The Gates: Into The Night
Nov. 7th, 2006 11:37 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsNathan and Angelo have a close encounter with Mystique. Later, as they continue their rescue efforts, Nathan finds himself haunted by ghosts of the past and Angelo proves that he's going to be worthy of the leathers in his future.
"Stay there! Stay at the window!" Nathan yelled up at the screaming woman leaning out of her fifth-story window. The building was on fire, smoke billowing from broken windows, flames punching through the roof. He had managed, with great difficulty, to lock onto her thoughts, and he could see her looking back over her shoulder, trying to figure out whether she should try and get out of her apartment and to the stairs, flames or no flames. "NO!" he yelled desperately as she vanished back inside. #Come back to the window!# he projected desperately and propelled himself upwards. #I'll get you down, just come-#
The building exploded. The fault of a gas main, or something like that, Nathan would later conclude when he had the time to think about it. Now was not that time. The force of the explosion slammed him back to the ground, and the half-exoskeleton that manifested spontaneously was the only thing that saved him from injury.
Of course, it also drew the attention of at least one person on the street, though most of the others were too busy shrieking and trying to get out of the path of the falling debris to notice. When Nathan looked up he saw a man standing over him, smirking and not making any move to help him up. "Still one for stupid heroics, I see," he remarked, heedless of the chunks of concrete and burning wood scattered about them.
Nathan pushed himself up to a sitting position, casting one half-anguished look at the building before turning his attention to the man. Not a man, he realized. "I bet," he grated, hauling himself back to his feet, "that you're just enjoying this to no end, aren't you? Now you've got oppressed mutants rising up against their oppressors and getting slaughtered for it. Magneto must be salivating over the propaganda value, wherever he is..." And please, don't let her say 'here'.
Mystique barked out a laugh. "Ah, yes, I forgot, I must want this to happen, because it wasn't as if I wasn't trying to encourage peaceful resistance. Does this look peaceful to you, Nathan? Do you think I enjoy watching my brethren being executed by stupid humans with too many guns and too few brains? I didn't make this happen, so stop blaming me for something you were just as powerless to stop."
"Then stop mocking my 'stupid heroics' and go make yourself useful!" he raged at her. The damned thing was that she was right, or at least, could be. As suspicious as he was, nothing he'd heard her saying to that group of militants that night could said to have led to this. Maybe she'd been elsewhere, manipulating behind the scenes... but maybe she hadn't. There was so much confusion, so much fear in this situation. It was bigger than her, bigger than either of them. These things happen...
"How does it feel, having an enemy you can't fight by force, Nathan?" Mystique asked, ignoring his angry words as she kicked aside a piece of flaming debris that threatened to light another beam of wood. "One against which your little bird doesn't have a chance? Maybe if you used your telepathy for something productive you'd be useful, but you're too much a coward for that. The X-Men are useless here, and so are you. There's nothing you can, or shall I say will do to make this right."
Nathan's hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, and the urge to reach out with his useless telekinesis and pop her head like a grape was almost overwhelming. For a moment. Then it was sickening. Nathan swallowed hard, ignoring the taste of bile at the back of his throat.
"At least I'm trying to do something."
"Ah, yes. I'm sure the woman in the window would thank you for it, if she hadn't been killed in a fiery explosion," Mystique said, glancing over her shoulder at the burning rubble behind her. If she was afraid of goading Nathan beyond his holding point, she didn't show it.
"Cleaning up the mess is always such fun, isn't it? I wouldn't blame you for thinking it gets a bit tedious after a while, though. It would be much better to fix the problem so there isn't a mess in the first place. That's what we are trying to do, Nathan, even if you can't seem to fathom it."
Nathan took a step towards her - just as Angelo appeared at the end of the street, looking around for him. He didn't spot the familiar figure in his peripheral vision, however. He was too focused on Mystique.
"Then you were just as useless as we were here, weren't you?"
