xp_logs | Log ~ [Alison, Nathan] Once more into the breach...

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During the night early hours of Thursday morning. Nathan comes to question Alison about her email to MacInnis. Alison makes a wild leap of logic, combining bits of information she gathered unknowingly (and knowingly) since the mission in Belgium.

Once more into the breach...

Nathan shot a furtive look up and down the hall. No one around, no one about to be around. He laid a hand on Haroun's door, reaching out and grimacing at what he sensed. Okay, so he was an intrusive bastard. Not intruding upon quite as much as he could have been. #Alison...#

Haroun had fallen asleep a while ago but she'd stayed awake, enjoying the warmth and generally just unable to sleep from thinking so much about the past week. And also, enjoying the warmth. There was a familiar sensation and then her name being whispered lowly in the back of her mind. Face buried against Harouns' shoulder, Alison screwed her eyes shut tightly. Then again, it wasn't like she could pretend not to have heard a telepath. Gnngnr. She slowly wriggled out of the embrace, and then nice and toasty wasn't suddenly as she slipped out from underneath the comforter. Gah.

Padding to the chair she'd draped her jeans on earlier, Alison recovered them and slipped them on before wandering towards the door, the t-shirt she'd borrowed earlier falling to mid-thigh. She slipped from Haroun's bedroom to the common room, closing the door silently before her and then pulling the suite's door open with a bit more force. "Mrmf?"

Nathan glared down at her. "What did you do?" he demanded, his voice low but agitated.

She blinked slowly, running a hand through her hair and letting it rest at the back of her neck. "Details. Give me details, Nathan." Killing him would upset Moira. And he looked upset enough that Alison was starting to get somewhat worried. "Wait." She stepped out of the suite, closing it behind her so they were both in the hallway and in no danger of waking up anyway. "Ok. What?"

"What did you say to MacInnis?" he demanded, a bit more loudly. "I didn't--I thought you were going to just ask him for more information or something, but now he's closing that email address and telling me he'll be in touch from somewhere else--"

Alison's eyes widened and she stared at him for a moment, a small smile starting to edge her lips. Did MacInnis... tattle? "I had another priority at the last minute and I had to talk to him about that. It was interesting." She glanced around the hallway to see how many breakables were at hand, pondering telling him the first reply email had been a threat to Miles no less.

"What--" He stopped, rubbed the back of his neck, and forced himself to go on in a more moderate tone. It was hard. "What did you say to him about me? He was asking if he'd overestimated me, if I was wanting to sit by and not go after more kids, or operatives in trouble like Foley..."

"Short version? I told him I didn't like the way he was using you to get things done, just because you were at hand and he knows every single button to push on you to get you to do what he wants." It hadn't been said quite that way, but the inherent message had been there, she knew. "Kinda like what he did just again now, looks like." Alison frowned at that, starting to get more than a little annoyed. And then sighed. "Want to have this talk somewhere else than the hallway?"

This talk? Oh. This talk. Nathan blinked down at her, then shrugged, half-uneasily, half-irritably. "Moira's down in the medlab. I don't have anywhere else to be. Where?"

She looked down at her bare toes, peeking out from under the hem of her jeans, feet certainly no longer warm and snuggly. "Anyplace but outside. It's cold outside." It hadn't been in bed. "Rec room?" Alison figured she could probably bury herself in cushions or something there at least. Keep her feet warm.

Nathan turned around and headed in that direction without another word. He was struggling to keep his composure, to keep his anxiety from leaking too much onto the link, and he really didn't want to discuss this any further with Alison in the hallway.

She had to lengthen her stride a fair bit to keep up with him, feeling oddly calm despite the obvious stress Nathan was showing. Cracks in the wall. Don't know him well enough. Ha. The first thing she did when they reached the rec room was claim a corner of the couch, grabbing a few cushions to pile around herself, fussily setting them just so. "Okay. Ready." They weren't speaking in low tones now - so much better.

Nathan flopped down in one of the armchairs, glaring. "What did it accomplish?" he asked tightly. "Whatever you said to him... here I thought you were going to do something productive with the email address, not just piss him off. What if he cuts off contact?"

