xp_logs | Nathan and Rahne, Tuesday afternoon

Rahne finds Nathan looking at pictures.

There was more than one digital camera in the office - they were useful tools for trips, when they needed to document what they were seeing - but most of them were stored away, waiting for when they were needed. It had been... February, or thereabouts, when Nathan had pulled one out to swap out its memory card, and never put it away again. It had sat around, used for candid around-the-office shots whenever anyone felt the urge.

Nathan sat at his desk, now, going through the pictures on it. It was such an assortment of things, really. Bobby's last day at the office, an impromptu celebration of the completion of a particularly lengthy project proposal, a picture of the stack of phone messages that had been taken the week of the bombing...

Medusa was in a number of them. Nathan paused at one, a picture of her and Rahne, red heads bent together over something on Rahne's laptop, both of them wearing looks of intense concentration. His chest tight, all of a sudden, he hooked the camera up to his computer, to transfer that picture over. He wanted a copy of it.

It had just popped up on the monitor when Rahne came in. Her throat locked up, and her shields; what escaped to Nathan's ears and mind was very much like a small sad mew.

Red-rimmed gray eyes met hers. "Would you like a copy too?" he asked her, his voice hoarse. "I know that she... I know she liked working with you." His smile was very faint, and tight with pain. "Alternatively, I have that very funny picture from the time that she came in while Juliette was away at her parent's and had her hair doing three days worth of accumulated filing while she helped me work on that presentation for the human trafficking conference..." He had been very impressed by Medusa's multitasking that day. Had complimented her, on how it was as good as mine, except with hair.

Rahne swallowed. "Both, please?" She sat down, looking a bit lost. "I canna understand it," she whispered. "I know there are accidents, disasters, but this one doesna even make -- make physical sense." She rubbed her forehead. "Not that most of our powers seem to, so...."

"Does it ever make sense? When you lose people..." He didn't have a picture of Crystal. Or Forge. Nathan printed out copies of the two pictures for Rahne. Added a third, when he came across a shot of Medusa on the dock, gazing out at the water.

"No. But that's why I said physical." She stared at the pictures. There were no... pieces. There had been light, but not enough energy to account for the disappearance. Which meant... either matter or energy had gone somewhere, not necessarily whole. And from her limited experience with teleporters that didn't come back right away, she wasn't sure she could hope it had been whole.

Nathan leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. He thought that there should be some relief, that whatever had happened, hadn't happened on... Saturday, or Sunday. That the mansion hadn't lost as many people as it could have. He couldn't seem to feel it, though.

"It's sort of numbing, isn't it? The scope of it all..."

"And they were so glad to be going home."

Nathan's jaw tightened and he leaned forward, sorting restlessly through the papers on his desk, looking for... nothing, really. "Do you want something to do?" he asked after a moment, his hands finally stilling. "I don't know what to do, besides work." There was nothing to do, that was the problem.

"I... I think I have a list."