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xp_logsNate goes sleepwalking, but not in the usual sense - he winds up in Amanda's dreamscape, and things get rapidly more strange from there.
This was not his beach, Nathan thought, blinking around at his surroundings. Nor was it the one on Muir, his second-favorite beach to visit in his dreams. But it wasn't entirely unfamiliar, he realized, shaking his head slowly as he took in the details of the dreamscape. At least there was no void here, this time. The landscape was intact, felt real in a way it hadn't been the first time he'd fallen into her mind and wound up here. Small mercies.
"Amanda?" he called, wrestling with a combination of disbelief and aggravation. He'd worked so hard on his shielding lately - he'd thought that his days of winding up in other people's dreams were in the past. The invasion of privacy bothered him. The lack of control on his part bothered him almost as much. "Amanda? Are you here?"
"Nice of you t' drop in," came her voice from behind him, sounding amused. When he turned she was sitting on the pebbled beach, tossing stones at an empty drink can propped up a couple of metres away. Like the mindscape around them, she looked real, solid, her increasing confidence in herself reflected in the astral version; she was dressed in faded blue jeans, with holes in the knees, and a white tank top cut low enough to show the first few ridges of scars across her chest. "Out for a walk?" she asked, grinning up at him.
Nathan sighed, coming over and sitting on a handy rock. "Apparently," he said, eyeing her speculatively. She had mentioned something about Strange doing some sort of dream-related work with her a while ago, but still, the fact that she was, as far as he could tell, completely aware of the fact that this was a dream was a surprise. "I don't have the excuse of sitting beside your hospital bed this time. Hope I'm not interrupting anything?"
Amanda shook her head, tossing another pebble at the can. It connected with a metallic 'ping', but didn't knock it over. "Nah. Well, if yer'd been here a little earlier, you might have." She gave him a distinctly wicked grin. "But Ewan's gone now, so yer right. Unless Manny decides t' walk in, but since I ain't havin' a nightmare, I doubt it." With a curious tilt to her head, she asked: "Anythin' in particular you were after? I don't _think_ I called you this time."
Nathan shrugged uneasily. "Think it's probably me," he said, trying to remember what he had been thinking as he'd drifted off to sleep. Angie's email, most likely. "Just kind of restless today..." Oh, was that ever an understatement. He blinked, then frowned as a few pieces of the furniture from Jack's office appeared on the beach, utterly incongruous in this setting. "Shit," he sighed, trying to banish the new additions.
Blinking at the furniture as it appeared, wavered, disappeared and then reasserted itself, Amanda couldn't help a small grin. "Looks t' me like yer subconscious is tryin' t' tell you somethin'," she said, nodding at the desk that was reappearing despite Nathan's efforts.
Nathan grimaced, rubbing at the bridge of his nose for a moment. "I broke it," he muttered under his breath. "The desk. Didn't mean to. He and I were talking about... something, and, well, broken desk." He looked up at Amanda again, smiling a bit wanly. "Jack was very good about it. Told me he'd been meaning to replace it anyway."
"Part of the hazards of dealin' with traumatised mutants," Amanda told him with a smile. "Bit hard on the furnishin's, especially when you start. I accidentally blew up a social worker's computer once. Well, mostly accidentally. She was tryin' t' tell me magic didn't exist, that I was fuckin' delusional. So I showed her an' it got a bit out of hand."
As she spoke, the images of what she was describing appeared in the background, ghostly and transparent. The girl slouched in the chair opposite the desk was younger, harder, than the girl in front of him. "Hmm, think I'm pickin' up new tricks from you," she said to him, raising her eyebrow at the scene. "We ain't doin' that overlap thing, are we? 'Cause migraines aren't what I want from a night's kip."
Nathan tilted his head, feeling out the mindscape for a moment. "No," he said quietly. "Just echoes." He watched the younger Amanda fade, but not before the rest of the scene played out. "My," he said dryly, taking refuge in the banter. "You probably gave her the shock of her life."
"She ended up takin' stress leave after a couple of weeks with me." Amanda's tone was contemptuous. "Amazin' I even deal with Samson now, considerin' the wankers I've had t' put up with, but he ain't like the rest of 'em." She pitched another pebble at the can. "Old Brighton tradition. Whenever yer on the beach with mates, you end up doin' this. Gives you somethin' t' do with yer hands." With another glance across at him, she went on: "How's this Jack bloke? You scare him off with the desk slayin'?"
"I don't think Jack scares easily," Nathan said, picking up a pebble and aiming at the can. It was mildly embarrassing that he missed it by a mile, but he figured he could excuse his apparent lack of reflexes, this being a mindscape and all. "He's... a good guy. Genuinely nice. But he sure as hell doesn't let up." Nathan felt a flash of bitter resentment that he stifled instantly, shocked at himself. It wasn't soon enough to stop the sky above them from darkening a little, echoing the change in his mood.
"Occupational hazard in shrinks," Amanda told him with a chuckle. "They take it on 'emselves t' make sure we don't do that nasty avoidance thing."
"Complicates things when you can see what your therapist is thinking," Nathan muttered, trying another pebble. A near miss, this time. "Like trying to play chess on multiple levels..."
"Could explain why Manny has so much trouble with Samson - seein' what yer shrink is feelin' must be even harder." Amanda fell silent for a moment, tossing pebbles at the can. "I go see Samson 'cause they made me at first, an' now I've gotten used t' him. No-one's makin' you go see this Jack - you could just tell him you changed yer mind, if it pisses you off so much."
