What The Papers Say (tag Nathaniel) on Teppenpaw Commons

Kir McLeod

September 25, 2019 11:02 AM

What The Papers Say (tag Nathaniel) by Kir McLeod

CW: sexual assault

The world was a pretty terrible place, with a lot of terrible things in it. Kir knew he wanted to go into some kind of political-social-welfare-wellbeing-policy-something later in life. As such, he kept abreast of the news. He read his own newspaper almost every day and he occasionally picked up one from Crotalus when he thought he could stomach it, just to keep up with how the other side thought. There had been some brief respite over Christmas, with stories of neighbourliness and community, or rare dragons that had hatched in fireplaces and would be helping to do the Christmas cooking before being released into the wild. Mostly though, it was depressing.

There had been a freak magical storm caused by an obscurial in rural Africa. That had left a number of people dead and there was a considerable aftermath to put right in terms of damage to the agriculture in the region, especially as the weather still wouldn't quite calm itself down. This had largely been obscured, as was often the way, by a domestic story. For the last week or so the news had been dominated by an assault case. Alleged assault, of course, they had to say, even though it seemed pretty black and white. A MACUSA accidental magic officer had been dispatched urgently after someone's trace indicated they'd used a fire spell. They had arrived to find one sobbing sixteen year old girl and a male five years her senior with his hands red, raw and blistering, after he'd tried to remove her clothing. Somehow, he was still trying to protest his innocence. Kir had not yet touched a right wing paper on either subject but given that the left had strenuously and repeatedly pointed out that yes, Americans did have a duty to help out communities abroad, and that the man being a really promising Quadpot player was not relevant, he could guess what angle they were taking on both...

Closer to home though, the society pages had turned up one or two important bits of information. Firstly, Winston Pierce had got engaged to Emerald Brockert. Kir didn't know her well. She had never struck him as awful, but he supposed it just went to show that, just because you were quiet - just because you were in a house of allegedly intelligent and independent people - didn't mean you weren't full of bigoted and racist ideals. He couldn't imagine any other kind of person managing to stomach the idea of being shackled to Winston, after all. Unless Emerald had had no say, which was equally possible. Overall, the whole thing was just gross, because they were seventeen or eighteen at most and, as far as he knew, had never even dated. Admittedly, he tried to ignore Winston as much as possible but he was sure the other boy would have needed to boast loudly enough for everyone to hear if he had got a girlfriend.

That, however, had not been the worst thing the society pages had had to offer this year. Something else had happened too. Something closer to the reasons why his family kept an eye on that otherwise loathed reminder of their past. Someone had lost someone. That was the wording used. The Mordues mourn the loss... It was a very small announcement, not the kind of send off one gave a genuinely beloved relative. More the quiet little footnote that let everyone know they simply weren't to talk about That Person any more.

Kir had to confess, he had no idea which of the Mordues this Cynthia was most closely related to. He still wasn't totally sure after dinner, either - he was not sure what he could read into it that the little one was there and that Nathaniel wasn't. Except, of course, that Nathaniel was less okay with whatever had gone on than his brother was.

Kir made his way back to dormitories, letting everyone else drift into their rooms before he went over and knocked, clearly but not yet insistently on Nathaniel's door.

13 Kir McLeod What The Papers Say (tag Nathaniel) 366 Kir McLeod 1 5

Nathaniel

September 25, 2019 9:25 PM

Didn't anyone ever tell you it's rude to gossip? by Nathaniel

When he heard a knock at the door, Nathaniel’s first reaction was to flinch, startled by the noise – after two weeks of spending most of his days shouting and most of his nights not sleeping, his nerves were as stretched as he thought any set of nerves, including his mother’s, had ever been. His second reaction was to feel a flash of panic unrelated to his nerves, because he imagined it was Professor Xavier on the other side of the door, and also imagined that Professor Xavier was not exactly going to be pleased with the state of Nathaniel’s solitary room.

