xp_logs | Alison and Nathan, the middle of Saturday night

Nathan has insomnia and paces the hallway on the third floor. Alison clocks him with a pillow. They agree to go downstairs, get some tea, and sit out on the porch for a while. The conversation turns to this email from MacInnis, and Alison makes a few suggestions that Nathan's maybe not quite ready to hear, but which should be out in the open nonetheless.

Moira was probably going to throttle him if she woke up and found him not there, but he hadn't been able to help himself. The room had just been too stifling, and he hadn't been able to sleep - again. The hallways weren't much better, because they were bringing back memories of running in his dream... induced vision, whatever the hell you wanted to call the scenario the conditioning team had put into his head. He had been pacing for a while now and the walls hadn't changed, but that didn't seem to have silenced the part of him that expected them to.

The door opened up slowly, a pair of narrowed blue eyes staring at him for a moment before the door was quietly and very carefully opened further. Clearly, a decision was reached as hint of white peeked out for a moment, then swung back, before hurtling out at high speed, aiming straight for the back of his head while he paced away. Again.

It was a sign of how tired he was that he didn't sense the (thankfully soft) missile heading at his head. It struck him squarely and he whirled, wide-eyed at the sight of Alison standing in her doorway, looking distinctively unimpressed.

"Uh..." He looked down, saw the pillow, and bent to retrieve it. "You threw a pillow at me," he said with a scowl. "Why?"

Her lips quirked and she kept her other hand well out of sight, leaning in the doorway wearing a camisole and cotton pants. "You're pacing up and down the hallway at ungodly hours of the night." Well, she didn't mind late hours, but most did and it sounded good to say it that way. "Besides. You had it coming. Fret fret fret..." She tapped the side of her head, giving him a meaningful look.

"I am not fretting," he said with as much dignity as he could muster in his bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived state. He walked back to her door, offering the pillow back. "But I'll pace more quietly, if it's bothering you."

"Wasn't the pacing," she grinned lop-sidedly, accepting the pillow. Ha, now she had all the pillows and he had none! "It was all the thinking keeping me awake and I'm not sure you could stop doing that short of someone knocking you out."

Nathan blinked, then frowned, more fitfully this time. "I was projecting?" he asked, checking his shields. "Shit..." He could only imagine what, too. "Surprised I haven't heard from Charles, then," he said with a lame smile. "Maybe he's just cutting me some slack."

"He has to keep up pretty damn strong shields too, when you think about it," she pointed out matter of factly. "You can practically see the change in his whenever Miles is nearby, actually." She stepped out in the hallway and closed the door behind her so they wouldn't wake up Lorna, both pillows now tucked under one arm.

Nathan gave the pillows a suspicious look. "No more hitting, okay? That can only end badly." A wry, if tired smile tugged at his lips as he met her eyes. "I'm sorry. I really didn't mean to wake you up."

So he was that worn out, it seemed. "Didn't we have a talk about you and sleep at one point?" It was like no one slept in this building. "S'ok." She chuckled, not really upset over it. "Although I got the general notion that you were more turning in circles and generally not making any headway there?"

"We did," Nathan confirmed quietly, leaning back against the wall beside him, folding his arms across his chest with a sigh. "And this is, or will be four nights, so I know I'm pushing it again. As for turning in circles..." The smile came back, a little tighter this time. "I'm playing chicken with the walls. If I keep pacing, they won't change on me. Because I'm daring them to, by pacing. You know how it is."

"The walls are used to students trying to vaporize them and Cain having student-proofed them. Not sure they'll be all that into playing games." Alison nodded wisely, reaching out to pet the wall. She pondered for a moment, before giving him a curious look. "Nathan? Don't the Askani have any training techniques to help you sleep?" She thought she remembered something like that, but she wasn't sure. The way it was called might mean it was just a way to refer to something else entirely, really.

