xp_logs | Nathan and Angelo, Monday night

A very jet-lagged and exhausted Nathan finally arrives home from Sri Lanka, only to find a very unsettled Angelo waiting for him. Sleep gets put off for a while.

He was really beyond exhausted. He'd even napped in the cab on the way back from the airport, and that was not like him. But it had been a long few days in Sri Lanka, and he wasn't entirely happy with the situation even as it had been settled. Isabel and Gavin couldn't stay there long-term, and there was a limit to how much security the centre could really provide. Not ideal. But there were definitely limits to what could be accomplished here, and they'd all done their best. Still, there was a definite drag to Nathan's step as he walked into the boathouse.

Angelo was sitting, wide awake and facing the door, in the office. He looked up and started to say something, then noticed the circles under Nathan's eyes and the other signs of weariness. "Sleep or coffee?" he settled on.

"Coffee." Because otherwise, they'd just have to have this talk in the morning. "I had to catch a commercial flight back," he said, dropping his duffel bag by the door in the partition and slumping into a chair. "Sent the plane back a few days ago, so Moira could use it."

Angelo nodded, moving without question to the coffeemaker. "Must've sucked." He knew Nate didn't like flying commercial at the best of times.

"Gavin and Isabel are going to stay for a few weeks, make sure things go smoothly and the kids start to settle in. It has the effect of providing some extra security for the time being." Nathan slouched in the chair, rubbing his hands over his face. "The centre's in a better spot than the temporary housing was, so hopefully there won't be any further problems."

Another nod, though he didn't look up. "All we can really do, sometimes. Hope for the best."

Nathan grunted, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. "My back's killing me. I swear I feel a hundred years old these days." And muzzy-headed, to boot.

"But you still don't let it stop you." The comment was mild.

"Well, what good would I be if it did?" Nathan grumbled, and eyed Angelo darkly. "Don't think I didn't see that original email of yours, by the way." He just hadn't had time to reply.

"Oh, we goin' down that road again?" Angelo demanded. "Thinkin' you're no good if you don't get out in the field? Doesn't mean it's stoppin' you if you stayed in the office, Nate."

"That's not what I meant," Nathan said. The urge to roll his eyes was there, but he didn't give into it; he rubbed them instead, and then directed a mild glare at Angelo. "Just because I have trouble folding my rather large frame into a commercial airline seat doesn't mean I need to sit here in the office with a blanket and a cup of tea. I got shot in the back two months ago - doesn't mean I'm old and decrepit. And this was important."

"Yeah, it was." He was back to the calm voice, now. "An' you left me waitin' in the office tryin' to keep Joel calm."

"Are you trying to tell me that he was flipping out?" The mental image was... just too surreal. "He's got a pretty good idea that there's more to us that meets the eye, even if he doesn't know to put the name 'X-Men' to it."

"Not flippin' out, but he was worried. About the kids an' about you an' Isabel an' Gavin."

"He wasn't the only one who was worried," Nathan pointed out. "But they're back, and mostly unhurt - a broken arm was the worst of it. I mean, I'm not happy that they've now had more trauma piled on the shitload they already have to deal with, but they're in a good place to get help with all of it."

"I know he wasn't", Angelo said a little defensively. "An' yeah, that's good. Better security an' all."

"Could we not rehash the situation? It's as settled as it's going to be, and I'm tired." And not entirely sure what time it was in this time zone, apart from 'night'; there'd been two stopovers on the way back. "Sorry for the general lack of communication, by the way-" He'd only managed the one brief phone call to tell the office that things were back to what passed for the status quo. "I forgot to throw in the satellite phone, and phone service in the area isn't great."

"I did suggest sleep", was the flat response. "But sure. Fine. Whatever." It wasn't like he should care when Nathan so obviously didn't, right?

"What the hell is your problem?" Nathan asked, aggravated. "It's not like I went running off to rescue them myself. And I didn't leave you behind because I was mad that you and John took off on a vacation - I needed you here to keep tabs on the office. The rest of the work doesn't stop because one project hits a crisis."

