xp_logs | Nathan and Cain, early Thursday morning

Nathan, out for an early morning flight, sees Cain head out on an unexpected errand.

Cain absently thought to himself how silly this was and cracked a smile. It had been almost half a century since he'd ever felt the need to quietly sneak out of this mansion, only when he was a teenager he hadn't been able to carry the pickup truck in one hand to avoid waking everyone up with the perpetually rattling engine.

Walking through the gates, truck over his head, he waited until he was a ways down the road before setting it down gently, then climbing in and turning the engine over.

Nathan had woken up before dawn and decided to go for a flight. It had been too long since he'd done that, and there'd been a nice amount of cloud cover to hide the firebird. It was breaking up as he headed back to the mansion, flying high enough that even had someone looked up just as he'd passed over a clear patch, all they would have seen was a gleam, high in the sky. Like a plane passing by, the sun reflecting off metal.

He didn't so much see the truck as feel Cain's thoughts as he set out on the road, as there were so few minds around outside the mansion at this time of the morning. Nathan came to a stop, the wings of his exoskeleton beating lazily as he hovered in place, wondering where Cain was going.

Delicately, careful to keep a safe distance - Cain was very good at picking upon the 'someone's in my brain' itch - Nathan changed course and cast his own thoughts outward to follow.

This early on a Friday morning, Salem Center didn't seem all that different from when Cain remembered his first drive through after getting his license. The same drugstore, only now it sported the large logo of a corporate chain. The McDonald's by the crossroads was still there - the oldest one in the state, actually. Cain could remember when it was built, he'd been ten years old. The days of driving into town for a burger, back when they were less than a twentieth of the current price.

A few more blocks, and he was past the old town area, following the two-lane road into the gently wooded foothills.

Where on earth is he going? Nathan thought as he moved between the clouds. Wondering if this classed as eavesdropping - all right, so it definitely classed as eavesdropping. Cain didn't seem agitated, from what impressions he was managing to get, but something was stopping Nathan from just turning around and heading back to the mansion.

Cain's destination was made clear as he brought the pickup to a rumbling stop outside a set of wrought-iron gates. He looked at the plaque by the gates, aware that he was well outside of the normal visiting hours. Not that it mattered.

Flexing his knees for a moment, Cain leaped into the air, alighting as gently as he could on the other side of the gate, his feet clearing the black iron letters spelling out "SALEM CENTER CEMETERY."

The cemetery? Nathan frowned a bit, but realized who almost certainly was buried there, this close to the mansion. He shifted uneasily through the air. Cain was visiting a grave, on top of everything else that had happened this week? What had been controlled worry sharpened abruptly.

But he still watched, weirdly fascinated. Cemeteries, graves, the idea of having a place to visit to remember the people you'd lost... it was still all vaguely alien to him, even after all the graves of the last year or so. Nathan reflected, as he hovered, that he didn't know where Saul was buried. There had been arrangments in the will, apparently. The lawyer had said it was all taken care of. He hadn't asked.

Oblivious to the faintly glowing outline against the morning clouds, Cain walked almost reverently among the headstones. It was chilling when he would look down and see a name he'd known, reminded of people he'd last seen before going off to war.

In a way, then, it made him feel a little more comfortable taking that thought with him as he ascended the hill to stop at two stones that overlooked the cemetery.

Sharon Xavier Marko. Wife. Mother. 1917-1953
Kurt Ian Marko. Husband. Father. 1906-1960

Cain shook his head, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Figured you'd be by her side instead of Mom's, up in Boston. You didn't give her a second thought when she died, why should anything change?"

He sniffed briefly, looking past the headstones to the horizon. "I told myself I wasn't going to ever come by here, I didn't have anything to say to you. When they pulled me out of my bunk at Parris Island, told me 'hey, Private. Your old man died, here's your bus ticket and leave papers', I tossed it back in their faces. I didn't have a damn thing to say to you."

"Well," he said, placing one hand atop the smooth marble, "I was wrong. I got something to say. I told myself I'd go to my grave hating you. That I wasn't going to forgive you for forgetting her, for forgetting me. For showing me I couldn't ever be good enough. I told myself I'd hate you forever."

Wiping his eyes with his other hand, Cain nodded at the grave of his father. "That's one promise I can still keep. This hate, at least I know it's mine."