"I tried, but I don't have the concentration. I can't even clear my mind." He pushed away from the wall, crossing the hall in a few rapid steps and then turning to face her again, that tight smile lingering. "If this is the beginnings of PTSD or some such damned thing, I'm going to be really pissed at myself."

Alison grinned a bit wryly at that, because that kind of syndrome certainly wouldn't be a huge surprise, after all. "Well... if you're going to stay awake and all, want some tea? Paige lets me raid her stash of vanilla tea now and then and pretends not to notice when I top it up with new stuff."

"Are you sure? I could go pace outside and let you get back to sleep..." He was trying very hard not to let on how pitifully glad he'd be for the company, though. He hadn't wanted to wake up Moira - she was sleeping soundly, and at least one of them should be.

"I'm awake now." She hid a smile at the look on his face, opening the door just enough to throw the pillows back inside. She padded barefooted on the floor a few steps before turning to look at him. "We can go stargaze or something on the front stoop with the tea, maybe? I got a bit of Askani astronomy in that cultural download way back when. Doesn't match right, but it's still fun to try and figure out what's what."

"We're still trying to sort out the difference," Nathan said, following her and not hearing the Askani accent edging his voice. "Comparative astronomy hasn't been high on his list of priorities, though."

So there was some slippage, Alison thought, turning to glance at him as they headed for the stairs. "Well, tonight's going to be just about passing the time. We can talk about pretty much anything." She paused at the laundry room to grab a blanket, just in case it was chilly out, waiting for the answer - if there was more of the secondary talk without Nathan realizing it, she'd just point it out to him and go on.

"I may not be the best conversationalist tonight," Nathan warned her wryly. "My mind keeps wandering." They started down the stairs, and Nathan chuckled suddenly, with a certain amount of amusement. "Sleep. Definitely, there has to be sleep at some point in my not-too-distant future. I suppose it's time to break out the evil little green pills."

"See how you feel after the tea and chat?" she suggested, hiding a yawn behind her hand. "Mmm. That vanilla tea is evil addictive when you wake up at night," she muttered wryly. The walk to the kitchen was short and Alison busied herself with putting water to boil before fetching the tea, leaving the tin slightly out of place on purpose to let Paige know she had sneaked a bit for herself.

Nathan leaned back against the counter, watching her fuss with the tea. "It's been an odd few days," he said finally. "My head may have been elsewhere for most of the time, but I still couldn't quite help noticing."

She pauseed a moment before reaching for mugs, setting them on the counter and then leaning on it as well. "Yeah... not sure if it's just that some people are tense or more. Or maybe it's something else." They'd managed to have blow-ups without people starting to insult others quite so drastically, before. "Eh." She shrugged, nuding one of the mugs, and smiled a bit to herself. She was okay. She was ok with the people she wanted to be okay with. Worked for her. "Are you thinking of anything in particular?" she asked, giving him a curious look.

"Well, apart from Scott, who seems to be settling down a little, from what I can sense, I was a bit concerned with the whole uproar that came from Betsy's question about atonement." Nathan shrugged, a bit embarassed. "Shouldn't have added my two cents' worth on that, I imagine."

There was, even if she'd already know, a flash of satisfaction at his words regarding Scott. Settling down, even a little, was good. She tensed afterwards however, holding her breath for a moment at the rest. "Her post wasn't-" she sighed, shaking her head. "She was talking about what Essex did. Giving her back her sight." And Kwannon.

"Ah." Definitely shouldn't have added his two cents' worth, then. Nathan shook his head, irritated at himself. "I should have..." He stopped again, sighed. "She and I haven't talked much," he admitted awkwardly. "After... well, she's afraid of the Askani. And after Mistra, I've been afraid of her." He gave Alison a ghost of a smile. "I'm back to being phobic about fellow telepaths. Did I tell you that? And let's not even talk about Manuel..."

