Amanda, Nathan - Monday night
Feb. 21st, 2005 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xp_daytripper posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsFor someone who reacted so badly when Nathan left, Amanda isn't exactly going out of her way to find him - eventually it's Nathan who does the finding, and things are... odd.
Cain was settled for the night (with much grumbling, but he'd offered her a gruff thanks for her help as she'd left him) but Amanda was reluctant to go back inside just yet. A couple of days' thought time, and she was beginning to realise that she really hadn't thought the thing with Jay through at all - just acted on impulse, the same as she used to do. Talking with Pete especially, considering recent events, had brought that one home. And now Nate was back, and while she wanted to hug him breathless, she was also afraid of what she'd see in his face. Disappointment, probably. Worry, which was almost as bad. She could cope with people being angry at her, since that meant she could yell back, but when Nate gave her that look that said he'd thought she knew better, all her arguments fell away and she could only admit that she'd fucked up. Again.
With a sigh, she wandered to the end of the dock and sat down at the end of it, dangling her feet over the half-frozen water. It was bitterly cold, and made the incipient headache start to come back, but at least it was quiet. No debates, no worried people, no-one telling her she was stupid or that she'd done the right thing - the outcome might have been a good one, but the aching head and feeling of unreality, and the two nosebleeds she'd had since and managed to cover up were telling her the price hadn't been fully paid yet.
Moving soundlessly, all his shields up, Nathan approached the dock, his eyes locked on the small figure sitting at the end. He stopped just short of where the dock started, knowing that the creak of the boards would give him away. Now, Dayspring, scaring her into the lake is probably not such a good idea, his conscience reminded him. But he'd wanted to get a good look at her, telepathically speaking, before he announced his presence. What he saw was... not particularly reassuring.
"~Have you mourned my absence, daughter?~" he asked in Askani, his voice soft.
Amanda started, nearly pitching off the end of the dock, and turned to see Nathan standing on the shore. "~With every day,~" she replied, giving the traditional response. The expression on her face was half-longing, half-trepidation. "I was gunna come find you," she went on, with a small shrug. "Only 's been a madhouse the last few days, an' I've been busy..." It was pretty lame, and she knew it.
And of course her nose would choose that moment to start bleeding again. "Bollocks," she muttered thickly, groping in her pocket for the wad of tissues she'd taken to carrying the past couple of days.
"Magical hangover?" Nathan asked, stepping out onto the deck. His voice was calm, his expression not so much neutral as relaxed. "I did some reading back on the journals when I got in."
Nodding, Amanda pressed the tissue to her nose, pinching the bridge. "Should be all right in a day or two," she said, sounding muffled. "Didn't want t' bother Bartlet, with McCoy bein' sick, an' everyone bein' in a state." She would have sighed, only that would have involved inhaling blood. "You don't have t' tell me. I was stupid."
"Oh, good. Because I'm really not in the mood for
delivering pointless lectures." He sat down beside her, cross-legged, as he really didn't see the need to get his boots wet. "Plus I'm turning over a new leaf. No more fighting other people's battles for them. I figure it might last... oh, a couple of days. If I'm lucky."
She gave him a wary look, as best she could with a tissue attached to her face. Luckily the bleed seemed to be a fairly minor one, already slowing. "You haven't gone an' been turned into a pod person or somethin'?" she asked, sounding a tinge disappointed that he wasn't upset with her. Maybe he was tired of her getting into trouble all the time and had decided to wash his hands of her. "Tho' yeah, the lack of lecturin's appreciated. Got enough of that from McCoy, an' I can't even be shirty at him any more since apparently his brain wasn't workin' when he made that post."
"Priorities. You didn't kill yourself, although apparently you gave 'permanent damage' the good old college try." Nathan stared out at the lake. "I don't know the circumstances, so I'm really not in a position to judge the level of stupidity involved. On anyone's part." He looked sideways at her. "Plus, you know, the fact that I wasn't here. ~Does an absentee father deserve the right of judgement?~"
Amanda dabbed at her nose, cautiously testing the state of the bleeding. "Be a first, someone not havin' their say 'cause they don't know the full story," she muttered, but her heart wasn't in it. Then the Askani sank in, and she shook her head, tucking the bloody tissue away to dispose of later. "~A father is a father, absentee or not,~" she said, finally looking up at him properly, not caring if he saw the tiredness in her face, the circles under her eyes.
