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xp_logsNathan decides not to spend the Youra anniversary quietly after all. Instead, he tracks down an old 'friend'. (OOC: Many thanks to Nute for socking Lense!)
It wasn't often that stupidity involved quite so much work.
But the person Nathan was looking for wasn't going to make himself easy to find, for obvious reasons - the US government very much wanted to speak to him still, if nothing else. Still, he had to be in the New York area somewhere, or at least come back here from time to time. The Hellfire Club was here, after all. It was a shot in the dark, but Nathan had decided to take it. He'd found a spot to park, a block or so down from the Hellfire Club, and had sat there for hours, scanning all the minds he could find, hoping for some reflected trace of the Inner Circle's Black Knight.
The headache had started about two hours in. Had gotten bad enough that he'd had to go looking for his back-up painkillers in the glove box an hour after that. But he'd persisted. Looking for Lense was a moronic idea, Nathan knew. If he was wanting someone from the old days to visit on the anniversary of Youra, there were all kinds of people who were very fond of him waiting in Tel Aviv. Most of whom would probably kick his ass if they knew he was out searching for the man who'd put him in a coma last summer.
And yet, here he was. He'd finally picked up a flash of an overheard conversation, one that had led him to a bar. Very much the sort of bar he remembered John favoring, too; it was a tiny, subterranean place like a 1930s speakeasy, that from all appearances specialized in imported beer. Nathan stood in the doorway, letting his gaze roam casually around the room, even though he was more than aware that Lense was sitting right over there in the corner, watching him.
"I would hate to see any damage done to a classy place like this," he murmured, just loud enough for John to hear him as he approached the table. "Especially if it's a personal favorite, like that very cute maid heard you saying."
"Daaaayspring," Lense drawled, sounding more inebriated than he likely was, although it was obvious that the pint of amber ale in front of him wasn't his first of the evening. "Told you I'd kill you, didn't I? Why d'you... why d'you gotta test me?"
A gesture of his hand, and the tables and chairs in the bar shook, rafters creaked and a few glasses cracked under the sudden pulse of gravity - but as quickly as it started, it faded. With a sigh, Lense leaned back into his chair, taking another long drink from his glass. "What do y'want, Dayspring?" he asked. "Come to drink to the triumphant dead? Truce between old friends, somethin' like that?"
Nathan shook his head, a faint laugh slipped out as he sank into the chair opposite John's. "You know, there's something to be said for hiding in plain sight. I suppose Shaw casts a long enough shadow to hide a lot of things." He hesitated, then signaled the bartender. I'll have what he's having. His hands were a little unsteady, and he folded them together under the edge of the table, where Lense couldn't see. "I suppose I woke up and decided I was going to be stupid today. But it strikes me. Four years on, and you've probably spent every single anniversary alone."
"Who'd understand?" Lense growled, staring into his glass. "Who wants to remember the day a gang of turncoats shattered everything you believed in? Fuck them." He downed the last of the beer, setting the glass down on the table perhaps a bit too roughly. "And fuck you too, Cable. My conscience is clear. Everyone who died four years ago is on your head, not mine."
The waiter who'd just arrived with Nathan's drink blinked, set it down, and backed prudently away from the table. Nathan gave John a brittle smile and tried the beer. Not really to his taste, he decided, and set it down again.
"You know what?" he asked after a moment, too casually. "I've been thinking about how much easier it would have been on everyone if Mick had actually killed you, instead of knocking you out so that the government could take you into custody. Because I don't need to be a telepath to know that your no-guilt bullshit is bullshit of the highest order." And what Lense was doing with that guilt was the problem, wasn't it?
"Mick couldn't piss without Tim shaking it for him," Lense laughed. "You and I both know it. Even before you got into his head, the sorry bastard cared too much. You knew it, and you pushed him, and you killed him. Him and Jackie, and Tim, and Pulaski... god damn you, Nathan. You had no right to..."
