xp_logs | Amanda and Nathan, Monday night

Nathan goes to apologize for turning down the healing spell. Bella facilitates. Amanda wants to know what he was thinking. He tells her. She doesn't like the answer. Nathan starts to realize he lost this argument from the moment he walked in the door - and that's a good thing!

It had been impressed on Bella, gently but firmly, that she had a Mission. The instructions had been a little complicated, and Nate had put some of them directly into her head, which was always rather funny, but she thought she had it all straight now.

Gripping her Special Delivery carefully with one foot, Bella flew up to the window Nate had shown her and clung with her free foot to the windowsill. Carefully, she tapped on the window with her beak.

Amanda was slouching on her bed, studying. Definitely studying. Not sulking at all. She had a week's worth of work to catch up on, after all. Then she caught the tapping on the window, and looked up, bemused, smiling a little as she saw Bella there on the windowsill. "Hey, prettybird," she said, getting up to open the window. "What've you got there?"

"Flowers!" Bella said enthusiastically, hopping through the window and dropping the bouquet of feverfew into Amanda's hand.

"Flowers!" Bella said enthusiastically, hopping through the window and dropping the bouquet of feverfew into Amanda's hand. She gave the girl a solemn look. "Flowers for Maaaanda. Nate baaaad."

Amanda smiled as she recognised the flowers - feverfew was a headache infusion. The smile became a giggle at Bella's words. "Nate very bad," she agreed, holding out her arm for Bella to hop onto. There was a card too: 'For headaches, from a headache. Can I grovel?' She snickered again. "Where is the silly man, Bella?"

There was a knock at the door and Bella cooed, jumping onto Amanda's arm. "Door!" she trilled sweetly. "Nate! Gooooood?"

"Well, maybe not _good_, but we'll see how the grovellin' goes." Amanda told Bella as she crossed to the door. Opening it, she gave Nate her very best stern look. "Yer a plonker," she told him. "And possibly a pillock."

Nathan smiled a bit lamely at her. "And hey, you haven't even started with the Askani descriptions of idiocy..." Bella whistled derisively and he gave her a stern look before turning his attention back to Amanda. "I'm sorry," he said with a sigh, remembering how shocked and upset she'd been when he'd turned down the healing spell. "Seems kind of inadequate. I wasn't stopping to think of how anyone around me was feeling last night, and the concussion's not really an excuse."

"I'm still mad at you, y'know," she said, stepping aside and indicating he should come in, before closing the door behind him. The wards were still there, glowing slightly. "But I s'pose you had yer reasons. 'Least, I _hope_ there was a reason, an' not just you decidin' t' be a pillock."

"I thought I'd blown up Jono," Nathan murmured, his eyes flickering restlessly around the room.

"Jono blew himself up," she pointed out, leaning against her desk and watching him. "But even so, that's a good reason t' leave yerself hurt? What's next? Goin' out an' takin' a beatin' 'cause you think you deserve t' be hurt?" Her voice was tight, edged with controlled anger. "'Cause that's where yer bloody headin'."

Nathan took a deep breath and gave Amanda a very, very direct look. "You don't actually think I've never done that."

"I didn't think yer'd be that stupid," she replied, the control slipping. "Maybe you an' Wagner should go sit down together an' compare scars an' exchange recipes." Visibly swallowing down the anger, she tried again. "Why, Nate? Yer've been hurt enough already without addin' t' it yerself. I don't..." The look she gave him was miserable indeed. "I don't understand."

Nathan took another deep breath. Bella was tilting her head at him from Amanda's shoulder, making a noise that was almost a rumbling. Very odd noise for a bird. "I don't think you're going to like the answer," he said with a sigh. "Can I sit down? I'm a bit wobbly still." Amanda hesitated, then nodded, and he went over and sat down on the end of the bed. "The problem," he said after a moment, somewhat reluctantly, "and I think you might understand this better than I'd like, is that there's no one to punish me anymore except myself."

"Punish you for _what_? For what Mistra made you do? If you need punishin' for that, then I should be punished for what Rack made _me_ do when he had me." Amanda bit her lip. "Yer the one that said there ain't no atonin', just tryin' not t' do the same thing again."

"It's a lot simpler than that, actually," Nathan said very quietly. "Nothing to do with atonement at all. Amanda, what do you think Mistra did to operatives who blew a mission, or caused a disciplinary problem, or didn't perform to expectations in training?"

She flinched at that. "Probably the same thing Rack used t' do t' me when I made a mistake," she admitted. "Why d' you think I study so hard? Part of me's expectin' t' get hit for every mistake..." Bella nudged her ear, cooing at her, and she smiled wanly. "Doesn't mean I'm gunna take a ruler t' meself instead, tho'."

