xp_logs | Nathan and Angelo, Saturday morning

Angelo, out walking Joyita, finds Nathan down by the lake. They have a serious conversation about atonement, forgiveness, and penance. Then Angelo finds out that Nathan is struggling with memories of where he was and what he was doing a month ago, and makes a suggestion.

Around the middle of the morning, Angelo headed out to take Joyita for her regular walk. Choosing a route down by the lake this time, he slowed his pace when he spotted Nate sitting on the shore. As he drew closer, he frowned - Nate wasn't looking too well...

Sensing Angelo-and-puppy approaching, Nathan looked up, mustering a faint smile. "Morning," he said, his voice a bit rough from disuse. Moira hadn't been pushing him to have much in the way of conversations yesterday. He looked down at the puppy bouncing on the end of her leash. "Morning to you too."

Not sure if Nathan was in the mood to be bounced at, Angelo kept a firm hold on the leash, despite Joyita's plaintive whine when she discovered she couldn't reach him. "Mornin'. How's things?"

"Oh, they're... there," Nathan said a bit wryly, his eyes moving back out to the lake. He laughed suddenly, a brief, tired sound. "You sure you want to be having a conversation with me down here?"

Angelo blinked, then got it, and answered steadily, "Well, I've done nothin' wrong this time. Have I?"

Nathan waved a hand. "Oh, no. Just that I haven't slept, and conversations down by the lake when I haven't slept..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "Bad joke," he offered a bit feebly.

Angelo nodded, eyeing him with some concern. But he knew what was going on, from Nathan's post, and didn't want to push.

"So," Nathan went, trying to pull his train of thought back onto something vaguely productive. "You okay? I did see some of the stuff on the journals."

Angelo shrugged. "Workin' on it. Talked to Paul some." The puppy, giving up on getting to lick Nathan today, stopped straining at the leash and lay down with her head on her paws, looking vaguely piteous.

"I'm sorry I wasn't around to talk to," Nathan said quietly, eyeing the puppy. "I probably shouldn't have jumped into the discussion in the first place." Should have left the kids their illusions...

Angelo shook his head. "Not your fault, the first one. An' for the second... it's what you thought. Why shouldn't you say it?"

"Because it's a hard thing to hear, and a harder thing to accept," Nathan said, staring back out at the lake. "I have trouble with it myself, still. I know you and Amanda both have plenty of things you wish you hadn't done in your pasts, but I've been... 'transgressing' for longer than either of you have been alive." He looked back up at Angelo, almost sharply. "And maybe that's why I can accept that there's no atonement, in the end. Because once the faces of the people you've killed start to blur into each other when you have a bloody eidetic memory, you know that there's just too much. If I started living to atone, I would be doing nothing else until the day I die."

Angelo winced, but didn't look away. "But what's the alternative?" he asked quietly. "Movin' forward an' atonin' by livin' better, it sounds good, but what if it's not enough? I believe in Hell, remember. Trouble is, I don't know what else I can do."

"You can never undo what's happened," Nathan said. "Even my Askani know that. If this little experiment of ours works, if we avoid their future, it doesn't change that they're here, that everything that happened still happened to them." He sucked in a quick breath, almost a frustrated hiss. "My point. I do have one. Moving forward is the only thing you can do. And while I can't speak for God, what do you think He'd prefer? You to help someone out because you genuinely want to help them, or to do it because you're thinking about the state of your soul?"

Angelo nodded thoughtfully. "The first one, of course. But the first... doesn't mean the second can't be true as well,or vice versa, unless I only do it as a way of atonin', and wouldn't've done otherwise."

"True enough," Nathan said. "But if you're in a crisis situation, Angelo, do you really want that second's hesitation where you think 'Well, hey, doing this will get me in good with God!'?"
Angelo scowled. "Now you're soundin' like you think I should give up on my faith. Like Rahne says, we're supposed to do good whether or not we've done bad before, so if I was gonna think that, I'd think it anyway..." He trailed off, having managed to confuse himself quite effectively. "I think."

"Then why worry about having done bad?" Nathan asked. "If the doing good is what counts, no matter what your motivations are."

