Backdated: Tatiana and Nate, 5pm

[x-tatiana.livejournal.com]

Nate finds Tat in a tree after she's decided that everything's too weird for her. They talk, she gets a little less jumpy, and he gives her a renewed sense of normalcy.


Everyone had gone home for the day, leaving a very quiet boathouse
behind them. Nathan had toyed with the idea of either going up to the
mansion and seeking out some company, or heading down to Harry's.
Except he didn't feel all that social, and Moira would have his head
if he sat around drinking alone. Plus drinking was not such a good
thing when one had patchy shields. The beers he'd had with Cain had
left him regretting it in the morning.

But the boathouse was too quiet. Opting for some air instead -
nice, simple answer - he headed outside and into the woods, intending
to follow one of the walking trails for a while. He was at the point
in his recovery when regular exercise was a good idea. But he hadn't
even reached the head of the trail when he realized he was not the
only one out here, and it wasn't any of the usual suspects.

Pausing below a tree, Nathan peered upwards, frowning slightly. "...
Tatiana?" he ventured, not recognizing the girl.

Tatiana sucked in a breath as she abruptly looked up at the sky,
rubbing at her eyes with the hem of her sweatshirt sleeve. It was two
sizes too big, but she'd picked it that way. All her clothes were
covered with the Xavier's name, and her feet - in slightly dirty white
socks- dangled on either side of the thick branch she was sitting on.
The bruises finally stopped getting worse yesterday, but it still made
her sick to look in the mirror, at that reminder. Her hair covered
that side of her face, and it took her just a second before she looked
down at whomever said her name, sniffling once. "What do you want?"

Not really the way to greet someone, but she'd reached her breaking
point. Life was life, but to these people, money didn't matter- she
didn't even understand that, but... but this whole thing. The whole,
entire thing. They were all delusional.

Sometimes the patchy shields were actually helpful. He could feel very
keenly the turmoil her thoughts were in; she was very self-contained,
and he wasn't about to go looking, but he could feel it. Nathan
closed his eyes for a moment, trying to let it roll over him and away.
It wasn't entirely successful.

But he answered her question anyway. "Honestly? Nothing," he said
gently. "I was just out for a walk and noticed you in the tree. Are
you all right?" She wasn't, but it was the thing one asked in
situations like this. "I'm Nathan, by the way," he added. "I
introduced myself on the journals."

She sucked in a breath, and pulled the sleeves down over her hands.
"Right. I... I needed to get away from the computer." She pressed her
lips together, and clenched her teeth so hard it hurts. "Aren't you
going to say that I'm supposed to be resting?" She hadn't even moved
to get out of the tree, yet. She didn't want too, because...
then she'd probably end up in the building, and then she'd end up back
in her room, and her room had her computer in it.

And her computer? That just reinforced the problem. That they just
gave her a computer. It was all of it. The entire thing. And
she looked away, leaning back as her shoulders stiffened, her eyes
burning.

"If I told you that you were supposed to be resting, I'd be the
biggest hypocrite in the world," Nathan said, unable to help a smile.
"I'm not so good at doing that myself when I need to, and I'm married
to a doctor. You can probably imagine that she throws things at my
head from time to time over it...."

"Do you dodge?" Her voice cracked, and she lifted her chin, twisting
to face him. "When she throws things." She sniffled again, and
scrubbed at her nose. She wasn't really expecting him to say that,
honestly. She was expecting a lecture about being outside, about being
in the tree, about- about not being happy with what she was given,
about being rude and about not having a cell phone... the list went on
and on.

Not him saying that he'd be a hypocrite for lecturing her. "And are they heavy?"

"Less heavy than they used to be several concussions ago." Nathan
chuckled softly. "To be honest, since our daughter came along -
Rachel's almost three, now - Moira and I don't have the sort of
dust-ups we used to. If you want," he went on lightly, "I can
introduce you to them when they get home on the weekend. Moira
commutes between jobs-" He wasn't going to admit that the other job
was in Scotland, given the culture shock the poor girl was already
experiencing. "-and this week, Ray's with her."

