xp_logs | Nathan and Amanda, Saturday night

Upon returning with the Blackbird, Amanda finds out that Nathan's gone back into the infirmary and stops in to visit. They manage to have a mostly coherent conversation, but Nathan's clearly fading.

Amelia had been kind enough not to be too pointed about him being back in her clutches when she'd come back in to take his temperature and another blood sample - thank goodness for small mercies, Nathan thought grumpily, shifting his arm in its sling and then rubbed at the spot between his eyes, wincing. His vision was still doubling , and the less said about the headache the better. But it meant that he couldn't even read, and lying here staring at the ceiling had gotten old better than a year ago.

There was a gentle tap at the door and a blonde head poked around the doorway, face concerned. "Nate?" Amanda asked quietly. "You awake?"

He waved at her with his good hand. "Thoroughly. Suppose I should be napping, but, well..." Nathan gave her a crooked smile as she came in. "Well. This is a blast from the past, isn't it? You visiting me in here..."

"Regular walk down memory lane," she said with a small smile, taking a seat by the bed. "Still, you'll have had plenty of company this time. I hear half the team blew themselves up."

"More like wore themselves out... although the funny thing? I don't remember," Nathan said more flippantly than he really felt. "I remember seeing a very large wave, but that's about it. According to Moira, if I want to remember doing 'heroic but insane things, ye daft man', I have to avoid concussions five minutes later. Her and her logic..." Amanda looked pretty worn herself. "Taking a break from the relief efforts?"

Amanda's smile became wry. "Sidelined for the duration. Apparently San Diego doesn't agree with me."

"I'd tilt my head, but I'm half-afraid it'd fall off if I did that. So can I just say - bwah?" Moira would be drubbing him for feeling the need to do a stand-up comedy routine, but it was one of the less-alarming ways of keeping his mind off things.

That got a snicker from her. "You sure you haven't broken anything in that hard head of yours?" she teased tiredly. Then, becoming a little more serious, she explained: "Powers thing, we think, since the buzzing in my head started clearing up almost as soon as we took off. I'm still tired, but I have a feeling I just need a couple of days in New York to deal with that."

"Ahh, I say, like I have any idea what the problem might be." Nathan mustered a bit of a smile. "Scott was in for a few minutes, said that he'd brought you back in the 'Bird. How'd you like the ride?"

"Well, we're working on it, but it's not like we get it either. Moira keeps 'hrumph'ing at me every time I come up with a new bit of info." Amanda shrugged a little. "It'll come good, but that's it for me and helping out. At least I wasn't doing anything they couldn't do without." At the thought of the trip back, she grinned a bit more easily. "It was great. No wonder you X-types like flying around in the thing so much. 'S very nifty."

"It's not quite the Pixie Express when it comes to speed, but it has its charms. Apparently it was a first, the poker game we had in it on..." Nathan trailed off, blinking as he tried to think. "... the night before everything happened in San Diego. We camped out. Whatever day that was..." It struck him that he was possibly verging on talking about things he shouldn't be talking about here, and he frowned, rubbing at his forehead again. "I'm not quite right in the head here today - ignore me if I babble."

She raised her eyebrows at him. "Anything I can get you?"

"Some water? I think there should be a pitcher over on the table..." He watched the two Amandas move, and willed them to become one Amanda. Narrowing his eyes almost did it. "My powers are mostly offline," he said. "I can probably expect a pretty crappy next few days... that's why I'm back in here."

"The virus?" It wasn't so much of a question as a confirmation. She poured the water and brought it back. "Do you need me to hold it for you or are you good with the sitting up?" she asked, letting him call the shots. Definitely a far cry from the days she would have babied him outrageously.

"I think I'm good." He pushed himself closer to an upright position and took the glass from her with a brief smile of thanks. "And yeah. Although I'm not coughing my lungs up, which is a good sign. Might not be so bad, in the end..." Although he wasn't sure he really believed that. Moira certainly didn't like the fact that he wasn't manifesting the usual symptoms. In fact, she seemed considerably bothered by that.

Despite herself, Amanda laid the back of her hand briefly against his forehead, making a small face at the heat radiating from his skin. "It's just a temporary thing, yeah? With your powers?" she asked, sitting back down.

"Should be. What I did-" And Scott had finally explained to him what had happened. "-I didn't do by myself or anything. And I had the psimitar, too." He smiled a bit sheepishly. "Apparently it blew up. I'm surprised Forge hasn't tracked me down and killed me."

This time she did wince. "Is he able to build a new one?" she asked, thinking back to the blurry footage of the firebird on the beach. The last time she'd seen that, had been the Hellfire Club. "I'd hate to think that it was gone for good." Especially since the original architects were gone.

"Me too. I hope so..." Nathan said wistfully. "I suppose he'll have plenty of time to see. Even if my powers come back tomorrow, I wouldn't be needing it for a while." He gave his arm a baleful look, then sipped at the water. "Drives me crazy. Being here, when I could be so helpful back in San Diego."