The wings of his exoskeleton ruffling in agitation, Nathan tried to figure out what he was sensing without making contact and tipping off Cain to the fact that he was watching. He wasn't an empath, he couldn't read emotions, but there was something both complicated and familiar about the impressions he was getting.

A small series of cracks spiderwebbed through the stone where Cain's hand rested atop his father's headstone. Cautiously, he removed his hand and stepped back. "There was a time when all I wanted was to hear you say you were proud of me. And you never were. So to hell with you, Dad. I'm doing something that I can finally be proud of. You hear me? I'm doing the right thing. And you'll never see it."

He took a step back, giving a small nod to the paired tombstones, one marred by a large crack down the side. "How long you been there?" he asked loudly.

#Longer than I should have been. I'm sorry.# There was a flare of light behind Cain as the firebird settled to the grass and vanished, leaving Nathan standing there regarding his friend, trying to keep the worry off his face. "Cain..." he said uncertainly, his eyes flickering to the tombstone. More words failed him. But this was closure, or something like it, and he didn't know why.

"You remember that day on the 'Bird, heading to Youra?" Cain asked without turning around. "I asked you if you ever thought what freedom felt like, and you didn't know. You'd never thought about it." He turned around, looking at Nathan with an earnest face. "So, was it all worth it?"

He hadn't known at Youra. Hadn't had time to find out, before Saul had come back into his life and things had gotten complicated, again. "I lost things... people I'd do anything to get back," Nathan said, almost inaudibly, "but what I have now, the life I have now..." He wasn't doing a very good job of answering the question. "I wish it could have been different. But I'm glad to be where I am now. I'm happy. Freedom feels... good."

"I know you know what it's like, making the hard decisions," Cain said quietly. "I was there. I mean, you walked into Hell - you risked losing everything good you'd built up to set things right. I... I gotta do the same."

Nathan stared past him at the tombstone. "You were there," he said, his voice strained. "Would I be able to... can I help?" He wasn't going to try and talk Cain out of it, whatever it was. Not when he could tell how much weight the decision had. But Cain had gone to Youra to make sure he came home...

Cain walked over, putting a hand on Nathan's shoulder. "Go home," he said. "Hold your daughter. Look at your wife and remember that it matters. I... I lost sight of that for a while. But you guys, you gave me that chance. You gave me that when I wouldn't have given it to myself. The chance to help do good things, to set things right."

He sighed, crouching down to lean against a larger headstone. "I gotta go to where it all began, and set things the way they should be. Because if I don't, then all the good I've tried to do - it's all going to come crashing down. And I'm not about to let that happen."

"Then you do what you need to do." It came out tight-sounding, but Nathan forced a smile, even if it only lasted for a moment. "And you come back." That, at least, came out more fiercely, although Nathan's composure nearly failed him again. "Because there are at least three of us who are going to be waiting for you to do that," he said, looking away as his jaw clenched. "You keep your eye on tomorrow," he said more faintly, remembering the conversation they'd had in the Blackbird on the way to Youra.

"With my shield or on it?" Cain quipped, shaking his head. "I ain't planning no blaze of glory, just putting things the way they should be. Don't you worry, Nate. I'm coming home."

"Good. Because my evil daughter has plans for you, you know. I think they involve squirrels..." The exoskeleton flashed into existence around him again, twitching and flaring, almost painfully bright as its wings unfolded. "And blazes of glory are highly overrated." Nathan swallowed past the tightness in his throat, staring through the light at Cain. "I'll see you at home," he said, and managed not to make it sound like a question.

Cain gave a nod, then looked down to the truck. "I think I'll take the long drive back," he said, and started down the hill.

Nathan watched him go, and then launched himself into the air with somewhat more force that was really necessary. He was far above the clouds almost before he realized it, so high that everything on the ground was tiny and insignificant-looking.

Except looks were deceiving. His mind was wide open and he could sense minds waking up, here and there in houses scattered across the landscape. A larger concentration, over in the direction of Salem Centre, and other towns, farther away. New York like the sun rising on the astral plane, in the distance.

But even as he hovered there, immersed in the big picture, Nathan reached out down those well-traveled ways in his own mind, to find Moira and Rachel at the end of their respective links, both just beginning to stir.

He held onto them tightly, and let them draw him home.