Amanda, Nathan - Wednesday afternoon
Oct. 4th, 2006 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsWhilst Angelo is chatting to Mark, Amanda is indeed in a meeting. With Nathan - he has a job for Snow Valley, although the business talk doesn't last overlong.
"...yes, sir, I'm sure you have your concerns, but I can assure you, mutants don't eat babies. Really. I can send you any number of papers on the dietary needs of various mutations, and I can definitely state babies don't feature there." Amanda rolled her eyes, making rude gestures with her hand even as she continued speaking in a calm, professional tone. She nodded as Nate approached, gesturing for him to take a seat whilst she finished the call. "Yes, I thought you might say that, but I really wouldn't call Scientific American a mutant propaganda sheet."
Nathan's mouth twitched suspiciously, but he sat down obediently, setting his briefcase by his side. He'd come directly from the UN and was thus properly be-suited and shaved - and still just as uncomfortable in business get-up as ever.
"Well, you are entitled to your opinion sir, even when it's not backed up by actual evidence.." Amanda pulled a face and mouthed 'you stupid ignorant wanker' at Nathan as the caller continued. "And I believe I warned you about using that sort of language to me at the start of this call. So I'm hanging up on you now. Thank you and have a good day." Amanda hit the 'disconnect' button on her phone with a smart jab and a muttered 'fuck-knob' before looking up at Nathan with a grin. "Hey, Nate. Sorry about that - standard bigot of the day call. How're you?"
"Oh, not bad. Been a long day already and I'm going right back to the UN after this... I have some catching up to do after my Tajik vacation," Nathan said dryly, loosening his tie. "But as I was in town, and needed to talk to you anyway, I figured I'd stop by on what passes for my lunch hour."
Pulling the phone headset off, Amanda raised her eyebrow. "Can I get you anything? Coffee? Mark's taken over making it, so it's apparently drinkable now." She grinned. "Never get a tea drinker to make coffee."
"Sure." Nathan picked up his briefcase as she went over to the coffeemaker, opening it and pulling out the stack of folders inside. "Now, where is that damned thing," he muttered, sorting through them.
Returning, she set the cup down on the desk in front of him and sat back down again, watching him curiously. "So, not a social visit, then," she observed as he went through the folders.
"Mmm... no, but it is good to see you," Nathan said, glancing up with a quick smile before he returned his attention to the folders. "If it was a purely social visit I'd have invited you out for lunch, not stopped by the office. Although we should do that, soonish. Between your August and my September, it's been a while."
Amanda shrugged a little, her smile turning wry. "October's looking to be more of the same, but we'll squeeze something in, sure." She reached for her tea mug, sipping at it whilst he continued the sorting. "I'm getting good at this whole time management thing."
"I'm still looking for those extra six hours a day that need to be out there somewhere." And for the folder. "Ah-hah..." Nathan set the rest of the stack aside and extended the folder to Amanda. "I don't know if Angelo's ever mentioned one of the ongoing issues we've been following... mutant children being turned away from feeding centers in Niger?"
"He might have said something..." Amanda opened the folder curiously, flipping through its contents. "He's definitely said you're having trouble getting hard data. Access issues, yeah?"
"It's a tricky part of the world, and although we may be swimming in more money that we can spend, that hasn't translated to extra field people. Yet," Nathan said, thinking about some of Rollins' plans. "So to some extent, we have to feed off what other NGOs can give us. Sometimes that works very well. Other times, like with Niger, it doesn't - or hasn't, up until this point." He leaned back in the chair, sipping at his coffee. "There's a small advocacy NGO in Berlin that's done some research in the area. Its board offered to open up their archives for us, but the problem is, most of it's not digitized. So I actually need someone to go out there."
Amanda raised her eyebrow again. "And that 'someone' wouldn't happen to be someone with a working knowledge of German who happens to work for a mutant think tank, would they?" she asked, innocently. "Someone who knows their way around an archive or two?"
Nathan laughed. "Yes, it would. And I'd pay my usual exorbitant consultant rates, plus a bit of a bonus for this being very last minute. But it would be helpful," he went on more seriously, "to have some hard data to work with. The next time someone from UNICEF pooh-poohs my concerns because I don't have the stats or case studies to back me up I'm liable to hit them, and that would not be good for the organizational reputation."
"When do you need it?" she asked, almost briskly. There was no question of her not doing the job, just the minor details. "There's this thing of Remy's on Sunday... if it's urgent, I can skip it, but I'd hate to have gone to the trouble of giving him a birthday and not see his face when he finds out." Although possibly it might be a good idea to be out of the country when he did...
