xp_logs | LOG: Clarice & Nathan

Odd, Nathan thought, peering closely at the plant. He and Askani had been discussing telekinetic techniques this morning, and when the conversation had turned to that little 'trick' of his, turning
those trees and grass to glass, she had suggested he stop up in the greenhouse and examine some of the plants to see if he could jog his memory to figure out what sort of visualization he'd been using. He hadn't expected the subtle differences in the structure of so many of the plants. Carefully, he reached out with his telekinesis, 'feeling' the leaves of the one he was studying.

How could he?! Clarice's thoughts screamed as she stalked around the school in a huff. She'd tried to ignore Nathan as much as possible the past few days, focusing more on her sewing than on her
classes in an attempt to not think about the current goings-on. She was pissed.

It wasn't easy to recall what you'd been thinking while in a semi-psychotic state, Nathan reflected ruefully. Yet there was something familiar about the feel of the molecules that made up the plant, something that made him itch to rearrange them in a specific way... but he'd kill the plant if he did that, and Ororo wouldn't appreciate that at all.

"There you are!" she declared, coming into the greenhouse. She'd looked everywhere before even thinking of looking in Ms. Munroe's precious greenhouse, which explains why he was there. It was the
last place she would think of.

Nathan glanced up, startled, and then cursed as the plant suddenly...puddled. There was no other way to describe it. One minute it was a small, prickly plant with silver-striped green leaves, and the next it was sliding downwards into green mush. What had he done to it? he thought in some distress. His telekinetic grip had slipped when Clarice had started him, but he hadn't anticipated this.

He looked back up at Clarice, irritated. "What do you want?" he asked bluntly.

"You! I trusted you!" Clarice splutted, not anticipating that reaction. She had been hell-bent on finding Nathan and chewing him out for the email he sent, but now that she actually found him she
didn't quite know what to do. "And you went and did everything you could to break it!"

Nathan's eyes narrowed, and for the first time since the blowup with Angelo, an accusation of that sort didn't make him so much as flinch. "Would you like to explain that, Clarice?" he asked, casting one last regretful look down at the plant. He would have to apologize to Ororo and offer to replace it. "I'm not sure I'm following."

Clarice looked at him bewildered, her mouth moving and nothing coming out. "Explain?" she finally managed.

"Explain," Nathan repeated. "Explain precisely how I betrayed your trust."

"You treated us like we meant something and not like sub-human rejects and then went and dumped Angelo in the lake, you said we were accessories to murder, you didn't even care about why we did it!" for once, Clarice had not begun crying, but had stood her ground. She wasn't quite making sense, but that wasn't unusual.

Nathan didn't get up from the stool where he was sitting. Clarice didn't need him looming over her. "I was wrong to dump Angelo in the lake," he said calmly, "and I've already told him that. Do
not expect me to apologize for the rest of it." He gave Clarice a level look. "Did you really know what she was planning to do, Clarice? I mean, really?"

"It's Sarah, Nathan," Clarice said helplessly not quite answering immediately, "She's always said she was going to kill the people who killed the Morlocks. And if I told, she'd've never forgiven me.
She would hate me forever. I didn't know when she was going to do anything, I didn't know anything until Jono posted, I knew she wanted to, but everyone knew that and no one ever tried to stop her
because no one took her seriously. She TOLD you all!" finally, Clarice took a breath.

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "Way to pass the buck, kiddo," he said, no less calmly. "There's some difference between 'I really, really want to kill the people who killed my family' and 'I've found
them and they're going down'." He swiveled around on the stool to face her. "What would have happened if Jono hadn't made that post, do you think?" he asked, more quietly. "If you had all kept her secret, and the X-Men hadn't gone after her... or even better, if Jono and Angelo, maybe a couple of the others, had?"

"Maybe she wouldn't've died. Maybe I could've 'ported her back here sooner. We can play the what-if game forever, but Sarah died, Alison was hurt...I think we could have at least stopped it from being as bad as it was," Clarice stood there, her arms crossed in front of her as if she could protect herself from Nathan's arguement.

Nathan's eyes widened slightly. This time, he did get up. "Oh, really," he said, his voice low and dangerous as he stood over the girl, looming quite deliberately. "You or Jono or Angelo or Paige
would have tipped the scale in those tunnels, is that what you're saying? I don't know why I didn't think of it that way. I'm sure the fact that you would have been facing adult mutants with lethal
powers and full military training wouldn't have mattered. You'd have handled them with no difficulty... and what? Helped Sarah kill them?"