"Because..." He paused, trying to think about it. "Rahne an' I were taught different. She says we can't atone, but it's been done for us if we want it, so that doesn't matter. The doin' good definitely counts for itself, but I was always taught... there has to be penance."

"That was always something I could never wrap my mind around," Nathan said, looking away again. "The difference between penance and punishment. I can't quite get past the idea that the only difference is that one is self-inflicted and the other isn't."

Angelo shrugged. "Maybe you're not far wrong. But penance is always deserved."

Nathan stared out at the lake. "Is it," he said very quietly. "Then I suppose I really should stop talking, shouldn't I? If this is something you have to do... something you deserve, I shouldn't be trying to get in the way."

"It's what I've always been taught", Angelo answered quietly. "But my problem is I don't know how to go about it. Maybe just rememberin' will have to do, along with tryin' to do better."

"Even if you didn't believe what you believed, would you ever forget?"

"I don't know. Probably not. I know you said... you can't let your past rule your present. But it's so hard..."

Nathan's eyes flickered back to him. "And should it be anything else but hard?" he asked. "Realistically?"

"No." This answer came without hesitation. "Stuff like that doesn't come easy, even I know that." Joyita, forgotten, appeared to have fallen asleep on Angelo's feet.

Nathan shifted a little where he sat, stretching out his leg, the one that had been broken back in May, into a more comfortable position. The nagging ache in it was letting him know that yes, it was indeed as damp as it felt out here this morning. "How much of this is about forgiving yourself?"

Angelo shrugged uncomfortably. "Some. Probably a lot."

"You've got a lot going on, then, don't you? The penance you believe God would expect, the penance you expect of yourself... no wonder you're finding it hard."

Angelo just nodded, answering simply, "Yeah", and focused on the sleeping puppy at his feet, petting her gently and not looking at Nathan for the moment.

Nathan sighed, shaking his head. It was frustrating - as if Angelo didn't have enough to grapple with, he had to insist upon adding divine displeasure to the whole mess? Dear God - still looking for that reason not to hate what religion can do to people. No love, Nathan.

Angelo looked up finally, clear-eyed. "I haven't been to Confession about all this", he said quietly. "T'be honest, I'm scared to. Doesn't really even make sense - they're not supposed to condemn people who're sorry for what they've done, an' there's the confidentiality rule, but..."

Nathan stared hard at him. "Angelo, you're being inconsistent. Either you believe, which includes doing penance and being forgiven and supported while you're doing it, or you don't."

"I do believe", Angelo insisted. "An' soon, I will go to the priest an' tell him, an' do the decades or whatever else he tells me, but... that'll clear the taint, but... there's still the penance I expect of myself, in your words. It's different."

Taint. Okay, Dayspring, time to back gracefully out of this conversation before you say something unforgivable. Pun intended. "One step at a time," Nathan said, and managed to make the comment calm, even encouraging.

Angelo nodded. "Yeah, an' the second part's the hard one, 'cause there's no clear thing I have t'do about it. Like I said, startin' to think the only way is just to... keep goin'."

Well, that wouldn't be so bad, would it? Nathan thought after a moment. Angelo could abase himself in front of some judgemental priest who couldn't possibly understand everything he'd been through, but so long as he himself moved forward... "You know that's my advice," Nathan said, mustering another faint smile. "I can keep reiterating it, if you want."

Angelo smiled slightly in return. "It'd help, I think. I will get there."

"I know you will," Nathan said, meaning it. Amazing how much more smoothly these conversations could go when you kept certain things to yourself, he reflected.

Angelo nodded and looked at Nathan speculatively, lifting the puppy off his feet and into his lap. "So how are you really?"

Nathan blinked, a bit taken aback at how swiftly the conversation had turned. Angelo was getting too damned good at that. Too much time spent around you... "I'm... here, like I said," he responded, managing another smile, even if it probably came across a little warier this time. "Just doing a little too much thinking this weekend, I suppose."

Angelo nodded. "Makes sense, with what you said about the anniversary. You know we're around if you need us." 'We' clearly referred to himself, Amanda, Moira, perhaps Rahne.

