The Patron Saint of Lost Causes: Part Two
It had started to snow overnight, evidentally deciding it was going to be a white Christmas after all. By the time Rachel got out of her exam at noon, the roads were terrible. The nearest mall was impossibly crowded, not all that surprising for the day before Christmas Eve, but now that she was actually going to have company for Christmas, she needed to do some shopping. It took pre-planning her route and some heavy-duty reinforcement of her shields, but she managed to get in and out in under two hours, with only a mild headache to show for the time spent in close proximity to so many stressed people.
When she finally got back to the house, she hesitated for a moment at the door, then smiled in satisfaction as her light scan brushed against her brother's sleeping mind. She'd told him to take it easy today, and it was nice to see he was doing it. Shifting her bags into one hand, Rachel unlocked the door as quietly as she could.
Inside, she slipped off her boots and lingered for a moment in the doorway of the living room, watching Nathan with a smile. He was sound asleep on the couch under a heavy layer of blankets, with his feet sticking out over the edge of the couch. As big as the couch was, he still didn't quite fit on it.
There was a half-full glass of water on the coffee table, and a bottle of pills that hadn't been there when she'd left this morning. Shedding her coat and the shopping bags, Rachel went over and picked it up, studying the label. It had the name and address of a local clinic on it, but she didn't recognize the name of the drug. Some kind of antibiotic, maybe? At least, though, it was evidence that he'd been serious about having a doctor he knew in the area make a house call, and hadn't just told her that to get her off his case on the subject.
#Oh ye of little faith,# Nathan sent, shifting awkwardly on the couch and blinking up at her.
Rachel gave him a penitent look and sat down on the edge of the table, shaking the pill bottle absently in one hand. "Hey," she said fondly. "I didn't mean to wake you up."
"I wasn't asleep," he muttered, his voice still roughened and hoarse. She raised an eyebrow at him, and he snorted softly. "I wasn't. I was meditating."
"Right."
"How'd your exam go?"
"Fine. I see your doctor friend was here," she said with a faint smile, wiggling the pill bottle at him and then setting it down beside her. "What did he say?" she went on more firmly, locking gazes with him and making it silently but very plainly clear that she wasn't going to tolerate anything less than a straight answer.
Nathan gave her a smile that would have been wry if it hadn't been so tired. "He said 'pneumonia, probably'," he answered. He touched his injured arm lightly, then his side. "He changed the dressings on these, too. Says they're healing fine."
Rachel looked at him skeptically. "He diagnosed you with pneumonia on the basis of a house call? Without doing any tests?" That really didn't seem right to her, even though given his symptoms, it made the most sense. Hell, she'd guessed pneumonia herself, last night.
Nathan gave her one of those damned puppy-dog looks. "Well," he said helpfully, "it was either that or the Shi'ar Death Flu. Since I haven't been to Chandilar lately--"
"Very funny," Rachel scoffed.
Nathan's grin abruptly faded. #He expressed some concerns over my immune system, now that I'm rid of the T-O virus,# he sent, sounding much more serious. #My powers might not be the only thing having trouble adapting.#
"Shit," Rachel swore softly, trying to ignore the twisting in her stomach. She hadn't even thought of that, but it made too much sense.
"Don't worry so much," Nathan said gruffly, staring up at her with a strange little smile playing on his lips. "If the virus didn't kill me, the lack of the virus sure as flonq isn't going to kill me, either."
"I can't help it," Rachel sighed, leaning forward and laying a hand on his forehead. "You're still hot," she said, biting her lip.
"Feverish," Nathan corrected her. "not hot." He shivered, pulling the blanket up a little more, as if for emphasis, and then gave her a penetrating look. "The exam wasn't 'fine', was it?" She stared down at him, puzzled, and he sighed. "I'm just wondering. You look so grim."
"The exam WAS fine," Rachel said. "I just wish you weren't sick."
"The feeling's mutual, believe me." He looked past her to the foyer. "Lots of bags," he observed, and she sensed a flicker of real interest from him.
"There's an artificial Christmas tree in the attic," Rachel admitted, almost shyly. "I wasn't going to put it up, but since you're here--" He was smiling up at her, a wry, knowing smile that made her blush, and remind herself that, fluctuating powers aside, he was just as powerful a telepath as she was, and he'd probably picked up on her mopiness about Christmas not long after he'd walked in the door yesterday. "So I stopped and got some decorations," she went on, brightly.
