xp_logs | Reunion Monticello

After the impromptu conference of the Elpis board is over, Nathan makes a stop at Arlington Cemetery and the Mistra memorial before heading back to Westchester. Someone meets him there.

Raise your family of ghosts and spirits, Sir, we really need to drink from your wine. And yes, your skeletons in the closets (might I bring a few of mine?).
Let's see what we can't see, unlock your books for a change. Glass excavated... bits of china... Mulberry Row scars still remain.

Bones are everywhere, aren't they? Our families spring from their graves. Their Sunday Best don't fit them bones the same way and wine is seeping from
the barrel staves...again.

I'm in your tea room toasting lives unchanged (while music's playing by the garden's edge). Outside rusted joints prove souls asleep can flowers blooms from this vintage? Relative Skeletons nervously shuffle, we glance around community of our own. Quiet valley drips with hints of laughter. Mr. Jefferson, can we slip these bones?

*

"I think we can call this a good couple of days' work, Nathan," Joel said with satisfaction, returning the folders to his briefcase. The rest of the board was gone as of about ten minutes ago, and had left equally as content as Rollins himself seemed to be. The meetings had been pretty intense over the last two days, but very productive. "There's really no substitute for sitting down face-to-face and hashing these things out. Gets all the worries and half-formed objections out of the way."

"I suppose we did get a lot accomplished," Nathan said from where he was standing by the window, and tried to sound at least a little enthusiastic. The hotel meeting room gave what he supposed was a decent enough view of DC, although the sky looked a little threatening. Just what he needed, to be driving back home in the rain. "Mind you, I have no idea what we're going to do regarding staff for Bolivia."

"Let me look after that," Joel said briskly. "I'd like you to start looking into possible sites." Nathan nodded, not looking away from the window, and Joel tilted his head, regarding him concernedly for a moment. "You okay?" he asked, almost gently. "You were quite visibly tuning out during that last hour or so."

"I'm just tired," Nathan said, looking around and forcing a brief smile. "The last few weeks have been kind of hectic."

"Well, you know, I'd be perfectly okay with you checking out sites virtually," Joel said, and if there was a teasing edge to his voice, it was more than balanced by the understanding in his eyes. "There's no need to head down there yourself until you have a couple of likely candidates. And I think in your place, I'd be wanting to avoid more travel for a while, too."

"Just until I'm sure the run of bad luck is over, huh?" Nathan asked wryly, folding his arms across his chest and shrugging, not quite in irritation. Joel was one thing, but he'd noticed a couple of the other board members restraining pained looks as he'd tried to explain Kyrgyzstan and Wakanda. It didn't help the cowboy reputation, of course. "I really don't plan these things, you know. They just happen."

"I know, Nathan. Don't worry too much about it, all right? These things do happen, and they could be a lot worse in terms of lasting consequences. Besides, uncomfortable as they tend to be, are you going to let these little incidents stop you?" The question was not quite pointed.

Nathan gave him a sharp look. "No. Of course not," he said immediately.

"Good man. Don't think I didn't note the lack of hesitation there." Smiling as Nathan rolled his eyes at him, Joel rose and fastened his briefcase. "I should get going," he said, his tone back to brisk. "I lined up a lunch date with an old friend from the State Department - I'm going to see if I can't bend his ear about some of those reports we're getting out of Southeast Asia."

"Never ends, does it?"

"Well, if we wanted a 9-5 job, we'd be in an entirely different line of work." Joel eyed him. "Are you heading back to New York right away, or...?"

Nathan shrugged. "In a couple of hours," he said. "I might make a stop somewhere first."

--

He hadn't brought a radio, like he usually did when he came to Arlington. It wasn't as if he needed the repetition, Nathan thought dimly, staring down at the false name on the tombstone. He'd all but memorized the list of names by now. Benefit or curse of a telepath's memory, he supposed.

Besides, he just wanted to be here. Reconnect with a past that didn't change, for better or for worse, strange as it would probably sound to anyone with whom he shared the sentiment. In his head, it made sense. He'd had the ground yanked out from beneath him a few too many times the past few weeks. Who are you kidding? More like the past half-year.

"2008, why must you vex me so," Nathan muttered under his breath, not quite dryly. Surely at some point his life was going to stop being quite so repetitiously traumatic. Had he pissed off God at some point? Or a god?

He felt like a rope - a cable, hah! - stretched so far that it was at the fraying point. It bothered him most, he thought, that his reserves of energy were so low. It introduced a degree of... detachment from his work which did not feel right. There was something very wrong when he didn't feel like his whole heart was in what he was doing.

A vacation was the obvious answer. He just wished he could be sure it would help.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement in the distance. There were less people in Arlington than usual, probably because of the fact that the weather looked like it was going to turn unpleasant anytime now. Distracted, his mind drifting, it took Nathan a long moment to realize that the person was coming towards him. Purposefully.

