xp_logs | Nathan and Haroun, Friday morning

Nathan is making use of Mr. Treadmill when Haroun, in something of a state, shows up in the gym to take his frustrations out on the heavy bag. The two of them have one of those no-hitting conversations that results in Nathan visiting Haroun's mindscape and figuring out that something a little odd is going on there.

The cracked rib was protesting, quite loudly as a matter of fact, but Nathan kept up the pace on the treadmill, determined that he was going to get to the 5K mark anyway. He'd missed nearly a week's worth of runs, and he was going to get out of shape if he kept that up.

Haroun walked into the Gym. His face was set in his "I am going to kill someone" mask, and he had both clicksticks in his hand, along with his sticker-encrusted Medkit. He dropped the medkit, extended the batons with a practiced flick of his wrist, and went looking for something to hit. Inside of his mind, all he could see was smoke, fire, and Alison. It pulsed behind his eyeballs like a sliver driven straight into his mind.

Nathan, lost in the rhythm of his run, hadn't sensed Haroun approaching. But the overly forceful images seething from Haroun's mind hit him like a sledgehammer, and abruptly, he parted company with the treadmill.

Haroun didn't even notice Nathan's pratfall - he was a little too intent on seeing if he could paint the picture of a heavy bag on the side of his weapons case. He was _beating_ the bag with the batons, quick vicious strikes done with a snarl on his face.

Grumbling, Nathan slammed up his shields and pulled himself back to his feet. Despite the throbbing in his side - Mr. Cracked Rib hadn't liked that, oh, no - he got back on, cranking up the speed a little. "So," he said, a bit breathlessly as he watched Haroun. "Do I shut up and ignore the fact that you're obviously in a state, or do you want to talk?"

Haroun paused in his beating of the bag to look at Nathan. "Alison and I went out last night." he said, voice dead. "The hotel burned down."

Nathan didn't pause, but did raise an eyebrow. "No shit? Huh. What is it with you two and this unbelievable streak of bad luck?"

"God hates me." he said, voice still flat. "It is the only possible explanation."

Ouch. That hadn't sounded like a joke. "You know," Nathan said, "I know you don't like Dom, but if she were here she could actually offer you an explanation that has to do with probability and variables and... well, okay, so neither of us would probably understand the explanation. But suffice to say, there isn't necessarily any divine disfavor going on here."

Haroun snarled again at the mention of Domino. "Once is chance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action." he stated. "Different times. Different places. Different circumstances. Same result. Either God hates me, or she really doesn't want any of this to actually _happen_."

Nathan blinked. "What did Alison have to do with the hotel catching fire? She didn't set it on fire, did she?" Because arson was bad. And subconscious desires to avoid certain things that led to acts of arson were worse.

Haroun shrugged. "I was with her the whole time. I doubt very much she set the fire. But ... I don't know. If I were a superstitious man, I would take this as a divine punishment for abandoning the ways of my people, for being too American."

"Uh-huh." Nathan started to settle back into a proper running rhythm. "But you're not a superstitous man. Right?"

Haroun grinned ferally, but didn't answer the question. Instead, he took a particularly vicious shot at the heavy bag with one of his batons. "It's hard." he said after a minute. "Trying to be American, to know what she expects of me. In my country..." he said, and then trailed off. "Now I sound like a bad comedy sketch. I'm not _IN_ "my" country."

"Haroun..." Nathan thought about it for a moment. "Have you ever thought of trying to get in contact with more fellow expatriates? I mean, we're next door to New York City."

Haroun hrmmed. "No, actually, I hadn't. That's a really good idea." he said, seeming to take some cheer from the notion. "Of course, even in my home country I was always a little different. But it's worth a try..."

"I'm not saying it's going to be an answer to all your problems," Nathan said, "but if you get to know some of the people from your country who've been here for years, you'll also get to know what sort of adaptation process they went through." He gave a wheezing laugh. "Of course, the whole mutant thing complicates things further, but like I said... might be a first step."

Haroun nodded. "That's just brilliant! Thanks! I feel a little better already. Still somewhat pissed-off about my lack of ability to actually _get anywhere_ with Alison, but you don't need to hear about that."

Nathan smiled a little. "Haroun, you're talking to a man who was attracted to his first wife for... oh, two years, probably, before the two of them figured out a way she could touch him without getting her neck snapped for her pains. I know a little bit about that sort of frustration."