"Not doing something isn't an option," Nathan said bleakly, looking around for a likely pebble. "I just hate being so weak." He stopped, blinking in surprise at what he'd just said. Damned dreamscapes, encouraging your damned subconscious to get uppity... "That's not what I meant," he said with as much dignity as he could muster. "I don't like dredging all of this up, that's all."
"If it were easy, we wouldn't have t' dredge. An' it ain't bein' weak - sometimes we can't do it alone, an' the bravest thing we can do is ask for help." Around them, the light was fading, until all was dark save for the patch of beach they were sitting on, and the can. "You told me somethin' like that, once."
Nathan stared fixedly out into the darkness. There was a claustrophobic sensation to it suddenly, as if invisible walls were closing in on them. "The tunnel. Very appropriate," he muttered, and then stiffened as he spotted movement out there in the blackness. For an instant, he thought it was his imagination... but no, there it was again, and he shot to his feet, backing away a step as he watched himself, dressed in black body armor, stride out of the darkness and into the circle of remaining light.
"Not funny, Dayspring," he gritted, his hands clenching spasmodically as his sides as his other self tilted his head, watching him coolly.
"I think I like me inner child better than yer inner... whatever the hell you call that," Amanda said, climbing to her feet as well. She gestured, trying to expand the light around them, and frowned as it failed to work. "All right, now this is gettin' unsettlin'. What's goin' on, Nate?"
"He can't answer you," the other him said coldly. "Too busy figuratively wetting himself. Aren't you, Nathan?" He turned his attention to Amanda, his eyes icy gray, assessing. "So you're the witch. I was expecting to be more impressed."
"Go away," Nathan groaned, covering his face with his hands. Bleak despair welled up inside him, and he couldn't summon the energy to even try and banish the newcomer. "Just go away, damn it..."
"Go fuck yourself," the other suggested without heat, his eyes narrowing slightly. "You can indulge yourself and wallow all you want, but I'm here to stay. However much you want to pretend you're not me."
"Ain't exactly polite t' insult yer host," Amanda said, stepping forward. Her clothes changed as she did, switching back to the layers of black she'd arrived at the mansion in, the battered leather jacket over all like a suit of armour. "This is my head, sunshine, an' yer'll behave yerself, or I'm liable t' get tetchy." She looked at Nate, then the newcomer. "So, any particular reason why yer've decided t' poke yer nose in?"
"You talk as if I'm some separate being who just dropped in for a chat," the other said calmly. "I'm not." He waved a hand at Nathan. "Ask him. He's just the lingering shadow of me."
"You sure it ain't the other way 'round?" Amanda asked, trying to brazen it out. Around them, the 'weather' turned colder, the wind picking up and whipping the unseen sea into choppier waves. "Yer his past, yeah, but he ain't you. You don't have a place here." She was standing beside Nathan now, and she glanced over at him, willing him to snap out of it and tell this plonker where to go.
"He knows," the other said, and there was no warmth in his voice, in his eyes. Nathan shrank further in on himself, part of him feverishly trying to break the connection, to wake up. But it wasn't working. "He knows he's nothing but scar tissue..."
Something snapped. "Shut UP!" Nathan snarled, erupting up off the rock and going for the other's throat. The other merely shook his head and batted him away telekinetically. Nathan was thrown back into the darkness...
...
....until he hit a wall, hard, and collapsed to the floor. With a groan, he pushed himself up to a sitting position, only to go rigid as he looked around and realized where he was. Mistra again, the old facility in New Mexico.
"Amanda?" he called out fearfully, hoping to hell that he'd been knocked back into his own mind and out of hers.
There was a muffled sound, a voice struggling to swear through some kind of impediment... The other him appeared, holding a struggling Amanda, hand plastered firmly over her mouth, her feet of the ground and kicking him futilely in the shins. She looked furious, and not a little scared; even if this was still a dream, this was rather more than she'd expected.
Nathan rose to his feet, something very close to a growl escaping him. "Let her go," he grated, fear the absolute last thing on his mind right now. "Right now."
The other smiled faintly, holding Amanda effortlessly. "Such protective fury. Why does she get that, when you were so fucking casual about 'saving' Aliya and Tyler that you got them killed?" He set Amanda down, giving her a little push so that she stumbled and fell between them. "Did he tell you that, little girl?" he asked Amanda, his voice still perfectly even. "I think the legal term would be 'negligent homicide'. He may as well have killed them himself."
"Yer lyin'," Amanda shot back, pushing herself up from where she'd landed, sprawling, on the hard floor. "He would've done everythin' he could, I know he would." She climbed to her feet, blue sparks crawling over her clenched fists as she glared at the doppleganger. "Now piss off an' leave us alone, before I show you just how 'unimpressive' I am."
"Amanda," Nathan said tiredly, all of his anger gone. "Don't. Just don't. He's..." He trailed off, his shoulders sagging. "It's me. He *is* me. Guess this isn't as lucid a dream as I thought it was." Taking a deep breath, he raised his eyes to meet the other's. "What do you want?" he asked dully.
"My life back," the other said coldly.
"Well, you can't have it." But there was no conviction in his voice, no strength to the denial. The Askani were... silent, or maybe he'd barred them from this dream, just like he'd called up this other him. "I have other things to do with my life now."
A flash of emotion in the other's eyes for the first time, a hot rage that was all too familiar. "You don't get to make that decision," he spat. "It'll be the same as before, if you try. And who pays the price this time, Nathan? Moira?" He pointed to Amanda. "Her? How many more do you need to kill before you admit it to yourself?"
