As You Were: Epilogue
It had been a while since he'd been out to the Academy, several months at least. Nate supposed it was ironic, given that he'd grown up here at the mansion, but he no longer felt quite comfortable here. His childhood home was barely recognizable. What had been a single, if sprawling residence and extensive grounds was now closer to a university campus than anything else, with lecture halls and dormitories and more Danger Room facilities than you could shake a stick at. Things had gotten crowded, to say the least.
There were spots that looked almost like they had when he'd been a child, though. Walking down towards the lake and the boathouse was like stepping into the past. Even the sounds of the pack of cadets out playing an after-dinner game of touch football behind the mansion seemed to grow muted, fading into the distance.
Aunt Jean was out in front of the boathouse, weeding the garden. She looked up as he approached, brushing silver hair back away from her face and smiling. "I was wondering if you were going to do the walking tour of the whole campus before you came down there," she said teasingly, her green eyes bright as they lingered on him.
Nate shrugged a bit uneasily, and knelt down next to her. "This a weed?" he asked, pointing to a stringy-looking plant with blue flowers that seemed to be growing on both sides of the stones marking the border of the garden.
"It certainly is. Care to take care of it for me?"
Nate started to uproot it, stalk by stalk. "Lots of roots."
"It's pretty, I suppose. I'd probably leave it alone if it had the decency to actually grow inside the garden rather than straddle the garden and the lawn."
"Oh."
Jean shook her head and reached out, laying a hand over his to still his weeding efforts. "I'd ask you where you picked up the habit of going taciturn when you're upset, but we all know your parents cursed you when they named you."
"Um--"
"I'm also not going to waste time on the obvious and ask you why you're here. She's down by the lake, Nate." Jean chucked him lightly under the chin. "Stop being such a wimp, dear."
Nate sighed, getting back to his feet. "Yes, ma'am," he said heavily. Jean beamed at him, and placidly went back to her weeding as he turned away and headed down to the lake. Her relaxed attitude was a good sign, he tried to convince himself. Maybe it even meant that she and Clare were making progress. He really wanted to believe that.
Some good news would do a lot to relieve tensions all around. After their return from Indiana and Clare's revelation in the debriefing that she had not only inherited something from the Phoenix after all, but had also been suppressing it all these years, there had been a lot of shocked, agitated people. Lots of very strong opinions about What Should Be Done Now.
Nate supposed it was understandable. After all, the last person who'd inherited a little something from the Phoenix had been Clare's father, who'd wound up using his legacy in a highly self-destructive fashion and doing himself so much damage that the Phoenix itself had come running to see what the hell he thought he was doing. The rest, of course, was history, and recent enough for a lot of people to be very worried about a possible repeat performance.
Things had definitely been getting out of hand when Jean had finally stepped in, announcing that she would be the one to help Clare work through the process of psychic reintegration, "since I have plenty of experience in the area, and Sulven, you can just butt the hell out right now."
That had been a week ago. Nate hadn't spoken to Clare since then. Things had been unbelievably hectic at the office. There'd been two more terrorist attacks, a bombing in Egypt and the murder of an XSE base commander in Iran. Both incidents had been traceable to groups who'd benefited from Stef's largesse--
And that really wasn't much of an excuse. He'd made Clare a promise, and avoiding her wasn't much of a way to keep it.
Nate had sensed Clare's presence as soon as he'd teleported onto the Academy grounds, but the closer he got, the more he became aware of the changes in her since that confrontation in her subconscious. Even her presence on the astral plane had altered. It was a solid silver-white now, with only the barest hint of blue. A surface change, maybe, but one suggesting that something a lot more fundamental was going on beneath the surface. He wasn't sure quite what to make of it.
Clare was sitting alone on the beach, watching the sun set. "It's about time," she said calmly as he came up beside her. She was in civilian clothes, jeans and a Academy t-shirt that seemed a little light for being out here at this time of day. The wind off the water had a chilly edge to it. "I was beginning to wonder if you were avoiding me."
Nate sighed and sat down beside her, stretching his legs out in front of him. The one that had been injured in the explosion at Clare's apartment still twinged every so often, even two weeks later. A reminder, he supposed. "Busy week," he said a bit awkwardly. "More of Stef's little surprises."
"So I heard." Clare tossed her hair over her shoulder - she was wearing it loose, something she only did when she was in civvies - and gave him a cheerfully malicious look. "I'd tell you to save some of the work for me, but I wouldn't want you to have to hold onto it for that long."