"You know, we should be able to at least say things we think without it being a crime in someone else's eyes," Alison said calmly enough, although she was starting to feel a bit irritated about that. "We keep cat-footing it around everything these days, I swear." She gave him a small smile to let him know she wasn't irked with him, while turning to fetch the kettle which had started to whistle.

"The phobia is understandable," she finally said, starting to pour water in the mugs. Her expression darkened for a moment, a far from kind thought being spared for the people who had messed with his head - again.

"I think it's a fine line," Nathan said, remembering his conversation with Angelo by the lake this morning. "On the journals, face to face... I'm starting to realize that you just have to swallow stuff sometimes, because of the kids. Even when it's something that's liable to fester. Either swallow it, or vent in a safer direction..." He stopped, shrugged. "You should see the paper journal I've been keeping these last few weeks. Jack's suggestion. All the things I'd never let myself actually say..."

"Mm. Unless you're planning on revisiting them you may want to consider burning the pages you wrote as you go along." She snickerd, dropping a tea bag in each mug. "Considering how things go in this place, odds are high someone would manage to stumble onto them and my, what drama would that generate..." She turned, handing him a mug. "I usually vent to Lorna. We can be wonderfully catty when we set our minds to it." A pause. "Actually, I can even when I don't set my mind to it. Heh."

Nathan took the mug from her. "I vent to Moira, generally, and vice versa. We don't get catty so much as goofy, oddly." He smiled. "It's the link, I think," he said almost brightly. "Our separate senses of humor are combining into this whole new frightening hybrid sense of humor..."

"Ha!" Alison made sure the oven was closed and set the kettle aside before picking both blanket and mug and heading towards the back porch. "You just say that because the two of you have Bella to swear a blue streak and strip the paint off the walls for you!"

Nathan followed her, shaking his head. "She's become quite devoted to Moira lately," he said with a snort. "It's moderately creepy at times. Like the other day, with the two of them and their maniacal laughter at the hermit crabs..."

"Heh. Sounds like they were having more fun creeping you out than anything else." The smell of vanilla was heavenly she decided, at least when it was in tea. Odd how you could hate something most times, but not in certain occasions or formats. "And hey, maybe Bella just figured out that Moira makes you happy."

"Entirely possible." They settled themselves in chairs on the porch, and Nathan took a deep breath, appreciating the cool, crisp air. Did wonderful things for the clearness of his head. "You will never guess," he went on dryly, "who I got an email from today."

As she finished wrapping the blanket around her legs then pulled them up to curl uponthe chair, Alison gave him a curious look. "Actually, no..." She leaned back after picking up her mug, cradling it in her hands and sighed in satisfaction a bit. The sky was nice and clear and it was just plain pleasant outside. "Who?"

"MacInnis," Nathan said flatly. Alison didn't betray much of a reaction, and he smiled tightly. "Guess he was thinking about this little anniversary, too."

Well, since he'd brought it up... "And what did the email say?" she asked evenly, taking a sip of the vanilla tea and sighing a bit at the warmth spread through her slowly. She didn't bother radiating light, choosing to rely on the combination of tea and blanket to keep her comfortable isntead.

"Oh, he was wondering how I was. Wanted to let me know that Mistra knew I was conditioning-free and had no plans to come after me. That they'd dealt with Kritzer. Stuff like that." Nathan took a sip of his tea, then went on in the same tense, angry low voice. "I asked him if he was going to leave me alone, too. He didn't reply back."

"Then I guess that's your answer there," she murmured, looking at him over the rim of her mug before taking another sip. "There's some good in the knowing of all of that, at least." She, at least, certainly felt better about it. Although she wished something could be done about Mistra, nonetheless.

"I don't know. I don't know why I should trust it, coming from him." Nathan stared out at the grounds for a long moment. "Something that came out in my session with Jack on Thursday... he asked me how I would have reacted if Kritzer's trap hadn't been lethal. If everyone had gone along with it and it had worked out like MacInnis had thought it would."

