xp_logs | Nathan and Alison, Monday morning (Reply)

Alison shares her own experience of outing herself as a mutant with Nathan, who decides he's got to go and talk to Amanda before the memorial after all.

It had struck him that he could have just skipped the whole getting out of bed thing today. That might have been one way to deal with the issue of the anniversary. Moira was still in Scotland, so he wouldn't have had to fear ass-kicking from that direction. Except there were all kinds of other directions it could come from, though, so it hadn't actually been a viable option.

He had only an afternoon meeting of the Hindi reading group to worry about - late afternoon, well after the time of the memorial. Which was just great, really. Fabulous. They'd come, and they'd all be thinking about it, and he--

"Naaaate?" Bella cooed from her cage.

"Not to worry, feathers," he said hoarsely, bending over to pick up the book he'd just dropped and then sinking down onto the couch.

There was a knock on the door, Alison peeking inside a moment later at the faintly grumbled mental reply to come in, since she obviously wasn't going away. Stepping within and closing the door quietly behind her, she gave him a contemplative look. "You're not happy about what Amanda is doing, are you?"

Nathan's hands clenched around the book. "Good morning to you, too," he said pointedly, a bitter edge to his voice. "And no, I'm not. That obvious, is it?"

"Mmm." She wandered closer until she could sit down on the other end of the couch, the gesture revealing she was holding something in her hand. "I guess you could say that. I have something," she lifted her hand, revealing one of those undersized data CDs, "that I'd like to show you." She was holding herself tightly reined in, he could tell now, though there were a multitude of emotions roiling underneath the calm surface.

Nathan's jaw clenched. "Laptop's right there," he said curtly. "Feel free." Maybe it would be something totally unrelated and innocuous. Sure. He'd just keep thinking that.

She smiled at him, just a bit, then rose to her feet again and went to fetch the laptop, bringing it back with her. "There's probably a copy somewhere on the servers, but I've never show this one to anyone." It was the only copy there was, as far as she knew, of this particular footage. Quietly she popped the cd in the drive and clicked through the various prompts until she hit play - and then leaned over to place the laptop in Nathan's lap without hesitation, disregarding the book he was holding entirely. "Careful. It's fragile."

Whether she meant the laptop or something else was lost in the sounds of a crowd cheering madly, a chant calling out for one person alone, over and over again, as the camera swooped over the throngs of people to settle on a single figure, in the middle of a brightly lit stage. "Baltimore! And everyone out there who's listening!" There was a brief falter in the woman's voice, though she continued. A bit more quietly perhaps, but no less decided. "I have something to tell you all."

Nathan froze, knowing perfectly well what this was, even before the camera focused more carefully on Alison. Alison on stage, at a microphone, very much like Amanda would be this afternoon. Saying very much the same thing Amanda would be saying.

He watched, stone-faced, as the Alison-on-the-screen got through her brief, obviously heartfelt words, outing herself as a mutant.

The silence that fell, both on the screen and in the room after her voice faded was almost deafening, broken only to Nathan's mind by the continued turmoil of Alison's thoughts. And then the screaming began on screen - condemnation, confusion and piercing through now and then wild and heartfelt support. " I didn't know what to expect when I did that. I thought I did, but at the same time - it was just too big. In a way, it was bad timing, maybe. Right after Magneto," ooh, the irony didn't escape her there, "tried that stunt on the Status of Liberty. There was a lot of anti-mutant talk going on and I just felt... tired of it all. Tired of hiding what I was from my friends. And if there was a chance I could change things, even a little bit..." She hugged herself, the memories still too bright and sharp to contemplate for too long.

Nathan didn't reply. He listened to the audience's obviously mixed reaction, watched some of Alison's band members come forward in a show of support. It wasn't until the clip reached its end that he leaned forward and set the laptop carefully on the coffee table, still not looking at her.

"You think I've let her down," he said after a moment. "Not being there to support her?"

"I think you underestimate how very important it is for her to know that even if you disagree, you can reach out and let her know that she is doing something incredibly... terrifying. But she's doing it anyway, for reasons that are important to her. Today," Alison's voice wavered over the words, voice taut with emotions, "is going to be with her for all her life. Good or bad. It's the voices you remember telling you 'it doesn't matter what happens, you're won't be alone' that makes it good, whatever happens after." She'd curled up on her end of the couch, not realizing she was hugging herself as well.

It felt like someone was closing a vice around his chest. "I'll... talk to her. Before she goes." He forced the words out, his voice impossibly tight. "I don't... disagree, Alison. It's an idealistic thing, what she's doing. I am proud of her. Just scared for her."

