Nathan and Jean Paul

[x-cynosure.livejournal.com]

Jean-Paul and Nate discuss why it's a good thing to leave the past lie, despite the fact that they can never quite manage it.



Jean-Paul glanced away from the television screen and gave Rachel a mock-glare where she sat nestled against Nathan's side.

"I can feel you tickling the edge of my brain and the answer is no. I am too full to be chased all over creation. Perhaps tomorrow." He switched his ire to Nathan. "This is your fault, you know."

"My fault that your crustiness has dissolved in record time when it comes to the wee redhead here?" Rachel giggled softly, and Nathan stroked her curly hair, smiling down at her. "Yeah, I find that laughable too, Ray. I think the man doth protest too much."

"You're directly responsible for the redhead in question. Therefore, your fault. I am an innocent victim in all of this."

"But it's fun to chase you," Rachel said, her wide gray eyes perfectly innocent. Nathan gave her a very dubious look and she giggled again, hiding her face against his chest.

"She reminds me way too much of myself sometimes," he said, not quite dourly. "I thought they had to get a little older before they started mimicking their parent's quirks."

"I assure you, I am properly horrified." At least Moira had gone up to bed instead of joining them for 'An American Tale', so he was only fending off the mockery of two people, not three. "Isn't it her bedtime?"

"Don't tell anyone, but secretly, I'm a marshmallow. She's going to use me as her personal doormat when she's fourteen." Rachel's thoughts were getting fuzzy-edged, however, the telltale sign of sleepiness. He had no issue with carrying her to bed. "Aren't you, precious?" Rachel giggled again, then yawned widely, nestling in closer against him.

Jean-Paul kept his stony expression; he knew full well that he'd never hear the end of it if he smiled. He kept his seat as Nate took Rachel up to bed for much the same reason...but also because he would have felt like an intruder in a vulnerable moment.

"She went right to sleep," Nathan said, reappearing after having all but closed the bedroom door - he liked to leave it open a crack, which was a bit ridiculous given that he hardly needed to hear her with his ears. "She's very good about doing that."

"Not so much like her father, then." Jean-Paul did allow himself a smile this time. Seeing Nathan happy made him feel protective of not only him, but Moira and Rachel both, which made little sense to the speedster, but it was what it was. "How went the playdate?"

"Mmm. No throwing of toys, I think that's progress." Nathan shrugged as he sat back down, rubbing at his hip. "I don't know that she and Valentia are going to be best buddies, but they don't seem to have any objections to playing together."

"Heavens be praised. Perhaps I will be retired from the toybox." Jean-Paul grinned from his armchair, but sobered after a bit. "So I got the coroner's report back a few days ago, then did some poking about on my own. I found out that my mother killed herself getting Jeanne-Marie and I out of the wreck that had just killed her husband. They hit a fuel truck...something. I was not paying so much attention to that. One of these days I will learn to leave well enough alone."

Nathan gazed across at his friend, an oddly ambiguous look in his eyes. "It's always like that, isn't it?" he finally said quietly, leaning forward to reclaim his (non-alcoholic) drink and taking a sip before he continuing. "You decide it's better to know, and then when you do know..."

"...you wonder if you weren't better off ignorant. Knowing this changes nothing except me, and I had my hands full before." He sighed. "It makes me want to ask more questions, and there is no one to ask."

"Sometimes the questions aren't answerable." Nathan's voice was gentle, but his eyes were shadowed, and he looked away for a moment, before turning back to Jean-Paul with a faint, slightly strained smile. "Then again, you do know something you didn't - something good. Your mother loved you and your sister."

"Enough to die for us," was the quiet agreement. There was too much space in the room; a moment later the speedster was on the end of the couch opposite Nathan. "I have a hard time comprehending the idea as something so...concrete as my being alive, here and talking to you."

"It's knowing on the intellectual level, but not really... having that emotional connection to the knowledge."

"That is it exactly. She is just a name. They both are. When I think of the Martins or any of the others, I at least have something to pit myself against. I'm alive despite them. That she saved us, it just confuses me. I should be grateful, but I can't...there is nowhere to direct it. Or to be angry at. It just...is. I just am." He leaned
against the armrest and blew a quiet raspberry. "We should both petition for do-overs."

Nathan snorted softly. "I'd help you petition for yours?" He hadn't found out anything good during his moments of revelation. To be honest, he'd given up on the idea. Didn't mean he wasn't happy that there had been something worth knowing for Jean-Paul.

"It would be so simple, though! We both petition not to have been reared by dangerously unqualified assholes. And while we are wishing, Rachel gets a pony. No, wait. We have room for a pony here. A unicorn. There."

"Make it a unicorn with wings and you'd have her vote." Nathan leaned back, letting his head sag backwards at enough of an angle that he was looking straight up at the ceiling. "Have you thought of looking for people who knew your parents back then?" he asked after a moment.

"Mmm." There was an affirmative note there, at least. "It seems a slim prospect at best. The only living relations on either side appear to have been my adoptive parents, and they were not close. I suppose next would be co-workers and friends, but I feel as if I should be looking for Jeanne-Marie again. At least I'd have something new to tell her."

"So much time has passed, too," Nathan said slowly. "Makes it harder. I remember when people were looking into my family for me..."

"And I don't think there's any way to answer the important questions anyway. It will just add more complications." Jean-Paul contemplated his hands. "You said it complete -- I know she loved us. I think that will have to do so far as answers go."

"It's a good answer," Nathan pointed out. "And... an uncomplicated one, if you want to look at it that way. There's not really... any other way to interpret what she did for the two of you." He smiled faintly. "That's worth holding on to."