hailey hamilton is better underwater. (mermayd) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-01-16 19:06:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! log, hailey hamilton, nathan mitchell |
WHO: Hailey & Nathan
WHAT: Things get heated re: his power
WHEN: Wednesday early evening
WHERE: Boys lounge 3rd floor
WARNINGS: None!
STATUS: Complete
There was something about the way that Nathan Mitchell tried to warn Hailey about his power again and again that intrigued her. She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t wanted to see what happened, and she’d also be lying if she believed that he couldn't control it. There was more to his power that he wasn’t talking about. Hailey hadn’t really noticed it until after Saturday, when he’d been so convinced he could have hurt her and made her promise to sedate him right away. She was itching to talk about it, to ask questions, to urge him to try and control it, but she’d held back. Hailey (eventually) realized that Nathan wasn’t going to happily open up about. So she’d given him some space and hadn’t pushed the subject. A few days had gone by and she’d felt her interests peaking again. She was less distracted by everything else going on in her life, but today her mind was perfectly clear to wonder about Nathan’s power and history again. She’d tried to put it out of her mind, but eventually she gave in and went looking for him. Hailey found him in his floor lounge, and was grateful to see that no one else was around. Hopping onto the couch, Hailey let her head fall backwards against the backrest. “What aren’t you telling me?” she asked, slowly turning her head to look at him. Yeah, okay, his power was intense. Absolutely it would scare some people. But Nathan knew Hailey, he knew she hunted, he knew she preferred being physical, and he’d heard her say time and time again he wouldn’t scare her. There had to be something more, right? ==== Nathan was relieved for a break from staring stupidly at his math homework that he’d been given to work on over break because he was just that hopeless, and when Hailey sat down he gratefully closed the book and tossed it on the table. Of course he didn’t know what she was about to ask, or he would’ve run a mile. But that was just the thing about him. He wasn’t terribly perceptive. Not as much as he should be, at least. It would definitely have made life a whole lot easier. “About what?” He wasn’t trying to play stupid when he said it. Not really. There was just so much happening right now. So many feelings everywhere. “I swear that I know nothing about this Jordana and Allegra mess, it’s just – them. doing their thing.” He felt bad about that too, about telling Jordana to apologise and it somehow turning into something even worse than it had been from the start. He should’ve just backed slowly away. Not gotten involved. Too late now, though. ==== Hailey had noticed some tension between Allegra and Jordana, but she’d purposely avoided it. When Claudia and Allegra had been fighting it had been equally as awful, but Hailey hadn’t done much of anything to help fix it. In her opinion the pair of them would be able to sort it out on their own. It might take some time and it might make for some awkward situations, but the last place Hailey wanted to be was in the middle. Claudia was a much better mediator than she was. “No,” she said with an amused expression. “If I start harassing you for gossip on my friends please punch me and shake me upside down.” Hailey had found herself in the middle of gossip at IVI, but she was not incredibly talked about - which was a huge relief. At least anything she’d been in the middle of had to do with guys and not saying she was a horrible friend or anything. “I mean about your power. What happened that terrifies you?” Hailey could go on into detail about how he was terrified, but she decided not to. ==== He’d rather not talk about the mess with the girls to be honest, because he’d already stuffed that one up when he tried, and was glad to hear that wasn’t why Hailey was coming to talk to him. At least until he heard the question. “What?” He felt like he’d told her a million times about how dangerous he could be, about the things he could do. Had she not been listening? “Nothing.” That was a lie. Of course. A lot of shit had happened. Too much, even. The reason he was scared was because of what hadn’t happened, though. And he’d told her that too. He thought. Hadn’t he? ==== As Nathan said ‘nothing’, Hailey couldn’t help but be reminded of when she’d confronted Richie about helping with the nightmare plot. Why did people keep trying to brush her off? She was pretty sure she’d made it known that she wasn’t going away easily, and she’d stubbornly keep picking at something until she finally received some sort of answer. She was even getting real good at keeping things locked up tight. Not so much secrets, but personal things that everyone didn’t need to know. “Fine, why do you want me to be afraid of you?” Hailey couldn’t have been more honest and upfront if she tried. It wasn’t always a conscious thing, but Hailey often found herself blurting out things before thinking them through or phrasing them a little nicer. Every conversation about Nate’s power circled back to the fact she “should” be afraid of him. Even after she’d seen him and said what felt like a million times she hadn’t been afraid, Nathan kept insisting she should be. That his power was horrible and she should never make it trigger. That he was