Amanda, Nathan - Saturday mid-morning
Jul. 29th, 2006 11:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xp_daytripper posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsOOC: Posting a little earlier a) while I had dedicated access and b) I'm not distracted by Teh People. ;)
Amanda drops by the boathouse, as promised. She and Nathan talk, and there's an exercise in irony.
True enough the Elpis crew had only just gotten back from their travels, but Amanda figured Angelo would be back in the office as soon as he could - it was amusing, how the pair of them were turning into workaholics. Who'd have thought, eh? Tapping on the frame of the partially-open door, she called out: "Anyone home and needing a break?"
Nathan was hunched over a computer, scrolling through screen after screen of names, looking for any Qadirs. He'd had to call in a number of favors to get these records and Rollins had called in more - NGO-NGO communication was not as robust as it should be - and it was going to take him literally forever. It wasn't as if you could count the number of organizations providing food and medical aid in northern Afghanistan on one hand, and he'd gotten records from... nearly a dozen of them. Not that they were complete. And really, this was probably looking for a needle in a haystack.
He looked up at the familiar voice. "Over here on the other side," he called back, wondering what Amanda was doing here at the mansion. Looking for Angelo, maybe? The corner of his mouth twitched.
Amanda let herself in and crossed through the partition door to the office side. Once there, she paused to take in the set-up - she hadn't seen it before. "Beats the old office, that's for sure," she said with a grin. "Must be nice, not having Mount Paperwork to skirt around. I swear I saw one of those sherpas climbing the lower slopes one day."
Gray eyes flickered in amusement as they met hers. "Legacy of my first secretary, may she rest in peace - not literally, I didn't actually kill her."
"This'd be the one who had horrible objections to flying babies, yeah? Angelo told me about her." Amanda perched on the desk opposite Nathan's, careful not to knock anything over. Her feet, clad in the ever-present Doc Martens, swung slightly as she grinned at him. "Thought I'd drop 'round, see if A... anyone was about." There was the slightest pause that indicated she'd been about to say something else. "How was the trip?"
Nathan laughed a bit wryly. "A little more eventful than I intended. Everyone's fine," he assured her, before she could react. "But we had to call for a Blackbird pickup. Ran into some problems..." He made a face, saving the file he'd been skimming through. "Afghanistan is not the most settled place in the world."
"What with the warlords and all..." Part of Snow Valley's other work involved keeping up with the world's hotspots and whilst she had a lot of go through, some of it was sticking. "So, these problems... did Ange have to sit on you to stop you from throwing yourself into the thick of it?"
Nathan coughed, turning red, and found something very interesting about his desk all of a sudden.
Amanda shook her head, rolling her eyes. "Or maybe not." She very wisely didn't say anything about knowing one's limits and the dangers of combat sans powers you were used to having, but there was something of it in her expression. "That book was a bloody good idea," she muttered to herself, then louder, added: "But you said everyone was fine, so I'm not going to give you the lecture. Grown man and all. I just..." She shook her head. "Doesn't matter."
"I had a very good horse," Nathan muttered, almost meekly. "Nice hyper-aggressive northern horse trained to play buzkashi. All I had to do was steer." His expression was wry again as he looked up at her. "It was a question of getting Rahne and Sooraya - that would be the new student we brought back - back from the people who'd kidnapped them before they crossed the Pakistani border. And yes, a bunch of idiots were dumb enough to kidnap Rahne."
"Some people just never learn..." Whether Amanda was talking about Nathan or the idiot bad guys wasn't exactly clear. "I saw something on the journals about a new student... mutant kidnapping ring?"
Nathan shook his head. "Slave traders. Not at all uncommon in that part of the world, but mutants are an unusual commodity. Sooraya is... quite something," Nathan said, thinking about the self-contained girl. "Very strong. I think she's going to be all right."
"Sounds a bit like the stuff we've been working on since we got Sarah back..." Amanda looked thoughtful, obviously filing away information in her head. "Seems to be the time of year for new students arriving with a bang," she added, wryly. "How's that Julio settling in?"
Nathan grimaced a bit. "As well as can be expected... I need to make sure I spend some time with him this weekend, I think." He shifted his arm in his sling, getting up. "Want to move out to the deck? Too nice a day to sit inside while we're waiting for Angelo..."