He paused for a moment, then went on, still lightly. "It's awfully
quiet down at the boathouse on weeks like this," he said. "They're
only a phone call away, but I miss them. I suppose that's why I
decided a walk was a good idea."

Tat watched him for a long time. "Do you like having a daughter?" It
was a weird question, and her fingers tightened on the branch she was
sitting on. Her dad- Her mom'd always say that her dad had died, but
she knew (well, everyone in the neighborhood knew) that he hadn't.
She'd heard that he'd left, that he'd had it with his manipulative
wife.

Nathan's smile grew. "Very much," he said. "Rachel's a handful - she's
a pretty unusual toddler. Her mutation's manifested already, so Moira
and I have to take a lot more into account than most parents of three
year-olds do. But she has us both wrapped around her little finger...
okay, me more than Moira. I'm kind of hopeless that way."

Tat stared at him again for a long time, her eyes searching his face.
The easy smile, the way he lit up when he talked about his family.
"You're lucky." She didn't really know what else to say, or how to say
it. They were lucky, too, that he loved them so much.

He didn't need telepathy to catch the edge of emotion there. "I tell
myself that every day. Just so that I don't forget." He leaned against
the trunk of the tree opposite Tatiana's, gazing up at her. "I wasn't
lucky, for a long time," he said after a moment. This was about to
verge on sharing too much, but he thought maybe... well, he'd gone
astray trusting his instincts before, but that didn't mean he was
going to stop doing it. "I had a pretty hard life before I wound up
here. I was married once before, years ago... she and my son were
killed. One of the many things that went very wrong, for me... I
remember my first few months here and how surreal they were. I
couldn't convince myself for ages that this was all real."

"It doesn't make sense. People aren't ever- This doesn't
happen." She shook her head. "This doesn't- People seem to
think that you should just accept all of this, but I can't pay for it.
They don't seem to get it. I can't pay for this and there's no
papers. No nothing. They brought me here and treated me without even
knowing my name."

She looked up at the sky again, her hair sliding back from her face,
the bruise that dark violet-burgundy, her eye swollen from the bruise
on her cheek. "Things have been hard." Her voice was strained, and she
wasn't looking at him any more.

Nathan nodded slowly, still gazing up at her. "You're trying to absorb
it all at once," he said. "To some extent, there's no way to get
around that... but you can try and slow things down a little. Take it
all one step at a time. It might be a bit easier." He hesitated again,
but only for an instant. "For instance," he said, keeping his voice
low and even and soothing, "you could come down, and maybe stop in at
the boathouse for a few minutes. I'm almost positive we've got hot
chocolate in a cupboard somewhere. Plus it's a lot smaller than the
mansion - looks a little more like a house, if you get my
meaning."

"I..." She shifted to get down, but she sucked in a breath. "Yeah, I
get your meaning. This place - who- who has a mansion full of mutants
that's a high school and has a billion extra people and classes about
flight and-" She paused. "Don't answer that. I mean. I know who." She
sighed, and rubbed her face with her hand. She hurt, honestly. She
shouldn't have come out, shouldn't have climbed the tree. "The
boathouse- I can't even believe I'm talking about a boathouse. The
boathouse sounds... nice."

Nathan frowned slightly. "You've stiffened up, sitting up there... do
you want a hand down?"

"I- I was... kind of at the wrong end of a beat-down." She licked her
lips before she nodded. "Yeah. I mean. Please?" She shifted, and
looked at the tree, trying to figure out how to get down to be within
his reach.

"Stay right there. I'll come up to you." Nathan carefully created a
shield beneath Tatiana, so that if she jumped and fell off the branch
when she saw him floating, she'd fall only several inches. "One of my
specialties," he said, his tone conversational as he rose slowly into
the air. "Helpful in situations like this."

Tatiana's eyes were the size of saucers. ".... You can fly, too." It
wasn't even a question, her fingers gripping her sweatshirt sleeves so
hard her knuckles were white. "You specialize in getting girls out of
trees?"

"It's called telekinesis," Nathan said gently, once he was at eye
level with her. "It's moving things with my mind - I just happen to be
able to move myself, too." He offered a slight smile. "Not the best
ability to have sometimes. It's bad when I have nightmares - I do
terrible things to the furniture sometimes."

