Nathan, Pete, and Rachel - Tuesday

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Pete stops in at the mansion with some files for the team, and finds Nathan and Rachel down by the lake. It's not the first conversation the two men have had this week, however.


#Don't go near the water, Ray.#

Rachel looked up at the projected thought, made a face at her father, and turned her attention back to the half-dozen small stones levitating around her, spinning in a lazy pattern. She didn't show any signs of getting up and making any move towards the water's edge, but Nathan, sitting on the grass several feet away, still didn't take his eyes off her.

Overprotective, he told himself. But Rory's words were still ringing in his ears, and there was a tiny, irrational part of him that thought that if he took his eyes off her, the fact that she was here and safe would somehow reverse itself. He was absolutely engrossed in watching her, so much so that he missed Pete's approach entirely.

"Alright, mate? Hello, Rachel." he waved to her as he sat down by Nate. "I was just dropping off copies of a few things Summers'll want for his files, thought I'd stop by."

"Pete," Rachel piped up, and one of the pebbles abruptly departed the pattern and pinged off Pete's shoulder, if lightly. Rachel gave him a huge grin that had absolutely nothing innocent about it. "Hi!"

Nathan managed to limit his reaction to Pete's sudden appearance to a twitch. He tried to smile at Rachel's antics, then winced as it pulled at the stitches in his face. "Watch it, she'll be throwing a squirrel at you next..."

"I can probably take a squirrel in a fight. I'll take my chances. So, aside from the obvious -" Pete gestured to the stitches "how're you doing?"

"Feeling my age. Your friend George felt the need to put on an Oscar-worthy performance, and that was before Campbell hit me with a cattle prod." Nathan looked back at Rachel, who was utterly absorbed in her stones again. "Then Essex showed up. I've decided that the last few days were an extended hallucination."

"Honestly? In the last month or so, I have had to kill a dinosaur before coffee, and several of my staff have excitingly perverted body-swapping experiences. Sick and stressful it may have been, but a mad bastard kidnapping children, and needing to call in the shiftiest man on the planet to sort it out felt like a blessed return to normalcy." Pete smilied ruefully.

Nathan just stared at him for a moment. "Here's to normalcy," he said, "and history repeating itself..." He trailed off as one of Rachel's stones pinged off his shoulder. "She's been doing the 'Don't brood, Dad, or I'll beat you' act for the last two days. I think she thinks she's funny."

--

Saturday

Pete took a second to admire the view over the lake, before sighing, turning around, and knocking on the door of the boathouse.

"Nate? You in?"

Inside, Nathan had been staring rather blankly at the same page of one particular file for the better part of an hour. His concentration was shot to shit this week on a number of levels; so was Moira's, which was part of the problem. They made a really great pair, sometimes.

Pete's voice jarred him from his spaced-out state and he looked up, seeing the other man through the screen door. "Yeah, I'm here," he said, and mustered up a thin smile as Pete came in. He waved a hand around at the empty office. "Everyone else has got the day off. Not much work has been getting done in here this week."

"Not surprising." Pete took a seat in a nearby chair. "I've just been up to see Summers. I got hold of George Blair. He was fairly happy to hear from me, as it turns out - started to ask for help before I'd even told him why I was calling, actually. Anyway, we've got a location, and Summers is putting a plan together now. But well, that's not all of it..."

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "My wife's psychotic ex-partner kidnapped three of our kids and is sending her mocking notes," he said in a voice that was deceptively even, "and that's not 'all of it'?" Although, given the content of those notes...

Pete sighed. "He's been experimenting on them, according to George. He didn't have a lot of the details, but Campbell's been trying some new process that he's developed out on them. Conditioning them, turning them into some kind of strike force."

Nathan's expression was unnaturally still as he absorbed Pete's words. He closed the file folder in front of him before he said anything. "Makes the notes make sense. Although I had hoped that was just bluster." The file floated up and onto the top of one of the several piles on Nathan's desk. Nathan stared at the door for a long moment, rather than looking at Pete. "Is it just me," he finally went on, "or did we just slip back in time to 2004 or thereabouts."