dangerous, that he couldn’t control it, that she should sedate him right away... except everything he said fascinated Hailey a little bit more and had the complete opposite effect of what he was going for. ==== All the things he’d done jumbled through his head as he sat there. The court room. Six broken bones, a concussion, the beaten up face of the guy who had punched him on display, High Street after he’d torn down it, wrecked cars, broken shop windows, a taser, police, his soccer team running, cowering as Emma ran forward with the syringe, her face the next day, black eye, saying ‘you didn’t mean it, I know you didn’t’. Further and further back it spun, one thing after another and then he was there – Mum’s bedroom, her thin face and... No. He wasn’t doing this. He wasn’t doing this now. He couldn’t. If she didn’t believe him he could just step back. Cut her off. (He tried not to remember that every time he’d tried to do that with his friends he’d failed. Because he couldn’t keep people at an arm’s length, he just couldn’t. He wasn’t that kind of person.) “I don’t want to hurt you. And I will. I will hurt anyone who comes in my way when I’m like that.” He hated talking about it. Hated putting on display just how awful his power was, what an awful person he was and how he couldn’t not be. It was easier not to be specific. To just say ‘I’m dangerous’ or ‘I’ve hurt people before’ or ‘stay away’. But Hailey wanted specifics. Hailey wanted him to explain things. Nathan was easygoing, relatively speaking. He didn’t get angry very often, being much better at sitting in the background, wondering why other people couldn’t just stay calm. Except that she was making it very hard. Except that her refusal to believe him drove him fucking crazy. “Why won’t you believe that? Do you think I’m making shit up? That I’m exaggerating or something?” ==== Hailey could see something in Nathan’s eye. She couldn’t tell if it was a memory or imagination or just a cycle of thoughts of how to get her to stop. There was something deeper there, though. She knew it. She could push and push and push and he still might not tell her, but she had to try. “That’s funny, because aside from one bruise that I really could have got anywhere, I was completely unhurt after you were like that,” Hailey said sharply. She hadn’t meant to have such a bite to her tone, but there it was. She’d seen how lights and sound had distracted him, she’d known instinctively that for a moment feral Nathan wanted to rip her apart instead of those trees, but he hadn’t. In all honesty, it was probably the worst thing to have happen. Now Hailey was convinced there was a way to control it. “No, but I think you’ve done an awfully good job at convincing yourself that you’re dangerous.” There it was. Hailey had tried to skirt around the issue before, tried to type it out multiple times, but ultimately deleted it. She honestly truly believed that if he embraced his power or tried to use it, he’d be able to get a handle on it. “You’re not the only dangerous person here, Nathan. There’s so many non-vols that would scare the shit out of me before I’d even consider being afraid of you.” This probably wasn’t the right way to go about this conversation, but Hailey had never been particularly good at that. She’d make a horrid counsellor. ==== “Fine,” Nathan said, his voice losing most of the mild tone he was rarely able to shake. “Do you want to know what I did to the last person who punched me?” He didn’t want to tell her this. He didn’t want to tell her any of it, but he couldn’t just give in. He couldn’t just let her think he was this nice bloke, that the one she’d seen wasn’t ‘really him’. Because it was. It was him. It really, really was. “I gave him a concussion, I broke both his legs, his left arm in three places, I punctured his left lung and broke about half his ribs. I would’ve kept going to. I wouldn’t have stopped there. I don’t know why I didn’t do that to you or what happened that made me go to that window instead because I can’t fucking remember. I only know what you tell me and the only reason I know so specifically what I did to that guy is because I ended up in court. I got to see the pictures and all that and that felt great, let me tell you.” He rubbed his hands through his hair, trying not to look at her. He was grateful that she was the only one who had seen it, that not everyone had been there, seeing the monster he really was. He just didn’t understand why she didn’t take it seriously. She’d seen it. “I know I’m not! That’s what this place is for. We’re here because we’re dangerous.” But he was too distracted by what she’d said next to keep going, although he had very specific thoughts on why they were at IVI and how wrong it was to keep the people with destructive powers together with the ones who would never hurt anyone. “And what is it about them that scare the shit out of you? Lack of compassion? No empathy? Ability to do anything to anyone and not even blink? Murderers, maybe? Because I might not be one right now but one day I’m going to wake up and someone’s going to tell me that I killed someone and maybe then you’ll realise I was right all along, but it’ll be too late then, won’t it?” Because maybe it will be you. He didn’t say. Maybe he should have. ==== Hailey couldn’t vocalize what it was, but every doubt Nathan had in himself made more and more anger rise inside of her. His experience sounded awful, but maybe that was it. Maybe all the negatives he’d been through were