Yvette, Nathan - Monday morning

[x-penance.livejournal.com]

Helping Nathan with Serbian army records, Yvette finds some worriesome resonances.



He was going to have to succumb to Moira's urgings and get his eyes checked. The headaches when he did this much reading weren't particularly severe, but they were getting frequent. With all the damage he'd done to his brain over the years, it would be a miracle if he didn't wind up with lingering vision problems, Nathan reflected grouchily, but forced himself to smile as he looked up from his desk and over at the long table, where Yvette was bent over a stack of files.

"How's it going over there?" He'd given her a pile of the Serbian military service records. Handy, to have someone else fluent in the language who could comb through them looking for Clues.

"It is, how you say, the slow going," she replied, not looking up straight away. She peeled off a post-it and stuck it to the edge of the page she was going through, before looking up at Nathan with a small smile. "But it is very interesting."

"Official-ese is opaque, whatever language you're working in," Nathan confessed. "Kind of like legal-ese. And don't even get me started on medical-ese." He really needed more coffee. Rising to his feet, he moved to the coffeemaker, refilling his cup. "We're actually lucky to have those copies. It's not as if Serbia has a Freedom of Information Act." Fortunately, when it came to international military contacts, MacInnis was like Santa Claus the whole year round.

"Do not ask, do not tell?" she suggested with an impish grin and an echoing flare of her eyes. Yvette's grasp of English was obviously subject to her schoolmates' language usage. "It is strange, there are some words which are..." She thought for a moment, looking for the right word. "Not so official-ese? The slang, almost. They do not fit so well, but you would not see if you did not know Serbian so well."

"Which is exactly why you're reading it. I'm not bad with Serbian idiom, but it's not natural to me." And honestly, Serbian was not the best of his languages. He classed as fluent, but it was definitely book-fluency. He'd never written any poetry in Serbian. "And when it comes to something like this, we need to be able to read between the lines. That's where the story is."

Yvette nodded. "This word here..." She pointed with a gloved talon. "It is meaning..." She wrinkled her nose a bit in thought. "The problem child? But there is not being the punishment from the commanding officers. Not like you would be expecting."

Nathan raised an eyebrow, leaning back against the coffee table as he thought about that. "Means they expect the problem, and are accommodating for it." Suggestive, but not definitive. "There any medical records attached to that one?"

Yvette flipped carefully through the file to the medical history. "There is not so much, but there is the note to say he has the food allergies," she said. "Chocolate, the artificial colours and flavours, artificial sugars..."

"Flag it, definitely," Nathan said. "That sounds like feral dietary accomodations." He shook his head slightly, wondering if they weren't reading a little too much into some of these cases. But there was no way to even begin thinking about setting up a program if they didn't establish the need. The need was there, he was positive of it - Serbia had lowered its military age to sixteen during the war - but they needed to get some sense of numbers.

With another nod, Yvette placed the file to the side, along with the other 'suspect' cases. "I was thinking, Mr. Dayspring," she said, not reaching for the next file just yet. "The people who took me... if I had not be sold to someone else, perhaps I would be one of the child soldiers? My mutation, it is good for the fighting."

Nathan gazed at her for a long, pensive moment. "Possibly," he said; this wasn't a topic for platitudes. "The fact that you were as young as you were, and female, might have prevented it. There are certain stereotypes in most parts of the world, still..."

"I did not think I would be glad for such thinking," she admitted a little wryly. "Do you know, Mr. Dayspring, who it was who was buying me?"

Nathan shrugged a bit. "It's in the team files," he said quietly, then smiled slightly. "Has Sooraya ever told you that I 'bought' her?"

"Yes. It was, how you say? Bonding moment." Yevtte smiled a little. "Marius and Jennie think they did the bad thing, but all I know that if they had not been doing this, I would not be safe here now. Like Sooraya." She dropped her eyes to the files. "Jennie does not like me, I think."

"Have you ever heard the phrase 'the end justifies the means'?" Nathan asked. "I don't believe it, not entirely. It can be an excuse for the worst type of behavior. But sometimes, the means aren't as important as the end."

"How do you know when this is so?" Yvette asked.

"You can make mistakes, or do things that are... questionable. But if you help more than hurt... well, in that case, it's better to focus on the good than the bad." Nathan let out a faint laugh, moving back to his desk. "Easier said than done, obviously. Believe me, I know that from personal experience."

Blue eyes dimmed slightly in thought, and Yvette nodded, face solemn. "I think I understand," she replied, then reached for another file. "It is best then, to make sure that there is no need for the desperate measure, yes?"

"In this case?" Nathan was silent for a moment as he remembered the conversation with Jean. "Yeah. What we're doing is making sure things really change. Treating the illness, not the symptoms. It's hard to be patient, when you know there are young mutants needing help... but if we do this right, it'll make it easier to help them, and all the ones who come after them."

"Until they are not needing the help ever again." It was said with quiet certainty, odd coming from the small girl, perched on the chair with her socked toes hanging over the edge of the seat. Then she gave Nathan another small smile. "Even if there is too much reading, as Kevin is saying."

"It's this thing with young men, Yvette - they're generally very impatient. Old men, too, but sometimes we can learn new tricks," Nathan said, his mouth quirking. "Even if we backslide occasionally."

That got him a giggle in response, as Yvette bent her attention back to her task.