"Feels a bit fucking like it, doesn't it? I keep telling myself that this time it's just a lone nut, rather than a renegade agency, but I don't imagine it feels any different to the kids."

Nathan rubbed a hand over his jaw, his expression increasingly set. "Conditioning them," he said finally. "I wonder where he got thatidea. Moira is either going to break down completely or I'm going to have to lock her in the boathouse to prevent her from going after him herself. I suspect the latter."

"Yeah, well, that's why I stopped in to tell you personally, rather than let you hear about it in the briefing. Like I said, Summers has everything I got out of George about the set up of the place, so I'd expect your leather alarm to go off any minute. Oh, and if you run across a bloke made out of liquid, just bung something explosive inside him. I said I'd try and make sure the stupid bastard got a plausible out, in exchange for the info. He's not a bad bloke, just doesn't quite have the sense to check a job out properly before he takes it."

A slight smile appeared on Pete's face, and then died again. "The rest of them are utter cunts, though, so feel free to work out your temper on them."

"My temper?" Nathan said a bit vaguely. Had Pete just asked him to blow up his informant? "I don't think under the circumstances I can really afford to have a temper, Pete. If nothing else, they'll leave me home." If they thought he was reacting to this in any way that deviated from 'calmly professional'... but his own pulse was thundering in his ears, and there was a part of his brain that just kept repeating conditioning them? over and over again.

Pete looked carefully at Nate before responding. "I don't have an answer for that one mate. These fucks seem like a waste of oxygen to me. But then that's why I never got fitted for the leather, I guess."

Oh, lovely. There was that intent look. Nathan made sure his expression was as blank as blank could be before he answered. "I'll need to talk to Moira," he said, "and tell her. I'd rather she hear this from me." A twisted smile slipped out before he could help it. "Monday is our wedding anniversary. I suppose Rory's timing was deliberate."

"He's a particularly sick kind of shit, isn't he?" Pete sighed, and stood up. "Look, I need to get back to the office. I just wanted to give you a heads up, that's all. Good luck getting them back."

You knew a friend knew you well when they knew you needed to be left alone to break something. Nathan managed another smile, still tight. "Thank you. I'd have rather heard it from you, too."

--

"They'll be fine," Nathan said, and grimaced slightly, knowing it for the lie that it was. "Well, they won't die. And Charles will probably have himself, Samson, and for all I know, Jack standing by to provide mountains of therapy."

"Y'know, this is kind of a horrible thought, but at some point either Jack or Samson ought to publish a book. Seriously, by this point they've got to be the world's top experts in using non-psionic methods to help with telepathic trauma recovery. And I don't imagine it's a field that'll become any less relevant over the next few decades. The rest of the world ought to get the benefit, y'know?"

Nathan had the sudden, bizarre urge to either burst out laughing (hysterically, of course) or throw Pete in the lake. Before he could do either, Rachel squealed and came hurtling at him, impacting solidly against his chest. "... oof." His arms went around her instinctively and she babbled furiously at him for a moment. Nathan sighed and looked over at Pete. "You were saying?" he quipped dryly. "And yes, Moira and I are going to put her into peewee hockey as soon as she's big enough. She's a natural at bodychecking."

"I'm not sure that scoring without the aid of a stick is allowed, though, is it?"

Pete eyed Rachel with a sort of amused suspicion. "Because you, young lady, have the devious looks of a born cheat. I should know."

"She takes after her godmother. Funny, that. I put her on the phone with Dom these days and the two of them carry on whole conversations." Nathan smoothed down his daughter's rumpled red curls, then looked up at Pete again. "I may have beer in the fridge," he said after a moment.

"And you only mention this now, after I've been sitting here a full ten minutes? What sort of an example is that to set for your daughter?" Pete grinned.

Rachel burbled more happily, shaking a small fist at her father, and Nathan rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I'm going to be cursing you and Dom both when she's fourteen, I can sense it already..." He rose, swinging Rachel up to his shoulders as she let out a whoop of glee. "Beer and conversation about things that aren't job-related. Sounds good to me."