The almost-palpable sadness radiating from Lense seemed to burn away in the sudden face of barely-restrained anger. "You know what?" he said through clenched teeth. "I didn't really like them. There, you want to hear it? I didn't give a damn about a one of you. And frankly... I don't give a damn about this bar either."
"I'm noticing a serious lack of nifty psi-dampening jewelry on your person," Nathan said, lifting his beer and taking another sip before he set the glass back down. His eyes were steady on Lense the whole time. "In other words - try it and see what happens. I dare you. Because the moment the gravity goes wonky in here you're going to find yourself walking out of this place with me while I call SHIELD to come pick you up."
Lense thought for a moment, then his shoulders sagged. "Fucking telepaths. Only one thing to do about a brain like that."
The right cross caught Nathan just above the jaw - Lense had always been fast and wiry, and a subtle gravity enhancement to the mass of his fist didn't hurt either. "I don't need to tear this place apart, Dayspring," he hissed. "But you've got four years of blood on your hands, and I plan to see it on this floor before I'm done."
Nathan's chair had gone right over backwards, but even with the shock of the punch and then the impact with the floor, he managed to project a suggestion to the rest of the bar that they wanted neither to panic nor to call the police. By the time he was back on his feet, the rest of the patrons were going about their drinking, happily ignoring the brewing brawl.
Nathan worked his jaw for a moment, eyeing Lense. "You should be glad you didn't kill me last year," he said. "If you didn't have anyone else to blame for being a fucking coward four years ago, I'd hate to see what kind of self-destructive behavior you could come up."
"Maybe I didn't want the crazy Chechen to steal what's rightfully mine," Lense said, cracking his knuckles and stalking around the table towards Nathan. "I get to kill you, Dayspring. No one else. How many dead on Youra, Cable? How many Spartans? Don't you dare talk to me about guilt, you sanctimonious son of a bitch. You walked away, you and Anika and Piers and the others. Even got yourself a new family," he spat the words out with venom. "I don't have a family anymore, Dayspring! You took that away from me. You didn't have the right. God damn you, you didn't have the right."
Lense's posture slouched, whether from alcohol or the despair in his words, Nathan couldn't quite tell. "I'm going to kill you, Cable," the gravity manipulator repeated. "One day, I swear I will. But today... today I don't know what I want. To beat some damn contrition into you, or just to sit and drink. I don't know. Gimme an order, Cable. Let me be a Spartan again, just this once."
Breathing hard, Nathan looked around at the oblivious patrons around them, and then back at Lense with another ghost of a smile. "This is," he said, almost under his breath, "a really nice bar. Outside, John." It wasn't quite an order, but it was close. "No reason we have to interrupt everyone else's drinking." And I have something you need to know.
---
Once they'd reached the unoccupied alley outside, Nathan didn't bother reiterating the rules of the evening. If Lense forgot, his brain was fuzzy enough with alcohol that Nathan could probably stop him easily before he did anything more than minor structural damage. I hope.
"We can proceed with trying to beat the shit out of each other in a minute, if you want," he said - and damn, but this was familiar. He remembered doing this, with Lense - who'd challenged his authority with all the desperation of the insecure beta male he was so many times - back in the old days. "But I have something to say, John, and you're going to listen to me first. If you're looking for another family, Taygetos isn't it."
His hands were shaking again; he clenched them into fists at his sides and went on. "It's not Mistra. These kids - they're not anything like we were, John, hell, they're not really kids! They've been raised, conditioned to be animals, not people. You think the directors treated us like we weren't quite human? The Taygetos operatives have been bred and born and molded into something that really isn't."
Lense paced, flexing his hands and occasionally glaring at Nathan. "You think I don't know that, Cable? That they're tools, weapons? What do you want from me? Should I be crying for them? I don't have any grief left, Dayspring. Whatever pity God gave me, Mistra burned most of that right out and you crushed the rest. What should I make of myself, now, oh fearless leader? Something like you? Husband, father, philanthropist, X-Man?"
