xp_logs | Paige and Nathan, Wednesday afternoon / Amanda and Nathan, Wednesday early evening

Arriving early for the Mandarin class, Nathan finds Paige already there. The two of them have words about Nathan's treatment of Angelo the day before and the circumstances in general. Nathan tries to put his new philosophy on how to deal with the students into practice. It's not nearly as straightforward as he thought.

He was early for the Mandarin class. The lesson with Manuel had left him unsettled (he had the sneaking suspicion that leaving that room in a pissy mood was going to start being a habit) and he hadn't been hungry, so he'd bypassed the kitchen and come straight to the classroom where the Mandarin was held, thinking he'd get a first look at some of these quizzes. He was missing Doug already.

Nathan stopped in the hallway, blinking as he sensed someone else's presence already in the room. A fairly disciplined presence, by the standards of most students around here... Paige? His jaw clenched and he hobbled forward and through the door. He had made a decision as to how he was going to handle this. Starting to apply it today was probably a good idea.

"Afternoon," he said in a neutral voice to Paige, limping forward to the front of the room.

Paige didn't bother to look up at him, offering a mere wave and an equally neutral, "Afternoon." Her logic was if she didn't look at him then he would just go away and she wouldn't have to hate him. It was a good logic for someone who kept insisting on not sleeping. The sound of paper on paper as she turned the page in the large textbook in front of her disturbed the otherwise silent room.

"I don't have the quizzes marked yet," he said, sitting down. "Probably by next class." He eyed her for a moment, noticing the obvious signs of fatigue. It seemed surreal that just a couple of days ago, he had been chuckling with Angelo over the apparent solution to the problem between him, Paige, and Jono. Now he would be just as happy if he didn't have to talk to any of them outside class. The Askani hissed disapprovingly at him, and he ignored them stonily, opening the folder in front of him. "You finished early," he said, remembering her heading out a good fifteen minutes ahead of anyone else. "No problems with the tonal stuff?"

Why wouldn't he just shut up and leave her alone before she let go of what little self restraint she had and ended up chucking her very large Mandarin book at him while screaming and cursing? She took a deep breath for her next answer. "No problems, sir." He could figure out the answers to the rest of it on his own. Better that than her voice betraying her and starting to shake.

He looked up at her, feeling his features settle into even colder lines. Reaching out telekinetically, he nudged the door shut. "Do you have a problem with me, Ms. Guthrie?" he asked, deliberately kicking down into zen level. He was needing to use that last resort far too much this week, but he didn't plan on losing his temper. Not again.

Paige looked up from her book giving him an innocent little smile. "Should I, Mr. Dayspring?" There was something dark behind her eyes, just peeking out behind the radiance of her teeth. She's played this game before. She always wins.

"Your shields are much better than most of your classmates," Nathan said calmly. Calm, cold, collected, he told himself. This needed to be brought out into the open, if she was going to continue in the class. Didn't mean he had to get emotionally involved. He was done with that. "But they're not that good."

"Why thank you, sir. That means a lot coming from you," Paige replied, tilting her head slightly to the side so that the sunlight fell on her hair. "However, stay out of my head, please."

"Keep your thoughts in your own head and I'd be delighted to," Nathan answered, starting to sort through the quizzes. The handwriting around here was atrocious, in general.

Paige smiled again. She probably hadn't ever stopped, just widened it a little. "I'll work on that, thank you." It was time to go back to her books now. Past time, actually, one more word and there would be snapping. Giant amounts of snapping. Taking a breath and letting it sigh out she returned to her Mandarin.

"Tell me something, Paige," Nathan said evenly, finding her quiz. "How are you planning to learn from me if you want to tear my head off?"

"Incentive. Proving you wrong would bring me such delight," Paige answered in such a polite, even tone that it could have easily been mistaken for exactly that outside the door. She hadn't bothered to look up again.

A trace of wary puzzlement cracked his icy calm. "Wrong about what, precisely?"

Paige looked up at him through blonde eyelashes. "Why, that the school is filled with idiot children who deserve nothing more than the rough side of your tongue and a dip in the lake of course. What else have I missed?"

