Nathan and Jubilee: Climbing the Mountain

[x-jubilee.livejournal.com]

Backdated to Saturday 15th January.

Nathan takes Jubilee ice climbing, she ends up learning more then she expected.



"Yes, Jubilee, that is a frozen waterfall. And yes, we are going to
climb it," Nathan said as he bent down to pull the two sets of
crampons out of his backpack. He waved at a nearby boulder. "Have a
seat and give me a foot. I want to make sure you've got these on
securely."

Jubilee did as she was told, taking a seat and holding up her foot.
"You're takin' me from indoor climbing gyms to climbing solid water.
Dude, not wanting to question your sanity or anythin' but...are you
insane? "

"Quite. Certifiable, as a matter of fact, but if you haven't known
that for the last six months, you haven't been paying attention." He
gave her a moderately disturbing smile as he fastened her crampons.
"It's just a little waterfall." Only about a hundred feet. "And it's
very pretty in the Adironacks at this time of year, don't you think?"

Jubilee eyed him, glad of the woolly jumper Madelyn's mother had sent
her for Christmas and the jacket she was wearing. It was beautiful
here, a crisp clearness to the air that you just didn't get closer to
civilization. And to someone still unaccustomed to weather this cold,
the ice that covered the tree limbs had been fascinating.

Nathan hadn't seemed impatient to get here, so she'd spent time
examining the trees on their way up, enjoying the crunch of grass
underfoot. It too appeared to have been covered with ice. Maybe an ice
storm last night?

"Is it always this quiet?" Jubilee asked, noting the lack of animal noise.

She knew they had to be somewhere out there, she just couldn't hear
them right now.

"This far from civilization? Generally. Although if you want quiet,
you should try some of the mountains I've climbed. Everest, K2... it's
an entirely different kind of silence." Nathan satisfied himself that
her crampons were on properly, and then went to put his on. "I know
it's cold," he said as he pulled two of the ice axes out, "but that's
actually good for ice-climbing."

Reversing them, he held them out to her, handles first. "You'll need
both. The axes and the crampons are how you make your way up the ice.
And they're sharp, so be careful."

She took them, making note of the weight. Her eyes widened as what
he'd said just registered. "You...Everest? Dude."

Shaking her head in bemusement, the things you learnt about your
teachers when they took you out into the wilderness, she looked up at
the waterfall, craning her head backwards to see the top. Okay, so it
was only a hundred feet but she was also only 5'4", there was a lot of
difference in those two heights. Nothing for it though but to go
ahead, damned if she was going to be undone by an inanimate object.

The best bet was probably to just go at it hard, get up the frozen
waterfall as fast as possible. Gripping the axes in her hands, she
started determined toward the waterfall.

Nathan reached out and stopped her with a hand. "I beg your pardon,
Ms. Lee," he said calmly. "No one said anything about you leading
out."

She looked back at him, her grin suddenly teasing. "Well, they do say
age before beauty. So, lead on McDuff."

Now that she'd made the decision to climb, she had to keep a reign on
her natural instincts to just do. As well as the itch that having
Nathan with her on a possibly dangerous activity caused. Following
anyone had always been nigh impossible for her. She didn't like being
constrained by someone else's decisions. What if they were wrong,
afterall? Better to follow her own gut instincts and not get too buddy
buddy with anyone, least then if she was wrong, she'd only kill
herself.

"Ropes, Jubilee," Nathan pointed out, his lips twitching a little.
"Remember, we were practicing how to belay?" He was not about to let
himself slip, mostly because she didn't really have the body weight to
catch him if he did.

It took them a few minutes to get that properly set up, and then he
started up the ice. "Watch how I move," he said, deliberately slowing
things down so she could get a good look at the way he moved the axes,
the way he placed his feet.

Jubilee watched him start up the waterfall, taking note of where he
placed his feet as he moved. He seemed to be testing the face of the
ice as he moved, glancing upward frequently to find the best way
forward.

She smiled suddenly as she realised that her way probably would have
seen her stuck half way up. She was slowly coming to realise that the
fastest, or easiest path wasn't always the best choice. Even if slow
and steady often seemed boring as all hell.

"So, Mr Turtle, do I get a go soon?" she asked, her tone still lightly teasing.