"Oh, not that much of a rush. I've got a meeting with an UNICEF official on the fifteenth... having it a few days ahead of that would be good. Once they have the raw information, my magnificent office staff can crunch it into a workable report pretty promptly. They know what needs highlighting." Nathan paused, raising an eyebrow. "You gave Remy a birthday?"
"Cain didn't mention it?" Amanda sighed a little. "He was supposed to invite anyone at the mansion who's mates with Remy..." Brushing off the mild annoyance - it had only been a day - she elaborated. "Remy's... got some shite going on. Which isn't new, but he's seeing himself as the monster again. Mark and I were talking and it seemed like the thing to do, since we don't know his real birthday. Something to mark the man, not the monster, yeah? So I..." Her fingers, always a good barometer of her state of mind, started fiddling with a pen. "I picked a date. The date he beat Gambit and became the Remy we all know and, well..." She let the words trail off. The fact it was the same day Gambit had scared her into flashbacks of Rack wasn't lost on her and she doubted Nate would have forgotten entirely.
Nathan sighed a little, his expression unreadable for a moment. "The small humanizing gestures work," he said finally, almost gently. "I speak from personal experience. Incrementally, though. Don't be surprised if he doesn't know quite how to react to this."
She nodded. "Oh, I don't expect him to be dancing on the tables with a lampshade on his head, but I just..." The pen was put down, to be replaced with a series of paperclips that were twisted and bent around by nervous fingers until they resembled pretzels. "I want him to know that he still has friends, who believe in Remy the man, not Gambit the monster," she said at last. "Sometimes it seems he has trouble remembering it." She steadfastly refused to think of Lorna.
Nathan refrained from pointing out that Remy wasn't really going to start getting through that until he got some honest-to-goodness help of the professional sort. Friends were important, but there was a difference between having someone you could lean on, and getting the help you needed to remake yourself from the ground up. But it had taken him nearly eight years to admit that.
"I'll come, if you don't mind," he said, instead. "Although it may take me some doing to come up with a birthday present to outdo Cesar the purple glass ass." He offered her a lopsided smile.
She snorted at that. "I don't think there's any outdoing that, but yeah, if you want to come, you'd be welcome. Sunday night at the brownstone." Closing the file, she added: "I'll head out to Berlin the next day, get cracking on this job of yours. Might even try and catch up with the bits of the family that're still talking to me these days."
"Ah, but I'm a creative man. I may go the other direction entirely and get him something ridiculously meaningful." Nathan waggled an eyebrow at her, and then laughed suddenly. "Someone is going to have a camera, yes? The expression on his face will need to be immortalized."
"If I know Mark, there'll be a full on Powerpoint presentation with video and all," she said, chuckling. "Which is another reason for leaving the country first thing the next day."
"Never say I've never provided you with a handy escape route," Nathan teased, then gave her a more serious look, thinking about what she'd said about the 'parts of the family still talking to her'. "You haven't heard from Kurt, have you?"
"Got another note, saying he was with his mum. There's ones for you, Ms. Munroe and Sam too," Amanda replied, relief plain. She rummaged in her desk and pulled out said notes and handed them over. "So he's in good hands - Margali'll be keeping an eye on him, making sure he's all right, and Meg's a good distraction from the brooding." There wasn't the slightest hesitation in her voice as she said the younger girl's name - she'd managed to deal with her guilt about that matter over time. "I'll give Stefan a bell, see if he's up for smuggling Kurt out to meet up in Berlin for lunch or something. 'S been an age since I saw him, and I can see for myself how Blue's doing."
"Good... that's good. You'll let me know how he's doing?" Nathan grimaced a bit, then took the notes with a grateful smile. He should have made sure he talked more to Kurt, that night. But he hadn't expected the other man to make a break for it before morning. They'd all been so exhausted. "San Francisco was just the straw that broke the camel's back for him, I think."
"Of course." She wrinkled her nose. "I'm getting the impression San Francisco was a lot more messy than anyone's letting on. But," she added, holding up her hand. "I'm not asking for details. 'S team stuff, no crossing the streams, all that shite. I just worry, you know that. Especially when there's more than one of my favourite people in the firing line. Still, I hope it turned out all right in the end."
"More right than we had any right to expect," Nathan said, his mind drifting back to that night for a moment before he shook his head, smiling briefly. "Actually, it gives me an idea for a birthday present. I may have to go to hell for this."
"Get Illyana to take you there?" Amanda quipped, but her tone was teasing, not nasty.
"If I get a charged birthday cake thrown at my head, I'm going to be... terribly entertained." Nathan's eyes danced as he loaded the folders back into his briefcase.