Haroun hrmmed thoughtfully. "It's driving me nuts, man." he admitted quietly. "And it pisses me off."

"I know. On both counts." Nathan upped the speed of the treadmill a notch or two. "I wish I had some advice other than what I've given you, but I'm at a loss."

Haroun shrugged and drove a baton deep into the heavy bag. "And it's not _fair_!" he said murderously. "I am _trying_, goddammit. I am doing the best that I can with what I have to work with. I'm there for her, I drop everything and go running if she crooks a finger, I indulge her every whim, and when it comes right down to the endgame, it's nothing but roadblocks."

Nathan sighed. "Talk to her," he said. "The canned response, I know. But you can't fix this unless she knows how you're feeling."

Haroun sighed. "I'm not sure what _good_ it would do me, man! She can't stop fires from breaking out, or make the cops go away, or dragon-proof the windows..."

"But that's not all that's bothering you," Nathan pointed out. "'Either God hates me,'" he quoted, "'or she really doesn't want any of this to actually happen'."

Haroun sighed. "It's all a part of Hot and Cold. We hit both extremes, although understandably, last night. Things were so very, very hot last night, but even just three days ago they were lukewarm at best."

"So you have two problems, basically. Lady Luck despises you, and you're not sure what's going through Alison's mind."

"Does any man, even telepaths like yourself, ever truly know?" he said with a shrug and a glance Heavenwards. "Only God truly knows."

"Look..." Okay, carrying on the conversation while he was running at this pace on the treadmill, given Mr. Cracked Rib, wasn't the easiest thing in the world, but he wasn't about to switch to telepathy. Haroun seemed a little too twitchy for that. "Have you done everything you can, to find out why the hot and cold?"

"I'm trying. It's not something that can just be brought up over breakfast, you know." he groused.

"Well, no, because bringing it up over breakfast would imply the problem had been solved," Nathan said, and then was very glad he was halfway across the gym and well out of Haroun's immediate reach. "I'm not trying to make fun," he said with a certain amount of contrition, "but hell, you're giving me, the telepath, the most ambiguous take on what's going on in your head."

"Then just go see for yourself already!" Haroun said with great frustration. "Go on, I won't fight you."

Nathan hesitated, prepared to tell Haroun that no, he didn't actually need to take a look (as Haroun was projecting plenty) but that was an out-and-out invitation. If he wasn't seeing things as clearly as he could be, why not fix that? They seemed to keep getting in these discussions, after all, and he was sick of sounding like a broken record.

"I'm going to take your word on that," Nathan warned, slowing the treadmill down to a stop and then stepping off.

Haroun took a deep breath, and slammed the batons against the ground to recollapse them. He waited for Nathan to do his thing, trying to keep his mind open and accessable.

Nathan came over to stand in front of Haroun. "Don't mind me," he said quietly, reaching up and laying one hand against Haroun's temple. "Makes it easier."

Haroun fought his first instinct (*BLOCK!*) to allow Nathan to lay a hand on him. Haroun felt warm, almost feverishly so and he took another deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Let the telepath in.

Mimicking Haroun's breathing almost unconsciously, Nathan closed his eyes, and instead of establishing a link, actually entered Haroun's mind. It was the difference between imposing an artificial 'this is how we would speak if we were both telepaths' state and visiting Haroun on his own turf.

Haroun's mindscape was an odd thing. Superficially, it represented the bazaars of Marrakesh, but with a sense of order imposed on it. The merchant stalls were all in rigidly straight lines, and the light overhead was precise and unwavering. Every so often a sound with erupt from one of the merchant stalls - a genderless drone, almost too garbled to make out well. One stall stood out from the others - one better-lit than the others, more spacious. The bazaar was packed, though, and Moors who moved through it was universally rude - hostile, pushing, shoving, but in eerie silence.

Nathan, standing in an unoccupied corner, shook his head slowly as he got a good view of the mindscape. Charles had been trying to teach him just how complex these manifestations could be, but there were depths here he wasn't seeing. He was sure of it. Looking around, he spotted an unoccupied wall overlooking one of the open portions of the bazaar and willed himself there, blinking from one spot to the next in an instant.

