Loose Ends, Part Two

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

After they arrive home safely, Kurt and Nate talk about Lense, the past, Nate's new trick, and Kurt's teleporting fumes.



Nathan grimaced, biting back a curse as he splashed more water on his face. "I ought to be actually washing out my eyes, I suppose," he muttered, well-aware of the fact that Kurt, still in his leathers as well, was standing behind him. "And we need to remember to tell Scott that your fumes can be used as a weapon. That's new."

"It is indeed", Kurt agreed a little ruefully. "And I suppose a telekinetic with detailed enough control could achieve the same effect, since it can be done at all. How are your eyes?"

"Stinging a little," Nathan said, straightening from the sink, "but I don't think there's any real damage. I can see just fine. I'll stop in and have Amelia take a look when I check on Kyle." He glanced at himself in the mirror. His eyes were reddened, as was the skin around them, but it wasn't too bad, he thought.

Kurt nodded. "That is good. She may have something that can soothe them."

Nathan shook his head. "We bring the parking garage crashing down, and what am I left with? Irritated eyes. I think I'll keep my new exoskeleton," he said, a bit more brightly than he really felt. "Obvious it most certainly is, but still."

"It was very impressive", Kurt said solemnly. "When did you learn to do that?"

"Askani. And Tim. But mostly Askani." Nathan straightened, wincing a bit as he put his weight on the leg with the sore knee. He'd have some bruises; Lense had knocked him around a bit before he'd turned on the exoskeleton. "You were probably a little too busy back on that mission in Canada to notice it, but that was its first appearance."

"I do not think I was best-placed to see it, no. Possibly I was not even in the right sightline. She manifested, then? Or was it Tim?"

"No, me. I needed something to fight Tim with. She had used something similar, and it was just... there, all of a sudden. I can fly in it, too," Nathan said with an odd little smile. "Well. You saw that much back at the parking garage."

Kurt nodded, still impressed by the memory. "You cannot fly telekinetically without the exoskeleton?"

"Not very well. I need to get Moira to help me test what I can do with it - new trick, like I said. I don't want it crapping out on me at a bad moment." He took a deep breath, then went over and sat down on one of the locker room's benches. He didn't have the energy to take the leathers off. "I can't believe this happened," he said, and knew Kurt would know that he wasn't talking about the exoskeleton.

Kurt nodded quietly, moving over to curl on one of the other benches. "None of us saw this coming, Nathan."

"He had a chance," Nathan said angrily, if with a lack of volume. He didn't really want to shout at Kurt, after all. "Next best thing to a clean slate. The government wanted to help all of us reintegrate, they thought they owed it to us. And he threw it all away."

"Did he try to reintegrate?" Kurt asked quietly. "At all?"

"I don't know," Nathan muttered. "I didn't keep track of him like I should have. I was... angry, I suppose. After he didn't support the others on Youra."

"That is understandable. What is to happen to him now?"

Nathan shrugged. "He's blown it," he said heavily, thinking about what he sensed from the agents they'd handed John to back at the remains of the parking garage. "I suspect they'll go a little more lightly on him than they ordinarily would, given the circumstances, but he's proven himself to be a danger to innocent people. They owe us," he said a bit bitterly, "but they don't owe us to the point of being stupid about it."

Kurt nodded, tail curling up round his legs. "A prison sentence, then?"

"Possibly. Back into psychiatric evaluation and treatment at the least." Nathan shifted on the bench, feeling a sudden pang at the thought, despite everything. "It could have happen to any of us, if we misstep," he said slowly. "We're dangerous. We were trained to be weapons, and they're going to watch us until they're sure we can trusted to be human beings."

"I think perhaps you should not be counting yourself in this", Kurt said, watching him with worried eyes. "Your conditioning was broken far longer ago than his, after all."

"I don't really, I suppose," Nathan said a bit restlessly. "I've proven that I can behave. I've been useful. They don't have any reason not to let me continue on my merry way, so long as I keep my mouth shut about everything I know."

"And yet... you seem not entirely happy with that being the case."

"I'm not." Nathan stared at the floor. "He was afraid," he said more quietly. "On Youra. He didn't help the others because he was afraid. Is that so wrong, Kurt? Look at the odds they were facing. Look at me, and how long it took me to gather my courage to actually do something about Mistra." He sighed a bit raggedly. "He had a few weeks to adjust to the cracked conditioning, and he didn't manage to do it. The only wonder is that so many of Tim's team from Canada did."