"If you don't know, I'm not gonna tell you. You'll figure it out." He hadn't actually poured any coffee when he turned, stepping away from the machine. "You're back, I'm goin' back to the house. See you on Monday."

Stress reaction, stress reaction, stress reaction, Nathan repeated to himself so that he didn't give into the temptation to leap up out of the chair and smack the boy upside the head. You were allowed to be bewildering and cryptic when you were recovering from trauma - yelling at him wasn't going to do any good. Although he would be damned if he had any idea why he was getting this sort of static over an innocuous trip-on-the-fly.

"You know," he said, levering himself up out of the chair and trying not to wince - but he did want that coffee, damn it, "one of these days you're going to outgrow this habit of making me guess what's upsetting you. I'm really looking forward to that day." He'd meant it to be snarky, but it just came out sounding exhausted.

"If you really don't remember what was goin' on two years ago", Angelo told him on his way to the door, "then there's no point talkin' about it, is there?"

Nathan paused. Blinked. Didn't roll his eyes. "Angelo," he said almost patiently, and continued on his way to the coffeemaker, "totally different situation, and you know that. I know you're twitchy lately, but you need to try and apply logic to these situations. Otherwise you do a whole lot of getting yourself wound up for no good reason."

"You're gonna be all... like that", Angelo said, more miserably than he'd have liked. "I'm still goin'. See you later." There was no point staying any longer. Nathan wasn't getting it. And maybe it was better he didn't, after the incident by the lake when he'd first opened his shields.

"Be like what, reasonable?" Nathan sighed and poured himself a cup of coffee. "Look, I'm not intending to minimize how you're feeling these days by calling it twitchy. You know me, I get overly flippant when I'm tired."

"Go to bed, Nate. No coffee. We can talk later." Or not at all.

Nathan rounded on him almost involuntarily. His shields had been doing slightly better service, with Jean's help, but fatigue and the stress of three commercial flights had been enough to leave them ragged again, and he'd most definitely caught that. "What the hell?" he demanded, and then his eyes narrowed as his brain woke up enough to make the obvious connection. "Oh no you don't," he said, less loudly but still vehemently. "None of the self-sabotaging crap. Driving me away didn't work four years ago, and it's not going to work on me now."

"Never did", Angelo acknowledged wearily, standing still with his hand on the door. "But what's the point talkin' when you just go all reasonable an' don't get it?"

"Would you actually prefer me to try and goad you into hitting me?" Nathan asked, moving towards him. His tone was deceptively mild. "Because if that's what you need, I could probably see my way clear to doing that. But I thought we'd gotten to the point where we could spare the bruises."

"Fuck off, Nathan." But even that had no heat in it.

"Or what? You've only said you were leaving about four times now." The fact that he hadn't yet was telling. "I could always toss you in the lake. The ice has gone and that's always done wonders when it comes to clearing your head..." Hopefully if he poked hard enough that wouldn't be necessary. Actual lake-throwing was best done when the issue at hand wasn't quite so serious.

"I'm not seventeen anymore. You can stop with all that stuff", Angelo informed him. "It wouldn't work anyway. Wouldn't make any difference." Somewhere at the back of his mind was - and had been for a while - the feeling that nothing was any good because he'd failed.

"Make any difference to what? What, Angelo? Because you don't get the option of avoiding the issue. If you're not seventeen anymore, then you don't get to run away from things anymore either." He had not expected to come home and immediately have to deal with Angelo having a crisis of his own. But that was fine. Living was thinking on your feet.

"I thought," Nathan went on, his voice low but hard, "that you had, at least, recognized that there were things you wanted to hold on to. Trying to drive us away isn't going to work, because we're not going to let you."

"Joel gave me a job too, you know, after you hired me. We talked about this before, once." He was looking at the floor. "But you won't let me do it, an' it doesn't matter. I can't keep you out of trouble like I couldn't stop Miguel gettin' hurt. Or anyone else."

