xp_logs | Shadow King: Irony

Evening in the infirmary, and Nathan and Jack aren't sleeping.

Every light but the intercom button was out. Jack leaned back against the wall, one knee up, the other leg straight, and arms crossed beneath the scratchy blanket. Amelia had given him an odd look on an earlier check, but he prefered the floor. He couldn't get comfortable on soft things.

He wasn't used to sleeping, either, but he didn't have a choice; though he could feel the others, switching didn't seem to be happening, so there was no chance of giving the job to Davey. Still, he questioned David's subconscious in the choice to give him uncontested reign over the body. A tendency towards hypervigiliance didn't make for a restful night.

Next door, Nathan had forsaken the bed, too. Mostly because he was terrified that if he fell asleep there again, he'd wake up restrained. That was the sort of thing they did, after all, when they didn't want to provoke a direct confrontation with you. He'd paced for a bit before the pain of moving around had gotten to be too much, at which point he'd found the best corner of the narrow room and slid down the wall to the floor. Back to the wall. Full view of the door.

It was cold in here. Which fit, too. Nathan ran an unsteady hand down the wall beside him, feeling around the shape of - an air vent, in the dimness. He froze, trying to piece together the fragments swimming around in his mind.

"Meg?" he called hoarsely - a bit tentatively, too. He was almost sure this wasn't when he thought it was, but it didn't hurt to check.

Jack jerked. Fuck, aren't I hearing enough voices without one coming right by my elbow?

There was no need to panic. The voice had been tinny, which meant there was a limit to how it could have been delivered. He shifted the blanket aside and saw what he dimly remembered noticing from before: a metal vent, almost flush with the wall.

". . . no," Jack said, very slowly. There was only one male in medlab not comatose, which meant he could only be talking to one person. "It's Jack, Dayspring."

Jack. Nathan stared blankly at the vent for a long moment. That was more than a little confusing. "I don't know a Jack. I don't know Jack." A very strange-sounding laugh slipped out, and he covered his mouth.

"Wonderful," Jack muttered, rubbing his forehead. He had a headache that wasn't going away anytime soon, and it wasn't as if he had anything else to do tonight. He raised his voice. "Sure you do. David Haller. Legion. Only known proof that on one dark day Charles Xavier actually got laid. Bells ringing in the belfry yet?"

Nathan rubbed at his temples, the buzzing in the back of his mind rising in intensity again. "So why are you here?" he asked slowly. "You're a little old for this. Or most of you is. Shouldn't you be one of the kids?" It was always one of the kids, when he had these dreams. "I'm sure they'll be along with your bodybag shortly."

There were two ways to play this. One was to call Nathan on his delusions, which, from the sound of what he'd heard so far, would undoubtably fail. The other was to simply ignore as much of the insanity as possible and attempt to formulate some kind of sense from what remained. Jack opted for the second.

"I'm here for the same reason as you: brain turned inside out. Makes the docs less nervous to have us all in one place, anyway." He repositioned himself, the blanket catching on his propped knee. "Heard you made a crater."

A spasm of rage at the memory, and Nathan pushed away from the vent, hard enough to smack his head against the wall. Dizzy for a moment, he squeezed his eyes shut. "They tried to keep me from getting to Rachel," he muttered, not quite under his breath. "Moira says she's okay, but I don't know..."

Jack snorted. "Think Moira would be here if she wasn't? Kid's safe and sound on Muir, same as she was then."

"She's not safe. Wherever she is." Nathan's voice sounded almost hollow. Mostly because there was too much truth in the statement, not that he knew why. He leaned his head against the wall, still breathing heavily. "Nothing's staying put. I can't tell where I am from one minute to the next."

"And here I am, no place but here." Jack's eyes slid closed again. "Feel like a trade?"

Nathan didn't even dignify that with a response. "Why you? Where's Jim?"

Jack's eyes opened in the darkness. In a moment he replied, "Jimmy gets attacked, I come out to bat defense. He did, so here I am."

"But you're still here." Nathan was silent for a long moment. "Is that what happened? We were attacked?" That would explain... some things. Not everything.

"Don't you remember?"

"... no," Nathan said softly, after another long pause. "But I believe you. Except that all the different times someone's messed with my head kind of blur into each other." So the explanation really didn't solve the problem of where he was and what was going on. It just put it into a very familiar context.

"Seeing how it looks in there, can see how that might happen." Jack sighed and shifted under the blanket. "Something was waiting for us in Cain's head. Pulled the rug right out from under us, and now we're all varying degrees of mindfucked. Those of us lucky enough to regain consciousness, that is."

I guess we're in trouble, then, was Nathan's first reply to that. Fortunately, he managed to bite it back. "I don't remember any of this," he said instead. "And I can't sense anything... not even Moira."

"Telepathy's down, far as anyone can tell." Jack shrugged against the wall, an automatic attempt to convey apathy. "With the Arab AWOL have to take their word for it myself."

Words. Nathan laughed again, weakly, then coughed. "Well. I don't believe them. They lie, you know. Maybe not Moira, but I might be wrong. She sounds like Moira, but that's a tactic, too."

"That the case, rest assured the real one would be along to raise a terminal objection." The alter let his other leg extend and settled back. "No, sad to say things are just as they appear. It's just you, brain twisted around as a box of corkscrews, and me, trying to make conversation with a man only in contact with reality one exchange in five. That's dire enough for anyone."