Last Legacies (Nathan, MacInnis, Angelo)
Jul. 9th, 2006 06:10 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsSomeone shows up at the mansion with a solution to the problem of Nathan's virus. It's a shocking solution, accompanied by an even more shocking truth.
Timing was everything, or so Colin MacInnis had always firmly believed. Timing was why he'd had the conversation he'd just had with Moira MacTaggart now, rather than a year ago. She hadn't been pleased with him at all, but he'd live. A long time ago, he'd made the decision to wait until it was both safe and necessary to reveal certain information. He didn't regret it. He supposed it had been safe for a while now, but not necessary, not until this moment. Though he had always expected this moment to come, given the life that the man in the bed in front of him insisted on living.
Moving slowly - he was stiff from the flight, still - he went over to the chair beside the bed and sat down, frowning a bit. The kid, Angelo, was in the chair in the corner, apparently sound asleep to judge by the way he was sprawled; MacInnis gave him one measuring look and then focused on the man in the bed, frowning. He wasn't much for hospital visits, and his bedside manner was pretty much nonexistent. But he did owe Nathan an explanation, and it appeared that timing was working in his favor on that, too. According to the monitors, Nathan's fever was back down to a more reasonable 102 degrees. Good. He needed to be at least somewhat lucid when he heard this.
MacInnis settled in to wait. It would take Moira and that other doctor, Voght, some time to set up for the additional test they needed to do. He had time. It wasn't long, though, until Nathan's eyes fluttered open and MacInnis found himself the focus of a bleary, somewhat puzzled gray stare.
"Mac? You're supposed to be in... where were you? Russia, or something..." Nathan's voice sounded rusty, hoarse.
"I was. Until I caught you making a spectacle of yourself on CNN." The only problem with having been back of beyond in Turkmenistan, looking into that particular mystery, was that he hadn't seen the foreign news for a few days. Once he had, however, he'd gotten back to Tel Aviv as quickly as he could, and from there booked himself on a flight to Washington. Before he'd gotten on the plane, he'd made a couple of phone calls, pulling strings to get himself some time with the Mistra archives. He had known he would need some hard documentation to convince Moira. She was a scientist, after all. "If I'd known twenty-five years ago that you were going to grow up with such a flair for the dramatic, son, I would've tried to beat it out of you preemptively."
Nathan grimaced tiredly and raised his good hand, the one that wasn't attached to the arm in the sling, to rub at his eyes. He paused, frowning at the IV attached to it. "Why're you here?" he asked a bit dimly, letting his hand fall again.
"Helping out your wife," MacInnis said simply. "She wasn't operating with all the facts." Although he hadn't been surprised to get here and find out that she'd already been a few steps down the road towards figuring it out. This was her husband, after all.
"Facts... facts about what? What are you talking about?" Nathan was blinking at him, as if trying to focus, but his words were tired, a little vague.
"About the virus."
Nathan stared at him, the vagueness gone.
Trying to ignore the slight tightness in his chest, MacInnis leaned back in the chair, taking a deep breath. "I want you to put yourself in the place of Ruiz and the other Mistra directors ten years ago," he said slowly. Keeping his tone as conversational as he could. "Your field commander, the one operative you can't afford to lose, is also the one operative you can't trust."
"Mac, what are you-"
"Shut up and listen to me, son." I don't know how much longer you're going to be able to do that. According to Moira and Voght, his fever kept spiking, and to dangerous levels. He had to hear this now, and know about the choice he had to make. "They knew. About the loopholes you were teaching the other operatives, about how much influence you had over them. The pack conditioning was coming back to bite them in the ass on that front." MacInnis smiled, very slightly and bleakly. "They weren't happy about how strong you were getting, either. You were thirty years old and growing into your telekinesis, remember? They had an atom bomb on the end of a leash they didn't quite trust."
The gray eyes that met his were terrified, suddenly. As if Nathan knew where this was going, and MacInnis wondered for a moment if he maybe did. If he'd overheard something ten years ago when he'd been first infected. Ruiz wouldn't have let anything slip, but one of the others, maybe? Not all of his former colleagues had been masters of discretion.
"It was a set-up." His voice was almost gentle. Maybe there was a little bedside manner in there after all. "The whole thing, that whole mission, was a set-up from start to finish. The Chinese didn't engineer that virus. It was cooked up in Mistra's own labs. It was in development for years."
He could see the realization dawning in Nathan's eyes. The half-formed, swiftly stifled questions. But what about my team- and But it almost killed me- and all the others.
"It's been driving your wife crazy, I gather. Trying to figure out why the virus levels in your system are staying so high when the antivirals are knocking out the ones in your lungs just fine. She lucked out with the MRI - I guess she ran it because of the concussion, and detected elevated pressure in a very specific part of your brain. The part that lets you do things like catch tsunamis."
The catalyst, the lab techs back at Mistra had called it. High-level psis had it, a small physical mutation that was the amplifier for their powers, basically. Sort of a workaround for the side effects that came with breaking the physiological ceiling on their powers. It rerouted the psionic feedback, let them go beyond what should be their limits.
