xp_logs | Nathan, Haroun and Askani, Tuesday morning (Reply)

Haroun comes looking for Nathan to chat about the new training rotation and satisfy his curiosity on the subject of the Askani. You-Know-Who makes an appearance to answer some questions and gets into something of a debate on religion with Haroun.

Haroun, a cheery whistle on his lips, wandered over to Nathan's suite. His leg had been patched up by a grumpy Hank McCoy, and a new batch of skin was growing in Moira's lab space, hopefully ready to be applied sometime this afternoon. He knocked on the door and then waited patiently, ignoring the faint hunger pangs coming from his belly.

Nathan, floating upside down in the air a few feet above the living room floor, reached out without sparing much thought. The door swung open, and he dimly registered Haroun standing there, watching him. He was quite deep into the meditation, though, and it took him a few minutes to come back far enough for speech.

"Morning," he murmured, his eyes still closed.

Haroun blinked as he looked at Nathan floating upside-down in midair. "Neat trick." he said. "Two can play at that game." He put himself into the same pose Nathan was in.

Nathan opened his eyes, regarding Haroun with a detached sort of amusement. "You're disrupting my sha'haivela," he pointed out. "The lines of force in the room," he explained when Haroun raised an eyebrow. "The pattern."

"Poor baby." Haroun grinned. "Make a new pattern." he said teasingly, giving his friend a bit of a hard time. "Hey, have you heard anything about the new training rotations?" he asked.

"Scott's still working on them. He may have bent my ear about working with a couple of his newest recruits. Darn telekinesis and its pesky flexibility." Nathan let himself drift away from Haroun, following the lines of force as he floated through the air.

"Given the staff changeup, I think it's going to be a very exciting time. Looks like Al gets to be the third Chief, with me as her exec. They _must_ be crazy." he said with a grin, not really protesting at all. "There are some folks I haven't run with yet - I need to fix that. You done anything in the Room with this Paige kid?"

"Keep intending to. Got sort of side-tracked by the whole brain-spraining adventure. But that's what all this is about," he said, meaning the upside-down meditation.

"I know her older brother, but I know very little about her. I predict a cozy evening in after prayers with a cup of mint tea and a stack of personnel jackets." he said. "That's assuming that someone doesn't decide that she needs her personal space heater ASAP." he added with something of a grin. "It is truly terrible to be me, let me tell you."

Nathan reached the top loop of the pattern, nearly bumping against the ceiling. "So I hear," he said dryly, unfolding himself from the meditation position and floating back to the floor. "I think Scott's still snickering, by the way. Are we absolutely sure that was Scott Summers Ororo brought back from New York on Wednesday?"

"Could be a pod person, a replicant, a clone, or a doppelganger of some sort. You should get Medstaff to run a full workup on him." Haroun said with a grin.

Nathan glanced at Haroun's leg. "Speaking of medlab, everything okay there?" he asked lightly. "Been kind of occupied with Mick and I didn't check back with you."

"No big deal. Wound was clean, Hank repaired the severed neural pathway, and the new skin is growing as we speak." Haroun said. "So foul, no real harm. He's working on a field kit to put in the 'Bird so I can get patched up while out on ops."

"Good," Nathan said, inwardly quite relieved to hear that. He walked across the room and into the kitchenette, getting a bottle of water out of the fridge. "Cain's still glowering at me about the mess I made in here."

"He should." Haroun said, looking around the rather bare, if cleaned-up, room. "Could have been much worse, though. Teek of your strength probably could have turned most of this wing into toothpicks all by your lonesome."

"I've done it before," Nathan said quietly, unscrewing the lid on the bottle of water. "If anything, I used to be worse about it." The Askani murmured to him, and he tilted his head, listening. "A flaw in my training," he said. "Or rather, a consequence of the fact that I had none for almost two years after I manifested."