Nathan gazed down at her. He reached out, then, fingertips brushing her temple. "Up here you believe that. ~But the head doesn't always rule, does it?~" He sighed, letting his hand fall back to his lap. "I can't even promise I won't do it again. This week... some fairly significant things happened while I was gone."
"It's Mistra, isn't it?" Amanda asked, although she didn't need telling. Without waiting for Nathan to answer, she went on. "Then 's important. Those kids... they need you more than I do."
"Do they?" Nathan asked, his voice still calm, even. "Do they really? They're in more immediate danger of dying, yes. But there are a lot of ways to suffer, mi'caehla, and sometimes living is more damaging than dying, and just as irreparable."
Amanda winced, feeling like the world's biggest brat. "They don't have anyone else, Nate, I do, as much as I act otherwise sometimes. I've got Pete, an' Rom an' even Strange. 'S not the same, but it should be enough while you're gone. An' I've learned me lesson. I know what people think about me now, that they think I can't look after meself, that I'll let people use me." Pulling her legs up from their dangle, she wrapped her arms around her knees, shivering slightly. "An' maybe they were right. So I've got t' learn otherwise, at least so I don't distract you from what's important."
"Do you want me to toss you in the lake?" Nathan asked. She looked up at him, blinking. "Because I will. Without a second thought. Of course, only if this wouldn't turn into a weeks-long 'Nathan, you bad, bad man' thing like it did with Angelo. After all, by now I'd hope you all realize I only toss people into large bodies of water out of love." He offered the somewhat bewildered-looking witch a bright smile.
"Have you been sleepin'?" she asked. "'Cause you only get this odd when you haven't slept for like a week. An' what's with the lake threats all of a sudden? 'S not me bein' stupid - dozens of kids in Mistra conditionin' centres are more important. 'Specially since I'm not in danger of dyin' just yet, even with acts of stupidity."
He sighed. "Didn't sleep much, no. Had a rather exciting end to the week, too." He rubbed at his arm, where the IVs had been, without really thinking about what he was doing. "There's got to be a way out of this without tearing yourself up like that. Otherwise Jack's been feeding me a whole lot of bullshit for the last six months, mi'caehla."
"You all right?" she asked, not missing the gesture. And Nate's kind of exciting weeks were always a worry. Suddenly her issues weren't that important - not that they had been before, any way...
Nathan gave her a level look. Whether it was his fatigue making his shields ragged, or what she'd done herself making her own thoughts less than disciplined, he overheard the tag end of that with no trouble at all. "~I put my head into the neotiger's mouth and came away with the gold,~" he said obliquely, then switched back to English. "That's not important. Answer me a question, Amanda - what do you want? Right here and now, when you think about what happened with this spell?"
Obviously something else she wasn't supposed to know about. With a sigh, Amanda let it go. "T' have not done it," she said quietly. "There were other ways of helpin' that person, an' I didn't bother t' look at 'em. An' now I'm payin' for it." She gave a hollow chuckle. "An' the worst of it? I raised the dead for someone I don't even know that well, who I think's a bloody drama queen, when I didn't even think t' ask Pete if he wanted me t'do that for his dad."
"You can't take back what you did," Nathan said, almost lightly. "Just like I can't take back something that I found out I did, this week. Well. Not that I did this week... that I did eight years ago." He tilted his head at her. "Remember stopping in New Mexico so that I could point out where the Mistra home facility used to be?"
She nodded, frowning a little. This couldn't be good. "What did you find out?"
"You guessed that it wasn't standing. I don't think I actually came out and told you that it was my doing." He looked back out at the lake, silent for a long moment. "It was the last thing I did, after my wife and son were killed. To Mistra, I mean. Walked in there and brought the place down around their ears." Nathan looked down at his hands, remembering gesturing at walls, watching them crumble. "What I didn't know is that the training barracks weren't evacuated with the rest of the facility. There were eighteen candidates locked in their cells."
