Nathan and Wanda - this morning

[x-scarletwitch.livejournal.com]

Eventually, everyone needs to talk, even if they are unwilling to realize it.



He was indeed hungover, but the worst of it was a pounding headache - his alcohol tolerance still at least resembled what it had been back in the bad old days. It was probably masochistic to be sitting out here in the bright sunlight, but the walls had felt like they were closing in, back in the boathouse. Besides, he had sunglasses. Nathan slouched a little lower in the chair, staring out dourly at the lake.

It could have been considered an accident that Wanda's walk had ended with her being so close to the boathouse and, thus, able to spot a miserable looking Nathan. But there true accidents very rarely occurred around her; she was, too often enough, far too aware of what was happening around her.

Or as Nathan would probably like to comment, far too meddling.

Her steps were soft but she knew he knew she was there as she joined him, stealing the chair next to him as her own. Sunglasses of her own perched on her nose and she slid down in the chair, actually enjoying the sun.

Good lord, if people didn't start leaving him alone... Nathan adjusted his own sunglasses and reached for his cup of coffee. Depth perception was a bit tricky this morning, however, and he nearly knocked it off the arm of his chair. He caught it with a curse. Apparently the reflexes
weren't so bad.

There was no response from his sudden companion and, in fact, it looked as if Wanda had fallen asleep the moment she sat down. It went more deeply than looked because she had, actually, drifted off.

So she'd come up here for the sole purpose of falling asleep on his deck. Fair enough. It wasn't as if other people hadn't done the same. But her presence grated on him, all the same, and he stared out at the lake, or rather glared, trying hard not to think about... well, anything. Alison or Cain or images of New York.

Wanda rarely did anything without a purpose behind it and, after all, she'd grown up with a brother that she'd done her best to antagonize. Out of everyone she'd come to know since she'd first arrived over her, she had come to realize that Nathan filled the role of a brother - even if it was a brother in arms - the best. The irritating part simply came part and parcel with that.

"If you start snoring," Nathan muttered, sotto voce and almost viciously, "I'm going to drop you in the lake."

"I fully plan on taking you with me if you wish to try," Wanda replied, eyes now open under the sunglasses and completely awake again. "Though I'm surprised at your restraint currently, seeing as I'm still in your chair and dry."

"I'm contemplating the best tactical approach."

She wiggled her fingers at him dismissively. "Contemplate away. Though with your hangover, that may take some time." Wanda focused her look on the lake and shook her head slightly, thinking over her own hangover. "Why is it the aftermath always feels worse than the actual battle?" she asked quietly.

"Because it is," Nathan said curtly. "The battle is the battle. The aftermath is the second-guessing, and the patching-up, and the realization that you now have to live with the battle from here on out." Damn it, now he was letting her draw him into conversation. She really did need to go in the lake. He slanted an assessing sideways look at her from behind the cover of his sunglasses.

"Don't even think about it," she warned him lightly, a faint smile playing across her face before it disappeared. "~We carry the battle with us. Always.~" It had been a while since Wanda had spoken Askani but it always felt natural to do so. "~And she was one of ours.~"

The ghosts of future history were always in the back of her mind.

"Didn't help her, did it?" Nathan said, even more brusquely.

"She's my friend, too," Wanda replied, her voice sharp for the first time. "We might not have been as close as you and her but it still..." She rubbed a hand over her breastbone and grimaced. The shock of being told was still fresh in her mind. Wanda turned, sliding her glasses off as she looked at him. Really looked. "Tell me one thing, Nathan. This reaction. Are you blaming yourself or the rest of us for what happened?"

Nathan gave her a mildly incredulous look. Debated the virtues of not answering, but... to hell with it. "I'm not blaming anyone but Apocalypse," he said flatly. "Yes, maybe deep down in the irrational part of my mind I'm beginning to wonder if being my friend comes with a goddamned curse or something. But I know that's irrational."

"Damned right it is. But understandable nonetheless." Wanda relaxed back into her chair, lacing her hands over her stomach. "I like to think we are friends, which is probably the only reason I really am not in that lake. So, as your friend, I want to help you. But I know you well enough to know you are not going to accept any help until you are damned well ready." Stubborn man, she thought tiredly but fondly. "I am not even sure what there is I can do but the offer and desire are there."

Nathan was silent for a long moment. "It's not just Alison," he said finally. Or Cain. "I... I just wonder sometimes if I really have seen too much, in all these years. I didn't hesitate once while I was in New York. I was as shut down emotionally as if it was twenty years ago and my conditioning was still fully operational. But now..." He made a vague gesture with one hand, disgusted with himself for actually saying any of this aloud. "Experience isn't a blessing. It doesn't mean you can bounce back easily - sometimes it just means you have more baggage. I had a flashback this morning. First time in months."

