Scene #2676: Popping The Question

Owner	Pose
Pegasus	Dinner is always a good start, especially when it's one of those rare times that Pegasus can speak with Nathan alone... and have a little private meal. One might think that using her own restaurant is a bad idea of a date, but it's actually the kitchen she's making use of, fixing a home-cooked meal for the two of them. Peg is a very good baker, so the bread is delicious, but she's also a pretty darn good cook, even if she isn't an award-winning chef when it's not bread products. It's also just good, she thinks, to share a meal. But now that that is done... Pegasus rests her hands in her lap and leans back, wings making a little whrring noise. "So... Nathan. I've been thinking," she begins. "We've been dating for a few years... gone through a lot. And I've um... been pretty patient with the strange girls you end up dealing with. My sister's since gotten married... had a child. There have been a few other weddings, too! It's really... nice. But thinking of that makes me realize that um... I really need to move things along and... I guess what I'm saying is I really need to ask you..." Deep breath. "Can we talk about you stabbing me, finally?"
Nathan Hall	Nathan has, these days, not been paticularly up to talking about that. Like Psyber seemed to wish to cultivate, the whole matter seemed to get sort of pushed to the side, and everyone seemed to agree not to talk about it. So it's just sort of not come up. Nathan has, of course, sort of quietly hoped that it never will, despite how inherently and essentially unrealistic that is. Some well-made food gets him a little less tense than he's been around Pegasus recently, and eventually he does wind up falling into friendly conversation. Then comes the social equivalent of air raid sirens and bomb whistling noises. He doesn't break his stoicism in the least, but Pegasus, knowing him particularly well and having machine senses, can probably see him panicking under the surface. Heartbeat racing, stomach dropping, teeth clenching just slightly, the works. Of course, there's the issue that Nathan himself is uncertain where he stands with Pegasus in a lot of ways. It's an awkward relief when the subject turns out to be the stabbing, which is a set of words nobody ever thought they'd ever get to write. But Nathan stays tense, in many ways. Marriage or breakups or major romantic motions like that, he might be averse to in more comical ways, but this is a touchy subject in many others. He takes a few seconds, a long pause that he uses to compose himself and stop himself from stuttering, and to must the energy for his old ways of speaking that he calls upon occasionally. "I assumed we would need to at some point. It is a distressing topic for a number of reasons you have, no doubt, guessed. And a difficult one to approach." He gulps in a nervous way, but aside from that, his face remains as stoic as it tends to, and his tone keeps to monotoned ranges. "If you want to talk about it, you certainly deserve the chance. It sounds as though you have put some thought to the discussion. But I am unsure of where to start." He looks to her with a more wide-eyed sort of blank expression now. "What of the event would you like to speak about first?" And then she can probably see the subtle tensions of emotionally bracing himself. He has clearly WAY overestimated how negatively this talk is about to go, this is one of those things that he's probably silently worried about endlessly again.
Pegasus	Pegasus is, amazingly, rising and... starting to clean up the dishes. There's cheesecake sitting nearby for dessert, so evidently things aren't finished! But for now, she's just acting like it's a normal night, rare as those might be. "Mmhmm, and I think we'd better before it gets too late. I know Miss Fairchild's been quiet, but how long do you think until that changes? I don't think even if she's not trying to manipulate people, she can act without a reaction." She tucks the plates to the side, so she can handle them later, and sighs. "I'm not angry at you for trying to go through me. Maybe I should be? After all that I've put you and other through, though... it's hard. I think that maybe it's time to put that kind of thing behind. What I want to know is when could it have changed? What did we do wrong that we could have stopped it? What did /I/ do wrong?" It may not be the direction Nathan expected this to take, but then Pegasus isn't finished, yet. She's just waiting for more information.
Nathan Hall	"...Yeah. Not long now, not long at all until things heat back up, things just get right back to the old pressure." Nathan says, slipping briefly into his exhausted tones. But the statement about not being angry makes him let out a breath, both of surprise -- he's spent weeks agonizing about it and working himself up to thinking she was -- and seems to consciously take several seconds just to revel in the relief. "...Right. Thanks. I... Thought you might. Thought you should, I guess." He says, then looks at the cake as if reading answers off of it while he thinks about what to say to the question properly.
