xp_logs | Moira/Nathan (This Afternoon)

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Moira steadied herself and brought up the rifle to her shoulder again. She hissed slightly at the pain it caused but ignored it. She kicked her discarded top shirt away from her leg and shook off the sweat that ran down the back of her tank top. She took the stance again, cocked and fired the weapon. She didn't even grunt at the kick back this time. The pain to her shoulder had deadened about an hour ago, the first hour, however, had been hell.

She could feel the sweat drip off the improvised pony tail she had made when she had gotten to the open glade. Instead of stopping, she fished around in her pocket for another bullet and slide it home. She went into a crouch this time, the snipering position Nathan had taught her a few years back. She caught her target in her sights and fired again.

Nathan had been able to hear the gunfire as soon as he'd left the mansion, and had followed the sound out to the range. His curiosity changed quickly into concern as he got close enough to get a good look at Moira. She had clearly been at it for a while; she was sweaty and exhausted-looking, and her stance didn't look quite steady. And there was blood all over her hand, Nathan thought with a frown. What had she done to herself?

He waited until she stopped to reload again, and then strode onto the range, deliberately into her line of fire. "If there's any steam left that you haven't blown off by now, Moira," he said evenly, "I suspect it's decided to stick around permanently."

Moira started, nearly dropping the rifle and nearly falling flat on her ass. "Nathan! Wha'...I didnae 'ear ye come up." She stood slowly and lowered the rifle, not looking at the bruised and flaming red area where the butt had been. It was already bruising quickly where the red was fading and it stood out harshly against the white of her skin and the tank top.

His first instinct, seeing that, was to wrench the rifle away and yell at her. Or find a handy body of water to dunk her in, one or the other. "You had your mind on killing the target," he said, moving a little closer to her and trying not to wince at how much pain and anger she was radiating. "Which is very thoroughly dead, by the way. You've kept up your practicing, I see."

"One o' them is, anyway," she remarked, eyes flickering to the target behind him. She absently wiped the hand that was bleeding on her jeans, getting off some of the excess blood. "An' aye, I 'ave. Comes in 'andy sometimes..." She glanced up at him and suddenly realized that something wasn't going to end well for her. She tugged the hair out of the pony tail and shivered a little as the sweat from it fell across her shoulders. "...'ow're ye feelin'?" Misdirection...perhaps she could convince him to go take a nap and then she'd finish beating the crap out of the targets.

It was better than letting Joe make her cry.

Nathan pressed his lips together tightly. "What did you do to your hand?" he asked, still in that same calm voice.

She blinked and glanced down at it. "...I think I hit a tree," she said simply, shrugging a little. Which brought a little bit of a wince to her face. Not only was the shoulder red, black and blue from the shooting, but it was also the shoulder she had dislocated. Moira fought off the pain by seeking out the anger at Joe again.

"What did the tree do?"

"It was there," she snapped. "An' it was either tha' or get on a plane an' fly ta En..." She stopped and huffed. "Anyway, 'tis nothin'...really." She eyed him. "Shouldn't ye be restin'?"

Misdirection, misdirection, misdirection, she thought to herself, belatedly realizing her hands were shaking slightly again.

Nathan took a deep breath that wasn't nearly as calming as it should have been. "I see I asked the wrong question," he said mildly. Between what he was sensing and her mention of England, he suspected he knew precisely what was wrong. "Let's try again. What did Joe do? And you do remember my standing offer, right?"

She shifted her gaze away from him and then tried to go around, back to the targets. "Aye, I remember," she said softly, about to ready the rifle again. "An'...nothin'...'tis always me, isna it?" The last
was whispered, mainly to herself and she shook her head violently.

This time, Nathan did reach out and take the rifle away from her. Moira gave him an indigant look and tried to snatch it back, but he held on to it, staring down at her with a mixture of anger and deep concern. "Bullshit," he said crisply, and she blinked at him. "You know better than that."

"Do I?" she gritted out, reaching for the rifle. Nathan simply held it above his head and looked down at her. She still tried to reach for it. "After all...nay good fer...anythin'...nay even a birthin' co..." She stopped herself, remembering she had never told Nathan that part on purpose. She ignored the fact she had said it, hoping the fact that she was struggling to get the gun would distract him from it.

