xp_logs | Angelo and Nathan

They have the requested talk, out by the pool, and Angelo is given some food for thought.

Angelo was out for a wander round the mansion, cigarette in hand as usual, just to get out of the house for a little while, even if it was only to the grounds. Passing close to the pool area, he heard the quiet splashing of someone taking a swim, and wandered idly that way to see who it was.

Nathan, concentrating on the laps he was doing in the pool, didn't take much notice of the approaching presence. His shoulder and leg were aching sharply, a good sign that the swimming was doing precisely the right sort of good, and being able to concentrate solely on physical activity was something he'd missed badly these last several weeks.

Realizing who the swimmer was, Angelo considered - fleetingly - just turning and going his way again. But he had wanted to talk to Nathan, and since they were both there, and nobody else was... He sat down on the edge of one of the loungers and waited for Nathan to notice him, content to let him finish his swim first.

...and twenty-five, Nathan counted to himself as he completed another lap. Which was probably sufficient, at least for a first session. He didn't want Moira to worry that he was overdoing it, after all. Grabbing the edge of the pool, he floated there idly for a moment, watching Angelo smoke. "Hey," he finally said, when the kid didn't seem about to make the first move.

Angelo nodded an acknowledgment, stubbing the almost-dead-anyway cigarette out on the cement. "Hey. Good swim?"

"Not bad. Going to try for fifty laps tomorrow," Nathan said, managing not to sound too out of breath.

Angelo raised an eyebrow. "Don't believe in takin' things gradual, do you?" He paused, then continued, "This a good time for that talk?"

"I don't have the time or patience for gradual. Not when it comes to this," Nathan said, turning to swim back to the ladder. "And sure. I think my leg's about ready to quit for the day even if I'm not."

As Nathan climbed out of the pool, Angelo's eyes were drawn to his numerous scars - he recognized obvious knife cuts, some of them almost in patterns, gunshot wounds, burns, and some he couldn't identify, before looking away hastily. "Yeah, don't wanna overdo it yet. Otherwise I'd have to go fetch Dr. MacTaggart", he finished lightly.

Nathan's eyes narrowed a little as Angelo suddenly found something very interesting about the hedge off to their left. "What's wrong?" he asked bluntly, very carefully staying behind his own shields and not reaching out to grasp the stray thoughts Angelo was almost certainly projecting. He certainly didn't need any more accusations of poking around in people's heads. Some of these kids seemed very resistant to the idea that just maybe they were shouting their thoughts at the top of their lungs whether they liked it or not.

Angelo shrugged. "Nothin's wrong. Didn't wanna stare, that's all. There's a reason *I* don't tend t'take my shirt off in public, an' I figured it might be the same for you. Seein' as you were swimmin' by yourself, an' all."

Well, that was interesting. His scars were not what he'd thought Angelo was reacting to, there, and Nathan eased back a little on the shielding, if reluctantly. Probably shouldn't risk misreading him too often if we're going to have this conversation... "I don't see any need to hide them," he said calmly as he reached for his towel. "They remind me of the times I wasn't fast enough, or careful enough. I could tell you where I got just about every single one of them."

Angelo nodded. "Yeah. Same for me. But they're my thing, my reminders. Not somethin' I want t'share with the whole school. Individual thing, though, I guess."

"To each their own," Nathan said shortly, limping heavily over to a chair - not the lounge chair next to Angelo's - and sitting down. "I'm sure that a number of you kids have decided you know precisely what kind of person I am. Why hide the visual evidence?"

Angelo shrugged, but couldn't resist shooting back, "No more'n you've maybe decided you know who we are."

Nathan smiled humorlessly, rubbing almost unconsciously at the aching muscles n his leg. "I call them as I see them. If you all are doing the same, more power to you. So long as you're actually thinking about the decisions you're making, rather than just reacting."

"Workin' on it", Angelo answered, unsmiling. "Which brings us back to what we were gonna talk about, I guess."