The Moors paid Nathan no mind whatsoever, although it looked like a riot was about to break out. The pushing and shoving was getting more intense, although the struggling Moors never came close to disrupting a stall - they only blocked traffic for everyone else. "Nathan!" said Haroun, dressed in black BDUs and a kaffiyeh. "Welcome to my mind. The stuff I wanted to show you is over here." he said, pointing to the larger, better-lit stall. "Follow me." And he waded into the struggling mass of Moors, elbowing and kicking his way through the crowd.

Nathan saw the stall and moved himself over there, so that he was waiting for Haroun once he'd made his way through the crowd. Conscious-Haroun? he wondered, regarding the black-garbed representation of his friend. He couldn't quite tell.

"It's a little bad in here right now." Haroun said conversationally as he kicked, punched, kneed, and elbowed his way through the crowd. "Be there in just a second!"

Nathan didn't reply. Interaction was occasionally a trap, or a distraction, on a mindscape like this, to hear Charles tell it. Better to watch and observe, at least for now. The hostility of the crowd was one thing he needed to notice. That much was obvious.

Haroun finally made his way to the stall, and spent a second wiping blood off his hands. "I think I need to go get filtered again." he said calmly. "The streets are just choked - this one especially, as that's where she lives. Anyway, let me clear the way for you here..." he said, disappearing into the stall for a moment. "Ah, there we go. Please, enter freely and of your own will."

Nathan followed him - and then stumbled, the transition shocking him enough that he nearly lost his hold on his astral form. Mindscapes didn't have to follow the dictates of linear time and space, of course, but that had almost hurt. He noticed, glancing down at his hands, that he was looking a little transparent, and concentrated.

Haroun sat down on the luxurious silk cushion. "Anyway - here it is. Feel free to take a look around. Maybe it'll help." he said with a shrug. Inside the shop - far larger now than it appeared - sat several objects on silk cushions. A Philly cheese steak, of all things, sat on one, the smell very appetizing. A deck of cards sat on another, with another deck, this time with a bowl of carrots, nearby. A snowball, so cold Nathan could practically still feel it, sat on a white silk cushion. Finally, absurdly, a broken window, looking out onto nothing, was open on the far wall.

"What day is it?" Nathan murmured, moving slowly around the shop and examining each item. "Indulge me," he said when Haroun didn't immediately answer. "Lucidity-check. I want to know whether I'm talking to you or your subconscious, or both."

Haroun grinned. "Friday." he said with a laugh. "You're talking to me. I'm no telepath, I have no idea where my subconscious is hiding."

Nathan relaxed fractionally. "I'm more used to doing this in a dream-state than awake," he confessed, going over to the broken window. "And generally not deliberately."

Haroun colored just slightly. "I should warn you - this is some private stuff. I'm not real worried that you're going to go blabbing all over the place, but - dammit, it's embarrassing!" he said.

Flashes of images, attached to each of these objects. Even the broken window. Nathan shook his head slowly, making another circuit of the room. "So you have these shut away in this little peaceful oasis," he mused, "and outside... order and chaos on top of each other."

Haroun shrugged and was about to answer when another person walked into the tent. A ghostly figure, dressed in a white button-down and slacks. His skin happened to be jade-green. "Yo, Harry, you've gotta check this ... whoops! Sorry, man, didn't realize you had company. Come find me when you're done, OK?"

Haroun grinned at the spectral figure. "Sure thing, Brainy." he said, and then stood up respectfully as the ghost left the tent. "Sorry 'bout that, man. Just an old friend now gone. You were saying - something about order and chaos?"

"This isn't helping, you realize," Nathan said, not responding to the question. "Transferring the futile conversation to mindspace doesn't make it any less futile." He went back over to the window. "What's on the other side of this?"

Haroun looked at the mirror. "Umm, the Mansion's back yard?" And sure enough, as he said it the image appeared beyond the window - the view from outside of Haroun's window. Oddly, it was early evening in the world beyond the window, but the sun outside said it was high noon.

Nathan shook his head again. "This isn't helping," he repeated, and strode for the door of the shop.

Haroun got up and followed Nathan back to the bazaar of his mind, where the riot-in-progress had melted away to merely heavy traffic with a lot of elbows and knees being thrown. "So what would help?" Haroun asked.

"You're only showing me what you want me to see." Nathan looked around, then floated upwards like a leaf on a breeze, up and up until he could see the bazaar laid out as if on a grid pattern. "This isn't what a Marrakesh bazaar looks like," he called back down to Haroun, far below, knowing that his voice would carry. "Why is it like this?"