Angelo glanced between Nathan and the other 'man' as he drew closer, frowning - without the benefit of telepathy, all he could see was Nathan glaring daggers at some stranger, and he didn't know why. "Nate? I need you over here."
The man smirked, keeping his attention on Nate despite his apparent nonchalance in the face of the other man's anger. "Yes, Nathan, I am sure there is more mess for you to clean up. Why don't you run along and sweep up the pieces... I'm sure you'll get some great footage for the bleeding hearts back at the mansion."
Most people who knew Nathan Dayspring particularly well would have agreed that he'd been doing quite well at keeping his temper so far that day, in the fact of what could only class as extreme provocation. But the most stubborn self-control had its limits, and without stopping to think about the fact that Angelo was standing right there without any idea as to what the hell was going on, Nathan lunged at Mystique.
In an instant Mystique went from smirking smugly to dead-faced serious, moving into a crouch and readying herself for Nathan's rush. When he got near enough she struck at him with one heavy forearm, obviously not backing down despite his blind anger.
"Nathan!" Angelo snapped, darting forward without a second thought to try and put himself between them. "What the hell are you... this is not the time."
Nathan, reeling a little from the blow that had connected - he was not in a defensive frame of mind at the moment - didn't move fast enough to keep Angelo from getting between them. "Angelo!" He was too close to her, Nathan thought, all of his anger draining away in a sudden shock of icy fear. "It's Mystique, get out of the way!"
The shapeshifter stepped back, not making any move to attack the young man now that he was between herself and Nate. She looked between them for a moment, reading the fear in Nate's eyes and the confusion in Angelo's. Suddenly her features shifted, almost too quick to follow, and a moment later there were two Angelos standing before Nate.
"You continue to bring babies into a war zone, Nathan... you're going to regret it one day," she told him in Angelo's voice, looking ever-so-slightly disapproving. "You can't be watching all the time. Someday something bad might happen. What would you do then? Moan about how it was inevitable while hating yourself for doing nothing? And you," she continued, turning to Angelo, "you need to find a better philosophy to follow. Because watching and waiting never solved anything. Only men of action make a difference in this world."
Angelo just looked at her coldly, stepping to Nathan's side. "See, that's where you're wrong. Watchin' an' waitin' have their place, until the time's right for the action, but the right people have to take it. An' I've chosen my way, signed an' sealed. Sorry." The last was cheerfully insincere.
Nathan forced himself to straighten, relax, stop wanting to tear out Mystique's throat with his bare hands. Angelo was right, this wasn't the time. Trust him to be the voice of sanity... "You said you needed me," he said to Angelo, his voice still a little unsteady. "Let's go, show me where." He looked back at Mystique in Angelo's form, and shook his head tightly. "I'm done here."
"You were done before you started," Mystique replied, once again looking smug. "And now you're condemning others to the same fate. I hope you both enjoy this, because it will only happen again and again until someone does something about it." She spread her arms, indicating the chaos and madness around them as injured people struggled to make their way down the streets. "Good luck with the dustpan and broom, gentlemen." And with that she turned, heading away from them at a sauntering pace.
Angelo glared after her for a second, then turned deliberately away. "Back where I came from. We kind of need your TK."
--
The first thing Nathan thought as they got a good look at the building on the corner was that someone had thrown the tank into the first floor. It looked very much like that was exactly what had happened - how else would the damned thing have wound up upside-down with a warped gun on the floor of the shops on the first floor of the building?
He swallowed and looked up at the upper floors. As well as the visible fire on the first floor, there was smoke coming from far too many of the broken windows, and two gaping holes in the facade. "There are people," he said to Angelo hoarsely, waving a hand. "On the upper floors." He half-jogged, half-stumbled closer to the building, his shirt pulling up over his mouth and nose in an attempt to keep out some of the smoke. There had to be a way up. Stairs to the apartments, somewhere...
Angelo hated fire. Was afraid of it to the core. But if there were people in there, if Nathan was going in there after them... well, what else could he do?