The thought was uppermost in her mind, so colored with anger and grief and even an edge of self-loathing that he couldn't help but hear it, even when she didn't complete it aloud. His grip on the gun tightened spasmodically, and for a moment, if Joe MacTaggart had been in front of him, he would have cheerfully torn him limb-from-limb, and to hell with the promise he had made to Moira about leaving the man alone unless she specifically asked him for help.

Moira managed to get a hand on the rifle but quickly let go when a spasm went through her injured shoulder. "Damn it!" She grabbed it and gasped, struggling to hang on to something of the anger that was fueling her before. She didn't want to let it go, didn't want to face the pain, physical and emotional, without it. She blinked back tears quickly and gritted her teeth.

Nathan's anger melted away as he caught the suddenly vulnerable look in her eyes. He lowered the gun, but didn't give it back to her. "Come back inside," he said softly, feeling suddenly weary and sad, and completely unable to fix what needed to be fixed here. Words could inflict wounds that lasted for a lifetime if they were flung with enough malice. Why had she never told him that Joe had said something so vile? *A 'birthing cow'--MacTaggart, you piece of shit.* Moira shook her head, still holding her shoulder, and he let his breath out on a sigh. "I'm not letting you stay out here," he said as gently as he could. "You've already hurt yourself, and that's not allowed."

"...I broke me phone," she said weakly, finally giving in. "'e called me, today. Tellin' me ta stop prancin' around over 'ere, 'urtin' his career." She turned and looked over the forest, cradling her shoulder. She shivered. The cold was getting to her without the anger racing through her veins. "I...I think 'e 'ad somethin' ta do wit' Muir bein' ransacked by th' government..."

Nathan mustered a faint smile. "And you're absolutely sure you don't want me to kill him?" he asked, for about the fifteenth time in the last six years.

She was shivering non-stop now. "...dinnae let me answer tha' right now." Moira closed her eyes and felt herself drift back to when Kevin was born...and Joe walked out. "...damn it..." She sniffled, embarrassed.

Nathan knelt for a moment and set the gun down, careful not to lose his balance as he did so. The dizziness wasn't so bad - the fresh air was helping - but it was still there. Although he figured the headache probably had as much to do with his blood pressure at the moment as it did with anything else. "Sorry," he said quietly, slipping out of his coat and arranging it over her shoulders. "Trying to lighten the moment in my own inimitable way." She looked up at him, her eyes too bright with tears, and he shook his head. "It just kills me that he can still hurt you like this, all these years later," he said, his voice still low but almost savage now. "That he's still vicious, or careless enough. We're supposed to gain wisdom as we age."

Moira curled the coat around herself, suddenly looking much smaller and more vulnerable than she had ever had before. "Snakes dinnae change," she said softly, willing the tears not to spill over. She -hated- crying. "'e'll always be able to...Kevin...failed 'im an' me marriage..."

"No," Nathan said forcefully. Gritting his teeth, he reached out and took her hands in his, careful of the injured one. "I don't want to ever hear you say that again," he went on, his voice rough. "You did everything you could for Kevin, and as for your marriage--damn it, Moira. You weren't the one who cut and ran when things got tough. He left you, and he left Kevin. Joe MacTaggart is a weak, cowardly excuse for a man and he does not deserve your tears." The last words came out more fiercely than he'd intended, but Moira blinked up at him, and he could tell she was actually listening, absorbing his words.

She clutched his hands and realized how cold hers were in comparison to his. She was touched more than she can say by him reaching out for her. And sometimes kindness is what undoes us all. She closed her eyes and felt the tears slide down her face. "I know, 'tis jus' been rough...guess I've been runnin' meself so ragged tha' he hit me where it 'urts th' most." Moira sniffled and hiccupped a little. This was incredibly embarrassing.

"I'm not surprised," Nathan muttered, taken aback by a sudden, overwhelming protective instinct. At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to carry her back to her room, force-feed her, and then make her get some more sleep. Not such a bad idea, maybe, but--well, wanting to kill Joe was so much less complicated. "I told you that you were doing too much. You're exhausted, Moira." And the fact that he had descended upon her this week certainly hadn't helped. He let go of her injured hand, but held onto the other as he bent to pick up the gun. Straightening, he started in the direction of the house, pulling her along with him. "We're going back inside," he said, putting a bit of steel into his voice. "You are going to eat something, and then you have a choice of either going back to bed or doing something sedate and utterly frivolous with me. It's up to you."

