xp_logs | Nathan and Jean-Paul, backdated to Monday night

Backdated to Monday night. Nathan is troubled in some unexpected ways by the news of Trask's death.

He felt more than a little guilty about this. Jean-Paul had quite enough on his plate this week; he didn't need to have moping telepath showing up at his door and then stealing his couch, but Nathan honestly hadn't been able to stand the quiet boathouse for one minute longer and it was too late to call Muir tonight. Still, he told himself, he really ought to be making some effort at conversation here, rather than just sitting around and watching Jean-Paul clean up the remains of the dinner he'd interrupted.

At least the speedster didn't really seem to mind the intrusion; he kept up a steady stream of decidedly blue Francophone invective against the journal system's conception, activation, and continued existence as he cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher before finally crashing down on the couch with a cranberry juice for himself and a refill of ginger ale for Nate -- though he really could have done with a beer, drinking in front of a man on painkillers just seemed too cruel.

"But," he said with a sigh, "I doubt that you are here to listen to me go on about that new wrinkle in things. What is up?"

"Does anything have to be up for me to come and visit you?" Nathan asked quietly, sipping at the gingerale. "And I agree wholeheartedly about the journals. I always have. They are a tool of the devil. Hank McCoy can burn in hell."

"I swear to you, the downfall of this place is not going to be a breakdown of human-mutant relations, but a bad case of Internet Balls." Jean-Paul gave Nate a stern look. "And when you are still only a few weeks out from being a bag of bone fragments, then yes. If you just wanted company, you would have hailed me and told me to bring movies and Jeanne-Marie."

"About time I stopped playing the needy convalescent, don't you think?" Nathan tried to make it sound flippant; it came out sounding flat and drained, instead. "I'm going to start wearing on people's last nerve. Just you wait."

"And then they will truss you up and leave you on my doorstep anyway, so it is no use in getting my impatient with you, no matter why you are here," the Canadian deadpanned.

Nathan took another sip of his gingerale. It was a moment before he answered. "Trask died," he said. "Scott heard about it from someone at SHIELD, posted about it on the team board. I read it and thought 'Good'." And then had been hard-pressed to keep his lunch down, although he wasn't going to come out and say that. Nathan's jaw trembled for a moment before he clenched it. "Enemies, friends, it doesn't seem to matter. They all kick the fucking bucket."

Shrine, Alpha, and now Trask. All three dead and good damn riddance. It should have happened sooner. He also should have felt more satisfaction, less relief. "Some too soon, others not soon enough."

His words evoked a sudden, despairing laugh from Nathan - and then a cringe. He set his glass down, his other hand pressed to his side, his breathing ragged. "I... hate living in a world where I can be glad that someone's not going to get the chance to wake up again," he said unsteadily. "Kind of hate myself for feeling that way, too. Maybe I'm retiring at a good time."

"For God's sake, Nathan, this was Trask. Mourn the wasted chance, certainly, but we are all better off with the woman dead!"

Another, softer noise that might have been a laugh, and Nathan looked away, his eyes suspiciously bright. "Better off... I don't know, I'm sure there's some complicated psychological explanation for why I'm grieving for the woman who mind-raped me on a regular basis for months."

Jean-Paul's brow knitted and he managed to step away from his anger for a moment at the look on Nathan's face. "Probably. But we are complicated people, non? So we do not have to make sense. Not all of the time, anyway."

"I guess not." Nathan's voice was almost inaudible. He lifted his glass with an unsteady hand, taking another sip. It didn't really help with the raw-feeling throat. "You can hate someone, and care about them at the same time... she could have been family. Wasn't much less evil than some of my actual family. I saw what she saw, too... the Askani's future, everything that happened. You can't share the experience of genocide with someone and not look at them, and see what might have happened to you if you'd let it break you, too..."

Jean-Paul shook his head, pained as much by the gulf of understanding between them as the look on Nathan's face. "Less evil" was still evil. "Do you know what they are going to do with her?"

"Didn't even ask." He wrapped both hands around his glass. "I thought of asking for Carly and John's ashes, to scatter them here," he said, almost distractedly. "With Mick and Tim and Mac, over the lake... but I think the last thing I needed is to obsess about my dead any more than I already do. And Tara... Trask, wasn't one of my people. She just wanted to be."

That made him understand. Even made him feel for the woman for a split second before he got it under control. "Dammit Dayspring..." Jean-Paul rose to his feet and headed for the kitchen. "For your throat. What do you want?"

"I don't know," Nathan muttered. "Any suggestions? I was doing a lot of snarling at myself down at the boathouse... I talk to myself way too much down there sometimes. Except tonight the logic just wasn't happening."

"Hot drinks are less than appealing in this weather." That instant of empathy was being quickly eclipsed by anger at Trask. Do not fucking think about that woman. Never met her. Only know her picture. And now she is dead and does not mean anything. Concentrate on Nathan. "Would ice cream be too ridiculous?"

Nathan couldn't help it; he smiled, if in a wobbly sort of fashion. "See, if Ray was here, we could go hog-wild with sprinkles and three different kinds of syrup... then we'd get to peel her off the ceiling. A good time would be had by all."

Jean-Paul reappeared shortly with a half-empty carton of vanilla gelato. "Here. Honestly, Nathan? This place puts logic through the woodchipper. I do not think...I wish you did not mourn this woman. I do not think she deserves any part of your regard. But that you do...I do not know. It is hard for me to understand that sort of...attachment? Or compassion, I suppose."

"Call it the standard telepath's dysfunction," Nathan said after a moment, taking the carton of gelato and the accompanying spoon. "Understanding, whether you like it or not. The problem used to be not quite so... acute with me. I suppose that's what I get for letting Charles actually train me to be more than a half-assed excuse for a telepath."

"The Canadian judge has no complaints." Not about Nathan, anyway. The idea still made him want to crawl out of his skin.

"Ah, burnout," Nathan said, trying a spoonful of the gelato. "So much fun. And this is new, the whole... not having to pull myself together so that I'm functional in the field again. I think I just don't know what to make of it."

Jean-Paul quirked a tiny smile. "I do not suppose I could convince you that being able to sleep in is worth the disorientation? I thought not. But it is not so bad, I think. You just wind up with a different set of options."

"I need to eat my gelato and stop fussing, don't I?"