"They're getting ready to do a brain biopsy," MacInnis said, knowing Moira would probably beat him with the nearest blunt instrument if she caught him talking to her husband about the specifics of his treatment. "To make sure that the live virus is there." Moira hadn't been willing to take his word for it without the results of the tests to back up what he was saying. He couldn't blame her. "When that test comes back positive, you're going to have a choice to make, son."
Nathan shifted slightly on the bed. "What?" he croaked, his eyes suspiciously bright as he turned them to the ceiling. MacInnis could almost feel the pain coming off him.
But that was just his imagination. He couldn't sense those things, after all.
Not anymore.
"You pushed too hard, Nathan, holding back that water. According to the MRI, you're looking at actual brain damage, and that part of your brain's what keeps the virus regulated. That's the whole point of the damned bug, to keep you from using your TK above a certain level. All the flare-ups you've had before, when you pushed too hard, or when your powers got scrambled... it's all because the balance of psionic energy in that part of your brain got out of whack temporarily." A pretty rough summary, but neither he nor Nathan were virologists. "If it's going to be permanent, the virus levels in the rest of your system are going to stay just as high as they are right now. You can't live with these symptoms." The temperature spikes were too dangerous. "And direct antiviral delivery would cook your brain."
Nathan's eyes were a little glazed now as he looked back at MacInnis. "This doesn't sound like a choice."
"You didn't let me finish. What you're going to have to do," MacInnis said, "is finish the job you started when you caught that wave." Nathan gazed at him uncomprehendingly. MacInnis sighed. "You need to burn out that part of your brain, and take the live virus with it."
"... you've got to be kidding me."
"It's the only way, son. If you kill off the live virus, the antivirals will take care of what's left in your system. You'll be cured," MacInnis said, softly but forcefully, "and the damned thing about all of it? Once you heal up, the consequences of the cure are going to be just the same as the side effects of the virus in the first place. You'll have limits, just like you've had with the virus. But you won't have the virus. And if you ever do something like this again," he said, a bit more dryly, "not that I'm recommending it, you'll have just the burnout to cope with."
Nathan swallowed visibly. "What... what does Moira say?"
He sounded scared. Not that MacInnis could blame him. It was a pretty damned drastic solution, but it was the only one there was. "Who do you think suggested it?" he asked. "She's been through all the files I brought. Although she's not about to let you do it until she's sure. Hence the brain biopsy."
Nathan squeezed his eyes shut, raising his good hand successfully this time to rub at his forehead. "Why didn't you ever tell me about this before?" he asked thickly. "It's not like you haven't had plenty of opportunity."
"You've never come this close to burning yourself out before." That wasn't all of it, of course, and part of MacInnis was glad that Nathan was telepathy-less, concussed, and feverish. Less chance of him picking up on anything he shouldn't. Or realizing that there were years MacInnis could have gotten the information to him and hadn't, for the simple fact that there'd been no way he'd been willing to risk Moira coming up with a cure when there was any chance that Nathan might be reclaimed by Mistra.
The leash had been necessary from more than one perspective.
"They killed them." Nathan's voice was more hoarse, tight with pain. "Because of me. My team..."
He'd been waiting for that. "Yes," MacInnis said. "They did." A cruel thing to say on the surface of it, but what was he supposed to do, lie to him? Nathan's team had died because the directorate had decided that controlling one man was worth killing six other men and women if need be. It hadn't been the first time Mistra had made such a decision, and it hadn't been the last time.
Nathan looked away from him, his shoulders shaking - just once, and only momentarily. MacInnis gazed down at him, then reached out and laid a hand on his good arm, squeezing briefly.
"Don't think of the dead." His own voice was more hoarse than it should have been. "Think of your wife, and your little girl."
"... go away." MacInnis didn't move, and Nathan looked back at him, his face wet with tears and his eyes blazing with anger. "Get the fuck out of here," he rasped. "You could have told me. Mistra's been gone for over a year, you could have told me..."
"That one more part of your life isn't what you thought it was?" MacInnis asked, not withdrawing his hand. "That what you remember, what you've thought for years, isn't the truth? I think you've had enough of that this year, son. I wouldn't have told you now if I'd had any choice." But I'm not going to watch you die.
"Fuck you." It was a broken-sounding curse, and more tears were sliding down Nathan's cheeks. "Get away from me. And stop calling me son."
If he upset him too much more, Moira would have his hide, MacInnis reflected, drawing back and then getting up slowly. "Xavier offered me a guest room," he said. "So that I can-"
"How nice for you. Get out."
"Nathan-"
"Get. Out." Reddened gray eyes stared up at him, filled with nothing but hurt.
Colin MacInnis would have done nearly anything to see hatred there instead. It would have been well-deserved, and he wouldn't have minded being a convenient target. Not for this.
"It can be over," he heard himself say, his voice too hoarse-sounding for his pride's sake. "In a couple of days..."
"It'll never be over. Never." Nathan shifted on the bed, curling up on his side, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.
One of the monitors was flashing red in the corner of his eye, and MacInnis looked up in time to see the readout go from 103 to 104. "Get some rest," he said faintly. "I'll..."
"Get out."
And he went.