He gritted his teeth, pulled his own shirt up to cover his face, and followed.
Nathan had to kick down the locked door that led into the small lobby. Inside, there was no one in evidence, and no one coming down the stairs from the apartments. Something was stopping them. They'd have to go up to find out what it was.
#Stay close,# Nathan thought at Angelo, even as he scanned up the stairs, to pin down the minds he'd sensed. On the second floor, there was burning debris blocking the stairs. Nathan wrapped it in a TK shield, choking off the oxygen to the fire and then dropped the debris over the railing to the lobby.
As he did, he projected the image of the now-clear hallways as clearly as he could to the half-dozen minds on this floor, with an invitation to move their asses as quickly as possible. Doors were flung open and terrified people emerged. "Get them downstairs and out of the building," Nathan ordered Angelo. "I'm going up to the third floor!"
Part of him - the pyrophobic part - really wanted to follow that order. Another part wanted to ignore it and go with Nathan, and it was a toss-up for a few moments which part was going to be stronger. Compromise was reached in the end, though, and he turned, face set, to start herding the people out of the building. He'd go to the third floor when he was done.
The situation was similar on the third floor, although the fire was more extensive. Nathan set his jaw and forced a shield tighter and tighter around the burning pieces of the interior wall that had collapsed inwards. There was someone lying beneath the debris in the apartment itself, and one quick probe told him that the man was dead.
Damn it. He wasn't sure what had done this damage. It didn't matter, he supposed. All that mattered was getting the last of the people out of here before the fire spread.
There weren't as many people on this floor. Four, he counted as he hustled them towards the stairs. But that wasn't right, he thought, pausing. He'd counted five minds on this floor... hadn't he?
"~Go!~" he shouted at the last of the four, a man who stopped and looked back uncertainly. Nathan gestured at the stairs, and he nodded jerkily and fled. Swallowing, Nathan headed down the hall, looking for that last set of thoughts. Hoping he hadn't been a few minutes too late.
There. Faint, clearly injured, but alive! Nathan kicked in the door of one of the apartments and hurried through a smoky, fire-lit living room. A few running steps took him down the hall to an open door, leading into one of the bedrooms. This had been where one of the holes in the facade of the building had been, Nathan thought. This was...
A child's bedroom. The boy lying on the bed was blond, maybe six or seven - and not moving. He could have been asleep, except for the blood on his face, on his pajamas...
Nathan's knees buckled and he slid down the doorframe. his chest so tight suddenly that he couldn't take a deep breath, and images exploding behind his eyes. "No," he heard himself mutter in a cracked voice. Bedroom. Hotel room. The boy on the bed, his little boy. Asleep, but no, not asleep, not with all the blood...
They were all safe outside, and Angelo didn't look back before he turned and sprinted back into the building, ignoring the smoke. Nathan was still in there, he'd been in there too long...
He shouted Nathan's name both aloud and as strongly telepathically as he could, as he raced for the third floor.
Night sky, outside the window. No, blue California sky, the sky above the hotel. And Tyler was on the bed, looking like he was asleep, but he knew better, he knew... Nathan reached out blindly, laid a hand against the doorframe. His heart was pounding in his ears, so loudly he couldn't hear anything else. Couldn't hear Angelo's shouts, or the ominous creaking of the roof. "I'm sorry," he muttered faintly. "I'm so sorry..."
He reached the third floor, and started checking each room methodically, door by door. "NATHAN!"
It didn't take him long to find the older man, and he took in the scene at a glance, then ran past to the boy. "Nathan! Snap out of it!"
"He's dead," Nathan mumbled, not sure who was talking to him.
Angelo flinched, taking in the fact that Nathan was quite clearly not with him, and turned back to the boy on the bed... who was still breathing. "...no, he isn't." An' he's not gonna be, either, not if I can help it. The next second, the boy was in his arms - with a brief hesitation when he saw the woman lying on the floor next to the bed, but she was facing up, he could see her eyes, and the blood, there was no help to give there - and then he was running for the stairs again.