Glad there was no tea for her to choke on, Alison shook her head. "You're forgetting one thing - the Professor never would have gone along with anything unless you had specifically given your permission... and even then, I don't think he'd have been keen on letting you potentially kill yourself. Well, even if it hadn't been lethal, would have been freakishly dangerous and - you know." She shrugged. "And you don't really have a reason to trust McInnis after all." She smiled a bit crookedly, waiting to see his reply to that.

"But it was tempting," Nathan muttered, sipping at his tea again. "I know it was. Pete would have gone along with it - I can even understand why. It wasn't a bad plan, if it had been what MacInnis thought." He stopped again. "They had kids there, Alison. They were starting up the first-gen conditioning again."

"Tempting is one thing. Violating someone's basic right to choose is another entirely. Charles wouldn't have gone along with it. Plain and simple. He'd have asked you first." She didn't go into the whole tap dancing on Pete's or anyone else's head if they'd gone along with something like that without asking Nathan first. "Are they still doing that? To kids I mean? Or has it stopped since?"

"I don't know. MacInnis didn't say." Nathan swallowed. "I'd imagine the conditioning was disrupted, because they would have had to move the base again... but they were determined to create most first-gen operatives. If they haven't started back up again, they will."

"Mmm." She switched mental gears for a moment, the mug still warm in her hands. "You said MacInnis wanted to know how you were doing?" She gave him a sidelong look, checking on his reaction.

"Yeah. Gave me this crap about being aware of the presumption and the irony of asking me that question. Apologized, again." Nathan's mouth twisted and he gulped down some more of the tea. "Called me 'son', speaking of presumption..."

This would either go over well, bring about some thought or... go over very badly indeed. Still, Alison went along with it. "Well..." she shrugged a bit, liberating one hand from the mug only long enough to tug the blanket up a bit. "Maybe checking in on you and trying to make sure you know you're safe is his way of making up for failing to help those kids in the first place. Especially since he was using the wrong way to go about it too and hurt you too in the process..."

"Trying to use me to atone?" Nathan said with a humorless smile, his fingers flexing and tightening on the mug. "How very... symmetrical." He was furious, he realized, and wondered precisely when that had happened. Or had he been furious since reading that email, and had just been trying to ignore it? "You know what he told me back in May, that weekend he and his merry band of idiots kidnapped me to put the booby-trap in my head in the first place? Well, actually, he told me a lot of stuff. That he and his people got beaten to the hotel the day Aliya and Tyler were killed. That he's been trying to help me for the last seven years. That he was proud of me for going back and extracting Anika..." He stopped, shaking his head. "Another Mistra operative," he explained tiredly. "Last year. She broke her conditioning and wanted out, so I helped."

"You don't use someone when you try to atone, Nathan," she said softly. "There's no price tag to it or expectancy of gratitude or much of anything but you doing what you can."

She took note of the list of events, wondering how many more things had happened that MacInnis hadn't even mentioned to Nathan. "So there are some who can break the conditionning?" The notion had been there for a while really, having taken root when she'd seen Nathan not even knowing who she was down in the medlab. About Mistra having to be stopped somehow. Not that she was the one to do it, of course.

Nathan nodded, deliberately not responding to her first comment. "It happens more easily with the second-gen operatives," he said quietly. "The ones that are older, when they're conditioned. Harder for the ones like me, the first-gens. It takes..." He paused, his jaw tightening a little. "Severe emotional shock, to break the obedience compulsions. The mission in China did it for me. Anika's lover was killed in a particularly senseless set of circumstances. Both times, the directorate was at fault." He was silent for a moment, thinking. "Mick... Foley, rather, the one Shinobi fought in the warehouse? I wouldn't be surprised if his conditioning is at least compromised. Shinobi said Foley was fighting to disable him for better than five minutes - that shouldn't be possible, that he could have resisted the urge to kill him for that long without being in agony. Like I was when I was fighting Pete..."

