Shakespeare Syndrome: Tat and Nathan (Backdated)

[x-tatiana.livejournal.com]

Tatiana can tell nothing but the truth, and ends up going to the one person who she can live with knowing it - Nathan. They have a talk on the dock, and hopefully some things are figured out.

He wasn't going to push. He'd learned not to push. He'd made the offer, Nathan thought, puttering around the living room of the
boathouse, and if Tat decided to take him up on it, then he'd follow through. If not... well, he'd check on her, in any case, but he wasn't going to be pushy. 'Young, female and overwhelmed' didn't meant 'lacking pride', especially in Tatiana's case.

She'd managed to stop crying. That was a plus, because she'd gotten so frustrated and-

And humiliated.

But Nathan was safe, even though she couldn't explain what was going on (certainly not without verse), and she couldn't stay in her room, not with Inez there and Tat opening her mouth to anyone who walked by.

She'd even made her suitemate turn into a puddle.

So she knocked, hoping that nothing utterly humiliating jumped out of her mouth this time.

The door opened, and Nathan was standing there, gazing down at her with a concerned smile. "Hey, kiddo," he said, then gestured at the deck chairs sitting out on the dock. "Why don't you go sit, and I'll get us something to drink? It's too nice out here not to enjoy the sun a little."

"The less people I'm around, the better it'll be, indeed. I'll go sit." She rubbed a hand over her face, her eyes red-rimmed still from crying. "Where's your daughter and your wife? I'd probably say something... bad to them." She shook her head with a grimace, and just walked back out onto the deck, skipping the deck chairs to just sit on the bare wood.

"Safely on Muir, don't worry!" Nathan called out after her gently, then went inside and poured two glasses of lemonade before he came out to join her. "Here you go," he said, handing her a glass and then sinking into one of the chairs. "So, this is very odd, this whole thing," he went on softly. "I'm sorry that you've had yet one more piece of insanity added to the pile. You'd think the world would have the decency to let you get your bearings here first."

"No, I would not think that." The words just came flooding out. "You don't know what I would think, deep deep down. I didn't even, either, but the world doesn't ever let you get them. It doesn't ever let you-getting your feet under you, impossible." She buried her head in her hands. "I feel like I should have my jaw wired shut so I can't keep talking."

... well. That had been an oddly profound - and mature statement for someone of Tat's age. Then again, with her background... "Try the lemonade," he said in the same quiet voice. "Sometimes focusing on the mundane when things get weird can help."

"That's not the issue, really," She said softly, her brows knitting. "It's not the weird that gets me, it's the world." She shrugged her shoulders. "That was the thing with my mom- She had me working three jobs, and then school. I got thrown out, beaten up- I've been on the run since then, surviving."

She pulled her knees to her chest, reaching for her lemonade.

"Tat..." Nathan trailed off, frowning to himself as he took a sip of his lemonade. "It's hard to stop, isn't it?" he said after a long pause. "When you've been running that long."

"I don't know if I can stop, you know what I mean, Nathan? This place is... I don't know if this place is... any better then before, do you know?" She seemed to be talking in fits and starts, like it was kind of hard to say. "I don't feel like I belong, since I don't embrace this... thing. What I am. Since I don't think that being like this is the best since slicing bread."

"You're not the only one around here who doesn't," Nathan said quietly, after a long moment. Something else he'd learned was that
there were times to share his own story and times to keep quiet. He actually thought this might be one of the former. "I'm forty-two years old and I'm still not really at peace with being a telepath. I'm not... afraid, necessarily, like I was for most of my life up until a few years ago. But it doesn't take much to put me right back into a place where I am afraid."

"I turn into a monster. I do it, and then I- I hurt people. I turn into a thing, and hurt people." She was close to tears. "I don't want it anymore. I don't want any of it. Do you see? I don't want to go home now, I don't ever want to go, but I'm stuck." She looked away, her knuckles white on her lemonade.

"You can't change that you change," Nathan said, keeping his voice soft, unthreatening. "But you can learn to control what happens when you do. Like a telepath learns how to shield, so that they don't always hear the thoughts of everyone around them. Or," he said, thinking of a better example, "how Rahne changes into a wolf, with all of a wolf's instincts, but doesn't wind up hurting people. It's her body that changes... it brings changes to her thinking with it, but she's still a person, Tat. She knows how to navigate the conflict."

