xp_logs | Betsy and Nathan, Tuesday morning

Betsy stops by the hospital to try and debrief Nathan, now that he's conscious. It goes a little better than Jean's attempt to scan his mind, but it's still not particularly informative.

Cold. The first thing he registered when he woke up was that he was still freezing cold, and Nathan shivered, blinking up at the ceiling. The buzzing in the air was louder, which meant that his fever had gone back up. Again. And no Cain in the room. Where had Cain gone?

Outside in the hall. He tried to reach out telepathically but froze in mid-projection, something close to a whimper slipping out at the stabbing pain behind his eyes. The catch in his breath set him coughing again, and as he tried desperately to stop, his vision going white with pain, he realized that Cain wasn't alone out in the hall. Familiar mind. Betsy? What was Betsy doing here?

A quick rap on the door and Betsy opened it and poked her head inside. She winced inwardly at the pain emanating from her bedridden friend. "Can't tear you from here, can we?"

Nathan swallowed, nearly gagging at the taste of blood. "Guess not," he rasped, his eyes watering. "Here to... debrief me? Or s-social call?"

"Both," Betsy managed without grimacing. She calmed the frayed edges of her thoughts, extending the sensations towards the man on the table. Calm, yet not intrusive. She closed the door behind her and took a seat next to the bed. "Mind telling me what happened?"

He didn't dare take a deep breath. He'd just start coughing again. "Pete," he managed weakly. "Was Gideon's... client." He was assuming Scott would have passed along the basic details on how he'd wound up in the middle of this mess in the first place. "Buying info on those camps in Africa... the training camps."

She felt herself hedge at the mention of Gideon and Pete, involved together in something so dark, but kept her inward and outward presence calm and receptive. "Do we know any reason why Pete would be involved in such dealings?"

"Said it was just business." The words came out sounding almost desolate, even in his hoarse, broken voice. "Just business... had to be as good as his word."

There was the flash of an office. Hot knives flying at intense speeds. Betsy flinched inwardly and she cleared her throat. "Business. Right. And the fight? How'd that kick off?"

"... me." Nathan blinked up at her as her face swam in and out of focus. "Burned the files... he'd burned the files before I got there. The information on the camps was in his head."

"And you couldn't let him go without trying to retrieve it," Betsy raised a knowing eyebrow at him. She sighed loudly as she studied the bandaged form in front of her. "He could've killed you, Nate. Don't you have any sense of self-preservation?"

"And I could have killed him." He almost managed a growl. Almost. Not quite. "Damned... EM distortion. Only reason I didn't kick his ass..." He didn't dare project, but he let the memory of the EM rig coming on, the tearing distortion that was more or less equivalent to psionic electrocution for him, sit at the top of his mind. "Must've known," he muttered more weakly. "That he'd do... something, sometime, that meant I'd be there and couldn't walk away." Either that or he'd just been paranoid, as Moira had said. But hadn't he told Pete, back at the beginning, that... Nathan blinked up at the ceiling, losing the thread of his thought.

"But why?" Betsy interjected. "What possible purpose could this serve?" Looking away as she processed the information, Betsy's face hardened. "There has to be a reason. There's always a reason."

"Don't care." Some of the bewildered anger was back, poking through the haze. "This is... unforgiveable. Kids, Betsy..." The memories of the camp in Chad hit him with the strength of a physical blow and Nathan winced exhaustedly, shifting on the bed and ignoring the way the burns protested the movement - loudly, even through the haze of drugs.

Betsy kept her face impassive. Part of her disbelieved what she was hearing. She knew Pete. He was a right bastard, but he wasn't into the unnecessary, tactless art of child peddling.

If Nate was right... Betsy realized she'd been grinding her teeth. "I know," Betsy said, trying to keep him from exerting himself.

Nathan subsided with something close to a whimper. "Can't move around," he muttered desperately, his thoughts fraying under the strain of the fever, the difference between now and the medlab back in March blurring, just a little. "I want to get out of bed but they won't let me."

Betsy turned away from him, ripples falling over her calm facade. Can't see me crack, Betsy repeated, over and over again. When she regained her composure, Betsy exhaled. "Right. And where would you want to go, if you could get out of bed?"

"Tyler's crying," Nathan said hazily, his eyes closing despite his best effort to keep them open.

"Shhhh," Betsy hushed, keeping her voice from cracking. "Tyler's safe with his Mum." She choked on her words and forcibly pushed past it, knowing she needed to soothe him, make him feel protected. "You need your rest. Sleep, now. Everything will be the way it's supposed to be when you wake up."

Confused images tumbled through his mind. The camp in Chad, but all of the kids were small blond boys with bright smiles except they weren't smiling, because they were dead and buried in the desert, and there were African children wandering the Alaska woods, confused and crying out for help, and Tyler was... Rachel was... the images were slowing down, going dark. But he could still hear crying, chasing him down into the blackness.

Betsy stood up and leaned over Nathan's bed, placing her hand on his forearm. She felt overrun with emotion but wiped angrily at her face. Nate's last thoughts of lost children roaming the arctic tundra, of his children past and present...

She walked the expanse between the bed and door, managing a stony expression as she exited the room. Looking up, her eyes seemed to flare crimson, as she caught Cain's eye and turned and left without another word.