"...can I do bot'?" she asked weakly. "Nay goin' ta be able ta sleep fer a while..." She vaguely wondered where all the "grr" in her had gone but there was a part of her that was enjoying holding his hand a little too much. "...ow...ow ow...somethin' wit' lots o' asprin an' nay movin' much...ow..." Her aching shoulder now fully registered itself in her brain.

"Scrabble in bed?" Nathan suggested, and then hesitated for a moment as lights started to flicker at the edges of his peripheral vision again. *Not now, damn it!* he swore silently, glancing down at Moira, who was looking exhausted and bedraggled and barely capable of getting herself back to the mansion, let alone worrying about him, too. The lights grew brighter, their shimmering increasingly painful, as if someone was stabbing needles into his brain. He focused on putting one foot in front of the other. The mansion wasn't far, he told himself. If he had to pass out, he could pass out once he was inside, where someone would notice what sort of shape Moira was in and look after her first--

"I like scrabble," Moira replied and then promptly ran into Nathan's back when he stopped abruptly. "Nathan?" She got a good look at the glazed expression on his face and cursed. She managed to keep a hold on his hand when she went to stand closer to him. He wasn't responding and she knew how this little dance went. But perhaps...

This was going probably going to hurt but him falling over in the middle of the woods was not the best option. Moira quickly braced herself against him and then as quickly as she could given her condition, hit him right behind the knees like he had taught her to do. She braced herself for impact but found herself nearly driven down to her knees as well when his full weight hit her. She managed to keep her balance, barely and hooked her arms around him. Now the tricky part...

Which was rudely interrupted by a giant shudder running through his body. Something was going on inside that mind of his and whatever it was made him lock his arms around Moira's waist. She gasped as the air was driven out of her body and her shoulder screamed in protest when Nathan's not-so-light head landed on it.

"Nate? Nathan...hon, tha's nay so comfortable," she gasped out, unaware of what she let slip by. He made a noise that sounded almost like a sob, and his muscles went slack as he pitched sideways, hitting the ground before she could try and break his fall. Not precisely the sort of landing she had been trying to accomplish for him, but not as bad as it could have been.

She knelt by his side and slipped her arms under his shoulders. She heaved slightly and managed to get his head and most of his shoulders onto her lap. She was panting from exhaustion at this point but she made soothing noises as Nathan twitched and moaned slightly. Moira didn't know what to do really and she settled for running a hand soothingly over his hair and face. "Nathan, come back ta me," she whispered every once in a while and just waited.

He couldn't get free. They were piled on top of him, crushing him. Bodies, men and women and children, so many of them. More being thrown onto the pile, and he could hear the soldiers laughing. Could smell flesh burning as they lit the fires--

Moira's voice, calling to him. It was impossibly far away, but he focused on it, trying to let go of everything else. Not real, this wasn't real--or at least he wasn't really here, but that didn't mean anything as the smell and the smoke choked him. Even when he managed to open his eyes and look up at her, to focus at least partway on the world around him, he could still hardly breathe for it. The laughter was still echoing in the back of his mind, and he could still hear the prisoners screaming and weeping as they were lined up to be executed.

She saw his eyes lock onto her but they were still searching. She leaned over, not bothering with the hair that spilled onto him. "Aye, tha's it, Nathan." Soft, steady, constant, keeping the pain and fear from her voice. Moira kept running her hand over his forehead and hair. "Fight it, come back ta me." Urgent, strong, comforting.

"M-Moira," he whispered, and the noise receded. The smell lingered, but he could smell the damp earth, too. "Didn't--mean--sorry--"

"Shhh, nothin' ta apologize for." She kept up the soothing, or hopefully soothing, motion of running her hand through his hair. "'Tis okay."

Moira watched as Nathan forced himself to relax but was pleasantly surprised when he didn't push her hand away. Maybe it was simply that he was too tired to try but...it was a nice feeling. She gazed down at him fondly. How easily they switched roles of protector and protectee. She waited until he had calmed himself and then tapped him on his head. "All right ye, ye owe me a game of scrabble. Looks like we're bot' due fer it."