Haroun shrugged. "That's more introspection and self-knowledge than I have, man. I got no idea."

Nathan floated back down to his side, suddenly and irrationally angry. "Oh, so you invite me into your mind to tell me that you don't want to bother looking too deeply at anything? Figures," he snarled, shoving Haroun. The crowd started to flow more quickly between the stalls of the bazaar, pushing each other, glaring.

The crowd instantly got more violent, shoving harder and with dirtier tricks. "Hey, it's not that I don't WANT to know, it's that I don't know RIGHT NOW!" said Haroun with a snarl. "I'm not a telepath, OK? I don't know all your nifty Mind Rules and all that shit."

"It's not shit, it's THINKING!" Nathan snapped at him, taking another step closer, his hands clenching into fists and a red haze clouding his vision.

The crowd surged into a full-blown riot at that, punching and kicking and elbowing anything around them in an orgy of destruction. "HEY! Get a grip, man! What's wrong with you?" he said, forcing his way to where Nathan stood.

The crowd was silent, yet he could hear them roaring, roaring at the back of his mind, screaming with a primal, demanding fury... "I can't... I can't THINK," Nathan stammered, his vision blurring. "We can't think. Just want? Why? Can't concentrate..."

Haroun sighed as he forced the crowds back. "SHUT UP!" he said to the silent fighting rioting Moors, and after about ten minutes of combat they finally backed off, simmering down off of full-blown riot mode and back across the cusp. "Is that better?" he asked, returning to Nathan's side, wincing as he broke into a hot sweat.

"It's not thinking," Nathan said, his astral form shimmering like a heat-mirage, his voice going oddly resonant. "It's not that we don't think, it's that we can't think - why?" The mindscape was transparent around him, patterns of energy flowing strangely beneath it. "Why the red? Why so much red bleeding into the straight lines?"

Haroun shuddered a bit. "Whatever you're doing, be careful. The 'ware just complained." And to Nathan's sight, mixed in among the red was the steel-grey of the mechanically-augmented. The lines looked cold and dead, however.

Nathan's astral form shimmered again, almost breaking up, before it finally stabilized. "Ow," he muttered, bending over and holding his head for a moment, as if afraid it was going to fall off. "What's wrong with you? Why is... it's hot, places where it shouldn't be hot. That's not right. Hot and cold. No wonder you can't think."

"There's nothing wrong with me." Haroun pointed out. "I do pretty well most of the time." he added. The red was slowly, slowly easing down in intensity, withdrawing into itself and not smearing itself across the lines of thought.

"Lava," Nathan said a bit dizzily, forcing himself to straighten. "Psychic lava. And then the machine is like ice. How is that supposed to work properly together when the pressure's there?"

There wasn't much Haroun could say to Nathan, so instead he just focused on his mental discipline. He was running a little hot, the events of yesterday still preying on his mind. So he started to meditate, to dissipate his passions rather then letting them accumulate.

"You're really not seeing it." It was getting easier to think himself, the residue of whatever he'd just tapped into beginning to fade, finally. "I'm not an empath, Haroun, but the line between thought and sensation is an iffy one at times. You hit mental walls because the red... because thought breaks down."

Haroun shrugged. "I'm not a psychologist. Give it to me in small, easily-digestable words. Are you saying that I'm insane?"

"No!" That much, he was sure about. "Not insane," Nathan said, shaking his head. "Just... hampered? There's something getting in the way." He stopped, took a deep breath, and then pulled as gently as he could out of Haroun's mind.

The lights of the gym seemed too bright, in contrast. "This blood filtering that you have to do," Nathan said, catching his breath and letting his hand fall back to his side. "Explain it to me."

Haroun nodded. "Well, basically it's what it says it is. They put two needles in, and run my blood through an artificial filter to dispose of excess hormones." he explained. "I don't have many of the usual ways to dispose of them, so if they build up too many too fast I need artificial help to get rid of them."

"Does it work properly?" Nathan demanded. "Are you sure it works properly?"

"It works just fine. Your fiancee in conjunction with Dr McCoy designed it and implemented it." he said stubbornly. "Why?"