"It?" Nathan inquired flatly, wearily. Amanda was looking back and forth between them, looking more and more agitated.
"A weapon has a purpose," the other said. "A weapon has a use. It does not have needs. Remember that, Nathan? Remember learning that?" He smiled tightly, bitterly. "Look at everything that's happened since you forgot. Since you started pretending to be something you're not..."
"He's a fuckin' person! Not a weapon, not some thing for someone t' use an' just toss away!" Amanda burst out, the other Nathan's words hitting a little too close to home for her. She turned to Nathan, _her_ Nathan, the one she knew and trusted. "No matter what you were taught in that place, you ain't just a tool, any more 'n I am!" She wasn't sure whose head they were in now, everything was so strange and confused, but she believed what she said, _really_ believed it, for the first time since Rack's death. "They can hurt you an' make you do things you don't want to, but they can't _own_ you, not unless you let 'em. An' you didn't, you got away, told 'em where t' go."
Amanda's words and everything behind them hit home, and the bone-deep fatigue receded, replaced by a surge of strength and determination that he was fairly sure came at least partially from her. Nathan closed his eyes for a moment, his jaw clenching.
"Is that what you want?" he asked, opening his eyes and staring steadily at the other him. "To go back?"
"I want my life back," was the flat answer.
Nathan looked at Amanda, a faint, sad smile tugging at his lips. "He's afraid," he explained to her. "Or maybe just lazy. There were things that were so easy about my life, the way it used to be..."
"Lazy," the other snarled. "Realistic, you mean."
"What's so realistic 'bout it? He's been out for years, an' they ain't caught up to him yet," Amanda told the other, knowing he was a part of Nathan but still unwilling to feel pity or sympathy for him. "An' yeah, 'normal' life's bloody hard, but it's worth it - bein' dead's easy too, but we still fight it whenever we have to." Moving to her Nathan's side, her hand crept into his cold one, lending him her strength, and she remembered, in a moment like a starburst, that he had done the same for her the last time they'd done something like this.
"I'm done with this," Nathan said quietly, meeting the other's eyes. "Done with you, Cable." He closed his eyes and took himself and Amanda away, not to the beach where they'd started but to his.
"I'm sorry," he said, opening his eyes and relaxing a little when he saw that they were safely there, and alone. He let go of her hand and took a step across the pristine white sand, staring up into the starry sky, unable to bring himself to look at her. "We should be okay here, until one of us wakes up and breaks the connection."
Amanda blinked, momentarily surprised by the sudden change in location, but taking it in her stride. After all, she'd been brought up as a power source to a black magician, so she wasn't exactly close-minded to strange experiences. This was just another one. Nathan's beach was a lot different to hers, she noted, pondering the brilliance of the stars overhead despite the fact it was as bright as daytime on the beach. Then she remembered the name he'd given the other Nathan, and frowned. "'Cable'? Was that what they called you, back in that place?"
"My field name," Nathan said quietly, forcing himself to look at her and give her a wan smile. "I suppose that other me back there is my own fault. In some ways I try to think of the person I was under the full conditioning as separate..."
"Yer talkin' t' the person who has herself as a little kid runnin' 'round her head. An' sometimes other people's," Amanda said wryly, although her eyes were shadowed with worry. "Least now I know where yer journal name came from. I was wonderin' 'bout that."
"Don't know why I picked it," Nathan muttered fitfully. The stars were murmuring at him - the Askani, concerned. "Hell, I don't remember all that much about my first week at the mansion, the state I was in..."
There was rustling behind him in the trees, the forest lining the beach whose symbolic significance he hadn't yet figured out, and he whirled around, glaring. "Go AWAY!" he shouted, ignoring Amanda's startled look.
But it wasn't the other him who walked out onto the beach. It was a little blond boy of about seven years old, grinning happily at him, and Nathan turned back to the water with a moan, gripping his head with shaking hands.
Aware of the Askani only as a vague murmur of voices on the air, Amanda turned her attention to the child. _This_ was more familiar territory. And Nathan's reaction implied his childhood hadn't been happy - she knew that from what he'd told her anyway. Stepping around Nathan and laying her hand on his arm, she looked into the child's eyes. "Hello," she said, her tone the same one she used for Miles and Artie.
"Hi," the boy said, still smiling. "What's your name?" Nathan, facing the water, squeezed his eyes shut in pain.
'Okay, maybe this isn't Nate...' "Amanda," she said, looking from Nathan's hunched shoulders to the boy's open, happy face. "Who're you?"
"Tyler. I'm Tyler," the boy announced, his blue eyes sparkling. "That's my dad."
"Stop," Nathan muttered to himself feverishly, keeping his eyes closed. "Stop, damn it..." Amanda didn't need to see this.
"Dad?" Amanda echoed in surprise. She knew Nathan had been married before, but he'd never mentioned a kid, not that she could remember...
Then she remembered what he'd told her about the link and his wife dying, and what 'Cable' had said about not protecting them. "Oh." At least she knew whose head they were in now. "'M a friend of yer dad's," she said, approaching the memory, ghost, whatever it was of Nathan's lost son. "D' you come down here much?"
"Sometimes," Tyler said cheerfully. "When he lets me. Except sometimes I'm over there, too." He pointed, and Amanda saw a bloodstained bed a short distance away on the beach. Tyler, or another Tyler, was lying there, utterly still, his eyes wide and empty, staring up at the sky.
