xp_logs | The Gates: Cusp

Nathan and Angelo have a late-night talk about how the next day is going to go.

It was freezing in the hotel again. The proprietor had given them a little oil lamp and extra blankets and apologized, yet again, for the lack of power. Nathan had gotten tired of reassuring him that really, they weren't taking any offense. "These self-heating coffee things are less successful on the whole than the soup," he observed to Angelo. Medusa, Rahne, and Juliette had long since retired for the night, but he wasn't going to be getting any sleep. Too much scanning earlier. And for no point at all...

Angelo didn't seem to have any plans to sleep yet either, if only through sheer force of will, and looked up from his own coffee. "Could be better, yeah. But coffee's coffee."

"I'm going to that rally tomorrow," Nathan said after a long stretch of silence. "Alone. I want you and the others to stay here."

Angelo looked up sharply at that, then gave him a measuring look. "What'd you say if I said, yeah, the girls should, but like hell I am?"

"I'd say in return that you made me a promise once. That when we were in situations like this, you'd do as I say," Nathan said, and gave Angelo a long look. "You can be as mad at me as you want for slipping out the other night, but that doesn't change the fact that if that rally goes wrong I can get myself out of the vicinity much more easily and safely than I can get two of us."

"An' you don't think I can do at least part of the gettin' me out of there?" came the quiet but pointed answer. "I'm not as helpless as you're makin' that sound, Nathan."

"I know you're not. And I know the chances that you could get yourself out of there without a scratch if things go badly are good - I'm just not willing to take the risk." Nathan shrugged. "You can call me overprotective, but frankly, it would just be nice to get pictures of this rally. Not essential."

"Then why are you so set on goin' out there on your own, where there's almost as much danger to you as there would be to me? Even you can't sense everythin' that might be comin' at you, or do much of anythin' about it if you get caught in the middle."

"Because." Nathan paused, pensively. "This started because of San Diego."

"A lot of things started because of San Diego," Angelo said flatly. "Which 'this' d'you mean?"

"Smichov. This whole situation. The mutants here were targeted because of what happened in San Diego. And the mutant militants... I don't think you can say that all of them got ideas from Magneto, because you have to be a sick bastard to admire someone who nearly destroyed a city, but from what I saw the other night, they're reacting to the polarization."

"Well, wouldn't you? If your government pulled this on you an' told you it was for your own good?"

"Yeah, I probably would," Nathan said, perfectly happy to let the other point go and not elaborate on it any further.

Angelo hadn't forgotten it, though, just put it aside for a moment. "So tell me... how does this tracin' back to San Diego mean you, personally, have to go out there on your own an' take pictures?"

"Because I was there, and now I'm here, and when I was there, we didn't stop him," Nathan said, with the sort of perfect logic that he knew sounded like nonsense to most other people. "I'm not kicking myself for that - we did the best we could - but it makes me, personally, a direct contributor to this situation. And if the only thing I can do is take pictures, that's what I'll do."

"So just 'cause they got ideas from Magneto - which could've happened before San Diego, it's not like he was unknown before that - you're goin' to go out on your own an' take your chances." It wasn't really a question.

"No," Nathan said, patiently enough to make it clear that he was really rather losing patience with this, "that's why I want pictures and will take the risk of going out to get them. The reason I'm going out on my own is that I want someone back here I can trust to handle the situation if things go badly wrong."

"...okay," Angelo said after a long silence, as flatly as before. "Sure. I'll get Rahne an' Medusa an' Juliette out of here, no problem." He refused, outright, to say anything at all about not wanting Nathan to go out there. Not when they'd already been over that.

"Thank you." Nathan was silent for a long moment. "It is going to go badly, you know," he finally said. "I may not have found Mystique when I was scanning tonight, but I saw enough. It's just a question of how bad."

"'Course it is. Even if nobody wanted this rally tomorrow to be anythin' but peaceful, there's no way the soldiers in here would let it go without breakin' it up. An' that'd be enough to send any gatherin' bad, given how this place is."

"I wonder what Amanda would think of the feel of this city," Nathan said more tiredly, setting his coffee aside. It really tasted like crap. Chemical crap. No wonder they were all getting a little disheartened. No power and no heat and crappy food in the middle of what was a breath away from being an open war zone. "We should try and get some sleep."

"'Try' bein' the operative word", Angelo said with a rueful smile, walking over to the closed balcony doors to stare out. "I think if I could, I'd already be sleepin'." He wondered, suddenly, if the others were actually asleep or if there was a similar scene going on in their hotel room.

Nathan went over and laid down on his best, not bothering to get under the covers or change. "Lots of people awake tonight," he said cryptically, closing his eyes. "I can feel it."

Angelo didn't move, except to turn his head. "Are you scannin' the city again? Or are they all projectin' that strong?"

"My shields are like tissue paper at the moment, I've been pushing so hard doing all that scanning..."

"Anythin' to be done about that? Or just rest an' let them get back up to strength?"

"A few hours of sleep will have me back to something approximating my usual self." Nathan yawned. "You try to sleep, too."

"Yeah, I'll try." There was no real conviction in his voice, though, and he still didn't move away from the window.