xp_logs | Nathan and Angelo, Sunday afternoon/evening

Angelo did say he was going down to keep Nathan company.

"Why precisely are you looking so dour?" Nathan inquired wearily, eyeing the young man sitting beside his bed. He hadn't been surprised that he and Jim were being kept in the infirmary overnight for observation - psis and head injuries did not mix - and had known better than to argue the point. Moira had vanished for a while to deal with getting Rachel her dinner, pausing only to mock his perfectly innocent question about whether or not he might be allowed his laptop.

"Oh, I don't know", came the deceptively mild answer. "Maybe 'cause you're in the medlab again?"

"Observation," Nathan quoted Amelia, with a faint curl of his lips. "I'm fine. I mean, I'm not going to be able to move in the morning, but I'm fine."

"Yeah", Angelo said flatly. "You're so fine I'm gonna be down here all night with you, helpin' wake you up every hour to make sure you don't die. Amelia said so."

"She's not even sure I've got a concussion," Nathan said. "It's just that I've had concussions a number of times, and the powers complicate things." He waved a hand tiredly at the door. "I'm not the only one getting this treatment. Jim's in the next room, remember?"

"Yes, I know. But but this is also... what, the second time he's been down here for more than a quick patch-up since he arrived?" Yeah, maybe it was hypocritical, but so what.

"Okay, so while you're scolding me, care to critique my choice of strategy, too? I mean, since you're obviously pissed, surely you've seen the alternative solution I didn't. You know what I mean. The way to stop the crazy man from blowing up the city while backup was half a day away?" It came out much more snarky than he'd intended, and Nathan made a face, looking away.

"You didn't have to go head to head with a telekinetic as strong as you are by yourself!" Angelo burst out, suddenly. "I mean, you said yourself, Jim was there, other people were there, an' emergency backup's never half a day away when we have Clarice. Did you even remember her?"

"Jim and I beat Saidullayev," Nathan shot back with a flash of exhausted anger. "And I'm not second-guessing the reaction here. Besides, we would have been fine if Magneto wasn't a back-stabbing son of a bitch."

"...an' you didn't expect that from him, why?"

"Because I'm a painfully direct person and tend to expect other people to be the same way. I'm a idiot, I know."

"You are when they're already been provin' for years that they're not." But the heat had gone out of his voice, now.

"He took me by surprise." It wasn't an excuse, just the truth. "I was... well, I was shaken up, from the fight." And if that wasn't the euphemism of the century, Nathan didn't know what was. He shifted on the bed, wincing as his many, many bruises protested. He was lucky bruises were all they were. Say what you wanted about his various powers adventures, his telekinetic shields were second to none.

"Shaken up", Angelo echoed tonelessly. "He beat you 'cause you were shaken up."

Nathan almost glared at him. "The Chechen lunatic had just spent twenty minutes or so putting me through buildings and tearing my exoskeleton into pieces," he said. Fine, no more euphemisms. "I wasn't at my best."

"That's more like it. I know you, Nathan, an' when you're tellin' me an enemy got you 'cause you were 'shaken up'... not gonna cut it."

"I was trying to spare my pride," Nathan muttered, closing his eyes. His head hurt. Rather a lot, actually, and he was feeling sick to his stomach.

Angelo sighed, looking down at him. "Look. You're allowed to sleep now, if you can. I'll wake you up in an hour."

"Okay." It was probably a good idea. The more he slept, the faster the night would go, and he wanted to be back out of here as soon as he could. It might have been years, but the infirmary rooms didn't remind him of certain other rooms any less.

--

Not far now... Or so he thought, but the corridors kept twisting and turning, and he hadn't gotten more than a glimpse of Saidullayev since the chase had started. Nathan ran through the dimness, his expression set in bleak lines.

He wasn't going to call out, because that wouldn't help, that would just make things worse. If he was going to reach him, he had to reach him, and the only way he was going to be able to do that was if he -

He turned a corner and came face to face with Magneto. Who smiled, slightly...

... and Nathan woke up with a gasp.

Angelo was sitting cross-legged in a corner of the room, eyes closed -but he wasn't sleeping, as evidenced by the speed with which his eyes shot open at the sound and he got to his feet. "Nate?"

Nathan swallowed and sat up - very slowly. He hurt too much for speed, but he felt the need to at least be semi-upright. "What time is it?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

Angelo glanced at his watch. "About seven. They might bring food in for us soon. Or me, if you're not up to eatin'."

A little over an hour since the last time he'd woken up. Moira had been here, then, and they'd talked a little bit about what had happened. Maybe not such a good idea, given the way he'd been dreaming. Nathan rubbed at the bump at the base of his skull, wincing.

"Don't touch it", Angelo said quietly. "You want me to go find you some ice?"