Letting out a growl from between clenched teeth, Lense balled up a fist and punched the side of the brick building, cracks radiating out from the point of impact. "I can do one thing, Dayspring. I'm a soldier. I follow orders, and if they say to kill, I kill. They say crush, I crush. They say slaughter, then I'm a goddamn one-man wrecking crew. As good as you ever were. No, those kids in Taygetos aren't like us. But understand this, Dayspring - you're nothing like me. You want to be a hero. All I want to be is a weapon. Those kids don't have a choice - I do. This is what I am. Soldier. Killer. Weapon. Spartan."
Squaring his shoulders, Lense motioned to Nathan in a "come on" gesture, smirking. "So let's see who would have made MacInnis proud, Cable. Come on. With your shield or on it, sir."
"You goddamned idiot," Nathan said, his own anger finally kindling at last. "Okay. You want to beat some contrition into me? Let's see if I can beat some fucking common sense into you." It would be a lie to say he hadn't expected things to go this way. But he'd hoped-
Hope. Like he'd hoped for those kids in Puerto Rico. Nathan closed the distance between them, sent Lense reeling back with a solid left hook. "All these chances," he growled, "all these choices, and this is what you choose. You're not a soldier anymore, John, you're a thug. You're a businessman's hired thug."
Lense's head snapped back, shaking off the momentary dizziness from the larger man's blow. "We were bought and sold years ago, Dayspring," he taunted, rushing forward and driving his shoulder into Nathan's chest, pushing them both up against the wall. "The only difference is-" a quick jab to the floating ribs, "-I know-" another hook to the kidney, a boxer's punch, "-who's holding my leash."
Nathan wasn't as fast as the other man, and certainly not as agile - his hip was still bothering him, even two months later - but there were benefits to being bigger. He drove Lense back with only a hint of telekinesis behind the blows. As Lense reeled again, staggering, Nathan sucked in a deep breath, ignoring the pain in his chest.
"Take the fucking leash off!" he growled shakily. "You can hate me all you want and still do that. You want me to believe you've found a new purpose in life, doing Shaw's dirty work? I could sense you three blocks away, John! You know damned well you're lying to yourself!" He lashed out with a kick to the side of Lense's knee, pulling it just enough so that it buckled the leg but didn't do permanent damage. "Stop being so goddamned stubborn!"
Lense backed away, holding his knee and limping. Gritting his teeth, he thrust his other hand out, palm-up. Around him in the alley, small pieces of trash and assorted debris began to levitate and circle around him in a loose orbit. "What am I off the leash, Dayspring?" he asked, disconcertingly quiet after his earlier ranting. "A mad dog? Maybe. You think being Shaw's Black Knight is the only purpose I have? Don't be an idiot. The Hellfire Club's a tool. I have a purpose, Cable. That one day, you'll feel my hand around your throat, and I'll watch you die."
Pulling himself up straight, Lense's feet rose off the pavement as the orbiting debris slowed and lowered. "Not here, and especially not today. You don't deserve to die in the company of our ghosts."
Nathan shook his head, almost despairingly. "This is the last chance I give you to walk away," he said, still breathing hard. Making no move to stop the other man telepathically. "Think about it, John, for God's sake. Talk to one of the others, if you have to keep hating me. Gavin wouldn't turn you away. Isabel might tell you that you're an idiot, but she wouldn't, either. Not all your friends are dead."
It might have been Nathan's imagination, but Lense almost seemed to pause and drift earthward momentarily - but just as quickly, the younger man's gaze hardened and he levitated up above the roof level of the bar. "This is the last time I'm going to walk away, Dayspring," he responded. "The next time, one of us goes to the hospital and the other goes to the morgue."
And with that, the light blurred around him as he seemed to fall upwards into the sky.
Nathan stared up after him, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. He took another shaky breath, then leaned back against the wall of the building, his shoulders sagging. That went well, a familiar gruff voice observed at the back of his mind, and it didn't even strike Nathan as strange that he was hearing Tim Morgan's voice, four years after his death.
Lense wasn't the only one who lived every day with his ghosts. And he was absolutely right. Nathan knew he would carry all those deaths on Youra to the day that he died.
