. "I don't mean to sound so cold, Amanda, but I don't have any patience anymore for those who won't help themselves."

She shrugged, finally stabbing the chicken with her fork and bringing it up to her mouth. "Oh, I get that," she said. "I just... Tante says I hang onto guilt like a baby holds onto a security blanket. I'm not happy unless I'm unhappy." She popped the chicken in her mouth as a form of punctuation.

"Well, they say knowing is half the battle," Nathan murmured dryly, then finally tried his sandwich. "I'm not qualified to give anyone advice on how to handle guilt. Historically I've not been all that good about it myself."

"It was more an observation than me asking for advice," she said, but with a slight grin to soften it. "I've had a good six months of working out what my issues are and how to deal with them. It just takes time to change habits of thinking, or that's what the therapist in New Orleans said. I'll get there. I just have to stop falling into bad habits." She gave him an apologetic shrug. "Which is why I'm not planning on coming back to the school at all. I... it's not the best place for me to be, right now. I'm still too messed up and there'd be too much trying to atone for what I did and before I knew it I'd be asking Tante for the magic back so I could half-kill myself again. Not that she'd let me have it, mind, but I made a choice and I'm sticking to that."

Nathan's expression went from calm to bemused to quizzical and back to calm as she spoke. "We all do what we feel we have to do," he said. "I didn't realize anyone was pressuring you to come back to the school?"

"They aren't. I just..." She pulled a face. "Just wanted that out there, I s'pose. To make it clear that I wasn't trying to... I dunno. Go back to how everything was? Because that isn't going to happen." With that she ducked her head, poking at the salad again as she thought. "Maybe I wanted to show you I'm thinking about stuff?" she suggested almost plaintively after a while, looking up at him again. "Reassure you I'm not going to be stupid again?"

He offered up a rueful little smile. "Well, point taken. But I do believe you're learning, you know. All I have to do is listen to you."

Amanda ducked her head again, but this time to hide the faint blush. "That means a lot," she said quietly. "I know I've got a long way to go, but... I'd like to think I'm not... a monster. Not any more."

"We're all capable of doing monstrous things, Amanda. Sometimes for what we think are the best of reasons. My father thought he was making me strong by having me sent off to New Mexico, you know." Nathan's eyes were distant for a moment. "He told me that again the very last time we talked. That it was all worth it." He shook his head a little. "Sometimes evil's just the willingness to act from a twisted perspective. But you can always choose to see more clearly."

"Choices again." The poor salad was being poked to death. "I spent so long thinking I didn't have any when what I was doing was letting myself get backed into a corner. Tante's been big on the personal responsibility thing - making choices is something she's been pushing bigtime." She smiled a little wryly. "She's actually more terrifying once you get to know her. In a weird way, it's a good thing. Knowing that safety net's there."

"I think I'll pass. The getting to know her, I mean," Nathan said, more or less lightly. "I've had one powerful female mentor figure in my life. Enough for me, really..."

"Well, she's not likely to be dropping by any time soon - she tends to stick to her own turf. And she's got Remy to keep an eye on me." This didn't sound like something Amanda was entirely unhappy with, though - she smiled again and actually started to eat her salad instead of poking it. Probably to the waitress's relief. "He's been a marvel. Even took me up to Muir when my powers started coming back."

"Mmm," Nathan said, and signaled the waitress for a refill on his coffee. "I'm drinking entirely too much of this stuff these days, even by my standards," he said. "Too much to do, not enough hours in the day."

"You wouldn't be you unless you were doing a hundred things at once. Patron saint of multi-tasking, that's you." Amanda tilted her head at him slightly. "You said something in that email about teaching again?"

"I took a couple of classes in the middle of the term when Jean left," Nathan explained as the waitress refilled his cup. "Debate and government, and guess who was best-suited? Although I suspect that there could have been another supply teacher found if they hadn't wanted to get me back on that particular roster..." He gave a slight, self-deprecating shrug.

Amanda snorted at him. "You're the best teacher they have there, Nate and if you don't know that you've been hit on the head too many times. Now, if it had been your choice not to go back, fair enough - you've got a lot on your plate, like you said. But it's never been about you being bad at it." She gave him a bashful grin. "Guess what's part of this whole job lark?"

Nathan tipped his head in one direction. "School," he said, drawling the word out with a spark of mischief in his gray eyes. "It's school, isn't it? And look, I didn't even need to read your mind."

