xp_logs | Kaiten: The Will Of Good Men

Nathan arrives at the hospital in Tel Aviv. He sees Angelo. Then he sees what else is going on in the world. (Includes a cameo from one very pissed-off Hungarian Minister for Mutant Affairs.)

"Do you want something to drink?"

It wasn't the first time Theo had asked Angelo that question. Not even the fifth, in the several hours they'd been here. Theo had left Angelo's bedside - they'd stuck him into a private room, telling him that they were keeping him overnight for observation because of the concussion - once an hour, on the hour, to check on the others. He'd brought back news each time, including that Domino was still in surgery and there was no news.

If this was anyone else, or almost anyone, the response might have been snappish. But it was impossible to get angry with Theo, especially now. "No, thanks", he said tiredly. "Not right now."

Theo nodded. One of the nurses had actually found something for him to sit on - it was a footstool from the waiting room, actually, as he didn't fit in your average hospital chair. He looked tired and disconsolate, bright white bandages here and there in his orange fur.

Angelo tipped his head carefully sideways to look at him. "You okay?"

"No. But I'll live." Unspoken was the fact that a number of people would not. There had been twelve dead, at the office. Six more, including Domino, were still in critical condition. Everyone who had been on the third floor had at the very least survived the blast.

The new staff and most of the others on the first floor hadn't been as fortunate.

Angelo hadn't been told any of that information yet, and with the fogginess, he hadn't thought to ask. He knew he'd find out how everyone was sooner or later. "Good", was the only answer.

Theo watched him carefully. "Are you sure you don't-"

Before he could answer the question, the door opened, and Nathan was standing there.

Angelo's head came up, faster than might be sensible, and he actually managed something vaguely like a smile. "Hey."

Nathan didn't say a word. He came over to the bed, sitting down on the edge, and wrapped his arms around Angelo, hugging him. Careful of the bruises, but still tightly.

It was odd, sometimes, what a man's final straw could be. In this case, after everything that had happened, this was it. Angelo promptly leaned on his shoulder and started to cry.

Theo murmured something about checking on someone and left the room, silent if still limping. Nathan just held onto Angelo, reaching out telepathically too, trying to comfort him.

"David called me," he said softly, after a few minutes. "I'd already seen the news."

Angelo muttered something about Domino and surgery and then, less coherently, about the building and the ambulance.

"I know." Nathan rubbed his back gently. "I know about everyone, Angelo. David met me at the door." They hadn't bothered with words; David had just opened his mind and all of the bad news, all of the horror, had spilled right out. Nathan didn't know how he was this calm, how he could be this comforting. Maybe just because Angelo needed him to be.

He was still crying and for once, not making any real effort to stop. Not today, not this soon. There hadn't been time before, though he'd wanted to cry when he was looking at Domino in the rubble, but now there was. He nodded jerkily against Nathan's shoulder. "I... don't", he admitted. "Only the Pack."

"Do you want to know now?"

"...I don't know." He wasn't stupid, and he'd seen the rubble for himself. Not everybody was going to have walked out of that, or even been carried. Not alive.

"It's not very good, Angelo." His voice wavered just a little. "It's not as bad as it could have been, but it's not good."

There was a silence, then he nodded slowly, closing his eyes. "Didn't think so."

He was, shamefully, almost glad that Angelo hadn't asked. That he didn't have to tell him about the dead - those kids, those kids I interviewed - or about the injured still fighting for their lives.

"Does everybody know?" Angelo asked suddenly, without opening his eyes. "That needs to?"

Nathan nodded slowly. "David called... families," he said, faltering again a little. "I talked to your mother, and Pete... and Amanda. They'll be here soon. So will Joel."

"Gonna let me out tomorrow", Angelo said with a nod. "So I can be... there." Wherever there might be, it made sense in his head.

"That's tomorrow," Nathan said. "Tonight you've got to rest." Oh, there would be significant amounts of resting tomorrow, and for a number of days afterwards if he had anything to say about it - which he did - but for now, tonight would do. "You don't want to give them an excuse to keep you," he said with a limp smile as Angelo leaned back a little.

"...'m I allowed to sleep now?" He'd got some vague notion about not being allowed to sleep with a concussion, but if Nathan said it was okay, it was okay.

Another weak smile. "What, you were waiting for me?" Nathan asked, pressing Angelo gently back against the pillows. "You can sleep now. For as long as you want. I'll be right here, and if I have to step out to check on anyone, I'll be right back."

That got a nod, as he turned into the pillows. "Okay."

Nathan rose, adjusting the blankets, and sank down in the chair that Theo hadn't been using. His expression stayed calm, utterly even, and he reached out with his mind, making contact with all of his friends. The ambulatory and the injured, the conscious and the not.

He didn't actually need to go anywhere to check on everyone.