Nathan started to laugh, a desolate, wild sound. "Oh, just perfect... just fucking perfect!" He turned around, glaring up at the sky. "Why don't you show her everything?" he shouted, enraged at himself. "Why not make it the grand fucking tour?"
Flinching at the sight of the small, still body, Amanda closed her eyes. This was more than she should know, more than Nathan wanted her to know, or at least more than his conscious mind was wanting her to know. And it was hard to look at Tyler's happy, boyish face and reconcile it with the knowledge he was dead. 'Oh, Nate, you poor bastard, carrying that with you...' She turned away from Tyler, back to Nathan, never wishing to wake up more than she did now, but knowing she was stuck until the connection between them was broken.
"Remember when you were in my head? Remember... Gemile?" It was hard to say the name - no-one except Rack had used it in close on six years. "Sometimes yer head plays tricks, makes you share stuff that you'd rather not. Because there's a bit of you that wants to."
Nathan made himself meet her eyes. "I remember," he said, his voice rough with pain. He took a deep, shaky breathing, running his hands through his hair. When he looked back at where Tyler had been, he was gone. So was the bed with his dead body. "But I think I need to talk to Charles about improving my shielding," he said, managing a smile that probably looked pretty ghastly. "Seems to be lacking, still."
"Rom said somethin' 'bout healin' spells makin' connections, so it probably ain't all yer fault. Tho' shieldin's probably a good idea." Then the thought occurred to her and she snacked herself on the forehead. "Shieldin', of course. I'm a moron." At Nathan's look, she went on. "Shieldin' spell. It blocked Manuel once, so it might block you. Enough t' break the connection an' get me out of here before I see anythin' else you don't want me to. Give you yer privacy. I dunno what'll happen, tho' - I've cast spells in me sleep before, but never from inside someone else's head."
"Failing that," came a voice from down the beach, "you could always ask me." Nathan looked around, rubbing his eyes again as Askani strode towards them, her white robe fluttering behind her in the breeze.
"So where have you been anyway?" he asked hoarsely as she reached them and smiled almost gently first at him, then at Amanda.
"Seeing if you could sort it out yourselves," Askani said lightly, tucking red hair behind one ear. "You have after all been quite sharp with me of late on the subject of unasked-for intervention." She turned her attention back to Amanda. "The connection is a relic of your healing spells, I believe," she said calmly, shooting Nathan a look that was almost wry. "Reinforced by the truly ridiculous number of times you've had to use them on him as of late."
Amanda muttered a string of words of which only Rack's name was understandable. "Just when I think I can't hate him any more 'n I already do," she finished with, shaking her head. "Had t' go an' teach me arse-about, didn't he? I didn't know any of this, 'til Strange an' Rom explained it." Shaking the irritation off, she met Askani's eyes. "What's done is done, an' I can't undo it - Strange told me that too. So how do we stop stuff like this happenin'? It ain't fair on Nate, me seein' this stuff when he ain't ready."
Askani stared at Amanda for a moment, and then turned to regard Nathan steadily. "I'm... not certain," she said, sounding almost surprised at her lack of an immediate solution. "I can end this now, easily enough, but I am unsure how it can be prevented from happening again. The problem comes from both ends, you see. Your spells created the connection, yet... he is not unready for all of this to be seen. So he reaches out for those he trusts, sleeping and waking."
Nathan swallowed hard. "But I--"
He stopped as Askani reached out and laid a hand against his lips, shaking her head. "Not ready," she said, "yet not unready. As you're so fond of telling the boy, you need to choose between one option and the other." She gave him one of those unsettlingly youthful smiles. "Sometimes the advice given should indeed be the advice taken."
"He's good at that, not takin' his own advice," Amanda said, her tone teasing but a part of her taking note of what Askani had said about trust and thrilling to it. Actions - even in a dreamscape - spoke louder than words for her. "An' I figured that. When Manuel was in my head, saw what had happened... part of me wanted him t' see it. That part of me trusted him with that." She looked at Nate. "You don't have t' worry 'bout me, y'know. I can handle it."
"I know you can," Nathan said with a heavy sigh, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment and wrestling for control. "But you shouldn't have to." He opened them, looking at Askani. "You said you can break the connection for now? Do it... please."
"I can also remove the memory of this dream," Askani said, her eyes thoughtful as she glanced back and forth between the two of them. "If you wish."
Amanda bit her lip. The thought of someone removing - or changing - anything in her head was something she really wasn't comfortable with, but in the circumstances... She met Nate's eyes, hiding her fear as best she could. "'S up t' you. This is yer stuff, not mine, an' I don't have a right to it if you don't want me to know it."
Nathan shook his head slowly, staring down at her. "I won't ask you to do that," he said hoarsely, reaching out and taking her hand, squeezing it gently. "I never would, Amanda." He looked back up at Askani. "Just break the connection," he said tiredly. "Get us both out of here?"
Askani nodded, and if Amanda had been expecting a showy display of powers, she was to be disappointed. The dream simply ended, as dreams do - she blinked sleepily at the early dawn light filtering in through a gap in the curtains, Manuel's naked length curled around her. He must have picked up on the tumult of emotions in her head, though, since he muttered thickly in Castillian and rolled away from her, taking most of the covers with him. She let him, looking up at the ceiling and wondering what the hell all that had been about.
Nathan opened his eyes, feeling the wetness on his cheeks and the dampness of his pillow. He took a deep, shaky breath and shifted closer to Moira, clinging to her tightly. He'd have to talk to Amanda, he thought dimly, squeezing his eyes shut. But in the morning. It could wait until morning...