"I shouldn't have hurt him, then. I didn't know what to do, I was just-" She cut off, tears slipping down her cheeks faster then she could rub them away. "I was trapped, and there wasn't- I couldn't do anything, and it just-" She hadn't known what to do, after she'd been trapped. "They just kept hitting me, and- And I had claws and it just- it happened-"

She was curled in a small ball on the dock, her shoulders hunched as she cried. She'd avoided thinking about it, ever since the bruises faded. Ever since she didn't have the real reminders.

Nathan paused for a moment, then set his lemonade on the flat arm of the deck chair and got up - only to kneel down beside Tatiana on the deck, an arm sliding around her shoulders in a somewhat tentative half-hug. "You didn't really have any choice but to fight," he said, his voice soft and reassuring. "I know you don't want to hurt people. That you didn't want to hurt him."

"I mauled him- I was a rat- I was a cornered rat and it- took over." She didn't even know how she ended up almost clinging to him, her tears soaking her hair and his shirt. "I didn't want to do it, not before, not after, just- during, I-" She cut off, and shook her head. "I don't belong here, really. Everyone's so... good, and- And I'm not."

"They're rich or they're special and- I've had to work since I turned fourteen, and I've never really had friends, and it's just-" The words wouldn't stop pouring out, the rhythm odd- Seven syllables, seven syllables, then three; something that she'd grown to hate. "It's just another place I, I don't fit, everything's wrong and bad-"

Okay. Definitely time for a proper hug. "I'd say you're a very good person," Nathan murmured. "To be so concerned for someone who was trying to hurt you. And you belong here for as long as you want to stay, Tat. Fitting in... well, that'll come in time."

"I don't actually care- not about him. It's what I've done, what I did- It's that I did it, and- and then it wasn't me- I don't know. He was horrible, so were the rest of them- they'd have killed me. Now I'm here and- I don't think it will work the way you think. It's been over... Over a month, and I still don't even know what I'm doing here."

"It took me four," Nathan said, without really thinking about it.

"Four? Four what? I wasn't really thinking about what I was saying,"

Nathan leaned back, but left a hand resting on her shoulder. "Four months," he said, quite seriously. "To figure out what I was doing here. I mean, I had reasons presented to me earlier than that... good reasons, some of them. But I wasn't sure until I'd been here for four months that I was going to stay. That I deserved to stay."

"I don't deserve to stay here," Tat said, as she winced, the words spilling out of her mouth. "I can't tell anyone what had happened. They'd think I-" She cut off, before speaking in a whisper. "They'd think I was some kind of horrible person, and they'd be right."

"Look. What you did, to protect yourself... there are people here who've done worse. Sometimes for equally good reasons," Nathan said. "Sometimes for no particularly good reason at all. You don't have to talk about it-" Although he was certainly going to suggest she speak to Leonard. "-but I don't think you'd get the reaction you expect, even if you did. It's not our place to pass judgement on you. I really hope," he went on, his voice growing gentler, "that you can work at forgiving yourself, though, Tat. I don't think you're a horrible person, and I think you do deserve to be here. I think you deserves it as much or more than any student I've seen wind up here,
one way or the other."

"I still feel like I need to pay them, somehow. I clean at night while people are sleeping." She winced, and looked down. "I wish I could stop talking. This just makes me miserable, deep down."

Nathan eyed her for a long moment. "Well. You're doing some work with Elpis - I know, that's not the school." Think. There had to be a solution that would let her feel like she was contributing, but not overburden her. You couldn't really pluck someone like Tatiana out of the life she'd led and into one of relative leisure, not and expect her to adapt well. "You know," he said slowly, "there's some volunteer work you could maybe do. In the infirmary. I - well, you and I would have to talk to Moira or Jean or Amelia."

"I know Dr. Grey-Summers," she said, latching on to that idea. "And she knows- She knows about me." She swallowed. "It could work." She nodded slightly, then looked out over the dock. "Can I stay here, for a while? So I can stop talking, some?"

Nathan smiled. "Tat, you can stay as long as you want," he said. "I'll even cook you dinner." He rose, grimacing as his knees popped. "Ow. That is the sound of old, in case you've never heard it before..."