xp_logs | Thirteen Days: Tibet

Sometimes there is an abandoned Buddhist monastery around when you need one.

They'd lucked out, Nathan knew. The area where they'd landed had been remote, and painfully so; there hadn't been much cover to be found on the upper slopes of the peaks that lined the river valley. Farther down, however, below the treeline, Nathan had found the remains of what appeared to be a Buddhist monastery. It was shelter enough. It had taken a lot of effort to get Angelo and Clarice down there, and he wasn't all that sure he should have been moving Angelo in the first place, but if this was Tibet - and it sure as hell looked like the Himalayas - the nights would get cold.

He'd found firewood, too. Another necessity. And there was a spring at the back of the little monastery, so they had water. Blinking as his vision doubled, Nathan poked at the fire and tried to convince himself that they'd be okay.

There was no sign of Toad or Senyaka. He'd looked. For some reason, he couldn't see that as a good thing. Finding bodies, in their case, would have been nice.

Angelo wasn't moving any more than necessary in his place by the fire, injured leg stretched out with the ankle roughly splinted. He'd discovered the hard way on their descent that too much exertion (and any was too much right now) just made him start coughing up blood again.

"You doing okay?" Nathan asked him tiredly. Clarice was asleep; he was letting her get some rest, but only for an hour or so at a time. She was obviously concussed, and he had to keep an eye on her.

"I'm... alive", came the wry and croaky answer. "Guess that's doin' pretty well."

"Yeah." Nathan poked at the fire some more. It was getting cold already. "You know, when we're all back home safe and sound, you and I are going to have a talk about why vacuum exposure is bad." It was a half-hearted joke, at best.

"Didn't... mean to", Angelo protested. His voice sounded painful, undeniably so. "You saw."

"I'm just giving you a hard time. Since you gave me a heart attack and all." Nathan looked over at him, trying to focus. "Do you need more water?" he asked.

"Do that... when I can talk again properly." He shook his head, very carefully. "'m okay." Well... not thirsty, at least.

"I wish I could say 'just think instead of talking', but my head's all messed up." Too much exertion, landing that glider. Plus whatever Senyaka had done to him. "You need water, just... wave a hand, or something, and I'll get you some." Nathan coughed experimentally, pressing against the sore spot along his ribs. Bruised, he thought, rather than broken.

That comment got a crooked grin as Angelo nodded slightly. "I will. Broke your brain again?"

"Yes, well, it's never been quite the same since I lobotomized myself, remember," Nathan said, as dryly as he could. "And reentry from orbit was a new trick, even with Clarice's help." You'd think they were sitting around the table at Harry's chewing over the mission, rather than stuck in some remote corner of Tibet, injured and who knows how many hours from help.

It was the easiest way to discuss it all. Easier than thinking about the truth of their situation. "An' survivin' vacuum is a new trick... for me. Moira's gonna be so proud." He started to cough again, lifting a hand to his mouth automatically.

"Try and limit the talking," Nathan said, not looking at Angelo, so that the younger man wouldn't see the worry in his eyes. "Your lungs'll be happier with you." It wasn't as if he hadn't had plenty of experience with lung damage and the effects of it.

He couldn't answer for a few moments, then he wiped his hand unobtrusively on the remnants of stone floor beside him. "'s too quiet... if nobody talks."

"I guess I can keep talking." Nathan gave a low, weary laugh that didn't have much in the way of amusement about it. "I do like the sound of my own voice. I'm sure you've probably figured that out by now."

"Years ago", Angelo said helpfully, trying to make his tone light and mostly failing.

"Yeah, I figured as much. Not as if I've made it much of a secret. I like giving advice and my take on How The World Works a little too much." Nathan smiled very faintly, poking at the fire again. "This is what happens when you get old, though. You think you know more than you do."

"Good advice", was Angelo's only contribution. "Mostly." And as far as his own experience went, for the most part, it really had been.

"I fully expect to be making a nuisance of myself in your life for a very long time to come." Nathan's voice was a little hoarse. "Both of you," he said, inclining his head towards Clarice. "So on that note, I think I'm going to be carrying you both out of here tomorrow. There's got to be a village somewhere. I don't feel like waiting and hoping the cavalry arrives." Not when he didn't know whether the others who'd come down with them were, whether they were still alive. Or pissed.

"Can't", Angelo protested, too sharply, setting off another round of coughing. "Not both. Your powers..." He didn't want Nathan overstretching himself for them, when there was no telling how near or far the closest village might be. He let the first sentence pass uncommented on.

"Neither of you are particularly big, you know," Nathan said, once the coughing had passed - although he watched Angelo carefully, through the coughing fit. "It's not like I can't throw you over a shoulder and tuck Clarice under one arm."

He wiped his mouth again, cleaning his hand on his clothes this time. "No throwin'." There was a wry edge to the rasp of his voice now. "I'll walk. Limp. With a stick. Won't slow you down... much more."

"No walking, boy. Not in this terrain and at this altitude. And not with a broken ankle. Try not to be a noble idiot. That's one thing you really had no business learning from me." Nathan's voice was gruff, but there was no edge to it.