She had to suggest it, really. Nathan's own path to atonement maybe, although he might not look at it that way. But it was doing something. "I think ifyou asked Charles if we could test out the possibility of extracting Foley, he might not turn you down flat." She paused, gathering her nerve. "I'd volunteer for that mission. It might be the chance to scout out other potential retrievals too..."

Nathan went white and nearly dropped his tea. "He--I don't--" He cut himself off before he could continue babbling, and folded his hands around the mug tightly, to try and still their shaking. "You had to say that, didn't you?" he asked, a bit of a wild edge to his voice, even though he managed to keep it relatively low.

"I did," she placed her mug down, struggling a bit out of the cocoon of her blanket to nudge her chair closer and be closer, not daring to touch him unless he made it clear it was ok, what with his shielding being so precarious. "It's been nagging at me since we got you back. I wouldn't be surprised if Charles was already researching into ways to break the conditioning in a less traumatic way, too. And... it doesn't mean you have to be on that mission. Not unless you're ready for it."

Despite the reassurance she'd tagged onto the end there, he could still hardly breathe. "Of course he is," he forced out. "And of course it's the right thing to do. Don't you think I know that?" Guilt and fear, equally paralyzing, gripped him, and he raised the mug to his lips, barely managing not to spill any of the contents.

"Nathan, look at me." She waited until he did, before going on. "If I'd been through a tenth of what you have, I'd be a screaming gibbering wreck right now. And for a hell of a long time, too. No one expects you to go diving back in there. It would be insane for you to do this now - you need time to heal, however long that takes. And there are others here who are perfectly capable of doing this. Because it's not just the right thing to do for them, but because offering to take that burden away from you is the right thing to do for us." She was calm now and thankful for it, not hesistating at all to radiate that towards as best she could, despite not being a telepath in the least - it's not as thought she hadn't had practice, what with the link with Betsy.

The calm, determined thoughts she was projecting smoothly undercut both the brewing panic and the lingering anger, and Nathan blinked at her for a long moment before he responded. "I don't know if I'll ever be ready to go diving back in there," he said, with every bit of honesty he could muster. "And I don't think I could live with myself if I don't."

"Then we find a way for you to help that doesn't involve causing you more damage. That simple. There's a hell of a lot more to this than just a simple extraction, after all. We'll have to find a way to remove the conditionning, help whoever we get out cope, find out more information on Mistra. There's so much intelligence work to do it's scary." She waited for a moment and then shrugged. "I'm not sure the X-Men are ideal for every phase of this too. We may need to call on other resources."

He laughed edgily. "Well, you know, MacInnis and his people have apparently been at it for the better part of twenty years..." Sipping more tea, he stared back out at the grounds, trying to relocate his composure. "The government's still running their own investigation. Pete hasn't given up on his. Lots of bases covered."

Good. Perspective of a sort was there. "So for now, maybe we just concentrate on Foley? You said he was possibly already shaking off the conditioning..." She offered him a small smile - apology for not leaving it alone, for bringing it up in the first place Reassurance that he'd not have to deal with it unless he were ready.

"It's not being decided on tonight, anyway." The door was open for a subject change really, an odd calm settling over her despite the fact that she knew she didn't particularly want to go diving in that mission herself, although she had told him the truth when she said she'd volunteer.

"No, it's not." Thankfully. Not over vanilla tea in the middle of the night, when he hadn't slept for the better part of four days. "I can't even start to think about this objectively yet," he went on. "Not really. ~We know it has to be done,~" he said, shifting without thinking into Askani. "~Not yet, though.~"

"~What will be, will be. When the time is right, it will happen, if it is meant to happen.~" The Askani way of thinking, sometimes, was oddly comforting. A blend of faith and fate, really. And they truly had diverged from what this was meant to be about, although perhaps now having it out in the open would give Nathan a bit of a respite. "Now. About them stars..."