internalized and made his power negative. Hailey couldn’t even begin to understand why they were different, why some people had certain powers, why some people seemed to suited to their powers and others seemed so missuited - and she definitely couldn’t begin to theorize what might happen if you hated your power so much you tried to convince everyone else to hate it too. “Is that it Nathan?” Hailey challenged, knowing she should go about this more gently but not being able to stop herself. “You’re worried you’ll kill me? How is trying to make me be afraid of you or pushing me away going to help that? If not me, someone else, right? How could I ever possibly help you if I was terrified of you? Maybe you can’t control what you do yet, but I can control what I do. You’ve made me carry around this epi-pen since I met you. Do you really want me to be too scared to use it? Yeah, fine, whatever - you’re strong as fuck and could snap me in half. But all I need is to get close enough to stab you with a needle. The lights and sounds distracted you! Why do you think it’s so fucking impossible that we - that anyone could figure out something to help? Animals can learn to respond, Nathan! Wild fucking scary ass animals are domesticated all the time in zoos!” Hailey’s voice had steadily raised as she spoke, and her legs had come up onto the couch so she was facing him. Her anger finally forced her to be honest with Nathan, to tell him that she really believed he could control it. Eventually. But not if he kept trying to tell her he was horrible and scary and possibly a murderer. ==== “Yes, that’s it!” For someone who didn’t raise his voice Nate was talking pretty loudly right now. He was saying all kinds of things, all sounding strange coming from the ever so nice person he was – who he had become by necessity through the years, trying to battle whatever life threw at him, from dealing with his power and his mother’s death and his family falling apart. “I need you to be scared because if you don’t respect it, if you can’t get into your head how dangerous it is you’ll all just sit there and wait to see what I’ll do next and then what? You don’t know that there’ll be lights or whatever distracting me, you don’t know that someone won’t suddenly show up in my path while you’re watching to see where the ‘wild fucking scary ass animal’ is going to go next.” He didn’t know how to explain that he didn’t want to be watched like some sort of freak show, that the thought of doing things he couldn’t control, that he wouldn’t remember afterwards, while people were watching made him feel so much worse about his power than anything else. All he knew about it was what he’d been told after the fact, what he’d been able to conclude after looking at the wreckage he left behind. That, and what had been in the reports from the detainment facility he’d lived in for a few months, while the proper way to debilitate him had been worked out. Nothing first hand. Not a single thing. “You don’t know how it feels,” he said, trying, but failing to sound calm. “You can breathe under water. You’re the world’s vollest diver. You don’t have to wake up and be told that you assaulted someone or that the reason you trashed that room was because your mum died, which, by the way you also forgot had happened, or that your brother shot you and you didn’t even notice, or that your dog is dead and it’s your fault. You don’t have to be scared of absolutely everything, of every emotion and that every single time you trip or cut yourself it will mean something bad and you don’t need to count every fucking day that nothing happens just hoping that you’ll last longer this time.” He was on his feet now, almost yelling at her, and he knew he was unfair, that he was being self-pitying and that he was being so many things, none which were the least bit good. Maybe this was why he’d never succeeded to drive any of them away yet. Because he’d just been too fucking nice, attempting to make up for the evil he would, at some point, do to the people around him. Maybe this was what he should’ve done from the start. If only it hadn’t hurt so much to tell her all those things. There was a reason he never talked about how it had happened that first time, why he’d not go into specifics and keep it lighthearted. As much as he could, anyway. ==== “That’s not what I meant!” Hailey yelled back, angry that he’d taken her term for a wild animal and used it on himself. That’s what she’d done though, hadn’t she? He’d intrigued her and fascinated her, and Hailey had let him rampage on until he hurt himself. He was right - she couldn’t know if anyone would get in his way. It took Nathan yelling at her for her to realize she had treated him like a wild animal. For all her insisting that he didn’t frighten her, that he was still Nathan... in the moment, he hadn’t been. Hailey had seen that in his eyes. If a bear attacked and killed someone, it would be chalked up to the bear being wild. What if Nathan did kill someone? Would people ever be able to forgive that? Probably not. Hailey wasn’t sure if raising his voice was helping Nathan, but she let him do it anyway. Her eyebrows narrowed slightly, but she listened to every word he said without interjecting. He was right. She didn’t know how it felt. Hailey tried as hard as she could to imagine feeling everything he was talking about. She really hadn’t done that before, even though she should have. By imagining hearing all that and being Nathan, Hailey finally felt some of the