"Then if he is going to be given psychiatric assessment now, perhaps it will help him to adjust", Kurt offered softly, knowing it was somewhat lame but having nothing better to suggest.

"I got a pass on the things I did after my conditioning first broke," Nathan said bleakly. "Double-standard? Or just because they couldn't have prosecuted my crimes - they were all against Mistra personnel - and still kept their secret..."

"Perhaps. But you cannot know which is the truth, and what's done now is done."

"He was angry at me for all of the opportunities I'd enjoyed," Nathan said heavily, rubbing at the back of his neck. "He probably had reason."

"No", Kurt said simply. "You did not take any opportunities from him, and so he did not have reason. You should not feel guilty for the way things happened to turn out."

"I was supposed to save them," Nathan said very quietly, his eyes dropping back to the floor. "And yeah, I know I'm backsliding. It's just... hard to be back here, thinking about all of this. I thought I'd had it more resolved in my head than I apparently do."

"Such things as happened today often stir up what we had thought was resolved. It is easier to forget, in a sense, with more distance."

Nathan took a deep breath, then let it out. "I'm feeling sorry for myself," he said. "I shouldn't. I should be feeling sorry for Kyle. John told him about the other kids in Vermont."

Kurt winced. "He had not been told what happened to them before? But I suppose not telling him was the kinder choice."

"He had enough to deal with. He didn't need survivor's guilt on top of it. I just hope," Nathan said, getting up, "that he's better able to handle it now, than he would have been a year ago."

"I think we can all hope for that", Kurt said with a sad smile.



During Kyle's post-rescue checkup, Nate stops by to talk to him, and to give him some reassurances. Kyle's not exactly doing well, emotionally. And an offer to go to the memorial in Arlington. And Ani's email address.



"Hey, champ." Still in his leathers, Nathan paused in the door of the examining room before he came in slowly, well-aware just from Kyle's body language that he was not a happy young feral. At all. Best to try and keep it soothing. "Dr. Voght tells me they're not going to keep you in here," he said with a slight smile. "Hurray for healing factors, huh?"

Kyle'd had -plenty- of time to be angry at Nate, first for not letting him watch the butt-kicking, and then for not telling him stuff, and then again for not letting him watch the butt-kicking, just for good measure. "Yeah, I guess they help.." he answered quietly. "Keep a guy alive and all."

Nathan pulled a chair up to the bed and sat down. "He told you something, didn't he?" he asked quietly. He knew perfectly well what John had told him. He'd seen it in his thoughts, and in Kyle's, but sometimes you needed to say things aloud. "Something that upset you to hear."

"Yeah...." Kyle stared down at his toes, curling them and watching the claws slide in and out. "Five other kids? And they all were younger than me? And they died?" He broke awy from examining his toes, only to look at the claws on his hands. "Yeah, I'm upset, you could call it that."

Upset, yet being oddly subdued. Which was worrying. Nathan, for a moment, almost drew back, part of him pointing out that Charles or Leonard might be far better choices to discuss this with Kyle.

But no. They would discuss it with Kyle, almost certainly - hell, he himself would make sure of it, if nothing else - but Kyle was owed the truth. And he was the one who owed it to him.

"There were six of you in that facility in Vermont," he said quietly, resting his still-gloved hands on his knees. "You were the only one surviving, when we got there. We didn't know that, when we went in. We thought we would be bringing six kids back out." His smile was a tiny, sad thing. "I arranged for a larger helicopter, because we thought there would be six."

"I dunno what to say..." Kyle said. "I mean, I .. I wanna be angry, but I dunno who I can be angry at, and I'm not gonna -cry-, because that'd be fucking stupid, and I'm pissy with the gravity guy, but he didn't kill those kids. He was all emo about it." He shrugged and absently fiddled with the frayed sleeve on his shirt. "What happened to them? Did their folks get told?"

Nathan nodded slowly. "The Professor and the government took care of that," he said softly, keeping his voice even, calm. "I... brought them back." For a moment, the memory of the bodies in their too-large body bags came back, the chill of the freezer as sudden and sharp as it had been that day, and Nathan took a deep breath, then let it out again. "They weren't forgotten," he said.

