Though the process of cleaning up a mess he didn’t exactly create, but definitely had a part in directly making, wasn’t the most ideal way to spend a good portion of his day, there was no way Nate was going to leave the interior of Arcana as a disaster zone for Molly to walk to when she returned - whenever it was that she would. How long she had been in Limbo, he didn’t know. How long she would stay in Limbo, he couldn’t say. How long it would take for her to claw her way back to the top was still an uncertainty and not even the demons, disappeared for now to perhaps the very dimensions they originated from, could be of some comfort to him as he swept up the toppled remnants of magical oddities that had been bashed, broken, and otherwise strewn across the store front - various ingredients of no particular importance to him scattered among destroyed packages of tarot cards that he took no stock in while pages of burnt and destroyed books joined the blanketing light layer of sawdust and plaster from product shelving and walls that had - easily so - seen better days.

But still, it provided time for him to think - a dangerous, but welcome use of time even as he stretched his mind to further depths of mental control, embracing the distraction of thought and the occasional blip of information feed from the active Internet on his mobile phone while picking up the scattered cards - at least those that were salvageable - to put them in proper order and in individuals stick on the glass counter that was more commonly home to one bookish magic shop employee with a bad case of eldritch abominations. It was calm despite the wreckage and it was quiet even among the scratch of broken glass being swept into as close a pile as he could manage it - something he wasn’t sure why he didn’t expect, but that he easily appreciated. The shards of glass had come next, carefully turning and twisting them in place like a puzzle to what segments of the window that remained while deeper forces, those connected to cosmic powers far greeted than his own, heated them into place, drawing telekinetic lines of severe heat across the cracks to melt them together in what was a temporary fix. Magic, he expected if not the building to do it itself, could repair it properly, but for now, it was all Nate had the ability to do.

And by the time he was done, perhaps it didn’t look entirely like it should have with only a semblance of organization the shop was usually kept in, but it was a good deed and - supposedly - those were never wasted, no matter how small in the grand scheme of things they actually were. It definitely hadn’t been going into Limbo himself to drag her out though the intention still remained, resting in his very fingertips without the means of accomplishing it on his own, but it was something he could do to help in a situation that had widely been out of his control while he figured out what to do about the rest.

But he wouldn’t leave her - not like he had been left so many times, be it by a mother who had only seen the darkness as absolution for all the wrongs she had been death in life until she had met her supposed end among the merging of the Phoenix and its lost spark; or by a father who, numerous times, had left him or sent him away with no promise that they would see each other again and only lies that he would never be alone; and by himself when he considered his own actions in regards to a future self, body overtaken by the techno-organic virus laid upon him by Apocalypse, that would only see to the end as he became the very thing Nate would attempt to stop, erasing and altering the memories of those closest to him to ensure the success of his mission. Even his wife couldn’t have gotten him to stay, enduring war and strife and loss without him in a future where a mindwipe was hardly enough to ensure Stryfe wouldn’t chase him through the time stream, causing harm to anyone who stood in his way.

Manipulative like mother and avoidant life father, like petulant time traveling son, he supposed, perhaps always destined and maybe even unworthy of anything else to feel this level of aloneness when it had been all he truly knew since infancy; but equally so, they had been things that had to be done, that he would probably do again given the necessity, and they weren't so easily avoided as they might have seemed - if not because of the immediate consequence then because of the long-lying effects to come as time progressed.

And time was never in a straight line, no rulebook present within that said things had to be that way even if he felt it so deeply then, nothing written in stone that said he would turn into his father and nothing etched in the stars that he would become his mother; and it was only when he had found himself back in the confines of a hotel room, temporary accommodations considering the hunt he would have to endure while his apartment was still a fire wreckage to be cleared, that he considered an alternative to the wallowing pit of aloneness that he had found himself sinking, if not drowning, in though poise and demeanor wouldn't have suggested it to the public eye. It was someone he knew from that other life though the shift in time, in days, wouldn’t have had the once-assassin covert agent, part of the continued history of the strike team he had once been at the helm of and that he crossed paths with time and time again, but truth to be told, it wasn’t Betsy Braddock he was looking for in that moment.

It might have been easier to reach out to her telepathically and a part of her considered it until the very notion of surprise came to mind - a random voice in the depths of her head at no expected moment might have come off as intrusive, but there were always old fashioned, non-powered means of reaching out that - well, maybe they would go rejected, maybe not, but easily worth a shot. Resting on the nightstand had been his phone, snatched up as he stood for what was quick to become intentionally slow pacing around the room as he thumbed through his contacts - not that it would take very long to allow his thumb to hover over ‘Bradford’ nearly at the top.

One ring.

Two rings.

Maybe he could have beat the third if hanging up became a viable course of action albeit not the desired one - but no, he wasn’t quite enough for that, too preoccupied with his own thoughts of what he was going to say and what they could have potentially gotten themselves into - dinner, drinks, maybe a dance - never mind when because there was always a when to be considered when years passed might have seemed far less convoluted than the present and the future was easily full of potential.

“Hey, it’s been a bit…” Obviously. “Want to grab a drink?”