Suddenly the coldness Amanda felt was nothing to do with the temperature. "Candidates... like Kyle? Not properly conditioned yet?" she asked faintly.
"I don't know. I really don't. I didn't ask the person who told me. Fled outside and threw up everything in my stomach." Nathan's hands clenched into fists on his lap. "Wishing that you'd never done something is pointless, Amanda. If it's happened, there's no changing it. You find the way forward or it sucks you down." He finally looked at her again. "I won't say that finding that out didn't shape my decisions later in the week... didn't make me willing to do something I'd never dreamed I would willingly do. But even so, it's a way forward, a way to do something good..." He trailed off, gazing down at her, troubled. "I shouldn't have told you any of this. It's coming across like me saying I screwed up worse than you, and that's not what I mean..." He bit his lip, smiled a bit feebly. "Write it off to lingering effects of the drugs?"
"Drugs? For fuck's sake, Nate, if you're tryin' t' make me less worried about you, you aren't doin' the best bloody job. 'Specially since I know if I ask you won't tell me since it's Mistra-related shite an' I'm not s'posed t' be hearin' that." Rubbing her aching forehead fretfully, Amanda tried to think. "I'm sorry I fucked up. I'm sorry it looks like you can't leave me alone for a second, an' that makes you feel like you're any less of a dad to me. But it's been a cunt of a week, an' just about every person I usually lean on has been gone or too wrapped up in their own shite. An' I get that, I do - people can't be there all the time. But just 'cause no-one was here wasn't a good reason for doin' what I did, an' I know I can't change what's done. Just don't blame yerself, Nate. 'S down t' me, same as it always is, an' I'm tryin' t' learn from it."
"It shouldn't have to be," he sighed, putting his arm around her shoulders. "I just... I'm having trouble shifting back to the Nate you know here, Amanda. Going from what I was doing, to back here... and now I can't figure out what I can do to help. If you even want my help, or need it..."
"I know who to ask," she said with a brief, tired smile, leaning her head against his shoulder. "An' don't worry - I'm used t' Pete, remember? You do what you have t' do, an' just drop me the odd email t' let me know you're okay, yeah? An' I'll try an' stop doin' stupid things while you're gone."
"Oh? You'll limit yourself to doing them when I'm here
and can worry?" He laughed, a wry, slightly edgy sound, but didn't remove his arm from around her shoulders. "Too kind. Really. Hey, though, I gather you weren't the only one getting into trouble this week."
She poked him in the ribs. "Not what I meant," she said, with a pout that wasn't serious at all. "An' yeah, Kyle an' Jay got into a bit of a scrap, an' Forge managed t' freak a lot of out with those posts of his..." She paused, unwilling to add more trouble to what he already knew, but this was important. "An' Manuel heard from his Dad. Well, sort of. Bastard sent him a crate of cider an' a DVD for Valentine's Day."
"A... DVD." Amanda was silent, but her mind was more open, suddenly, and Nathan brushed her thoughts tentatively... and saw her memories of the footage. Seeing herself being beaten. He swallowed, his throat feeling oddly like sandpaper, words failing him completely for a moment. "You... I'm sorry. I..." He bit off the rest of what he'd been about to say, the silence dragging on between them for a long few moments. "Part of it was the helplessness, then?" he said hoarsely. "What you did for Jay. You did it because you could do it. You could change something, for him."
"I couldn't help Manuel," she admitted, throat tightening. "Not when it was his father that done it in the first place, that I wouldn't have been there at all if..." She couldn't finish that traitorous thought. "I did what I could. Gave a copy t' Remy, gave Manuel space t' process it all, since that was what he wanted. But I kept seein' it, an' all I could think was that if I'd had full power, that bastard'd be dead an' all of it would be over. Only I can't think like that, not if I don't want t' lose everythin'. So when Jay asked... I thought maybe the good would outweigh the bad."
Nathan fell silent again, then shook his head, getting up. "You know, enough of the deep thoughts and the hard choices," he said, holding out his hands to her. "I know they've got to be dealt with, but damn it, it doesn't have to be tonight. Come fly with me?"