weight Nathan must feel everyday. She hadn’t realized just how deep it went - that he wasn’t only scared of changing, but that he was scared every time he felt certain things. “Nathan,” Hailey said softly as she slowly stood up. She reached out and grabbed his hand, still finding that even though so many of the people she met disliked physical touch, it was the fastest way to bring someone back. “I’m sorry,” she said genuinely, “I never thought it of it that way.” Dropping his hand, Hailey reached up and placed her hand on his cheek. “I don’t want you to hate yourself anymore.” That was her biggest problem, though it had taken him explaining and raising his voice for her to really grasp that. “I want to help, I want --” to make it better. But Hailey knew that even if she pushed as hard as she could, Nathan would never willingly let her be around when he was triggered. “What happens after you wake up?” she asked, finding a question she’d never considered before this moment. “Do you know something happened, that you lost time?” ==== Hailey was right, of course. His hand in hers, however briefly, did calm him down. Made him remember that none of this was her fault. It was his issues and his power and it wasn’t fair to yell at her. It was the only way he would’ve told her this stuff, though. Had he been thinking clearly he would’ve left most if it out of the picture. He put his hand on top of hers when it went to his cheek. Held on to it, maybe a little longer than he should have. She was Hailey and she was trying to help. She couldn’t understand – no one could, unless they had powers as brutal as his, and were ruled by them like he was – but she could try. And after that outburst of his she was doing her best. He could tell. “I know,” he said. “That’s what the counsellors keep telling me. That it’s not my fault or whatever, but –” But it feels like it. “They look at me like a monster. Back home. They saw me hit Emma – my ex – one time, when she was trying to... to stop me. They think I’m doing it to Tessa and Bailey too and if not, that I’ll do it to their wives and kids and whatever.” He let go of her hand, stepping back ever so slightly. “And I can’t promise them that I won’t. I can’t promise anyone anything.” All this talk about hypothetical violence, about hypothetical situations and hypothetical reactions was enough to making his head spin. It was how he lived his life, though. Surrounded by ‘what ifs’. “I remember telling you that you knew what to do.” He looked around before dropping back down on the couch. He really hoped that nobody had overheard their yelling. It was bad enough to just have Hailey know all these things. “I lose a bit of what happen before I turn. I just black out. But I remembered being there with you before, so I knew you had been there but not if I’d hurt you or what I’d done to you.” The rest was harder to explain. He just knew. Was that strange? It probably was. “If I was sedated I feel all weird from that,” he tried. “If not someone probably hit me over the head with something, and then I have one hell of a headache and sometimes a concussion telling me what just happened. And then there’s this.” He looked down at his arms, still bandaged up. He’d thought about having Anthony heal them, but felt awkward asking someone he barely knew for a favour like that. “And depending where I hurt I can kind of piece it together. So it’s, um, a bit confusing. But it helps if someone tells me what happened.” Except then they’d seen him like that, and their perception of him was changed forever. ==== At the mention of being looking at like a ‘monster’, Hailey bristled. She was absolutely not okay with that. She had no idea who these people were or what any of their situations were, but Nathan Mitchell was absolutely not a monster. The name Emma sparked curiosity in Hailey, and she realized that she hadn’t noticed Nathan be particularly interested in any girls at IVI. Was he afraid of getting close to someone and hurting them? Had Emma looked at him different after that? Hailey knew it was unrealistic to say ‘what other people think doesn’t matter’ - because it did, of course it did - but it was the people you were close to that stung the most. Nathan’s family, albeit a little untraditional, seemed as though they got along well. She hadn’t picked up on any fear, but it could have been there. Hailey wasn’t always the most perceptive person. “Who’s they?” Hailey asked softly, both curious and unable to contain herself. “Did Emma? Is that why you haven’t really gone after anyone here?” Her question was too forward and too blunt, but it was Hailey at her finest. On the network she could delete things, think about what she said, and ultimately decide on the least offensive thing. In person she didn’t have that luxury, and while occasionally sounding awkward, she just went for it. “You don’t have to promise,” Hailey said honestly. “I can’t promise I won’t hurt anyone, either. You’ve done everything you can do. You have your friends carry around epi-pens, you make sure we know how to use them, and you warn us about what might happen. You don’t need to make me afraid of you, though. The more you try to the more I’m going to try and prove you otherwise. There will always be someone somewhere who is afraid, who does think you’re a monster, but those aren’t the people you’ve surrounded yourself with. Those are the people who won’t be able to act. But that’s not me, Nathan. I shouldn’t have waited and watched you for a bit when