"He won't." The idea alone was ludicrous - MacInnis himself had revealed that much. "If he made you think that, he's just playing head games again. He was refusing to not involve you as much as possible. The whole asking you if you could handle it then cutting you of to let you work yourself into a state like you are now," she waved at him, "so that you'd be far too relieved to question when he contacted you again? I'd say proves it nicely."

"This is not a game!" Nathan said, his agitation getting the better of him again. "What if he stops coming to me with information? If someone winds up in Mick's situation, and I don't know--"

She didn't say a word, looking at him levelly for a long moment. "No. It's not a game. So you actually think that if you don't jump when he tells you to, he'll punish you by not giving you the information needed to save someone?" That he'd mentioned retrieving agents first was carefully noted and filed away. That was good.

"Of course he will," Nathan said restlessly, not even having to stop and think about the answer. "Intel doesn't come for free. If I'm not reliable, he won't come to me with it."

Alison somehow managed to stay on 'calm' and not quite plot out ways to torment MacInnis just for the fun of it. Yet. Maybe later when Nathan wasn't around. "Do you realize what you've just said?"

"Of course I know what I said," Nathan snapped. "I just said it, didn't I? If I give him reason to think I'm not reliable, he's going to cut me out of this completely. He can't afford to take the chance." His hands were shaking a little and he folded his arms across his chest.

"My questions was 'will he punish you if you don't do as he says', Nathan." Alison looked at him levelly, toes wriggling a bit before disappearing under the edge of a cushion. "You said 'of course he will'."

Nathan stopped, blinked. "It's not punishment," he said irritably. "It's common sense. You don't use an asset that can't function as required."

She was not going to throw a cushion at him. But this was why she was going to stand firm on this, even if he threw a fit at her as well. Yep. On the road to losing the people you care for one by one. What a week. "You're. Not. An. Asset. You're not a tool. You're not a thing he can use at will. You're not his to manipulate or throw into danger. You're not an agent anymore and he's not Mistra to treat you as though you still were." If he broke the coffee table, Alison thought idly, Cain was going to have a fit.

He stared at her for a long moment. Something told him they were talking about entirely different things here. Or something. Definitely, not connecting on some level. "But... it needs to be done," he said, a bit uncertainly. "And I know... I have the experience."

"Yes. You do." That was incontestable. "But there are others who can do this just as well, with your help. And without you hurting yourself repeatedly." She sighed, shaking her head and shifted on the couch to sit cross-legged, cushions spilling to the floor. "~Brother mine... Open heart and open mind. Walk in my thoughts?~"

Nathan hesitated, then slid down to join her, feeling awkward and irritated and not quite sure why she was acting like she found something really vexing about all of this. Hadn't he been the one who'd gone looking for her to tell her off? "~If... you wish,~" he said uncertainly, reaching out to her telepathically.

She'd done this so many times before, stilling her mind when training with Betsy, moreso recently with all the emphatic training with Manuel - neither were in her thoughts however, Nathan simply finding a calm readiness welcoming him. #I see things. See them as I do?# And she showed him. Snippets of the talk with Anika, how Mistra trained their agents. Memories of the look on his face, after the return from the mission to get Kyle, the way he'd resorted to physical violence right away against the medical personnel in Belgium. Details and notes picked up since his arrival, some of them she was even only now recalling and adding to the others, to form a larger mental picture. The way MacInnis had been able to reach straight through him, yanking at invisible strings was last, the impression strongest of all. #I see this. All of this.#

Nathan reeled back, out of her thoughts. He realized his hands were shaking again, and he flexed them without thinking, clenched them into fists. "I know you were angry about Tournai," he said hoarsely and then found himself at a loss for further words. He didn't like the picture in her mind. Didn't think she had it right, not really. "So I didn't handle it as well as I could have," he burst out suddenly, almost defiantly. "Doesn't mean I don't have a responsibility here."

"Of course not." She smiled at him crookedly, reaching forward to rest her hands over his lightly. "I'm just saying you don't have it all. You don't have to do it all yourself." She looked down for a moment, shifting to try and hide her feet back under the hem of her jeans. They were long enough, it seemed, although it probably made her look like a ragamuffin. "Let me help." She took a deep breath, holding for a moment before letting it go, slowly. "I have a responsibility of my own, now. I can't back away either. But I think this needs to be done on terms which don't involve either you or I being used by someone else."