"Just warn me in time to hide before Cain first, yeah?"
"...yes, sir, I'm sure you have your concerns, but I can assure you, mutants don't eat babies. Really. I can send you any number of papers on the dietary needs of various mutations, and I can definitely state babies don't feature there." Amanda rolled her eyes, making rude gestures with her hand even as she continued speaking in a calm, professional tone. She nodded as Nate approached, gesturing for him to take a seat whilst she finished the call. "Yes, I thought you might say that, but I really wouldn't call Scientific American a mutant propaganda sheet."
Nathan's mouth twitched suspiciously, but he sat down obediently, setting his briefcase by his side. He'd come directly from the UN and was thus properly be-suited and shaved - and still just as uncomfortable in business get-up as ever.
"Well, you are entitled to your opinion sir, even when it's not backed up by actual evidence.." Amanda pulled a face and mouthed 'you stupid ignorant wanker' at Nathan as the caller continued. "And I believe I warned you about using that sort of language to me at the start of this call. So I'm hanging up on you now. Thank you and have a good day." Amanda hit the 'disconnect' button on her phone with a smart jab and a muttered 'fuck-knob' before looking up at Nathan with a grin. "Hey, Nate. Sorry about that - standard bigot of the day call. How're you?"
"Oh, not bad. Been a long day already and I'm going right back to the UN after this... I have some catching up to do after my Tajik vacation," Nathan said dryly, loosening his tie. "But as I was in town, and needed to talk to you anyway, I figured I'd stop by on what passes for my lunch hour."
Pulling the phone headset off, Amanda raised her eyebrow. "Can I get you anything? Coffee? Mark's taken over making it, so it's apparently drinkable now." She grinned. "Never get a tea drinker to make coffee."
"Sure." Nathan picked up his briefcase as she went over to the coffeemaker, opening it and pulling out the stack of folders inside. "Now, where is that damned thing," he muttered, sorting through them.
Returning, she set the cup down on the desk in front of him and sat back down again, watching him curiously. "So, not a social visit, then," she observed as he went through the folders.
"Mmm... no, but it is good to see you," Nathan said, glancing up with a quick smile before he returned his attention to the folders. "If it was a purely social visit I'd have invited you out for lunch, not stopped by the office. Although we should do that, soonish. Between your August and my September, it's been a while."
Amanda shrugged a little, her smile turning wry. "October's looking to be more of the same, but we'll squeeze something in, sure." She reached for her tea mug, sipping at it whilst he continued the sorting. "I'm getting good at this whole time management thing."
"I'm still looking for those extra six hours a day that need to be out there somewhere." And for the folder. "Ah-hah..." Nathan set the rest of the stack aside and extended the folder to Amanda. "I don't know if Angelo's ever mentioned one of the ongoing issues we've been following... mutant children being turned away from feeding centers in Niger?"
"He might have said something..." Amanda opened the folder curiously, flipping through its contents. "He's definitely said you're having trouble getting hard data. Access issues, yeah?"
"It's a tricky part of the world, and although we may be swimming in more money that we can spend, that hasn't translated to extra field people. Yet," Nathan said, thinking about some of Rollins' plans. "So to some extent, we have to feed off what other NGOs can give us. Sometimes that works very well. Other times, like with Niger, it doesn't - or hasn't, up until this point." He leaned back in the chair, sipping at his coffee. "There's a small advocacy NGO in Berlin that's done some research in the area. Its board offered to open up their archives for us, but the problem is, most of it's not digitized. So I actually need someone to go out there."
Amanda raised her eyebrow again. "And that 'someone' wouldn't happen to be someone with a working knowledge of German who happens to work for a mutant think tank, would they?" she asked, innocently. "Someone who knows their way around an archive or two?"
Nathan laughed. "Yes, it would. And I'd pay my usual exorbitant consultant rates, plus a bit of a bonus for this being very last minute. But it would be helpful," he went on more seriously, "to have some hard data to work with. The next time someone from UNICEF pooh-poohs my concerns because I don't have the stats or case studies to back me up I'm liable to hit them, and that would not be good for the organizational reputation."
"When do you need it?" she asked, almost briskly. There was no question of her not doing the job, just the minor details. "There's this thing of Remy's on Sunday... if it's urgent, I can skip it, but I'd hate to have gone to the trouble of giving him a birthday and not see his face when he finds out." Although possibly it might be a good idea to be out of the country when he did...
