Wanda and Nathan

[x-scarletwitch.livejournal.com]

Wanda is wandering the grounds when she encounters Nathan. After introductions, they walk together and talk. They get on the topic of the Askani and Wanda is fascinated. Fascinated enough to offer to record their history for him. Everyone's pleased by this, including the Askani.



There was a small path, Wanda realized, that wove through a patch of tress and then a small glade. The grounds of Xavier's school were gorgeous and she had no trouble spending a good deal outside exploring. The cool breeze ruffled her hair and moved her tank top around slightly, so she stopped to adjust both. This place was certainly...interesting. Nothing like she had expected.

Nathan, out jogging, spotted the woman ahead of him on the path and slowed down. "Morning," he said cheerfully as he approached. "Wanda, right?"

Turning, she shielded her eyes from the sun and squinted. "Yes," she responded, smiling. Someone she hadn't met yet. "And you are...?"

"Nathan," he said, coming to a stop and offering his hand as he gave her a quick, assessing look. "Weird languages and weirder history." He gave her his best endearing grin.

Wanda leaned forward and returned the handshake, her grip strong and sure. "Nathan..." she murmured. "Oh! I suppose I should extend my congratulations to you and yours." There was laughter on her words, she had caught the little posts of the engagement. "Languages and history, no matter how weird, are both fascinating."

"Thank you," Nathan said, still grinning. "And yes, they most certainly are. Headed this way?" He gestured aimlessly at the path ahead of them. "I could do to walk for a bit, I think - I'd be happy to keep you company."

"Why thank you." She turned and started walking, Nathan at her side. "I enjoy the company of others more than I enjoy time with myself. And meeting new people, it's something I cannot pass up."

"I heard someone mention that you're an anthropologist?" Nathan asked with interest as they headed down the path. "I took several courses back at the University of New Mexico... chose to go the history route in the end, though."

"Yes, I am. I am currently working towards my doctorate while I work at Cambridge in England. I do more traveling than I do teaching but I enjoy it. History interests me as well, people even more so. What degree did you end up with, if I may ask?"

"Uhh... a BA in history, an MA in history and international relations, and a law degree," Nathan rattled them off, grinning a bit sheepishly. "I've been something of a dilettante. Circumstances of my life..."

Wanda grinned. "A man of many talents, then. Your fiancée is very lucky," she teased. He was a handsome man but very, very firmly attached.

"My fiancée has twice my intellectual ability. On a bad day. It's really very intimidating." Nathan's grin turned cheerful. Wanda's presence was very steady, very disciplined on the telepathic level. People like that were a real pleasure to be around.

"I have heard of Dr. MacTaggart. Because of my work with Cambridge, I live in London when I am not traveling. And Muir Island is pretty well known. Formidable woman, or so they so."

"Very formidable," Nathan said with a sappy smile. "And I'll stop right there, or you'll get me babbling on for fifteen minutes about all her many virtues. I'm a bit giddy still."

Wanda snickered and shook her head. "It is all very cute, truly, and I have only met you. How long have you been at Xavier’s?"

"Since February," Nathan said more seriously. "I came as a patient, actually. Problems with a secondary mutation... Moira had been my doctor of choice and dear friend for several years before this, so she was who I came to when I finally admitted the problem was more than I could handle."

"Good idea. Powers should be under the person’s control, not the other way around. Although I know that there are times that cannot be the case." She smiled and shrugged. "It took some time for me to get mine firmly under control. Fifteen years and I still have the occasional hiccup."

"I'm still having some difficulties with my primary mutation," Nathan admitted cheerfully. "Developing my telepathy for the first time, and trying to use my telekinesis as something other than a brute-force weapon..." She looked curious, and he explained. "I did... work for the government for a long time. They did my initial training, and they weren't much into non-combat applications."

Wanda grimaced. "I spoke to Kurt before and mentioned that I cannot imagine being used either against your will or for a cause you do not wish." She glanced at him. "Forgive me, that's how it sounded anyway. I do not think my powers would be useful to anything like that but, well, one can never tell."

"It's a long and rather depressing story," Nathan said, then donned the bright smile again. "Important thing is, I'm out the other side, after twenty-five years, and free to do something I'm actually loving to death - the teaching, I mean."

"Teaching has many rewards, that is for certain. I enjoyed the lectures I did at Cambridge though..." With a laugh, she gestured around her. "I believe teaching here would be a very different experience."'

"That would be putting it mildly," Nathan said, a mischievous look in his eyes. "I imagine you don't get nearly the range of pranks in a standard sort of school, for one."

"...pranks? Is there something I should watch out for?"

"Oh, no," Nathan assured her. "You're a guest. Barring the unlikely event that you get caught in the crossfire of some grand scheme, you can probably just relax and enjoy as an audience."

"Oh good." Wanda looked slightly mischievous suddenly. "I find if that I am the center of a prank, there must be some sort of revenge. But it is a good that they do not usually target guests."

"Guests are usually here because they need something," Nathan said candidly. "Sometimes help. Sometimes just time and space. The kids tend to respect that."

"Another good thing to know. I am not sure how long I'm going to be here but it will be a nice change of pace."

"Hopefully things will stay fairly settled for you while you're here," Nathan said. "Then again, that's probably like asking the wind now to blow..."

"I...noticed the post about the _dragon_ this morning," Wanda said, clearly quite startled by the entire thing. "Other realms, dragons...I knew magic existed but this just blows the mind."

Nathan gave her a thoughtful look, wondering whether or not he should say anything. "You haven't, um, come across any references to the Askani on the journals, have you?"