Slipping her hands into his, letting him pull her up, Amanda nodded. "Sounds perfect t' me."
Cain was settled for the night (with much grumbling, but he'd offered her a gruff thanks for her help as she'd left him) but Amanda was reluctant to go back inside just yet. A couple of days' thought time, and she was beginning to realise that she really hadn't thought the thing with Jay through at all - just acted on impulse, the same as she used to do. Talking with Pete especially, considering recent events, had brought that one home. And now Nate was back, and while she wanted to hug him breathless, she was also afraid of what she'd see in his face. Disappointment, probably. Worry, which was almost as bad. She could cope with people being angry at her, since that meant she could yell back, but when Nate gave her that look that said he'd thought she knew better, all her arguments fell away and she could only admit that she'd fucked up. Again.
With a sigh, she wandered to the end of the dock and sat down at the end of it, dangling her feet over the half-frozen water. It was bitterly cold, and made the incipient headache start to come back, but at least it was quiet. No debates, no worried people, no-one telling her she was stupid or that she'd done the right thing - the outcome might have been a good one, but the aching head and feeling of unreality, and the two nosebleeds she'd had since and managed to cover up were telling her the price hadn't been fully paid yet.
Moving soundlessly, all his shields up, Nathan approached the dock, his eyes locked on the small figure sitting at the end. He stopped just short of where the dock started, knowing that the creak of the boards would give him away. Now, Dayspring, scaring her into the lake is probably not such a good idea, his conscience reminded him. But he'd wanted to get a good look at her, telepathically speaking, before he announced his presence. What he saw was... not particularly reassuring.
"~Have you mourned my absence, daughter?~" he asked in Askani, his voice soft.
Amanda started, nearly pitching off the end of the dock, and turned to see Nathan standing on the shore. "~With every day,~" she replied, giving the traditional response. The expression on her face was half-longing, half-trepidation. "I was gunna come find you," she went on, with a small shrug. "Only 's been a madhouse the last few days, an' I've been busy..." It was pretty lame, and she knew it.
And of course her nose would choose that moment to start bleeding again. "Bollocks," she muttered thickly, groping in her pocket for the wad of tissues she'd taken to carrying the past couple of days.
"Magical hangover?" Nathan asked, stepping out onto the deck. His voice was calm, his expression not so much neutral as relaxed. "I did some reading back on the journals when I got in."
Nodding, Amanda pressed the tissue to her nose, pinching the bridge. "Should be all right in a day or two," she said, sounding muffled. "Didn't want t' bother Bartlet, with McCoy bein' sick, an' everyone bein' in a state." She would have sighed, only that would have involved inhaling blood. "You don't have t' tell me. I was stupid."
"Oh, good. Because I'm really not in the mood for
delivering pointless lectures." He sat down beside her, cross-legged, as he really didn't see the need to get his boots wet. "Plus I'm turning over a new leaf. No more fighting other people's battles for them. I figure it might last... oh, a couple of days. If I'm lucky."
She gave him a wary look, as best she could with a tissue attached to her face. Luckily the bleed seemed to be a fairly minor one, already slowing. "You haven't gone an' been turned into a pod person or somethin'?" she asked, sounding a tinge disappointed that he wasn't upset with her. Maybe he was tired of her getting into trouble all the time and had decided to wash his hands of her. "Tho' yeah, the lack of lecturin's appreciated. Got enough of that from McCoy, an' I can't even be shirty at him any more since apparently his brain wasn't workin' when he made that post."
"Priorities. You didn't kill yourself, although apparently you gave 'permanent damage' the good old college try." Nathan stared out at the lake. "I don't know the circumstances, so I'm really not in a position to judge the level of stupidity involved. On anyone's part." He looked sideways at her. "Plus, you know, the fact that I wasn't here. ~Does an absentee father deserve the right of judgement?~"
Amanda dabbed at her nose, cautiously testing the state of the bleeding. "Be a first, someone not havin' their say 'cause they don't know the full story," she muttered, but her heart wasn't in it. Then the Askani sank in, and she shook her head, tucking the bloody tissue away to dispose of later. "~A father is a father, absentee or not,~" she said, finally looking up at him properly, not caring if he saw the tiredness in her face, the circles under her eyes.