Nathan mentally crossed the three kids off the list he could sense so clearly in Angelo's mind. All three of them had their own worries at the moment, some related to this whole discussion on atonement that had gotten out of hand, some not. He was hardly about to burden any of them with his problems.

"It's all self-inflicted," Nathan said with a shrug, another slight smile playing on his lips as he caught himself echoing his own words from earlier. "Unnecessarily so, in this case, by any assessment."

Angelo tilted his head, confused. "Why unnecessary? Bad memories are bad memories, an' what with it bein' so recent, an' the exact date..."

"Well, because I didn't need to let myself dwell on the fact that it was the anniversary," Nathan said, managing a good approximation of a dismissive tone. "I've never really been one for celebrating traumatic anniversaries. I have no business starting when I'm thirty-eight years old."

Angelo shrugged. "Well, it's your call, I guess. But if you found yourself thinkin' about it a lot this time, maybe it's 'cause you needed to."

Nathan's eyes narrowed. Everyone and their uncles, giving him advice... "Maybe about the stuff that actually happened," he said, a bit curtly. "Not about the crap they put in my head. That's not real, and I shouldn't be obsessing on it like this."

Angelo paused, considering, then answered carefully, "Bet it felt as real as the rest when they put it there, though."

"Given that I was drugged and unconscious and they were using it to break down my defenses, yes, it did," Nathan said, breathing a little heavily as the images flickered through his mind again. The mansion, being torn away piece by piece, the kids in training at Mistra... no, stopping right there.

Angelo watched him intently, concerned, and answered simply, "Then when it comes to how you react to it, it was. As much as the rest." He looked frustrated. "I'm puttin' this all wrong."

"No, I see the point," Nathan said, trying very hard to smile. "I don't mind telling you that what happened that night is one of those things I wish hadn't come back."

"You remember it all now, then?" Angelo asked quietly. "You know, the Professor could probably do somethin' about that if you wanted him to."

It took a lot not to push himself to his feet and back away, at just the suggestion. "No," Nathan said, holding onto the smile by sheer force of will and not looking at Angelo, knowing the look in his eyes would probably betray him if he did. "I don't think I'll be doing that. Had quite enough people doing things in my head lately."

Angelo nodded, understanding and mentally kicking himself for even making the suggestion. "If you wanted to", he repeated. "But it's your call, of course." He figured that bore repeating: that no one would be doing anything in Nathan's head without his permission, any more.

Nathan nodded, staring at the lake and breathing deeply for a moment, trying to let the panic fade. "Just the lack of sleep," he said quietly. "I'm too much better to be this jumpy."

Another nod. "Yeah - but there again... it is okay to have bad days, y'know. Not like you don't have a reason, this particular day."

"Yesterday, actually," Nathan said. "Today... today would have been the day I spent at Mistra before they sent me back out." He laughed, the sound coming across a little brittle. "See? Even less of an excuse. I'm thinking, though, that I should maybe be out of here entirely for tomorrow night. So that I don't get tempted to go wandering back down to that particular room in the medlab in a fit of nostalgia."

Angelo winced sympathetically. "Yeah, that might not be a bad idea. Go somewhere nice with Dr. MacTaggart, or somethin'."

"We could just head out tomorrow night," Nathan said, musing aloud. "Be back in plenty of time for classes on Monday morning..." He was liking this idea.

Angelo nodded. "Sounds like a plan."

"Yeah, I suppose it does," Nathan said, obscurely tickled by Angelo's use of one of his favorite phrases. Definitely spending too much time around me... He glanced back out at the lake for a moment, then rose. "I think what's called for now, though, is a nap. Two nights and most of a third without sleep is really beginning to push it. And we don't need me wandering around babbling hysterically in Askani again."

Angelo chuckled. "No, I think we could say that'd be a bad thing." He looked down at the fast-asleep Joyita. "Think this one needs any more walkin', or should I take her back inside?"

"Looks like she's crashed," Nathan said with a smile as Angelo got up, still holding the puppy. "I guess she got bored of the conversation."

Angelo grinned and nodded. "Yeah, it wasn't about her, so nothin' interestin' there." Cradling her in an effort not to wake her up as he walked, he followed Nathan back towards the school.