And he wouldn't have it any other way.
It wasn't often that stupidity involved quite so much work.
But the person Nathan was looking for wasn't going to make himself easy to find, for obvious reasons - the US government very much wanted to speak to him still, if nothing else. Still, he had to be in the New York area somewhere, or at least come back here from time to time. The Hellfire Club was here, after all. It was a shot in the dark, but Nathan had decided to take it. He'd found a spot to park, a block or so down from the Hellfire Club, and had sat there for hours, scanning all the minds he could find, hoping for some reflected trace of the Inner Circle's Black Knight.
The headache had started about two hours in. Had gotten bad enough that he'd had to go looking for his back-up painkillers in the glove box an hour after that. But he'd persisted. Looking for Lense was a moronic idea, Nathan knew. If he was wanting someone from the old days to visit on the anniversary of Youra, there were all kinds of people who were very fond of him waiting in Tel Aviv. Most of whom would probably kick his ass if they knew he was out searching for the man who'd put him in a coma last summer.
And yet, here he was. He'd finally picked up a flash of an overheard conversation, one that had led him to a bar. Very much the sort of bar he remembered John favoring, too; it was a tiny, subterranean place like a 1930s speakeasy, that from all appearances specialized in imported beer. Nathan stood in the doorway, letting his gaze roam casually around the room, even though he was more than aware that Lense was sitting right over there in the corner, watching him.
"I would hate to see any damage done to a classy place like this," he murmured, just loud enough for John to hear him as he approached the table. "Especially if it's a personal favorite, like that very cute maid heard you saying."
"Daaaayspring," Lense drawled, sounding more inebriated than he likely was, although it was obvious that the pint of amber ale in front of him wasn't his first of the evening. "Told you I'd kill you, didn't I? Why d'you... why d'you gotta test me?"
A gesture of his hand, and the tables and chairs in the bar shook, rafters creaked and a few glasses cracked under the sudden pulse of gravity - but as quickly as it started, it faded. With a sigh, Lense leaned back into his chair, taking another long drink from his glass. "What do y'want, Dayspring?" he asked. "Come to drink to the triumphant dead? Truce between old friends, somethin' like that?"
Nathan shook his head, a faint laugh slipped out as he sank into the chair opposite John's. "You know, there's something to be said for hiding in plain sight. I suppose Shaw casts a long enough shadow to hide a lot of things." He hesitated, then signaled the bartender. I'll have what he's having. His hands were a little unsteady, and he folded them together under the edge of the table, where Lense couldn't see. "I suppose I woke up and decided I was going to be stupid today. But it strikes me. Four years on, and you've probably spent every single anniversary alone."
"Who'd understand?" Lense growled, staring into his glass. "Who wants to remember the day a gang of turncoats shattered everything you believed in? Fuck them." He downed the last of the beer, setting the glass down on the table perhaps a bit too roughly. "And fuck you too, Cable. My conscience is clear. Everyone who died four years ago is on your head, not mine."
The waiter who'd just arrived with Nathan's drink blinked, set it down, and backed prudently away from the table. Nathan gave John a brittle smile and tried the beer. Not really to his taste, he decided, and set it down again.
"You know what?" he asked after a moment, too casually. "I've been thinking about how much easier it would have been on everyone if Mick had actually killed you, instead of knocking you out so that the government could take you into custody. Because I don't need to be a telepath to know that your no-guilt bullshit is bullshit of the highest order." And what Lense was doing with that guilt was the problem, wasn't it?
"Mick couldn't piss without Tim shaking it for him," Lense laughed. "You and I both know it. Even before you got into his head, the sorry bastard cared too much. You knew it, and you pushed him, and you killed him. Him and Jackie, and Tim, and Pulaski... god damn you, Nathan. You had no right to..."
The almost-palpable sadness radiating from Lense seemed to burn away in the sudden face of barely-restrained anger. "You know what?" he said through clenched teeth. "I didn't really like them. There, you want to hear it? I didn't give a damn about a one of you. And frankly... I don't give a damn about this bar either."