She poked her tongue out at him briefly, suddenly looking younger than her nineteen years and the outfit allowed. "Smart arse," she said, laughing a little. "Yeah, there's a college degree tied in. I'm looking at Sociology - it's useful for the whole think tank thing and it's close to the social work stuff I was wanting to do. But I'm going to do a couple of extra credits. Mandarin and Arabic."

Nathan smiled again, his eyes pleased and warm as they met Amanda's - and then he laughed suddenly, looking delighted. "Oh! Did Angelo mention? I've had him learning languages as fast as he can cram them into his brain. It's a little disconcerting, hearing him speak Russian with an LA accent." He grinned. "You two can bond over the language studies."

"He's already hitting me up for Arabic practice," she said, pride and affection entering her expression. "Bugger's already better than me - I lost a bit with some of the stuff that happened." She didn't say it aloud but Moira and Curt had found definite damage caused by the events of the last year and it had impacted on some things. There was no bitterness or regret, though, only happiness for Angelo. "He's doing so well these days. I'm really glad he's happy, doing something he enjoys - he was always at loose ends after he finished school."

"I couldn't have done any of this without him," Nathan said, but a shadow crossed his face. "He wound up at a conference with Gideon earlier in the year. Took me a while to let him start going to meetings on his own again."

"He didn't... Ange wasn't hurt or anything, was he?" Amanda asked, a little anxiously. It would be like Angelo to not tell her if something had happened.

"No. Apparently they had something of a brief philosophical debate." Nathan raised an eyebrow, smiling a bit wryly. "My uncle was wearing his humanitarian hat. He had one of those, for the times he wasn't using the people I care about as object lessons."

Amanda bit her lip. "I was sorry to hear about GW," she said, throat tightening a little. "Moira let me know what happened. Such a bloody awful thing to happen."

Nathan stared down into his coffee cup for a moment. "He did it with my powers. Waited until I was within his range, then used my TK to give GW a stroke. I made it through the door just in time to see GW hit the ground."

This time it was Amanda who reached out to touch the back of his hand hesitantly. "I'm sorry," she repeated, not sure what else to say. What she had the right to say - she certainly didn't get to tell him what he should and shouldn't feel any more.

"Dom's not really been the same since he died," Nathan said after a moment. "I doubt you've heard from her? She threw herself into the intel-gathering I asked her and David and the other to do, afterwards... I'm not absolutely sure where she is right now. She sent me back an email telling me she'd take the job and she'd be back when she was back."

Amanda shook her head. "I haven't heard from her since... I don't really remember. More than six months, maybe more than that. I figured she had stuff on her mind. Pete mentions her every so often." Rather awkwardly, given Amanda didn't really know how to respond. "I figured she had enough on her mind to deal with and once she was ready she'd get back in touch. It can't have been an easy year for her. This one or last one."

"I worry. She's not really talking to me, and I'm not sure where she and Pete are at... Gideon had her for nearly three weeks before we got her back in December." Nathan shook his head a little. "That 'car accident' of mine is something that he told her about in the worst possible light, while he had her. Your dear uncle nearly got his head blown off when we showed up to rescue her."

"Pete never mentioned that. I wonder why." Her tone was dry. Pete still occasionally tended to treat her like she was fragile. Which was fair enough, she supposed, given her track record. "You don't have any way of tracking her down at all?" Maybe the Trenchcoat Brigade could help...

"If she stays out of contact for much longer, we'll start looking. Between me and Pete and David and Mac, she won't stay off the grid for long." He tilted his head suddenly, smiling a bit. "You never met Mac, did you? Except maybe in passing at the funeral last March..."

Amanda shook her head. "I stayed with you, remember? Funerals... weren't really my thing. Took me six month to even go to Charlie's grave. Isn't he the one you called the old rat bastard?"

"I still call him the old rat bastard from time to time. Usually it's said affectionately, though." Nathan shook his head. "Ironic, that it's one of the men who founded Mistra who's turned into more of a father to me than my own ever was."

Nathan leaned back in his chair, thinking for a minute. "I don't know if Moira told you, that he let Gideon send me to Mistra," he said finally. "And you know, he didn't regret that. The last time we talked, just before Gideon took me, he said that he didn't have any regrets. That he thought it had been worth it, because of the man I'd become." He shrugged, a diffident gesture that really wasn't. "He was a sociopath, I think, every bit as much as his brother was."

"You said." Amanda's eyes hardened. "Sounds like they got what they deserved, in the end."