Maybe it was just being away from the school, or not having anyone
else around to have to put on the tough girl act for. But, she was
feeling at ease today and it'd been a long time since she'd been nice
to Nathan. She hadn't really thought about how much she missed being
able to say something without what seemed like the fate of her future
lying on every damn word.

"Once I'm at the top of the rope and can belay you. Slow and steady
wins the race, Jubilee," he called down calmly, carefully setting his
axe in solid ice. "I bet you wonder why I climb. I mean, I'm
telekinetic, I can fly, right?"

She laughed, surprised for a second before she remembered he was a
telepath. Of course he'd have been able to hear what she was thinking.
She'd been told often enough by the mansion inhabitants who could hear
such things that she was like a whole herd of garbage trucks at 4am in
the morning. She tightened her hold on the belaying rope and pulled it
taunt again, taking up the slack as he climbed higher. If he fell,
she'd be able to brace her feet, and the ropes attached to her
climbing harness holding her to the ground would stop her from being
pulled upwards.

"Well, yeah. Seems kinda like a wasted effort, ya know?"

"Don't think of it that way," Nathan suggested, climbing steadily. The
ice was of good quality, taking the axe well. "There's something very
simple about this, Jubilee. It's you, the rock - or in this case, the
frozen waterfall - and if you have one, your climbing partner. The
expectations are simple, and very, very clear. There's rarely such a
thing as a complex decision on a climb."

She nodded, turning the concept over in her head. There was a comfort
that came from an easy decision. There weren't many places left in
life that had black and white choices.

"It's still dangerous if you make the wrong choice though, right?"
Jubilee asked, raising her voice slightly as he got further up the
ice.

No choice without consequence. Here, back at the mansion, out in the
world beyond. Sometimes knowing a thing and understanding it were two
different things. Jubilee realised that it wasn't a depressing
thought, just a realisation of the world at large.

Maybe the choice wasn't ignoring the danger, but not allowing the
danger to stop you from making the choice.

And living in whatever mode you chose to, well, that was a choice as well.

"Sometimes dangerous even when you make the right choice," Nathan
called down, his voice carrying easily. "You can do things for the
absolute best reasons and still wind up in a very bad place." Crack! A
dinner plate-sized chunk of ice fell and he shifted sideways to avoid
it. He paused for a moment, then tried again with the axe, finding a
more secure spot. "But there's a certain honesty out here, doing
something like this. Mountaineers sometimes talk about being stripped
down to their fundamental selfs when they're up in the Death Zone.
There's a lot of truth to that."

"Dude, people go to a hell of a lot of effort to be truthful with
'emselves, don't they? Still, Grandfather was always going on about
how meditation was meant to bring you closer to your true self too.
All I know is after five hours of Alison's marathon sessions, I'm
dyin' for a pee. Well, that and I probably feel calmer then I have any
other time, but don't tell her that. It'll only encourage her."

The sessions in the climbing gym had been a lot of fun for her.
Finding her way up the walls, pressing her body to stretch that small
fraction more in order to get over a difficult section.

"So, does this flinging wide of my soul to the truth mean I have to
stop thinkin' this is fun? Or can I do both at the same time?"

"Depends," Nathan said, hauling himself upwards. "You can think it's
fun. You can enjoy yourself thoroughly. But you can never forget the
impact of a misstep." He picked up the pace a little, moving up the
ice face more smoothly, with the ease of long practice. "You can't let
it paralyze you, but you have to act with a certain amount of...
deliberation."

"Reminds me of gymnastics." Jubilee replied. "There's the fun but
there's also the bit where you know if you do a move wrong you could
end up breaking your neck, or worse. When I'm on the uneven bars and
I'm in the middle of a routine. It's like you said, there's no time
for lies there or evasion. You can't do something, or you're not
ready...it's a bad place to be."

Jubilee shifted, pulling the rope taunt again and blinking her eyes as
she squinted against the light of the sun through the trees around
them.

"So, what was Everest like?"

"Big. Cold. More beautiful than you can imagine." Nathan paused for a
moment, planting his axe to free up a hand and then wiping his
forehead. "Hell of a view. I was twenty-three. I climbed it solo,
without oxygen."

If Nathan had been looking down, he might have seen the look of shock
that crossed Jubilee's face.