This was not his beach, Nathan thought, blinking around at his surroundings. Nor was it the one on Muir, his second-favorite beach to visit in his dreams. But it wasn't entirely unfamiliar, he realized, shaking his head slowly as he took in the details of the dreamscape. At least there was no void here, this time. The landscape was intact, felt real in a way it hadn't been the first time he'd fallen into her mind and wound up here. Small mercies.
"Amanda?" he called, wrestling with a combination of disbelief and aggravation. He'd worked so hard on his shielding lately - he'd thought that his days of winding up in other people's dreams were in the past. The invasion of privacy bothered him. The lack of control on his part bothered him almost as much. "Amanda? Are you here?"
"Nice of you t' drop in," came her voice from behind him, sounding amused. When he turned she was sitting on the pebbled beach, tossing stones at an empty drink can propped up a couple of metres away. Like the mindscape around them, she looked real, solid, her increasing confidence in herself reflected in the astral version; she was dressed in faded blue jeans, with holes in the knees, and a white tank top cut low enough to show the first few ridges of scars across her chest. "Out for a walk?" she asked, grinning up at him.
Nathan sighed, coming over and sitting on a handy rock. "Apparently," he said, eyeing her speculatively. She had mentioned something about Strange doing some sort of dream-related work with her a while ago, but still, the fact that she was, as far as he could tell, completely aware of the fact that this was a dream was a surprise. "I don't have the excuse of sitting beside your hospital bed this time. Hope I'm not interrupting anything?"
Amanda shook her head, tossing another pebble at the can. It connected with a metallic 'ping', but didn't knock it over. "Nah. Well, if yer'd been here a little earlier, you might have." She gave him a distinctly wicked grin. "But Ewan's gone now, so yer right. Unless Manny decides t' walk in, but since I ain't havin' a nightmare, I doubt it." With a curious tilt to her head, she asked: "Anythin' in particular you were after? I don't _think_ I called you this time."
Nathan shrugged uneasily. "Think it's probably me," he said, trying to remember what he had been thinking as he'd drifted off to sleep. Angie's email, most likely. "Just kind of restless today..." Oh, was that ever an understatement. He blinked, then frowned as a few pieces of the furniture from Jack's office appeared on the beach, utterly incongruous in this setting. "Shit," he sighed, trying to banish the new additions.
Blinking at the furniture as it appeared, wavered, disappeared and then reasserted itself, Amanda couldn't help a small grin. "Looks t' me like yer subconscious is tryin' t' tell you somethin'," she said, nodding at the desk that was reappearing despite Nathan's efforts.
Nathan grimaced, rubbing at the bridge of his nose for a moment. "I broke it," he muttered under his breath. "The desk. Didn't mean to. He and I were talking about... something, and, well, broken desk." He looked up at Amanda again, smiling a bit wanly. "Jack was very good about it. Told me he'd been meaning to replace it anyway."
"Part of the hazards of dealin' with traumatised mutants," Amanda told him with a smile. "Bit hard on the furnishin's, especially when you start. I accidentally blew up a social worker's computer once. Well, mostly accidentally. She was tryin' t' tell me magic didn't exist, that I was fuckin' delusional. So I showed her an' it got a bit out of hand."
As she spoke, the images of what she was describing appeared in the background, ghostly and transparent. The girl slouched in the chair opposite the desk was younger, harder, than the girl in front of him. "Hmm, think I'm pickin' up new tricks from you," she said to him, raising her eyebrow at the scene. "We ain't doin' that overlap thing, are we? 'Cause migraines aren't what I want from a night's kip."
Nathan tilted his head, feeling out the mindscape for a moment. "No," he said quietly. "Just echoes." He watched the younger Amanda fade, but not before the rest of the scene played out. "My," he said dryly, taking refuge in the banter. "You probably gave her the shock of her life."
"She ended up takin' stress leave after a couple of weeks with me." Amanda's tone was contemptuous. "Amazin' I even deal with Samson now, considerin' the wankers I've had t' put up with, but he ain't like the rest of 'em." She pitched another pebble at the can. "Old Brighton tradition. Whenever yer on the beach with mates, you end up doin' this. Gives you somethin' t' do with yer hands." With another glance across at him, she went on: "How's this Jack bloke? You scare him off with the desk slayin'?"
"I don't think Jack scares easily," Nathan said, picking up a pebble and aiming at the can. It was mildly embarrassing that he missed it by a mile, but he figured he could excuse his apparent lack of reflexes, this being a mindscape and all. "He's... a good guy. Genuinely nice. But he sure as hell doesn't let up." Nathan felt a flash of bitter resentment that he stifled instantly, shocked at himself. It wasn't soon enough to stop the sky above them from darkening a little, echoing the change in his mood.
"Occupational hazard in shrinks," Amanda told him with a chuckle. "They take it on 'emselves t' make sure we don't do that nasty avoidance thing."
"Complicates things when you can see what your therapist is thinking," Nathan muttered, trying another pebble. A near miss, this time. "Like trying to play chess on multiple levels..."
"Could explain why Manny has so much trouble with Samson - seein' what yer shrink is feelin' must be even harder." Amanda fell silent for a moment, tossing pebbles at the can. "I go see Samson 'cause they made me at first, an' now I've gotten used t' him. No-one's makin' you go see this Jack - you could just tell him you changed yer mind, if it pisses you off so much."
