xp_logs | Nathan and Sooraya, Tuesday evening

Nathan finally gets some rest - except it's not as restful as he was hoping. And he's not dreaming about clowns. Later, Sooraya shows up to check on him and manages to get him out into the sunlight as the two of them touch base on her experience of the weekend.

Gigantic bolts of plasma streaked down from the sky and smashed into the ground, destroying everything they touched. He threw up a telekinetic shield, flinching as blue fire washed against it, and shouted a warning to a gun crew up ahead.

"~Get under cover!~" The bombardment was too intense, and none of their artillery would reach the enemy's airships. There was nothing to be done except hunker down and wait for reinforcements.

One of the gunners looked at him, as if she heard his voice over the explosions and screaming. She turned back to her crew, mouth opening to issue orders - and a plasma bolt smashed into the gun, destroying it and killing two of the four gunners instantly. The others went up like human torches, screaming as they ran. As they burned.

The rain of fire wasn't stopping. He looked skyward, at the dark shapes of the airships lurking behind darker clouds, and snarled a bitter, empty curse.

The cowards didn't even have the courage to come down and finish them off honorably.

An airship came into view, another lance of blue fire sweeping down towards him. He stood his ground, unflinching.

"~What is, is...~"

And this was the floor, Nathan thought dizzily, raising his head. Hadn't he been sleeping on the couch? He pushed himself up slowly to a sitting position, shaking.

"You'd think you'd be dreaming about clowns," he muttered weakly - or intended to. What came out was not English, and Nathan stopped, blinking rapidly. "~Lahna, dyas, tria-~" he tried experimentally, his voice shaking. "No... one, two, three."

Better. Getting up slowly, wincing at the pounding in his head, Nathan went into the kitchen to get some water. The dream was symbolic, maybe. The dream was... vanishing, even as he tried to focus on it.

"Symbolic or not, you were slipping into Askani, Dayspring," he muttered, relieved when it did come out in English. The psionic damage, maybe. Everything was jumbled in his mind. Broken patterns.

Still. He sipped at his glass of water, his eyes distant. There were some more emails he could write, to try and track down Trask. Maybe not everyone in her department would be coy about the professor's privacy. Traveling, my ass...

---

Sooraya had never seen the mansion in quite this state before - though there had been disappearances and kidnappings since her arrival there, they had never occured on quite this scale. Everybody from her friends and classmates to the teachers was walking as if on eggshells. Sooraya had been quietly helping however she could: the usual deliveries of food, of course, and checking in on people without trying to smother them. She had already made the rounds of her suite that evening and was now moving on to the boathouse, where there remained one very important person for her to see.

The office half of the downstairs was dark as were the living quarters on the other side, all of the curtains drawn. There was someone home, though. Nathan sat at the kitchen table in front of his laptop, the light from its screen the only illumination to be found.

"Nathan?" Sooraya entered the offices and shuffled towards the dim light in the kitchen, immediately on edge. "Are you there?"

Nathan looked up from his laptop, blinking. He'd been a million miles away, mentally. "In here, Sooraya," he called, his voice sounding oddly rusty. When her slight form appeared at the door to the office, propriety finally occurred to him. A flicker of telekinesis turned on the lights - and he blinked, his eyes narrowing instinctively.

He looked, in a word, terrible. Pale and tired, and quite noticeably unshaven. The look in his gray eyes was strange, as if part of his mind hadn't quite come back to the here and now, despite Sooraya's arrival.

Sooraya gave a small gasp - she couldn't help it. Clasping her hands together in front of her, she came to stand across the table from him, looking down in concern. "I wanted to see how you are... you do not look well. I think you have not eaten or had sleep, yes?"

"Don't worry." His voice somehow managed to be gentle and gruff at the same time. "I've slept." Although his nap could hardly have been called restful. "Even eaten. What I've not had much of is sunlight, and you can justifiably look distressed at me for that." He softened it with a smile, tired but with a flicker of real warmth behind it.

"There is still sunlight outside now..." Not much, as it was approaching evening, but with the way Nathan looked, every little bit would help. "Will you like to go walking by the lake?"

A walk would probably be a good thing, to get a better picture of how she was handling it all. "All right," he said, rising slowly from his chair. His knees announced that they didn't like him very much; he ignored them. "I think that would be good."

A few minutes later they were on the path by the lake, walking slowly and carefully so as not to disturb any of the freshly-sprouted flowers lining the way. Sooraya couldn't keep her eyes from darting to take in Nathan's face, the stiff way he moved, his posture. She had heard vague stories of what had occured in Las Vegas, though they were incomplete and confusing.

