xp_logs | Nathan and Alison, backdated to Wednesday morning (Reply)

Backdated to Wednesday morning, set just after this rather tense conversation with Jubilee. Alison finds Nathan taking out his frustrations on a punching bag and shouting at the Askani. She doesn't really manage to get through to the Askani, but she does successfully talk some sense into Nathan on the subject of Manuel - or at least gets him to stop and take a step back.

He hadn't taped his hands, hadn't put gloves on. Protective gear of any sort minimized the impact with the punching bag, kept the pain at a distance, and he needed the pain this morning. Needed the clarity to hold off the red haze of guilt-tinged anger waxing and waning in his mind. Not to mention the Askani empaths were hissing at him. Almost in unison, too. There were a few dissenting voices, Lusanya's chief among them, but most of the empaths were infuriated with him. Disgusted. Not being shy about letting him know it.

"~Shut up,~" he snarled back, hammering away at the punching bag with desperate speed. "~Stab your eyes, shut UP!~" But they kept growling at him, pushing the images of Manuel's precognitive dream into the forefront of his mind, reminding him how badly he'd failed, how he'd bungled the whole thing, undone what little good he had done. #~Flonq you all, leave me ALONE!~# he projected inwards at them, almost in a scream, and the next time he hit the punching bag his TK slipped, echoing the blow, and the punching bag just - exploded. Leather fragments and a fine mist of sand filled the air, and Nathan took a stumbling step backwards, coughing. "FUCK!" he raged.

Leaning on the doorway of the gym and reflecting that she should soon start charging to keep the building standing from all the leaning in doorways she did, Alison raised an eyebrow as dust slowly floated about Nathan, as though the punching bag were trying to take its murderer with it by suffocating him to death.

"It's dead, Jim," she intoned wryly, crossing her arms and making a mental note of the damage Nathan had done to his hands and what she'd need from the emergency medical kit on the far wall, before sending him off to the medlab.

Nathan shot her a harried look. "I'll replace it," he growled, half-embarassed, half-infuriated. "That replacement I ordered when I killed the first one is in the storage room." He looked away, struggling to try and get his anger back under control. Failing. Why did people have to walk in on him at every possible bad moment? He should have gone out to the quarry.

#Yes, might as well run right away,# Galin chided.

#SHUT UP!# Nathan bellowed at him, only half-aware that he was clutching at his skull again. He took a deep, shaky breath, trying very hard not to look at Alison.

"You might as well order a half-dozen more at this rate," she replied, the internal battle he was waging with himself and his temper far too easy to discern. First the insomnia, now this - at least he was picking an outlet to vent at, but still. The gesture however broke her train of thought and she dropped her lackadaisical demeanor, moving into the room and frowning at the sight. "Nathan, what's going on?"

A wild laugh slipped out before he could stop it. "Clean breaks are an illusion, that's what's going on, Alison," he snapped bitterly, almost feverishly. "You think you make the right decision, and everyone and their uncle decides not only that you didn't, but that they're going to keep throwing it in your face how badly you screwed up from now until the fucking end of time!"

Both eyebrows went up slowly at his reply as well as his state of mind, Alison slowly to a stop a few feet from him. Holding his head and telling someone to shut up. Hrm. "~Are the Askani being a pain?~" she asked calmly. "And if so about what?"

"About Manuel!" he all but raved at her, part of him distantly aware that he was shouting at her and really shouldn't be, given that she hadn't done anything and was trying to help, but he couldn't help himself. Unstrung again. How very charming, a cold, dry voice at the back of his mind said. He almost told it to shut up, but talking to himself would be a bad development, very bad... "Who else? The poor, benighted young empath who I abused and abandoned and am taking every opportunity to discourage, apparently..."

#Now you're being melodramatic, boy,# Galin growled.

"SHUT UP!" Nathan whirled away from Alison, still clutching at his head. Not letting his TK slip, he raged at himself. Not. One. More. Slip.

There were times, Alison thought, when some people didn't know when to quit. And this time it seemed, it was the Askani, or at least some of them. Frowning slightly she walked around Nathan, carefully staying out of his reach until she faced him, before stepping forward. "~Clan sibs, may I have a moment of your time please?~" she said in perfectly enunciated tones, realiazing a moment later that this would be the first time she ever adressed any other of the clan other than Askani herself.

Nathan stared down at her, wide-eyed, as the empaths actually fell silent. "They're... they're listening," he said a bit uncertainly. Not quite sure why they'd shut up so willingly at Alison's simple request.