And to realize that the mind approaching was not quite of a standard type. Frowning, he looked around, eyeing the woman. Telepath. A strong one, if he had to guess, and well-shielded. Cautiously, he did what he could to reinforce his own shields and watched her approach.

She was tall and lean, with long dark hair and eyes nearly the same shade. And... there was something very familiar about her, Nathan thought, his frown deepening. Where do I know you from?

She stopped near him, hands in the pocket of her gray, hip-length coat, watching him with calm, steady focus that was less curious than it was measuring. A lock of her hair escaped the band that held her hair away from her face and blew across her finely sculpted features. It was the softest thing about her. She lifted her hand and tucked it ruthlessly back behind her ear. "Hello, Nathan." Her voice was the same as her gaze, a crisp, even tone that gave away nothing.

Nathan just stared at her for a moment longer, the sense of familiarity increasing exponentially. Take off ten - no, fifteen years... "This is... a surprise," he finally said, his voice low. "Carly, right? It is Carly..." It wasn't a question, in the end. The longer he looked at her, the more sure he was.

But to say it was a surprise was an understatement. Carly Alvarez had been a very young operative at Mistra, fifteen years ago. Barely out of training, when her team's helicopter had crashed on a mission, killing all six operatives aboard. Or so he'd been told.

He couldn't be that surprised, though. It wasn't as if the directors at Mistra had made a habit of being truthful.

She smiled, not a lot, just with the corners of her mouth and the slightest bit around her eyes. "You remembered." She sounded genuinely pleased and just a little surprised. It had been a long time after all. "I'd hoped for a little more shock and awe but I guess you're probably used to the way that they manipulated events."

"I remember all of you," Nathan said, almost under his breath. "And yes," he went on, at a more normal volume, "I think we all got used to that." He eyed her for another long moment. "You look... well. Are you all right?"

Inwardly, he was all but bursting with questions. Where had she been for all these years? Why hadn't the taskforce turned up any records of her survival? Even if the operatives hadn't been told, surely the directors' files would have included something. Some trace.

"I'm doing very well. I was in town on business and saw you coming in here. I couldn't resist coming over to say hello." She was warming slowly, her dark eyes coming alive, softening the cold exterior. "It's not often that I see anyone from back then. I mean, I wouldn't, obviously. That would have defeated the purpose of the experiment."

"Experiment..." His mind jumped to the logical conclusion, and he frowned. "You were separated deliberately, then." It wouldn't have been the only experiment done on operatives, although he'd been privy to them, usually. Privy and helpless to do a damned thing.

Carly nodded, looked down at the tombstone and then made a small gesture, "Let's walk?"

As they fell into step on the quiet, green expanse, she explained. "They failed with your training, the conditioning. They didn't want to waste another telepath so I was separated from the group and given different training. If they could keep me...cooperative and still train me to be as competent as the rest of the staff telepaths, it would be an enormous boost to the program. I worked alone, mostly." She shrugged, "You'd know better than I how being on a team gives you different loyalties."

"A solo operative." It was a strange concept to wrap his mind around. Very alien to the standard forms of conditioning the rest of them had received. Nathan looked down at her, still frowning. "Whose project was it?" he asked grimly, then answered his own question before she could. "Wait, no, let me guess. Carmella Ruiz." It would be characteristic. None of the others had been quite so... creative about things.

A solo operative, and a fully-trained telepathic operative. Nathan found himself at the mercy of strangely conflicted emotions: an odd jealousy, that she'd had the chance he hadn't to fully master her telepathy, mixed with wariness as he realized what that had to mean. Fully trained, like the staff telepaths - like the telepaths on the conditioning teams.

This was not a lost sheep he was looking at, but a wolf. Remember that, Nathan.

"Got it in one," Carly agreed and was silent for a few moments. "I never expected to run into anyone else from the program, let alone here." She sounded wistful, a woman who had been held apart for most of her life. "What are you doing with yourself these days?"

Nathan couldn't restrain the startled look. Does she not know? "I... got out," he said, stumbling over the words a little. "Well, that's oversimplifying it considerably, but... we brought down the program, in the end. Three years ago now." She might not know, he realized. That, or the rest of it. "Carly," he said, stopping. "Are you still conditioned? Because if you are, we can undo it." Whatever had brought her here, he had to make that offer.

She glanced at him, her expression wry, "I know you did, Nathan. I could hardly have missed it. Subtle, you weren't." There was no one nearby but she looked around anyway, habitual paranoia. A trait of survivors. "Who is we? Your new team?"

The avoidance of his question was another warning flag. Nathan watched her guardedly, knowing that he had to get her to tell him where she'd been and what she'd been doing. Ruiz had been dead for nearly as long as Mistra.