Nathan met her eyes unwaveringly. "I see," he said after a moment, and then looked back down at the quizzes. "Good luck with that."

Something in her broke and she bit her lip, looking away; glad he had first so as to miss it. She could only do this for so long and she'd liked Mr. Dayspring. A lot, really. This only proved so much that she believed in very wrong. Swallowing hard, Paige picked up her pencil, scratching down the notes she'd been working on earlier.

Nathan rubbed at his eyes. "I'm sorry, Paige," he said quietly, and heard the pencil stop scratching. "That was unkind. As was my behavior with Angelo yesterday." He looked up at her, gazing at the bent blonde head steadily. "I will tell him that. It won't be happening again." It, and a great deal of other things he'd been doing were now officially in the past.

"Of course you're sorry. No one likes to make a little girl sad," Paige spit back before she could catch herself. Her eyes were an unnatural shade of blue now and she couldn't help but continue. "Have you ever thought that maybe we don't need another person who practices tough love, Mister Dayspring? That maybe the reason we were drawn to you is because in this huge house filled with all these "adults" all we have managed is to be told over and over again that we're stupid, insolent children? The only support we get these days is from ourselves and even that has been shattered, hasn't it?" She was standing now, hands braced on the desk if only to hold herself up and trying to regain her breath.

Nathan stared at her for a moment, his calm fracturing a little further as her thoughts lashed out at him like whips biting into shields already weakened from a morning with Manuel. "It was a mistake, how I handled things with Angelo," he said as steadily as he could. The pain he'd felt last night, talking about this with Moira, was closing vice-like around his chest again, and the comfortable, emotionless void was almost completely gone. "I don't have any right to lash out at any of you, and I'm not going to do it anymore. I won't be practicing tough love again anytime soon, Paige. I'm not particularly good at it."

She sniffed and shook her head, half trying to clear it and half in disbelief. "You can be our teacher and our friend you know. It's possible. But neither friends nor teachers have the right to treat us like you do," she said, trying very hard not to break down in front of him. "I'm sorry! I know I'm responsible for Sarah's condition and it's not like I don't feel bad about it because I love her and she's hurt and it's my fault and I know! I know! And all anyone can do about it is tell me I'm stupid and I don't understand and..." Paige stopped, rubbing at her eyes and dropping into a whisper. "I never thought she would do it and I'm sorry."

Deep breath, Nathan told himself. "You're not responsible," he said quietly. "Sarah and the people she went after are the ones responsible for her condition." He studied her for a moment, thinking. "Do you want me to explain?" he said, without a trace of condescension, no edge at all to the words. "Why I got as angry as I did? If you want to know, I will tell you. If you'd rather just stay angry at me, we can do that, too."

"I don't ever want to be angry with you, sir," Paige answered, her tone still quiet. She'd deflated somehow, all the anger run out of her in one solid sweep of words.

"I'll take that as a yes, then," Nathan said, leaning his chin on his hand, his eyes lingering on her face. "It's two things, really," he said after a long moment. "Firstly, it's the week of missed opportunities, between that email Angelo projected at me and the one that set Jono off, thankfully in public. I think of what could have been done in that time if we'd known what might be happening... Charles could have found Grey Crow with Cerebro. I could have hit up my contacts and dug up some information, since Pete wouldn't have been around to do it." He paused for another long moment. "Even if no one had gone anywhere near Sarah in that time, there might have been the chance to come up with some sort of realistic plan, something that wouldn't have resulted in Sarah nearly getting killed and the team who went after her getting chewed up saving her."

Paige nodded slowly; these were all things she already knew, between having been told repeatedly and figuring it out herself. "I know, sir. I know." She laughed suddenly, rubbing back the last bits of her tears with the heels of her hands. "God. And to think I came here to save lives. Some super hero I am. Some super genius, too. I seem to have a real knack for doing stupid things, hm? I'm sorry."

"I know you are," Nathan said very quietly. "The second thing... well, never mind the second thing. It's more about me than it is about any of you, and I'd decided I was going to stop doing that." He took a deep breath, staring down at his hands for a moment. "I am sorry, Paige. About losing my temper with Angelo. But it's shown me what I've been doing wrong, here, so at the very least it won't happen again."