After having played eavesdropper on Nathan's conversation with MacInnis, Angelo tries to comfort him and engage his logic. Neither really works.
Angelo had been asleep, when MacInnis first came in, but that had lasted until approximately the second sentence spoken. Since then, he'd been leaning against the wall with his eyes closed, pretending to be asleep, listening intently. He'd been about five seconds from getting up and forcibly making MacInnis leave when the old man did it under his own power. Now, he got up and walked cautiously to Nathan's side.
Nathan's shoulders were shaking silently, tears trickling down his flushed face. He didn't seem to notice Angelo's approach, or MacInnis's departure.
...he was crying. Angelo didn't remember ever seeing Nathan cry quite so openly. He reached forward tentatively to rest a hand on one shoulder.
"They killed them. Because of me." It was too much. It was like Mac had just reached in and ripped the scar tissue away until the wound was open and bleeding again. The wound that had cracked his conditioning in the first place. And it hurt.
"I heard", Angelo said quietly, shooting a hateful look at the door. "But it still wasn't your fault they died. Those bastards at Mistra..."
"It doesn't matter," Nathan said brokenly, trying to blink away the tears. "It was because of me. They wouldn't... they wouldn't have set that up, except for m-me..." It made so much sense. So much sick sense.
"Because you were doin' what you could to help the others," Angelo pointed out. "Help them get round it, help them stay alive... whatever."
"So...full of myself. So arrogant... thinking I could do that, and they wouldn't see..."
"But what else were you gonna do, Nate? Let your friends die, let them be forced to damn themselves, when you could do somethin' about it?"
The monitor continued to flash red, 104 rising to 105. Nathan wiped his eyes with his good hand. "Ten years," he rasped. "Ten years, and they're still... why won't it stop?"
Angelo glanced worriedly at the monitor. "Someday it will," he said quietly. "Someday, it'll really be over."
"If I burn myself out?" The noise Nathan made might have been a laugh. "Oh... have to love the choice, really do..."
"What's... what's goin' to happen if you do it?" Angelo asked. "He said limits, but what...?"
"I don't know... I hope Moira does..." But his mind kept insisting upon supplying him with all kinds of nightmarish possibilities. Everything that could happen. This wasn't a choice!
"She won't let it happen if she doesn't, or if she doesn't think it's worth the cost," came the instant answer, more confident than before. "You know that."
"They win. If I do, they win," Nathan muttered. His head was pounding again, and he winced, his hand shaking violently as he tried to rub his eyes.
"If you get rid of the virus that's gonna kill you sooner or later if you don't? Or the next time you burn yourself out?" He sighed. "Okay, so... what's gonna happen if you don't?"
"Maybe... maybe my powers'll come back, and this'll stop again..." It was a feeble sort of protest.
"Maybe. An' maybe they won't. An' maybe you'll lose them for good anyway, or they'll have to put permanent limits on them so this doesn't happen again."
"Stop it! I can't think... stop pushing me like this!" Nathan burst out miserably, tears glittering in his reddened gray eyes, and then started coughing violently.
Angelo backed off instantly, taking his hand off Nathan's shoulder and taking a step back. "Okay, okay, no more questions... I'm sorry."
"This is t-too much," Nathan wheezed as he caught his breath again. "I can't... can you get Moira for me? Please?" There were more tears escaping and he couldn't stop them.
"Course." He turned and all but ran out of the room, frightened but hiding it, as well as his anger at himself.
Not at all happy, Angelo heads upstairs to give MacInnis a piece of his mind, only to find out that there was one truth that didn't get shared.
He couldn't stay in the medlab while Moira was working, even if she'd let him - some things he just... couldn't stay to watch. So he did the next best thing - went upstairs to find Colin MacInnis and say his piece. Even if that meant knocking on every door on the guest corridor.
Almost ironically, the door he wanted was wide open. MacInnis, the single piece of luggage he had brought with him open on the bed, looked up and at Angelo, and appeared completely unsurprised to see him there.
"Come in, son."
Angelo nodded to him, not quite wary but something close, and walked into the room. "Expectin' someone? An' don't call me son."
"Well, it had struck me that Moira might show up with a weapon of some variety..." MacInnis said dryly, sorting through his belongs. She wouldn't be happy with him for having gone that far with Nathan. He could almost hear the Ye are nay a doctor, ye old bastard! right now.
"She might've done," Angelo told him, matching his tone, "if she wasn't too busy lookin' after Nathan right now after what you told him."
"That particular piece of news wasn't going to be easy for him to hear at any point," MacInnis pointed out, and decided that he needed to sit down. He did so, without inviting Angelo to do the same. The boy hadn't been the one rushing back from Turkmenistan.
He likely wouldn't have sat anyway. He wasn't here for a friendly visit. "An' he needed to be told that Mistra killed his friends for another way to control him? You really needed to tell him that part when you were explainin' how to cure the virus?"
"And precisely how, s-Angelo, was I supposed to explain how I knew? He may be lying down there burning up with fever, with no telepathy, but he's still far from dumb."
"Make somethin' up. Tell him you'd found new information in China somehow, or had it brought to you. Anythin' but give him yet another thing to feel guilty about."
