xp_logs | Nathan and Charles, Thursday afternoon

Nathan stops in to see Charles - and make a confession or two about what happened in Prague.

"... so Joel and a couple of the other board members are going through all the pictures and video we brought back." Nathan sipped at the tea, staring at the elegantly patterned china very steadily. It really was a pretty cup. Maybe Charles would pretend to ignore him counting the little blue flowers. "There'll be meetings, I imagine. The working group getting back together. Might take a few days, and meanwhile we can probably expect the news services to be spinning what happened in all kinds of unfortunate ways."

"I'd imagine they will. They generally do." Charles took a sip of his own tea. "Is there anything else I should know about?" he asked neutrally. "It's not that I mind being kept up to date--or your company, Nathan, of course--but you seem . . . less settled than I might expect, even considering the hardships of the past several days."

Well, wasn't that an interestingly phrased question. Nathan took another sip of the tea, then set it aside, still not looking at Charles. "When the rioting broke out," he said calmly, "we made our way to the medical clinic to do what we could to help. A few hours later, a group of soldiers showed up looking for injured mutants. I... encouraged them to leave." Liar. "No," Nathan corrected meticulously, "I made them leave. And not come back."

"And intellectually, you can tell yourself that it was the safest option, involving the least mayhem . . . I have no doubt that you're competent enough to do it without leaving scars . . . but it still bothered you, I see." Charles smiled slightly. "I don't suppose you'll find it reassuring to hear that I've used the same trick myself. From time to time, when she was younger, Jean used to call me Obi-Wan."

"'These are not the droids you're looking for'," Nathan muttered under his breath, and finally looked up at Charles. The struggle for composure wouldn't have been obvious to a non-telepath. "I've done that before too. Clouded people's thoughts so they wouldn't see us on missions. I've never changed..." His voice faltered, cracking for a moment before steadying again. "I had to make sure they wouldn't come back. If I'd just sent them on their way, they'd have gotten to the end of the street and then turned back..." He made a sudden, almost violent gesture. "Or maybe they wouldn't have. There I go with the slippery slope. Medusa was right to look at me like I'd grown a second head. Lorna's right to come down on me for bad telepathy jokes. Clearly my judgement is not so good."

"Hm." Charles sat back in his chair, watching Nathan thoughtfully. "The day of the attack on the President that led to Alkali Lake, the school was on a field trip to the science museum." He hid a smile in his tea. "It seems so long ago, now. Bobby, John, and Rogue had detached themselves from the group--their own little teenage rebellion--and had gotten themselves into trouble in the food court. John tried to frighten a pair of young men who were hassling them, and accidentally set one of them on fire. Bobby put the fire out almost immediately, but that only put two mutants in the room. The crowded, easily-sparked room." He sighed. "I froze them all, extracted my students, and left those who had actually witnessed the event believing they had seen something decidedly more innocuous involving a pretty girl, a rude boy, and a glass of crushed ice. It's not something I try to make a habit of doing, but memory alteration can sometimes be useful. Even beneficial."

"I thought about it, you know." Nathan's voice sounded very slightly strangled. "I didn't lash out in a panic. I don't know if that makes it better or worse." He took an unsteady breath. "I could have ripped the guns out of their hands and thrown them across the street. They'd already seen Medusa using her powers, they knew there was at least one mutant at the clinic. But there were injured people everywhere."

"I would be a great deal more worried had you lashed out without thinking, particularly after all the work we've done," Charles replied wryly. "And you were badly outnumbered--even if you'd taken their guns, would you have had time to separate them from their radios as well?"

Nathan thought about it. "Maybe," he said, but sounded unconvinced. "I don't know what I would have done with them then, though. Kept them there? Knocked them out? They would have woken up eventually. Others would have come looking. The clinic..." He looked frustrated. "They had to leave it alone. They had to. Any of the other options..."

". . . would have been too dangerous for you, and for those under your care." Charles smiled serenely. "You made the best choice available to you; in fact, you very likely saved those soldiers' lives as well."

Nathan was silent for a long moment. Then he reached out and picked up the teacup. "It's hard to keep the logic of it in mind," he said, more quietly. The tension in his posture had visibly eased, if not vanished. "I think about what I did, the mechanics of it, and I remember Gideon and the telepaths at Mistra."

"Understandable, given what they put you through. What I would like you to consider, however, is that it's not the mechanics that really bother you." Charles raised a hand, palm up. "A hammer in the hand of a murderer can kill in sickening ways." He raised the other hand. "Give it to a construction worker, however, and he can put a roof over the heads of homeless children. In both cases, the mechanics of the hammer are the same."

But the intent was different. "I'd do the same thing again," Nathan said, and realized that he meant it. He gave Charles a slight, unsteady smile. "Not that it would feel that much better the second time, I'd imagine." And it shouldn't, should it? It really shouldn't. If it started to feel right, then he'd be...

"You are not your uncle, Nathan," Charles said firmly. "Or one of the Mistra trainers. And it will take far more than this before I begin to wonder if perhaps I should worry that you might take their path."

Nathan took another deep breath, steadier this time. "I suppose I just needed to hear that," he said. Charles and Askani had been the only real models he'd ever had for what a telepath could be. What a telepath didn't have to be. Where else did you go, when you were wondering about your grip on your personal mental ethics, than to the person who'd taught you what those ethics were in the first place?

"Then I'm glad I could be here to help. Although . . ." Charles' expression managed to be decidedly whimsical and serious at the same time. "Next time, you might also ask your daughter. The kind of man you fear becoming, I feel sure, could not have raised a mind as open, as trusting and full of light, as hers is."