"Because it's the only thing I can think of that might be causing what I just saw!" Nathan almost exploded at him and then stopped, clamping his jaw shut, his eyes going a little wider than usual. "Damn it," he finally said, his voice much more subdued. "I'm still echoing. But doesn't it feel like that, Haroun? Adrenalin, want, frustration... you came down here to take it out physically. Burn it off."

Haroun nodded. "It's what I do. I'm used to it by now. What are you getting at, Nathan?"

"It's not working properly," Nathan said bluntly.

"Sure it is. I just need to do it again if I can't work this out on my own." he insisted. "After I've been filtered, I am downright _serene_."

Nathan gave him a harried look. "And how often do you get filtered?"

"Nowadays? Maybe twice a week. Dating is rough on me." he confessed. "And if you tell Alison I told you that I will cut your balls off and stuff them up your nose."

"How often before you were dating?"

Haroun looked embarrassed again. "Once a month, once every two months, maybe?" he said sheepishly. "Like I said, Ali does bad things to me."

"Excess hormones," Nathan muttered, squeezing his eyes shut. "Your brain is having a hormone bath. It's affecting the way you think."

"No shit." Haroun said with a laugh. "And in other news, the sky is blue."

"No, I mean, it's really affecting the way you think. On a regular basis." Nathan opened his eyes and met Haroun's unflinchingly. "And it is going to be a problem," he said very steadily, "in the field."

"You hop into my head _one time_, after I had a monumentally crappy day the night before, and you feel confident in telling me that I'm going to be a problem?" he said nastily.

Nathan didn't respond to the hostility. "It would only take once. One time, being called out, in the wake of a crappy day."

"Yeah, and? Give me a little credit for some professionalism." he said, stung.

"I give you plenty of credit for professionalism!" Nathan said, more heatedly than he really should have. "I'm worried about you, damn it. That did not feel right, by any definition. It was breaking up the patterns in your mind, like..." He stopped, bit his lip. It was familiar, somehow. He just didn't know how.

"I appreciate the concern, I really do." he said with a sigh. "But I can handle it. It's part and parcel of who and what I am."

Nathan told himself that pulling out his hair was not appropriate. "Would you talk to Charles? Please? I'm a total novice here, Haroun. Maybe I'm overreacting to what I'm sensing, maybe I'm totally off-base, but I think it would be worth double-checking, don't you?"

Haroun sighed and then nodded. "If it will make you feel better, then I'll go." he said with a resigned look. "But I think you're overreacting."

"Thank you," Nathan said, unable to quite hide his relief. He wiped sweat from his forehead with a slightly unsteady hand. "We need you 100% functional and all," he said, striving for a lighter tone

"Or as close to functional as I ever get." he said with a laugh. "Dammit, now I'm not nearly as pissed as i was when I came down here. Talk about spoiling a perfectly good bad mood with logic and compassion. Sheesh!"

"Bad habit," Nathan joked weakly. "Call it the law degree. Well, you can blame the logic part on that, at least..."

Haroun waved that off. "I hate to admit it, but I could probably use more logic in my life. Hey, you were on the treadmill. You need to finish out your cardio workout, or were you done?"

"Done, I guess. I suppose I didn't need to do the whole 5K - Hank already ran me through my official fitness test this morning." Nathan grinned a bit wryly, recovering some of his composure. "Apparently I'm moderately fit for an old man."

Haroun couldn't help but snort at that. "So Hank's cleared you for active duty? Finally?"

"Medically cleared, yeah, although he tutted a little about the scans of my lungs. Not quite healed up from December's little virus flare-up, apparently." Nathan snorted in his turn. "Mind you, it was a conditional sort of all-clear. Apparently he doesn't want me doing anything too strenuous until this cracked rib's healed."

"Fair enough. Welcome to the X-Men, Cable." he said with a laugh. "As acting CO of X-Men Black...." he said, and then broke out into a grin. "It is my duty to officially take you out for drinks. To celebrate."

"Well, don't jump the gun," Nathan warned him. "I haven't heard it from Scott yet. Who knows what else he's got up his sleeve for me?" He grinned. "I'll take a raincheck on the drink, anyway. The Purple Pixie Express is dropping me off at Muir tonight."

"Oho! Sounds like somebody's going to have a _private_ party." he said with a wink. "Have a good time, I'll catch up with you when you get back.

"I'll hold you to that. Try to have some fun this weekend yourself?" Nathan said over his shoulder as he headed for the door. "At some point the universe has got to stop having such a nasty sense of humor."