"Lied to him." MacInnis gazed at him steadily. "Don't you think he's been lied to enough in his life? Manipulated enough?"
Angelo met his gaze, forcing himself not to look down. "There's manipulation, an' then there's not tellin' him things that do nothin' but hurt him. It'd still have been his choice, if you told him everythin' but that part."
"It would've come out eventually. When he was better-" And he would be better, MacInnis told himself doggedly. "-and he wanted to know more. Better to lay all the cards on the table now." He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, hearing the weariness in his own voice.
"He might've dealt with it better then," Angelo pointed out, but he was too tired for a real argument as well. "When he can think straight."
"I'd kept the truth from him for long enough." Now, why had he said that? "It was time he knew," MacInnis muttered.
"If you say so. Just doesn't seem like you're the one that deals with the fallout when you come here an' drop stuff like this on him."
MacInnis gave him a long, level look. "I don't see you wearing a sign saying 'I am my boss's keeper', Angelo. Then again, I'm old and maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me..."
"An' what the hell would you know about any of it, off in Turkmenistan or wherever? I'm the one that keeps an eye on him when he needs it, an' carts him upstairs when he needs it an' tries to make sure he doesn't do anythin' too stupid." An' he's not just a boss, but like hell am I tellin' you that.
"Free piece of advice, son." If MacInnis emphasized the last word at all, it was barely noticeable. "Nathan doesn't need a minder. He doesn't need to be coddled, he doesn't need to be protected, and he sure as hell doesn't need to be fussed over. Hell," MacInnis said with his first real flash of emotion in the whole conversation - and it was exasperation. "Even his wife doesn't do that, boy."
The surge of emotion seemed draining, and MacInnis bent over slightly in his chair, overtaken suddenly by a fit of coughing. His breath rattled in his chest, with a sudden, shocking similarity to the way the breathing of the man downstairs in the infirmary sounded.
Angelo had been about to bolt from the harsh words, already worn too thin from the last few days and emotionally overstrained, but the coughing stopped him in his tracks. He turned slowly, face suddenly pale... and no one who knew Angelo honestly thought he was stupid. "...you've got it too."
MacInnis swallowed, mustering up a thin smile. "You're looking at the original test subject, Mr. Espinosa," he rasped.
"An' he doesn't know that part. Does he."
"Of course not. That, he really didn't need to know today." MacInnis coughed again, almost experimentally. "My... infection predates his by oh, about ten years. It's a much earlier, much milder form of the virus. Works much the same way, though."
MacInnis paused, giving Angelo a grimly amused look. "But since I was just a low-level telepath, it suppressed my powers completely."
Angelo froze, looking at him carefully. "Completely an'... permanently?"
MacInnis lifted his shoulders in a shrug. "The cure I was pushing on Nate won't work for me. The live virus is everywhere in my brain, since I don't have powers that'd warrant the catalyst mutation. And my powers're wearing out," MacInnis concluded wearily. "So it's moving into my lungs."
That got a flinch. Am I lookin' at Nathan's future, if he doesn't take the cure? "How long've you got?" he asked, very quietly.
"Depends on whether Moira comes up with an antiviral cocktail for me, now that she knows." Or whether I let her. MacInnis shrugged again. "Not important, anyway. I went into this with my eyes wide open, son. I wasn't going to let them test it on any of my kids first. Mistra wanted psis, you know. Wanted them very, very badly. But they were afraid of them, too. Afraid they'd be too strong to control, afraid that their minds'd reject the conditioning eventually... this virus was in the works for a lot of years."
"As another control," he said flatly. "Yeah, I heard everythin' you told Nathan about it."
"They didn't anticipate the reaction Nathan had to it." He'd been through the files, the reports. "Suppose it's his father's genetic legacy, that unusual metabolism of his. Maybe. But the virus wasn't supposed to come as close to killing him as it did."
"Thought you said they planned it for years," Angelo jibed, though with no real venom to it. "An' they had Nathan right there for all the tests they needed. So what went wrong?"
MacInnis sighed. "They rushed. Got arrogant. Used a new variant of the virus without having tested it properly first." He smiled faintly. "Mistra did usually get undone by its own arrogance."
"Yeah, I've got that idea over the last year or two."
"Look," MacInnis said, more quietly. "He doesn't really have a choice. Not if he wants to be around to see his daughter grow up. He can't take these cyclical fevers for much longer."
"He's stubborn as all hell, though. You must've known him long enough to know that. An' he doesn't have long to be talked round."
"I have a certain amount of faith in that terrifying woman he married," MacInnis said. "So should you."
Angelo grinned faintly. "Yeah. Good point."
"So, anything else you wanted to say to me, Mr. Espinosa?" MacInnis asked dryly, pushing himself up out of his chair. "If not, I'm jetlagged as all hell and could use a little rest."
"No." He pushed himself up. "I think we're done."
"Remember what I said," MacInnis added, heading towards the bathroom, clearly assuming Angelo could let himself out. "I can see you're attached - you wouldn't be the first - but if... when he comes through this all right, you've got to shake this idea that he needs protecting. You push that on him too much, and he'll resent you for it, Angelo. He's a Spartan, remember. That's not the way they're made."