"I'm noticing a serious lack of nifty psi-dampening jewelry on your person," Nathan said, lifting his beer and taking another sip before he set the glass back down. His eyes were steady on Lense the whole time. "In other words - try it and see what happens. I dare you. Because the moment the gravity goes wonky in here you're going to find yourself walking out of this place with me while I call SHIELD to come pick you up."
Lense thought for a moment, then his shoulders sagged. "Fucking telepaths. Only one thing to do about a brain like that."
The right cross caught Nathan just above the jaw - Lense had always been fast and wiry, and a subtle gravity enhancement to the mass of his fist didn't hurt either. "I don't need to tear this place apart, Dayspring," he hissed. "But you've got four years of blood on your hands, and I plan to see it on this floor before I'm done."
Nathan's chair had gone right over backwards, but even with the shock of the punch and then the impact with the floor, he managed to project a suggestion to the rest of the bar that they wanted neither to panic nor to call the police. By the time he was back on his feet, the rest of the patrons were going about their drinking, happily ignoring the brewing brawl.
Nathan worked his jaw for a moment, eyeing Lense. "You should be glad you didn't kill me last year," he said. "If you didn't have anyone else to blame for being a fucking coward four years ago, I'd hate to see what kind of self-destructive behavior you could come up."
"Maybe I didn't want the crazy Chechen to steal what's rightfully mine," Lense said, cracking his knuckles and stalking around the table towards Nathan. "I get to kill you, Dayspring. No one else. How many dead on Youra, Cable? How many Spartans? Don't you dare talk to me about guilt, you sanctimonious son of a bitch. You walked away, you and Anika and Piers and the others. Even got yourself a new family," he spat the words out with venom. "I don't have a family anymore, Dayspring! You took that away from me. You didn't have the right. God damn you, you didn't have the right."
Lense's posture slouched, whether from alcohol or the despair in his words, Nathan couldn't quite tell. "I'm going to kill you, Cable," the gravity manipulator repeated. "One day, I swear I will. But today... today I don't know what I want. To beat some damn contrition into you, or just to sit and drink. I don't know. Gimme an order, Cable. Let me be a Spartan again, just this once."
Breathing hard, Nathan looked around at the oblivious patrons around them, and then back at Lense with another ghost of a smile. "This is," he said, almost under his breath, "a really nice bar. Outside, John." It wasn't quite an order, but it was close. "No reason we have to interrupt everyone else's drinking." And I have something you need to know.
---
Once they'd reached the unoccupied alley outside, Nathan didn't bother reiterating the rules of the evening. If Lense forgot, his brain was fuzzy enough with alcohol that Nathan could probably stop him easily before he did anything more than minor structural damage. I hope.
"We can proceed with trying to beat the shit out of each other in a minute, if you want," he said - and damn, but this was familiar. He remembered doing this, with Lense - who'd challenged his authority with all the desperation of the insecure beta male he was so many times - back in the old days. "But I have something to say, John, and you're going to listen to me first. If you're looking for another family, Taygetos isn't it."
His hands were shaking again; he clenched them into fists at his sides and went on. "It's not Mistra. These kids - they're not anything like we were, John, hell, they're not really kids! They've been raised, conditioned to be animals, not people. You think the directors treated us like we weren't quite human? The Taygetos operatives have been bred and born and molded into something that really isn't."
Lense paced, flexing his hands and occasionally glaring at Nathan. "You think I don't know that, Cable? That they're tools, weapons? What do you want from me? Should I be crying for them? I don't have any grief left, Dayspring. Whatever pity God gave me, Mistra burned most of that right out and you crushed the rest. What should I make of myself, now, oh fearless leader? Something like you? Husband, father, philanthropist, X-Man?"