Nathaniel had had no intention of returning to Sonora. He was, after all, giving up everything else in his life to protect his mother from That Man, so what was school beside the rest of it? Nobody here would miss him if Sylvia didn’t, and nothing going on here was as important as what was going on at home. His mother, however, had had different ideas, and in keeping with the same brazenness which had led her to allow That Man to move into their house and stay in her room when they weren’t even married yet – something that would have been indecent even had he been a suitable husband! – she had had the sheer nerve, when she had realized he was not going to budge, to Confund him in order to get him to get on the wagon!

That wasn’t the worst of it, though. When he had started to realize what had happened, he had also started to plan various strategies for getting home as quickly as possible, only to find that she had written him a little note and charmed it to jump up and down on top of his trunk until he opened it. Inside, she explained that she had sent Professor Xavier a note explaining that Nathaniel wasn’t allowed to come home unless she personally arrived to collect him.

That was when the first object had gone flying across the room.

It had felt good, too. He had never done anything like that before, at least not since he had been old enough to remember, and it had gotten out of hand. Reasonably, he knew that it solved nothing – until he was seventeen, he was, it seemed, completely powerless. Unreasonably, his inkwells and schoolbooks and bedcurtains and pillows and left shoe had all temporarily become various people in his life, and after about the seventh time he kicked the hell out of an object representing That Man, or Uncle Alexander, or Jeremy, or his father, or finally even his mother – it had gotten all out of hand – Nathaniel had briefly, almost, felt better.

That, however, hadn’t lasted, and soon he had found himself right back where he started: unable to stay with his mother, rejected by the rest of his family, horribly aware that everything he had based his entire life on was either a lie or actively working against him right now, and with no way at all to fix any of it.

He had been lying on his bare mattress, staring blankly at the ceiling, for a long time when he heard the knock on his door, flinched, and then panicked. Sitting up, he tried to think. “Just a moment, please,” he said, his voice raspier than usual from exhaustion and this morning’s blazing argument with his mother and That Man. He got to his feet, stumbled a bit, and hurried over to the door, opening it only a little and trying to obscure as much of the view as possible with his body, despite realizing at the very moment he opened it that aside from the bags under his eyes, he was still only wearing his right shoe. He shuffled his left foot further back, hoping it would pass unnoticed, even though the person bothering him was of less consequence than he had feared.

“Good evening,” he said. “Do you need something?”

16 Nathaniel Didn't anyone ever tell you it's rude to gossip? 1412 Nathaniel 0 5

Kir McLeod

September 28, 2019 9:49 PM

Keeping up with world events is scarcely gossip by Kir McLeod

Kir was pretty relieved when he heard Nathaniel's voice, and that it confirmed he would open the door presently. There was no guarantee that he wouldn't promptly slam it again in Kir's face when he saw who it was, but this answer already meant they could rule out a few of Kir's worse case scenarios.

Nathaniel opened the door, not widely and welcomingly, but the door was open, he had seen who was outside it and they had continued to talk. In fact, Nathaniel seemed to be acting as if everything was normal. Ah. Good old Pureblood denial. Keep that face on as the world burns. Kir might have doubted things, assumed it was a distant relative who really didn't matter much, except that Nathaniel... well, he looked a bit of a mess. Tired. Stressed. And whatever it was, it was bad enough that he had missed the feast.

"I came to ask you that, actually. "You weren't at the feast," he pointed out, deciding that was a reasonably good starting point. It was a concrete fact, after all, one they both were aware of, and aware that the other one was aware of. And then, rather that leaving Nathaniel to feel like he needed to lie and bluff and convince Kir that nothing was wrong, he added, "I know you might be having a rough time right now."

13 Kir McLeod Keeping up with world events is scarcely gossip 366 Kir McLeod 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue

September 28, 2019 10:12 PM

It might as well be, if you can't do anything about them. by Nathaniel Mordue

Nathaniel's shoulders hunched defensively at the idea that he might need something, and did not relax when Kir continued talking. If anything, he drew in further to himself, and then hated himself for that, too - for probably confirming without saying a word that he was, in fact, having a rough time right now.