Nathan gazed down at her. He reached out, then, fingertips brushing her temple. "Up here you believe that. ~But the head doesn't always rule, does it?~" He sighed, letting his hand fall back to his lap. "I can't even promise I won't do it again. This week... some fairly significant things happened while I was gone."
"It's Mistra, isn't it?" Amanda asked, although she didn't need telling. Without waiting for Nathan to answer, she went on. "Then 's important. Those kids... they need you more than I do."
"Do they?" Nathan asked, his voice still calm, even. "Do they really? They're in more immediate danger of dying, yes. But there are a lot of ways to suffer, mi'caehla, and sometimes living is more damaging than dying, and just as irreparable."
Amanda winced, feeling like the world's biggest brat. "They don't have anyone else, Nate, I do, as much as I act otherwise sometimes. I've got Pete, an' Rom an' even Strange. 'S not the same, but it should be enough while you're gone. An' I've learned me lesson. I know what people think about me now, that they think I can't look after meself, that I'll let people use me." Pulling her legs up from their dangle, she wrapped her arms around her knees, shivering slightly. "An' maybe they were right. So I've got t' learn otherwise, at least so I don't distract you from what's important."
"Do you want me to toss you in the lake?" Nathan asked. She looked up at him, blinking. "Because I will. Without a second thought. Of course, only if this wouldn't turn into a weeks-long 'Nathan, you bad, bad man' thing like it did with Angelo. After all, by now I'd hope you all realize I only toss people into large bodies of water out of love." He offered the somewhat bewildered-looking witch a bright smile.
"Have you been sleepin'?" she asked. "'Cause you only get this odd when you haven't slept for like a week. An' what's with the lake threats all of a sudden? 'S not me bein' stupid - dozens of kids in Mistra conditionin' centres are more important. 'Specially since I'm not in danger of dyin' just yet, even with acts of stupidity."
He sighed. "Didn't sleep much, no. Had a rather exciting end to the week, too." He rubbed at his arm, where the IVs had been, without really thinking about what he was doing. "There's got to be a way out of this without tearing yourself up like that. Otherwise Jack's been feeding me a whole lot of bullshit for the last six months, mi'caehla."
"You all right?" she asked, not missing the gesture. And Nate's kind of exciting weeks were always a worry. Suddenly her issues weren't that important - not that they had been before, any way...
Nathan gave her a level look. Whether it was his fatigue making his shields ragged, or what she'd done herself making her own thoughts less than disciplined, he overheard the tag end of that with no trouble at all. "~I put my head into the neotiger's mouth and came away with the gold,~" he said obliquely, then switched back to English. "That's not important. Answer me a question, Amanda - what do you want? Right here and now, when you think about what happened with this spell?"
Obviously something else she wasn't supposed to know about. With a sigh, Amanda let it go. "T' have not done it," she said quietly. "There were other ways of helpin' that person, an' I didn't bother t' look at 'em. An' now I'm payin' for it." She gave a hollow chuckle. "An' the worst of it? I raised the dead for someone I don't even know that well, who I think's a bloody drama queen, when I didn't even think t' ask Pete if he wanted me t'do that for his dad."
"You can't take back what you did," Nathan said, almost lightly. "Just like I can't take back something that I found out I did, this week. Well. Not that I did this week... that I did eight years ago." He tilted his head at her. "Remember stopping in New Mexico so that I could point out where the Mistra home facility used to be?"
She nodded, frowning a little. This couldn't be good. "What did you find out?"
"You guessed that it wasn't standing. I don't think I actually came out and told you that it was my doing." He looked back out at the lake, silent for a long moment. "It was the last thing I did, after my wife and son were killed. To Mistra, I mean. Walked in there and brought the place down around their ears." Nathan looked down at his hands, remembering gesturing at walls, watching them crumble. "What I didn't know is that the training barracks weren't evacuated with the rest of the facility. There were eighteen candidates locked in their cells."