"Yeah. Please." Nathan closed his eyes, focusing on calming down and slowing his breathing while Angelo found a cold pack. He took it from him with another murmur of thanks and laid back down on his side, holding it to the back of his neck. It took him a long moment to speak again. "I shouldn't feel this badly for him."

"For who?" Angelo was sitting closer to the edge of the bed now, in a chair rather than on the floor. He'd move back when Nathan went back to sleep.

"Saidullayev." He ought to elaborate. He couldn't quite pull the words together, though.

"I've read the report, Nate." That was quiet, again. "He didn't know what he was doin'."

"He knew what he was doing in San Francisco. And Moscow." It seemed like a pretty feeble thing to say. The man was a criminal, but no one deserved seven months of torture as punishment - did they? The law degree and the new life was conflicting with far too many years of a more rough and ready approach to things, and yet there were things in those years, too, that meant he was wrestling with sympathy whether he liked it or not.

"Yeah, he did. But not this time. An' if you're thinkin', 'did he deserve that, even for San Francisco an' Moscow?... then no. You're not wrong."

"I'm so tired of this." His voice slurred a little on the words as he closed his eyes. "No matter where I go, what I do, it's always something like this." Nathan wasn't even really sure what he meant.

"Like... someone gettin' conditioned?" Angelo hazarded. "Or someone tryin' to, anyway."

A slightly despairing, almost inaudible laugh was Nathan's only response for another long moment. "We all get conditioned," he said, still with no idea what the hell he was saying. "One way or the other. I conditioned you, you know." He opened his eyes, tried to focus on Angelo. "Except I tried to condition you to choose, and that's why I'm different than them. I think." I hope.

"No", Angelo protested. "Nate, you're different than them so many ways. You taught me. It was my choice every step of the way to stick around."

"Do they know that? The people who think you're too like me..." Nathan winced, rubbing at his eyes. "I don't know what I'm saying," he went on, his voice wavering slightly. "I don't know how much choosing I ever did versus how much I could have done... everyone's got an opinion, you know." It was official. He was making absolutely no sense whatsoever.

"If anyone ever seriously thought you'd done somethin' to my head, don't you think they'd've got the Professor to check?" Angelo demanded. "An' as for the choosin'... you were a kid an' they took you an' tried damn hard to make sure you didn't have free will. Even if they didn't get you all the way, kids learn what to do to survive."

It struck him that Angelo was trying to be reassuring. About something. "I wonder how old he was," Nathan said dimly. "When he started choosing."

"If you ever see him again", was the dry answer, "maybe you should ask."

"I think they're all wondering if we'll see him again," Nathan said, "and what he'll choose then. If he's even capable of choosing anymore. Do you get that back, if you lose it?" He should know the answer to that, he really should. "Or do you just constantly play catch-up and hope you get there eventually..."

"I don't know", Angelo said, quiet and unhappy. "There's different kinds of choosin'."

"I don't think you ever get there. All you do if you pull off the best-case scenario is keep a few steps ahead of the wolves. They all have opinions too," Nathan said fitfully, shifting on the bed again. "Baying at you about the things you do or the choices you didn't make."

"They always will. But the wolves don't matter, 'cause the past's the past. None of us can change it, all you can do is make up for it. So who cares what anyone says?"

"No one. Everyone. I'm not any different from him, you know." Nathan sounded almost lost. "He's just me in another time. And if Magneto had shown up the year I lost my family... I probably would have gone with him willingly." Wouldn't have had to be carted off, unconscious...

"An' if Magneto'd come for me when I was livin' on the streets, I'd probably've gone with him, an' how many of the others here with bad histories could say the same? The difference is he didn't."

Nathan's eyes closed, and he was silent for long enough that the safest assumption would have been that he'd fallen asleep again. But before Angelo could move back to his corner to keep meditating, he spoke.

"He's me. And he's them. The kids in that program."

"The program?" Angelo asked, alert. "There was another military program out there?"

"No." No wonder Angelo was having trouble following him, he wasn't following himself. "The DDR program, in Derbent. All those Chechnyan mutant kids, who'd been soldiers... he's them twenty years from now, if they don't-" Nathan's eyes opened. "When I'm out of here don't let me forget to find out what happened," he said suddenly, hoarsely. "To them. Where they went. Or no - call Joel, tell him? They don't get to slip between the cracks, or do awful things because no one teaches them how to live..."

"I'll call him tonight", Angelo promised, soothing but meaning it. "We'll find them. Get them somewhere safe, if they're not already." He'd been the kid who'd slipped through the cracks, once, or all but.

"Okay." Nathan's voice was fainter, and he closed his eyes again. "Good. Because I don't want to let them down anymore. They die when I do that."

"We'll find them", Angelo repeated quietly, watching him.