Nate winced. "So what's the verdict?" he said hesitantly, not sure he wanted to know the answer.
Clare shrugged, smiling a little. "Not so bad," she said, almost reassuringly. "You'll be running the office for a while longer, though." She snorted. "I suppose I've spend enough time on psych leave in my career that a couple more months isn't going to make much difference in the grand scheme of things."
Months. He'd expected as much, but it didn't stop him from feeling partially responsible. "Except you hate it."
"Well, yes. But at least this time, I've got Jean mothering me, instead of Psych staff trying to diagram my brain." Clare actually grinned. "She still makes the best chocolate-chip pancakes in the world, you know."
"I'll have to stop in for breakfast sometime this week." She seemed in remarkably good spirits. Nate couldn't help feeling a little better, seeing that. "Think she'd mind?"
"Actually," Clare said, looking more serious all of a sudden, "we won't be here." Nate gave her a questioning look, and Clare gestured vaguely in a northwesterly direction. "Although I'm sure Jean wouldn't mind if you showed up for breakfast in Alaska some morning. In fact, she'd probably love it. She still thinks you're too thin."
"Alaska?" Nate said slowly, thinking about Clare being on the other side of the continent and not liking the idea. His teleportational range didn't reach that far. He'd be able to do it in a few stages, certainly, and even if work conspired to deny him the time to do so, it hardly meant Clare was out of touch. They could reach each other telepathically at that distance with no trouble, and hell, there was always the phone, if they wanted to get boring and conventional about it.
"She think some peace and quiet will let us work faster. Fewer distractions and all. Personally, I just think she wants me out of the vicinity of the Tower so I'm not tempted to sneak back to work." Clare scowled slightly, looking back out at the water. The sun had vanished under the horizon while they'd been talking, and the wind was picking up a little, getting colder.
Nate debated with himself for a moment, and then pulled off his uniform jacket and draped it over her shoulders. Clare shifted irritably, giving him a baleful look. "I'm not an invalid, Guthrie," she pointed out acidly. "It's my mental health that's questionable, remember?"
"I know. I'm contemplating a makeshift straitjacket," Nate said helpfully, making as if to tie the sleeves of the jacket together. Clare laughed, pulling away.
"And here I thought you were just being chivalrous."
"Please. I'm a twenty-first century man, remember?"
"Who was raised by the man who introduced the concept of 'good manners, first and foremost' to the X-Men," Clare pointed out ironically.
"Yeah. Too bad it didn't take, right?" Nate stared at the lake for a moment, his mind wandering, remembering all the times they'd all come down here to swim. He'd preferred the pool, himself, but peer pressure in a group of preadolescent telepaths was something to behold.
"Remember the time Zara teleported Harry's shorts off?" Clare said, her mouth twitching. "And then he tried to drown her, and Rogue hauled them both out and threatened to 'whup their asses' if they didn't shake hands and apologize--"
Nate couldn't help a smile. "Vividly," he admitted. Sometimes, when he stopped to think of it, he was amazed they'd all survived to become adults. "Those were the days, right?"
Clare's expression turned pensive. "I miss them. Things were so much simpler back then--and doesn't that sound cliched?"
The bantering mood had passed, and Nate let it go with some regret. "A little," he said lightly. "Doesn't make it any less true, though."
The silence hung there between them for a minute or two, until Clare broke it. "I feel so strange," she said, her voice a little distant as she turned her face upwards, searching for the first stars of the evening in the sky still streaked with red and orange. "I've been just ravenously hungry all week, and I've been sleeping for twelve hours at a time and dreaming every night. Really vivid dreams." She looked away suddenly, and Nate thought he saw a bit of a flush rising in her cheeks to go along with the edge of sheepishness on the link.
"Higher energy levels, higher demands on your body," he said, trying to keep his voice conversational. "More brain activity, too, probably. That might account for the dreams. What does Jean say?"
"She says not to worry, unless I feel the need to dance naked on the ridgepole of the house for the edification of the male cadets."
Nate coughed, looking away to hide his own reaction to that particular mental image. "Umm--good advice."
"Quite."
Silence, again. Nate decided it was his turn to break it this time. "So other than that, how are you feeling?"
Clare shifted her weight, frowning. "Edgy," she said, tracing patterns in the sand beside her. "Charged, but--nervous. Not quite myself, really."
