[b]ROSE AND NATHAN DANSE[/b]

Nathan was trying to remember something. This was a constant: he was forgetful, but not as one would expect of a seventy year old. He was forgetting things he had not experienced, just as he learned that which he had not known. He was remembering the smell of gunpowder after five days and nights of the ghost dance and the way the smoke rolled off the first train to screech through the transcontinental railway. 

Also, he couldn't remember the name of the one guy from Friends.

"Not the short one," he muttered. "Rose. Rose, what was his name?

"Who's name?"

"The guy from Friends."

"Joey?"

"No, how could I forget [i]Joey,[/i] the other one."

"I dunno, I never saw Friends."

Nathan sighed. He had tried to raise Rose well but, clearly, failed in some regards. [i]No man can accomplish everything. And Joey couldn't accomplish anything.[/i] "I fear for you, sometimes."

The park bench was peaceful, as were most places that Nathan went. He had a disarming personality - something about the genial old smile and gentle aura he gave off. He was many-in-one. Sometimes when he closed his eyes he saw himself through the eyes of a pigeon perched thirty feet away, or had a brief little glimpse through the eyes of someone long dead. If he listened close, he could hear the whispers from beyond the passing cars and constant noise of city life. Many people had died in this city through the centuries. Someone had a heart attack on this park bench only a few months ago. If he focused, he felt the pain creep up his left arm, saw the colors blur and run. 

"...It definitely wasn't Joey," Nathan muttered. He turned to look at Rose for a moment. She had on her proper prosthesis - the leather-and-steel one was crude, but she preferred it. Understandably. There was a beauty in simplicity, and the electronic one was prone to break. [i]You don't have to recharge steel.[/i] She was constantly working with it, idly making her fingers dance one way, then the other, rolling her wrist, flexing and releasing. The prosthesis lacked the finesse of a real hand, but was better than nothing. Nathan wondered how precise they'd be in another few decades. [i]Won't matter. She'll still be wearing the leather one.[/i]

"What," Nathan began, looking across the gathering. Downtown was always busy, he had found, the few times he had come through Verthaven before. Nathan did not care for cities. There was lots of noise, too much energy and life all bustling about. The desert and the wild was simpler: a big empty expanse, and the noise was all animals and the occasional person. Easier by far to listen to. That was a solo performance; this was a rock concert. Nathan remembered rock concerts - these he had actually attended. He managed to get backstage by convincing Led Zeppelin's bouncers he had mescaline. [i]I love stereotypes.[/i] "Do you think of this place, Rose?"

"It's different," she decided, brushing some hair back behind her ear with her left hand. "But not bad. Maybe not good either. I don't really know yet."

"There are more like us here," Nathan said, a statement that was wonderfully neutral.

"There are," she said, the subtext of what he had said not lost on her. [i]More like us. But not more of us.[/i] 

"They have academies. I like to think I have trained you fairly well, but these people haven't had their brains boiled in the desert for fifty years. Might be they know a thing or two I don't."

[i]I doubt it.[/i] "I'm sure they do," she said, nudging him with her prosthetic arm. "What are the plans for the rest of the day?"

Nathan shrugged. "I thought you knew."

Rose rolled her eyes, watching people pass by. There was certainly lots of energy in this place, and she would have been lying if she said she wasn't a bit excited to experience being a teenager in the big city. Hers had been a bit of a nomadic lifestyle. Mom and Dad had been wont to move around a bit, and then...[i]some cold feeling lurched in her gut, like an empty where everything should be[/i]...Nathan was constantly on the move. Coming to Verthaven had been extremely surprising for her: he never went to one place, not like this. Not buying an apartment and packing a bag for more than a few nights. Nathan had a smile across his weathered face, and a devilish gleam in his eyes - one that she had learned to signify "I'm thinking of ways to mess with that person over there" - but there was something below it. [i]He is close. Or thinks he is.[/i]

[i]"They are here?"[/i] Rose asked very quietly in their native tongue. It was truly theirs now. She heard it only from him. He heard it from her and the dead.

Nathan's smile broke for a minute as he turned to look at her. He did not say anything, he merely nodded. 

[i]"Good."[/i]

"...so, if it wasn't Joey, and it wasn't Ross..."

"You never said it wasn't Ross."

"I never say lots of things. Learn to listen."