"Good." She beamed at him, before tilting her head to the side, clearly adressing someone else as she continued. "~Now, I do not really know all the details but I can guess well enough. Therefore," she continued, with great patience or so she felt, "may I ask that you all kindly shut up and stop enabling the original poster child for self-flagellation whose head you're currently inhabiting? Mmm?~" She arched an eyebrow, trying not to glare at Nathan too much. "~Because frankly, picking away at someone who cannot get away is nothing short of bullying.~"

"~That is hardly the priority here!~" Galin snapped, using Nathan's voice, and Nathan backed away from Alison, shaking his head almost wildly as he tried and failed to get control back. Ganging up on him, all the empaths were ganging up on him... "~The boy upstairs who will destroy the world if he's not taught properly is who we should all be concerned about!~"

That gave Nathan the renewed flood of anger and strength he needed, and he tore control back from the empath, turning away from Alison again as telekinesis shivered through the air around him as his temper started to slip again. "~Flonq you,~" he hissed, "~and flonq him! Him and his flonqing Man in the Chair excuse... I'm sick of it!~"

For all of her startlement at the unexpected manifestation, Alison saw red, temper slipping away from her for a crucial moment. "~Not the priority? What kind of empath are you? Take a good look at what you're doing to Nathan you narrow-minded old fool and then tell me that you're leaving him in any condition to help anyone at all! You're conditioning him to feel like nothing more than an unimportant conduit and to hate the entire process! You're an empath! Feel the damage you are solely responsible for here and now!~" The last words were snarled out before Alison managed to reign herself in, and her last words were calm although earnest. "~He's already redeveloped his phobia of telepaths - continually attempting to expose him to Manuel is criminally stupid.~" She took a deep breath. "~And a breach of the trust he placed in you, inviting you in his mind and allowing you to remain. He has no defenses against you other than your honor and self-restraint.~"

Galin was silent, stonily silent, and Nathan took a deep, shudderingbreath, struggling with misery, suddenly, that was almost as strong as the anger. "I always hated the process," he said hoarsely. "Right from the beginning. I never should have agreed to it. But there seemed like so many reasons to do it, and no reason not to, except my own fear... and I've never liked being a coward, Alison." He stopped, swallowing as his throat tightened. "But I shouldn't have started, if I wasn't going to finish. Now I'm just one more person who's failed him."

"Stop that," Alison pleaded, anger melting away, because her priority now was very much clear. "You didn't have the right tools to help him from the start, Nathan. It was never fair to you, doesn't matter who you have in your head to try and guide things along if you're fighting yourself the entire time. You're just being set up to hurt yourself and warp the entire process that way. You're not the one who failed," her voice hardened at that, her tone clearly directed at someone other than Nathan. "And if they can't face up to that, it's their problem. Damn it."

There were all kinds of things he could have said to that. How many times his own troubles had resulted in the interruption of his sessions with Manuel over the summer, how effective the Askani had been when he'd actually allowed them to work...

"Picked the wrong host," he muttered, a soft, pained laugh slipping out. "I'm surprised none of them have come out and told me that..."

The very firm thump of her open hand on his chest surprised Alison as much as him, though she recovered nicely. "Quit that! You have your own issues and they're not giving you any space to work with in this. That's what I'm saying. Don't you dare twist it around. No one is perfect, damn it. And if they'd picked anyone else they'd have gotten tossed out on their asses a long time ago, if you ask me. You've had the patience of a saint with them!"

"I've had--" He cut himself off, the look in Alison's eyes making it perfectly clear that she wasn't going to put up with a whole lot more in the way of protestations. "I just--" Damn it. The anger was draining away inexorably, leaving him cold and shaken and so very tired. "They were expecting me to take a couple of weeks off and then get back at it," he said almost dully. "You know. Pull myself together, then do what needs doing."

Alison gave him an incredulous look. "What, now you're the amazing self -reconstructing man? Go boom then be all fixed up again in two shakes? Good grief, Nathan! ~And you!~" she added, frowning. Oh yes, she meant the empaths. "You should know better! You've got mental traumas that would drive most people to jump under a train for crying out loud. A few weeks is. Not. Enough!" Okay, so maybe she wasn't quite so much waving her arms as flailing helplessly, but it was that or find a way to punch the empaths and since that meant Nathan just now, she had to make do with something else.

"I would just like to be able to let it go, you know?" Nathan asked tiredly, flinching away from her as she waved her hands. "But they won't. And he won't. He loathes me, but he thinks he owes me, and he won't let it go..."

"That's going to have to be something he deals with, while you work on your own thing," Alison suggested, forcibly stopping the handwaving - barely. She took a deep breath, trying to regain some measure of composure. "Look... it won't kill Manuel to feel that way a bit longer, if" she gave him a stern look, "if he really does and it's not just another thing he's reading more into than there is. And it won't kill you that he feels that way a bit longer. It's not forever, Nathan." She gestured with her hands lightly, unable to stop. "You have time. Time to heal, time to mend yourself. And then you can look to mending other bridges. And the empaths can damn well sit on their asses and wait. Forcing the issue isn't going to help anyone. Hell, it's just making things worse." She paused, not really feeling charitable towards Galin. "Heck, for all they know, what they're doing now by nagging at you to resume training with Manuel all the time may _lead_ to what they're trying to avoid. Bad training isn't going to help anyone at all."

All perfectly logical. Really. Nathan looked away, at the sand and leather fragments spread all over the floor around them. He raised a hand, concentrating, and the punching bag started to reassemble itself, the sand pulling together first, followed by the puzzle-pieces of the bag itself.

"I suppose there's nothing to do, one way or the other," he muttered, despondent and wanting out of this conversation. "And he wants nothing to do with me, so the Askani are out of luck. All of us will just have to live with that."

Manipulating the fibers, threading them back together... easier than it should be, again. Nathan levitated the now-whole punching bag back onto the hook, laying a hand against it. Warm. The leather was warm. Too bad he couldn't put the pieces of less tangible things back together that easily.