She covered the momentary odd expression with an eager nod and slid off the desk. She'd been in the office that morning, but had gotten changed before driving out to the school, and was looking particularly casual in a pair of denim shorts and a cotton tank top that had started life as a t-shirt before she'd ripped the sleeves off. "Been spending too much time indoors," she agreed, following Nathan out to the deck. "I've been hitting the books pretty hard since I got back from New Orleans, and there's a lot on at work."
"You were in New Orleans?" Nathan paused. "Wait, you said that," he said, lowering himself into the nearest chair.
Amanda moved down the rail a bit further away and fished her cigarettes out. "D'you mind?" she asked, before answering his question. "Yeah, had to go see Tante, check on something. " She pulled a face. "That woman ought t' be a lawyer. She's sneaky as one."
"Hey, no lawyer jokes," Nathan said a bit petulantly, but nodded at the cigarette. Rachel was up at the house, and she would have been the only reason for him to say no. "Was it a productive checking on something?" he asked a bit quizzically.
"Ta." Amanda lit up, careful to stay downwind. She couldn't smoke in the office and living with Angie had gotten her out of the habit of smoking in her living space, so she'd cut down a lot, but there was something comforting about the act of lighting up and taking the first drag. Grounding, somehow. Once an addict... she thought with black humour. "Yes and no. More her getting all semantic on me, but I can't argue with it. And I'm not entirely sure I want to. After all, I was sort of thinking about it, but further down the track..." She cut herself off and looked at him with another of those wry grins. "And I'm not making a bit of sense, am I?"
"Not an ounce," Nathan said, raising an eyebrow.
Amanda sighed. "You have to promise you're not going to get all mopey at me," she said, seriously. "I know you don't have your powers at the moment and you're really narked about it and I wasn't going to tell you but it's not fair to ask Ange and Marie and Moira to keep secrets..." She trailled off, looking uncertain and unhappy, before finally spitting it out. "The magic's back."
Nathan opened his mouth - and then closed it again, startlement crossing his face, chased by puzzlement that lingered. "Well. There's a piece of surprising news..."
"And then some." Amanda eyed Nathan cautiously. Rubbing his nose in the fact his powers were gone was not what she wanted to do, but their situations were so similar, in a way... "Tante says I'm not the same person I was last year. Literally - that's why it came back. Apparently I was ready for it and there's no way to turn it off permanently without killing me."
Nathan thought about it for a moment, his gaze inward-turned, as if examining something very carefully in the questionable privacy of his mind. "I'm glad," he said finally. "That it's back, I mean. I don't think you ever should have had her turn it off in the first place." He offered her a slight, faintly apologetic smile. "I don't mean to pick an argument, but that was how I felt on the subject."
Amanda shrugged. "I didn't have to. I chose to - I wasn't ready for it and the mess I made of things was a pretty good example of that." She took a drag on her cigarette, frowning a little. "And now I am, apparently. Still, at least I didn't nearly kill myself with the whole denial thing. Learned my lesson back when the mutant power came back." She snorted a little at that.
"Well, it's moot - like you said, it's back." He smiled again, as faintly, a bit of a sigh escaping him as he looked out at the water. "I suppose I was never really clear on the difference between the magic and your mutant power in the first place. That wasn't," he said wryly, "a request to be educated. Are you okay to be okay with this?" he asked more seriously, his eyes still on the lake.
"Y'know... I think I am." Amanda had turned to look out at the lake, her voice turning thoughtful, as if she was talking to herself more than Nate. "I'm not the person I was last year, and Tante's given me the grounding I need in how to think about it. 'S going to be a hell of a lot of work - I have to start over again, learn everything from scratch. But... I think I'm ready for it now." She smiled a little, her face softening. "It's who I am, after all."
"Never too late to learn. Look at how old I was before I learned how to use my telepathy properly," Nathan said. "And it may not be as much work as you think? You know how to apply yourself, Amanda, and you've got the will to do it." He smiled again, slightly. "You might surprise yourself."
"Magic's not supposed to be easy - you take it for granted if it is. But that doesn't mean I won't enjoy the work." She laughed a little at herself, then sobered. "The healing... I don't know if I'm going to be able to do that. I still don't know what I'm using as a power source and I don't want to risk it until I know for sure."