"Right. I'm listening," Nathan said, toweling his cropped hair dry and then stopped, his fingers lingering at the bullet scar along the side of his head, almost compulsively. The hair was beginning to grow back in, but it was pure white, which was a little aggravating. Last thing someone like him needed was a distinguishing characteristic.

Angelo suddenly discovered that he had no idea where to start, having put the beginnings of what he wanted to say in the e-mail, and not wanting to repeat himself. He sat in silence, trying to put together something that didn't sound whiny or stupid.

Nathan wanted to sigh at the awkward silence, but didn't. "Don't worry about making it sound right," he said. "Just get it out."

Angelo glanced up at him wryly. "Said the important bits already. But... okay. Main thing is, I obviously didn't change as much as I thought I had. Which kinda makes me think I can't on my own. It's been nearly a year now..."

Nathan's eyes narrowed further. "And you've had no help available in all that time?" he asked. "Or just not asked for it?"

"They've tried. I know they have. But like I said in the e-mail, they can't do it for me, in the end. An' they haven't been there. Most of 'em don't know how it is to need t'change, 'cause they've always been the good guys."

"What precisely do you mean by change?" Nathan asked, keeping his voice flat, unwelcoming. He was going to make the kid think, really think, if it was the last thing he did. "Easy enough to say you want to change, or even to want it. Defining it is another matter entirely."

Angelo did think about it, trying to put together a truthful answer that would make sense. "I... guess I want to leave behind the kid that had t'do some really bad stuff to survive. Had t'do everythin' for himself, 'cause he'd get nothin' if he didn't. Just knowin' that's not true anymore doesn't seem to mean I've left him behind."

Nathan raised an eyebrow. It was a bit of an effort to keep his reaction to that and that alone, because he honestly hadn't expected an answer so terrifyingly naive. "You can't," he said bluntly. Angelo blinked at him. "You can't leave him behind. If that's what you've been trying to do, it's no wonder you haven't made the progress you want."

Angelo nodded, taking that in. "Right. I... didn't really know what to do, when I got here. No one I ever knew - or knew well - before wanted t'leave behind what they were, so I didn't have the first clue if it was possible. An' when I got here, I just wanted to fit in. Thought that might be a way to do it..."

Nathan couldn't help a snort. "Angelo, I don't think it's possible to fit in. Especially in a place like this." He paused, giving the kid a speculative look. "So why do you think it didn't work?"

"Because... like you said, I can't. Not really. But then... you said before, he's not me. So, I guess... maybe I was tryin' to cut him off too much? The thing with Jamie's twins should've showed me that wasn't workin'..."

"First of all, stop referring to 'him' as a separate being," Nathan said curtly. "You do that, you half-convince yourself that it is possible to leave your past behind." He draped the towel around his shoulders. "What you are, what you've done... it is never going to stop being a part of you. Never going to stop shaping how you look at the world."

Angelo nodded. "Yeah. Gettin' that. 's why I came to you. I don't want h... that to be the reason for my first reactions anymore, if that's possible."

"Angelo..." Nathan paused, but decided that the unadulterated truth was necessary. "My first instinct, in most conflict situations, is still violence. " The corner of his mouth tugged upwards humorlessly as he thought about Thursday's session with Manuel. "Fight or flight. I'm not sure I'm the person to be talking to."

"Which do you usually choose, though?" Angelo asked pointedly. "Haven't heard of anyone actually gettin' hurt who wasn't actively tryin' to hurt you, since you got here."

"Instinct and reaction are two different things," Nathan said. "I wouldn't have survived long in my line of work if I'd made a habit of acting on instinct." He rubbed lightly at the burn scars on his arm. "Unfortunately, that's not something I can teach you."

"But there are things you can teach me, that might help?" Angelo asked hopefully, before sighing. "I know I said... I didn't trust you anymore an' that's true. But Amanda lost herself my trust, a few months back. I'm willin'... to work on gettin' it back, if you are."

His expression hardening, Nathan stared down at him. "Very magnanimous of you," he said, his voice chilly. "Are you as willing to work to get back my trust, or is the onus all on me here? Again?"