Angelo turned back, framed in the door, and just looked at him. "He hasn't fired me for it yet."
Timing was everything, or so Colin MacInnis had always firmly believed. Timing was why he'd had the conversation he'd just had with Moira MacTaggart now, rather than a year ago. She hadn't been pleased with him at all, but he'd live. A long time ago, he'd made the decision to wait until it was both safe and necessary to reveal certain information. He didn't regret it. He supposed it had been safe for a while now, but not necessary, not until this moment. Though he had always expected this moment to come, given the life that the man in the bed in front of him insisted on living.
Moving slowly - he was stiff from the flight, still - he went over to the chair beside the bed and sat down, frowning a bit. The kid, Angelo, was in the chair in the corner, apparently sound asleep to judge by the way he was sprawled; MacInnis gave him one measuring look and then focused on the man in the bed, frowning. He wasn't much for hospital visits, and his bedside manner was pretty much nonexistent. But he did owe Nathan an explanation, and it appeared that timing was working in his favor on that, too. According to the monitors, Nathan's fever was back down to a more reasonable 102 degrees. Good. He needed to be at least somewhat lucid when he heard this.
MacInnis settled in to wait. It would take Moira and that other doctor, Voght, some time to set up for the additional test they needed to do. He had time. It wasn't long, though, until Nathan's eyes fluttered open and MacInnis found himself the focus of a bleary, somewhat puzzled gray stare.
"Mac? You're supposed to be in... where were you? Russia, or something..." Nathan's voice sounded rusty, hoarse.
"I was. Until I caught you making a spectacle of yourself on CNN." The only problem with having been back of beyond in Turkmenistan, looking into that particular mystery, was that he hadn't seen the foreign news for a few days. Once he had, however, he'd gotten back to Tel Aviv as quickly as he could, and from there booked himself on a flight to Washington. Before he'd gotten on the plane, he'd made a couple of phone calls, pulling strings to get himself some time with the Mistra archives. He had known he would need some hard documentation to convince Moira. She was a scientist, after all. "If I'd known twenty-five years ago that you were going to grow up with such a flair for the dramatic, son, I would've tried to beat it out of you preemptively."
Nathan grimaced tiredly and raised his good hand, the one that wasn't attached to the arm in the sling, to rub at his eyes. He paused, frowning at the IV attached to it. "Why're you here?" he asked a bit dimly, letting his hand fall again.
"Helping out your wife," MacInnis said simply. "She wasn't operating with all the facts." Although he hadn't been surprised to get here and find out that she'd already been a few steps down the road towards figuring it out. This was her husband, after all.
"Facts... facts about what? What are you talking about?" Nathan was blinking at him, as if trying to focus, but his words were tired, a little vague.
"About the virus."
Nathan stared at him, the vagueness gone.
Trying to ignore the slight tightness in his chest, MacInnis leaned back in the chair, taking a deep breath. "I want you to put yourself in the place of Ruiz and the other Mistra directors ten years ago," he said slowly. Keeping his tone as conversational as he could. "Your field commander, the one operative you can't afford to lose, is also the one operative you can't trust."
"Mac, what are you-"
"Shut up and listen to me, son." I don't know how much longer you're going to be able to do that. According to Moira and Voght, his fever kept spiking, and to dangerous levels. He had to hear this now, and know about the choice he had to make. "They knew. About the loopholes you were teaching the other operatives, about how much influence you had over them. The pack conditioning was coming back to bite them in the ass on that front." MacInnis smiled, very slightly and bleakly. "They weren't happy about how strong you were getting, either. You were thirty years old and growing into your telekinesis, remember? They had an atom bomb on the end of a leash they didn't quite trust."
The gray eyes that met his were terrified, suddenly. As if Nathan knew where this was going, and MacInnis wondered for a moment if he maybe did. If he'd overheard something ten years ago when he'd been first infected. Ruiz wouldn't have let anything slip, but one of the others, maybe? Not all of his former colleagues had been masters of discretion.
"It was a set-up." His voice was almost gentle. Maybe there was a little bedside manner in there after all. "The whole thing, that whole mission, was a set-up from start to finish. The Chinese didn't engineer that virus. It was cooked up in Mistra's own labs. It was in development for years."
He could see the realization dawning in Nathan's eyes. The half-formed, swiftly stifled questions. But what about my team- and But it almost killed me- and all the others.
"It's been driving your wife crazy, I gather. Trying to figure out why the virus levels in your system are staying so high when the antivirals are knocking out the ones in your lungs just fine. She lucked out with the MRI - I guess she ran it because of the concussion, and detected elevated pressure in a very specific part of your brain. The part that lets you do things like catch tsunamis."
The catalyst, the lab techs back at Mistra had called it. High-level psis had it, a small physical mutation that was the amplifier for their powers, basically. Sort of a workaround for the side effects that came with breaking the physiological ceiling on their powers. It rerouted the psionic feedback, let them go beyond what should be their limits.
