LOG: [Nathan, Haller] Art Therapy

[x-legion.livejournal.com]

After the slightly traumatic mission this week, Haller talks Nate into venting his Feelings in a colorful and productive way that highlights the fact Haller has himself been in therapy for many, many years.





There were definite fringe benefits to doing this here on the deck outside the boathouse at this time of the evening, Nathan thought a bit dourly, staring flatly at the easel. Cain was much less likely to happen by and mock, for one.

"I'm finding the white page is saying a lot," he grumbled at Jim, who had an easel of his own.

"Just remember that there's always another one," Jim replied, dipping his brush into the cup of water balanced on the railing and swirling a little water into the daubs of paint on his pallet. The art-room had been well-stocked -- even the acrylics were borrowed. He'd brought his own brushes, though; gifts from Charles years ago. The weight of the slightly-scorched handle rested secure and familiar in his hand.

"Paint," Nathan muttered almost fitfully. "This is the first time I've ever painted... I think." He watched Jim for a moment, the way he was adding bits of water to the paint. There were times he hated moments like this, the awkward times where he realized he had no idea how to do something just because he'd never had the opportunity to do it. They'd been fewer and farther between lately - this wasn't ten years ago, after all - but still...

"You mean there's something left on this planet you haven't done yet?" Jim said with a grin. There were only five paints on the waxed paper of his pallet: red, yellow, blue, white and black, strong and primary. He'd brought more in case Nathan had wanted to use them, but mostly he preferred to mix his own colors. He swept a chunk of red off by itself, then began dabbing in blue. It was a little tacky. More water. "Relax. It's not about being perfect. At all, really. Perfection kind of gets in the way. You're not going for photorealism here. It's about impression and emotion. That's a good thing to remind yourself of if you start obsessing. Also," he added, moving to the yellow, "it's only paint."

Nathan gave him a dubious look, then looked down at the paint. Rather tentatively at first, he mixed red and yellow until he had a sandy sort of orange, and then started to add broad, curved horizontal lines to the paper in front of him. They were overlapping each other in a very specific sort of pattern.

A little more blending, this time red with black, and Jim finally raised his brush to canvas. The bristles stroked across the paper, outlining large, almost formless blotches of shadow. His movements were unhurried, but purposeful. "Charles said the candidates seem to be adjusting well," he said conversationally. "Dr. Cooper called this morning. It looks like the government already had some things in place when she got in touch with us. They've got some culture-shock, but it sounds like they're doing pretty well. Most of them even have at least rudimentary English skills. They'll make the transition pretty well, I think."

Nathan grunted. "They've got some experience with this. All those kids after Youra who were in the same situation... the cultural differences complicate things, but the issues are universal, I suppose." He shook his head, aggravated, and leaned back a little to stare at the paper.

The telepath nodded. "They're in good shape, all things considered. The conditioning wasn't too deeply entrenched at all. I was barely necessary." The white space closed, leaving solid shadow. Jim moved to shades of maroon. "You were quiet on the flight back."

"I was..." Nathan shrugged, letting his paintbrush rest for a moment. He didn't know what to do next. There was too much the pattern of lines was bringing back to mind for him. The dunes, certainly, which was the first thing he'd thought about... but the shape, with a slight alteration... he added another line, somewhat hesitantly. "Between the circumstances and the geography," he said, his tone somewhat clipped, "I was finding it a little difficult to focus, once everything was done."

"I can imagine. It's frustrating, feeling like you can't even turn around without hitting a sore spot. Like every little thing just rubs that much more. I can't say I haven't felt like that some days, too." Moira in the convenience store. Watching Cain leave. The damage to Marie-Ange's mind. He traced the curve of an arm in red, the angle sharp and awkward. "Things pile up. Have you done anything to decompress lately? Not work-related, I mean. That doesn't really count."

Nathan stared somewhat blankly at his painting. "... decompress. Um."

"Yeah, thought not," the younger man smiled faintly. As had Lorna, as a matter of fact, which was a fairly good indicator in and of itself. Leave it to Lorna to be sensitive to people with avoidance issues. But Jim had seen Nathan's uncharacteristic reserve on the plane, too, even with the distraction of the children. Lorna's judgement had only been a contributing factor.