"You and me both," she said with a small shrug. "Well, not so much with the 'so helpful', but I was doing my bit." She snorted a little. "Gave the Spanish a real workout. Man... the person who taught me would be so proud." It was hard to hide the bitterness - it had been the right decision to come back, but it still felt like failure.

Nathan blinked at her, trying to focus again. "You know, it's natural," he said after a moment, the words he needed a bit foggy in his head but still more or less there. "Anyone working to help in a situation like that... they want to do all that they can, and if anything gets in the way, there's a lot of personal... stuff." Okay, that had been vague. "But you remember your RedX orientation. Important thing is pacing yourself, even if that involves pacing yourself right off-scene. The thing you don't want to do is wind up as a victim."

"Which is why I'm back here," she pointed out gently. "I was doing well, sleeping, eating, not driving myself too hard. Just... my powers got in the way. Ironic, huh?" Falling into thought for a moment, she went on. "I think, if I'd still had the magic, it would have been different. The healing... I pushed myself too hard, I know I did. But it was a tangible way of doing something good, y'know? Something I could do and other people could see and realise that I wasn't such a bad person after all."

"... you did say that out loud, right? And not just in my head... right, no telepathy right now." That had been a joke. Right? "I think I knew that, about that being one of the reasons you healed people. I remember when Jono blew me into the wall and I wasn't going to let you heal the concussion, but I wound up doing it anyway..." He frowned a bit, remembering. "I shouldn't have let you. Even if I was not letting you for equally wrong reasons."

She shrugged again. "Not your fault, Nate. I was a messed up kid who had no business having that kind of ability. Fuck, even back when I was with Rack, it was what I used to hold onto my humanity and in the end it became a crutch, as much as anything else." She grinned briefly, humorlessly. "All academic now, anyway. Now I go about sorting myself out the same as plain ordinary folks."

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "Speaking of that," he said, "I had coffee with Sofia, did I tell you that?"

She shook her head. "No, you didn't. I can guess what it was about, though." The tips of her ears were turning pink, soon to be followed by her face.

"Well, not entirely," Nathan said with a certain amount of weary amusement. "I'd promised her coffee back when she first came, remember? But I might have given her a few things to think about when it comes to interactions on the journals, that sort of thing... I think we forget that people from outside look at all that stuff and generally go 'What the fuck?'"

"Yeah." Amanda looked definitely shamefaced. "I was just trying to explain, y'know? Why she's getting the reaction she does. Only... she has this tone, this attitude, that really gets at me. Superior, like. Like the court shrinks." She shook her head. "But that shouldn't matter. Like you said, it's a job requirement and I need to suck it up. I think I managed a decent compromise, tho'. I go to her for evaluations, and get Samson to find me a therapist since I can't go to him any more. He knows me well enough to find a decent match."

"It's a good compromise. Although Sofia's tone isn't the reason she's getting the reaction she does. Takes two to tango. One to have a tone, one to interpret... and oh, God, I sound like a fruit loop." Nathan winced and pressed the heel of his good hand to his forehead for a moment. "Why am I talking about therapy when I'm back into more therapy than I've been in since the summer of 2004? I'm a hypocrite. And breakfast cereal."

"Hey, I know it's my damage as much as anything," Amanda said. "But she's read my file, and every-bloody-one else's and she ought to realise that we're not..." She stopped at Nathan's wince. "And this is so not the conversation we should be having now. Do you need something for your head? I can give Voght a shout."

"There's nothing she can give me. Can't let anything get in the way of the antivirals working..." Nathan rubbed at his forehead. "She'll be in here to take more blood in an hour. Vampire."

"Speaking of people who don't really get on with people," Amanda said with a grimace and a glance at the door. "Where'd the Prof dig her up, any way?"

"I think there's a long and complicated story behind that one," Nathan said. "On the bright side, apparently she doesn't need to eat, drink, or sleep, so she's available whenever she's needed..." He went to pick up his water glass again - and then hesitated, frowning. "Eh," he muttered, letting his hand fall. "I'll have some more of that later..."

One of the monitors was flashing red, however, and before it had been doing it for more than ten seconds or thereabouts, Amelia was sweeping coolly into the room, checking the readouts and then frowning down at Nathan.

"I thought I told you to rest," she said, and before he could respond, looked at Amanda. "He needs to rest. You can see yourself out."

Nathan waggled his eyebrows a bit helplessly at Amanda.

"I'll be by later, when you've slept some," Amanda told him, ignoring Amelia's tone. "Take care, Nate. Do what the docs tell you to this time, yeah?"

"That would be a revelation," Amelia murmured, then tsked at Nathan. "Three degrees in the last hour. No wonder your head hurts."

Nathan raised his good hand in a limp wave to Amanda. "I'll behave. See you soon."

"Sleep well," she told him and left before he could catch the worried frown crossing her face. Pulling out her phone, she dialled a certain number from memory. There was someone in San Diego who would really want to know what was going on.