Suddenly the coldness Amanda felt was nothing to do with the temperature. "Candidates... like Kyle? Not properly conditioned yet?" she asked faintly.
"I don't know. I really don't. I didn't ask the person who told me. Fled outside and threw up everything in my stomach." Nathan's hands clenched into fists on his lap. "Wishing that you'd never done something is pointless, Amanda. If it's happened, there's no changing it. You find the way forward or it sucks you down." He finally looked at her again. "I won't say that finding that out didn't shape my decisions later in the week... didn't make me willing to do something I'd never dreamed I would willingly do. But even so, it's a way forward, a way to do something good..." He trailed off, gazing down at her, troubled. "I shouldn't have told you any of this. It's coming across like me saying I screwed up worse than you, and that's not what I mean..." He bit his lip, smiled a bit feebly. "Write it off to lingering effects of the drugs?"
"Drugs? For fuck's sake, Nate, if you're tryin' t' make me less worried about you, you aren't doin' the best bloody job. 'Specially since I know if I ask you won't tell me since it's Mistra-related shite an' I'm not s'posed t' be hearin' that." Rubbing her aching forehead fretfully, Amanda tried to think. "I'm sorry I fucked up. I'm sorry it looks like you can't leave me alone for a second, an' that makes you feel like you're any less of a dad to me. But it's been a cunt of a week, an' just about every person I usually lean on has been gone or too wrapped up in their own shite. An' I get that, I do - people can't be there all the time. But just 'cause no-one was here wasn't a good reason for doin' what I did, an' I know I can't change what's done. Just don't blame yerself, Nate. 'S down t' me, same as it always is, an' I'm tryin' t' learn from it."
"It shouldn't have to be," he sighed, putting his arm around her shoulders. "I just... I'm having trouble shifting back to the Nate you know here, Amanda. Going from what I was doing, to back here... and now I can't figure out what I can do to help. If you even want my help, or need it..."
"I know who to ask," she said with a brief, tired smile, leaning her head against his shoulder. "An' don't worry - I'm used t' Pete, remember? You do what you have t' do, an' just drop me the odd email t' let me know you're okay, yeah? An' I'll try an' stop doin' stupid things while you're gone."
"Oh? You'll limit yourself to doing them when I'm here
and can worry?" He laughed, a wry, slightly edgy sound, but didn't remove his arm from around her shoulders. "Too kind. Really. Hey, though, I gather you weren't the only one getting into trouble this week."
She poked him in the ribs. "Not what I meant," she said, with a pout that wasn't serious at all. "An' yeah, Kyle an' Jay got into a bit of a scrap, an' Forge managed t' freak a lot of out with those posts of his..." She paused, unwilling to add more trouble to what he already knew, but this was important. "An' Manuel heard from his Dad. Well, sort of. Bastard sent him a crate of cider an' a DVD for Valentine's Day."
"A... DVD." Amanda was silent, but her mind was more open, suddenly, and Nathan brushed her thoughts tentatively... and saw her memories of the footage. Seeing herself being beaten. He swallowed, his throat feeling oddly like sandpaper, words failing him completely for a moment. "You... I'm sorry. I..." He bit off the rest of what he'd been about to say, the silence dragging on between them for a long few moments. "Part of it was the helplessness, then?" he said hoarsely. "What you did for Jay. You did it because you could do it. You could change something, for him."
"I couldn't help Manuel," she admitted, throat tightening. "Not when it was his father that done it in the first place, that I wouldn't have been there at all if..." She couldn't finish that traitorous thought. "I did what I could. Gave a copy t' Remy, gave Manuel space t' process it all, since that was what he wanted. But I kept seein' it, an' all I could think was that if I'd had full power, that bastard'd be dead an' all of it would be over. Only I can't think like that, not if I don't want t' lose everythin'. So when Jay asked... I thought maybe the good would outweigh the bad."
Nathan fell silent again, then shook his head, getting up. "You know, enough of the deep thoughts and the hard choices," he said, holding out his hands to her. "I know they've got to be dealt with, but damn it, it doesn't have to be tonight. Come fly with me?"
Slipping her hands into his, letting him pull her up, Amanda nodded. "Sounds perfect t' me."