Paige was staring down at her book, and Nathan sighed. "Sarah's going to make it," he said, "which is more than most people in that sort of situation get. You've got a chance to help her through the aftermath of this. I think that's the most important thing here. The rest..." He smiled very slightly, a smile that was more unsteady that it should have been, more of a betrayal. "Just... promise me this'll be a learning experience, Paige. If nothing else."

"Of... of course," Paige stumbled, unable to raise her eyes. Part of her knew that if she could go back in time she probably couldn't have changed a thing. "That's one thing I tend to do right. Learning I mean."

"I'd picked up on that," Nathan said with a ghost of a smile, looking back down at her quiz. His eyes were trying very hard to blur on him, and he swallowed past the tightness in this throat. "This is good," he said, his voice wavering. "You've got this all right. You'll be chatting in Mandarin before you know it."

There were footsteps in the hall outside, and Nathan glanced down at his watch. Time for class, thankfully, he thought, and concentrated on getting his game face back on. It was much harder than it should have been.

A few hours later, Nathan, increasingly feeling the strain of the telepathic atmosphere in the mansion, looks for some refuge in the library, and runs right into Amanda, who's also deeply upset over what's happened to Sarah. He tries to take the logical approach and manages to make perhaps a little bit of sense, but Amanda being Amanda, she eventually sees through him.

Feeling drained, yet oddly on edge, Nathan limped into the library, his only ambition to find a quiet corner and do some reading. He would have gone up to the room, but he didn't want to communicate his mood to Moira, who needed to rest after having been up literally all night.

A familiar small figure at one of the tables by the window drew his attention, and as she looked up at him, he sighed, nodding a bit awkwardly at Amanda.

Closing the book in front of her - one of her large, leather-bound magic texts, he noticed - she nodded back. She looked tired, and worried, and would not have denied it if someone had said she was sulking. "Hey," she said, her voice subdued.

For a moment, he was genuinely torn. But this was Amanda, one of the few kids he'd done any actual good for (although balanced against the harm he'd done her, he wasn't sure it meant anything), and he couldn't disengage completely from any of them, let alone her. "Hard at work?" he said with a ghost of a smile, limping over.

"Yeah." Amanda's returning smile wasn't much better than his, but some of the worry left her face at the sight of him. "As someone reminded me, me track record ain't exactly that good with the magic, so I might as well try t' fill the gaps, do some good." She shrugged. "Strange says another week before I can Heal again, so I don't know why I'm botherin'. I have t' keep reminding meself Sarah's got a healin' factor an' that she'll be fine without me."

"And no one else is critical," Nathan said quietly, his eyes drifting down to his leg. He hadn't been either, of course. "They'll all recover. Although I'm sure the healing would be welcome once Strange says you're up to it."

"Hope so. I'm tryin' t' do it properly this time, only I don't take well t' waitin'. 'Specially when it's the people I care about. Bad enough Pete let someone use him for target practice, but I know better 'n t' try an' trick him into lettin' me heal him. Rom'd have me hide, or what was left of it once he was done." With a sigh, Amanda rubbed her eyes. "What a fuckin' mess. I still can't believe it's happenin' - Sarah always comes across as so fuckin' undestructible."

"She bit off more than she could chew," Nathan said, no energy at all in his voice. He couldn't muster anything at this point, not even a flicker of anger. "And Alison and the others who went in after her didn't have the information they needed. It's a wonder it turned out as well as it did, really."

"Christ, I knew she was goin' after 'em, but I thought it was Friends of Humanity, or some fucked-up shite like that. Not military. Not someone she'd already trained with." A wobble entered Amanda's voice despite her efforts to stop it. "I would've emailed her, told her t' stop an' think 'bout it, or at least take Shinobi with her... Not that she'd would've listened, not t' me, not after what I said t' her before she left." Closing her eyes tightly against the encroaching tears, she dug her nails into her palms. "Fuck. What if this is my fault? What if she decided t' show me she wasn't a coward?"