"Not doing something isn't an option," Nathan said bleakly, looking around for a likely pebble. "I just hate being so weak." He stopped, blinking in surprise at what he'd just said. Damned dreamscapes, encouraging your damned subconscious to get uppity... "That's not what I meant," he said with as much dignity as he could muster. "I don't like dredging all of this up, that's all."
"If it were easy, we wouldn't have t' dredge. An' it ain't bein' weak - sometimes we can't do it alone, an' the bravest thing we can do is ask for help." Around them, the light was fading, until all was dark save for the patch of beach they were sitting on, and the can. "You told me somethin' like that, once."
Nathan stared fixedly out into the darkness. There was a claustrophobic sensation to it suddenly, as if invisible walls were closing in on them. "The tunnel. Very appropriate," he muttered, and then stiffened as he spotted movement out there in the blackness. For an instant, he thought it was his imagination... but no, there it was again, and he shot to his feet, backing away a step as he watched himself, dressed in black body armor, stride out of the darkness and into the circle of remaining light.
"Not funny, Dayspring," he gritted, his hands clenching spasmodically as his sides as his other self tilted his head, watching him coolly.
"I think I like me inner child better than yer inner... whatever the hell you call that," Amanda said, climbing to her feet as well. She gestured, trying to expand the light around them, and frowned as it failed to work. "All right, now this is gettin' unsettlin'. What's goin' on, Nate?"
"He can't answer you," the other him said coldly. "Too busy figuratively wetting himself. Aren't you, Nathan?" He turned his attention to Amanda, his eyes icy gray, assessing. "So you're the witch. I was expecting to be more impressed."
"Go away," Nathan groaned, covering his face with his hands. Bleak despair welled up inside him, and he couldn't summon the energy to even try and banish the newcomer. "Just go away, damn it..."
"Go fuck yourself," the other suggested without heat, his eyes narrowing slightly. "You can indulge yourself and wallow all you want, but I'm here to stay. However much you want to pretend you're not me."
"Ain't exactly polite t' insult yer host," Amanda said, stepping forward. Her clothes changed as she did, switching back to the layers of black she'd arrived at the mansion in, the battered leather jacket over all like a suit of armour. "This is my head, sunshine, an' yer'll behave yerself, or I'm liable t' get tetchy." She looked at Nate, then the newcomer. "So, any particular reason why yer've decided t' poke yer nose in?"
"You talk as if I'm some separate being who just dropped in for a chat," the other said calmly. "I'm not." He waved a hand at Nathan. "Ask him. He's just the lingering shadow of me."
"You sure it ain't the other way 'round?" Amanda asked, trying to brazen it out. Around them, the 'weather' turned colder, the wind picking up and whipping the unseen sea into choppier waves. "Yer his past, yeah, but he ain't you. You don't have a place here." She was standing beside Nathan now, and she glanced over at him, willing him to snap out of it and tell this plonker where to go.
"He knows," the other said, and there was no warmth in his voice, in his eyes. Nathan shrank further in on himself, part of him feverishly trying to break the connection, to wake up. But it wasn't working. "He knows he's nothing but scar tissue..."
Something snapped. "Shut UP!" Nathan snarled, erupting up off the rock and going for the other's throat. The other merely shook his head and batted him away telekinetically. Nathan was thrown back into the darkness...
...
....until he hit a wall, hard, and collapsed to the floor. With a groan, he pushed himself up to a sitting position, only to go rigid as he looked around and realized where he was. Mistra again, the old facility in New Mexico.
"Amanda?" he called out fearfully, hoping to hell that he'd been knocked back into his own mind and out of hers.
There was a muffled sound, a voice struggling to swear through some kind of impediment... The other him appeared, holding a struggling Amanda, hand plastered firmly over her mouth, her feet of the ground and kicking him futilely in the shins. She looked furious, and not a little scared; even if this was still a dream, this was rather more than she'd expected.
Nathan rose to his feet, something very close to a growl escaping him. "Let her go," he grated, fear the absolute last thing on his mind right now. "Right now."
The other smiled faintly, holding Amanda effortlessly. "Such protective fury. Why does she get that, when you were so fucking casual about 'saving' Aliya and Tyler that you got them killed?" He set Amanda down, giving her a little push so that she stumbled and fell between them. "Did he tell you that, little girl?" he asked Amanda, his voice still perfectly even. "I think the legal term would be 'negligent homicide'. He may as well have killed them himself."
"Yer lyin'," Amanda shot back, pushing herself up from where she'd landed, sprawling, on the hard floor. "He would've done everythin' he could, I know he would." She climbed to her feet, blue sparks crawling over her clenched fists as she glared at the doppleganger. "Now piss off an' leave us alone, before I show you just how 'unimpressive' I am."
"Amanda," Nathan said tiredly, all of his anger gone. "Don't. Just don't. He's..." He trailed off, his shoulders sagging. "It's me. He *is* me. Guess this isn't as lucid a dream as I thought it was." Taking a deep breath, he raised his eyes to meet the other's. "What do you want?" he asked dully.
"My life back," the other said coldly.
"Well, you can't have it." But there was no conviction in his voice, no strength to the denial. The Askani were... silent, or maybe he'd barred them from this dream, just like he'd called up this other him. "I have other things to do with my life now."
A flash of emotion in the other's eyes for the first time, a hot rage that was all too familiar. "You don't get to make that decision," he spat. "It'll be the same as before, if you try. And who pays the price this time, Nathan? Moira?" He pointed to Amanda. "Her? How many more do you need to kill before you admit it to yourself?"
