Angelo and Nathan, Tuesday morning

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After returning to the mansion from a visit to Amanda, Angelo takes refuge in the boathouse. Unfortunately, the couch is occupied.



Moira had removed the baby from the premises, taking Ray up to the mansion with her, and had suggested that he enjoy a few quiet hours - in the sleeping sort of way. He was still messed up from the repeated druggings, however, and although he'd slept like the dead all last night, an afternoon nap seemed to be unachievable.

He was however lying down - on the couch, with a cold pack on his forehead. The living room was nicely dim around him, in deference to the headache that was still screaming, if softly, after two of the little blue pills. The office was entirely quiet; he'd officially shut it down for at least a week. Maybe longer.

Entirely quiet, that was, until the soft click of the door opening and closing broke the silence, and a chair creaked. Someone was trying to pretend he wasn't there... at least there was no further noise to suggest the person was there to work?

"I'm not asleep, you know."

After a startled pause, "Why not?"

Nathan sighed and lifted the cold pack off his eyes, sitting up - slowly. The bullet graze itched and burned under the bandage, as they tended to do. "Well, best I can figure it, I spent about... well, actually I don't know how long I spent drugged this weekend. It's all a little confused. Sleep's not the first thing on my mind right now."

"You know, druggin' really doesn't count. But I can see where you're comin' from on that, yeah."

Nathan tilted his head, regarding Angelo through eyes narrowed not out of suspicion, but because the light from the door was making his head hurt more. "You look like you're a bit worse the wear yourself. Sit down - and don't go anywhere near that office door."

"I wasn't goin' to", Angelo protested, reaching for the chair he'd been about to sit on when Nathan first spoke. "Can't think straight enough to work on the painkillers."

"I find your arguments specious. Or something." Nathan let his aching head rest against the back of the couch, sighing. His eyes closed again, but not out of drowsiness. "You just get back?" he hazarded a guess.

"Before you did", was the correction. "Not long before the kids from the bus got brought home."

"That's not what I meant," Nathan said, and proceeded to demonstrate that singed-around-the-edges telepathy or not, he was still aware of far too much of what was going on. Of course, a certain Scottish redhead was mostly responsible for that. "Did you just get back from seeing Amanda."

"...oh." He looked down. "I stayed at the clinic last night, yeah. They let me as long as I don't keep her awake."

Nathan's eyes opened, but he looked up at the spot where the wall met the ceiling, not at Angelo. "So what happened?" he asked. "The kicked look you're wearing is more than just worry."

"Nothin' happened at the clinic", he answered honestly if evasively. "I saw her. We talked a bit. She slept."

Nathan made a noise that was somehow more eloquent than a tirade about avoiding the question would have been. "Right," he said, putting the cold pack over his eyes. It felt rather good, actually, although he had to hold it there.

"I don't..." Angelo started, then pulled a face at his own dramatism. 'I don't want to talk about it' sounded far too... something.

"One of those situations, is it?" Nathan paused. "How did you get hurt?"

"I tried to stop them takin' Amanda", he answered after a short silence, voice empty and flat. "This was a lesson to stop makin' trouble."

Nathan froze for a moment, then lifted the cold pack off his eyes and raised his head, looking at Angelo.

The bruises were still livid on his face and any visible skin under the collar of his shirt, and he was holding himself stiffly in his chair. He wasn't looking at Nathan.

Nathan had a sudden, dizzying flash of memory, of another conversation. When he spoke, however, his voice was considerably more gentle than it had been back then. Even if the response was the same.

"And?"

"An' what?" He just sounded tired now. Tired and in pain and too old for a boy of twenty.

Nathan was so tired. Tired and sore, and considerably more frayed around the edges than he was letting on. Some things, though, you did anyway. "And, did you?"

"Make more trouble?" He looked away, almost ashamed. "No."

"Look at me." It was almost snapped, demanding obedience. But when he went on, his tone was softer again. "Why not?"