"It's nothing. I'm going to get it under control," he said brusquely, though the words sounded hollow even to him, now, and seemed to get hollower every time he said them. It had been some days since he had said them to anyone but the ceiling at home; he supposed it was as well to test them on someone who did not matter (to the extent anyone here mattered to him until he got the situation back under control...somehow) before he started running into people who did.

He frowned suspiciously as a thought unrelated to the problem of how he was supposed to fix things made its way through the exhausted, anxious tangle of fog and briars in his head. I know you might be having a rough time right now. That seemed like a lot to draw, really, just from Nathaniel not feeling like putting up with everyone at the feast...wasn't it? Maybe. He supposed he had already given part of the game away just now, so there was no harm in checking now, was there? "Wait - what do you think you know?" he demanded.

16 Nathaniel Mordue It might as well be, if you can't do anything about them. 1412 Nathaniel Mordue 0 5

Kir McLeod

September 30, 2019 9:56 AM

That's an interesting perspective by Kir McLeod

Nathaniel was… interesting. He was hunched, angry and defensive - all things Kir had broadly expecting him to be, and which he continued to be thankful weren’t anything worse. He seemed almost… manic though. The idea of ‘fixing’ things struck Kir as very odd. As far as he knew, problems like this didn’t get fixed. Declaring someone dead was very, very permanent. The Pureblood world revolved on the tit for tat exchange of not challenging people’s narratives but he thought that credibility might be strained beyond its breaking point if someone claimed a resurrection. There were things, after all, that even magic could not do.

He assumed that Nathaniel’s query was just… flat out being in denial, or being confused over how someone like Kir would know this information, rather than an indicator that they really were on different pages here.

“That your family mourns the loss of Cynthia Mordue,” he answered, deciding that the safest path was sticking to quoting the article more or less exactly. “And I figured that, whatever they meant by that, it can’t be anything good, and then you didn’t show up to the feast…” he shrugged, figuring that was enough of an explanation of why he was here. “What are you trying to fix?” he asked in return, because he was pretty sure that wasn’t fixable.

13 Kir McLeod That's an interesting perspective 366 Kir McLeod 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue

September 30, 2019 12:40 PM

Do you know another function for such information? by Nathaniel Mordue

Nathaniel had not looked at the papers in weeks. If he had even thought about this, he would have attributed it to not having time, rather than being afraid of them, but he had not even thought about a paper until he heard Kir using the kind of phrase that only ever appeared in a certain kind of paper. His green eyes widened, and before he thought, his mouth started moving.

"Son of a - "

Nathaniel caught himself just short of completing the phrase and therefore just short of insulting his own grandmother, who was not even the target of his aggressive impulse.

It was only sheer habit, however, that stopped him from doing it. He couldn't say he felt any remorse about the prospect of insulting Grandmother or Uncle Alexander or both. Grandmother had not specifically proven herself a backstabbing liar, but at this point, he was starting to think he was an anomaly because he wasn't one....

"I'm sorry," he said, just as automatically, because there was still someone else in earshot, someone who was definitely paying attention to him. "That wasn't at you."

He struggled to concentrate and think through how to phrase things. Just as habitually as ever, he wished Sylvia was with him; Sylvia always knew what to say, after all. Except, it seemed, when it was actually a matter of serious importance - but that wasn't fair either. He couldn't blame Sylvia. It wasn't her fault that Uncle Alexander and Aunt Avery were dishonest, traitorous bastards. Sylvia hadn't reacted the best, but he hadn't, either - they had both been shocked. Now, Sylvia was probably well past shock, so she would have known what to say to get them out of this situation.

"What are you trying to fix?”

He flushed, wishing again that Sylvia was with him. "My mother - don't worry about it," he muttered. "It's all a misunderstanding. I'm going to straighten it out. Did you see my cousins? My brother? Were they at the Feast?"