"I didn't either, but there was a very good reason for that." Haroun said ruefully. "A little hard to train in the use of your power when you spend two years under the knife, off-and-on." He shrugged away his black thoughts, and then turned to look at Nathan more fully. "I've been reading your file as well. I'm probably going to regret this, but can you tell me about about these ghosts in your mind? Your file is maddeningly vague about them."

Nathan raised an eyebrow. Oh, boy... He waved a hand at the couch, then went over and flopped into one of the intact armchairs. Needed a little bit of distance for this.

"Ghosts isn't perhaps the best word for them," he said as Haroun sat down. "Just a convenient one. What they are, really, are psionic... echoes. Or maybe memories. Their leader, Askani, was a psi of really fucking scary strength. She made some type of connection with me - Charles and I aren't sure whether it was telepathic, precognitive, or a combination of the two - from two thousand years in the future."

Haroun blinked. Once. "That is, if you will pardon me saying so, fairly difficult to accept. I mean, I trust you and all that, but 2000-year-old psi-spirits?"

Nathan shrugged. "Well, there's a school of thought around here that says I've just cracked and the Askani aren't real. Also the 'brain-sucking parasites' school of thought. Room enough for a skeptic in either, although I should point out that Charles has had extensive conversations with Askani herself over the last six months and is fairly convinced she's real."

Haroun just shook his head. "The future is in Allah's hands." he said piously. "Precognitives have a rare gift - to see the mind of God, to catch a glimpse of the Divine Plan. This - is difficult for me." he said, waving a hand to encompass the entire affair. "You may be cracked, old man, but not about this." he said suddenly, with a grin.

"So we've established that you're not subscribing to that school," Nathan said dryly, ignoring the comment about God and precognitives. "The brain-sucking parasites school, though... the people who subscribe to that one believe that the Askani are there."

Haroun hrmmed thoughtfully. "I did not know you before the Askani came, so I have no basis for comparison. I have, however, seen the mad, and you, my friend, do not seem mad to me. Charles would never stand for it if you were. So I think I can rule out the brain-sucking parasites theory." he said with a grin. "But that does not mean that I am not concerned. You have no faith, so it is easier for a vision of tomorrows to come to influence you, I would think. To guide you, to steer you."

Nathan blinked, then gave Haroun something of a hard look, his eyes narrowing. "It does," he said freely. "It does to an extent that I think only Charles and Moira really understand."

"Don't look at me like that!" said Haroun with a somewhat nervous smile. "I do not mean to offend, really. If you are being led, and you recognize the leading, then you still have some control. It is an interesting question."

"Lately, I've been wholeheartedly encouraging the leading, actually." Nathan smiled a bit oddly, leaning forward in the chair. "Do you know what I do in my dreams, Haroun?" he asked, the Askani accent beginning to edge his words again. "I learn. From their War Leaders--their generals. Have been for a couple of months, now, almost every night. You wondered why my fighting style changed--that's why. I've been picking up their fighting styles, their psionic arts - they did things with telekinesis you wouldn't believe - their strategy and philosophy..."

Haroun hissed unconsciously. "I had wondered." he said faintly. "You will forgive me, my friend, if I say that this worries me. If they turn you into one of them, then where will be the man who is my friend?" he asked worriedly. "I will find out, I suppose. I am not so foolish as to assume that I can tell you to do, or to not do, anything."

Nathan leaned back in his chair, shaking his head a little. "See?" he asked a bit sadly. "You weren't even here during the worst of the adjustment period - I can't blame Moira or Amanda for mistrusting the Askani a little while they saw them hurt me, or saw me struggling - and yet you're still worried." He took a sip from his water, grimacing. "You don't think I know it's like a bad science fiction novel? Manuel had it right in a sense, all along... I am possessed. You know, if I skip too many nights of sleep, I lose my grip on English and start blurring into them? I still have memories that aren't mine, from the last time, and a few holes where there weren't holes before..."

