xp_logs | Nathan, Ororo and Jean

Ororo checks in with Nathan in the infirmary, who gives her a (very brief) report while waiting for the doctors to get around to him. A bit later, Jean finally makes it back to the mansion and pitches in to help patch up X-Men. She's in something of a mood.

Nathan relaxed a little at the sight of the silver-haired head that appeared in the doorway of the examining room. "Come in, 'Ro," he said, smiling slightly at her. "I'm just waiting my turn, here. How'd things go in New York?" He hesitated. "Moira could tell me that Angelo was all right, but not any of the details..." He would not fret. Angelo was okay, and that was what counted, even if he wasn't here so that Nathan could make sure of that for himself.

"He's well enough to be captivating an audience of FBI agents with his undercover stories," Ororo replied, frowning as she saw the cuts and bruises on Nate's face. She approached him, her own face still set in its habitual expression of worry. "He handled himself very well, Nathan."

"Of course he did." Fierce pride flashed in Nathan's eyes for a moment, before it was chased out again by weariness. "I suppose they'll be debriefing him for a while. Damn." He wanted to see him, talk to him about what had happened. "Scott woke up a couple of times on the way back." The sudden shift in topic was perhaps bit disconcerting. "He was pretty disoriented."

Her shoulders slumped in relief, and she nodded, mustering up a smile. "I can imagine. As long as he is well."

"Scott's fine, Angelo's fine, everyone else is largely intact... except the bombmaker, and really, not shedding any tears here." Cooper hadn't been entirely happy to receive a corpse, but, well. Nathan still couldn't see what had happened as anything but a rough form of justice.

"Disaster is averted once again." Turning on her heel, Ororo sank down to sit next to Nate, willing herself to breathe in deeply to dispel the tension that had settled on her shoulders almost a week before. "If just barely. At least everyone is all right. No permanent casualties."

"We won't know until the government interrogates the ones we brought back.... well, we might not even know then," Nathan conceded, "but I'd have to think we gutted them. The Preservers, I mean. I doubt it'll be the last we see of them, but this has got to be a huge setback." He sighed a bit, shifting his injured arm awkwardly. "And at least they won't be turning young mutants into bombs anymore."

"Thank the Goddess. This is one of those threats I am particularly glad has been eradicated."

"You look absolutely wiped out, Ororo," Nathan said, more seriously. "Go get some rest? I think everyone's pretty much squared away. The redheads just have yet to get to those of us who aren't bleeding on the floor."

"I think I will stay up just a while longer," she told him with a shake of her head. "I would like to make sure everyone is all right. Even the ones without gaping flesh wounds," she added with a smirk in his direction.

"You're a worrywart," was his sage rejoinder. "I think that's the term, for you... I suppose you had to take over all of Scott's worrying for the week, too." It was a calculated little poke. He wondered if she'd respond. She'd definitely seemed to be doing the stiff upper lip thing all week.

"I will gladly give it back once he is up to taking it," Ororo replied. "With people like you and Angelo under our roof, it is definitely a two-person job." No one said she couldn't poke back, right?

Nathan stared at her for a moment, then grinned tiredly. "Shoo," he said, flicking his fingers at the door. "Go check on the others. Debriefing's going to be a kick, tomorrow..." Tomorrow would come soon enough. He wanted to get his shoulder looked at, then maybe see if he couldn't find a way to check on Angelo. That might take some doing, though.

"Mm, yes," she said as she slipped off the table and headed for the door. "I believe I will let you cover the part where the Blackbird had an unfortunate meeting with the ground."

--

He'd had to wait for a while longer; only logical, given that Scott needed checking out, first and foremost, and there were other X-Men more hurt than he was. Moira had blown in and out like a minor hurricane, hissing at him disapprovingly before she gave him a once-over, a kiss, and a couple of painkillers. Nathan was surprised when it was Jean who came through the door into the examining room, however.

"I thought you'd be with Scott," he greeted her - then raised an eyebrow at her black eye.

"Conflict of interest," Jean said shortly. "I can't decide if I want to hit him or hit him hard. Amelia decided not to take the chance."

"Ah," Nathan said. Delicately. He eyed her a bit warily as she came over to where he was sitting. "Like I told Moira, I think I'm fine, mostly, except for the shoulder. Bruises and cuts, that's all." The painkillers had kicked in nicely, but he was still holding the arm half-tucked against his side, almost instinctively.

"Let's have a look," Jean said, quickly cleaning up what little blood there still was as she checked him over. She was a good enough doctor not to take her ire out on him, but the examination was possibly a tad more brusque than it needed to be, and there was a distinct lack of her usual chatter.

The painkillers hadn't quite kicked in that far, however, and Nathan was looking a little white around the lips as Jean helped him off with the black t-shirt he'd been wearing under his uniform jacket. His shoulder was several alarming colors of black and blue already. "I put it back in place myself... um, with a tree."

"Joy," Jean muttered, scowling. "Yet more of the traditional lack of self-care that we've become so famous for. Come on, we're going to need x-rays."

"It was kind of a necessity," Nathan said, trailing along after her meekly as she led him from the examining room. "I needed both arms." She was not in a good mood. Not that he could blame her, although... wait. "Who hit you, by the way?"

