xp_logs | Nathan and Marie, Saturday afternoon

After their exchange in Nathan's journal, Marie comes to deliver on a certain promise she made some time ago.

Some of the voices had started sobbing. Pleading for their lives, Nathan thought dimly, staring unseeing at the pages of 'The Cardinal of the Kremlin'. He could almost see them, chained prisoners kneeling in rows, green-armored soldiers walking behind him, killing each person with a single blow from a bladed weapon. He could almost...

No. Nathan squeezed his eyes shut, his breathing going ragged. *Go away--go away--* he thought wildly. The image receded, but the sobbing was still there.

Marie knocked sharply on the door. The last comment had done it. She was angry but worse, she was scared. Nathan needed to fight to live and his present mood was unnerving her.

"Nathan?"

Someone calling his name. His name, not the name of the Askani officer who was watching the prisoners being murdered, knowing he would be the last. Nathan opened his eyes again, blinking as the room went in and out of focus. "Come in," he called hoarsely, not sure who he was talking to.

Marie let herself in and crossed the room to where Nathan was sitting in his chair, looking haggard and unfocussed. "We need to talk." She crossed the room and stood in front of him. "Are you here? Are you with me?"

"I--" Nathan stopped, squeezing his eyes shut. Concentrate, he told himself. Here and now. Not there. "Mostly," he said very softly, opening his eyes again and staring up at her.

"We need to talk about this bullshit attitude of yours, Nathan." Marie was way out of patience and tact. "I know you're tired, and I know this seems hopeless, but you cannot give up like this."

Nathan didn't answer for a moment. He reached out, closing the book in his lap and running a hand over the cover. "Who said anything about giving up?" he asked dully. "What is, is."

"No, it isn't," Marie's voice rose. "You believe that? You're going to go all fatalistic and defeatist on me, Nathan? If what is, is, then what you see /will be/. Do you want that?"

It provoked something him, a thought that had been half-formed for weeks now, and he looked up at her. "But isn't it?" he asked slowly. "They're there, dying. I'm here, watching. Even if this is all some way of... warning us, even if things change and none of it comes to pass... they're still there. It's all still happened." I'll still remember, he wanted to say, but didn't.

"You know this? You haven't lived your life yet, Nathan. These things unfold... what if they're simultaneous, or what if the time streams are branched and all you get to see is one path? You. Don't. Know." Her eyes were intense, her voice fierce. "What you see, all those deaths, those little children suffering and screaming, Nathan... can you really risk not doing everything you can, including fighting every damn inch of the way to maintain your sense of self in case you find a way to change it all? Can you afford not to do your best, for them if not for you, if not for Moira?"

The anger boiled up and out of him so suddenly that he had no defense against it. "So they come to me for help?" he snarled feverishly at her, pushing himself up out of the chair. The book fell to the ground with a thud. "Me? Someone living two thousand years in the past, who tries to help people and winds up getting them killed, or worse? Great strategy there, really--"

"We don't get to choose," Marie shot back. "Did you ever get to pick who saved you, Nathan? It doesn't make sense. It doesn't have to be beautiful or synchronous. We take what we get. They're drowning and they're pulling you in. You want to save anyone, you fight back. The drowning have no sense of reason."

It was so close to his mental image of the ocean of memories, trying to pull him in, that he turned away, the breath catching in his chest with something close to a whimper. He grabbed at the back of the chair, trying to steady himself. "I fail," he breathed. "I fail them every time, and I live long enough to know that before I die--" Pain twisted in his chest, cutting off any further words, and Nathan gripped the back of the chair desperately, his shoulders hunching.

"You fail no-one." Marie reached out for him, invaded his personal space, grabbing his shoulders. "Nathan, every breath you take, you win."

In a moment of blind panic, Nathan tried to jerk away, but couldn't. He heard, dimly, the furniture in the room rattle as his telekinesis shivered through the air around him. But he could sense Marie, too, her usual indecipherable presence clearer, suddenly, clearer and so bright that it was burning through the haze, so undisputably of the here and now that he could almost feel himself being pulled back. The voices were howling, enraged, but he was on his knees all of a sudden, staring up at her, and there was a clarity to the world that hadn't been there in days.

"Marie," he muttered distractedly.

"Hi, honey," Marie said tearfully, looking down at him. "Are you okay?"

"I don't know," he whispered thickly, his shoulders slumped. The haze was gone, but that only meant the despair was sharper, and he could feel it pushing at him, trying to drown his thoughts. "I'm here. For now. I don't know how long it's going to last..."

"Nathan." Marie took his face in her hands. "Fight it. So you stay, so you go... we get you back, we find a way. I told you. I told you we'd take care of you, that we'd manage it. Don't give up. Have faith."

"I don't know how," he said, almost wildly. "Death, how do you fight death... I've never found anything I can't fight before, Marie, I don't know what to do..."

"You /live/, Nathan. You breathe. You /don't/ give up. You can't fight it with your hands, you can't even fight it with your mind sometimes, you have to fight it with your soul." Marie reached to help him to his feet. "You have faith. .../please/."

"I know I have to," he whispered, almost in anguish. "I know I can't leave her... but it's so hard, Marie. I'm so tired, and I keep forgetting who I am--"

"I know you are. I know you do. We'll keep telling you, I promise." She lifted him easily, gently, holding him up. "We're not near done with you, Nathan. I know it's hard but you're not alone. Not ever. If you lose faith, if you forget, I'll come tell you again."

"The storm's coming back," he muttered, dimly aware of the fact that she was holding him up. Images cascaded through his mind, battle-darkened skies and wind... "Their banner's there again... they're not going to retreat..."

Marie's expression was deeply sad as she picked Nathan up and put him in bed. "And neither should you, Nathan," she said, stroking his hair with one hand as she pulled the covers up over him with the other. "Neither should you."