xp_logs | Nathan and Jack Leary, Monday afternoon

Nathan has his session with Jack a little early this week. Gee, I wonder why...

Yeah. He was looking forward to this almost as much as he had that inevitable conversation with Charles on the weekend about methods, body counts, and why torturing people for information was a bad thing. Nathan smiled a bit tightly at Jack as the older man came in and sat down in the chair he usually occupied during these sessions. "Want some coffee or anything?" he asked, trying for a casual tone and not quite managing it.

"Not right now," Jack replied, his casual tone far more realistic than Nathan's but his eyes fixed on him with that particularly piercing look of his. The one that made people wonder if he was telepathic after all. "So, it's been a busy week for you. I got your message cancelling Thursday... Belgium?"

"Belgium," Nathan confirmed, the tension fading suddenly into confused uncertainty as he thought of Mick, down there in the medlab. "I have... there's someone here you... two someones, actually, but him in particular... if you would, I mean... I think he'd be willing, but..." He stopped, closed his eyes for a moment. "Coherency," he said finally, a trace of wry, strained humor in his voice. "Not such a bad thing." He opened his eyes and focused on Jack again. "Succinctly, then. We went into a Mistra training facility in Vermont on Wednesday night because we had some information that they had a group of kids there and were putting them through the first-generation conditioning. By the time we got there--" Focus, damn it. "--there was only one left alive. He's... going to be staying here for a while, I think." Nathan took another deep breath. "They'd sent--I don't know why, but they'd sent a field team in to check out the place. First-gen operatives, too, and one of them... you remember me telling you about Foley? His conditioning cracked when he saw what was going on there, and he ran. Alison and I went to Belgium to retrieve him. We found him in another training facility, and there were... there'd been more kids there. We brought him back here." And whoa, was that ever glossing over a lot.

Jack blinked. "That's... that's quite the week," he said at last. "Ah, I think I might have that coffee after all, actually. Don't get up, I can get it." While he set about pouring himself a cup from the maker, he considered what Nathan had said, and then said: "So, it's probably a dumb question, but it's the one they teach us in shrink school - how are you feeling?"

Nathan gave a brittle laugh as Jack came back over and sat down. "I've... kind of been all over the place. Moira had to get someone to help her pick me up off the hall floor on Wednesday night and then forced a sedative on me. When I woke up on Thursday, I was... angry. I kind of stayed angry until we found Mick. Alison had to... remind me that there are things I'm not supposed to be doing anymore. Like torturing people for information. Since then..." He stopped, gave a diffident shrug he really didn't feel. "There's plenty to do. I haven't really had much time to stop and think about it. Charles called me in for a little chat on Sunday. I think he thought I'd been getting a little out of hand or something."

"Possibly the attempted torture might have tipped him off," suggested Jack wryly, then waved that comment away. "Perhaps it is time you let yourself stop and think about it, Nathan. Seeing those kids, having contact with Mistra again... to say it's probably doing a number on your head is an understatement. So let's break it down, start at the beginning. MacInnis. How did that go?"

"He IMed me out of the blue. Kept calling me son, again... I hate it when he does that," Nathan muttered, then wrenched his mind back on track. "I suppose he wasn't confrontational. Gave me the information, told me his people couldn't do anything about it... told me he knew I'd do the right thing." There was a sour, bitter taste in his mouth suddenly. "Although it would have been nice, you know, if he'd asked me a week earlier. Most of those kids would still have been alive. I wouldn't have had to be carrying bodybags out of the freezer--" He bit off the rest, blinking rapidly.

Putting Nathan's obvious father-issues aside... Jack waited a long moment and then asked quietly. "How many?"

"Five in Vermont. Eleven in Leuven. At least they had an actual morgue in Leuven. I knew what to expect, I didn't just..." Nathan's jaw clenched. "Some of them must have been early emergents," he went on, his voice hoarse. "A few of the ones in Belgium were under ten."

Jack's eyes hardened, the soldier coming to the fore for a moment before he brought his attention back to the man in front of him. The living could be helped, the dead could only be mourned. "Talk to me, Nathan. Don't bottle it up, or it'll destroy you," he said. "The anger, the loss, they're normal reactions to something like this."

"Are they? Really? Because Alison and Charles seemed to think that killing the people responsible was somehow a bad thing." Nathan leaned back in his chair, shaking his head almost violently. "She even wanted me to use non-lethal force on the conditioning team in Belgium. On the people who killed those kids, who tore their minds apart and--" His voice had started to rise and he stopped. trying to slow down his breathing.

"The desire to retaliate, to punish... yes, those are normal. Acting on those desires... a death for death never works, you know that, Nathan. You can't bring them back by killing in their names," Jack said implacably, although something in his eyes burned. Ten years old - those children could have been his grandchildren, were the same age... "That is the thing that you must remember - having the reaction, the emotion, that's one thing, acting on it is entirely a different thing. You shouldn't be censured for what you feel, only for what you _do_."

"Then go ahead and censure me," Nathan said, his voice very low and tight, "because I walked into the conditioning room in the safehouse in Vermont and killed everyone in it except Kyle. The empath, then the others when they drew their weapons on me... even the one that dropped his gun." He stopped, breathing hard. "And I only held back in Belgium because she insisted."