Letting out a growl from between clenched teeth, Lense balled up a fist and punched the side of the brick building, cracks radiating out from the point of impact. "I can do one thing, Dayspring. I'm a soldier. I follow orders, and if they say to kill, I kill. They say crush, I crush. They say slaughter, then I'm a goddamn one-man wrecking crew. As good as you ever were. No, those kids in Taygetos aren't like us. But understand this, Dayspring - you're nothing like me. You want to be a hero. All I want to be is a weapon. Those kids don't have a choice - I do. This is what I am. Soldier. Killer. Weapon. Spartan."
Squaring his shoulders, Lense motioned to Nathan in a "come on" gesture, smirking. "So let's see who would have made MacInnis proud, Cable. Come on. With your shield or on it, sir."
"You goddamned idiot," Nathan said, his own anger finally kindling at last. "Okay. You want to beat some contrition into me? Let's see if I can beat some fucking common sense into you." It would be a lie to say he hadn't expected things to go this way. But he'd hoped-
Hope. Like he'd hoped for those kids in Puerto Rico. Nathan closed the distance between them, sent Lense reeling back with a solid left hook. "All these chances," he growled, "all these choices, and this is what you choose. You're not a soldier anymore, John, you're a thug. You're a businessman's hired thug."
Lense's head snapped back, shaking off the momentary dizziness from the larger man's blow. "We were bought and sold years ago, Dayspring," he taunted, rushing forward and driving his shoulder into Nathan's chest, pushing them both up against the wall. "The only difference is-" a quick jab to the floating ribs, "-I know-" another hook to the kidney, a boxer's punch, "-who's holding my leash."
Nathan wasn't as fast as the other man, and certainly not as agile - his hip was still bothering him, even two months later - but there were benefits to being bigger. He drove Lense back with only a hint of telekinesis behind the blows. As Lense reeled again, staggering, Nathan sucked in a deep breath, ignoring the pain in his chest.
"Take the fucking leash off!" he growled shakily. "You can hate me all you want and still do that. You want me to believe you've found a new purpose in life, doing Shaw's dirty work? I could sense you three blocks away, John! You know damned well you're lying to yourself!" He lashed out with a kick to the side of Lense's knee, pulling it just enough so that it buckled the leg but didn't do permanent damage. "Stop being so goddamned stubborn!"
Lense backed away, holding his knee and limping. Gritting his teeth, he thrust his other hand out, palm-up. Around him in the alley, small pieces of trash and assorted debris began to levitate and circle around him in a loose orbit. "What am I off the leash, Dayspring?" he asked, disconcertingly quiet after his earlier ranting. "A mad dog? Maybe. You think being Shaw's Black Knight is the only purpose I have? Don't be an idiot. The Hellfire Club's a tool. I have a purpose, Cable. That one day, you'll feel my hand around your throat, and I'll watch you die."
Pulling himself up straight, Lense's feet rose off the pavement as the orbiting debris slowed and lowered. "Not here, and especially not today. You don't deserve to die in the company of our ghosts."
Nathan shook his head, almost despairingly. "This is the last chance I give you to walk away," he said, still breathing hard. Making no move to stop the other man telepathically. "Think about it, John, for God's sake. Talk to one of the others, if you have to keep hating me. Gavin wouldn't turn you away. Isabel might tell you that you're an idiot, but she wouldn't, either. Not all your friends are dead."
It might have been Nathan's imagination, but Lense almost seemed to pause and drift earthward momentarily - but just as quickly, the younger man's gaze hardened and he levitated up above the roof level of the bar. "This is the last time I'm going to walk away, Dayspring," he responded. "The next time, one of us goes to the hospital and the other goes to the morgue."
And with that, the light blurred around him as he seemed to fall upwards into the sky.
Nathan stared up after him, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. He took another shaky breath, then leaned back against the wall of the building, his shoulders sagging. That went well, a familiar gruff voice observed at the back of his mind, and it didn't even strike Nathan as strange that he was hearing Tim Morgan's voice, four years after his death.
Lense wasn't the only one who lived every day with his ghosts. And he was absolutely right. Nathan knew he would carry all those deaths on Youra to the day that he died.
And he wouldn't have it any other way.
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