--

Theo had come back after a while, insisting that he needed to head out to the waiting room to "check out something on the TV". Nathan hadn't been enthused about the idea of leaving Angelo, asleep or not, but as soon as he'd started paying attention to the psychic atmosphere in the waiting room, he'd realized that Theo was right, and something was going on.

"David?" he asked, finding David slumped in a chair staring up at the television. "What-" His next words froze on his lips as he glanced at the screen and saw a familiar building, or one that would have been familiar if something hadn't blown apart its highly recognizable facade and carved a deep scar in the building itself.

He'd heard something about an explosion in Paris on the drive from the airport. There'd been no details at that point, and honestly, he hadn't cared. Whatever else was going on in the world, he'd reasoned, it could wait until he had things under control here. Until he knew how everyone was, who was alive and who was dead.

But this was... "Shit," he said under his breath, sinking down into the chair beside David. "That's-"

"The Mutant Affairs Ministry in Budapest." David looked sideways at him, his eyes red-rimmed with fatigue and worry. His arm was in a sling and his face was cut up by the glass he'd gone through in an attempt to outrun the blast wave with a couple of stragglers in tow, but he'd gotten off comparatively lightly. Had ever seemed relatively together, when Nathan had first arrived. Now, though... now, he looked shell-shocked. "The explosion in Paris was an UN building. Guess which."

"Oh, shit." There were a number of UN offices in Paris. Including that of the Human Rights Council's Committee for Mutant Affairs.

"And there's reports of an explosion in Switzerland. In Bern. Not what, yet..."

"What the hell," Nathan said under his breath, "is going on?" It was a rhetorical question, mostly; his eyes were locked on the television, and he straightened abruptly as the camera crew moved hurriedly down the street in Budapest, threading their way through the crowd and the emergency vehicles, and approaching a group of dark-coated people who immediately shifted to surround one figure in the center in a way that screamed 'security detail'. "Oh thank fuck," he muttered, seeing the camera zoom in on Barath. "He must not have been inside the building at the time."

"Minister Barath!" The correspondent's voice was British-accented. "Sir, can we speak to you for a moment? Sir!"

Barath looked... stunned, to put it mildly. His eyes moved from his damaged Ministry to the paramedics at work, the shocked and horrified crowd, as if he couldn't take it all in. One of his detail laid a hand on his arm, leaning down to murmur something in his ear, and Barath shook his head, replying in Hungarian.

The correspondent was persistent. "Minister! Do you have any statement on these attacks? We're getting reports now that the explosion in Bern was at the Mueller Institute, a mutant hospital-"

The camera caught the woman taking a very abrupt step back as Barath rounded on her, the fury on his face almost terrifying in its ferocity. "A 'mutant hospital'?" he snarled at her, his accent thickening with rage. "And how many staff members there were not mutants? How many family members?" He gestured to the ruined building. "Do you believe that all those killed and injured here were mutants? If that is what you intend to make of this, young woman-"

"Minister Barath, please," the correspondent said, sounding almost imploring, and rather shocked, as well. As if she hadn't expected that reaction. "I'm sorry, sir, I was only hoping to get a statement."

The fury in Barath's expression didn't entirely fade. But his jaw clenched, and he went on in a more controlled voice. "You want a statement. Well, then. This-" He gestured to the building, "all of this, and what has happened today elsewhere, is an obscenity." Somehow, even on a live feed, even with all of the background noise of the rescue operations going on, he managed to speak in a way that made every other sound on the street in Budapest seem like accompaniment, not competition. "These are not attacks against mutants, these are attacks against the best impulses of humanity, against those who see past the petty differences of genetics. And they will fail!" he growled. "Whoever has done this, whatever their motivations, they will be left behind by history and we will move forward. Because there is nothing in this world stronger than the will of good men."

Nathan leaned back in his chair as Barath brusquely dismissed the news crew and headed towards the ambulances, clearly to check on the injured members of his staff. The news coverage switched to Bern, and Nathan winced at the text scrolling across the bottom of the scene of yet another bombing. It was the Mueller Institute.

"I've got to call Moira," he said. "She'll want to do what she can to help." The two facilities had worked together, more than once. She had colleagues, long-time acquaintances, on staff at that hospital, and Nathan wondered, depressed, just how many of them were still alive. The hospital looked worse than the Elpis office had.

"People needing help all over, today," David muttered and rose, unsteady on his feet. "I'm going to go check on Isabel."

Nathan nodded, folding his arms across his chest, almost hugging himself as he stared, blankly now, at the television as the coverage continued. He needed to think, sort out how to react, but he couldn't, not when he could still sense his friends, sense Dom on the operating table.

There were lives in the balance here, and he couldn't think on the grand scale. Not yet. Taking a deep, unsteady breath, Nathan rose and headed over to the nursing station to ask for the latest news.