Someone had pushed past him. Nathan didn't register the movement, even though part of him knew that he had to get up, too. Get up, because they'd be coming for him, they were still here...
Angelo stopped, turned, knowing he had to get the boy out of here, but... this was Nathan, he couldn't leave Nathan on his own in a building that might be too weak to stand much longer. He couldn't, "Nate! Come on!" Please, get up.
Someone was calling his name. Calling for help? He'd tried to get there in time, taken the stairs four at a time... but he hadn't, and Tyler had been on the bed, and Aliya had been lying on the floor by the window, both of them gone... Nathan turned his face towards the wall, squeezing his eyes shut.
He had no choice, or the boy was going to die in his arms. He still might anyway. Angelo shot a last desperate look over his shoulder, hoping he'd see Nathan get back up and follow him, then ran.
---
"Nathan."
The voice cut through the roaring in his ears. Crackling roar, like... fire, Nathan thought dimly, and looked up at the bedroom. Seeing it clearly, for the first time since he'd reached the doorway.
And she was standing there, in the middle of the flames but apparently unbothered by them. Her white robe was so bright it was painful to look at, far brighter than the fire that seemed to coalesce around her. Green eyes met his, one eyebrow arching.
"Rather an undignified end, don't you think?" Askani paused. "Get up, little brother."
Nathan pulled himself back to his feet, leaning heavily on the doorframe and staring at her blankly as the flames around her climbed higher. She smiled, almost wryly.
"Move, Nathan. They're waiting."
---
Angelo would later tell him how thankful he was that he hadn't had to go back any further into the building than the first flight of stairs. Implicit in that, of course, was the relief he'd felt to see Nathan staggering down the stairs under his own power.
Nathan would confess, likewise, that he hadn't really registered that it was Angelo who kept him from falling headlong down that flight of stairs as he stumbled, who'd led him back out into what passed for fresh air. But also, that he wasn't surprised to know that Angelo had run back into the burning building a third time.
Not at all surprised. But grateful.
"Stay there! Stay at the window!" Nathan yelled up at the screaming woman leaning out of her fifth-story window. The building was on fire, smoke billowing from broken windows, flames punching through the roof. He had managed, with great difficulty, to lock onto her thoughts, and he could see her looking back over her shoulder, trying to figure out whether she should try and get out of her apartment and to the stairs, flames or no flames. "NO!" he yelled desperately as she vanished back inside. #Come back to the window!# he projected desperately and propelled himself upwards. #I'll get you down, just come-#
The building exploded. The fault of a gas main, or something like that, Nathan would later conclude when he had the time to think about it. Now was not that time. The force of the explosion slammed him back to the ground, and the half-exoskeleton that manifested spontaneously was the only thing that saved him from injury.
Of course, it also drew the attention of at least one person on the street, though most of the others were too busy shrieking and trying to get out of the path of the falling debris to notice. When Nathan looked up he saw a man standing over him, smirking and not making any move to help him up. "Still one for stupid heroics, I see," he remarked, heedless of the chunks of concrete and burning wood scattered about them.
Nathan pushed himself up to a sitting position, casting one half-anguished look at the building before turning his attention to the man. Not a man, he realized. "I bet," he grated, hauling himself back to his feet, "that you're just enjoying this to no end, aren't you? Now you've got oppressed mutants rising up against their oppressors and getting slaughtered for it. Magneto must be salivating over the propaganda value, wherever he is..." And please, don't let her say 'here'.
Mystique barked out a laugh. "Ah, yes, I forgot, I must want this to happen, because it wasn't as if I wasn't trying to encourage peaceful resistance. Does this look peaceful to you, Nathan? Do you think I enjoy watching my brethren being executed by stupid humans with too many guns and too few brains? I didn't make this happen, so stop blaming me for something you were just as powerless to stop."