"Am I repeating myself? My mind kind of wanders when I talk about it, still... Jack says that's normal." Nathan became very interested in his silverware for a moment. "I suppose one of the reasons I'm throwing myself into Doing Good with the money from the will is to try and turn this all into something worthwhile, in the end."

"A little, but we've been covering some heavy stuff. You're allowed the odd lapse." She took advantage of his lowered gaze to frown a little, worried. This was so much to deal with, and in an odd way she could sympathise. She'd been so worried she'd turn out like Rack that sometimes she couldn't see the worth in herself, only what he'd made of her. "Doing Good sounds like the perfect way to make something of this - talk about irony. Using the money he made to fix what he did."

"He's actually partially responsible for things turning out the way they did. He told me after we... well, ask Pete about Vladivostok next time you see him, it's a great story." The false heartiness was gone from his voice as quickly as it had come. "But Saul told me afterwards that we'd pissed Gideon off, and he was liable to resort to another object lesson - and that Rachel was the only person in my life who was safe, because she was too valuable." He swallowed, then lifted his coffee cup. "I suppose that was when I decided that I really had to do something. You know, it struck me that he might go after you? One of those nights when I was wide awake at three in the morning... you were like the Pack, not anywhere where I could be sure you were safe from him."

Her eyes widened a little - the thought certainly hadn't occurred to her. "Just as well things went the way they did between us, then, isn't it?" she said wryly. "I wasn't defenceless down there, though. Remy might be crippled, but he's still a dangerous bastard and Tante and her girls were keeping pretty good tabs on me." Reaching out again, she squeezed his hand briefly. "I appreciate the worry, tho'. I just wish you didn't have to go through all that in the first place. You or Moira."

"I'm surprised she didn't kill me herself when they brought me back. Then again," Nathan said with a crooked little smile, "she didn't beat me to death when I woke her up to say goodbye, so she really didn't have much of a leg to stand on." He squeezed her hand back, just for a moment. "We're okay," he said, to reassure her. "Can you believe it's going to be our first anniversary in another week?"

"It's been that long?" Amanda asked, surprised. "Wow, talk about time flying. That would mean the munch... Rachel would be coming up on her first birthday too, yeah?"

"Well, another few months..." Nathan leaned back a little, watching her. "Moira told me you'd been a little twitchy around her, back on Muir," he said without preamble.

There was a sudden fit of coughing as Amanda inhaled lettuce and she reached for her glass of water. She had been hoping to avoid this particular topic, but she should have known it would come up. Rachel was everything to Nathan. "Um," she said, once she was able, desperately marshalling her thoughts. "I thought it was... better, that I don't get close. Safer." Especially after his last actual words to her before she'd gone to the Hellfire Club.

"Did you actually think you'd hurt her?" Nathan asked quietly. "Or did you think I'd react badly if I'd found out you'd been spending time with her while you were on the island?"

"I'd never hurt her!" It came out a bit more forcefully than she expected. "Not even when... not even last year. But my powers were all out of whack and I wasn't sure what Selene had done had stuck... And then, once we were sure I wasn't draining energy from people, I just... I don't know. Every time I looked at her I remembered you telling me you never wanted me near her again. It made sense to keep clear, if only so she didn't have my shite in her head."

Nathan gave another faint smile. "I appreciate the caution, when it comes to the state your powers were in. As for what I said last year... you know, I never believed you'd have knowingly hurt her. Not even when you were acting like you were last fall."

"Then why say what you did?" she asked, trying not to sound accusing. "Why act like you thought I was going to drain her dry if I got the chance?"

"Listen to what I said." Nathan's voice was still calm, quiet. "I never believed you'd have knowingly hurt her."

"I get the distinction, Nate, but no, I didn't know that. All I had to go on was what you'd said and the way you looked when you said it. So I stayed away, even if it meant leaving the room if Moira had Rachel with her when she came in." Amanda gave up all pretence of eating, for the first time actual tears burning her eyes. "She's the most important thing in the world to you, Nate. I'd already taken away Askani, I didn't want you to think I might do the same to her."

"I didn't believe you'd ever knowingly hurt her, even at the time. Right now, I know you wouldn't. You've made that very clear." Nathan gazed across the table at her, his expression grave, serious, but not angry. Or guilty. "That didn't change the fact that at the time, you didn't think of her before you acted. In retrospect, I understand why. I think part of me understood at the time, even. But you didn't spare her a thought. I lost a child once to people who wiped him out of existence because they didn't care a damned thing about him except inasmuch as he could be used to hurt me. I never expected to ever have to be afraid that someone I loved might have been capable of doing the same thing by accident."