"Look at it this way. Technically, you're more yourself than you've been in a while," he offered.
Clare looked up at him, a strangely grateful look in her eyes. "Thanks," she said softly. "You know, you're one of the few people who's not acting like this is Armageddon waiting to happen or something. Even Harry's kind of freaked out."
"Oh?" Nate was surprised at that. "I wouldn't have expected him to be."
"I should be fair. I'm not sure he's freaked out over this so much as over the fact that he missed it entirely." Clare made an exasperated noise. "He's been hovering all week. I finally told him to go away and finish his self-flagellation in private."
Nate winced. "A bit harsh, maybe," he said tentatively. "He's just worried about you." Not that he knew for sure, as he hadn't talked to Harry since the Indiana mission, either. Somehow, explaining to Harry that he'd yanked Clare out of a self-destructive psychic battle with herself with his best effort at a declaration of undying love wasn't high of his list of things to do anytime soon.
"I know. But I'm getting tired of people looking at me sideways." Clare's shoulders slumped a little. "Walk softly around me or I might explode, don't you know?"
"Hey," Nate said firmly, reaching out and taking her by the shoulders, turning her towards him. "Enough of that," he said, letting his hands fall back to his sides as she flinched at the contact. He couldn't take it personally, he told himself sternly. She'd already told him she was jumpy. "You know Harry doesn't believe that, and neither do I."
"I know." Clare didn't meet his eyes. "I suppose I was taking it out on Harry a little. I'll make it up to him before I go."
"Good," Nate said, and then could have kicked himself as the question of what precisely she meant by 'making it up' to Harry bounced back and forth in his mind with all the subtlety of icecubes rattling in an empty glasse. She couldn't possibly not have missed hearing him think that, he realized, flushing.
Clare laughed briefly, looking up at him. "No, I certainly didn't," she quipped, giving him a wry smile. "As if I don't have enough on my plate with putting my psyche back together, I still have to figure out what to do with the two of you."
"There's no rush," he said, trying to sound cheerful. There was no way in hell that he wanted to push her, not when she was under this much stress. Psychic dissociation was a dangerous thing for a telepath, and any more pressure could just make things worse. Nate was perfectly content to put everything else on the back burner for now, and he knew Harry would feel the same way.
"That's sweet, Nate, but not very realistic." Clare reached out, laying a hand over his. The contact sharpened the link, and some of the tension Nate was feeling drained away at the lack of barriers there.
The link had changed, too, after he'd gone into her subconscious. He'd noticed that right away, when they'd been on the carrier on the way back from Indiana. The link felt stronger, somehow. Deeper. Everything that flowed along it was more intense.
It was vibrating softly now, with a strange mixture of nervousness and wry humor and something that felt like yearning. Though he wasn't sure which of them that was coming from, admittedly.
#You and Harry have both been frighteningly patient with me, you know,# Clare sent. #Most sane men would have moved on long ago.#
#Sanity is highly overrated.#
#You think so? Well, that makes me feel better--#
"Would you stop implying you're insane?" Nate asked testily. "You're just--adjusting." She would, too. There wasn't a doubt in his mind about that. She was too damned stubborn for this to end any other way.
Clare shrugged again. "I can laugh," she said almost playfully, "or I can run around in little circles, shrieking at the top of my lungs."
"You're still scared," he said more gently, sensing it.
Her expression tightened a little. "Shouldn't I be?"
"You could look on this as some great new adventure," Nate suggested, aching at the sharp needles of fear stabbing along the link. "Exploring the uncharted frontiers of your own psyche."
"Star Trek geek," Clare accused, and he sensed her mood lightening a little. She squeezed his hand tightly. "I just need time to get comfortable in my own skin again," she said with a sigh. "If I can. It's been a long, long time since I could say I felt that way."
"I know."
"Promise you'll visit me in Alaska? At least once or twice?" Her smile was sudden and brilliant, lighting up her eyes, too. It warmed him right to the core. "I need to remember why I'm putting all this work into avoiding any more dangerous psychotic episodes."
"I promise," Nate said softly. Knowing that he'd keep it. "And I'll make sure things run smoothly at the office while you're away."
Clare's eyes looked suspiciously bright. "You'll notice I didn't ask about that," she pointed out. "I know I can count on you, partner."
"Remember that, okay?"
"I will." After a moment, Clare laid her head against his shoulder, and Nate put his arm around her.
They sat there together until the stars came out.
fin
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