it happened, I know that now, but I was ready to jump in at any time. And the second you got hurt, I did. If I was afraid of you, I could have been frozen with fear.” Hailey sat back on the couch as well, finding that she preferred this level of volume to speak at. It felt much less like a fight, and more like an intimate conversation now. “You’re not any different to me today than you were on Friday,” Hailey said stubbornly. She would have no idea how close that was to Nathan’s thoughts and worries, but after hearing that people looked at him like a monster she felt as though she needed to say it. ==== “People in town. Our neighbours. My old friends.” Truth be told he hadn’t had that many friends, with his life always being too full of family drama to really be able to spend that much time with anyone else. But there’d been a few, and when the gossip started they’d disappeared. Of course. “It’s a small town. There’s not much to do but talk.” He hadn’t bothered to take Hailey into town when she was there, with them being too occupied with the ocean and the diving in the few days she was visiting. There was nothing to see there anyway. Nobody to meet. “She was good about it,” he said, shrugging. “Mostly. She said it wasn’t my fault but...” Seeing your girlfriend with a black eye wasn’t exactly something that left you without guilt. “I don’t know. I think she did towards the end, but –” Who wouldn’t? He didn’t blame her for that. Her next question threw him a bit, but it was Hailey, and she never quite did what you expected her to. This whole conversation was an example of that. “Um. I don’t know. I try not to do serious stuff because if it ends badly it might trigger it. Casual sex is better. Less dangerous.” He’d never really thought about how limited his life was, of all the rules he’d set up for himself. But maybe they were all like this. The people with dangerous powers, at least. The ones who could cause a lot of damage, should something go down. And maybe all of them would be as relieved as him to hear what she told him. “Glad to hear it,” he said, giving her hand a quick squeeze. “Even if I think you’re just a little bit crazy.” ==== “Not much of friends,” Hailey mumbled, unable to let that comment slip by without saying anything. She would have easily - and happily - given anyone from that town a piece of her mind. Maybe it was a good thing Nathan hadn’t taken her there over Christmas break. Surely she would have noticed someone staring or someone saying something stupid and she would have lost it. “I’m from a small town, we hunt, atv, and drink instead of talk,” she added in the same mumbly voice. Nathan was adding too many ‘buts’ into this conversation. Hailey could pick up the fact that he wasn’t entirely sure how Emma felt, but he had his suspicions. Suspicions that bought right into his ‘woe I’m a horrible dangerous person’ bit. And it was that bit that Hailey was stubbornly determined to destroy. “It sounds like a lot can trigger it, don’t limit yourself because something might or might not happen. And don’t be so sure about casual sex,” Hailey added with a bitterness. Claudia was right. Hailey had tried, God help her she had tried, but she just got too invested. Seeing Hugo flirt with other girls had been hard enough, let alone being confronted with the fact he was sleeping with other girls. No one could honestly say right now that it had ended ‘well’, or even with completely certainty it ended. Hailey was purposely ignoring the whole situation, and Hugo seemed fine to do so as well. “Just a little bit?” Hailey quipped back with a smile. “So you’re saying I should work on that, eh? What’ll take for me to be a lot crazy?” ==== Nate didn’t know all the specifics about Hailey’s adventures in the land of no strings attached, but it was hard to be completely clueless about it, the way things were. He’d known enough to let her spar even though he shouldn’t have, and he knew enough to figure out what that tone of voice meant. “It’s not always easy,” he had to admit. “I’ve fucked it up a few times. But I’m getting better at it.” If sleeping with girls you felt very little for was an improvement. Some people would say it was, but Nate wasn’t so sure of that. It would probably be easier to not go there at all, but he wasn’t very good at that either. As with most things in life he simply stumbled along, trying his best and failing half the time. It was the only way he knew how. “I’ll let you know when you get there,” he said, smiling as well. “I’ll bake some cookies while I wait. They’ll be warm when you show up. And wow, that sounded lame, sorry.” ==== “Yeah, I guess,” Hailey said a little absently. She wanted to be able to have casual sex, especially in a place like this, but she was starting to realize that wasn’t likely to happen. Maybe just staying friends was the better route to go. Even the people who had become couples here - if they were to break up, that would be hell. Seeing your ex everyday? Couldn’t be easy. Hailey still wasn’t entirely satisfied with Nathan’s answer, but that wasn’t something that warranted an argument, at least not today. With a laugh, Hailey pulled her legs back up and underneath her. She let her head fall to the back of the couch as she looked at Nathan, in a strikingly similar position as she’d started off this conversation with. “Aye sounds good mate,” Hailey said in a horrible horrible impression of an Australian accent. She laughed at herself before turning and having a look at the tv. ==== |