xp_logs | Nathan and Manuel, Wednesday morning

Nathan and Manuel discuss poetry. Really.

Manuel sat at the table he had to himself and stared death-glares at the cheerfully oblivious Nathan. "It was bad enough when you were giving me Dick and Jane. Now I get _poetry_? Come _on_, Nathan, why not just put me in tights and give me the fairy-wand now and spare us both the hassle?"

Nathan smiled cheerfully at Manuel. "Bitch, bitch. Only you could read Dylan Thomas and suggest his poetry is effeminate." He picked up his copy of 'And Death Shall Have No Dominion'. "'Though they go mad they shall be sane / though they sink through the sea they shall rise again / though lovers be lost love shall not / and death shall have no dominion." He shook his head at Manuel. "You don't perceive the emotion there, o paragon of empaths?"

"Put a beat to it, and I'd do much better." he admitted. "This straight-up stuff isn't really me, especially not in English." he said, flipping the slender tome of poetry down on the desktop. "He could have just come out and _said_ what he meant, rather than hiding behind all this artificial stilted language."

"I know you disdain English as a barbaric language," Nathan said, "but that is hardly stilted. It's about as lyrical as they come. What do you think he means?"

"For English, anyway." he smirked. "And I struggled like a _bitch_ to figure out what the hell he was saying. As far as I can tell, he thinks he's immortal."

"Who do you think he's talking to?"

"Does it matter? The world at large, if I had to guess. I have no idea." he shrugged. "And people give _me_ grief for daring to have some confidence in my skills. I never claimed to be immortal!"

Nathan shook his head. "And if I told you that Dylan Thomas wasn't actually psychotic, and didn't actually believe that he was immortal? What would that make you think of this poem?"

"I'd probably suspect you were lying to me to extend your enjoyment of this farce." he grumbled. "Or, since you won't like that answer one bit, I'd say that I have no fucking idea. The guy comes out and _says_ it - death has no dominion. Whatever dominion means."

"Dominion," Nathan said. "Control, rulership, sway..."

Manuel ah'ed. "Got it. So Death has no sway? I don't think so. This guy's an idiot. Everything dies. Ideas, people, nations, everything dies."

"The poem is loaded with death-imagery," Nathan pointed out. "Yet he rejects it, repeatedly. There's another poem by the same author that has the same sort of repeating motif. Only in that case it's 'Rage, rage against the dying of the light'."

"Even I've heard that one before." he commented. "And I noticed some of this death-imagery you talked about. That was actually somewhat pleasant. But still - he can rail against it all he wants, but everything dies."

"True," Nathan said. "But dying doesn't always mean fading away into nothingness, does it?" He smile broadly at Manuel, inviting him to make the obvious connection.

"Yes, actually, it does." he said. "I harbor no romantic illusions about death. I've seen, I have _felt_ too many people die."

Nathan shook his head and decided he had to be blatantly obvious. "The Askani liked Dylan Thomas," he said. "I read them the first, and wound up reading through several of the others because they kept begging for more."

"I am not surprised." Manuel sneered. "They would like the romantic idea of immortality."

"They're here, aren't they?" Nathan spread his hands wide. "Okay, so maybe they haven't technically been born yet, but let's not get obsessed with the paradox."

"They're here because of _you_ tampering with the natural order of things." Manuel countered, steepling his hands. "And they're so desperate to keep oblivion at bay that they'll use anyone and everyone to make sure that they never happen. And I'm the only one bothered by this."

"Still stinging over last week, are we?"

"Don't get me started." Manuel warned. "I still need them, to learn what I can and still hold onto me and my meager skill with English."

Nathan leaned back in his chair. "I'm wondering if you've noticed something," he said. "They don't refer to you as 'brother'. Askani certainly hasn't, and I don't recall Galin doing it, either."

"Good." he smiled. "I don't want to be their brother. I don't have any siblings - well, no legitimate ones, anyway. I have more than a few half-brothers and half-sisters born on the wrong side of the sheets, as it were. Should this bother me in some way?"

"Actually, it should be heartening," Nathan said, regarding Manuel coolly. "They've been quite casually adopting people left and right, yet they've very deliberately not even given you a token 'brother'. Should indicate to you that they don't want to infect you."

"I may have failed Psych, but I do remember reverse psychology, since it's an emotional technique. Crude, very crude." Manuel smirked. "And the adoption thing worries me. At this rate, they could propose that torturing small animals for their amusement was a sacrament, and there'd be no-one left with a mind of their own to tell them no."

Nathan gave him a chilly smile in response. "Really grates, doesn't it, to be dealing with people who are deadly serious about life-and-death issues?"

"No, but fanatics tend to disturb me just a little." he riposted.

"It's generally the frivolous-minded who like throwing around that particular accusation," Nathan countered. "Or at least people who are incapable of appreciating or empathizing--" He gave the word a sardonic twist. "--with that level of dedication."