She actually flinched at that, although again, she preferred the honesty. "At the time, everything happened so fast," she said. "And I can't say whether I would have been able to keep her out of drain or not. I like to think that if she had been down there, I would have stopped and thought about it. And then maybe Remy would have died." The tears overflowed at this point and she groped for her napkin. "We won't know, because she wasn't there, but that's why I stay clear. Because of that doubt. It's always going to be there and nothing I do or say's ever going to change that."

"What doubt?" Nathan's gaze was very slightly stoney as he watched her. "If you think you're talking about my doubt... you don't read minds, Amanda. Don't presume. If it's your own doubt... I won't try and convince you otherwise. I'll just say," he went on, more calmly again, "that I don't believe, after this, that you'd ever hurt her even by accident. You've obviously... agonized too much over it to ever let yourself go anywhere near that road again. But I will not apologize," he said very clearly, "for reacting the way I did at the time. I..."

He stopped, his jaw clenching just a bit. "I saw more in your mind than I possibly should have," he said, "when we were linking, while you were draining Askani. I saw that you thought I'd picked blood over you, just like Manuel did with his father. I can't even deny that, I suppose. But I think you need to keep in mind that Manuel choosing his evil abusive bastard of a father over you is not quite on the same level as me wanting to protect a two-month-old baby who couldn't protect herself ."

She was messing this up, same as she had before. Only a certain amount of stubbornness and a desire to at least finish things made her stay when all she wanted to do was flee. No more running away, she'd made a promise to herself. Scrubbing at her eyes (and completely ruining her makeup), she tried to pull herself together. "I was wrong," she said haltingly through the lump in her throat. "Back then and right now. I was a messed up kid who thought she'd lost everything that ever mattered and it was my own bloody fault. I just didn't want to believe... still don't want to believe, that I'd ever hurt a defenceless baby." All this was said with her eyes fixed firmly on the table, the neglected lunch. "I suppose there was a part of me that was still a little kid, feeling like she'd been put aside. Manuel did it, Pete did it... it seemed like you had too, even before what happened. But I know better now - 's stupid, being jealous over a baby that's never done you any harm. But I guess I was back then. Jealous, that is. Of course you'd want to protect her, she couldn't do it herself. I'm just sorry I every made you think there was a need."

Nathan reached out and took her hand again. "Look at me." He waited until she did. "I know you are," he said, his voice more gentle and the hard look gone entirely from his eyes. "I know. If I'd brought her with me today, I would lift her out of the goofy-ass stroller and put her on your lap, and not think twice about it. Well, except to remind you to hold onto the leash." He smiled. "She flies, you know."

"A-ange s-said," she hiccuped, clinging to his hand perhaps a little bit and trying not to be angry at herself for dissolving. She'd wanted to be mature about this, and here she was blubbing in public. "S-sounds like a real holy terror, just like her Auntie Dom."

"She flies, and still hums in your head, and basically can charm the birds out of the trees. Literally." Nathan didn't let go of her hand. "And when you get settled in New York, she and I and most likely Moira will come and visit, and the two of you can catch up on some of the missed time."

"I... I think I'd like that," she replied, thinking of the stuffed gator she'd sent Rachel via Angelo. She sniffled a little. "Fuck, I must look a mess."

"The eye makeup looks a little unintentionally gothic, yes," Nathan said with a perfectly straight face, offering her a hankerchief. "Use that, not the napkin. I think the waitress already thinks we're cracked."

"Maybe lunch wasn't such a good idea for this..." she said with a small, trembling laugh. She wiped at her face with Nathan's handkerchief, trying to clean herself up. "Ugh, I need a mirror. I'm going to go to the bathroom and wash up." She paused before she got up, and looked at him seriously. "I'll be right back. And maybe then we can actually finish this properly?"

"You go wash up, I'll pay the bill. I think a walk would be the best remedy to overly heavy if necessary conversations," he said, giving her hand one last squeeze before letting go. "And I don't know... I think we've dealt with as much as we really need to, for today at least. Right now I think I'd rather enjoy the fresh air with someone I've missed very much."

The smile she gave him was as much relieved as anything else, but it was an honest one. "Same here," she said. "To all of it." And she headed off to the washroom with as much dignity as one can muster with a tear-stained face and streaked mascara.