"I know." Smiling crookedly, Alison took a shallow breath, not trying for anything more - it was hard to do, the way she was feeling now. "But it's not about you, Nathan." She took another breath, this time trying for a bit more air - she was blinking her eyes rapidly, feeling the echoes of what she'd done piling on keenly, for the first time in months. It was, almost, as though she were reliving the day itself. "It's about her. Who she is and who she wants to be."

Oh, he knew he had his head stuck up his own ass. "I know." His voice wobbled dangerously. "Thank you for showing me that," he made himself say. "I'll talk to her. I should have done it before this."

Alison merely nodded, reaching out to flick the drive open to carefully pick the CD within up and put it back in the case. "That part's just as important for you as it is for her," she murmured, looking down at the case. She squared her shoulders and got up once more, this time figuring it was best to let him think about it without pushing further. Once she was standing, she offered him an unusually serious, if a bit worn, look. "I never regretted it, you know. What happened after, losing the contracts and the stalker - it was hell. But I'd done what I felt ought to be done. What needed to be done. And that no one could take away from me." She looked at the case in her hands and smiled wanly. "Right. I'll go now."

"Some good should come out of it." The words came out almost brokenly, and Nathan blinked rapidly, drawing in on himself as if he could crush out the tidal surge of emotions struggling to break free. "It would be good to think that there c-could be..."

She turned to look at him, not quite over her shoulder, standing between the door and the couch. "Do you know what Jamie told me, when I'd just got here?" She smiled, and this time there were tears in her eyes. "There are no words. I'll just show you." A quick moving back to the computer, a even faster search in the journal system. "There. Read for yourself."

He read Jamie telling Alison how she'd inspired him, and before he knew quite what he was doing, was pushing himself up off the couch, flinching away from Alison and moving across to the window. Bella cooed worriedly at him, but he leaned his forehead against the cold glass, humiliating tears escaping.

"I'm sorry," he whispered shakily. "I'll talk to her. I'm sorry." I'm so ashamed of myself. It took him a moment to realize he'd said that aloud, too.

"Why? Because something in all of this is scaring you and you can't figure out what it is yet?" Alison followed him to the window and leaned on the frame, the tiredness showing through clearly by now. 'It's been what, almost two years since I went through that, and just knowing that Amanda would be today kept me awake all night." He'd learned to retreat when needed. "Regardless of whatever powers and skills we have, in the end, we're just human, Nathan. Nothing more." She smiled, just a bit. "Nothing less."

"It's like you said." It hurt to force the words out. "It's not about me. But because I can't... because I'm afraid, and guilty, and have my head stuck up my fucking ass, I haven't been able to..." He swallowed, scrubbing frantically at his eyes. "She's going to be up there doing this incredible thing," he said hoarsely, "and here I am, avoiding television and newspapers and people in general, because I can't bear to think about what happened. She was right, when she... she was right. And that's why I'm ashamed of myself."

"Maybe... maybe you should just give her the chance to change the old memories for something new?" Not erase the badness of Columbia that Nathan had gone through, exactly, Alison thought. Just give them something else to focus on, perhaps. "It might be too recent still. But I'll be taping the broadcast, too. If you're ever ready to watch it one day, it'll be there." And then she reached out, placing one hand firmly on his arm. "No one but you lived through what you did, back then. No one says you have to deal with it now, perfectly so. But... you can start somewhere. Where you do is up to you."

"I'll go talk to her." Nathan coughed, wiping his eyes again. "I just... I wish Moira was here." He knew it for pitiful-sounding as soon as it was out of his mouth.

"Call her up. Talk to her. Maybe she can listen with you via webcam or something, mm?" It wasn't, obviously, the same as Moira being here to hold him and tell him it would be all right, but still. "Hey. Amanda's not alone, but neither are you." She reached out, hand open and palm turned upwards, offering it to him.

He hesitated for a moment, but then took the offered hand, squeezing it gently. "I can list them, you know," he said hoarsely. "All forty-six names. Their ages, where they came from. What they were studying, or why they were at the university that day..."

"And after reviewing the tapes more times than I care to think about when we got back from Iceland, I can tell you who was responsible for the deaths of each of those people." Alison took a deep breath. "All of them just happened to have been on that Mistra team, too." She held on to his hand, voice firming. "I can also list a couple of instances where one person took hits he could easily have stopped, if he hadn't made the choice to defend innocent people caught in the crossfire instead."