A long pause, stretching into a poignant silence. Then Jack said, in that quiet, gentle voice of his: "And did it help? Did it change anything?"

Okay, where was the censuring? Nathan thought wildly. He had sort of counted on there being censuring, because then he could be defiant, and that was... He was shaking his head for some reason, almost violently, and his eyes were stinging again. "He's still--he's still down there with p- pieces missing out of his mind," he forced out, hardly able to breathe for the tightness in his chest. "And the cells were still empty when I found them, and the bodybags were still lying there in this n-neat little row on the floor--"

"The dead will still be dead, Nathan, even if you kill every Mistra agent there is," Jack said softly. "But that boy down there... he's alive. So is Foley. And they're going to need your help, because only you have any idea what they're going through. Maybe the people that did this to them, to you, maybe they do deserve to die. But it can't be you that does it - otherwise it goes from being justice to nothing more than revenge." His words took on a certain intensity he seldom showed. "They need you to live, Nathan. That boy - he needs you to show him how to get through this, not a pile of corpses in his name."

Nathan forced himself to straighten in the chair, to stop hunching over as if he was bracing himself for a blow. Belgium, Vermont, all of it was spinning through his mind, all tangled up, too many emotions to even begin sorting out... "I'm so confused," he said, his voice shaking. "What to do, what to feel... I've been running on pure instinct all week, and suddenly there's nothing left to fight."

"Then stop fighting," Jack said. "You've been running on empty, Nathan, and there's nothing left to fight with. So stop. Give yourself the space to process this, figure out what the hell it is you're feeling, instead of lurching further into the morass. Get out of here for a couple of days, you and Moira, if that's what it takes. But you've got to give yourself a break for Christ's sake, man, before there's nothing left."

"I have to--I can't leave. Not until I know Mick's not going to off himself if we turn our backs." He took a deep, shaky breath. "Anika's coming. To talk to him, and the boy of course, since they're both ferals... I think it'll help. We'll see." Nathan's eyes blurred suddenly with tears, and he rubbed at them frantically. "I didn't want to do that to him," he said hoarsely. "I didn't... I just didn't know what else to do, and I couldn't let him go back. Couldn't let them have him. If I'd left him behind again..."

"Do what to who, Nathan?" asked Jack, passing over the box of Kleenex that inevitably made an appearance during sessions. "You're losing me here."

"They'd had enough time to start repairing his conditioning, before we got there. But the... opening was still there," Nathan said, his voice faltering. "I took it. I saw it in his mind... he'd killed this boy in Columbia, by accident, just a stupid accident, and then when he saw the kids at the safehouse in Vermont... so I d-dragged him into the morgue in Leuven, made him see all of them. And his conditioning just shattered. He actually stopped breathing." He yanked miserably at the kleenex, wiping his eyes. "I could have killed him. I just... I had to do it. He wanted to get away from them, or he wouldn't have run in the first place. I wasn't going to let them have him back just because I didn't get to Tournai fast enough."

Had to be Mick Foley. "But you didn't kill him, Nathan. It was a risk, one hell of a risk, but it worked - you got him out. And from what I've seen of your files, it was going to take a big shock to break their hold on him. The same as you."

"He was lying down there for two days begging anyone who'd listen to kill him. He's doing better, but--" Nathan shook his head again, taking a deep, shaky breath. "But he's here," he said, not really talking to Jack now. "He's here, away from them..."

"He is," Jack affirmed. "And so are you."

"And so is Kyle." Nathan stared blankly at the coffee table for a long moment. "I told you weeks ago that I was terrified at the idea of having anything more to do with Mistra, and here I go after them twice in the space of one week. I don't think... I was thinking, like I said. I don't think I could have gone to Vermont, let along gotten on that plane for Belgium, if I'd thought too hard about it."

"Probably not," Jack agreed. "However, sometimes there are things that need doing that we don't think about... It's part of the training soldiers get - to not-think when it's required. And the conditioning might be gone, but the lessons you learned aren't. But like I said before... stopping and thinking about it now might be what's needed. To put it into perspective. To process it, determine what the implications are."

"Back to my handy little paper journal?" Nathan asked with a very weak smile. "I've fallen a bit behind this week." He took another deep breath, a little more steadily this time. "I can do this," he said, more to himself than to Jack again. "I made it through this week. Not going to fall short just because I have to actually stop and think about it now..."

"It's not going to be easy, but I think you can get through it. You're a stubborn bastard, Dayspring." Jack chuckled a little. "Yes, the paper journal would be a start - get your thoughts, your reactions out. Better on paper than running around in circles in your head. And remember - you're not the only one who can help these two. They need you, yes, but they don't need a sleep-deprived zombie. Make sure you take care of the little things as well - sleeping, eating..." He wrinkled his nose a little theatrically. "Showering."

"I showered," Nathan protested, then blinked. "I think." At the look Jack gave him, a weary laugh slipped out. "Okay. So I've been a little distracted. But point taken. I don't have to do it all myself."