"You cope a little better than I do, then," Nathan said with an equally wan smile, watching Bella nibble on Amanda's hair. "When I first left Mistra, I didn't... I couldn't figure out how to handle the aftermath of making a mistake. For so many years, I never had to think about that. You made a mistake, you got penal measures." He sighed. "It's something Jack and I have talked a lot about. The fact that I still, even now, try and fill that gap."

"Yeah, well, that's 'cause yer a pillock." Amanda said the word with a bit more affection this time. "What am I gunna do with you, Nate? I can Heal you without yer consent, but it ain't easy. An' I don't think this whole punishment thing yer've got goin' would appreciate it. But I can't just sit back an' watch you damage yerself. An' it's not doin' Moira any good either."

Nathan winced. "Low blow." He sighed again. "I found out I didn't cause Jono's accident," he told her after a moment. "Charles found me and explained what did happen. I didn't remember, see, that was the problem..." He trailed off, shifting a bit on the end of the bed. "Had it pointed out to me what could have happened, though, if that explosion had been any bigger. So now I'm wondering whether I really knew what I was doing, holding lessons down there... it's not just about punishing myself at this point, Amanda. I'm... wondering if I need to prove that I'll deal with the consequences of my choices, even if when I don't think them out properly beforehand."

"By showin' everyone that yer dumb enough t' not let people fix you when yer hurt? Nate, I'm probably not exactly the most mature person in this school, but even I can see there's a problem with that logic." He looked so miserable she didn't have the heart to keep yelling at him. And bringing up Moira _was_ a low blow, but she'd been taught to fight dirty. Careful not to upset Bella on her shoulder, she came and sat down next to him. "How about doin' all this dealin' with a clear head, first?"

"You don't get it," Nathan said without a trace of heat, rubbing at the back of his still-sore neck. His voice grew a bit unsteady as he went on. "They're going to start thinking that I don't ever deal with consequences. That I just get up, stagger onward, and see what kind of trouble I can get into next."

"Isn't that what you did? Refused treatment, went into a guilt spiral an' then walked out of medlab? Bartlet was ropeable." Amanda ducked her head as Bella made her way from one shoulder to the other, and then onto Nathan's, cooing softly. She thought for a long time, then said, softly. "Maybe you should get away from here. Go somewhere where there ain't one disaster after another."

Nathan opened his mouth to protest that no, that wasn't what he'd done - and then closed it. He looked sideways at her, past the bird trying to rub her face against his cheek. "Do you know what tomorrow is?" he asked abruptly.

She shook her head. "Somethin' important, if yer askin' me that. But I'm bad with dates, always have been."

"Three months. A whole quarter of a year." Bella cooed at him and he sighed. "I keep thinking about it, you know. Trying to total up what I have and haven't done with this whole new life." He smiled a bit limply. "You know. The good things and the bad things. Steps forward, steps back... the old shit reaching back to make a grab for me." He shrugged the non-occupied shoulder. "My head just spins with it," he admitted. "Even when the house isn't spinning."

Amanda didn't smile at his joke, and he took a deep breath. "The only thing I know for sure is that I can't leave," he said quietly. "That this is home now. That all of you are family. But I can't shake the idea that I keep letting you all down."

She took his hand in hers. "I don't know much 'bout how families work, Nate, but I know this. You ain't let me down. It kills me t' see you hurtin' yerself like this, but I know yer'd forget all that in a second if I needed you." The briefest tingle, a mere glow of light from her fingers, the healing spell held in abeyance. "An' family lets family help. Let me help you?"

Nathan closed his eyes. The somewhat wobbly smile snuck out anyway. "I lost this argument the moment I walked in the room, didn't I?"

He found himself wrestling with it for a moment longer, though. There was still good reason to wait it out, wasn't there? How else was he supposed to show that yes, this had made an impact on him and he wasn't just going to trudge along looking for the next brain-spraining opportunity? His expression tightened. Fuck, how I hate that damned phrase...

"I can't hear the Askani," he said finally, his voice coming out hoarse. If he couldn't hear the Askani, they couldn't help Jono. That was one thing. The truth Amanda was speaking was another, and his... what was it, even? His pride? Did it matter more than her and Moira and Madelyn and their need to help someone who was part of their family?

Nathan swallowed, opening his eyes and focusing on Amanda. "Please?" he asked, fighting back a complex mixture of guilt and shame. Pride, in the end, didn't mean anything, and this wasn't going to prove anything to anyone anyway, he suspected. "I--I shouldn't have turned you down in the first place. I'm sorry."

"That don't matter now." Lifting her other hand to his temple, she smiled at him. "This won't take a minute," she said, and let the spell go.