"Why?" she asked. "And why aren't you dead because of it?"

Nathan laughed a little. "It has been done, you know. Numerous times.
Alpine-style is the purest form of climbing. If you're carrying oxygen
with you to simulate conditions at lower altitudes, your'e not really
climbing the mountain, are you?"

Jubilee grinned. "Dude, you've had me totally fooled all this time.
Here I've been thinkin' of you as this big grizzled old bear, and yer
just a big ol kid. Bet you were the type to stand on your garage roof
and think you were Superman, right?"

He faltered briefly, then resumed his upward motion. "Not really.
Didn't know who Superman was when I was a kid. You lose out on popular
culture when you grow up in the middle of Alaska with no contact with
the outside world."

Jubilee blinked, it wasn't something she'd known. She was curious
suddenly, Nate was probably being more open now with her then he ever
had been before. She decided to take advantage of his good mood to
find out more.

"Alaska? Why'd ya grow with no contact? I'd have thought they'd have
television even there, ya know."

"My parents were part of a religious cult." Almost at the top. "They
didn't believe in television. Or a lot of things." There. He pulled
himself up to solid rock. "Up until I was twelve, the only people I
saw outside the cult were some of the local Inuit."

Nathan had been in a cult? She wondered what that did to your
thinking, considering he'd been a kid at the time. Had to do weird
shit to your outlook on life, and from what she'd seen of his teenage
years...Seemed like for most of his life people had gone out of their
way to fuck him over.

Was that...is that what compassion felt like? She focussed on the
feeling, mulling it over in her mind.

"What was the cult like?" she asked, realising that she shouldn't jump
to conclusions. Although, cult had never exactly been a word ringing
with positive overtones.

"Unpleasant. They believed in making their children prove they were
strong, and they started very young." Nathan checked the belay device
carefully. "There was a lot of abuse. I ran away when I was twelve."

Jubilee got ready to start her ascent, waiting for Nathan's signal to
begin. "Where'd you go?"

"Down the West Coast. Made it to San Francisco eventually." He watched
very carefully as she started her ascent, his telekinesis reaching out
to feel out the air around her. Just in case. "That's where my former
employers picked me up, after a year or so."

Jubilee concentrated on the ice in front of her, hammering the pick in
tight before moving her feet. She wondered how Mistra had managed to
find Nathan. She herself had left San Francisco after that last fight
with her foster father and headed down to Los Angeles. "How'd they
find you?" she asked, lifting the ice axe and pounding it home a few
inches above her head.

Nathan snorted softly. "Got arrested and handed over to social
services. Who flagged me as a mutant. Only a matter of time at that
point, really, especially given that I was telekinetic. Psis were at
the top of their priority list."

Jubilee raised her eyes, judging the best way up from what she'd
observed Nathan do. "Almost got caught by mall cops a couple of times
in LA. Never did anythin' to get taken down by the real cops when I
was out and about though. Power like mine, people are willin' to give
you some money for a show. Guess I never knew how lucky I was. How'd
you get out? What I saw, didn't seem like they were the type to just
let you go."

And they hadn't, she'd seen what they did to Nathan, had felt it like
they were doing it to her. She shivered, wondering if they'd have
found her had she not been taken in by other foster parents after that
first emergence of her powers.

"Make sure you kick into the wall as carefully as you use your axes,"
he advised. "Don't move up until you're secure." She slowed down a bit
at his warning. "I was thirty before I got out," he said finally.
"Almost thirty-one. They sent me on a mission without proper
intelligence and I was the only one of my team to survive. That was
when I was infected with the virus." He had explained to her, a
little, about why he'd been so sick before Christmas. "The emotional
shock broke my conditioning. When I got back to the States, I tried to
run."

"Tried?" she asked, jumping on the qualifier.

She placed her ice axes higher, this time making sure to ground her
feet securely into the wall before putting weight on them. She wobbled
a moment, feeling an ice axe begin to come lose as an unseen
instability in the waterfall came lose and feel below her. She gripped
her other axe tightly, pulling herself close to the wall, suddenly
deaf to anything but her own racing heartbeat and elevated breathing.

'Suck it up, Jubilee. You've still got three points of contact, just
deal and find a better place for the axe' she thought, still not
moving, the hand holding the free axe pressed against her side.

