xp_logs | Kashmir Waltz: That Demon Car

Nathan and Angelo's rented Jeep turns out to be in fragile health, and breaks down miles from nowhere. They set up camp for the night, and in the course of campfire conversation Angelo finds out more about what's led Nathan into this new line of work as well as a few of Nathan's other recent secrets.

"Now I know why all the locals were laughing at us as we drove through those first couple of villages," Nathan said, and gave the Jeep a vengeful kick in the wheel. "Fucking thing." Car trouble. In backcountry Kashmir. It would have been funny if it hadn't been so aggravating. "That rental agency must have a bad reputation or some such bloody thing."

They had made it fifty kilometers from Srinagar before the Jeep had suddenly and abruptly given up the ghost. And it wasn't as if they'd had any warning, either. First, some odd noises, and ten, five minutes later, black smoke belching from under the hood.

"We are not going anywhere," Nathan said darkly, slamming the hood shut. "That belt's a total loss."

Angelo sighed. "Where was the nearest town, again?"

"Yusmarg, and it's not much of a town. Fifteen kilometres, at least." Nathan eyed the darkening sky. "And we are so not trekking back there at night, that's just asking for trouble." He smiled wryly at Angelo. "Well, I did bring a little basic camping gear. Call it a precognitive moment?" Really, it had just been common sense. You didn't expect everything to go as planned when you were travelling in a place like this, and a prudent person made allowances for that.

"...Campin' it is, then. At least we don't have to sleep in the Jeep."

Nathan looked around, then waved a hand at the Jeep. It levitated smoothly several inches upward, then floated over, off the road and to a soft landing in a half-circle clearing that would probably make a decent campsite.

Angelo grinned. "Right. Where's the stuff?"

"In the back. A couple of bedrolls. You get them out, I'll start a fire." A circular patch of turf stripped itself away, and rocks floated over to form a perimeter around the impromptu firepit.

Angelo nodded and went to fetch the bedrolls, laying them out in what looked like a good sleeping spot. "So, we walk out to Yusmarg tomorrow? Find a phone or somethin'?"

"Or engine parts, preferably. Much as I'd like the head of the bastard who rented us this thing, I can wait until we get back to Srinagar for that." Nathan snorted softly. "We're going to be a day late getting to Duncan's at this rate." Kindling and wood was assembling itself in a neat box-shape at Nathan's feet, and he gazed thoughtfully at it. Maybe he didn't need a match... Reaching out telekinetically, he agitated the air molecules around the kindling, and smiled in satisfaction as it caught fire.

"You said it wasn't much of a town, though," Angelo commented with a frown. "Think they'll have a mechanic?"

"I can fix it myself if I have the part. They might at least be willing to sell something that'll do." And once they got to Duncan's, they could beg another vehicle if need be, or get it properly fixed at worst.

"That'd work. Just hope they've got one, then."

"Mmm." The fire was growing nicely. "Grab some dinner from our supplies if you want - oh, and throw me the small leather bag from my duffel?"

Angelo moved back to the Jeep and fished out food and the bag. "Here. What's in this?" he asked curiously.

"Pills," Nathan said a bit dourly. "Hand me the canteen?" Angelo did, and Nathan took the antivirals first, then the antiepileptics, aware that Angelo was looking at the second set of pills curiously. It struck him, suddenly, that he really should have told Angelo, given that they were traveling together relatively far from medical help at the moment. "I've been having these... seizures," he confessed, taking another swallow of water and then digging out the painkiller bottle. The burns were almost entirely healed and his arm was only aching a little, but the ribs were still bothering him.

Angelo looked up sharply from the food he was preparing. "Seizures?"

"Seizures," Nathan said with a brief, humorless smile, waving the one pill bottle. "Anti-seizure medication. Dilantin, which, creepily enough, they used to use on us at Mistra whenever they pulled us in for work on our conditioning."

"When did that start?"

"I'm not absolutely sure. The problem is that I don't seem to be remembering them as anything beyond momentary zoning out. But they got worse after my... accident. Clarice was there for one and told the doctors."

Angelo winced. "Good for the Pixie, then. The meds are workin', right?"

"They seem to be." No need to mention the headaches, which were unlikely to be side effects, as Jean had pointed out. Nathan shrugged a little, poking at the fire. "I should probably have told you before asking you along, so you knew what you might have to deal with. Sorry."