She rolled the word over in mind, such a strange word to her. "No," she responded slowly, "I do not believe I have. There is something of importance tied to this word, I'll take it?"

"Yes," Nathan said slowly, pondering his next words carefully before he stopped, turning to Wanda. "Succinctly: that secondary mutation I mentioned I was having problems with was precognition, fixed specifically on a group of people in the thirty-eighth century known as the Askani. They were involved in a genocidal war, and I was seeing through the eyes of members of the Clan. As they died."

It was a good thing she took everything in stride, Wanda mused, turning to look at Nathan. She didn't respond right away, just tucked her hands into her pockets while she thought. "That--must have been very trying, to say the least," she murmured, looking at him. "And took a great deal of effort to get back to normal, I would say?"

"After a while, it got so bad that my heart was stopping, when the person whose eyes I was seeing through died," Nathan said simply. "At one point, I was in a coma for... three, four days, I forget precisely how long it was." He took a deep breath. "But I'm digressing. What you probably need to know, just so that it doesn't come as a shock when someone mentions it casually, is that all two and a half million of them exist as psionic echoes in my mind now." He smiled a bit sheepishly at Wanda's reaction. "Part of how it was all resolved."

"I am fairly positive my eyebrows are in my hairline right now," Wanda said dryly. "That is...absolutely amazing." Slightly, more than slightly, startled, she was nonetheless absolutely fascinated by the entire thing. "Do you hear them all or only the, well, strongest?"

"Generally only the strongest," Nathan said. "Although some of the others will surprise me, at times..." He looked down at her pensively, surprised by how well she was taking it. Pleased, but surprised. "There are a range of opinions in the house about them," he said quietly. "Ranging from 'Ooh, aren't they nifty' to 'Gah! Brain-sucking parasites!'"

"I think I can see why. But you obviously do not seem to mind them, from what I can see. Do they harm you in anyway?"

"They... have," Nathan confessed slowly. "Unintentionally, most of the time. I have difficulty eating or sleeping when they've been particularly active - their psi-energy does odd things to my metabolism. We've had a few... disagreements, too. It's not easy, coexisting with a whole people inside your head." He smiled suddenly. "But it has its compensations," he said, realizing that Wanda might find those compensations very interesting, given her field. "Learning about their culture. Their language. Alison has started a project to record their music."

Wanda's eyes lit up at that. "Now _that_ is most intriguing," she breathed. "What does their language sound like? Is it very different than English, or say, any language in our times, actually? If it's that far into the future, I believe they would have evolved a completely different language. Not to mention culture. And their music...oh, that must be something." She stopped and stared at him, completely unabashed by all the questions she had just asked.

Nathan thought for a moment. "Es'valaca se langya bellaya," he said. "In English, they call it the battle language."

"That is a gorgeous language. And that's the _battle_ language? I must hear the music." Wanda shook her head. "Do they have a nonbattle language?"

Nathan smiled. "I'll drop a few of the CDs we've compiled by your room, if you want," he offered. "And we have... well, I guess you'd call it an Askani group, every Thursday night, to talk more about their language and culture. You're more than welcome." He laughed softly. "But to answer your question, no... the battle language has four different forms, but it all developed from the same, relatively primitive coded language the first Askani used on the battlefield."

"Hrm. Different forms for different purposes? Not all that unusual in some societies, that." Wanda beamed. "And I would love to attend. Are you recording all of that, or just the music?"

"Recording? Just the music." Nathan looked thoughtful. "I hadn't even thought of recording the group sessions..."

She looked at him a bit slyly. "Well, you have an official, if yet doctor-ated, anthropologist on call now. Recording history is something I do and I would be _delighted_ to record the Askani's information for you." Wanda thought. "Were they a traveling people, by any chance?"

"For about the first fifteen years of their history," Nathan said as they continued towards the mansion. "Once they settled, that was when their problems began. And at that point, they had to fortify quickly." He shook his head. "They were at war for sixty years," he said. "You can imagine the effect on a society of that."

She winced in sympathy. "For a once traveling folk--settling down is hard enough, but to have to trap yourselves in with walls and ceilings like that...." Wanda shook her head. "War is a difficult thing to begin with. War for that long is a devastating one. But they survived that long so their spirits must have been strong."

She was asking such interesting questions, Nathan thought, giving her a sudden smile. "If I had to describe them in a sentence," he said thoughtfully, "I'd probably call them the most noble and yet the most ruthlessly pragmatic people I've ever known."

"They sound very similar to the Rom," Wanda said with a grin. "Except with that much chaos, I am willing to bet that they could not enjoy calmness such as we do." Work hard, until you bleed, but play harder to make up for the pain of the days. "I will enjoy very much writing the information down. People like that should never be forgotten."

"I think I'm going to enjoy telling it to you, too," Nathan said, unable to hide his enthusiasm. It would be so good to talk to someone who was honestly interested, and who knew what questions to ask.

"I don't have the necessary equipment just yet but I can get it." The thought of the work, of listening, talking and the scribing, made Wanda's eyes glow with excitement. "It has been a while between assignments, I'm afraid. A little too much lecturing at the university."

The Askani were murmuring softly, approvingly in the back of his mind. He took that to mean that they liked the idea. Wanda obviously did. "So," he said with a grin, "you'll have something interesting to do with your time here. If you ignore the whole 'stepping into a science fiction novel' aspect of it..."

She chuckled. "Consdering I am stopping by later to see the dragon, I don't think I can ignore it all that much. It is a good thing I take everything in such stride, then, isn't it?"

"Flexibility is a virtue," Nathan agreed happily as the mansion came into sight.