16 Nathaniel Mordue Do you know another function for such information? 1412 Nathaniel Mordue 0 5

Kir McLeod

September 30, 2019 3:03 PM

Keeping an eye on you by Kir McLeod

“That’s alright,” Kir nodded, quite surprised that the swearing hadn’t been directed at him. He hadn’t been sure, although it had more sounded like it wasn’t. He had been distracted by the fact that he had almost heard a Pureblood swear. Kir had found his eyebrows raising slightly in surprise, in spite of the fact he was aiming for carefully cultivated neutrality and that Nathaniel had cut himself off. It also meant Nathaniel hadn’t, until the point where Kir had mentioned it, known that it had been in the paper, at which point Kir did some mental swearing of his own. What the heck were these people doing to each other? Nathaniel was a child. Whatever petty, crappy squabbles they were having, why and how had it ended up more important than the well being of the person in front of him? Nathaniel was clearly not okay. Obviously, real illness and death could not be prevented, there were harms that were inevitable, but it really felt like this didn’t need to be one of them.

Nathaniel seemed to state it was his mother, or that his mother was the problem. Kir was not sure whether this meant the mother was the mourned Cynthia or the one who had orchestrated the current unpleasant situation. He was leaning towards the former based on the fact it was usually male heads of families who orchestrated such situations, and based on Nathaniel’s choice of almost oath. Except Nathaniel was still using terms like ‘straighten it out’

“They were,” he confirmed, of the presence of the other Mordues at the feast. “Were you expecting them not to be?” he questioned, trying to dig a little deeper without outright asking any of the questions that were currently burning on his mind but which he thought were likely to get the door slammed in his face - most of which amounted to variations on ‘What exactly happened?’

13 Kir McLeod Keeping an eye on you 366 Kir McLeod 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue

September 30, 2019 3:32 PM

Yeah, I don't recommend doing that. by Nathaniel Mordue

He shouldn't have asked that. Of course they were there. He shouldn't have expected any more - or less - from Simon, and Jeremy -

He didn't even want to think about Jeremy. It made him too angry, when it didn't make him wish he could just crawl off into a corner and die, because that situation felt like it was his fault. It had been his job to make sure Jeremy was not - well - anything like Jeremy was, and he had tried, but sometimes he had wanted to go play with Sylvia or take photographs or read a book and hadn't wanted to deal with Jeremy right then, and clearly at some point he had given in to those impulses one too many times, somewhere along the line -

He was not sure, though, what he had expected from Sylvia. She had been as upset as he was, the last time they'd spoken. Surely Sylvia wasn't okay with this either, but she was made of sterner stuff than he was. She'd keep her face on even if it was her own mother who shamed her, he thought with something like pride. Whereas he -

He didn't have time for this!

"Clearly you know we've had difficulties," he said, a bit testily. "My mother - mine and Jeremy's - she - got into a - situation. It wasn't her fault!" he added sharply, though he had accepted that it was at least partially her fault, for being willing to be manipulated. It was one thing to acknowledge that to himself. It was another entirely to acknowledge it to Kir McLeod. "Jeremy's been staying with our aunt and uncle while I've been trying to sort it out. I haven't seen any of them since - well, never mind. They're okay, right. That's good. That's all I needed to know there. Thank you." He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to concentrate again. In doing so, his grip on the door relaxed, allowing a broader section of the room to become visible without his noticing. "I'm going to have to go home," he concluded, resuming his efforts to think of a way around his mother's attempt to imprison him here. "Sorry about the teams, but - " he shrugged helplessly, hoping that pure concern for his mother would be the only thing Kir got out of that gesture.

16 Nathaniel Mordue Yeah, I don't recommend doing that. 1412 Nathaniel Mordue 0 5

Kir McLeod

September 30, 2019 4:29 PM

I think I'll be ignoring that advice by Kir McLeod

Kir wasn’t sure whether any of the rest of the Mordues were alright, having not seen them close up. It seemed likely that there was a lot on all of their minds. Nathaniel seemed to be able to draw that conclusion from the fact they were present - clearly they were more alright than he was, Kir supposed. As the door drifted and he glimpsed inside Nathaniel’s room, he really wasn’t sure that was saying much. Surprise, or rather shock, stole over his face for a moment but he reeled it in. The room, at least, was a clear and honest answer to how Nathaniel was doing.

“You’re welcome,” Kir nodded, glad to have been able to provide some kind of information that Nathaniel deemed useful. That was what he really wanted to do. He wanted to just… help. He wasn’t sure Nathaniel was making very realistic conclusions about anything, but it was nice to know that what Kir was saying was somehow calming Nathaniel down.