Nathan leaned forward in his chair a little. "Amanda," he said quietly. "Look at me." She looked up at him, blinking back tears, and he shook his head. "Sarah made her choices," he said, his tone just as even, as lifeless as before. "I won't lie to you. You should have told someone. But you didn't have the information
for long, and you didn't have all of it. She shouldn't have put you in that position in the first place." He stopped, taking a deep breath and leaning back. "The real, critical mistakes were hers. Don't torment yourself by taking responsibility for her actions."

"I know, I _know_, it was a bloody stupid thing t' do. But she's my mate, an' mates should be there for each other, 'specially if one of them's fuckin' suicidal. Where the fuck would I have been if Ange hadn't been there? I should've done somethin', said somethin', only it was so quick - I only got tol... found out the night before all this happened." Scrubbing at her eyes with a fragment of tissue she had dug out of her pocket, Amanda took a deep, shuddering breath. "I don't do well at the waitin' thing," she said at last, when she had herself marginally back under control.

"You can be here for her now," Nathan said, dimly relieved that she was pulling herself back from the brink. He really didn't think he was up to it at the moment. "Help her pick up the pieces. I suspect she'll probably need it."

"I'll try. 'S why I asked Strange 'bout lettin' me do healing spells again - it's what I can do. I ain't so good at the rest of it, the makin' people feel better by talkin' t' 'em," said Amanda, looking down at the book in front of her without much enthusiasm. "An' Yana 'n Lee were right, I would've been shredded out there. 'S why I didn't go. But fuck it all, doesn't wantin' t' help count for somethin'? People keep tellin' me it's important t' care about other people, but when you show you do, they have a go at you for it."

"The most caring thing, the most helpful thing anyone who got that first email could have done was to tell someone what Sarah was planning," Nathan said, his voice flat but no edge to the words. "It would have blown her happy little revenge fantasy all to hell, yes. Might have destroyed a friendship. But if the X-Men had been able to do anything but react at the last minute, Sarah and Alison might not be lying in medlab right now." He paused. "Sometimes the only real way to show you care about someone is to hurt them, Amanda."

A low, mirthless chuckle broke from her. "Fuckin' ironic, ain't it? This is what it was like for you lot when Rack came after me, when I took off for Mexico." The laughter became something close to a sob, and she bit down on her lip, hard. "Rule of fuckin' three come back t' bite me in the arse. Karma's a bitch." She shook her head at herself, and looked back up at Nate. "I figured you'd be stalkin' the halls, trackin' down the people who did know an' givin' 'em what for."

"Forget karma," Nathan said woodenly. "We make our own fate, and this is human error, all the way." She was blinking at him, and he shrugged slightly, then responded to the rest of what she'd said. "As for stalking the halls... not my place." The next words slipped out almost of their own accord, and a distant part of him was mildly horrified at himself. "I've chosen sides, decided to be just another adult. So I'm the enemy now, and to be honest, I don't have it in me to go looking for a fight."

"'Not yer place'? What the fuck's that supposed t' mean? An' since when was this 'bout sides, 'bout you bein' the enemy?" Anger and fear kindled in Amanda's expression, and she clamped down as hard as she could on the link to spare Manuel the headache after the one she'd given him yesterday. "If you think yer my enemy..." She couldn't finish the thought.

"I don't want to think that." The words came out tight, audible pain beneath them, and he swallowed hard, pushing it away. Zen level was beyond him at this point in the day, but he could still shut down. Still go dead, if he tried hard enough. Surely he could. But he kept watching her, his eyes burning with weariness. "I hope... I hope you don't think that." He took as deep a breath as he could, trying to ignore what felt like a vice tightening around his chest. "But I handled... yesterday very badly. Finding out about the email."

"Yer the telepath, you tell me what I'm thinkin'. For fuck's sake, Nate, if for one minute you could think that I'd..." Amanda's voice was raw with hurt, and she clenched her fists tighter to contain the pain, give her something to focus on so she wouldn't fall apart. "Yesterday was a fuckin' awful day. They happen. It ain't any reason t' push us away, call us the enemy."