"Then stop mocking my 'stupid heroics' and go make yourself useful!" he raged at her. The damned thing was that she was right, or at least, could be. As suspicious as he was, nothing he'd heard her saying to that group of militants that night could said to have led to this. Maybe she'd been elsewhere, manipulating behind the scenes... but maybe she hadn't. There was so much confusion, so much fear in this situation. It was bigger than her, bigger than either of them. These things happen...
"How does it feel, having an enemy you can't fight by force, Nathan?" Mystique asked, ignoring his angry words as she kicked aside a piece of flaming debris that threatened to light another beam of wood. "One against which your little bird doesn't have a chance? Maybe if you used your telepathy for something productive you'd be useful, but you're too much a coward for that. The X-Men are useless here, and so are you. There's nothing you can, or shall I say will do to make this right."
Nathan's hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, and the urge to reach out with his useless telekinesis and pop her head like a grape was almost overwhelming. For a moment. Then it was sickening. Nathan swallowed hard, ignoring the taste of bile at the back of his throat.
"At least I'm trying to do something."
"Ah, yes. I'm sure the woman in the window would thank you for it, if she hadn't been killed in a fiery explosion," Mystique said, glancing over her shoulder at the burning rubble behind her. If she was afraid of goading Nathan beyond his holding point, she didn't show it.
"Cleaning up the mess is always such fun, isn't it? I wouldn't blame you for thinking it gets a bit tedious after a while, though. It would be much better to fix the problem so there isn't a mess in the first place. That's what we are trying to do, Nathan, even if you can't seem to fathom it."
Nathan took a step towards her - just as Angelo appeared at the end of the street, looking around for him. He didn't spot the familiar figure in his peripheral vision, however. He was too focused on Mystique.
"Then you were just as useless as we were here, weren't you?"
Angelo glanced between Nathan and the other 'man' as he drew closer, frowning - without the benefit of telepathy, all he could see was Nathan glaring daggers at some stranger, and he didn't know why. "Nate? I need you over here."
The man smirked, keeping his attention on Nate despite his apparent nonchalance in the face of the other man's anger. "Yes, Nathan, I am sure there is more mess for you to clean up. Why don't you run along and sweep up the pieces... I'm sure you'll get some great footage for the bleeding hearts back at the mansion."
Most people who knew Nathan Dayspring particularly well would have agreed that he'd been doing quite well at keeping his temper so far that day, in the fact of what could only class as extreme provocation. But the most stubborn self-control had its limits, and without stopping to think about the fact that Angelo was standing right there without any idea as to what the hell was going on, Nathan lunged at Mystique.
In an instant Mystique went from smirking smugly to dead-faced serious, moving into a crouch and readying herself for Nathan's rush. When he got near enough she struck at him with one heavy forearm, obviously not backing down despite his blind anger.
"Nathan!" Angelo snapped, darting forward without a second thought to try and put himself between them. "What the hell are you... this is not the time."
Nathan, reeling a little from the blow that had connected - he was not in a defensive frame of mind at the moment - didn't move fast enough to keep Angelo from getting between them. "Angelo!" He was too close to her, Nathan thought, all of his anger draining away in a sudden shock of icy fear. "It's Mystique, get out of the way!"
The shapeshifter stepped back, not making any move to attack the young man now that he was between herself and Nate. She looked between them for a moment, reading the fear in Nate's eyes and the confusion in Angelo's. Suddenly her features shifted, almost too quick to follow, and a moment later there were two Angelos standing before Nate.
"You continue to bring babies into a war zone, Nathan... you're going to regret it one day," she told him in Angelo's voice, looking ever-so-slightly disapproving. "You can't be watching all the time. Someday something bad might happen. What would you do then? Moan about how it was inevitable while hating yourself for doing nothing? And you," she continued, turning to Angelo, "you need to find a better philosophy to follow. Because watching and waiting never solved anything. Only men of action make a difference in this world."