Nathan Hall	"I don't really know, I suppose I can't really say what should have been done. I was... Emotional, I was very emotional, very rash at the time. At all those times, really, for months, months and months of it. Not a good perspective, in the moment or even retroactively. Maybe there was a better way for the others to approach it. Maybe. Psyber said he realized some mistakes in what he did, said he realized some of what went wrong, and he's usually right. Maybe it wouldn't have helped." Nathan just slips right back out of that stiff old tone he used to used and back into the exhausted one. He's also still staring at the cake, despite its continued dedication to having no answers written on it.
Pegasus	Pegasus places a small fork on the plate, as if to break out Nathan from the stare, and moves aside to carry the plates off to the sink proper. She'll rejoin momentarily, she's still in speaking distance. "I knew you weren't being yourself, but I should have stopped you earlier. I hate her. Hated. I don't know if I do now, but I did. Maybe that's why I didn't stop you, but I should have. You've always been good at seeing things, Nathan... I think we need to pay more attention to one another's blind spots. That's what a couple does, right?"
Nathan Hall	The small noise does manage to break Nathan out of his weird cake trance. "...Maybe." He says, after turning her words over in his head. There's a lengthy pause before he gets back into rambling. "I guess it might have helped. To stop things. Suppose I don't know, I don't really know what stopping me entailed though. What that even would have meant." He leans on one elbow, rubbing his forehead in somber thought. "Psyber tried. Tried an awful lot, really, it's what made me so..." He gestures vaguely with his free hand. "Well, part of what made me so frustrated, made me so aggressive about all that. He tried to talk me down from hating her for what happened so intensely, so often. It wasn't for lack of someone close to me trying to stop me."
Nathan Hall	"Honestly. Honestly, I don't really know what would have stopped me from getting more frustrated, more hateful to her. In a way, I guess I still feel the same frustration. Hasn't really stopped at all, I just realize more of the price. Have a little less Hate God in the soul." Nathan says, going more motionless for a moment to firmly contemplate it. The slowness of his speech makes it clear that he's not even contemplated his own feelings much at all. "It felt like... Some abstract scales were tipped the wrong way, and everyone seemed to want it that way but me. I'd try telling people how much the unbalance hurt, and they'd tell me how it wasn't unbalanced. How I just needed to let go and accept that it was going to hurt, that it was my fault. And maybe that wasn't even the flaw. In a way, I guess that was only half the issue."
Nathan Hall	"So, maybe I could have been stopped if I felt there was something, I suppose, something besides just me working to balance things out. Working to... Stop things from getting worse. But, well, I just listened to what the others said before. Just trying to let go and accept things. Trying to trust and move on. And I guess things probably would have been fine, I guess I probably would have been 'stopped' if that had been it. The other half of the issue, the other side of the problem was the fact that there just weren't any real options, weren't any real paths forward. Because I tried being 'stopped' and..." Nathan discards his motionlessness but not his emotionlessness long enough to do a plaintive, helpless gesture. "I just wound up betrayed again. Nearly turning out exactly like her, almost had the Shajem shoved right into my soul too." Another of those rare, heavy sighs. "I don't really know. Don't really know at all. Still don't know, in the end, not really. I just wanted to feel like there was a path forward that balanced things out, or at least made me... Hurt less. I guess stopping me would have meant finding that."
Pegasus	Pegasus comes back from the kitchen and settles in the chair, ears swivelled forward to listen intently. She nods slightly to some of what's said, but only starts to talk after she's processed a lot of it... with a gentler tone. "You aren't the type to hate easily... that's why I like you. Seeing you hate made me uncomfortable but um..." She pauses. "It's not like you didn't have reasons. I think you just don't... don't know how to deal with it. So..."
Pegasus	With a sigh, Pegasus leans back and takes a moment to order her thoughts. "I hate her. But I don't feel like I need to punish her any more. And I don't feel... good about hating her. I defended her anyway because... um, do you remember how I had a list? Amalthea was on it... and Niv! And my parents. I was all muddled up and didn't understand things. I hated Niv because I thought he was abusing Amalthea. I loved Amalthea, and there was no difference in what I wanted to do. I /still hate/ my parents. When people said to let go I think... I think they weren't quite right." Her wings lower suddenly, and she mumbles, "I'm not good at this. What I'm trying to say is that you can feel the emotion, but trying to do something about it isn't always good. You know that now. I have a lot of things more precious to me than hating my parents, Nathan. I have a sister, a boyfriend, a sister-in-law, a niece... a family. Friends. People who need me to fight FOR them, or to just spend time with them. That's important to me. My parents, and Miss Fairchild, are all less important than that. I guess, when I stood between you and her, I was hoping you felt the same. I didn't realize you'd already commit. And that's kind of both our faults because we didn't want to talk about it."
