xp_logs | Mnemovore: Nathan and Jean, Thursday evening

With no other leads on Jean-Paul's whereabouts, Nathan's sketchy recollections from the moment after his brain got scrambled may offer an important clue.

There was not much point in going anywhere until they had some sense of where to go, hence why the Blackbird was still sitting on the ground in the Middle of Nowhere, Ukraine. Nathan sat at the back of the plane, head in his hands, willing the painkillers he'd just taken to finish kicking in already. He had to be able to think. Hell, fuck thinking, he had to be able to fight.

And as for where to go, he could help with that. He knew he could. If he could just fucking focus.

He wished the goddamned nosebleed would stop coming back. His shields were in such tatters that he knew Jean was coming to sit down beside him roughly two minutes before she did, and managed to raise his head, gazing blearily at her as she settled in the seat beside his.

"I think I got something," he said, his voice low and gravelly, "from the teleporter who dumped me here. I can't make sense of it." He swallowed, his throat feeling like sandpaper.

"Well, it's a start," Jean said, leaning back. "What do you remember?"

Nathan swallowed, rubbing at his temples. "Mountains," he muttered. "Forested, at least on the lower slopes. Misty, more or less untouched-looking..." It didn't sound like much, but he knew mountains in a way most people didn't. He stared blankly across the cabin, his head throbbing steadily. "I've seen them before, I'm sure of it."

"Could that have been part of what sent you flashing back to your old hideouts?" Jean asked, chewing slightly on her bottom lip as she thought aloud. "Is it something you remember from your days with the Pack, or from Mistra?"

Nathan was silent for a long moment, his eyes drifting closed. Anyone not a telepath might have suspected he was falling asleep sitting up - unless they took a close look, and saw the lines of pain and tension drawn just as sharply into his features as they had been before. Jean's presence was soothing, though, the familiar patterns of her mind almost encouraging his to settle back into its accustomed shape. There were some good consequences of the gestalt.

"I've climbed them," he finally said, his voice sounding oddly distant. "Not challenging, though. I didn't go back. I didn't like it because I didn't speak the language." The pieces were starting to come together, and he opened his eyes again. "It's the Carpathians," he said. "The Southern Carpathians, and not Serbia - Romania." His head finally turned towards Jean, bloodshot gray eyes slightly wider than they had been. "What if I'm wrong?" he said hoarsely, his jaw trembling slightly. "Look at what I already did, making myself think it was years ago..."

Jean took a deep breath. Nathan was in so much pain, but they had no idea how much time Jean-Paul really had... "Nathan, I..." she said hesitantly, and the pause before she continued was almost unbearable. "I can check your memory. I don't want to hurt you but..." But he was right - they couldn't trust his view of his own mind, not just now.

The sharp noise that came from Nathan at that wasn't a laugh, and he shifted around in his seat awkwardly to face her. "I don't care." His voice was almost level, but fraying at the edges. "Check. Be sure, and I don't care if you have to dig. I'm not sending us or Charles in the wrong direction."

As much as she wanted to, she couldn't really scold him for that. Instead she simply straightened in her seat, focusing on him more closely and reaching out to lay her hand over his. "Pull the memory to the front, I'll try to be gentle."

Nathan's hand tightened around her, almost spasmodically. He closed his eyes again, trying as hard as he could to summon up that flickering memory. It hurt to concentrate, and he sucked in a sharp breath that caught unevenly in his chest as Jean slipped into his mind. Don't embroider it, he told himself doggedly, shaking. He knew GW had been there, but he couldn't put him there into the image, because that was false. He needed whatever corresponded to that sense of recognition. Whatever had stirred up the memory to start with.

It took the barest moments for Jean to check that both Nathan's original memory and the impression he'd gotten from the teleporter were true memories, at least at their bases. No one had built them from scratch. Unfortunately, that wasn't proof that they hadn't been altered, and checking that would take more work, which could be done either quickly or gently, but not both, not in these circumstances. It's like ripping off a band aid, she thought as she dove deeper into his memory. Better to get it over and done with.

Nathan didn't rip his hand out of hers, or tear away from the link in reaction, but it was a near thing. He did jerked backwards, hitting his head against the inside wall of the plane, but the additional impact didn't even register. Had worse, he repeated to himself doggedly, definitely had worse...

It was painful, but it was definitely faster. Though it felt like ages to both Jean and Nathan, in truth it was less than a minute before Jean sat back, slipping free of his mind. "It's definitely Romania. The memory's sound."

"That s-should help, right?" Nathan said, his voice shaking. He lowered his head back into his hands. "Charles knows where to start..." It was something, he told himself. He'd been able to do something more than get just get shanghaied to another country.

"It will help," Jean said, the adamant tone of her voice as much for the lost Jean-Paul as for Nathan's peace of mind. There could be no uncertainty, there could be no wavering. It would help, Charles would find him, and they would bring him back.