Haroun nodded. "However, I am willing to trust you to do the right thing when it comes to them. Keep a hold of something, Nathan, for Moira's sake as well as for all of us. Do not let them overwrite you completely." He hrmmed for a moment as he thought. "Is there any way you can bring them forth? Maybe they have some thoughts on the subject they wouldn't mind sharing."

"They're not overwriting me, they're--" Nathan stopped, biting his tongue. Hard. "They're changing," he muttered. "Getting less individually differentiated, speaking with one voice more often... I could probably get her to come out, though." He looked away from Haroun, at the sunlight flooding in through the window. #Askani?#

And she took shape there, out of the light. Wearing her armor, Nathan noted with an inward sigh, and not looking particularly pleased with life at the moment.

Haroun stood up as well, to better inspect the woman of light before him. "Fascinating." he said, doing an unconscious Spock impression - complete with raised eyebrow. "So you're the Askani." he said.

"No," she corrected him. "I am Askani. My people are Askani. And you are taking your new leadership duties quite seriously, are you not?" She smiled very faintly at him, and Nathan sighed.

"Don't start, sister," he told her wearily. "What is it about my friends that makes you get this lippy?"

Askani blinked at him, then actually laughed, those incandescent green eyes sparkling even brighter for a moment. "Because they are suspicious and wary men," she pointed out, smiling. "Rather like you."

Haroun blinked, and then grinned. "I do." he said to Askani. "And I am suspicious and wary when faced with something of this importance - to my friend as well as to my teammate."

"And so forthright," Askani said. "Much like Peter. Has he forgiven me yet, by the way?"

Nathan snorted. "I haven't asked. We don't speak of you. I think he sleeps much better that way." He looked back at Haroun. "My manners are poor," he said, the Askani lilt back in his voice for a moment. "Haroun al-Rashid, this is the Mother Askani. Don't let the youthful exterior fool you. She was a hundred and twelve years old when she decided to turn a hundred square kilometres of Southeastern Eurasia into smoking glass in order to wipe out the Canaanite army before it could exterminate what was left of her people. Her telekinesis makes mine look like a minor talent."

"Impressive." Haroun said, bowing slightly to the Mother Askani. "I am Haroun ibn Sallah al-Rashid, most formally." he said. "But you may call me Haroun for now. Your people were on the losing side of a war of extermination, I take it?" he asked her pleasantly. "And you are teaching Nathan combat techniques?"

"We are teaching Nathan a way of life, not merely combat techniques," Askani corrected him. "And as for the war... yes." She glided away from the window, looking around at the living room with curious eyes. "There was a rigid caste system in our time. We defied it by encouraging humans, mutants and synthetics to live together in equality. Our religiously motivated neighbors took exception."

"Religiously motivated?" asked Haroun, and then resolved in the questionable privacy of his own mind not to get sucked into theological discussions with ghosts from a future. Even if it WAS during Ramadan. "And you are teaching him your way of life?" he said, far more suspiciously. "I admit the man's had a rough go of things, but isn't that something for him to determine, not a guest inside his mind?"

"Religiously motivated," Askani said blandly, and Nathan scowled, knowing full well she was deliberately taking a poke at Haroun. "They had a living god who created in them the belief that only the strong should be permitted to survive. And since the mutants among my Clan affiliated themselves with the 'weak', we were all forfeit." She shrugged elegantly. "As for what we are teaching Nathan, we have his cooperation in this. His enthusiastic cooperation."

"Of course you do. Take a look at his life before you came along - he had virtually none save as a living weapon slaved to another's will. Then you come along and offer him a different path. Of COURSE he'd jump onto it." Haroun said pleasantly. He was ignoring the jab about religion for now, but he was irritated that she would resort to such cheap shots so quickly. Guess she didn't have much of a leg to stand on rationally.

"Now wait a minute," Nathan protested before Askani could reply. "You're oversimplifying things, Haroun. Not to mention not giving me a whole lot of credit for the capacity for making reasoned decisions..."