Shoving the sunglasses up into her hair, Wanda turned sideways in the chair and curled her legs up under her. "Do you think it's still worth it?" she asked quietly, mulling over what he had said. "It sounds like the question you might be asking yourself is - when is enough simply enough? We went through literal hell in New York because a man thought he knew better than the rest of us. And we did our jobs and we came home. But when does going on vacation or taking down time stop being a solution and start to become a bandaid fix?"

Nathan thought of Cain's letter, but shrugged, not meeting Wanda's eyes. "I don't know," he said, his mouth twisting. "I'm a bad person to ask. My only real down time this year was a coma."

"Oh please," she said in response, "that's not a vacation and you know it. Try going to Russia with a sex crazed wizard midget for a month and then we'll talk about vacations. That probably added more baggage to what you were already talking about."

"Baggage from a coma." Nathan's voice was just a little too casual. "Sort of defeats the purpose of a blessed month of unconsciousness, doesn't it?"

Wanda snorted. "If being in a coma meant a blessed month were you did not have to do a thing and came out feeling fresh as a daisy?" She waved a hand towards the mansion. "I think you would be seeing more people signing up for the occurrence. So, yes, baggage from a coma. Surprising, I know."

"I'm fine, Wanda. Fully and completely recovered - well, if you ignore the headaches every time the weather changes. I am so going to be senile when I'm fifty, what with yet another head injury," Nathan said, mock-cheerfully.

"Of course you are and of course you will be," she responded flatly, unwinding her limbs but not yet getting out of the chair. "Because you keep telling everyone that. There are those that have turned it into a - joke. A lark. But it is not. Have they wondered what I have? That you have a unique perspective of the MedLab not because it is some cosmic joke but, perhaps, because you put yourself out there so fully, so often? But I could just be thinking of odd things, after all."

Nathan gave her a sideways look, eyes narrowing slightly. "~A battle half-fought is a battle already lost,~" he said in Askani, then shifted back to English as he looked away. "The jokes don't bother me the way they used to. Enough of the jokers are learning what it's really like out there that the jokes are ringing a little hollow."

"Some hide in laughter and humor without realizing the consequences," Wanda said in some kind of agreement. She thought of Kyle, who had experienced his own brand of jokes at his expense. "I think after this last fight, more than just surface and large things will have changed." In response to how he had responded to her, she switched back to Askani at the last, saying, "~There's no more shield left to bear or return on, now.~"

Nathan gave her a deadpan look. "Right. No more battles left to fight. And there will be love and hugs and candy hearts for all, too."

There was quite a solid thwap as Wanda leaned over and slapped him in the shoulder. "Oh, now you're just being an ass," she said dryly, leaning back again to prevent the chair from tipping over and sending her sprawling onto the boards.

"Never said I wasn't," Nathan pointed out, somewhat chagrined at just how much of a conversation she had managed to get out of him in the end. Then again, the brooding silence had been getting a bit wearing. There had been stuff that wanted to come out; he vaguely remembered that happening last night on the walk home from Harry's, too. "I want my redheads," he said almost abruptly. "But I don't want Ray back over here for another couple of weeks, and I'm too much of a fucking coward to go to Muir just yet, with Alison there."

She didn't quite look at him then; if she had, it would have been a softer look that wasn't quite pity. But Wanda figured that right now, a look like that would end up with her in the lake. "After our conversation, I'm willing to bet that suggesting a vacation is right out. I feel like there's nothing much I can do to help with this whole mess -" A hand waved to encompass everything around them. "- but if there's something I can do to help you with that, let me know. I think seeing your 'girls' - please don't tell Doctor MacTaggart I called her that - would do you a world of good."

"It's all right, Wanda. I will go to Muir, probably in a few days." Nathan sounded oddly detached. "I need to, I know that. I'm one of the few people around here who really understands what she's been through."

There was a difference between being possessed - taken over, shunted to the side as you are made into a puppet - and having what happened to Nathan and Alison. Broken down and molded into something else but it was still you, just jagged and wrong inside. "Remember to watch out for yourself as well. Because your wife will probably still kick your ancient ass if you don't."

"And my daughter will kick me in the shins," Nathan said, with a passing flash of humor. "She's very good at that, violent little thing. I wonder where she gets that from."

"You actually have met your wife, yes?"