Angelo just looked at her coldly, stepping to Nathan's side. "See, that's where you're wrong. Watchin' an' waitin' have their place, until the time's right for the action, but the right people have to take it. An' I've chosen my way, signed an' sealed. Sorry." The last was cheerfully insincere.
Nathan forced himself to straighten, relax, stop wanting to tear out Mystique's throat with his bare hands. Angelo was right, this wasn't the time. Trust him to be the voice of sanity... "You said you needed me," he said to Angelo, his voice still a little unsteady. "Let's go, show me where." He looked back at Mystique in Angelo's form, and shook his head tightly. "I'm done here."
"You were done before you started," Mystique replied, once again looking smug. "And now you're condemning others to the same fate. I hope you both enjoy this, because it will only happen again and again until someone does something about it." She spread her arms, indicating the chaos and madness around them as injured people struggled to make their way down the streets. "Good luck with the dustpan and broom, gentlemen." And with that she turned, heading away from them at a sauntering pace.
Angelo glared after her for a second, then turned deliberately away. "Back where I came from. We kind of need your TK."
--
The first thing Nathan thought as they got a good look at the building on the corner was that someone had thrown the tank into the first floor. It looked very much like that was exactly what had happened - how else would the damned thing have wound up upside-down with a warped gun on the floor of the shops on the first floor of the building?
He swallowed and looked up at the upper floors. As well as the visible fire on the first floor, there was smoke coming from far too many of the broken windows, and two gaping holes in the facade. "There are people," he said to Angelo hoarsely, waving a hand. "On the upper floors." He half-jogged, half-stumbled closer to the building, his shirt pulling up over his mouth and nose in an attempt to keep out some of the smoke. There had to be a way up. Stairs to the apartments, somewhere...
Angelo hated fire. Was afraid of it to the core. But if there were people in there, if Nathan was going in there after them... well, what else could he do?
He gritted his teeth, pulled his own shirt up to cover his face, and followed.
Nathan had to kick down the locked door that led into the small lobby. Inside, there was no one in evidence, and no one coming down the stairs from the apartments. Something was stopping them. They'd have to go up to find out what it was.
#Stay close,# Nathan thought at Angelo, even as he scanned up the stairs, to pin down the minds he'd sensed. On the second floor, there was burning debris blocking the stairs. Nathan wrapped it in a TK shield, choking off the oxygen to the fire and then dropped the debris over the railing to the lobby.
As he did, he projected the image of the now-clear hallways as clearly as he could to the half-dozen minds on this floor, with an invitation to move their asses as quickly as possible. Doors were flung open and terrified people emerged. "Get them downstairs and out of the building," Nathan ordered Angelo. "I'm going up to the third floor!"
Part of him - the pyrophobic part - really wanted to follow that order. Another part wanted to ignore it and go with Nathan, and it was a toss-up for a few moments which part was going to be stronger. Compromise was reached in the end, though, and he turned, face set, to start herding the people out of the building. He'd go to the third floor when he was done.
The situation was similar on the third floor, although the fire was more extensive. Nathan set his jaw and forced a shield tighter and tighter around the burning pieces of the interior wall that had collapsed inwards. There was someone lying beneath the debris in the apartment itself, and one quick probe told him that the man was dead.
Damn it. He wasn't sure what had done this damage. It didn't matter, he supposed. All that mattered was getting the last of the people out of here before the fire spread.
There weren't as many people on this floor. Four, he counted as he hustled them towards the stairs. But that wasn't right, he thought, pausing. He'd counted five minds on this floor... hadn't he?
"~Go!~" he shouted at the last of the four, a man who stopped and looked back uncertainly. Nathan gestured at the stairs, and he nodded jerkily and fled. Swallowing, Nathan headed down the hall, looking for that last set of thoughts. Hoping he hadn't been a few minutes too late.