"Good." Kyle said. "Was it really because of, you know, the healing thing, and the feral thing?" He couldn't meet Nate's eyes, and didn't entirely want to either. "He, the guy, said that ferals survived more, but that one of the other kids was feral too.."

"It would have been part of it," Nathan said gently. "But it's more complicated than that." He took another deep breath. "They used to tell us - the adult us, the ones that survived to be operatives - that we survived because we were more pliable. Easier to manipulate," he explained. "Because we didn't fight the conditioning as hard, we didn't die. But I found out last year," he said with a very faint smile, "that they were lying about that. It's the opposite. Those of us who survived, survived because we fought. Because there was a part of us that could never quite... surrender. It didn't break us," he concluded quietly. "Not entirely."

Kyle had to chew on that for a minute, before it made enough sense to sink in. "So, I didn't keel over and die because I'm too stubborn?" He barked out a short laugh. "Man, and my mom said being a stubborn brat'd only get me in trouble. I mean, it does that too, but it's nice to know she's wrong."

Nathan watched him for a long moment. "You haven't asked me why we didn't tell you," he said more softly.

"I was getting there?" Kyle shrugged, still not looking up "I figured you guys were trying to keep me from, I dunno, trying to go find all the people and chew on them or something."

"You'd just been through something horrible," Nathan said. "You needed to recover. Think back to those first few months and all the sessions with Doctor Samson... how much harder would it have been for you to have known about the other kids back then?" His eyes went distant for a moment, remembering sending Kyle back to sleep in the helicopter when he'd come to briefly on the way back to the mansion. So that he wouldn't see the bodybags, even in his drugged state.

"I figured.. Just doesn't mean I have to like it any." He remembered wanting to bite people on the ankle just for locking -him- up in that room. Even now he wanted to find someone and at least give them a good punch in the mouth. "Not much I can do about it though, I guess."

"When your healing factor's taken care of the bruises, there's somewhere I should take you." Nathan leaned back in the chair. "You know what Arlington National Cemetery is, yes?"

"Um. It's, uh, in... Arlington?" Kyle answered tentatively. "Which is somewhere, um, near DC? Where all the dead presidents and soldiers and all are buried?" He wasn't sure that was right, but something about it stuck from history class.

Nathan nodded. "There's a memorial there," he murmured. "For all of them. The operatives, the kids, everyone who died." The smile came back, still sad but a little stronger. "It's not... obvious. This all has to stay secret, still. But I'll show it to you."

"That'd be cool." Kyle said.. "Or, well, not cool, you know, but good." He wasn't entirely sure how a secret memorial worked, exactly. "I'd kinda like that. You know, get to, I dunno, at least know somebody knows, even if it's not a lot of people."

"It's not fair," Nathan said quietly, "that it has to be kept secret. It worries me sometimes, that it does. Things like this shouldn't be swept under the carpet, because then they'll happen again. But that's the way the world works."

Kyle shrugged, not sure what to say. After what felt like far too much silence, he looked up. "Sometimes I think the world's a pretty crappy place. Sometimes, I dunno, not so much. Every time I get it figured out, I find out I'm wrong, so I kinda figure I'll never get it, but I kinda gotta live in it."

Nathan rose, slipping out of the heavy protective jacket as he did. "I imagine Amelia's going to be back in here to set you free fairly soon," he said. "Try and get some rest, okay? I know it's not going to be easy to sleep after this, but you should try. It'll make your healing factor work faster."

"I might get Marius to go for a run or something with me if I can't get to sleep." Kyle said. He'd been thinking about it, at least. "Figure I've got an excuse to miss morning classes if I have to, and if I bust my ass running then I'll pass out and sleep until 'm not all worn out anymore." And running was easy and he didn't have to -think- if he was running on the paths in the woods.

"You know what I always say about physical activity." Nathan paused at the door. "Check your email, once you're out of here," he said gently. "I'll send you the new email address you can use to get in touch with Ani."

Kyle nodded. "I will. Cool." Going a few rounds on the heavy bag was looking pretty good too, now that he thought about it. Some violence on an inanimate object, some running and taunting with Marius, and he could just get back to normal. Hopefully. Maybe. He could try, at least.