"Mmm," he said, instead of a direct answer. "As for what I'm doing these days, you probably wouldn't believe me if I told you. Would I be equally incredulous, hearing your story?"

"Would you trust a word of it even if I told you?" Carly countered and tugged her hands out of her pockets, spreading them wide. "I'm the stronger telepath, you'd have no way of knowing if it was a lie or not. You'll simply have to trust me when I say that I mean you no harm." She was watching him very closely. "At least until I know if I can trust you."

"So in other words, my move?" Nathan asked. Some of the less pleasant possibilities were occurring to him. A still-working operative - working for whom? But revenge isn't an effective use of resources. And Carly was only a telepath. He might be overmatched on that level, but it wasn't a habit of his to get into TP-boxing matches.

"I've settled down," he said brusquely. "I do humanitarian work." It was hard to ignore how edgy that matter-of-fact assertion of her greater strength was making him. But if this was a (relatively) innocent encounter, he wanted to keep it that way. There was a debt here, after all, and her having been 'dead' all these years didn't change what he owed her.

The tension bled out of her shoulders and her hands returned to her pockets. He was plainly making her as nervous as she made him with his questions. "What sort of work? I wouldn't have expected that."

"Mutant aid and advocacy," Nathan said briefly. If she didn't know the name of the organization, he wasn't going to give it to her. Not yet, at least. "Your turn. Ruiz has been dead for two and a half years -how have you been spending your time?"

"Mutant aid," she murmured like she hadn't heard his question. "Are you still trying to save mutants from our fate? Do you really think that you can?"

Still? Nathan gave her a sharp look. That had been an odd comment. "I try to do what I can," he said. "I don't see myself as some kind of savior. Where did you get that idea?"

"I thought it was a fairly obvious conclusion. You'd already escaped Mistra. Why go back? Why tear it down? Why begin working for mutant advocacy?" She shrugged, "If you're not trying to save anyone, why are you doing it?"

"I went back because-" Nathan stopped, flushing. "It's a long story. And you've been avoiding my questions, Carly. You can't have a one-sided give and take, and I don't have a reason to trust you particularly yet." It came out more harshly than he'd intended.

Her jaw clenched and her cheeks flushed scarlet with a sudden rush of emotion, "So far there's no give and take at all. You've told me nothing! I need your help, Nathan. Would I have risked this if I didn't?"

"If you need my help, you have to tell me what's happening," Nathan said, stepping on the urge to lay all his cards on the table just because she claimed to be in need. He'd help her if he could, but he wasn't going to let guilt make him overlook the possibility that this could be a set-up. He'd been taken by surprise far too often, these last few years. "I don't know what more in the way of bonafides you need, Carly. Not if you know what I helped do to Mistra. Some of the others are working with me on this humanitarian work - they've got brand new lives. Piers, Matsuda, Nash... if you want a fresh start too, whatever it might consist of, I can help. But I need to know what's going on."

For a moment, it looked like she was going to say nothing, just storm off and give up on this whole conversation but with her eyes still flashing dark fire, she took a deep breath and managed to keep her anger to a snappish tone and fisted hands. "Yes, I'm still conditioned. And I want it gone. I want to be my own person, for once instead of always looking to someone else to set my path. You saved them. Help me. That's what you do, isn't it? Your organization and your team and your new life? You're holding back on me like I'm something to fear."

"I don't think you understand just how often people or situations that seem innocuous have come back to bite me in the ass these last few years," Nathan said, with a very tight smile. "But if you want your conditioning gone, I'll help you. That was my raison d'etre for a while there, and I'm not about to pass up the chance to help someone else get that crap out of their head."

He took a deep breath, then let it out. Think, Nathan. "You need to come with me, if we're going to do this. I can't just... do it, anymore, first of all, and if they altered your conditioning, what worked for everyone else may need tweaking for you. I have a friend who can help." He could get a hotel room here in DC, call Charles for his advice.

"What changed? Was it the... You can still do it, right? I don't want anyone else in my head. It's not a comfortable experience--you should know that." She looked down at her watch. "I don't have time for this."

Don't have time - who is she worried about? "It's a long story," he said, trying to sound reassuring, even though the hair on the back of his neck was prickling at her cut-off sentence. "Look, either way, we should stop having this conversation somewhere this exposed. If you're worried about someone coming looking for you, trust me, I can get you somewhere safe."

"Somewhere... you think you can keep me safe?" Carly stood motionless for a second, looking off at nothing. "No," she said flatly, "I can't trust your little band of heroes." As her eyes locked on his, she flung a psionic attack at him.

It took him completely by surprise. He'd had his shields up, of course, but that didn't do much good when a stronger telepath swatted you of the blue. Stumbling backwards, Nathan caught at one of the tombstones to steady himself, sucking in a sharp breath.

