xp_logs | Living in Someone Else's Promise (Rahne, Nathan) (Exit log)

Backdated to Jan. 18 2009. Rahne is staying at the Tel Aviv office.

OOC note: Rahne transitions to unplayed character.

The telephone had been impinging on Rahne's awareness for the past few
days. Unusually, it did so the most when she wasn't using it.

She'd actually tried calling several days ago, but only ended up
chatting with Juliette for a while when it turned out Nathan was away.
Then, well, they'd been busy. But it was really about time, which was
why she had gone to bed early and was now getting up in the wee hours
of the morning to make another phone call.

Sitting in the armchair in the living room and leafing through some
papers, Nathan paused at the sound of the phone. Too late for it to be
someone calling from Muir for Moira, but the phone in here didn't have
caller ID. He picked it up anyway. "Hello?"

"Nathan? 'Tis Rahne." Probably he'd recognize her voice, but
connections varied. You could never be sure of that. "How are you?"

Nathan smiled - then blinked and frowned. "I'm fine," he said, "but
you are up awfully late. Is something wrong?" His heart skipped
a beat, even as he tried to tell himself that she wouldn't have led
off asking him how he was if there was something the matter in Tel
Aviv.

"No, no. And technically I'm up awfully early. I wanted to catch you
in an evening. And for all of getting used to both precognitives and
international travel, I'm still rather charmed by the idea of calling
someone from tomorrow."

Nathan smiled again, more reflectively. "So how is the weather in
tomorrow?" he asked, letting out the air in his lungs on a sigh and
leaning back into the cushioned armchair. His battered old bones liked
this chair as much as they did any, this week.

"Warm." A pause. "Nathan, I'm thinking I'd like to stay."

Nathan didn't answer for a moment. "I'd kind of wondered," he finally
said, suppressing the brief flare of sadness. "When you didn't say
anything at Christmas about coming back here for the spring semester."

"The course schedules are far enough off, I couldn't finish here
without missing the start there. I thought for a while maybe I'd take
a semester off if the study abroad program had no arrangement for
that." She sighed a little. "Then I started thinking I'd apply to stay
the year. And then I started thinking maybe I'd transfer."

"School's that good over there, is it?" There was more to it than
that, though, he suspected.

"School's... a source of timing constraints. Not really the reason."
Rahne shifted a little restlessly. "I like working with you, you know
that." With, she said, not for. She wasn't proposing to change "for,"
but that wasn't the only reason for the choice of preposition.
"Directly with, I mean. But I feel like... like I fit here better than
I often do at Xavier's. Even at the Elpis office there."

Nathan smiled faintly. "And living at the villa, I imagine, with the
others, in something a lot closer to a pack structure than you see
here..."

A soft laugh slipped out. "Part of it, probably, aye. Also part of the
out-of-nowhere case of homesick for Asgard right after I got
here, presumably." She'd re-examined her memories of Asgard again,
then, wondering just why she'd been treated as well as she had when by
rights she should have been very low. Some of it had been that
Hrimhari was attracted to her and thought she had potential; she still
believed that, strange as it might be, still remembered the long talks
and... his tongue lapping her neck. Some had been the Asgardian
wolves' version of hospitality. She suspected some had looked at her
as a kind of a pet -- embarrassing thought, but no more so than the
actual tripping over her feet and nose had been when she was learning.

And some.... Well, she knew that the pack structure imposed by Mistra
had once been much harsher than the version that lingered now, and
that Hrimhari's pack -- perhaps partly because it was very old -- was
less harsh in its maintenance of hierarchy than the average
non-sentient pack of wolves and any number of human organizations.
Some had been very like the way she'd been accepted and
mentored here, despite her comparative inexperience in both cases.

"I feel a little guilty sometimes," she said slowly, "being more
comfortable with that, among people who had it imposed on them. Which
I suppose is a little silly in that I can't fathom what good it would
do for me not to be."

"Especially given that it's long-since become just... a part of their
lives," Nathan said. "Something comforting. If you find... comfort in
it, there's nothing to feel guilty about." 'Comfort' was a very
carefully chosen word on his part, and he knew Rahne would know he
meant more than just simple reassurance.

"I rather thought you'd say something like that," Rahne admitted.

"I am deeply, deeply predictable," Nathan said. "So what you're
telling me, basically, is that you're happy where you are, doing what
you're doing."

A pause and a smile. "Mostly, yes, that about sums it up."

"Well, then... I'm going to miss seeing you around the office every
day," Nathan said, not quite lightly - because he already did, every
day, without fail, "but I think I should go poke Joel to put the
paperwork through for the right kind of visa for you."

"Thank you." She sighed a little. "I'll miss you too, you know. Have,
all this time." And yet.

"You'll see plenty of me," Nathan said. "I need to start spending more
time in Tel Aviv. There are all kinds of people I don't see nearly
enough of, down there. Now I have one more reason to come regularly."