Nathan glanced down at his arm, still in the cast, and then up at her. "Good," he said, almost gently. "I think that's something you need to be not doing until you're sure you've broken certain thinking patterns and won't be slipping back into them." He smiled a bit crookedly. "Not that I'm not still very grateful, don't get me wrong."
Amanda's answering smile was sad. "I never could say no to you. And the last time... the last time I Healed anyone, well, you were there. I don't think I could try again, not yet. 'S still too..." She didn't finish the thought, turning back to the lake. "'S pretty out here," she said. "Moving out here was a good idea. 'S more peaceful than up at the main house."
Nathan made a noise that might have been agreement, or contemplation. The two of them sat there in silence for a few minutes, just staring out at the water. Unnoticed by Amanda, Nathan's eyes started to go very slightly glassy as he gazed out at the lake. A few moments later, his eyelids started to droop.
A few moments after that, the chairs on the deck started to rattle.
"Wha... Nate?" Amanda glanced over at him, debating whether to rouse him or not. What did they warn you about sleepwalkers, don't wake them up or the legs would fall off? "Nate, you all right?"
The rattling went on for perhaps ten seconds longer, like the very gentlest imaginable earthquake. The deck itself was vibrating, interesting ripple patterns spreading outwards into the water.
And then everything was still. Nathan blinked, smiling a bit fuzzily out at the lake. "I like my view," he said, clearly not having heard Amanda at all.
Amanda bit her lip, not sure whether to push things. Nate obviously hadn't noticed anything. "Nate..." she began, hesitantly. "You all right? You spaced out on me a bit there."
"Hmm?" He looked sideways at her, and did a very slightly comical double-take at her obvious look of concern. "I spaced... oh." He turned red again, his smile a bit sheepish. "Sorry. I've been getting these little... spells, no pun intended, the last few days. Charles says it's nothing to worry about. It's my TK saying 'Let me out!' and my subconscious saying 'Like hell!', that's all."
She blinked at him for a moment and then, surprisingly, burst into laughter. For a moment she couldn't speak, but then she managed to choke out. "I nearly broke my brain keeping mine in, you're breaking yours trying to let it out. Oh, fuck, Nate, what a pair we are..."
He grinned suddenly, looking about ten years younger than he had been, since San Diego. "Well, you know, there were always very, very good reasons we got along, you brat..."
Amanda drops by the boathouse, as promised. She and Nathan talk, and there's an exercise in irony.
True enough the Elpis crew had only just gotten back from their travels, but Amanda figured Angelo would be back in the office as soon as he could - it was amusing, how the pair of them were turning into workaholics. Who'd have thought, eh? Tapping on the frame of the partially-open door, she called out: "Anyone home and needing a break?"
Nathan was hunched over a computer, scrolling through screen after screen of names, looking for any Qadirs. He'd had to call in a number of favors to get these records and Rollins had called in more - NGO-NGO communication was not as robust as it should be - and it was going to take him literally forever. It wasn't as if you could count the number of organizations providing food and medical aid in northern Afghanistan on one hand, and he'd gotten records from... nearly a dozen of them. Not that they were complete. And really, this was probably looking for a needle in a haystack.
He looked up at the familiar voice. "Over here on the other side," he called back, wondering what Amanda was doing here at the mansion. Looking for Angelo, maybe? The corner of his mouth twitched.
Amanda let herself in and crossed through the partition door to the office side. Once there, she paused to take in the set-up - she hadn't seen it before. "Beats the old office, that's for sure," she said with a grin. "Must be nice, not having Mount Paperwork to skirt around. I swear I saw one of those sherpas climbing the lower slopes one day."
Gray eyes flickered in amusement as they met hers. "Legacy of my first secretary, may she rest in peace - not literally, I didn't actually kill her."
"This'd be the one who had horrible objections to flying babies, yeah? Angelo told me about her." Amanda perched on the desk opposite Nathan's, careful not to knock anything over. Her feet, clad in the ever-present Doc Martens, swung slightly as she grinned at him. "Thought I'd drop 'round, see if A... anyone was about." There was the slightest pause that indicated she'd been about to say something else. "How was the trip?"
Nathan laughed a bit wryly. "A little more eventful than I intended. Everyone's fine," he assured her, before she could react. "But we had to call for a Blackbird pickup. Ran into some problems..." He made a face, saving the file he'd been skimming through. "Afghanistan is not the most settled place in the world."