Angelo shrugged, turning back to his dinner since Nathan didn't seem to be looking at him. "You've told me now, an' nothin' happened before you did. We're good."

"Don't mention it to Amanda when we get back. Or anyone, actually. I don't think it's necessary for anyone who doesn't need to know to know." He smiled humorlessly. "Can't have people thinking I'm decrepit on top of careless."

"Secret's safe with me," Angelo answered tonelessly, not happy about not telling Amanda. It wasn't his choice, though, really.

Nathan shot him an aggravated look. "Can you blame me?" he asked sharply. "The way the lot of you walked around at the beginning of last month thinking 'Ho-hum, Nathan's in the hospital again, must be Tuesday'?" He poked more aggressively at the fire. "I could have throttled most of you. Would have, if it hadn't hurt so much to move that first week."

"I'm not sayin' everybody needs to know. Just not happy about keepin' stuff from Amanda. But I will."

Nathan looked up from the fire, eyeing Angelo. "She doesn't need to know this," he said bluntly, stepping hard on the rising tide of anger. There was absolutely no reason to get this aggravated about it. "She's happier not knowing it. If it's gotten to the point where even the prospect of something wrong with me gets her making snarky comments on the journals about not being able to heal me anymore, she doesn't need to know." He hadn't gone back to her to find out what that had been about, and for a moment, his conscience pricked him for that.

But she was eighteen years old, had more than enough on her plate, and if she wanted distance, which she certainly seemed to, he wasn't about to push himself and his issues on her. He'd made the mistake of holding on too tightly with Dom, and even if that had all come right in the end, he had to wonder if the process couldn't have been a whole lot easier on both of them if he'd just backed off when he should have. Jack's comments about his control-freak tendencies when it came to the people he cared about and how that was just one more trauma response in the end had been at the forefront of his mind a lot over the last few months.

Besides. She wanted normality, and his life was just getting more and more complicated. There was a basic compatibility problem there.

"I already said I wasn't gonna tell her," Angelo pointed out, poking at his food. "An' I won't."

"Yes, but you still think that's somehow doing something wrong. Keeping it from her. As if she had the right to know," Nathan said, his gaze dropping back to the fire. It had come out more bitterly than he'd intended, and his voice went flat as he continued. "Neither of you really have any idea of half of what's gone on with me this summer."

"An' you're not gonna tell us." It was not a question. "'s your right not to, I guess."

"I've gotten the sense over the last few months that Amanda resents that. That she interprets it as me cutting her out of my life, and I honestly haven't known how to deal with that. Full disclosure is not an option, even if I thought she really did want it." There was no way he was dragging her into the so-lucky circle of people who knew what was going on with Saul and Gideon, and the less said about his encounter with Pete, the better. Nathan looked back up at Angelo. "You, on the other hand," he said quietly, "might need to know some of it, given that I've involved you in something that's a lot more personal than it looks on the surface. I'm just not sure I should tell you if you're going to react like this. If what I tell you is going to be interpreted as a secret that you're shamefully keeping from Amanda, instead of important information I'm telling you because I think you both need and deserve to know if you're going to help me with this."

Angelo thought about this for a long few moments, then nodded slowly. "Amanda's sensitive about that stuff. You know she is. I've been... tryin' not to be. An' if you really think she shouldn't know... it's your decision."

Nathan studied him for another long few moments. "All right," he finally said, a little more normally. "You met my father this summer. You remember me posting about how it didn't work out?"

"Yeah," Angelo answered simply, with a sideways look. "There was more to that, then?"

"A lot more." Nathan poked at the fire again. It spat sparks upward into the sky, which was almost completely dark now. The stars were coming out. "I can't tell you everything. Some of it is team-related, and classified. But my father... and my uncle, whom I met this summer as well, are both mutants, and both Social Darwinists who've been experimented for longer than I've been alive with putting their theories into practice."

Angelo took this in in silence for a while. "I think you said somethin' about that, once."

"It's what I thought I remembered about my father. It turned out to be true." Nathan stared into the flames. "I'm not sure what else is. I know what he told me, which is that I didn't wind up at Mistra by accident. My uncle arranged it. Saul agreed to let him."

Angelo dropped his knife, fists clenching. "They... what?"

"It was meant to test me," Nathan said dispassionately. "Turn me into someone... strong, a survivor. They're very pleased by how it turned out. Successful experiment, that I broke free and all..." He trailed off, resting his chin on a hand for a moment. "When I finally did run, Gideon - that would be my uncle - didn't think that I needed to be encumbered by a wife and child. Or maybe he was testing them too. I'm not positive."