"Brains are too high maintenance," Jim continued. "You'd think you'd just be able to get all your problems tied up and the thing would let you be for a while, but no. They demand constant upkeep, or the problems keep coming back, even if nothing really overt has triggered it. Like weeds, or telemarketers. Pesky." The line of a neck ended in a red smear. "In spite of the fact asking this officially makes me your wife, and I kind of doubt Moira's that fond of me -- have you been seeing your therapist lately?"

"Have," Nathan said somewhat remotely. "Will be seeing more of him, too. We're going back to two sessions a week - he's a little concerned about me." He washed out his paintbrush, then dipped it in black, filling in the sky somewhat aggressively. "I've been having nightmares again, almost every night, for the last few weeks."

"Increased sessions is a good idea. It means I won't have to nag you to death. Again, that's Moira's job." Bristles scraped against the paint-scored lip of the cup, pressing out excess water. Uneasy purple now, shadows in the hollow of one cheekbone. Jim let his stroke wander. "What started the dreams? Anything in particular?"

"That session in the Danger Room with Logan." Nathan finished filling in the sky, then, after a moment, took a dab of the black and mixed it with white to produce a faint gray. "Funny not-quite-flashbacks. Like there were environmental things that were evoking that day, but not enough to actually put me mentally back there. I have this..." He paused, his jaw tightening. "... this recurring thing, about the world not quite staying put. Walls changing, so that I'm somewhere other than where I know I am. It was what happened after my conditioning was wiped clean, and this reminded me too much of that."

Ah, that would be the day he'd wrenched his back. Jim nodded, muddying a patch of red to create an eyesocket. "You depend on your mind to be a constant, but if that's violated . . . it's a little difficult to see the world around you with any kind of solidarity. The thing closest to you has been undermined. That's a shock that doesn't really go away." The bristles fanned under his touch. "Trauma's like a gadfly. It'll sting and sting, but the pain alone can't kill you. Partial-triggers are the most frustrating. Just enough to get under your skin without provoking a full cathartic release, which is almost what needs to happen before you can get on with things. Mauritania was like that too, huh?" It wasn't really a question; under the circumstances there wasn't much chance it could be anything but. But it's kind of bad manners to say 'your damage is so obvious it's worrying your teammates,' so . . .

Nathan, very delicately, started adding gray lines beneath the dunes. Not quite the outlines of bodies, but suggestive enough. "I don't want to have a full cathartic release," he muttered. "I've done enough of that. People get tired of seeing me fall apart."

"As opposed to watching you on slow burn for a month?" Jim chided gently. "C'mon, Nate. The brain does what it does. Fighting it only makes the explosion that much messier." His brush caressed the jagged jut of bone, calm and smooth. "Trust me."

Nathan breathed out on a sigh a little shakier than it should have been, and kept doggedly at adding the outlines of children's bodies, one beneath each dune. No gravestones, though, because there was never anything to mark the graves. Not out in the desert. "I don't want to," he said again, the protest sounding a little more feeble. "if I just keep moving, no boom necessary."

"That's kind of like reasoning that if you don't stick your head out from under the covers the monsters can't get you, isn't it? If you stopped, what do you think would happen?" Jim nodded towards the mounds, the first indication he'd given to looking at Nathan's canvas since they'd started this exercise. "Is it that?"

Nathan stared at his painting. "This happens anyway," he said softly. "It has happened, it will happen... it's probably happening right now. Innocents. Real innocents, not pawns like me..." It was hard to express what he meant, and he'd certainly been failing with Jack for months now.

"So it's your job to save them, is that it?" The question was soft, but not unsympathetic. "Innocents lose. It happens. It will always happen. That's just how it goes. I'm not saying it's useless to do all you can to prevent it, but when it does happen it's no one's fault." Jim cleaned the edge of the brush on the lip of the cup and moved to the smear of off-white. Bone white. "No one's but the people responsible."

"It's not about fault," Nathan protested, picking up the paintbrush again and adding a figure standing on a distant dune, in gray just like the dead beneath the dunes. "And I always do all I can. It's just that I can't do everything that needs doing, and I'll do less if I sit around feeling sorry for myself."

