xp_logs | Sooraya and Nathan

Sooraya comes down to the boathouse to discover Nathan in the throes of a nightmare. After he wakes up they talk, and though they don't banish all the bad dreams, they certainly remember that there are good things ahead, too.

Sooraya couldn't whistle, but if she could, she would've been. Her classes were going very well, and Yvette was home! She was so happy to have her friend back, and she was looking forward to all the things they would get to do together now that she was a real student at the school. Letting herself into the boathouse, she set down the little bucket of towels and cleaners she had brought and decided to walk through the offices quickly to see what needed to be tackled.

The general look of inactivity that greeted her was something very foreign to the boathouse office. Computers were off, mail was untouched... the fact that the staff had taken a week off was perfectly obvious, and this was only Tuesday.

As Sooraya walked, however, the furniture in the office started to shiver very gently, loose objects atop the desks rattling. The blinds on the windows clattered.

Sooraya stopped, standing stock-still for a moment as she took a deep breath. Edging forward again, she had barely made it past one of the desks when the shivering intensified and one of the doors behind her slammed shut with a loud noise. That was all it took to shock her into changing forms, and the loose pile of sand quivered and jumped along with the rest of the furniture.

On the other side of the partitions, Nathan, who'd dozed off on the couch - it was too quiet in the boathouse, and as he'd made a promise, he had absolutely nothing to do this afternoon until a Danger Room session later that night - awoke with a soft, strangled cry from the nightmare. Sitting bolt upright on the couch, his heart hammering in his ears, he tried to catch his breath.

"Nathan!" Sooraya rushed into the room, her eyes wide and face pale. "What is wrong?"

"Sooraya?" Nathan swung his feet over the edge of the couch, still breathing raggedly. "It's okay. I'm fine." He ran a shaky hand over his hair, smoothing it down, and mustered up a weak smile. "Bad dream, that's all."

"The whole house is moving!" she said, her voice just a little tight. "The chairs, the tables..." She gestured around her, at a loss for words. "This dream is very, very bad, I think."

Nathan took as deep a breath as he could and let it out, tracing calming patterns in his mind. "Nothing hit you, did it?" he asked, focusing on what was important first. When she shook her head, he relaxed a little. "I'm sorry for scaring you. My abilities... when I'm having a bad dream, I'm not in conscious control of them. Sometimes the room does start moving."

"Why is the dream very bad?" Sooraya knew about nightmares... she had them herself occasionally, dark things with evil faces and a feeling of utter hopelessness. But it seemed Nathan's bad dreams must be even worse than that.

Nathan sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck. "I have very clear memories of things that I see," he said after a moment. "I don't just remember what I see, and smell, I remember what I feel... what I think. What other people around me were thinking."

Sooraya shuffled over to a thankfully-still chair, perching on the edge, her eyes all the while never leaving Nathan's face. "What memory is this dream?" she asked softly.

Nathan shrugged a little. "Something bad that happened a long time ago," he said quietly. "Something that happened in Prague brought it back to mind."

"I am sorry," she murmured. "It is why you are not sleeping very much?"

He nodded. "It'll get better," he said, forcing another smile. "I just... I have a lot of things in my past that I don't like to remember. Sometimes they come back in my dreams." That was about as close as he was going to get to explaining post-traumatic stress disorder to her, he thought.

"The good things now do not make the bad things less hard?" Sooraya asked, biting her lip.

"They do... oh, they do," Nathan said, hoping he wasn't upsetting her any further with all of this. "It's just..." He gave a breathless, unhappy laugh. "There were a lot of bad things, for a very long time."

Sooraya felt a frown tug at her lips; he sounded so unhappy. "There is no way to put them away?"

"I work on doing that. It's just easier some days than others." His heartrate was slowing down, finally. The smile he gave her was more steady.

Sooraya made a conscious effort to unknit her fingers and relax. After all, Nathan couldn't be wrong. "I wish you are not having the bad dreams. I wish it is all for you to think of the future and not be sad of the past. But sometimes... you are right, I think. It is hard not to be sad."

He reached out and laid a hand over hers. "It is, sometimes," he said, his voice low, hushed and a bit strained. "But we have to try. Mostly because we both have such a wonderful future to look forward to. Both of us," he emphasized, managing another smile.

"It is thank you to you," Sooraya said solemnly. "For what you have done."

It really was a pity that he couldn't just lean over and hug her, like he might have done with Rahne. Because he really wanted to, damn it. As it was, she was making him misty-eyed.

"I'm awfully glad I happened down that aisle at the market that day, you know," he said very quietly. "I think that's one of the most important walks I've taken in my life."

"I am glad too," Sooraya told him, her eyes very wide and round. "I was very not happy, and sad. And now I am the most very lucky girl ever."

"I hear how well you're doing in your classes, you know." Nathan laughed a little shakily. "Your teachers tell me. I think they're getting a little tired of me checking up on you as frequently as you do..." But he'd made her a promise, and he didn't intend to half-ass it.

"I will try very hard. I wish to do good so I can help people too." Her expression turned shy, and she dropped her eyes to one side. "Like you do. I wish to work like you and Angelo and Bobby and Rahne... saving people."

Nathan smiled suddenly. "Really?" He looked in the direction of the office, thinking. "You know," he said quietly, "you could spend some time in the office. See what we do. We'd be happy to have you, you know."

“Yes? I will not be... on the way?" she asked, raising her eyebrows.

Nathan shook his head, then thought about it some more. Sooraya needed very badly to feel like she was helping - she probably wouldn't be happy with sitting around and watching. "We can find you something to do," he suggested lightly. "I'm sure Juliette will help. Something that can be practice for your English at the same time."

At this Sooraya's face split into a smile, and she looked up at Nathan adoringly once more. "Thank you. I will like that, very much. I will be not trouble, I promise."
"No, I know you won't. I think... you'll be very good at whatever you choose to do," Nathan said, his voice a little hoarse, "and that you're considering this..." It meant a lot. More than he could really tell her. "You'll like it, I think. But you need to promise you'll ask lots of questions. Anything you don't understand, ask about it. We can explain it all."

"I know," she told him, still smiling. "I trust that."

He grinned suddenly, helplessly, even if his eyes were still suspiciously bright. "You're a sponge, you know," he said, and then explained. "You soak up what you want to learn like a sponge soaks up water."

"And I clean things, too," Sooraya reminded him, grinning back at him. "I am very like a sponge."