"'Cause..." He swallowed. "'Cause they'd already taken her. There was nothin' left to fight for that wasn't just me. An' I didn't want them to hurt the girls."

"So what you're telling me is that you made a decision. Why do you look ashamed of yourself, then?" Nathan sighed, his hand curling around the cold pack. "If you'd made them injure you more seriously, you were gving up the chance to possibly fight back later."

"Because it wasn't - " he started, then continued more slowly. "Wasn't like that. I didn't want them to hurt the girls, but it wasn't... they didn't stop 'til I said stop, Nate. An' I didn't do anyone a damn bit of good."

"So what would have happened if you hadn't said stop?"

"I don't know." And he didn't. "They weren't lookin' to kill me on purpose..."

"Pride's a pretty weak reason to wind up dead or hurt beyond repair, Angelo." Nathan let the cold pack rest on his knee. "And everything changes when you're in someone else's power like that."

"I know it does." That was almost inaudible. "But I let them break me an' that bitch laughed. I saw her face when Cain came to get me."

"Angelo." Nathan leaned forward, lines of pain appearing and then smoothing again. "How she did or didn't react doesn't matter. I've been tortured by people who were absolutely unemotional about it and people who enjoyed it... hell, a couple of people who were sexually aroused by it, and that was not a good day, let me tell you." He gave the young man a thin, sardonic smile. "But you know the one thing that was the same, in every single one of those cases? I did a lot of screaming."

Angelo blinked, almost looked down again, but didn't let himself - though it took an effort. "I... didn't. Much. But it wasn't really torture, just a beatin'. I've had worse."

"Have you." It wasn't a question, and Nathan's tone was almost ironic. "You've had worse than being helpless while Remy's bitch of an ex-wife carted off your girlfriend to be tortured, while kids you were responsible for were under threat. When?"

"I meant just the pain." His voice had turned flat again. "Not the rest of it." The trap when he was fourteen... that had been close, or as bad, but not worse.

"Well, guess what. You can't separate the pain from the rest of it, Angelo. It's an artificial distinction." Nathan leaned back again, wincing. "There's a reason that bitch grabbed the kids, and not just you and Amanda. They were leverage. With the two of you, as much as with us."

That was just met with silence, as Angelo's hands curled in his lap and his face shuttered over. He didn't know what to say, or had run out of words.

"No one's expecting you to bounce back, Angelo." Nathan replaced the cold pack over his eyes. "But if you drown yourself in guilt over this, you let her continue to have power over you. And I don't think you want to do that. Besides," he muttered under his breath, "don't be cutting into the guilt-accepting line. There are other people who should be ahead of you."

That got him a sharp sideways look, but no comment on the latter part. "I need to... when Amanda's better, I need to go away for awhile. I think." His voice was oddly tentative.

Nathan let the cold pack slip off one eye. "On your own, or for work?" he asked quietly. "You need an excuse to go somewhere remote, I have about fifteen, at last count..."

"Not sure. Wherever I can get. With her, maybe - I don't think she's gonna have a problem gettin' time off work. But that'll depend if she wants to go."

"You're owed a few weeks of actual vacation. You need to take them, just let me know." Nathan sighed, adjusting the cold pack. "I'm thinking of keeping the office shut for a few weeks anyway."

"Ask the girls", Angelo advised quietly. "Might be they need somethin' to take their minds off all this more than they need a rest."

Nathan sat bolt upright, the cold pack falling, and ignored the wave of sick dizziness that went through him at the too-quick motion. The weary assessing look was gone, replaced by something noticeably cracked around the edges.

"Maybe I need a vacation, too," was all he said, breathing heavily.

"I never said you didn't", Angelo returned, wary and startled. "Just... if they can keep the office runnin' even a little bit, it'd give them somethin' to do while we're gone. An' they're all capable."

"I'll think about it." Nathan's voice was a little calmer. Not much, but a little, and the tired, slightly cynical mask was reassembling itself. "Not for a few days, though."