Haroun opened his mouth to protest as well. "Not all that oversimplified." he sulked. "And you sprain your brain weekly. Your decision-making capacity is at best suspect at times."

"I do not--" Nathan bit his lip again as Askani turned towards him, raising an eyebrow. "I'm getting very sick of the cracks about brain-spraining," he said crossly. "A good portion of it is not my fault, and as for the part that was... would you have preferred me not to shield and catch the Blackbird that day?"

"Now, children," Askani murmured dryly. "What would reassure you, then, Haroun? Perhaps it can be provided."

"Tell me what you think about God." he said, neatly turning the religion discussion back to her. "Did your people have any faith at all to carry them through the dark times?"

Askani sighed, moving back into the sunlight and staring out the window. "You have to understand," she said quietly. "There were many faiths in our time. They were insular at best, destructive at worst. Faith, in the thirty-eighth century, was a way to separate yourself from your neighbors, a method of closing ranks against the outsider, the alien."

Haroun looked incredibly saddened by this revelation. "So they have turned away from the Creator and forgotten His words." he said softly. "That is very disturbing, that the Divine Plan could encompass such a thing."

"I grew up in such a faith," Askani said, and Nathan blinked at her, not having heard this before. Her life before the founding of the Clan was not something she had shared with him, ever. "I was taught to believe that those who were not us were subhuman, that we were the only true children of our god. That we were born to rule." She looked back at her, her green eyes dimming. "Then I was sent to the front lines in my early teens, to be a soldier. I soon saw enough to shake that faith."

"War has a way of doing that, even jihads like yours seems to have been." said Haroun, sitting back down to hear the rest of the story. "So you had a poor religious experience, and thus the entire concept is suspect?"

Her expression hardened. "When I took the refugees who looked to me away from the battlefield, we searched for another home," she said. "We went from Clan to Clan, across Eurasia, seeking those who might take us in. But we were not of their blood, or of their faith. Worse, we had forsaken our own Clan, our own beliefs, simply because we took exception to the fact that they required us to bathe in blood." Askani drew herself up to her full height, her expression chilly. "We were turned away, time and again. In the end, we had to find our own way."

Haroun shrugged. "You did not answer my question. So because your experience was poor the entire concept is suspect?"

"I answered your question," she said coldly. "There was no good experience to be had. No reason for I or any of my people to believe that faith was anything but a sham, to encourage the worst instincts of humanity."

Haroun smiled widely. "You are a telepath, are you not?" he asked. "If so, then I can give you the evidence you did not find in your own time. You will see it there, in my mind."

Askani's gaze went back to Nathan, questioningly. He sighed. "She has to see through me," Nathan told Haroun. "Her own powers don't exist any longer. Not in her current form."

Haroun ahhed. "In that case, I give you permission. Just mind the neural link to my legs, yes?" he said with a grin.

Nathan nodded, then wordlessly let his shields drop partway, allowing Askani to take the lead. She took him with her, of course, and Nathan closed his eyes, flinching as she slipped into Haroun's mind and examined the complex web of thoughts and images that represented his fath. It touched all parts of his mind, had connections to everything, and Nathan shifted in his chair, fighting back a sudden swell of bitter, pained envy, edged in mistrust.

Haroun struggled to keep his mind open - he had little experience with telepathy and was unused to a mindscan. He let them see what they would - the bedrocks of his faith, his early years, and later his struggles against those who would do as the Mother Askani experienced - take a beautiful thing and pervert it into a thing of horrific evil.

Askani slipped back out of his mind as subtly and as gently as she'd entered it. Her manners were definitely improving, Nathan thought, his shoulders hunching as he sank deeper into the chair. "So what do I do with this knowledge, Haroun?" she asked. "I can see the truth of your actions in your mind and your memories. Are they to redeem centuries of blood and billions of lives lost?