Nathan flinched as Amanda pushed her thoughts at him and shifted in his chair, fighting the 'flight' urge. "Don't," he said, almost a plea, making a helpless gesture as if to ward off the agitated, too-forceful thoughts. The words spilled out almost feverishly. "I just c-can't, I'm doing it wrong and I'm just hurting people..."

He couldn't block her out - Amanda realised she was projecting and tried to quieten her mind, unsuccessfully. There'd been too much stress lately, and his words had set off an almost primal fear of rejection in her. So she did the next best thing - she cast her shielding spell, the one Strange had taught her, envisioning a wall between them. As always, her visualisation actualised, a blueish glow surrounding her. "You know who you sound like?" she asked, when she had the spell in place. "You sound like me. An' you didn't let me get away with wantin' t' close meself off, remember? You told me it'd be like a part of me dyin', an' you wouldn't let me do that. Well, I won't let you do it neither." It might have been more effective if her voice hadn't been so bloody shaky.

"It's not the..." Nathan stopped, squeezing his eyes shut. "I blew it," he said a bit wildly, thinking of what Paige had said to him, "and not just by being just like all the others but I wrecked...something, I wrecked sometimes between you guys and I don't know how to... I couldn't not see it, I didn't go looking..."

"Nate, for fuck's sake, snap out of it! Yer scarin' the crap out of me here." Amanda got up, tried to touch his arm... and winced as the shield crackled and spat sparks, like static electricity. "Nate I dunno what yer talkin' 'bout with the wreckin', but you didn't fuck up. We did that, all by ourselves, by not thinkin' t' tell someone 'bout what Sarah was gunna do, even if we didn't know when she was gunna do it. Please, Nate, don't do this, not t' me..."

Control yourself, an icy cold voice from the back of his mind said to him brutally. Self-indulgent idiot. The Askani were...buzzing, agitated, calling out to him yet sounding oddly muffled. Nathan sucked in a shaky breath, opening his eyes and flinching a little at the way his head spun. "I'm sorry," he said, and the words came out slow and detached-sounding. "I feel very odd today..." No 'I', the voice went on inexorably. "You... shouldn't...couldn't have known, Amanda. Any of you, really. Too harsh... I'm not being fair..."

"Like I said, it's been a fuckin' awful couple of days. Over-reactin' on all sides." She tried to smile at him, but it came out twisted. "Are you all right, Nate? You ain't soundin' yerself."

"Ne'hiela vassalyanar hiya," Nathan said and then shook his head as Amanda blinked at him. "It's all right, Amanda," he said dimly. "Focus on the here and now. Be here for her now."

"I will, if it'll help." She frowned at his slip into Askani - she wasn't sure now if it was him speaking, or one of them - and dropped the shield so she could touch his arm. "An' what 'bout you? Are you gunna be all right? Are we... are things all right between us?" It helped, focussing on someone else rather than herself, she'd found. And Nate was acting oddly, even for him.

You couldn't, a different, softer voice pointed out as he gazed up at her. Not her. Even if you really wanted to. Nathan tilted his head, then wished he hadn't as the room decided to take its turn and spin around a little. "I think you're... family," he said slowly, almost dazedly. Not just a student. Couldn't withdraw here, not without hurting her... "It'll be all right. Just... it'll be all right."

Something wrenched in her chest at the words, and she nodded, quickly, not trusting her voice to speak. Instead, her hand squeezed his arm, tightly, before she let go and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, forcing back the tears. "I don't know what I'd do without you, Nate," she said at last. "I really don't."

"You'd... do okay," Nathan said, trying to make his voice light, teasing. Failing almost totally. "You're a tough little witch, and I didn't have much to do with that, so..."

"Maybe. But you taught me how t' be a person as well as a witch. You an' Moira an' a few others. But mostly you." She said it almost fiercely. "You don't let yerself believe you can ever do anythin' good, do you?"

Nathan blinked at her. "That's not... exactly true," he protested, then flabbergasted himself with a sudden smile that was real, if tired. "Where'd you learn to go right for the jugular like that?"

"You don't wanna know," she said with a small grin, glad to see an honest expression on his face. "But I promise, I only use me powers for good now."