"I--I don't want you to do anything that you can't live with," Nathan said, his voice rough suddenly, with a very ambiguous mixture of emotions. "You figure out how you want to be involved in this. I can't set terms and conditions with MacInnis."

"I can't stand by and do nothing." Alison shook her head. The decision had already been made, anyway. "Haroun agrees with me. We'll ask for volunteers for these missions - that's all." Nathan was wrong however, on one point. "But. MacInnis needs you more than you need him. Pete can get you intel on Mistra. Even Remy could." She didn't like admitting it, but it was fact. "There are other resources as well. He needs us, Nathan, not the other way around." Twenty-five years. No wonder he knew exactly how to keep Nathan on the path he wanted. Determination sparked to the surface, bright and fierce. "~You lead the path as you will it to be. You don't follow another's as a mindless drone would.~!"

"Not enough," Nathan muttered, not really registering her last words. "Not enough intel. He has people inside, Alison, we know that... we don't."

Her hands tightened over his, a truly disturbing thought coming to mind. Twenty-five years spent watching Nathan. The way MacInnis had got to him so easily in Belgium. How rattled and almost desperate Nathan seemed to be now. Mistra was turning her into a paranoid bitch, that had to be it. "Nathan? I want to check something. Come on." She rose to her feet, tugging at his hand. "Downstairs. Below levels. I need the sound mixer there. And you." She was wrong. Had to be. Or else there'd be hell to pay.

Nathan followed her, bemused. "Sound mixer?" he asked as they headed downstairs. "I don't... what?" Why had the conversation just taken a sharp left turn? He didn't resist Alison, though, bewildered as he was.

"I know sound. I can reproduce anything I want with the right equipment." She led him down the stairs and then the hallways, dancing a bit at the cold floor. "Gah. Here!" A sharp turn into the room which held the equipment she needed. "Hrm. Sit at that table, okay? Don't move. Put that paper in front of you, yeah, that one - don't touch it anymore now though. Right. Gimme a bit of time here." She hooked a pair of earphones and put them on, making sure the speakers themselves were off. And then set to work, trying to reproduce only one word, matching the timbre and voice she needed as perfectly as possible.

Nathan watched her, his bewilderment only growing. Paper? Reproducing sound? He would have scanned her to figure out what precisely she was doing, but... no. He could wait. A little patience never hurt anyone, and at least they weren't arguing anymore...

Eventually, she spoke again. "One hand on the table. No, don't touch the paper. Now close your eyes, would you?" Alison ran through the sound file several times again, making minor adjustments. One word. One. Single. Word. Let me be wrong. She turned around to look at Nathan, flicking on the speakers and then pulling off the earphones. A low, male voice resonated through the room, saying a single word. "Son."

Nathan nearly jumped out of his skin as he recognized MacInnis' voice. "What the HELL?" he all but shouted at her, half-rising from the chair. "What are you--don't DO that!"

That was a reaction. She would have muchpreferred no reaction at all, really. Sighing, Alison gave Nathan an apologetic look - and ran the sound file again, looking at him intently. Was it just emotional or something more?

The chair nearly toppled over as he stood all the way, rapidly. "Are you trying to be funny?" he raved at her, backing up unconsciously towards the door. "You know how much I hate that old rat bastard calling me that!"

Third time's the charm, she thought. MacInnis' voice rang out through the room again, followed by Alison's voice seconds afterward, pitched low and clear. "Stop moving, Nathan." Hopefully, she thought belatedly, he wasn't going to blow up the room on her for this

Nathan froze. "Stop it," he gritted, his shaking hands clenching into fists at his side. "Stop doing that or I swear I'll blow up the sound mixer and you can bill me for it."

She moved her hands away from the sound mixer slowly, pale-faced. "Nathan? Why did you stop?" The whisper broke the silence of the room, Alison's voice shaking slightly. "You wanted to leave, why didn't you?"

He stared blankly at her, still trembling slightly. He could feel Moira reaching up the link, questioning, worried, and he swallowed, trying to send reassurance back down, to tell her that Alison was just trying some kind of twisted experiment on him... "You told me to stop," he snapped. "Make up your mind."