"I'm not going to let you fall, Jubilee." Nathan watched her for a few
moments longer before he spoke again. "I made it eventually -
obviously. My wife and son didn't."

Jubilee eventually got her breath under control, focussing on Nathan's
words that he would catch her if there was an issue. Shrugging off the
brief moment of panic, she reached up again and placed the axe,
pulling herself up.

"You told me once, I think. About them. I didn't know they were Mistra
too. I thought the whole point of the training was to be unemotional,
though? How'd you ever manage to get a wife and kid?"

She was heading into the deeply personal now. You didn't just lose
something as important as a kid and not have it cut you deeply. She'd
lost her parents, she knew what it was like. She'd spent the better
part of two months not being able to speak at all after that night.

"A reward." He gazed down at her, watching every move she made. "For
being a good soldier. For being the best, I suppose. I was allowed...
privileges most of the others weren't."

She pulled herself up over the ice, grunting with the effort and then
stood for a second, balancing as she surveyed her next move. She
wondered at the type of person Nate's wife might have been. She
couldn't imagine a personality that would willingly allow themselves
to be given as a reward, let alone to have a child as a part of it.
But she was being unfair again, there had to be more to it then that.
"If someone tried to give me as a reward...I'd probably geld the guy
the first time he came near me. Why did she go along with it?"

"No, it wasn't like that. The reward was in being allowed to do
something... normal, like get married. She was an instructor, I was an
operative. They would turn a blind idea to relationships within those
two groups, but you generally weren't supposed to cross that line. And
you certainly weren't supposed to do it... formally."

Jubilee swore as the ice under her right foot gave way. Compensating
quickly, she managed to get the cleet fixed firmly in more stable ice.
She was getting the hang of this, although her judgement on suitable
foot and handholds could use some work. Still, she was now halfway up
and hadn't managed to fall off. She looked up at Nate, expression
still holding that mix between curiosity and compassion. Thanks to her
trip through his past she knew some of what they'd done to him. How
much worse must it have been to live that?

Her angry words to him while he was blind suddenly seemed cruel. How
could she have thought he'd put her through even a moment of anything
like they'd done to him? Only, at the time, she'd been so confused.

"I'm sorry." she said, not clarifying.

She didn't need to, it wasn't an appoligy for any particular incident
but for all of them. She had a habit of testing the people around her
to breaking point.

'No good deed goes unpunished' she thought wryly, realising how
self-destructive that particular behaviour was.

How could she ever get past where she was if she ran off anyone who
wanted to help? It was a surprise to realise that she now wanted that
help, wanted to be better. Didn't hate herself quite as much as she
had before.

Nathan tilted his head, gazing down at her. "You're making good
progress," he said conversationally, if rather cryptically. "One
movement at a time. Too many reactions at once muddy the waters."

Jubilee was somewhat reminded of the cryptic crosswords that someone
in the mists of time had gotten her hooked on. She couldn't quite
remember when she'd started doing them, only that she usually stole
that section of the paper before anyone else could take it in the
morning.

She reached up and dug the axes into ice, swarming up over a slight
overhang and then resting on the other side for a second. There was
only a few metres left to go now.

She'd had a thought trail a minute ago, hadn't she? She was sure it
had been at least semi-important. Something about crossword puzzles.
Right, Nathan as the crossword puzzle, all cryptic and irritating but
you couldn't quite let it just sit there unsolved. Today had slotted
some of the letters into place.

"You know, you and my Grandfather would get on like a house on fire."
she replied with a grunt of effort as she hauled herself onwards.

"I'll take that as a compliment. You're almost here - don't rush the
last stretch. That's when one gets into trouble, climbing." He snorted
softly. "I tried to rush the Hilary Step - that's the last stretch of
the climb to the summit of Everest - and wound up falling a hundred
feet."

The eyes she turned up towards him were wide with surprise. "A hundred
feet? Dude, tell me you had a rope line on."

"Nope," Nathan said cheerfully. "Grabbed one of the fixed ropes
partway down, though."

"You know, you take a lot of risks. You have a death wish or
somethin', Dude?" she asked.