"I think your perspective may be a little skewed," Jim replied. He raised his hand to rub the back of it across his forehead. The act left a thin smudge of yellow behind, which he ignored. "'Everything that needs doing.' What does that mean? I mean, where's the limit? There's a lot that needs doing in the world. Endless. Think there's a possibility you might need to sit down and think about what's humanly attainable? You're not a small-scale guy, Nathan. After your colorful and unique life you're not really cut out for it. But just focusing on the bigger picture doesn't mean the details go away." He gestured again at the graves in the dunes. "Do you see what I mean?"

"But if I develop a less skewed perspective, doesn't that mean that I need to keep focusing on the big picture and not on the things that I can't do anything about?" Nathan dipped his brush back into the white and created a crescent moon. "I'm so not getting this," he said moodily. "Either you shoot for the moon or you don't, and you either see the trees and the forest, or don't... I don't understand how doing everything you can is compatible with putting limits on it."

"You do everything you can do. That isn't even a question. But your definition of 'everything you can do' needs to be feasible, or else you're just setting yourself up for a fall. And then there's the kind of more important question of using that 'everything' to bury yourself so you actively don't have to look at the details . . ." The younger man's mouth quirked as he touched highlights to grinning teeth. "You know I think Elpis is a great idea, but how much time have you given yourself to deal with what happened with Saul and Gideon since setting it up? Really?"

"...you sound like Jack," was Nathan's grudging reply as he started adding stars here and there, little pinpoints of white in the black sky. "I thought Elpis was a way of dealing with that - at least, with the stuff that can be dealt with. The specifics of what happened are black and white and there's not a damned thing I can do about any of it."

Jim's smile went strange for a moment, eyes still fixed on his canvas. There was a slight flicker in his mind, like a shifting windchime momentarily catching the sunlight, then balance quietly reasserted itself. "You can't do anything about what happened, that's true. But you can at least figure out how you're handling it. That means really thinking about it, not just giving your brain busywork to occupy itself with. Maybe you don't want to get into it because you don't like where you think it'll lead you or the questions it'll make you ask, but it's something that needs to get dealt with. If you don't it'll just stay hanging over you like the Sword of Damocles, and nothing's ever going to feel centered right. Not Elpis, or the team, or the school." Jim stroked the whites of the eyes in the shadows of the sockets. Empty, staring. "That's not a good place to be."

"... I've felt off-center for a very long time," Nathan said, wondering why he'd just put stars in the sky over the desert. That was a little off, wasn't it? "There's so much I can't change, so much I regret... I've had to accept and move on from so much, Jim. I don't know what else to do except keep moving."

"Don't confuse acceptance with endurance. There's the stuff you've come to terms with, and the stuff you keep functioning in spite of. I think you've got a little too much of the latter, personally." Jim gave his brush a final swirl in the water and abandoned it, finished. The brush clunked lightly against the edge of the cup, pulled in slow circles by the remnants of the current. The pallet, too, was laid safely at his feet. He stood back and withdrew a cigarette as he regarded the canvas, the easel still tilted slightly so the other man couldn't see.

"I think you've been moving so long you don't remember what it's like to stand still," Jim said, cupping his hand around the cigarette as he flicked his lighter open. "Feeling chronically off-balance might be considered a sign, you think? Moving on isn't easy. You don't just snap your fingers and decide you're going to be better. It's kind of a lifetime commitment. But there's moving forward, and then there's running away." He took a drag, exhaling away from the panting. "Fine line."

Nathan took a deep breath and then let it out on a sigh. "I'll think about that," he said, and meant it. Not just as a platitude. He mustered up a smile that was a little uncertain. "I do hate the idea of running away, you know. All the Spartan conditioning..." But his painting drew his attention, and he shook his head slowly, gazing at it. "I think I'll take this to my next session with me. Says a lot, don't you think?" He set the paintbrush down carefully. "Very different outlet than the poetry," he said, almost under his breath.

The telepath nodded. "Sometimes it's easier to put a thought into picture than words. And like most art, the real value's in the doing, not the result. It's amazing how much power the demons lose once you get them out of your head."

Balancing his cigarette between his lips, Jim slid his fingernails under the masking tape that affixed the painting to the backing board and ripped. The stiff paper depicting the crushed and bleeding remains of the conditioning empath was folded once, twice, then crumpled.

No, Jim thought calmly as he turned to Nathan with the remains of his project wadded in one hand, the other traveling briefly to smear red across his cigarette, I'm not Jack.

"Okay. So, dinner?"