Angelo blinked up at him, having thought that was implicit in his asking for help changing. "Yeah, I am. I know I screwed up big time here."

"You have got to be in a perpetual state of mental whiplash," Nathan said, a bit of a bite to the words this time. "You act without thinking, then you overthink. You do the defensive apology thing, but then you get snarly about it. All these constant changes of direction make people dizzy, Angelo."

Angelo nodded wryly. "Yeah, I can see that. Kinda makes me dizzy too, sometimes. It was... part of me tryin' to fit in, and it obviously wasn't workin' too well. Gonna try an' find a new way... although you were sayin' about it bein' hard to fit in here, with all the different people..."

"You're saying all the right things," Nathan said, unable to keep the wariness out of his voice, "and I think you do believe what you're saying. But you've said similar things to me before. What happens the next time the shit hits the fan? Because it will. If there's one thing I've figured out about this place so far it's that there's always shit on the way." Nathan held Angelo's gaze with his own, not breaking eye contact for an instant. "Words are easy, Angelo."

Angelo didn't look away. "I know. An' I'm not gonna make any promises, 'cept that I'll try."

It still sounded hollow to him. Earnest, but hollow. Nathan eyed him for a moment longer and then, casually, looked away, his gaze lingering on the gently rippling water of the pool. "What do you think I can teach you?"

"How to not do what I've been doin'. The changes of direction. To find a way of my own, a way not to let my instincts control everythin'. An' I know you can't give me a way, but maybe you can help me find one for myself? How to stop talkin' about this stuff, an' do it. How to deal with it better, the next time the shit hits the fan."

"I want you to do something," Nathan said after a long pause. "I want you to come up with what you think that way is, or what you want it to be." Angelo opened his mouth as if to reply, but Nathan went on, cutting him off sharply. "I want you to think about what you want, Angelo, not just what you want to change. Once you can come back to me with at least an idea, if not a concrete answer, then we can decide if I'm really the best person to help you."

Angelo seemed about to retort, then looked defeated. "...Okay. You might be waitin' awhile, though. I don't know what I want, other than to change. To not do stupid things anymore."

"If you don't know how you want to move forward, you won't be doing it," Nathan said, his voice no gentler. "You talk like you want to fix yourself - for what? And that was a rhetorical question, Angelo," he said when Angelo looked like he was about to reply. "I cannot give you the answers. I will not simply hold your hand while you stumble around in the dark, either." He took a deep breath, moderating his tone a little before he let the anger get ahead of him and encourage him to say something he would regret. "I thought I could, but I can't. I don't have the patience anymore. I can help you get you where you've going, maybe, depending on where you decide that is, but the decisions... hell, the options have to be yours."

Angelo sighed. "The options... I know what they are, or some of them, after I finish high school that is. College. Move back in with Mom and get a job. Get some other kind of job, with help. Stay here an' do... somethin'. An' I've got nearly a year to choose one of those, but... I guess what I want is to stop wantin' to go back to LA - not necessarily literally. Stop wantin' my options to be limited again, just 'cause it'd be simpler. An' most of the time, I don't want that, but sometimes..."

Nathan tilted his head a little. "You realize you just listed things you could do, places you could go. Not a word about what you want to be."

That, Angelo answered without hesitation. "I want to be a good man. Want t'live up to what the people here think I can be."

Nathan rose from his chair, stifling the wince as his leg protested. "Then you'll fail," he said bluntly. "If you define yourself only by what other people think of you, or even think you can be, you'll fuck it up in the end." He shook his head, staring down at the kid. "There has to be more than that," he said, "or it's not worth doing. Think about it, like I said. When you start thinking about what you want for yourself, then these conversations of ours will probably start doing some good." He smiled thinly. "Right now, I'm going to go get changed and go for a nice 5K walk. Tomorrow I may make it a jog."

Angelo nodded, clearly already starting to think about it, tentatively. "Okay. I'll see you around, I guess..."

"Almost certainly, " Nathan said briskly, and headed off in the direction of the house.