"I'd imagine that it wouldn't be good all the time." Her voice was
strained, and her color had drained, leaving her olive skin an odd
green shade, especially with the bruising. "But at least it's useful
sometimes." She was still gripping the branch, was still not even sure
what to think about it. "It's not all telekinesis. Angel can fly, but
she's a microwave." She didn't even think before or while she said it,
almost afraid to breathe. "What if you mess up and fall?"

Keep her talking, Nathan thought. "It happens from time to
time," he said candidly. "Not times like this, when I can relax and
concentrate... under stress, sometimes."

"Remind me never to s-stress you out." She didn't even think about how
she was staring, her lower lip between her teeth. "Have you been able
to.... do... this for a long time?"

"Since I was a little younger than you." Nathan held out his hands,
palms up. "I know you don't know me," he went on more softly, "but why
don't you let me get you back to solid ground, at least? I promise,
not a chance in hell I'd drop you."

"Well, if you did, I wouldn't really have to worry about tuition,
right?" She tried to make a joke even as she reached for his hands,
still balanced on the branch. "I should have thought about it before I
got up here, I just... I needed to think, and it's cold, and I've been
sitting here for like two hours-" She was babbling now, and her eyes
flicked to his. "You're sure? I mean... you're not going to like...
die, or anything?"

Nathan just smiled. "Someday I'll tell you about some of the things
I've lifted," he said as her hands closed around his. Very, very
carefully, he floated them slightly to the left, making sure to
support Tatiana's weight completely. A fast descent would be a bad
idea, but hanging there in mid-air wasn't going to do her nerves any
good, either. He compromised with a drifting sort of descent, like a
leaf on a gentle wind. "This is no trouble at all."

"Okay. I mean. Okay. This is okay, right?" Her eyes were on his face -
not on the ground or if it was moving closer or if they were going to
suddenly crash into something, or- "You know, maybe I am dreaming.
That'd explain a lot. I mean, I don't really want to wake up back
where I was, but at least I'd be closer to Canada." She was gripping
his hands, her voice an odd squeak. "So what do you do? I mean. Just.
In general. Boathouse. All of that."

"Canada's overrated," Nathan said almost cheerfully. "I run an NGO
office out of the boathouse - we work on mutant issues in the
developing world - places where they don't have access to places like
this. Right now we're setting up demobilization centers for young
mutants who've been used as child soldiers - you probably want to
point your feet ground-ward now," he added.

"Really?" She sucked in a breath. "But a lot of people here don't have
access to a place like-" She cut off, and looked down. She got her
feet settled in time, holding her breath until her socks started
soaking up the dampness from the wet grass. "S-Sorry. A place like
this here, unless I just haven't heard about giant fancy free
schools all around the US."

"You're right," Nathan conceded. "There's only one Xavier's, really -
although there are some countries that take the right approach to
helping their mutant population. Hungary, Canada, so on... if you're a
mutant in the developing world, though, you've got even less of a
chance than you have here."

"Right. I..." She sucked in a breath. "Mine's-" She stared down at the
ground after she let go of his hands, finally, her own shoved
immediately into the front pocket of her hoodie. "Mine doesn't happen
unless I'm not careful. I just have to be careful, and..." She trailed
off. "I can be careful. It was two months since the last time." That
was the most she'd told anyone at all about it, and her cheeks
reddened as she stared at the ground.

Nathan inclined his head in the direction of the boathouse. "Having to
worry so much about being careful... it's got to be hard." There was
nothing judgemental or demanding in his tone. Just a statement she
could respond to if she wanted to, or not.

"I'd say you have no idea, except that for all I know, you do." She
licked her lips, and sucked in a breath, forcing a smile. "Hot
chocolate, right? And a normal-sized house." She didn't even want to
tell him how long it'd been since she'd had either.

"Very good hot chocolate. And a very normal-sized house. Small-ish,
even. And strewn with kid's toys." She needed a little bit of
normality, just to get her balance back. Maybe in less intimidating
surroundings, she might relax enough to ask some questions. It wasn't
the only way to lose the sense of surreality, but it was a good start.