"What with the warlords and all..." Part of Snow Valley's other work involved keeping up with the world's hotspots and whilst she had a lot of go through, some of it was sticking. "So, these problems... did Ange have to sit on you to stop you from throwing yourself into the thick of it?"
Nathan coughed, turning red, and found something very interesting about his desk all of a sudden.
Amanda shook her head, rolling her eyes. "Or maybe not." She very wisely didn't say anything about knowing one's limits and the dangers of combat sans powers you were used to having, but there was something of it in her expression. "That book was a bloody good idea," she muttered to herself, then louder, added: "But you said everyone was fine, so I'm not going to give you the lecture. Grown man and all. I just..." She shook her head. "Doesn't matter."
"I had a very good horse," Nathan muttered, almost meekly. "Nice hyper-aggressive northern horse trained to play buzkashi. All I had to do was steer." His expression was wry again as he looked up at her. "It was a question of getting Rahne and Sooraya - that would be the new student we brought back - back from the people who'd kidnapped them before they crossed the Pakistani border. And yes, a bunch of idiots were dumb enough to kidnap Rahne."
"Some people just never learn..." Whether Amanda was talking about Nathan or the idiot bad guys wasn't exactly clear. "I saw something on the journals about a new student... mutant kidnapping ring?"
Nathan shook his head. "Slave traders. Not at all uncommon in that part of the world, but mutants are an unusual commodity. Sooraya is... quite something," Nathan said, thinking about the self-contained girl. "Very strong. I think she's going to be all right."
"Sounds a bit like the stuff we've been working on since we got Sarah back..." Amanda looked thoughtful, obviously filing away information in her head. "Seems to be the time of year for new students arriving with a bang," she added, wryly. "How's that Julio settling in?"
Nathan grimaced a bit. "As well as can be expected... I need to make sure I spend some time with him this weekend, I think." He shifted his arm in his sling, getting up. "Want to move out to the deck? Too nice a day to sit inside while we're waiting for Angelo..."
She covered the momentary odd expression with an eager nod and slid off the desk. She'd been in the office that morning, but had gotten changed before driving out to the school, and was looking particularly casual in a pair of denim shorts and a cotton tank top that had started life as a t-shirt before she'd ripped the sleeves off. "Been spending too much time indoors," she agreed, following Nathan out to the deck. "I've been hitting the books pretty hard since I got back from New Orleans, and there's a lot on at work."
"You were in New Orleans?" Nathan paused. "Wait, you said that," he said, lowering himself into the nearest chair.
Amanda moved down the rail a bit further away and fished her cigarettes out. "D'you mind?" she asked, before answering his question. "Yeah, had to go see Tante, check on something. " She pulled a face. "That woman ought t' be a lawyer. She's sneaky as one."
"Hey, no lawyer jokes," Nathan said a bit petulantly, but nodded at the cigarette. Rachel was up at the house, and she would have been the only reason for him to say no. "Was it a productive checking on something?" he asked a bit quizzically.
"Ta." Amanda lit up, careful to stay downwind. She couldn't smoke in the office and living with Angie had gotten her out of the habit of smoking in her living space, so she'd cut down a lot, but there was something comforting about the act of lighting up and taking the first drag. Grounding, somehow. Once an addict... she thought with black humour. "Yes and no. More her getting all semantic on me, but I can't argue with it. And I'm not entirely sure I want to. After all, I was sort of thinking about it, but further down the track..." She cut herself off and looked at him with another of those wry grins. "And I'm not making a bit of sense, am I?"
"Not an ounce," Nathan said, raising an eyebrow.
Amanda sighed. "You have to promise you're not going to get all mopey at me," she said, seriously. "I know you don't have your powers at the moment and you're really narked about it and I wasn't going to tell you but it's not fair to ask Ange and Marie and Moira to keep secrets..." She trailled off, looking uncertain and unhappy, before finally spitting it out. "The magic's back."
Nathan opened his mouth - and then closed it again, startlement crossing his face, chased by puzzlement that lingered. "Well. There's a piece of surprising news..."
"And then some." Amanda eyed Nathan cautiously. Rubbing his nose in the fact his powers were gone was not what she wanted to do, but their situations were so similar, in a way... "Tante says I'm not the same person I was last year. Literally - that's why it came back. Apparently I was ready for it and there's no way to turn it off permanently without killing me."