"They're getting ready to do a brain biopsy," MacInnis said, knowing Moira would probably beat him with the nearest blunt instrument if she caught him talking to her husband about the specifics of his treatment. "To make sure that the live virus is there." Moira hadn't been willing to take his word for it without the results of the tests to back up what he was saying. He couldn't blame her. "When that test comes back positive, you're going to have a choice to make, son."
Nathan shifted slightly on the bed. "What?" he croaked, his eyes suspiciously bright as he turned them to the ceiling. MacInnis could almost feel the pain coming off him.
But that was just his imagination. He couldn't sense those things, after all.
Not anymore.
"You pushed too hard, Nathan, holding back that water. According to the MRI, you're looking at actual brain damage, and that part of your brain's what keeps the virus regulated. That's the whole point of the damned bug, to keep you from using your TK above a certain level. All the flare-ups you've had before, when you pushed too hard, or when your powers got scrambled... it's all because the balance of psionic energy in that part of your brain got out of whack temporarily." A pretty rough summary, but neither he nor Nathan were virologists. "If it's going to be permanent, the virus levels in the rest of your system are going to stay just as high as they are right now. You can't live with these symptoms." The temperature spikes were too dangerous. "And direct antiviral delivery would cook your brain."
Nathan's eyes were a little glazed now as he looked back at MacInnis. "This doesn't sound like a choice."
"You didn't let me finish. What you're going to have to do," MacInnis said, "is finish the job you started when you caught that wave." Nathan gazed at him uncomprehendingly. MacInnis sighed. "You need to burn out that part of your brain, and take the live virus with it."
"... you've got to be kidding me."
"It's the only way, son. If you kill off the live virus, the antivirals will take care of what's left in your system. You'll be cured," MacInnis said, softly but forcefully, "and the damned thing about all of it? Once you heal up, the consequences of the cure are going to be just the same as the side effects of the virus in the first place. You'll have limits, just like you've had with the virus. But you won't have the virus. And if you ever do something like this again," he said, a bit more dryly, "not that I'm recommending it, you'll have just the burnout to cope with."
Nathan swallowed visibly. "What... what does Moira say?"
He sounded scared. Not that MacInnis could blame him. It was a pretty damned drastic solution, but it was the only one there was. "Who do you think suggested it?" he asked. "She's been through all the files I brought. Although she's not about to let you do it until she's sure. Hence the brain biopsy."
Nathan squeezed his eyes shut, raising his good hand successfully this time to rub at his forehead. "Why didn't you ever tell me about this before?" he asked thickly. "It's not like you haven't had plenty of opportunity."
"You've never come this close to burning yourself out before." That wasn't all of it, of course, and part of MacInnis was glad that Nathan was telepathy-less, concussed, and feverish. Less chance of him picking up on anything he shouldn't. Or realizing that there were years MacInnis could have gotten the information to him and hadn't, for the simple fact that there'd been no way he'd been willing to risk Moira coming up with a cure when there was any chance that Nathan might be reclaimed by Mistra.
The leash had been necessary from more than one perspective.
"They killed them." Nathan's voice was more hoarse, tight with pain. "Because of me. My team..."
He'd been waiting for that. "Yes," MacInnis said. "They did." A cruel thing to say on the surface of it, but what was he supposed to do, lie to him? Nathan's team had died because the directorate had decided that controlling one man was worth killing six other men and women if need be. It hadn't been the first time Mistra had made such a decision, and it hadn't been the last time.
Nathan looked away from him, his shoulders shaking - just once, and only momentarily. MacInnis gazed down at him, then reached out and laid a hand on his good arm, squeezing briefly.
"Don't think of the dead." His own voice was more hoarse than it should have been. "Think of your wife, and your little girl."
"... go away." MacInnis didn't move, and Nathan looked back at him, his face wet with tears and his eyes blazing with anger. "Get the fuck out of here," he rasped. "You could have told me. Mistra's been gone for over a year, you could have told me..."
"That one more part of your life isn't what you thought it was?" MacInnis asked, not withdrawing his hand. "That what you remember, what you've thought for years, isn't the truth? I think you've had enough of that this year, son. I wouldn't have told you now if I'd had any choice." But I'm not going to watch you die.
"Fuck you." It was a broken-sounding curse, and more tears were sliding down Nathan's cheeks. "Get away from me. And stop calling me son."
If he upset him too much more, Moira would have his hide, MacInnis reflected, drawing back and then getting up slowly. "Xavier offered me a guest room," he said. "So that I can-"
"How nice for you. Get out."
"Nathan-"
"Get. Out." Reddened gray eyes stared up at him, filled with nothing but hurt.
Colin MacInnis would have done nearly anything to see hatred there instead. It would have been well-deserved, and he wouldn't have minded being a convenient target. Not for this.
"It can be over," he heard himself say, his voice too hoarse-sounding for his pride's sake. "In a couple of days..."
"It'll never be over. Never." Nathan shifted on the bed, curling up on his side, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.
One of the monitors was flashing red in the corner of his eye, and MacInnis looked up in time to see the readout go from 103 to 104. "Get some rest," he said faintly. "I'll..."
"Get out."
And he went.
After having played eavesdropper on Nathan's conversation with MacInnis, Angelo tries to comfort him and engage his logic. Neither really works.