"I do have a Christmas gift for you, you know," Nathan said, as if he'd just remembered. "It's in my bag. Bought it in New York."
"What a coincidence," Rachel said with a grin."I bought one for you, too."
"Then we'll have something to put beneath the tree, I guess." He pushed himself up to a sitting position with a wince, still obviously favoring that arm. "Need helping getting the tree down?"
"You stay put," Rachel said severely as she rose. "Telekinesis is a wonderful thing. Saves me from having to go running for the nearest big tall male when I can't reach something."
"I guess that's why Xavier insists on calling them mutant gifts," Nathan said drolly, and relaxed back against the couch with a sigh that turned into another coughing fit.
Rachel picked up the glass of water and offered it to him, but he shook his head. "You really don't like the Professor, do you?" she said hesitantly. It wasn't something they'd ever talked about--and she wasn't sure that dislike was the right description for the conflict she sensed in him every time the Professor came up in conversation. It puzzled her, but she'd never dared to probe a little deeper to find out what it was all about.
"I don't trust him," Nathan wheezed. "There's a difference." He fell silent for a moment, staring up at her, his emotions suddenly so murky they were unreadable. #You can't tell me that he's not part of the reason you're avoiding the X-Men. You don't want to get sucked back into fighting for the almighty Dream again.#
"My tenure as an X-Man wasn't particularly distinguished, no," Rachel admitted wryly.
"What a coincidence," Nathan said aloud, with a thin, bitter smile. "Neither was mine."
Rachel sat back down on the edge of the coffee table, wondering how - or if - she should broach this particular subject. It had been bothering her for a while. "You joined to take Scott's place, didn't you?" she asked tentatively. "And once Scott was back--"
"It wasn't quite that simple," Nathan said flatly, the look in his eyes suggesting the topic was most definitely closed, as far as he was concerned.
Rachel gave him a wan smile. "It never is, is it? Not with our family." She took a deep breath and got back up, telling herself that now really wasn't the time to be having conversations about deep dark emotional secrets. It was taking advantage of him, when he was in a state like this, with all his defenses weakened. Besides, she really didn't want him to think that she was grilling him. In what time they'd spent together since he'd rescued her from Gaunt and brought her back to this century, she'd learned how easily he turned all close-mouthed and reticent if she pushed too hard. "Have you had any lunch?"
"I'm not really that hungry."
Rachel glowered at him. "Nathan, you need to eat."
The puppy-dog eyes were back. "Can I have some coffee if I do?" he asked, so meekly that she nearly burst out laughing.
"Nathan, I don't have coffee in the house. I told you that last night." She was going to break that caffeine addiction of his if it was the last thing she did. It wasn't healthy.
"I know," Nathan said, and then gave her a rakish grin. "I was hoping there was some in one of the bags."
Rachel pressed her lips together for a moment, telling herself not to fall for it. "How does ham and cheese sound?" she asked sweetly. "Or would you rather have more soup?"
"Ham and cheese sounds fine," Nathan said, and settled back against the cushions, pulling the blanket up a little further. "Soup is for invalids." She opened her mouth to point out that pneumonia and two bullet wounds probably meant one should be classed as something of an invalid, but he gave her a repressive look. "Not a word."
***
He was really feeling very out of it, had been since just after lunch. Probably a sign that his fever was higher than he really wanted to know; in any case, Rachel kept looking back over her shoulder at him as she decorated the tree, and he could feel her worried little pokes at his mind every few minutes.
She really shouldn't worry, Nathan thought groggily. He hated it when people worried about him, he really did. It--grated on him, in a way he couldn't ever manage to explain. With the Clan Chosen, in the future, no one had run around saying 'Are you sure you should be doing this?' or 'Are you SURE you're all right?' or 'I wish you'd be more careful' or anything like that. You didn't do that sort of thing. It was a sign that you didn't trust the person you were fretting about. And when you directed that at the person who was supposed to be leading you into battle, who was responsible for your lives and the lives of your family, the lack of trust was dangerous. And a challenge. Maybe he'd been mixing up what was with what had been all along, Nathan thought distantly. Wouldn't that be funny.
Rachel attached a clear blue ball to the tree and then looked back at him, frowning. "I can sense you stewing," she said softly. "What's the matter?"