Nathan Hall	"Yeah. I guess I don't really know, I don't really have any experience acting on hatred. Acting on that sort of emotion in a positive way, in a way that isn't harmful." Nathan finally does look back up when Pegasus sits back across from him. It's a rare sight to see Nathan fidget, but she can see him playing with his hands with subconscious nervousness. "I tried a lot of ways of... Not acting on it. I tried telling the people around me about what I was feeling, but I guess that didn't really work. I keeping the tensions low-key, relatively low-key, just enough to keep distance from Elliana and keep myself feeling safe, and that didn't really work. And I tried shutting it down, refusing to act, but that didn't really work. I guess I don't really know how to hate the right way." He's of course dancing around the issue of the stabbing itself, but slowly being drawn towards it by the flow of the rambling dialogue...
Nathan Hall	"...When you stood between me and her, it felt like if I stopped..." Nathan starts, and this is another rare time when his monotone breaks. For a moment, he gets a little more melodramatic and authentically emotional than normal. It sounds somber, melancholy, and distantly sad. "It felt, in the moment, I suppose it felt like I'd be something that admitted I was broken, like I said to you back then. It felt like I'd admit it was a waste. In the end it was, really, in the end it was a waste. Figured that out eventually. Sunk cost fallacies, you know. I was scared that all the work I'd done, building all that power, feeling all that hate, was just... Pointless. The idea of being that broken scared me a lot." His emotionlessness seems to restore itself with a more hardened sort of tone. "So I kept going. I turned out wrong. That wasn't your fault at all." He hangs his head, just slightly. "Sorry."
Pegasus	She really would like to hear the rationale for the stabbing, but Pegasus is focusing on the other words right now. So when the rambling approaches that, she's paying extra attention. She's thinking about what is being said. This lets her eventually, as the apology comes out and the ramble comes to a close, craft her own reply. She's not as good at words as Nathan, but she's a simple creature in some ways. Speaking from the heart - metaphorically - comes easily to her. "There's no way to hate the right way. Um, no one way. You just have to deal. Your friends knew you were wrong... and they stood up to you, like they should have. What they... what WE didn't do was understand how hard this made it for you all the time. We weren't good at explaining why. You weren't wrong for wanting or believing it, you were just wrong in method."
Pegasus	Suddenly, Pegasus stabs the cheesecake. She is, Nathan will remember, very good at stabbing things. "You stepped into a world way different when you started interacting with people like me... and her. You can't go back. You're going to make mistakes, and some pretty bad ones. I'm not angry at you... but I am hurt, and I don't mean that I've forgotten it. I've made a lot worse mistakes." She quickly holds up a finger. "And don't say that it was because I was damaged. I... it's true, but the feelings came from somewhere, and if we play that game you had a hate god shoved at you right before. I don't like to be called a robot, Nathan, and you shouldn't either. Apologizing is a good start. I think we can work with that."
Nathan Hall	Nathan stops hanging his head to listen to the response more intently, still fidgeting with those hands. There's even one of his classic delayed reactions from the suddenness of the stabbing, a few blinks and some widening of the eyes. "...Right." Nathan says, and then he nods. "Right. No matter what amplifies, the feelings come from somewhere. Even if you don't hate me, I hurt you. I'm sorry for that. I'll take due responsibility. Try to... Make things better. Heal things if I can. Stop myself from hurting you more if I can't. And I'll try not to obsess over it too much." He rubs the back of his head nervously, awkwardly, even while retaining the dignified stoicism. "Maybe get things back to normal. Sometime." There's a long pause, but it's not the kind where Nathan is clearly trying to come up with something to say, it's the kind where he knows what he wants to say but is more mustering the will to spit it out.
Pegasus	Pegasus can tell there's something there, but she isn't going to push for it directly. Instead, she chides gently, "I think the lesson we have is to talk more honestly with ourselves and to ask more when we know we're hurting. No more secrets... well, barring you job I guess." She allows for that much. "It's better to hurt me early a little than a lot later. I think... we're good though. But there's a long way to go with the others."
