xp_logs | Nathan, Saturday night (Reply)

Somewhere in northern Arizona, Nathan does some thinking while he drives and Amanda sleeps. No satisfactory answers present themselves.

He'd forgotten how the roads out here in the desert seemed to go on forever. Right to the horizon. Nathan glanced sideways at Amanda, who was still curled up in the passenger's seat, sleeping peacefully. A faint, fond smile tugged at his lips as he turned back to the highway.

They seemed to be the only people out here. It had been better than an hour since the last other car he'd seen, and there was nothing at all in the way of lights. He could 'hear' some telepathic activity, but it was distant, barely a murmur, save for what he was picking up from Amanda. The Askani were all but silent in the back of his head.

Almost alone with his thoughts.

Which kept returning, over and over again, to his email to Pete and Pete's reply. Part of him wished he hadn't switched on his laptop at that last stop he'd made, but he'd wanted to see if Strange or Moira had sent anything back, any more instructions regarding Amanda in the aftermath of her recharge. But no, just Pete confirming what you already knew...

He was going soft.

If this week had illustrated anything, that was it. Why else would he have been doing his best impression of a nervous wreck, pacing the safehouse and not sleeping? He knew better than that.

When you were on a job, you slept. If you didn't, you made mistakes.

When you were on a job, you didn't dwell on the worst-case scenario. If you did, you got myopic and missed things.

You looked at your people as pieces to be moved around a chessboard. Ends justified the means. You took the risks that needed taking...

Only that seemed to have become a lot easier said than done. Was it just that it had been the kids? Nathan's eyes flickered to Amanda again. It certainly hadn't helped, he admitted to himself. If there was something that all these sessions with Jack had given him, it was a keen understanding of his weak spots. His buttons. Throwing any kids into a situation like that would have pushed several of them. That it had been these kids...

Amanda stirred in her sleep, mumbling something, and then quieted again. Nathan let the air in his lungs out on a sigh, his grip on the steering wheel tightening. It wasn't going to help to wrap them in cotton wool, or try to. Or even to wish that he could.

The memory of that conversation with Cain after Doug's idiocy at the blood drive nagged at him suddenly. You made a promise, his conscience pointed out acidly, and wringing your hands isn't going to get the job done. Make sure they know the cost if they decide to fight. Strip away their illusions. Bring them back alive, one way or the other.

The very fact that this job had gone relatively well, that they'd escaped more or less unscathed, as if this were some damned heist movie, only made it more dangerous in the long run. His fingers tapped out an agitated rhythm on the steering wheel as he wrestled with the problem. No solution, part of him insisted stubbornly. Just an assortment of unpalatable options, and he couldn't even tell what the lesser of the evils was.

He wasn't going soft, he thought suddenly, as much as he was losing his edge. Or had lost it, all in one night back in August. He didn't have that unnatural control over his emotions anymore, the ability to turn them off when they got inconvenient. No more zen level, no more handy compartmentalization that required only a moment's concentration to achieve. Now he had to go about it like normal people did. And he didn't know how.

And I don't know if I want to know how. His jaw clenched. Was that so wrong? Wanting to feel again, to not...

...not have to make the hard decisions.

Nathan took a deep breath and pulled the car over. Amanda didn't stir, not even when he got out and the inside light went on briefly before he shut the door as quietly as possible behind him.

There was a definite chill to the air, and he folded his arms tightly across his chest as he leaned back against the car. The cold of the desert night. He'd almost forgotten what it felt like.

The starscape above was dazzling. For a moment, he toyed with the idea of waking Amanda up to see it, but then decided against it. They'd have another chance tomorrow night, in New Mexico. Better to let her sleep. He could wrestle with his conscience all by himself.

"Coward," he murmured, rubbing at the back of his neck. He turned his face skyward, his eyes tracing the familiar shapes of constellations. He was stiff from the hours of driving, his bad leg and shoulder aching steadily.

He felt old and tired and entirely too confused. To think that I'd ever find myself missing how clear things were when my conditioning was still active...

Freedom was a bitch at times.

The patterns in the stars suggested others, and Nathan let his mind drift, unsurprised when the stars seemed to shift, echoing the spiral shapes still spinning in his head. He should be more bothered by what he supposed was technically a hallucination. But there was still that lingering sense of rightness about this, and it only grew stronger as he focused.

"Show me," he muttered, almost a plea. And the spirals shifted almost sinuously, unwinding like pathways in the sky, leading to their uncertain futures. Images flashed through his mind, unrecognizable faces and places and events he couldn't comprehend, let alone recognize.

No answers for him, in any case. That wasn't the way it worked, was it? Nathan sighed, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, the stars were back in their regular positions, a glimmering blanket flung over the night sky. It was an eerie echo of his beach-mindscape and its sky full of murmuring stars that represented the Askani.

Stars up there, stars inside my head... you'd think I could find something written in one place or the other.