Angelo had been asleep, when MacInnis first came in, but that had lasted until approximately the second sentence spoken. Since then, he'd been leaning against the wall with his eyes closed, pretending to be asleep, listening intently. He'd been about five seconds from getting up and forcibly making MacInnis leave when the old man did it under his own power. Now, he got up and walked cautiously to Nathan's side.
Nathan's shoulders were shaking silently, tears trickling down his flushed face. He didn't seem to notice Angelo's approach, or MacInnis's departure.
...he was crying. Angelo didn't remember ever seeing Nathan cry quite so openly. He reached forward tentatively to rest a hand on one shoulder.
"They killed them. Because of me." It was too much. It was like Mac had just reached in and ripped the scar tissue away until the wound was open and bleeding again. The wound that had cracked his conditioning in the first place. And it hurt.
"I heard", Angelo said quietly, shooting a hateful look at the door. "But it still wasn't your fault they died. Those bastards at Mistra..."
"It doesn't matter," Nathan said brokenly, trying to blink away the tears. "It was because of me. They wouldn't... they wouldn't have set that up, except for m-me..." It made so much sense. So much sick sense.
"Because you were doin' what you could to help the others," Angelo pointed out. "Help them get round it, help them stay alive... whatever."
"So...full of myself. So arrogant... thinking I could do that, and they wouldn't see..."
"But what else were you gonna do, Nate? Let your friends die, let them be forced to damn themselves, when you could do somethin' about it?"
The monitor continued to flash red, 104 rising to 105. Nathan wiped his eyes with his good hand. "Ten years," he rasped. "Ten years, and they're still... why won't it stop?"
Angelo glanced worriedly at the monitor. "Someday it will," he said quietly. "Someday, it'll really be over."
"If I burn myself out?" The noise Nathan made might have been a laugh. "Oh... have to love the choice, really do..."
"What's... what's goin' to happen if you do it?" Angelo asked. "He said limits, but what...?"
"I don't know... I hope Moira does..." But his mind kept insisting upon supplying him with all kinds of nightmarish possibilities. Everything that could happen. This wasn't a choice!
"She won't let it happen if she doesn't, or if she doesn't think it's worth the cost," came the instant answer, more confident than before. "You know that."
"They win. If I do, they win," Nathan muttered. His head was pounding again, and he winced, his hand shaking violently as he tried to rub his eyes.
"If you get rid of the virus that's gonna kill you sooner or later if you don't? Or the next time you burn yourself out?" He sighed. "Okay, so... what's gonna happen if you don't?"
"Maybe... maybe my powers'll come back, and this'll stop again..." It was a feeble sort of protest.
"Maybe. An' maybe they won't. An' maybe you'll lose them for good anyway, or they'll have to put permanent limits on them so this doesn't happen again."
"Stop it! I can't think... stop pushing me like this!" Nathan burst out miserably, tears glittering in his reddened gray eyes, and then started coughing violently.
Angelo backed off instantly, taking his hand off Nathan's shoulder and taking a step back. "Okay, okay, no more questions... I'm sorry."
"This is t-too much," Nathan wheezed as he caught his breath again. "I can't... can you get Moira for me? Please?" There were more tears escaping and he couldn't stop them.
"Course." He turned and all but ran out of the room, frightened but hiding it, as well as his anger at himself.
Not at all happy, Angelo heads upstairs to give MacInnis a piece of his mind, only to find out that there was one truth that didn't get shared.
He couldn't stay in the medlab while Moira was working, even if she'd let him - some things he just... couldn't stay to watch. So he did the next best thing - went upstairs to find Colin MacInnis and say his piece. Even if that meant knocking on every door on the guest corridor.
Almost ironically, the door he wanted was wide open. MacInnis, the single piece of luggage he had brought with him open on the bed, looked up and at Angelo, and appeared completely unsurprised to see him there.
"Come in, son."
Angelo nodded to him, not quite wary but something close, and walked into the room. "Expectin' someone? An' don't call me son."
"Well, it had struck me that Moira might show up with a weapon of some variety..." MacInnis said dryly, sorting through his belongs. She wouldn't be happy with him for having gone that far with Nathan. He could almost hear the Ye are nay a doctor, ye old bastard! right now.
"She might've done," Angelo told him, matching his tone, "if she wasn't too busy lookin' after Nathan right now after what you told him."
"That particular piece of news wasn't going to be easy for him to hear at any point," MacInnis pointed out, and decided that he needed to sit down. He did so, without inviting Angelo to do the same. The boy hadn't been the one rushing back from Turkmenistan.
He likely wouldn't have sat anyway. He wasn't here for a friendly visit. "An' he needed to be told that Mistra killed his friends for another way to control him? You really needed to tell him that part when you were explainin' how to cure the virus?"
"And precisely how, s-Angelo, was I supposed to explain how I knew? He may be lying down there burning up with fever, with no telepathy, but he's still far from dumb."
"Make somethin' up. Tell him you'd found new information in China somehow, or had it brought to you. Anythin' but give him yet another thing to feel guilty about."
"Lied to him." MacInnis gazed at him steadily. "Don't you think he's been lied to enough in his life? Manipulated enough?"