"One word. One voice. And you listened to the command that followed afterwards, even though you didn't want to. Look at how upset you are over that one word. He's not even here Nathan!" Alison hissed out the last words, mind racing, wondering if there were other keywords or if this was all a gigantic fluke. "Please don't blow up the room?" The request was almost lost in the silence, Alison sounding almost forlorn.

"What the hell are you TALKING ABOUT?" This time, he did shout, absolutely incredulous at what was coming out of her mouth, furious at her for doing this. "Now who's playing games? You told me to stay, I stayed!" He stalked forward suddenly, grabbing the piece of paper off the table. It crumpled as he clenched his hand around it. "I suppose this was what I was supposed to do if I hadn't gotten out of the chair, wasn't it? Damn it, Alison!" He threw the crumpled paper at her feet. "If there was anything of my conditioning left in my head, don't you think Charles would have seen that? We still work on my telepathy twice a week!" He glared at her, ignoring the look in her eyes as she gazed up at him. "I'm not being controlled! You're being paranoid! Just because MacInnis is rubbing my nose in the fatherly shit and I don't like it?"

"There's one way to find out." Yep. Two friends in one week. She was running an amazing average. Alison ignored the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach and kept going, ignoring the small voice telling her she just didn't know when to quit. He was yelling at her over a word spoken by someone who wasn't even in the room. Her hand hovered over the button again. "Or you can double check yourself. Or Askani can if you'd rather." Or they could go wake up Charles and ask him, and Alison was quite willing to at that. "You have no idea how wrong I want to be. Prove it to me. Please. I don't want. To. Be. Right."

Askani was stirring in the back of his mind, radiating confused wariness and making an obvious attempt to soothe him. "Don't you touch that button," he warned her, his voice shaking. "I am through with this, Alison. As if it weren't bad that Haroun's decided to look at me sideways over the Askani, now you've decided I've still got some--ridiculous trigger in my head?"

He was being irrational. Possibly it was the phobias coming up to the surface - it wasn't as though she hadn't been using the right thing to do so, although as far as Nathan knew MacInnis wasn't Mistra. Oh. Of course. Maybe... "Twenty-five years, Nathan. MacInnis has been watching you for twenty. Five. Years."

The change of subject threw him totally. "What are you--" he sputtered and then stopped himself. He pressed the heels of his hand to his forehead for a moment, fighting to concentrate. "He knew me when I first came into the program," he said, biting off the end of each word. "I told you that. He was my first hand-to-hand instructor."

"How long ago was that? How long was he in contact with you while you were in the program?" He wasn't yelling anymore, or looking at her like Lorna had and she managed to remain right where she was, hands resting on her lap, barely realizing her feet were freezing in the cool room.

"Twenty--twenty-three years ago," Nathan said, having to stop and think about it. "That's when someone else got that job. He told me me tried to help me get out, seven years ago. I told you that, too."

"He told me he'd been watching you for twenty-five years, Nathan." All she really wanted to do was give up and tell him she was imagining things and apologize and not have Monday repeat itself all over again. "No pauses, no gaps in between years."

"And did he tell you that in a context where he could have gone into specifics like that? Or were you two busy hurling insults at each other or something?" Nathan said restlessly. He stopped to pick up the crumpled piece of paper. "For all I know, he was watching me. I didn't know he tried to help me until May, remember? Didn't remember him as anything but an instructor I hadn't seen in better than two decades."

"Oh, he threatened Miles and then told me I was pretty much an idiot but I don't really care what he thinks," she brought her legs up on the chair, hugging her legs to herself tightly while keeping her breathing as shallow as possible. She didn't really care anymore, really, as long as this might be over soon so she could do the only thing left for her to do. "Why did he wait that long if he was watching you all that time? Why does he... why does he treat you like Mistra does their agents? Throwing you into something the way he does counting on the fact that you'll do it anyway regardless of what it does to you? Because you've got the all that training telling you do it even if it's..." Alison finally stopped, looking down. "Never mind. I should just learn to know when to give up." She rose to her feet and headed towards the door without looking at him.

He watched her go, shocked by the thoughts she was projecting, but still angry at her for dredging all of this up and making wild leaps. But he didn't make a move to stop her. He wasn't about to defend the old rat bastard.

~*~

Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect.
~ Henry V, Act 3, Scene 1, Shakespeare