Nathan thought about it for a moment, and then decided he didn't really want to try and explain it all to her. Mostly because he wasn't sure it made sense. "I don't see you as her, you know," he said abruptly, switching back to something else that had been bothering him since their conversation yesterday.
Rachel froze for a moment, then went back to putting decorations on the tree, moving smoothly, almost mechnically. "You don't see me as the Mother Askani?" Her voice was level, but there was a little catch in it that he would have missed if he hadn't been listening carefully. "Then what was all that business about owing me, after you saved me from Gaunt?"
"I didn't know the Mother Askani," Nathan said slowly, not answering her question because he wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. He hadn't quite sorted it out in his own mind yet. "I had a voice in my head that tried to keep me out of trouble," he went on, willing her to understand. "The only time I actually saw you, you were my age." He hesitated, realizing that hadn't quite made sense. "The age I was at the time, I mean," he amended.
"You were still talking to the Mother Askani." Rachel had moved on to little silvery snowflakes, now. Her voice was as cold as the snow still falling outside the window, and much more distant.
"But I didn't know her," Nathan insisted. "Not like you do, remembering who you would have been." He hesitated, not sure how to put it, how to make it clear to her. He had to, somehow. She didn't deserve to keep hating herself over things she hadn't done, a lot of which were justified in the first place. "I didn't hate her, Rachel," he said, wondering where the sudden pain in his voice had come from. "I was so lonely, sometimes. It was comforting to have her talk to me."
"Oh?" Rachel said with a false little laugh, still not looking at him. "Even when I--when she was telling you you'd have to fight the virus for the rest of your life, and that you'd never have a home?"
Nathan closed his eyes with a sigh. "You keep harping on that," he murmured. It haunted her. That was definitely one memory he wished she hadn't gotten back.
"She--I was right though, wasn't I?" Rachel finally turned to him, clenching one of the silver snowflakes so tightly in her hands that he half-expected to see it break. Misery was written all over her face, and Nathan wanted to turn away, to give up on the conversation entirely. How was he supposed to lighten her heart when his own was sitting like a stone in his chest? "It's like--I made it true by saying it."
Now, THAT was ridiculous. "Rachel--" he started to protest, but she shook her head and went on, cutting him off.
"Well, that's the way it feels." A strange vehemence crept into her voice. "I don't like the memories," she said, almost angrily. "She was old and cruel and bitter--"
"Realistic," Nathan said wearily, feeling so old suddenly that it was appalling. And residual memories aside, she was still so young. "Don't be so hard on her."
"Or myself?"
"You said it. I didn't."
"I think that's the hardest thing, knowing that I did grow into her," Rachel said with a sigh, and put the snowflake on the tree. "I know what I'm capable of, but sometimes it's nice to live in denial, if you know what I mean."
"What is, is," Nathan murmured. The tree was beginning to look pretty damned impressive, actually. Rachel had definitely put some thought into her decoration-buying. The lights were all blue, setting off silver garland, and the decorations were a mix of silver, blue, white and clear glass. It was beautiful, in a subdued sort of way. He just hoped it wasn't a reflection of her mood.
Rachel made an exasperated noise. "I hate that. Are you sure I invented it?"
"Actually, I think you borrowed it from an obscure neo-Zen philosopher of the thirty-second century," Nathan said. Rachel blinked at him, and he gave her a faint, sheepish smile. "I researched it in the Canaanite archives one time."
Rachel shook her head, grumbling something under her breath. "Of all the vague, stupid sayings to live by, I had to pick that," she said with a sigh, adjusting the garland.
"It actually makes a lot of sense," Nathan said, thinking. This would be so much easier if they could just speak in Askani, or at least mind-to-mind, but she didn't like the battle language, and he was too tired to talk telepathically. "There are--levels to it. They become clear gradually. You're meant to meditate on it."
"I'll have to take your word for it."
She still sounded doubtful, so he forged onwards, not really sure why he was bothering. Maybe it was just that he didn't want her to think it was all nonsense. Not when the lessons she'd passed down to him through Sanctity and Aliya had saved him so often, and kept him going when all he'd wanted to do was lay down and die. "The one I never really liked was 'the why of any situation is secondary to the situation itself'," he said doggedly. "Really hated that one."