"Centuries of history. Billions of lives lost, yes, but billions more that can be saved." said Haroun. "You know as much as I do, now, about the history of Islam. When Christianity was burning libraries and self-destructing, Islam kept learning alive, kept the knowledge from being lost. Sounds to me like something your Clan may be interested in. But if you're too angry with God for what His children did in your time, I can understand that." he said with a small smile. Two could play at the jabs game.

"Two can indeed," Askani murmured. "Would you like to see? What our pious neighboring Clan did to us, in the name of their God?"

"False prophets and deceivers. Minions of Shai'tan." he said with his arms crossed. "From what you have said, there were no true believers in your time. And that distresses me beyond all measure."

"I shall take that as a no."

"Smart man," Nathan murmured.

Haroun shot Nathan a _look_. "I am taking you at your word." he said simply. He didn't want to say that the thought frightened him, and that he got a premonition of doom each time he looked at her. "I gave you something to think about - that is, if you're even interested."

"It is rather a lot to ask," Askani said, and for a moment there was something close to confused pain in her expression, resentment and hollow loss in her voice. "After what was done to us. We rejected faith in anything besides each other. Was that truly so short-sighed? No one, or One, stepped in to save us, or even to soften the hearts of the believers who were slaughtering us."

"Any more to ask than believing in a future twenty centuries or more to come, in all mankind losing faith in God? It's called faith for a reason." Haroun said to the Mother Askani.

"Perhaps I am not the one to whom you should be making your case, then," Askani said, her eyes flickering back to Nathan. "After all. I am but a shadow. My life has been lived, for better or for worse."

"Yet here you stand." Haroun said quietly. "I make my case to Nathan by just living my life where he can see me. My triumphs, my failures, will in some small way perhaps serve as an example to others. I am not quite as arrogant as you."

"Why do these conversations all wind up in the same place?" Nathan said with a sigh.

Askani spread her hands wide, that odd smile coming back. "Perhaps because I am arrogant, and it is blatantly obvious?" She looked back at Haroun. "But we can only ever react as our own experiences inform us. I may not have saved my people by taking them outside the pale, but I bought them eighty years of life they would not have had otherwise. And some escaped, in the end. I often wonder..." She paused, her expression gone pensive.

"I'm getting tired," Nathan said quietly. "It's been a long week and my reserves are still running low. And you drew pretty deeply on my telepathy there." He looked at Haroun. "Anything else you wanted to ask her while she's out wandering around?"

Haroun shook his head. "That will do for now. I'm an engineer by trade, I have a million questions about the technology of her time. But they can all wait."

"Then be well, Haroun ibn Sallah al-Rashid. You have engaged our curiosity. We will be watching." Askani faded into the sunlight and was gone.

"Interesting," Nathan said after a moment. "I would've expected her to say something about Alison."

Haroun shot Nathan another Look. "Why would she say something about Alison?" he asked the other man dangerously.

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "Alison asked for and was given both the Askani's battle language and a telepathic download of their culture. Months ago." He shrugged. "She and Askani have spent some time together. In dreams, usually."

Haroun's eyes went wide for a second. "I see." he said. "She didn't mention that, but then again, I didn't ask. I think I will, next time I talk to her."

"She's not like me. There aren't any living in her head," Nathan said a bit wryly. "But she wanted their music. Ask her for some of what she'd recorded so far. You'll understand why."

Music. That would explain it. Haroun shuddered theatrically. "If it is anything like the mealy-mouthed crap she listens to now, I'll have to pass. I like my music loud, brutal, and incomprehensible." he said with a grin.

Nathan thought of the funeral dirges, of the Winternight hymns. "It's... not like anything from this time period," he said simply. "No basis for comparison. Hence her need for cultural context."

Haroun smirked. "Do they have electric guitars?" he said whimsically. "Music isn't music without a screaming guitar. I do like me my wall of sound." he said.