"It?" Nathan inquired flatly, wearily. Amanda was looking back and forth between them, looking more and more agitated.
"A weapon has a purpose," the other said. "A weapon has a use. It does not have needs. Remember that, Nathan? Remember learning that?" He smiled tightly, bitterly. "Look at everything that's happened since you forgot. Since you started pretending to be something you're not..."
"He's a fuckin' person! Not a weapon, not some thing for someone t' use an' just toss away!" Amanda burst out, the other Nathan's words hitting a little too close to home for her. She turned to Nathan, _her_ Nathan, the one she knew and trusted. "No matter what you were taught in that place, you ain't just a tool, any more 'n I am!" She wasn't sure whose head they were in now, everything was so strange and confused, but she believed what she said, _really_ believed it, for the first time since Rack's death. "They can hurt you an' make you do things you don't want to, but they can't _own_ you, not unless you let 'em. An' you didn't, you got away, told 'em where t' go."
Amanda's words and everything behind them hit home, and the bone-deep fatigue receded, replaced by a surge of strength and determination that he was fairly sure came at least partially from her. Nathan closed his eyes for a moment, his jaw clenching.
"Is that what you want?" he asked, opening his eyes and staring steadily at the other him. "To go back?"
"I want my life back," was the flat answer.
Nathan looked at Amanda, a faint, sad smile tugging at his lips. "He's afraid," he explained to her. "Or maybe just lazy. There were things that were so easy about my life, the way it used to be..."
"Lazy," the other snarled. "Realistic, you mean."
"What's so realistic 'bout it? He's been out for years, an' they ain't caught up to him yet," Amanda told the other, knowing he was a part of Nathan but still unwilling to feel pity or sympathy for him. "An' yeah, 'normal' life's bloody hard, but it's worth it - bein' dead's easy too, but we still fight it whenever we have to." Moving to her Nathan's side, her hand crept into his cold one, lending him her strength, and she remembered, in a moment like a starburst, that he had done the same for her the last time they'd done something like this.
"I'm done with this," Nathan said quietly, meeting the other's eyes. "Done with you, Cable." He closed his eyes and took himself and Amanda away, not to the beach where they'd started but to his.
"I'm sorry," he said, opening his eyes and relaxing a little when he saw that they were safely there, and alone. He let go of her hand and took a step across the pristine white sand, staring up into the starry sky, unable to bring himself to look at her. "We should be okay here, until one of us wakes up and breaks the connection."
Amanda blinked, momentarily surprised by the sudden change in location, but taking it in her stride. After all, she'd been brought up as a power source to a black magician, so she wasn't exactly close-minded to strange experiences. This was just another one. Nathan's beach was a lot different to hers, she noted, pondering the brilliance of the stars overhead despite the fact it was as bright as daytime on the beach. Then she remembered the name he'd given the other Nathan, and frowned. "'Cable'? Was that what they called you, back in that place?"
"My field name," Nathan said quietly, forcing himself to look at her and give her a wan smile. "I suppose that other me back there is my own fault. In some ways I try to think of the person I was under the full conditioning as separate..."
"Yer talkin' t' the person who has herself as a little kid runnin' 'round her head. An' sometimes other people's," Amanda said wryly, although her eyes were shadowed with worry. "Least now I know where yer journal name came from. I was wonderin' 'bout that."
"Don't know why I picked it," Nathan muttered fitfully. The stars were murmuring at him - the Askani, concerned. "Hell, I don't remember all that much about my first week at the mansion, the state I was in..."
There was rustling behind him in the trees, the forest lining the beach whose symbolic significance he hadn't yet figured out, and he whirled around, glaring. "Go AWAY!" he shouted, ignoring Amanda's startled look.
But it wasn't the other him who walked out onto the beach. It was a little blond boy of about seven years old, grinning happily at him, and Nathan turned back to the water with a moan, gripping his head with shaking hands.
Aware of the Askani only as a vague murmur of voices on the air, Amanda turned her attention to the child. _This_ was more familiar territory. And Nathan's reaction implied his childhood hadn't been happy - she knew that from what he'd told her anyway. Stepping around Nathan and laying her hand on his arm, she looked into the child's eyes. "Hello," she said, her tone the same one she used for Miles and Artie.
"Hi," the boy said, still smiling. "What's your name?" Nathan, facing the water, squeezed his eyes shut in pain.
'Okay, maybe this isn't Nate...' "Amanda," she said, looking from Nathan's hunched shoulders to the boy's open, happy face. "Who're you?"
"Tyler. I'm Tyler," the boy announced, his blue eyes sparkling. "That's my dad."
"Stop," Nathan muttered to himself feverishly, keeping his eyes closed. "Stop, damn it..." Amanda didn't need to see this.
"Dad?" Amanda echoed in surprise. She knew Nathan had been married before, but he'd never mentioned a kid, not that she could remember...
Then she remembered what he'd told her about the link and his wife dying, and what 'Cable' had said about not protecting them. "Oh." At least she knew whose head they were in now. "'M a friend of yer dad's," she said, approaching the memory, ghost, whatever it was of Nathan's lost son. "D' you come down here much?"
"Sometimes," Tyler said cheerfully. "When he lets me. Except sometimes I'm over there, too." He pointed, and Amanda saw a bloodstained bed a short distance away on the beach. Tyler, or another Tyler, was lying there, utterly still, his eyes wide and empty, staring up at the sky.