Manuel just looked at Nathan, and then shrugged. "Believe what you want. They bother me, on fundamental levels. But I need them, so I will listen to their words. For now."

Nathan smiled a little. "'What's never known is safest in this life,'" he quoted. "'Under the skysigns they who have no arms have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost alone's unhurt, so the blind man sees best."

Manuel looked at Nathan as if he'd grown another two heads. "What the hell are you babbling about?"

Nathan's smile grew. "I ought to have turned your dampener off," he said.

"Today's not an empathy day, and I keep my word. Leave it alone." Manuel said. "Today's apparently Askani Indoctrination and Stupid Poetry day."

"'What's never known is safest in this life'," Nathan said, repeating the one line that seemed most apt to him. "Sound familiar? There are depths to life you're terrified of exploring, Manuel, mostly because you see them as too complicated."

"It's my life." he said, answering the allegation obliquely. "I get to live it. Not you, not them, not anyone else. Tried that, it didn't work out too well."

"And you can skim along the surface of life if you want," Nathan said. "No one can stop you from doing that, but that doesn't mean that people aren't going to despise you for being shallow if that's the choice you make."

"I'm an empath. I don't have to be despised if I don't choose to be, once I am whole." he smirked, slipping right back into old habits. "I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet. I have ideas, yes, but nothing solid. We're not all given ancient wisdom from brain-sucking parasites from a future." he smirked.

Nathan laughed softly, picking up the copy of 'And Death Shall Have Dominion'. He was tempted to point out that he really didn't think Manuel was going to be taught how to be 'whole' until the Askani were sure he could be trusted, but that wouldn't be very diplomatic, would it? "What about the apocalyptic imagery?" he asked, shifting smoothly back to the poem. "'Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again', 'Break in the sun till the sun breaks down'..."

"Is that what that was? I wasn't sure - it was hard to read." he admitted. He caught something odd in Nathan's emotional aura, but it was gone before he could get a good look at it. "And once something sinks into the sea, it stays that way unless someone or something dredges it out of its place and time." he said, proud of himself for scoring what he perceived to be a point.

"I need to have you read the book of Revelation," Nathan said with a smile that felt odd even to himself. He was going to break the kid of this habit of over-literal thinking if it was the last thing he did.

"You're too late. I've read the Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud." he smirked. "My family has always sheltered the religiously and politically undesirable - a tradition that ended when Alphonso cast me out." he added sadly. "I really do need to talk to Kitty about that sometime."

Nathan looked curiously at Manuel. "Talk to Kitty about what?"

"Her faith, mostly." he shrugged. "Perhaps sitting in on a seder or something like that. I've always liked Judaism, even though YHWH and I aren't on speaking terms right now."

"Let's not get onto the subject of religion," Nathan said, his mouth twisting a little as he picked up his papers, looking for that other poem, the Yeats one.

"Oh, that's right, there's nothing quite so fanatical as a recent convert. Indeed, let's talk about something else." he said with a twisted grin.

Nathan glared at him. "I am not a convert," he said, a bite to the words as he sorted through the papers. "And the Askani are not religious."

"You're not? This will come as a surprise to a great number of people, I assure you. And they've got their martyrs, their beliefs, their own language - they fit any definition you care to propose of a persecuted religious group."

"Or a persecuted ethnic group, or a persecuted political group," Nathan said, inwardly boiling. But he was not going to let Manuel press this particular button. "You ought to resist the impulse to label people, Manuel. It's a sign of sloppy thinking."

"Or a sign of clear vision and correct thinking." he retorted. "But we were discussing poetry."

"Mm," Nathan commented darkly, finding the right paper. "What did you think of 'The Second Coming'?"

"This one I somewhat liked. Much better than the first." he commented, flipping the slender poetry volume open to the correct page.

"Rather bleaker than the first," Nathan said. "Fits your worldview better?

Manuel rolled his eyes at Nathan. "Unworthy of you, O Prophet of the Doomed." he grinned. "This one at least was more straightforward."

"It was always one of my favorites," Nathan murmured, then gave Manuel a hard look. "Well before the Askani showed up."

"Oh?" Manuel said, quirking an eyebrow. "Why is that, I wonder?"

"The imagery is astounding," Nathan said. "And it fit my mood for a lot of years." He shook his head a little, as if shaking off the spell of the poem. "I want you to write one of your own for our next BS session," he said, deliberately using Manuel's own term for their academic lessons. "Style and subject is up to you. But it has to be in English."

Manuel smirked. "Lyrics aren't usually my thing, preferring my beats straight-up, but I might be able to arrange something."

Nathan glanced at his watch. Still a little short of noon, but... "Okay. Let's call it a morning, then." He smiled faintly at Manuel. "Since you did put some actual effort in and all."

"You're too kind." he said with a dismissive look. "I'm gonna go do something fun to scrub the taste of all this shit out of my mouth."

Nathan gave him a dismissive wave. "I'll see you tomorrow. Galin apparently wants to work on your multitasking abilities."