Angelo's head snapped up. "You mean, he...?"

"He told Mistra where they could find Aliya and Tyler. How that ended, you already know." Nathan looked back at him finally, the firelight flickering in his eyes. "All of this is just background, Angelo," he said quietly. "So you know the kind of people we're dealing with. The problem is that I was just one experiment of many. They're doing things, out in the world... gathering information, selling it, information that does a lot of damage. They're manipulating events to create conflict, to watch their philosophies working themselves out in the real world."

"And you're tryin' to stop them." Again, it was a statement rather than a question.

Nathan nodded slowly, looking away again. "That's the reason behind all of this, really," he said quietly. "The sudden new 'job', all this interest in the more subtle ways that mutants can be used or manipulated or abused. What the X-Men do, even what intel does... to some extent it's all crisis work, either immediate or preventative. What we're doing is something different. We're looking for..." He paused, remembering the words he'd used with Charles. "... the things that don't even look like battles until after we've lost them. Like finding out why a food agency that's behaved as a tool of its government in the past is suddenly interested in mutants." Nathan shook his head. "You know how many situations like this we're turning up as we do more research. Not all of them can or should be dealt with. But the ones that should be... they need different strategies, different tactics."

Angelo nodded. "So we're like a third team workin' on the same kind of thing?"

Nathan grinned suddenly - if a bit tightly - despite the topic of conversation. "Just you and me, Espinosa. It's thoroughly insane, actually, and I've been realizing that more and more as we've been working. We couldn't do it all if we both had Jamie's power and didn't need to sleep for the rest of our lives."

"Doesn't mean we can't do anythin', though. A lot, even."

"Now I know why I hired you. The boundless optimism." It wasn't entirely a joke. Nathan took a pair of painkillers, with a swig from the canteen. "My accident," he said finally. "Or should I say 'accident'..."

Angelo glanced at him again, suddenly suspicious. "Yeah?"

"It wasn't anything of the sort," Nathan said with a slight shrug. He wasn't going to tell Angelo the details, but maybe it was pride... well, yes, it was pride. "I didn't step out in front of a truck."

"I thought that was kind of... unlikely. But you said it's what happened, so..."

Nathan smiled a little. "Well, I'm flattered by the trust. But what happened is that I took... a stupid risk, trying to get information that would have helped a lot of people. Obviously," he murmured dryly, "it didn't work out as planned. But I can't be sorry I tried. It was that important, in the grand scheme of things." He sighed softly, the faces of the kids from Chad coming back to mind, again. He was going to be a good long while forgiving himself for fucking that up, whatever GW said about being able to get his own intel.

Angelo nodded. "If it was worth it, it was worth it."

"It grates, you know. All of the jokes, or the dismissive crap about how accident-prone I am." A quiet sort of vehemence entered his voice as he went on. "I don't get hurt out of carelessness, or a need for attention. Or specifically to worry the people who care about me. I pointed out to Moira a couple of weeks ago that the last four times I've gotten seriously hurt, I was either saving lives or trying to. You willingly walk through the fire, you get burned, Angelo. And there have been a number of times this summer that I've gone out with the team to help people, and come back with nothing worse than bruises." Oh, he needed to be careful or he'd get off ranting again...

"People never remember when it goes right, though," Angelo pointed out quietly. "They blur, but the times when stuff goes wrong don't."

"People rarely know when it goes right," Nathan said, tossing another stick into the fire. "I wouldn't have it any other way, and I think the rest of the team would agree with me. It would just be nice if people kept in mind that there's a lot they don't know, and maybe cut us a little slack when things do go wrong. Trust me, it might be upsetting from the point of view of an observer to see someone you care about wind up in the medlab, but it's not any fun from our perspective, either."

"It'd be nice," Angelo agreed. "Probably isn't gonna happen, though."

"I don't know. I have some hopes that some of you are growing up a little." Nathan smiled very faintly at him. "I'm telling you all of this, aren't I?"

"Yeah." Angelo returned the smile. "You are."

"Of course, if you don't keep it to yourself, I'm going to take you over my knee," Nathan said with a perfectly straight face. Just to see his reaction.

Angelo eyed him, holding back laughter. "You can try."

Nathan laughed for him. "Eat your dinner. Brat."