#Carly, stop.# He frantically tried to firm up his shields, thankful that today hadn't been too bad a day, at least. #This isn't necessary.#

She stood unmoved, face back to that perfect, unbroken calm. A whirlwind wrapped about him, cutting against his shields with diamond-hard abrasion, boring away at the exterior and digging through the weakest points. #Yes, Nathan. It is.# Her mind-voice was cold, implacable. The pressure increased, crawling over his shields seeking a way in.

#No, damn it!# It was almost but not quite a panic-reaction, his counter-attack. He lashed out, the pattern of a psi-bolt taking shape on instinct and slamming into Carly's shields.

Her shields that were even more elaborately patterned, and - oh, fuck, fuck me! There was no room for 'I told myself so'; Nathan lunged forward physically, grabbing at Carly, even as his attack dissolved harmlessly against her defenses and the truth hit him.

#You have Askani shields - you're Trask's telepath?!#

Her shields weren't perfect. Nowhere near perfect, but that was only to be expected when they had to have been learned second-hand. And imperfect was good enough, for a stronger telepath with all of Mistra's bag of tricks.

A fact made all too clear as her attack scraped away the last thin layer of shielding. It was a small hole, tiny really, but her follow up attack was needle sharp and expertly aimed, diving through the vulnerability into his mind. #You've made this unnecessarily difficult.# She sounded almost regretful, but not at all sorry.

Their minds were in full contact for a split second; he saw her and Trask sitting together, their minds joined. It was only a flash, not enough to be useful, and all thought of gathering further information was gone in the next instant as his shields collapsed completely.

In a very familiar way. Like sand sliding out from beneath their foundations, making the collapse inevitable. Losing his grip on Carly, Nathan fell to his knees as all the noise and pressure of DC came crashing in on him.

She was suddenly standing close to him and her voice rang through his head. #You left me no other choice.#

Then with a whiplash of pain, everything went black.

Carly looked down at the slumped over body at her feet, bent to check his pulse. When she strode away with her hands tucked into her coat, she didn't hesitate, didn't look back, didn't falter.

--

It was raining. Not hard, just drizzling. The cool drops felt good, although they weren't really doing much for the screaming pain in his head. Nathan forced his eyes open, blinking up at the sky until it came into focus.

He laid there for a moment, until the fact that he was lying on the grass and getting progressively more damp penetrated the haze inside his skull. Biting back a groan, he sat up slowly, looking around. It took a moment for the disorientation to fade enough to let him register his surroundings.

Arlington. Right. But not in front of the memorial.

Nathan let his head rest in his hands for a minute or so, trying to concentrate and figure out what had happened. He'd left the hotel, come to the cemetery to visit the memorial, and...

Nothing. Grimacing, he straightened, checking his watch. Two-thirty.

He'd lost at least an hour.

"... shit." Nathan rubbed at his eyes, then got slowly to his feet, swaying for a moment. Wallet was still in his pocket, as were the car keys and his cell phone. So not a robbery - and precisely who could successfully rob me, anyway? Had he passed out? His head certainly hurt like hell.

Then again, he didn't make a habit of randomly passing out... usually. When it didn't have to do with his powers. Shield collapse was the next logical explanation, and Nathan closed his eyes, checking. But his frown deepened as he tested his shields and found them....

Rather remarkably solid, by the standards of the last six months. What the hell?

"Okay. Later for this," he mumbled. Rubbing at his temples, he turned and started to make his way back in the direction he'd left the car. As he walked and his head began to clear a little further, it became harder to deny what must have happened.

It was a very familiar sensation, the feel of someone having raked through your mind. He'd lived through it so many times in his life, he couldn't not recognize it when it happened again.

Only more reason to get out of here and back home. To get out, period. He clamped down on the ripple of panic and walked faster. That whoever it was wouldn't have left him on the ground in the first place if they intended to finish the job wasn't really penetrating.

Out. Get out.

*

And bones are everywhere, aren't they? What do you think they'd see through those trees? 'Resurrected Spirits Dancing,' you don't say!? (The minstrel's new arrangement of History).

We danced and drank the sun! It over flowed and washed the past away. We roamed! Echo! Laughter! Spirits danced a jig around their graves...
...Then came the rain.

A garden craves a balance of both (I guess so).
From the garden, they're all running from the garden, we're all looking for the garden. So much to maintain.
Bones are everywhere aren't they? Ghosty spirits dash right past me. Finding hidden spaces, favored places. Families disperse to their graves.
Bones are here to stay aren't they? We cultivate the bones that we're of. Sir, if you caught me drunk on wisdom, would you say I've had enough?
- 'Reunion Monticello' by Carbon Leaf