There. Faint, clearly injured, but alive! Nathan kicked in the door of one of the apartments and hurried through a smoky, fire-lit living room. A few running steps took him down the hall to an open door, leading into one of the bedrooms. This had been where one of the holes in the facade of the building had been, Nathan thought. This was...
A child's bedroom. The boy lying on the bed was blond, maybe six or seven - and not moving. He could have been asleep, except for the blood on his face, on his pajamas...
Nathan's knees buckled and he slid down the doorframe. his chest so tight suddenly that he couldn't take a deep breath, and images exploding behind his eyes. "No," he heard himself mutter in a cracked voice. Bedroom. Hotel room. The boy on the bed, his little boy. Asleep, but no, not asleep, not with all the blood...
They were all safe outside, and Angelo didn't look back before he turned and sprinted back into the building, ignoring the smoke. Nathan was still in there, he'd been in there too long...
He shouted Nathan's name both aloud and as strongly telepathically as he could, as he raced for the third floor.
Night sky, outside the window. No, blue California sky, the sky above the hotel. And Tyler was on the bed, looking like he was asleep, but he knew better, he knew... Nathan reached out blindly, laid a hand against the doorframe. His heart was pounding in his ears, so loudly he couldn't hear anything else. Couldn't hear Angelo's shouts, or the ominous creaking of the roof. "I'm sorry," he muttered faintly. "I'm so sorry..."
He reached the third floor, and started checking each room methodically, door by door. "NATHAN!"
It didn't take him long to find the older man, and he took in the scene at a glance, then ran past to the boy. "Nathan! Snap out of it!"
"He's dead," Nathan mumbled, not sure who was talking to him.
Angelo flinched, taking in the fact that Nathan was quite clearly not with him, and turned back to the boy on the bed... who was still breathing. "...no, he isn't." An' he's not gonna be, either, not if I can help it. The next second, the boy was in his arms - with a brief hesitation when he saw the woman lying on the floor next to the bed, but she was facing up, he could see her eyes, and the blood, there was no help to give there - and then he was running for the stairs again.
Someone had pushed past him. Nathan didn't register the movement, even though part of him knew that he had to get up, too. Get up, because they'd be coming for him, they were still here...
Angelo stopped, turned, knowing he had to get the boy out of here, but... this was Nathan, he couldn't leave Nathan on his own in a building that might be too weak to stand much longer. He couldn't, "Nate! Come on!" Please, get up.
Someone was calling his name. Calling for help? He'd tried to get there in time, taken the stairs four at a time... but he hadn't, and Tyler had been on the bed, and Aliya had been lying on the floor by the window, both of them gone... Nathan turned his face towards the wall, squeezing his eyes shut.
He had no choice, or the boy was going to die in his arms. He still might anyway. Angelo shot a last desperate look over his shoulder, hoping he'd see Nathan get back up and follow him, then ran.
---
"Nathan."
The voice cut through the roaring in his ears. Crackling roar, like... fire, Nathan thought dimly, and looked up at the bedroom. Seeing it clearly, for the first time since he'd reached the doorway.
And she was standing there, in the middle of the flames but apparently unbothered by them. Her white robe was so bright it was painful to look at, far brighter than the fire that seemed to coalesce around her. Green eyes met his, one eyebrow arching.
"Rather an undignified end, don't you think?" Askani paused. "Get up, little brother."
Nathan pulled himself back to his feet, leaning heavily on the doorframe and staring at her blankly as the flames around her climbed higher. She smiled, almost wryly.
"Move, Nathan. They're waiting."
---
Angelo would later tell him how thankful he was that he hadn't had to go back any further into the building than the first flight of stairs. Implicit in that, of course, was the relief he'd felt to see Nathan staggering down the stairs under his own power.
Nathan would confess, likewise, that he hadn't really registered that it was Angelo who kept him from falling headlong down that flight of stairs as he stumbled, who'd led him back out into what passed for fresh air. But also, that he wasn't surprised to know that Angelo had run back into the burning building a third time.
Not at all surprised. But grateful.
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