xp_logs | Angelo and Nathan, by the boathouse at sunset

After Nathan accepts the memory Saul left for him, he and Angelo talk. It starts off necessarily woeful, and then conversation turns to Rachel.

The sun was setting, but Nathan hadn't gone back up to the mansion, Angelo realized as he came out of the boathouse. He watched the older man for several long moments, where he sat on the deck looking out over the water, then walked quietly over to join him.

It was even more worrying, as he drew closer, that Nathan didn't seem to know he was there. Nathan always heard him coming, telepathically or otherwise. "...Nate?"

Nathan shook himself a little at Angelo's question, then looked around at him, blinking. His expression was strange - distant and faintly pained, and he wasn't focusing well on Angelo. "Hey."

"Hey." He settled on the deck beside Nathan, legs folded under him. "You okay?"

Nathan shrugged a little, his gaze going back to the lake. "Yeah." At the moment, he did not at all resemble the man who'd been roaring around the office like a caged lion all afternoon, on the phone to Nicaragua and Tel Aviv and several points in between.

"You sure?" Angelo pressed. "'Cause you're a lot... quieter, than you were an hour ago."

"Just stopped to..." Nathan's lips quirked in a brief smile. "It's complicated."

"I've got time", came the quiet answer. "If you want."

"Did you notice David and my father talking on the plane, in Ushuaia?" Nathan asked after a moment.

"David - oh, Haller. Right. I knew they were talkin', but I was up front watchin' for the team to come back, so I don't know what about."

Nathan shifted again in the chair. "Saul left him with a memory - one of Saul's, of him and me when I was a child. To pass along to me, if the worst happened. Which it did, didn't it?"

"...yeah, I guess it did. So... he... passed it on?"

"Yeah." Nathan kept staring out at the lake, his expression unreadable again.

Angelo didn't prod further right away, but eventually, when the silence had drawn out for too long, he asked gently, "And?"

"And, it's a memory. Him taking me ice fishing. Very detailed memory, too - I think he must have been holding onto that moment very hard, over the years." Nathan subsided into another, bleaker silence, and this time the hurt was written all over his face.

Angelo looked at him sideways, really not sure he should be asking anything more. But then.... "Ice fishin'?"

"Ice fishing. He'd mentioned it to me before. I don't remember it myself," Nathan said, the line of his jaw tight. "Apparently it was something we used to do together when I was a kid."

Angelo winced, turning himself to look out over the lake. "Ah. One of those memories."

Nathan looked around at him, and although there was a flicker of savage amusement in his gray eyes, it wasn't directed strictly at Angelo. "Those memories?"

Angelo shrugged, not looking at him. "You know what I mean."

"No, I don't. And I'd like to know, because I don't know what any of this means." It wasn't fair to lash out at Angelo, even if his voice was staying perfectly even, but that one little comment was just the straw that broke the camel's back. He was so sick of ambiguity.

Angelo could take it, even if it brought on one of his bouts of complete blankness. "For you... the ones Gideon took. Changed. Whatever the hell he did."

"Yeah." Nathan looked away again, his features settling into bitter lines. "One more lost moment. And apparently it was supposed to mean something to me, to have it back."

"Does it?"

"Depends on your definition of 'something'. Does it confirm for me what I thought, that my father was a total sociopath capable of both loving me and possibly sending me to my death for my own good? Yes," Nathan mumbled.

Angelo drew a long breath, thinking that over. "Well... does it make any difference now, to get that confirmation?"

"Should it?" It came out sounding a little choked, and Nathan was shaking his head, as if denying the emotion in his voice - futilely, it turned out, because it stayed there as he went on. "I don't even have words to describe how much I hate him. I really don't." His eyes were suspiciously bright as he made this claim, however.

"But that's not all of it", Angelo said quietly, still not looking round, or anywhere but steadfastly out at the water. "Is it."

"No. But it should be. I should be able to close the book. He doesn't deserve any more than that," Nathan said harshly, rubbing at his eyes.

"Nate, you know as well as anyone that just wantin' it to be that way doesn't make it that way."

"And how pointless is anything else?" He was not getting upset. He wasn't. "He's dead. He made it damned clear the last time we talked that he wouldn't have done a damned thing differently... I had a monster for a father," Nathan said, much more pain than anger in his voice at this point, "and I just wish he'd had a chance to appreciate that before he died."

"How do you know he didn't?" Angelo asked quietly. "I know it's as much his fault as anyone's that you weren't with him when he died, but.... you weren't."

Nathan, uncharacteristically, avoided the question. "You know what I wish?" he asked restlessly, staring down at his hands. "I wish I could do what Gideon did, but do it properly. Go back over the last year and edit out any memory of him."

Angelo flinched. "Nathan, if you ever mention doin' that again, so help me, I'm goin' straight to the Professor. That's not the way to go. Not with everythin' that happened."

"Fine. Then I won't mention it again." But Nathan looked around at Angelo with a little shrug and a nod, as good as an admission that he knew that it was a Very Bad Idea. "I just wish it were feasible. Him, Gideon, my mother... all of it. Take it right out and never have to think about any of them again."

"An' have your mind do what it did last time an' try an' create God knows what kind of explanation for the parts that don't get wiped out with the memories?" His voice was tired, now.

"Yeah, well, the truth sucks just as much." His voice cracked, and Nathan stared back out at the lake, fixedly. "It makes no sense, they're all dead so that's never going to change, and there's precisely zero closure in any of this."

"You don't always get closure", Angelo muttered, not entirely to Nathan. "Not the way the world works."

Nathan shook his head, looking down again. "I know that," he said tiredly, reaching out and laying a hand on Angelo's shoulder for a moment, squeezing gently.

Angelo smiled faintly and leaned into the contact, while it lasted. "Come on. It'll be dark soon, an' God knows what kind of terror Rachel's up to."

"Tormenting her babysitter again, mostly likely..." Nathan rose with a sigh. "I creak," he complained, starting towards the steps. "Have you noticed that lately?"

"You're gettin' old", Angelo informed him solemnly as he followed.

"I'm starting to monopolize the tub after Danger Room sessions on a regular basis," Nathan grumped, then winced as he straightened a little and his back protested. "Okay, so that's been going on for a while."

"..." Angelo eyed him, but judiciously said nothing about whether Nathan should be in the Danger Room, if it was having that effect.

"Stop fussing. And yes, I know you're fussing, even if you're giving me the stone-faced look. I'm a telepath, you know," Nathan said dryly as they headed up the path to the mansion.

"Lookin' after you's part of my job, when I can", Angelo pointed out. "When you let me."

"I didn't realize I'd written that into the job description," Nathan said in amusement, but the look he turned on Angelo was affectionate. "What, did you sneak it in there when I wasn't looking?"

"I might've done", came the innocent answer. "Moira agrees with me. So does Rachel. I can tell."

"I've noticed you and my evil daughter conferring." Rachel adored Angelo with a devotion that she reserved for very few people who weren't her parents. The way she reacted to him, Nathan reflected, smiling despite the way his eyes stung, reminded him very much of the way she'd reacted to GW.

"We plot", Angelo agreed, straight-faced. "An' she's even comin' up with things on her own these days, too."

"Oh-ho. Now there's an alarming thought. I'll have to watch the pair of you very, very closely."

"Good luck with that!"