Nathan blinked, stiffening a little at the bright, hard push of memory. Morgan's exoskeleton, and the mangled car flying through the air at that group of kids... "I saw some of the footage again," he said hollowly. "On... I don't know, Fox? Just... bits of it. And two of their talking heads wondering who I was, whether the death toll might have been lower if I'd surrendered right away..."

Raising an eyebrow at that, Alison shook her head firmly. "And how many more people would have been hurt or killed once they'd reconditioned you and turned you back into a good little Mistra mook, Nathan?" She sighed softly. "I think we can both agree that the reporters don't exactly have the full picture here, mmm?"

He shifted a little, not quite a shrug. "Amanda told me she hadn't let me in on what she was planning because they had me... beaten, was her word. Looking at the footage again..." The moment from the tape when he'd knelt down, hands behind his head... his face hadn't been visible, but watching himself as the Mistra operatives had advanced on him, he'd seen the defeat in his own posture. "She was right," he said softly. "I gave up. Even knowing what would happen. I have to wonder if that's why what happened in August turned out like it did, because I'd given up, and I knew what it felt like..."

"And if I hadn't given up and gone into hiding, would I still have my career today? If I'd given up earlier would people around me not have been hurt as a result? What if I'd given him his shot, let him take me out, would Doug have worked himself up to thinking it was better that he died and been hit in the chest by a sniper bullet as a result?" She was remarkably calm as she asked him these questions, somewhat to her surprise. "If you spend your entire life on 'what ifs' how will you do it justice?"

Nathan sighed, shaking his head. "No, you don't get what I mean. I gave up. I surrendered. They always used to teach us that once you did that, you could never take it back. That it broke something in you, and you..." He trailed off, staring blankly out the window as something shifted, just beyond reach of conscious thought. But then it was gone, and he shook his head again, frowning. "I don't know what I mean," he muttered tiredly.

Well, that they were working on, though by habit now Alison didn't linger on the thought. He had to sort it out himself. Not by picking it out in someone else's head, not by having it pointed out to him. By figuring it out, all on his own. It was the only way it would not only get across, but also stick. "I get what you mean." It wasn't massive conditioning and it wasn't about killing people, but even boring old normal life sometimes had people trying to tell you that if you quit at anything, you were a failure and would never be good for anything again. Including one's parents. "I'm glad you're talking to Amanda."

"I should go do that now. Won't do much good after the fact." He swallowed, his eyes burning again. "I just wish today was over," he confessed, his voice falling back to a whisper. "But I'll... watch it. I'll tell her I'll watch it. That way I'll be sort of there..." And the part of him that was pointing out that it would be good penance anyway could just shut right the hell up.

"Telling her that will mean the world to her." Alison smiled a bit wistfully. "And today will be over soon and I'd like to ask you a pretty big favor, if you don't mind." She placed one fingertip on the window and a moment afterward, light started to shimmer in the glass lightly. "Go talk to Charles a bit, later tonight or tomorrow morning? Even if it's just about the weather. He's very grounding when you feel like you're lost out at sea."

Nathan nodded. "I will," he murmured, staring out at the snow-covered grounds for a long moment before he finally turned away from the window, meeting her eyes. "I'll see you... tomorrow? The next session's tomorrow, isn't it?" He tried to smile. "My head's in a bit of an uproar at the moment. Short-term memory's going and all... or maybe it's just early senility."

"Tomorrow." Though she'd be keeping a close eye to be ready to lessen the program's intensity if need be. But right now changing that schedule would be seen as a failure and set them back, possibly beyond what they were doing now being effective anymore. "And hey. It's not like we're not all a bit insane around here anyway, mmm?"

"Good point." Nathan gazed at her almost fearfully for a moment, then stepped forward, moving almost jerkily, as if he were expecting her to push him away, and hugged her. "Thanks," he whispered.

There was something almost like a howl of victory, very dimly buried in the back of her mind. "Thank you, too," she murmured, returning the hug and keeping everything very still, as much as she could manage it.

It was a real effort to pull away. The absolute steadiness she was projecting was so soothing, maybe more than it should have been. But he did have a witch to catch. "Okay," he said, managing a wobbly smile as he drew back. "Off to find Amanda. I look like hell, don't I?"

"That's okay," Alison grinned suddenly, something dancing in her eyes that had nothing to do with sorrow or remembered memories. "The kicked puppy dog look will give her a pretty good hint how hard you had to wrestle with things. Make her feel all the more valued and important. It's not a bad thing."