"Nate... gonna slow you down either way. Might's well let me go slow on my... foot." Noble idiot or not, he wasn't going to give in to the idea of being carried that easily.

"I promise not to tell anyone." It wasn't really a debate. Angelo wasn't walking on a broken ankle. He didn't care how he ensured that, but he would. Nathan made a limp gesture with his hands. "I could do one of those travois things... I've had to haul people out of rough terrain before."

"Better than your shoulder", was the simple answer. "Clarice can ride in it too."

"A double-travois. Very cosy. Amanda may have to have words with her." Nathan leaned forward, letting his head rest on his knees for a long moment. He was tired, but he couldn't risk sleeping and not being able to wake up Clarice. Or waking up to find out that Angelo's condition had gotten worse.

That got something like a quick faint laugh. "She'll understand... body heat thing, an' all." He drew up his good leg, wrapping his arms around his knee. It was cold, now he'd gone and mentioned heat.

Nathan got up, a little unsteady on his feet, and went over to pull Angelo a bit closer to the fire. "The hole in the roof makes a handy vent for the smoke," he muttered, trying to jar Angelo as little as possible in the process of shifting him.

Angelo helped as best he could, shuffling along towards the fire with his leg held stiff. "s good. Don't want more things makin'... me cough. Gonna be hard enough... sleepin' as it is." And not only because of the cold and the cough and the pain. Those few seconds when he'd been out in vacuum, before he passed out...

"The government had better pony up for therapy for all of us," Nathan said, gruff again. "Least they can do, when they throw us into a science fiction disaster movie..."

Angelo snorted, faintly. "Didn't need... one more phobia. Hittin' all the classics.. fire, now dark an' cold..." It wasn't something he'd have admitted to many other people.

"Can be gotten over," Nathan said, laying him back down gently. "Traumatic experience was shorter and all. Probably a blessing that you passed out. Should be easier." He went back to where he'd been sitting, sagging back to the ground. He was fairly battered himself, if not nearly as badly as the two younger X-Men. Getting old, Dayspring... once upon a time you could have crashed a glider on reentry and gone dancing with Moira that night. Or something like that. Maybe he was a little delirious, too.

Angelo propped himself up on his elbows, looking into the fire. "Wish Amanda was here. Or Mom. I mean. Not here. But... I wish I could see them." He left the natural conclusion of that sentence unspoken.

"Hey," Nathan said sharply. "No going there. I'm getting both of you out of here - I told you that. And there's nothing wrong with you that some appropriate medical care isn't going to fix." There wasn't. Not when he'd made it this far.

"Yeah, if I... get it." His voice was quiet, his words still interrupted by coughing. "But we don't even know where we are." It wasn't that he didn't trust Nathan. It wasn't. But Nathan was only human, and he was hurt too.

"I know where we are. We're in the Himalayas. And how long do you think it'l take Charles to track us down using Cerebro?" Would have been a hell of a lot easier if he hadn't overstrained his powers. He could have reached out as far as he could, 'screamed' at the top of his mental lungs...

"'s a big world. An' we're not the only ones he'll be tryin' to find." It wasn't that he was being stubborn in despair, either. But hoping too much, until it was too late, would hurt more than not hoping enough and finding he'd been wrong.

"But we're probably among the easiest to find. You've got a telepath with you, remember?" Nathan said firmly.

"...yeah." No point arguing the issue further, no point commenting on that telepath being burned out, but the word rang with doubt. He turned back to stare into the fire.

"It doesn't matter that I can't reach back," Nathan said. "Charles has trained with me at least once a week for the last four years. He knows my mind. And I'm not as burned-out as you might be assuming."

"Can't even... hear me if I thought at you. You said." He wasn't looking up.

"I lie a lot. It's this thing that I do."

"Lyin' now", was the faint retort. His voice was getting weaker every time he spoke, from over-abused lungs.

"And you're talking too much. Did I never teach you the super-secret Askani finger language?" Nathan said facetiously, wiggling his fingers - or trying. He'd done something to his left wrist, and the mobility in that hand was not so good.

That just got a snort - Angelo knew perfectly well there was no super-secret Askani finger language - but there was little amusement in it. His mood had been sliding steadily downward since that one brief moment of levity over Clarice and the double-travois.

Nathan's jaw clenched and he looked away, back into the flames. He might not have been able to focus enough to pick up on a single thought without triggering a killer migraine - he knew this feeling -but the shifting patterns of Angelo's thoughts and the way they were fracturing along the edges were still obvious to him.

Angelo looked up at the movement, over at Nate, and his expression was abruptly wretched... and very, very lonely. Then, slowly and carefully but decisively, he pushed himself over onto hands and knees, keeping his injured foot off the ground. He probably looked ridiculous, but that was the last thing he was thinking about as he started to crawl towards Nathan.

"Sure, why don't we do the tango, Mr. Internal Bleeding..." But Nathan just reached out as Angelo crossed the relatively short distance between them and helped him into a sitting position, propping him against his side. "This'll probably be easier on your lungs," he muttered, eyes still on the flames as he put an arm around the younger man.

"Didn't want to be... all the way over there", Angelo said quietly, then had to pause for an outbreak of coughing, followed by spitting blood to the side away from Nathan. "'s cold."

"I know."