"Oh, didn't you hear?" Jean's voice was that dangerous, sweet, 'say the wrong thing and I'll rip your liver out' tone that didn't get used very often, and it was probably just as well Nate couldn't see her face. "My husband has taken to beating me to get what he wants. Although, possibly only when what he wants is for me to leave him so he can die alone."

All right. Several things made sense, now. He had kind of been wondering just how Scott had gotten hours off the Florida coast in a seaplane. "And how does that make you feel?" he murmured, somewhat ironically.

Jean stopped and turned to stare at him. Possibly it was only the irony in his tone that saved him. "Well," she finally said, "my eye hurts."

"It's a pretty respectable black eye, I'd say. You know, Moira's done her hand in a couple of times, hitting me," Nathan said, the irony still there in his voice. "Under very different circumstances, obviously. Generally I was just being an ass."

"And what, do you think, Moira would do if it had been you?" She had actually asked Moira and gotten an 'Ach, lass,' and a hug that had almost broken through the anger which was keeping Jean going at the moment but now, facing Nate, she wanted a real answer. "If you had been dying of something she. couldn't. fix, and you left like that. So she woke up, alone, for all she knew you were already dead and she'd never even get to say good bye, and then. You. Came. BACK." Jean wan't yelling, but that didn't keep the intensity out. "If you gave up, and someone else saved you in spite of yourself, what would Moira do?"

Despite the soreness and the fatigue, Nathan tilted his head at her, and his expression and his voice were both utterly level. "I left, dying of something she couldn't fix, over and over and over again, Jean. For eight years. Eight years, she waited for GW to come to Muir and tell her that I'd died, for me to turn up and tell her that the antivirals were no longer working." He took a deep breath, then let it out.

"So take all that, all the pain, all the fear and hurt and anger -eight years worth, and then compress it into a handful of hours. That's how it made me feel." Jean turned on her heel, heading on towards the waiting x-ray machine.

Nathan sighed again and followed. "On the other hand," he said, sitting down as directed, "he's alive and he's going to be fine. But I'd imagine you're torn between being unutterably relieved at that and wanting to strangle him."

"You imagine correctly." She was back to being short. Jean knew none of this was Nathan's fault; that, really, it wasn't even Scott's fault. It was just that she couldn't afford to give up her anger yet. The anger was what was keeping her functioning instead of crying in a corner. And she needed to focus the anger, or else she'd just end up screaming and throwing things, swearing at life for doing this to them again.

"You could wish sometimes that our lives were less whacked-out Grand Epic," Nathan said and then winced again as she moved his arm gently. He looked away, his expression tight. "Okay. Most of the time, you could wish that..."

"Ah, but the last time I ended up wishing that my life wasn't like this, I took myself at face value, developed a psychotic break and ended up dressed in tiny amounts of black vinyl. I can't even want my life not to be whacked-out in a non-whacked-out fashion." Releasing his arm she watched as he once again tucked it against his side and then went rumaging through one of the drawers before pulling out a proper sling. "It's not broken, but this will help. And you're going to be doing PT as soon as it stops hurting just to move."

"PT? Me? The world will stop turning at the incongruity-" She was giving him that look. Nathan managed a one-shouldered shrug. "Cut me some slack, I was holding a plane together all the way from Mexico. I'm not entirely sure I didn't will her off the ground. Which reminds me, your idiot of a husband is going to wake up and promptly pass out again when he sees his plane."

"How much are you joking?" Jean asked, grabbing on to the new focus. "What happened to the 'Bird?"

"Oh, that's right. You weren't back here when we, um, landed. If you call that a landing." Nathan shook his head slightly as Jean helped him on with a new shirt, then the sling. "Two major hull breaches and serious wing damage. They shot us down, Jean."

"No, Cooper was keeping the whole facility in an info black-out so I couldn't find out where he'd gone." There was bitterness there. Jean didn't actually know if Val had been the one to authorize that or not - it wasn't really the blonde's style - but she didn't much care. "How did they manage that, though?"

"Multiple energy projectors, firing at us from the cover of the trees." Nathan slumped a bit in his seat. Exhaustion was clearly winning out over adrenaline, finally. "I think I need more drilling on scanning from the plane... I didn't catch it until it was too late."

"My, these guys certainly loved their energy projectors..." Jean sighed. "You need to get some rest, Nate. Long range telepathic scans under time pressure are... Well, it's amazing we pull it off as often as we do, but we can work on it, later."

He hauled himself up, swaying a little. "Yes, I can make it back to the boathouse," he said, preempting any questions on the subject. "And Jean..." Tired gray eyes met hers for a moment, until he gave her a faint smile. "He's going to be okay. You can kill him later."

Jean managed a smile which in no way resembled a real smile. "Don't be nice," she said. "I don't think I can take nice right now."

The laugh was tired-sounding, but unfeigned. "Well, I'd offer to let you use me as a punching bag but it's been a hard day."

"Oh, no." Jean shook her head. "I'm unlikely to be able to get more than one pass on hitting patients out of Amelia, and I'm saving it."