Nathan and his contact, Friday night

[x-cable.livejournal.com]

After doing a little shopping for Moira, Nathan arrives at the bar to meet the person who has information for him. He isn't expecting who he finds.



It caught his attention, twinkling at the edge of his vision as he walked down the street, and Nathan paused, turning to look in the window of the little jewelry store. The pieces were unusual, he saw; mostly Celtic in design, but definitely upscale. Rather lovely, too, Nathan thought dimly, but then focused on the ring that had so successfully broken his train of thought. It was platinum knotwork, exquisitely detailed and set with sapphires... and perfect, he told himself. He hadn't forgotten Moira's birthday was rapidly approaching; it was one of the reasons he had come into the city as early as he had today.

He hadn't expected the right gift to leap out at him like this. Oh, well, he thought in amusement, turning back towards the door of the little shop. It wasn't as if he was going to complain. He wasn't all that fond of lengthy shopping.

***

The bar was about the sort of place he had expected, for a meeting of this nature. Nathan went in and took a seat in an empty booth, wondering at how calm he felt. The place was more or less empty, and he couldn't sense any ill intentions being directed his way by the few people who were here. He had checked around outside as thoroughly as he could, too, and the same had been true. If this was a trap, it was a particularly well-disguised one, he reflected.

He was there for perhaps five minutes when the door opened and an older man came in, looking around for a moment and then making a beeline for his booth. As he approached, Nathan studied his face, his calm deteriorating into a sort of unsettled disbelief as he realized that he knew this person. That wasn't the surprise; he had wondered if it would be someone he knew, but this, he hadn't expected. Not his very first hand-to-hand instructor.

"MacInnis," he said unsteadily as the older man lowered himself onto the opposite bench.

"Wasn't sure you'd remember me," Colin MacInnis said with a faint smile, laying both hands flat on the table between them. He looked--weathered, but then, he had looked at least a little weathered even back then. He had visibly aged, his dark hair now completely iron-gray and a whole host of new lines in his face, but those keen dark eyes were the same as Nathan remembered them. If he closed his eyes and focused, he could almost be back in that training room, facing the younger version of this man across the mats. "Been a long time."

"You're not still with the program," Nathan said uncertainly. MacInnis had only been there at the training facility for those first couple of years, and there had been something--something the other instructors had whispered about at a meal one night, thinking the candidates weren't paying attention.

MacInnis shook his head. "No," he said calmly. "Haven't been for a good twenty years." He looked up, waving at the bartender, who came over with two beers..

Nathan blinked. "I--" He waited until the bartender had gone again, then sipped at the beer, part of him pointing out that he had promised Moira he wouldn't drink, but... needed to buy himself a minute here. "How did you even know how to get in touch with me?" he finally asked, confused. A former Mistra instructor. A former Mistra instructor who had been one of the few to ever show him any sort of kindness... this was not what he had expected from this meeting.

"I may be retired, son, but I haven't lost all my marbles," MacInnis quipped, and Nathan remembered that dry sense of humor and how much easier it had made those lessons. "You look better than I expected. Scuttlebutt says that Moira MacTaggart dragged you back here for medical treatment."

Nathan tried not to gape at him, taking another sip of his beer instead. "I think I'd like some answers, if you don't mind," he said, managing to make the words a little more level this time.

MacInnis shrugged slightly, still smiling. "There are a number of us who soured on the program over the years," he said, as if that was explanation enough. "We try to help those who manage to get themselves out. Well," he corrected himself, the smile fading, "we try to help those who want out to get there, too." His eyes lingered on Nathan, something close to sadness in them. "Sometimes we're more successful than others."

"What are you saying?" Nathan asked slowly.

"We were on the way to the hotel that day," MacInnis said softly. "The retrieval team beat us there by about an hour. We missed you by about fifteen minutes." Nathan stared at him fixedly, his mind trying to assimilate this new information even as he reeled inwardly from it. MacInnis said nothing for a long moment, as if giving him a chance to get a good look, judge whether he was telling the truth. Which he was, Nathan thought, stunned. "Drink your beer," the older man urged then. "If it means anything, we buried them. Little cemetary out Sacramento way."

He thought of Aliya and Tyler, of how he had felt leaving their bodies behind, and then about there being a grave. Somewhere he could go to talk to them, some sign that they hadn't just been forgotten, unclaimed corpses disposed of when no family stepped forward... "So this is why you brought me here? To tell me this?" Nathan asked, his voice shaking.

"We were planning to help you get out of the country after," MacInnis said, as if picking up right where he'd left off. "But you had other ideas." He shook his head, giving Nathan a look that seemed to mix old irritation and compassion. "You would have made our lives so much easier if you'd just headed to Mexico that night, son. I can't blame you, though." For the first time, he took a sip of his own beer. "We did our best to keep some of the heat off you, and then when you finally got out, we did what we could."

Nathan took another gulp of his. "I'm supposed to believe you?" he demanded, trying to think of what 'what we could' had entail. There had been escapes that had been closer than should have logically ended up well for him, but he hadn't seen any signs of someone else helping him out...

"You should be able to tell if I'm telling you the truth." MacInnis shook his head again, his expression tightening in worry. "You're on the edge of a big hole here, Nathan. I don't know what the hell you told Xavier, or what he told the President, but it's stirred up a hornet's nest."

"I figured," Nathan said. His head was quite literally spinning, and he started to think that this wasn't just all the new and unexpected information being crammed into it.

MacInnis was giving him a carefully measuring look now, a faint smile playing on his lips. "I remember you when they first brought you in," he said, an edge of sadness in his voice. "I told Rika Locke... remember her? She would've been your first tactics instructor, I think." Nathan stared at him, not nodding, not reacting, and MacInnis went on. "Anyhow, I remember telling her that we were going to have trouble with you. You were a handful, to put it mildly. A walking attitude. But tough enough to make it."

"I don't like reminiscing," Nathan muttered. His vision was blurring, and he really ought to be panicking, but MacInnis was acting like there was nothing wrong, and for some reason he couldn't muster the coordination to get up...

"Took them the better part of six months to beat the attitude out of you... or did they?" MacInnis chuckled softly, and it sounded strange to Nathan, as if the sound was coming from somewhere underwater. "I always wondered if you'd just finally learned to pretend."

"What do you want?" he managed to say, and the words sounded slurred even to him.

"To help you," MacInnis said, and there was such calm conviction in his words, radiating from his mind. "That's all."

"What was in the beer?"

"Something to knock you out," MacInnis said, and this time Nathan did manage to lurch to his feet. But his balance wasn't there, and the room was rotating, contracting. "Easy," he heard MacInnis say, even as he sensed/saw two of the apparently harmless patrons moving slowly in their direction. "We're not going to hurt you."

He couldn't call out on the link, his thoughts were splintering and falling apart. Nathan took two staggering steps in the direction of the door, but that was all he could manage.

He didn't remember hitting the floor.