"Oh, not that much of a rush. I've got a meeting with an UNICEF official on the fifteenth... having it a few days ahead of that would be good. Once they have the raw information, my magnificent office staff can crunch it into a workable report pretty promptly. They know what needs highlighting." Nathan paused, raising an eyebrow. "You gave Remy a birthday?"
"Cain didn't mention it?" Amanda sighed a little. "He was supposed to invite anyone at the mansion who's mates with Remy..." Brushing off the mild annoyance - it had only been a day - she elaborated. "Remy's... got some shite going on. Which isn't new, but he's seeing himself as the monster again. Mark and I were talking and it seemed like the thing to do, since we don't know his real birthday. Something to mark the man, not the monster, yeah? So I..." Her fingers, always a good barometer of her state of mind, started fiddling with a pen. "I picked a date. The date he beat Gambit and became the Remy we all know and, well..." She let the words trail off. The fact it was the same day Gambit had scared her into flashbacks of Rack wasn't lost on her and she doubted Nate would have forgotten entirely.
Nathan sighed a little, his expression unreadable for a moment. "The small humanizing gestures work," he said finally, almost gently. "I speak from personal experience. Incrementally, though. Don't be surprised if he doesn't know quite how to react to this."
She nodded. "Oh, I don't expect him to be dancing on the tables with a lampshade on his head, but I just..." The pen was put down, to be replaced with a series of paperclips that were twisted and bent around by nervous fingers until they resembled pretzels. "I want him to know that he still has friends, who believe in Remy the man, not Gambit the monster," she said at last. "Sometimes it seems he has trouble remembering it." She steadfastly refused to think of Lorna.
Nathan refrained from pointing out that Remy wasn't really going to start getting through that until he got some honest-to-goodness help of the professional sort. Friends were important, but there was a difference between having someone you could lean on, and getting the help you needed to remake yourself from the ground up. But it had taken him nearly eight years to admit that.
"I'll come, if you don't mind," he said, instead. "Although it may take me some doing to come up with a birthday present to outdo Cesar the purple glass ass." He offered her a lopsided smile.
She snorted at that. "I don't think there's any outdoing that, but yeah, if you want to come, you'd be welcome. Sunday night at the brownstone." Closing the file, she added: "I'll head out to Berlin the next day, get cracking on this job of yours. Might even try and catch up with the bits of the family that're still talking to me these days."
"Ah, but I'm a creative man. I may go the other direction entirely and get him something ridiculously meaningful." Nathan waggled an eyebrow at her, and then laughed suddenly. "Someone is going to have a camera, yes? The expression on his face will need to be immortalized."
"If I know Mark, there'll be a full on Powerpoint presentation with video and all," she said, chuckling. "Which is another reason for leaving the country first thing the next day."
"Never say I've never provided you with a handy escape route," Nathan teased, then gave her a more serious look, thinking about what she'd said about the 'parts of the family still talking to her'. "You haven't heard from Kurt, have you?"
"Got another note, saying he was with his mum. There's ones for you, Ms. Munroe and Sam too," Amanda replied, relief plain. She rummaged in her desk and pulled out said notes and handed them over. "So he's in good hands - Margali'll be keeping an eye on him, making sure he's all right, and Meg's a good distraction from the brooding." There wasn't the slightest hesitation in her voice as she said the younger girl's name - she'd managed to deal with her guilt about that matter over time. "I'll give Stefan a bell, see if he's up for smuggling Kurt out to meet up in Berlin for lunch or something. 'S been an age since I saw him, and I can see for myself how Blue's doing."
"Good... that's good. You'll let me know how he's doing?" Nathan grimaced a bit, then took the notes with a grateful smile. He should have made sure he talked more to Kurt, that night. But he hadn't expected the other man to make a break for it before morning. They'd all been so exhausted. "San Francisco was just the straw that broke the camel's back for him, I think."
"Of course." She wrinkled her nose. "I'm getting the impression San Francisco was a lot more messy than anyone's letting on. But," she added, holding up her hand. "I'm not asking for details. 'S team stuff, no crossing the streams, all that shite. I just worry, you know that. Especially when there's more than one of my favourite people in the firing line. Still, I hope it turned out all right in the end."
"More right than we had any right to expect," Nathan said, his mind drifting back to that night for a moment before he shook his head, smiling briefly. "Actually, it gives me an idea for a birthday present. I may have to go to hell for this."
"Get Illyana to take you there?" Amanda quipped, but her tone was teasing, not nasty.
"If I get a charged birthday cake thrown at my head, I'm going to be... terribly entertained." Nathan's eyes danced as he loaded the folders back into his briefcase.
"Just warn me in time to hide before Cain first, yeah?"
