xp_logs | Nathan and Jim, Wednesday

Nathan and Jim catch up on the week's events (and stresses) over a meal. While Nathan checks the boathouse mail.

"I have to say I'm glad Rachel's not here this week," Nathan said, sorting idly through the accumulated mail of the last couple of days. His mind had been elsewhere, for obvious reasons, and he hadn't gone through the personal mail that had come to the boathouse since... well, since Friday. "The atmosphere's tense, and she's approaching the terrible twos quickly enough. No need for her to get cranky-due-to-telepathic ambience."

"Yeah. Even without psi to influence it, the range of stress is kind of remarkable." Jim pushed around the green-tinged pasta on his plate without appetite. Students hiding under their beds . . . and those were only the overt manifestations. The tendency to overwork was definitely outing itself as well. He wasn't sure how many hours a night Forge needed, but he doubted he was getting enough. Jim wished they could go back to last week, where the epitome of his concerns for the students' mental health had been Logan's choice of prom-wear.

The young man set down his fork, surrendering to the inevitabile. "There's too much disappearance trauma here. And just trauma in general. I'm glad Ange found Yvette, but I should follow-up. I need to check on Julio. He's down two suitemates, and this cuts kind of close. Um. Crystal, obviously . . . Angel's never been through something like this first-hand, her too. And Laurie. Although I think maybe the fact that her suitemates need her is making this easier than if she had to handle this alone. Um." Jim pinched the bridge of his nose. "Do you know how Sooraya's doing at all?"

"Sooraya's had kidnapping trauma of her own," Nathan mentioned, still sorting through the mail. "I've been trying to keep an eye on her, but..." The letter addressed to Moira caught his eye and he frowned. I know that handwriting... He started to open it without a moment's hesitation. Moira had long-since okayed him opening anything that wasn't marked 'confidential', following the reasoning that if it was important and she was on Muir, she wanted to know about it prior to the weekend. "I don't think it helps that the three people missing have all been down this road before, either. You have a degree of despair that the world just can't seem to let up to deal with, too..."

"I think it's even harder for the people on the periphery, if that's possible," the counselor said, pushing his chair away from the table so he could start gathering up the plates. "I'm sort of worried about Marie. This is the second time she's had to RA through a missing student crisis. For two of the same students." Jim was additionally a little worried about the fact that one of the other staffers the most in the trenches was also prone to hearing voices in her head. He was also starting to wonder if Charles, Scott and Ororo would be joining them soon, though the thought wasn't exactly new.

The paper of the letter was as thick and high-quality as the envelope. Almost parchment, really. "Monet had a point, you know. Whatever did or didn't happen, the fact remains that we have three kids in trouble somewhere and we're supposed to stop that sort of thing from happening. When it happens, again, to three students who've already been in serious trouble under our watch... I'm not saying that we could have done anything differently, but at some point every student and parent in the equation is going to lose faith in us. And we're going to lose faith in ourselves, which is almost - " Nathan went as white as a sheet as his eyes ran over the couple of lines scrawled in reddish ink on the page he was holding.

Jim turned from scraping the pasta into the trashcan, eyebrow tilted at the abrupt silence. "Almost . . ." he began, then saw the expression on the other man's face. "What is it?"

Nathan didn't answer. He read over the letter - a note, really - once more, as if to reassure himself that he was indeed seeing what he was seeing. He began to look up at Jim then, all of the color still gone from his face, but the words died unspoken as he saw the corner of another envelope, of the same near-parchment, poking out from the pile of mail. He pulled it out, tearing it open far faster than he had the first time.

"Ahab," he muttered, his voice soft but wild as he looked from one note to the next. "Ahab? It's Rory, this is his handwriting..." He shoved the second note at Jim abruptly.

"Who--" Jim started to say, but the name caught with him before the rest of the words could form. Old, familiar, and associated with two things: the clp-klop, clp-klop of a cane on tile supporting uneven weight, and a plastic nametag. Dr. Rory Campbell.

Memories from Muir. Most of them even pleasant, or at least not bad. And all of them washed away by two simple sentences.

Moira,

Delightful, your young charges, so much potential. So much resistance that we can break.

Ahab

Jim raised his mismatched eyes from the paper to stare at Nathan's pallid face. "What is this?" he whispered.

Nathan rocked back slightly in his chair, as if Jim's question had been a blow. Gray eyes met his for a moment, and the sudden blast of rage there was as quickly snuffed out, or perhaps simply hidden, by a cold blankness that couldn't be anything but defensive.

"This is a lot of things, I think." There was a razor edge of sharpness to Nathan's voice as he rose. "But I think right now, what's important is that it's a lead."