She wondered if that wasn't it, if these climbs had been before he met
Moira and after he'd lost his wife and child. Taking almost insane
risks might have been a way of throwing himself in the path of death
when you didn't particularly like the idea of right out suicide. She'd
done some of that kind of risk taking herself at times.

She pulled herself up further, noting that she'd be at the top in two
more moves.

"High-risk hobbies were always a thing of mine, once I was allowed to
have them," Nathan admitted freely. "It was... spitting in Mistra's
face in a very petty sort of way. Which was amusing, given that they
thought it was an adequate sort of outlet." He shrugged. "I was more
careful while my son was alive. Had an actively suicidal period after
he and my wife were killed." He grinned a bit wryly at her as she
gazed up at him. "Let it out," he teased lightly. "I can almost see
the 'And this is the person I'm taking advice from?' in your eyes."

Jubilee smiled wryly. "Well, there's been times I wondered why I was.
I thought it was worth it if I could get you to respect me. It was
important."

It still was, although she'd never really intimately looked at her
reasoning for going to Nathan. She wasn't sure how her behaviour so
far was helping her achieve respect but it had been her original
intention. It was a problem, to be sure that she had a habit of
thinking one thing and then completely going in the opposite direction
of where she'd really wanted to be.

'Self destructive, much?' she thought.

Nathan reached out to pull her up the last bit of the way, then
started to reset the belay. "Why?" he asked her thoughtfully. "What's
my respect worth? Why not go to Charles, or Hank, or Scott, if you
needed a strong male figure in your life?"

Jubilee had reached the top, and she pulled herself over the edge,
kneeling for a second as she looked up at him. Her expression was a
thoughtful one, considering his question.

"Scott didn't want to be. Don't think anyone does, to be honest."

Why? Why was this man's approval important? Because he'd survived
worse then she had? Maybe. But there was a better answer then that, an
extremely selfish one and possibly an explanation as to why she'd been
so hard on him.

"But it was cause Amanda cared about you. I was jealous that she'd
found someone who cared so much, I guess. At the time, before I met
Mads, no one had ever cared about me like that. An I ain't exactly the
nicest person to people who try an get close. I wanted what she had.
Someone who wouldn't give up on me, no matter how bad I screwed up.
Someone who wouldn't let me hate me anymore."

Jubilee dropped her axes to the ground, looking out over the
waterfall, across the expanse of forest. It was beautiful up here,
enough to stop the breath in your throat

"There are worse reasons, I suppose," Nathan said. "So here's the
reward," he said, waving a hand out at the view. "Makes the risk worth
it, no?"

She grinned at him suddenly, gaze taking in the view with a silent
wonder. She felt..humbled. It wasn't often that you recognised
something much bigger then yourself. Jubilee could acknowledge that
the world was larger then the small part of it that she stumbled
through on a daily basis. As much as she did matter in the scheme of
things, she knew too that against this, she was just a small part of
the enormous whole.

"It does, it really does." she whispered.

Nathan grinned suddenly and took her hand. "Time to head back down,"
he said, drawing her towards the head. She looked at him wide-eyed and
he shook his head. "Call it rappelling without a rope. Don't worry,
I'm not going to let go of you."

It'd be a long fall if he let her go...

Jubilee had never been a soft person, she often didn't know how to
accept random hugs or friendship that didn't seem to have any
conditions. Although, between Mads and her roommates, she'd gotten
better at that. She had to start somewhere, give her trust before she
could receive it. She looked out over the drop, wondering what it
would feel like to fly, or as close to it as a human would ever get.
She found herself wanting to find out, and trusting that Nate wouldn't
let her fall.

"Do I just step off?" she asked, the smile she gave him showing in her
eyes this time, a genuine one, rather then what she thought people
expected.

"On three," Nathan said mischievously. "One, two... three..."

Jubilee launched herself into clear space, feeling Nathan close behind
her. She thrust her hands outwards, feeling the pull of gravity
against her as her stomach jumped, her eyes going wide as she saw the
ground coming up fast. She was about to open her mouth and shout an
adamant question about this fact when she felt herself being pulled
upwards into a rising arc.

He hadn't let her fall. She let out a loud whoop, suddenly able to
enjoy what had come before. "Dude...so awesome." she yelled back,
laughing. "But you're so snow-balled when we get down for that first
step."