Rachel gave him a curious look. "Aren't they sort of the same thing?"
"I never saw it that way," Nathan said. "'What is, is' can be comforting, sometimes. Accept and live," he murmured more softly. That was the way he'd always seen it--well, when he wasn't using it as a way of stopping conversations he didn't want to see continue. It was good for that, too.
"But you don't like the other," Rachel said, giving up on the tree and wandering over slowly.
He got the impression that she was being--cautious, somehow, as if she expected him to jump up off the couch and run if she got too close. It was strange that she would be thinking like that, because he really didn't feel that way. "No," he said, pausing to cough, flinching at the memory of the little boy crying as he hid in the bedroom. "It's all about ends and means--it's an excuse. I never agreed with the idea that you could deal with the consequences of your actions and just move on, as if your motivations didn't matter," he went on roughly when he'd caught his breath. "Motivations come back to bite you in the ass, if you don't deal with them."
Rachel knelt beside him, her face very close to his and her green eyes serious, almost sad. "Are you going to tell me what's bothering you so much?" she murmured, very gently.
His vision blurred, and he blinked determinedly. "No," he rasped, turning his face away from her, "because I'm being stupid about it."
"Why?" Her voice was soft, but the question was definitely probing. He could almost feel her pushing at him to answer.
"Because I'm letting it bother me."
"But isn't it something that should bother you?" Rachel gave a pained sigh. "I can feel how much you're hurting over whatever it is. You just won't let me see the details."
"It's something that should bother a normal, compassionate human being," Nathan said, that sense of eerie detachment coming back, pushing the pain into the distance a little way. "So it shouldn't bother me. I'm not supposed to let things like that get to me." He was supposed to be able to kill what needed killing and wake up in the morning after a good night's sleep and do it again. That was what he'd been made for, the purpose he'd been fashioned to serve. Wallowing got him nowhere. Wallowing was self-indulgent self-pity, and he needed to stop--
"You're just tired," Rachel said, a bit of a quaver to her voice. He didn't look back at her, not wanting to see her expression. "Not thinking straight, like you said."
"Am I ever?" he said with a cracked laugh that led into another coughing fit, more violent than the last.
Rachel just sat there next to him, murmuring comforting words in a voice so low he couldn't make out what she was saying. She laid a hand on his good shoulder, and he could feel the heat radiating from her skin as if the Phoenix-force still burned inside her.
He was still cold. He wondered if he'd ever be warm again.
***
Rachel pulled the blanket up over Nathan, sensing his thoughts finally settling down into a sleep pattern. Sleeping, but not relaxed. She could still feel the tension in him, the hint of anguish that edged his thoughts.
It bothered her. It was perfectly clear that it didn't have anything to do with his injuries--although she wouldn't be surprised if whatever it was wasn't being exacerbated by the fact that he was sick and exhausted. He was worn out, above and beyond the pneumonia. She could tell that much just by looking in his eyes.
He should have come back and stayed with her for a while, after he'd excised the T-O virus. Most sane people would have taken a bit of a break after an experience like that, but instead, he'd thrown himself into something else, and that something else clearly hadn't gone quite the way he'd expected it to. Something was tearing at him from the inside, and Rachel was sick of playing guessing games.
Taking a deep breath, she laid a hand on the side of his face, wincing at the heat of his skin, and closed her eyes, sinking past his patchy shields into his mind. She found herself almost immediately in some sort of laboratory--underground, from the oppressive feel of it. There were corpses everywhere, blood everywhere. Her astral self flinched reflexively at the dull, ashy 'feel' of the scene.
Well, this might explain things. If he'd been here, in the midst of all this when it happened, he'd probably caught some nasty backlash. Which would certainly account for the depression--because it was depression, not just simple brooding.
She noted the corpses slumped against the wall, and shivered inwardly. That didn't look like something that had happened in the heat of battle. It looked like they'd been standing there, when they died--
#I wish you hadn't seen that,# Nathan said from behind her.
She turned, to see him with gun in hand and a numb, dazed look on his face. His jungle fatigues were liberally splashed with blood. Rachel spared a moment to wonder whether it was metaphorical, or a memory. #Why? I've seen worse,# she responded finally, when Nathan's astral self just stood there and stared at her.