“Don’t worry about the team thing,” he added. Again, it really felt like it wasn’t the issue here, but it was something concrete he could offer. “Whether you go home or not - I’ll understand if you’re not able to bring your best right now. “That’s not really why I’m here though,” he clarified. He wanted to reassure Nathaniel, and that seemed a good thing he could offer, but it wasn’t the main reason. “In situations like this,” he tried, hoping that was delicate enough, “I mean, there’s obviously a lot on your mind. If you need someone to talk to… Or, if other people start being unkind to you about it… Well, I wouldn’t want to think you were trying to deal with all that alone. So… you know where my door is. If you need someone.

“Do you want some help tidying up?” he offered, nodding at the room behind Nathaniel.

13 Kir McLeod I think I'll be ignoring that advice 366 Kir McLeod 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue

September 30, 2019 5:52 PM

I can take care of myself. by Nathaniel Mordue

Nathaniel's face tightened at the suggestion that he might need to talk about his feelings, but he bit his tongue to keep himself from saying anything rash. He was a civilized person, and civilized people did not behave that way. Showing unseemly emotion was not the correct response to anything. He had acted enough like his father in the past few weeks without lashing out at someone who meant well, even if he was being (to Nathaniel's mind) rather patronizing about it. That was, after all, the privilege of not being someone who was visibly falling apart at the seams.

"Thank you, but I'll be fine," he said. "I'm sorry. I...lost my temper. And I was coming to...my mother Confunded me," he muttered, his demeanor momentarily slipping into perfectly ordinary childish sulkiness.

Should he be polite to Kir? He had always tried to be polite to everyone, because that was what civilized people did. He had never thought twice about it until now. Now, though, he could hear Sylvia's voice in his head..."Mordues do not mix with Elphwicks." Kir was something worse, from what he understood. He should be rude to make a point, but - he always tried to be good. He wanted to do the right thing, and the right thing had always been being a gentleman, no matter where he was, no matter who he was dealing with. Except, it was his mother who had always told him to be good, and now his mother had been bad -

"But I can take care of myself. Goodbye," he said, and abruptly closed the door.

He could repair the broken inkwells and torn books, he supposed - those were simple enough charms. He could probably Vanish the ink on the floor. Remaking his bed, though, was another question. He had never put sheets on a bed in his life, but he was going to need the bedding as long as he was here, because it was January. He was going to be cold. Sheets were not the most important bit, though, and neither was neatness; he could drag enough onto the bed to make himself a nest until one of the elves came by to make the bed up properly.

It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was enough of a solution to make him, in combination with the information that his brother and Sylvia were at least functional, feel a tiny bit better. He had semi-solved a problem he had created himself. Surely, then, he could solve others. Never mind how unlike the problems were, both in scale and in every other way. He had solved one problem. He could solve another. And he didn't need any help.

16 Nathaniel Mordue I can take care of myself. 1412 Nathaniel Mordue 0 5

Kir McLeod

October 01, 2019 1:41 AM

We'll see by Kir McLeod

"Okay. That must have been..." he wanted to say 'confusing' but that seemed rather obvious, given the spell they were dealing with, "rather a lot to take in."

And then, after a few more assurances of everything being fine and fixable, the door was being slammed. Kir was not sure whether it was a particular thing he had said - the suggestion that Nathaniel might need help, or want to talk about feelings, or even voluntarily interact with someone like Kir... All of those were likely contenders, as was simply the cumulative effect of having to interact with him.

"Well, if you do," he called out to the closed door. Because Nathaniel was bound to need someone at some stage, and whilst it certainly did not have to be him, and in some ways Kir would be glad if it wasn't, he didn't want to leave it that the final note of the conversation had been a literal and metaphorical door slamming. That was harder to come back from, if Nathaniel changed his mind. He wanted to leave it just the teeniest crack open. Satisfied that he had done all he could for now, he turned and headed back to his own room.

13 Kir McLeod We'll see 366 Kir McLeod 0 5