That stopped Clarice cold, "They were military trained mutants?" she asked, genuinely shocked. "I thought they were just humans, they'd kick her butt and we'd go home..."

"You weren't paying close attention to that thread on the journals, were you?" Nathan asked, with much less heat. "I suppose emotions were running high that morning. But yes, they were military, specifically trained to kill." He shook his head, sitting back down on the stool. His leg was aching again - going without the cane was liberating, but still a little wearing. "Some of you may have done fairly well in crisis situations before," he said, thinking about Jamie's twins invading the mansion, "but that doesn't excuse getting cocky and stupid."

Clarice thought about the time a few weeks after she arrived when the military invaded the school looking for Mr. Wisdom and blanched, she'd teleported to Sarah's room and hid under her bed with a sword and refused to leave the room for almost a week after. "I...thought I would be transport and maybe hand out bandaids. I never thought I'd fight and I'd never kill. I never thought she'd actually kill someone, she'd talked about it forever."

"You can't have it both ways, Clarice," Nathan said evenly. "Either it was no big thing, or it was a serious enough thing that you and the others could have helped if we had 'let' you."

"So we're accessories to murder, then?" Clarice asked, never once thinking that she was a crimminal, she hadn't helped Sarah, she had been prevented from it, "We didn't do anything!"

"An accessory to murder is an individual who aids or contributes to a murder without participating in the act," Nathan said ruthlessly. "An accessory to murder has to have been aware, not merely that death or grievous bodily harm might be caused, but that it might be caused intentionally, by the person whom she was assisting or encouraging to commit a crime."

Clarice shifted putting her arms on her hips, "So then what would you have done? Gone and arrested her before she did it? Sarah would have hated us and you and everyone would be miserable!"

"We won't know what could have been done, will we?"

Sighing, Clarice rubbed her eyes. There was more to this than she had ever thought. "So all the teachers think we're all murderers now, is that it?"

"Well," Nathan said calmly, "I can't speak for the others. What I think is that the four of you either didn't really think clearly about what you were--or rather weren't doing, or you honestly
thought that you had the right to decide that these people Sarah killed deserved to die. I'm not sure which is worse... or at least more disappointing, from my point of view."

Nathan's statements caught caught Clarice offguard, she'd never thought about the situation like that. "No one has the right to say someone deserves to die," she started slowly, "but they also
killed Sarah's family. She should get something from them, if she can. Maybe not their lives, but something. How is this different from being a mercenary? Or an assassin? They just kill for whomever
pays them and they decide if they live or die."

Nathan closed his eyes. Oh, he'd been waiting for that. Ironic that it should be Clarice who chose to play that card. "Do you want to be a mercenary or assassin?" he asked slowly, keeping his eyes
closed. "Because once you start making decisions like that, Clarice, once you do what you and the others did, it gets easier and easier. And harder, at the same time." He opened his eyes again and stared stonily at her. "You have the opportunity to live a happy life, as close to a normal life as people like us get. You start killing, or allowing killing to be done when you could have done something to stop it, and you lose that. You lose it by inches, until you wake up one day, look in the mirror, and don't recognize the person you used to be." His voice went even colder. "It disgusts me that you would throw away your opportunity to be better than that so easily. And I haven't even gotten to the fact that Sarah nearly died and Alison was badly hurt, because you thought it was no big thing and didn't want to make a friend angry."

"I don't want to kill! I said I didn't! I don't want to be an assassin or anything! I want to be a doctor!" she protested vehemently, "I just...she's a friend. I haven't had many of those. I didn't want anyone hurt...I didn't know you guys would go after her. How did this happen?"

Nathan stared at her for a moment longer. "No," he said coldly. "Even if I knew all the details, which I don't, I wouldn't be filling you in on them. Even if it was appropriate. You've already proven that you can't handle that sort of information."

"No...I mean 'how did I let this happen?'" Clarice clarified, "I mean, I thought I was helping a friend...and there's all this. I mean...it's my fault."

"It's very simple," Nathan said. "You placed what your friend wanted and your fear of making her angry above her welfare and what I hope you know was right."

Clarice nodded, not trusting her voice. Without warning, she turned and ran out of the greenhouse.

Nathan watched her go, hoping his words had at least made an impression. Once she was gone, he rose, going in search of gardening implements of some sort to do something with that poor plant.