Nathan started to laugh, a desolate, wild sound. "Oh, just perfect... just fucking perfect!" He turned around, glaring up at the sky. "Why don't you show her everything?" he shouted, enraged at himself. "Why not make it the grand fucking tour?"
Flinching at the sight of the small, still body, Amanda closed her eyes. This was more than she should know, more than Nathan wanted her to know, or at least more than his conscious mind was wanting her to know. And it was hard to look at Tyler's happy, boyish face and reconcile it with the knowledge he was dead. 'Oh, Nate, you poor bastard, carrying that with you...' She turned away from Tyler, back to Nathan, never wishing to wake up more than she did now, but knowing she was stuck until the connection between them was broken.
"Remember when you were in my head? Remember... Gemile?" It was hard to say the name - no-one except Rack had used it in close on six years. "Sometimes yer head plays tricks, makes you share stuff that you'd rather not. Because there's a bit of you that wants to."
Nathan made himself meet her eyes. "I remember," he said, his voice rough with pain. He took a deep, shaky breathing, running his hands through his hair. When he looked back at where Tyler had been, he was gone. So was the bed with his dead body. "But I think I need to talk to Charles about improving my shielding," he said, managing a smile that probably looked pretty ghastly. "Seems to be lacking, still."
"Rom said somethin' 'bout healin' spells makin' connections, so it probably ain't all yer fault. Tho' shieldin's probably a good idea." Then the thought occurred to her and she snacked herself on the forehead. "Shieldin', of course. I'm a moron." At Nathan's look, she went on. "Shieldin' spell. It blocked Manuel once, so it might block you. Enough t' break the connection an' get me out of here before I see anythin' else you don't want me to. Give you yer privacy. I dunno what'll happen, tho' - I've cast spells in me sleep before, but never from inside someone else's head."
"Failing that," came a voice from down the beach, "you could always ask me." Nathan looked around, rubbing his eyes again as Askani strode towards them, her white robe fluttering behind her in the breeze.
"So where have you been anyway?" he asked hoarsely as she reached them and smiled almost gently first at him, then at Amanda.
"Seeing if you could sort it out yourselves," Askani said lightly, tucking red hair behind one ear. "You have after all been quite sharp with me of late on the subject of unasked-for intervention." She turned her attention back to Amanda. "The connection is a relic of your healing spells, I believe," she said calmly, shooting Nathan a look that was almost wry. "Reinforced by the truly ridiculous number of times you've had to use them on him as of late."
Amanda muttered a string of words of which only Rack's name was understandable. "Just when I think I can't hate him any more 'n I already do," she finished with, shaking her head. "Had t' go an' teach me arse-about, didn't he? I didn't know any of this, 'til Strange an' Rom explained it." Shaking the irritation off, she met Askani's eyes. "What's done is done, an' I can't undo it - Strange told me that too. So how do we stop stuff like this happenin'? It ain't fair on Nate, me seein' this stuff when he ain't ready."
Askani stared at Amanda for a moment, and then turned to regard Nathan steadily. "I'm... not certain," she said, sounding almost surprised at her lack of an immediate solution. "I can end this now, easily enough, but I am unsure how it can be prevented from happening again. The problem comes from both ends, you see. Your spells created the connection, yet... he is not unready for all of this to be seen. So he reaches out for those he trusts, sleeping and waking."
Nathan swallowed hard. "But I--"
He stopped as Askani reached out and laid a hand against his lips, shaking her head. "Not ready," she said, "yet not unready. As you're so fond of telling the boy, you need to choose between one option and the other." She gave him one of those unsettlingly youthful smiles. "Sometimes the advice given should indeed be the advice taken."
"He's good at that, not takin' his own advice," Amanda said, her tone teasing but a part of her taking note of what Askani had said about trust and thrilling to it. Actions - even in a dreamscape - spoke louder than words for her. "An' I figured that. When Manuel was in my head, saw what had happened... part of me wanted him t' see it. That part of me trusted him with that." She looked at Nate. "You don't have t' worry 'bout me, y'know. I can handle it."
"I know you can," Nathan said with a heavy sigh, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment and wrestling for control. "But you shouldn't have to." He opened them, looking at Askani. "You said you can break the connection for now? Do it... please."
"I can also remove the memory of this dream," Askani said, her eyes thoughtful as she glanced back and forth between the two of them. "If you wish."
Amanda bit her lip. The thought of someone removing - or changing - anything in her head was something she really wasn't comfortable with, but in the circumstances... She met Nate's eyes, hiding her fear as best she could. "'S up t' you. This is yer stuff, not mine, an' I don't have a right to it if you don't want me to know it."
Nathan shook his head slowly, staring down at her. "I won't ask you to do that," he said hoarsely, reaching out and taking her hand, squeezing it gently. "I never would, Amanda." He looked back up at Askani. "Just break the connection," he said tiredly. "Get us both out of here?"
Askani nodded, and if Amanda had been expecting a showy display of powers, she was to be disappointed. The dream simply ended, as dreams do - she blinked sleepily at the early dawn light filtering in through a gap in the curtains, Manuel's naked length curled around her. He must have picked up on the tumult of emotions in her head, though, since he muttered thickly in Castillian and rolled away from her, taking most of the covers with him. She let him, looking up at the ceiling and wondering what the hell all that had been about.
Nathan opened his eyes, feeling the wetness on his cheeks and the dampness of his pillow. He took a deep, shaky breath and shifted closer to Moira, clinging to her tightly. He'd have to talk to Amanda, he thought dimly, squeezing his eyes shut. But in the morning. It could wait until morning...