#I know. That's why I didn't want you to see it,# he sent back mechanically, holstering his gun. He started to wipe his hands, methodically, on the front of his shirt. The blood didn't come off. #You shouldn't have to see things like this any more.#
Rachel felt a flicker of anger. #Is that why you've been encouraging me to make a 'normal life' for myself? Because you think I'm some wounded little ex-firebird who needs to be sheltered and protected and kept out of the fight?# Nathan had his full share of flaws, but she'd never caught him being so stereotypically male before. She'd actually figured that he'd evolved past that, having grown up two thousand years in the future and all.
#No.# There was a flash of emotion in his voice, on his face, for the first time. He looked up at her, his eyes dark and haunted, and she wanted to take back her angry words. #Because I love you, and I want you to have what was taken from you.#
Rachel sighed, and willed the lab and the corpses away, replacing it with a tranquil green meadow under a bright sun. #You can't change the past,# she murmured, reaching out and taking his hand.
#Oh, really?# he shot back in amusement, and Rachel blinked as she saw, for a split-second, Apocalypse standing across from her, instead of Nathan. She let go of his hand with an instinctive yelp, but an instant later Nathan was back, staring down at her wryly.
#Okay, point,# she admitted. #But he's dead--#
#One devil dead, a million lesser demons to go--#
#--and you deserve a chance to have what was taken from you, too,# Rachel said stubbornly. #Altruism is all well and good, but let's be realistic here, shall we?#
#I am being realistic,# Nathan insisted, taking a step closer to her. #Just look at me, little sister,# he insisted. #What do you see?#
#My brother,# Rachel said stubbornly. #A man who deserves a little peace in his life. Not to be lying on my couch, hurt and sick and tormenting himself over something he should never have been involved in in the first place.#
#If not me, then who?# Nathan asked, almost whimsically, and then shook his head. #Look at me, Rachel. What do you see?#
#You,# Rachel responded hesitantly. Because he did look different, suddenly. The relaxed posture was gone, the whimsical look gone as if it had never been.
He seemed--taller. Harder and more stern--sharper, somehow. Staring up into his eyes, she saw all those long years of battle, all the loss and suffering and the steely resolve that had carried him through. The taint of the T-O virus was gone, and his full power shone from him, blazing like a newborn star inside him.
She knew that sort of power. She'd been that sort of power, still was when she put her mind to it--but she'd never seen it this clearly in him.
#I was born for this, Rachel,# he said, diminishing back into the Nathan she knew. #As much as it hurts sometimes, as much as I want to pretend that I was cut out for a life of simple pleasures and emotional fulfillment, this is who I am.#
#You don't seem so certain when you're awake,# Rachel pointed out. But she knew there were any number of explanations for that - the backlash, the fever, the simple exhaustion - and that the image of Nathan she was speaking to here was almost certainly telling her the truth that laid beneath it all.
#I'm certain about who I am,# Nathan said, almost pedantically. He had a habit of that, she'd noticed. Almost two years, now, since he'd left X-Force, and he was still very much the teacher. #The choices I make are an entirely different matter.#
#So, you're just going to live with it?#
#And learn from it. Because if I don't do better next time, then nothing about what I did this time can be redeemed,# he said, and Rachel shuddered at the uncompromising determination she sensed in him.
#You scare me, sometimes,# she admitted softly.
#I never wanted to do that,# Nathan said, and his 'voice' was suddenly warmer, infinitely kinder. He stepped forward, embracing her, and the meadow around them vanished, leaving them floating amid the stars.
#It's a good kind of scare,# Rachel laughed faintly, hugging him back. The stars were dancing around them, winking at them. #I do love you, you know. I really do.#
He said nothing for a moment, but when he finally spoke, she felt as if her heart were going to burst beneath the sheer weight of the joy his words provoked.
#I feel like I'm home when I'm with you, Rachel,# he said--
--and Rachel sat bolt upright, staring down at his sleeping face. He was smiling very faintly, and she bit her lip, happy tears blurring her vision as she reached out and smoothed sweat-damp silver hair back from his forehead.
"When did you get so good at knowing exactly what to say, huh?" she murmured, and laid her head against his shoulder, letting his words soothe away the sting of the memory of the Mother Askani's pitiless prophecy. He'd been absolutely sincere, she'd sensed it.
It was, she decided, the best Christmas gift she'd ever been given.
to be
continued...
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