Nathan Hall	"...Right." Nathan says, nodding in a way that's almost hard to detect for how light it is. "I should probably tell you these things. Tell you, things like this. More often, I mean, earlier. Before awful flare-ups." There's a very long pause. "There are a few things I'm keeping under... Wraps. For now." He rubs the center of his forehead particularly. "And I should be more open with you about them. Honestly, it was tough, it was rather difficult to bring that sort of thing up to you before, because..." He makes yet another nebulous one-handed gesture. "Well. We started all this when I was less awful. It was kind of shameful to admit how bad it had gotten. Suppose I've let that cat out of the bag though. If you do really want to help that way, it's... Something I can try, being more open and direct and close with you is something I can try."
Nathan Hall	That seems to have given him a little more courage for what's coming next. "I'm not actually sure, um. I'm not entirely sure if what I'm saying next is right, if what I'm saying next is entirely appropriate to bring up right now, right specifically now, given we were just talking about how I hurt you. But in a way, it is about the idea of more... Appropriate emotional openness." Nathan says, awkwardness only really increasing there. "A friend and I had been talking. There's been another resurgence in..." Nathan starts, then gestures in his usual vague way. "Incidents. Of the kind you know of. The... Particular residential kind. The vespa woman, the burglar witch, people like that." 'Girls keep trying to live with me again now', is what is being implied there, indirectly. Also, directly! "And he said that our difficulties, our own mutual difficulties -- mine, the Heaven or Hell members... yours, in a way -- might ease a bit if I was less closed off. From you, I mean, closer to someone with a better track record than them, someone who understands more." He's completely silent for a long time, and he only really speaks up at the exact moment when the silence becomes awkwardly long. "What I mean is, I got advice that I should move out into an apartment in Boston, and ask you to move in with me." It looks like he did take some of that opening to heart. And it's probably obvious despite any and all attempts at stoicism that he's actively biting back all his usual social and commitment anxiety to try to act, very immediately, on the suggestion that the relationship should be less closed off than he's made it so far.
Pegasus	The roundabout way of approaching the proposal(not that kind) means that Pegasus is actually a little lost as to what's coming up, right until Nathan asks the final question of 'do you want to move in?' That actually makes her choke on her water briefly, but only long enough to blink and look at Nathan as if he'd grown an extra head. It just wasn't the suggestion she expected right that moment. "Um," Pegasus mumbles, actually startled into a loss of words. "Of course I would, you just surprised me. I... hmm." She tilts her head, flits and ear, and then flashes a smile. "Eheh. It's hard for me not to be cheerful, you know, even when I'm not. So being genuinely surprised in a happy way makes me feel awkward, because it's hard for me to tell you. We'll do that. We can go hunting for a place soon enough. I guess it goes full circle... and I guess it's a good thing you gave me a chance."
Nathan Hall	Nathan looks relieved, his stoic mask breaking from its usual blankness to show palpable happiness. "Right. I just... Right. I figured, it would be... Something to properly mark it. Something to properly mark more openness, more honesty on that sort of thing. Honesty on this particular sort of topic. Long overdue, anyway." There's a pause. Once again, it lasts about to its Awkward Limit, and then ends abruptly. "Yes, in a way, in a certain indirect way we're back to the way you introduced things. That was admittedly sticking in my mind a bit." And for a moment, he sees the smile and lets a small amount of his own through before the mask restores.
Nathan Hall	"I'm not a beacon, really, not much of a paragon of emotional expression myself." Nathan says, and then makes an awkward, sort of sheepishly plaintive gesture. "But I understand. So...." There's another rare sigh, but this one seems much more relieved. "Right. Honesty. More openness. Less stabbing. I'm sure we can get through this." He seems to be mentally summarizing everything that's gone down, he has that feeling of meing 'emotioned out' for the night. There's one awkward point, though. "So, I should probably start the honesty soon. Or, uh, now? Please remind me later, please give me a reminder to explain the problem about the stress head-robots. Suppose we might have had a close call with that anyway." He coughs, awkwardly. "But, cake, for now."
Pegasus	Pegasus perks up, "Oh, yeah, I have heard a little about the head robots. We really should talk about that soon. And any other issues you've had recently with living arrangements or like that. We don't have to right now, just let me know when you have time." Unfortunately, stress head-robots is something that by now, Pegasus fully expects Nathan to have. There are standards at work here. Though there is a beat. "Just, make sure you tell me if any more strange women come in and commandeer your bathtub. I think the troubles started there."