"How are you?" Nathan asked softly, after another minute or two of quiet walking. "I know I asked that before. But sometimes your feelings on an experience need some time to sink in."

"I am fine," the girl said, echoing the reply she had given him earlier. It didn't have an air of evasiveness about it, however, just simple fact. "I am glad we are all back... even if we are not all well. But we are here, and that is good."

"I was worried about you. Being kidnapped, again..." He gave the girl a sideways look, a faint smile growing on his lips. "Although I hear you handled yourself as if you were a full-fledged X-Man wearing leathers."

A faint blush rose to Sooraya's cheeks, and she shook her head bashfully. "No... I do not think I did." Indeed, for much of the kidnapping she hadn't been wearing very much at all. The blush increased. "But I am glad I could help my friends. It was very scary but we didn't stop from what we must do. Everyone was very brave."

The image of Sooraya in leathers was a little alarming. Still... "It seems like I repeat myself a lot," Nathan said after another long pause. "I tell you I'm proud of you, over and over again... but you keep doing things that make me feel that way, Sooraya. Over and over." His voice was a little hoarse on the last words, with emotion this time. Sometimes he didn't know what he'd done to deserve watching this young woman grow stronger and stronger, watch her blossom into a remarkable young person shaped but not defined by her harsh experiences.

He didn't know, but he was going to keep watching. Because it was one of a handful of pure joys in his life.

"It is because of what I have learned here," Sooraya said, watching her feet as they continued to walk along the lakeshore. "It has happened before... the kidnapping. You know." A quick glance sideways, and then she looked ahead again. "But this time... I did not have to be scared and wait. Because of being here, because of the things I have learned..." Emotion made it hard to find the right words, and she switched to Dari, anxious to make her feelings known. "~I wasn't a victim... I wasn't helpless. I wouldn't ever want my friends to be in danger, but I'm very glad that I was able to do something. That was never possible before.~"

Nathan nodded slowly. "~I'll tell you something truthfully, Sooraya,~" he said, sticking to Dari himself. "~I don't believe you'll ever be a victim again. Oh, bad things may happen, you may find yourself in trouble at some point in the future again... but you won't be a victim.~" He paused. "~You've moved past that. You've learned too much.~"

"~I am very grateful for that. This school has given me so much... my education, friends, a place to live... but I think that the most important thing it's given me is that.~" She smiled, feeling the wind play with the fluttering ends of her chador. "~I am grateful, even though I wish bad things would stop happening here. It does not seem fair, that so many good people should have such evil following them constantly.~"

Fair didn't seem to have a lot to do with it, although he didn't say that. "~I'm glad you don't regret coming back with us,~" he said softly, instead. "~I never wanted there to be a day that you did.~"

"~There are some people who don't like being here. I don't understand them. Although after what has just happened...~" Sooraya looked up at Nathan, her expression questioning. "~Do you regret being here, ever?~"

Nathan opened his mouth, hesitating, and then closed it again. He didn't answer for long enough that the silence was growing a little uncomfortable by the time that he finally spoke. "Sometimes," he said, almost under his breath and in English. "Sometimes I do. I've fought for a very long time, Sooraya, and sometimes I just get... so tired."

"Like you are tired now?" she asked, switching languages as well. There was no denying that he looked worn, weary.

"Like I am now." There was no harm in admitting it. She had eyes. "Tired and discouraged. It's been a bad year and we're only halfway through it."

"I hope you will find a reason to stay and go on. Last year in this time, my life was not very good." Like a bird, Sooraya's hand darted out to Nathan's sleeve, resting on his forearm lightly. She gave him a smile, her expression equal parts earnestness and trepidation. "But it got better."

"... it did, didn't it?" Uncertainly, he laid a hand over hers - just for an instant. "I have so little to complain about, really," he went on when he'd drawn his hand back. "I'm just tired. Need a little time to recharge, I suppose - rest and remember why I fight," he amended.

"And walks outside," she corrected him, nodding thoughtfully. "In the sunlight."

"And those." And maybe Muir Island, sometime soon. Nathan closed his eyes, letting out the air in his lungs slowly. Some of the tension eased. Not all, only a portion, but it was an improvement. He opened his eyes again and smiled down at her. "Or rides, in the sunlight. You and I haven't done that in a while."

"I will like that. The horses are good. But not cows." Giving a little shiver, Sooraya shook her head.

The smile reached all the way to his eyes this time. "No cows."