Nathan thought about it for a moment, his gaze inward-turned, as if examining something very carefully in the questionable privacy of his mind. "I'm glad," he said finally. "That it's back, I mean. I don't think you ever should have had her turn it off in the first place." He offered her a slight, faintly apologetic smile. "I don't mean to pick an argument, but that was how I felt on the subject."
Amanda shrugged. "I didn't have to. I chose to - I wasn't ready for it and the mess I made of things was a pretty good example of that." She took a drag on her cigarette, frowning a little. "And now I am, apparently. Still, at least I didn't nearly kill myself with the whole denial thing. Learned my lesson back when the mutant power came back." She snorted a little at that.
"Well, it's moot - like you said, it's back." He smiled again, as faintly, a bit of a sigh escaping him as he looked out at the water. "I suppose I was never really clear on the difference between the magic and your mutant power in the first place. That wasn't," he said wryly, "a request to be educated. Are you okay to be okay with this?" he asked more seriously, his eyes still on the lake.
"Y'know... I think I am." Amanda had turned to look out at the lake, her voice turning thoughtful, as if she was talking to herself more than Nate. "I'm not the person I was last year, and Tante's given me the grounding I need in how to think about it. 'S going to be a hell of a lot of work - I have to start over again, learn everything from scratch. But... I think I'm ready for it now." She smiled a little, her face softening. "It's who I am, after all."
"Never too late to learn. Look at how old I was before I learned how to use my telepathy properly," Nathan said. "And it may not be as much work as you think? You know how to apply yourself, Amanda, and you've got the will to do it." He smiled again, slightly. "You might surprise yourself."
"Magic's not supposed to be easy - you take it for granted if it is. But that doesn't mean I won't enjoy the work." She laughed a little at herself, then sobered. "The healing... I don't know if I'm going to be able to do that. I still don't know what I'm using as a power source and I don't want to risk it until I know for sure."
Nathan glanced down at his arm, still in the cast, and then up at her. "Good," he said, almost gently. "I think that's something you need to be not doing until you're sure you've broken certain thinking patterns and won't be slipping back into them." He smiled a bit crookedly. "Not that I'm not still very grateful, don't get me wrong."
Amanda's answering smile was sad. "I never could say no to you. And the last time... the last time I Healed anyone, well, you were there. I don't think I could try again, not yet. 'S still too..." She didn't finish the thought, turning back to the lake. "'S pretty out here," she said. "Moving out here was a good idea. 'S more peaceful than up at the main house."
Nathan made a noise that might have been agreement, or contemplation. The two of them sat there in silence for a few minutes, just staring out at the water. Unnoticed by Amanda, Nathan's eyes started to go very slightly glassy as he gazed out at the lake. A few moments later, his eyelids started to droop.
A few moments after that, the chairs on the deck started to rattle.
"Wha... Nate?" Amanda glanced over at him, debating whether to rouse him or not. What did they warn you about sleepwalkers, don't wake them up or the legs would fall off? "Nate, you all right?"
The rattling went on for perhaps ten seconds longer, like the very gentlest imaginable earthquake. The deck itself was vibrating, interesting ripple patterns spreading outwards into the water.
And then everything was still. Nathan blinked, smiling a bit fuzzily out at the lake. "I like my view," he said, clearly not having heard Amanda at all.
Amanda bit her lip, not sure whether to push things. Nate obviously hadn't noticed anything. "Nate..." she began, hesitantly. "You all right? You spaced out on me a bit there."
"Hmm?" He looked sideways at her, and did a very slightly comical double-take at her obvious look of concern. "I spaced... oh." He turned red again, his smile a bit sheepish. "Sorry. I've been getting these little... spells, no pun intended, the last few days. Charles says it's nothing to worry about. It's my TK saying 'Let me out!' and my subconscious saying 'Like hell!', that's all."
She blinked at him for a moment and then, surprisingly, burst into laughter. For a moment she couldn't speak, but then she managed to choke out. "I nearly broke my brain keeping mine in, you're breaking yours trying to let it out. Oh, fuck, Nate, what a pair we are..."
He grinned suddenly, looking about ten years younger than he had been, since San Diego. "Well, you know, there were always very, very good reasons we got along, you brat..."