Angelo met his gaze, forcing himself not to look down. "There's manipulation, an' then there's not tellin' him things that do nothin' but hurt him. It'd still have been his choice, if you told him everythin' but that part."
"It would've come out eventually. When he was better-" And he would be better, MacInnis told himself doggedly. "-and he wanted to know more. Better to lay all the cards on the table now." He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, hearing the weariness in his own voice.
"He might've dealt with it better then," Angelo pointed out, but he was too tired for a real argument as well. "When he can think straight."
"I'd kept the truth from him for long enough." Now, why had he said that? "It was time he knew," MacInnis muttered.
"If you say so. Just doesn't seem like you're the one that deals with the fallout when you come here an' drop stuff like this on him."
MacInnis gave him a long, level look. "I don't see you wearing a sign saying 'I am my boss's keeper', Angelo. Then again, I'm old and maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me..."
"An' what the hell would you know about any of it, off in Turkmenistan or wherever? I'm the one that keeps an eye on him when he needs it, an' carts him upstairs when he needs it an' tries to make sure he doesn't do anythin' too stupid." An' he's not just a boss, but like hell am I tellin' you that.
"Free piece of advice, son." If MacInnis emphasized the last word at all, it was barely noticeable. "Nathan doesn't need a minder. He doesn't need to be coddled, he doesn't need to be protected, and he sure as hell doesn't need to be fussed over. Hell," MacInnis said with his first real flash of emotion in the whole conversation - and it was exasperation. "Even his wife doesn't do that, boy."
The surge of emotion seemed draining, and MacInnis bent over slightly in his chair, overtaken suddenly by a fit of coughing. His breath rattled in his chest, with a sudden, shocking similarity to the way the breathing of the man downstairs in the infirmary sounded.
Angelo had been about to bolt from the harsh words, already worn too thin from the last few days and emotionally overstrained, but the coughing stopped him in his tracks. He turned slowly, face suddenly pale... and no one who knew Angelo honestly thought he was stupid. "...you've got it too."
MacInnis swallowed, mustering up a thin smile. "You're looking at the original test subject, Mr. Espinosa," he rasped.
"An' he doesn't know that part. Does he."
"Of course not. That, he really didn't need to know today." MacInnis coughed again, almost experimentally. "My... infection predates his by oh, about ten years. It's a much earlier, much milder form of the virus. Works much the same way, though."
MacInnis paused, giving Angelo a grimly amused look. "But since I was just a low-level telepath, it suppressed my powers completely."
Angelo froze, looking at him carefully. "Completely an'... permanently?"
MacInnis lifted his shoulders in a shrug. "The cure I was pushing on Nate won't work for me. The live virus is everywhere in my brain, since I don't have powers that'd warrant the catalyst mutation. And my powers're wearing out," MacInnis concluded wearily. "So it's moving into my lungs."
That got a flinch. Am I lookin' at Nathan's future, if he doesn't take the cure? "How long've you got?" he asked, very quietly.
"Depends on whether Moira comes up with an antiviral cocktail for me, now that she knows." Or whether I let her. MacInnis shrugged again. "Not important, anyway. I went into this with my eyes wide open, son. I wasn't going to let them test it on any of my kids first. Mistra wanted psis, you know. Wanted them very, very badly. But they were afraid of them, too. Afraid they'd be too strong to control, afraid that their minds'd reject the conditioning eventually... this virus was in the works for a lot of years."
"As another control," he said flatly. "Yeah, I heard everythin' you told Nathan about it."
"They didn't anticipate the reaction Nathan had to it." He'd been through the files, the reports. "Suppose it's his father's genetic legacy, that unusual metabolism of his. Maybe. But the virus wasn't supposed to come as close to killing him as it did."
"Thought you said they planned it for years," Angelo jibed, though with no real venom to it. "An' they had Nathan right there for all the tests they needed. So what went wrong?"
MacInnis sighed. "They rushed. Got arrogant. Used a new variant of the virus without having tested it properly first." He smiled faintly. "Mistra did usually get undone by its own arrogance."
"Yeah, I've got that idea over the last year or two."
"Look," MacInnis said, more quietly. "He doesn't really have a choice. Not if he wants to be around to see his daughter grow up. He can't take these cyclical fevers for much longer."
"He's stubborn as all hell, though. You must've known him long enough to know that. An' he doesn't have long to be talked round."
"I have a certain amount of faith in that terrifying woman he married," MacInnis said. "So should you."
Angelo grinned faintly. "Yeah. Good point."
"So, anything else you wanted to say to me, Mr. Espinosa?" MacInnis asked dryly, pushing himself up out of his chair. "If not, I'm jetlagged as all hell and could use a little rest."
"No." He pushed himself up. "I think we're done."
"Remember what I said," MacInnis added, heading towards the bathroom, clearly assuming Angelo could let himself out. "I can see you're attached - you wouldn't be the first - but if... when he comes through this all right, you've got to shake this idea that he needs protecting. You push that on him too much, and he'll resent you for it, Angelo. He's a Spartan, remember. That's not the way they're made."
Angelo turned back, framed in the door, and just looked at him. "He hasn't fired me for it yet."
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