"Angelo... the thing you're overlooking is that there was no trouble this time." At least none he himself had gotten into. "The worst that happened once I was in Sri Lanka is that I had to break up an argument between Isabel and one of the local police officers." His voice softened slightly as he went on. "Just because things sometimes go badly, and people you care about get hurt doesn't mean that it's always going to happen."

"This time. But I can't do anythin' about it if I'm not there an' you're always leavin' me behind." He shrugged. "Like I said, anyway. Doesn't matter, 'cause I can't stop it even when I'm right there."

"Knowing that you can't always stop bad things from happening is a commendable thing - but not if you look at it like it's some personal failure." Nathan stopped for a moment, distracted by a sudden mental image of bodybags lined up on the floor of a freezer. "We do what we can, Angelo," he went on finally, unable to quite keep the strain out of his voice. He really was tired. "And if you hold yourself to some impossible standard, you are going to drive yourself crazy."

"I know I can't stop stuff happenin' to everybody", the younger man muttered. "But you... you're my people. I'm s'posed to be able to protect you an' I can't. I didn't."

"Was I able to protect any of you in the Tel Aviv office last year?" Nathan asked tensely. "Do I wish I'd been able to do something? Hell yes. But that's not always an option. You have to learn to live with that, because all any of us can do in the end is our best."

"An' if I can't learn to live with it?" was the next, quiet question.

Nathan gave him a long, dark look. What came out didn't have a lot of tact, wasn't particularly kind, but something had to jar Angelo out of the circular thinking.

"Then you're going to break in half and not be able to help anyone you care about. At all. You have to figure out what's more important to you - the times you're able to help the people you care about, or the times you haven't."

Angelo blinked up at him, then glanced back down. "There's somethin' Haller said... I could be a soldier, go as far as I'm willin' to for my people, but I can't do that here. I would, but it'd mean I don't belong anymore."

"You could," Nathan said, his voice very even. "But being able to do that isn't all it's knocked up to be. A soldier's got less freedom than you think. Why do you think I've made the choices I have? Why I don't kill anymore... if you want my opinion, that's not the answer to your problem. It's not any easier, and it's not any more guaranteed to protect the people you care about. For all that Pete's willing to do whatever's necessary, that didn't prevent Dom from being blown up last year, did it?"

"Then I'm screwed." That came with a faint smile, twisted though it was. "'Cause it's always gonna kill me when shit happens to you guys an' I couldn't stop it."

"And I'm going to say it again - if the times you fail mean more to you than the times you've helped, that is the problem. And if that's it, then it requires a rearrangement of your priorities that Jack's a lot better equipped to help you with than I am." Nathan shook his head helplessly. "Angelo, hasn't working for Elpis taught you anything? We try, we fail, we try again, and we keep trying. It's quitting that's the real sin, not failing."

"Elpis is different", was all the objection Angelo could offer. "It's important work, it's always gonna be worth doin', but it's not personal. Doesn't hurt as much when things don't work there."

Nathan left the 'not personal' alone, although it stung, to hear that. "And you think that it's any less true for your personal life?" he said, his jaw clenching. "No matter how many times life knocks you down, or you stumble, I will always be here to help you back up. As long as you want me to be. But if you quit on me..." He left it there for a moment, but a harsh laugh escaped before he could stop it, and he turned away, running a hand through his hair. "Well, I'd still be there. Call me a masochist."

"...I don't even know anymore", Angelo said wretchedly. "I never said Elpis didn't matter, what we do, don't... I didn't mean I don't care. But I can't care about all of those people the way I care about you. I can't. An' I can't quit, either, ever, because then I'd be abandonin' you - an' them, but you."

Nathan reached out and his hand clamped down on Angelo's shoulder, not quite hard enough to bruise. He gave him a little shake. "Just stop. Stop being so hard on yourself... so fucking unforgiving. You do everything you can."

"I can't", he said simply, looking up into Nathan's face. "I don't know how."

"You have to want to. That's the first step. I mean, are you happy like this? Do you think any of us can look at you like this and think our hypothetical or not-so-hypothetical moments of need are worth it?"

"You gave me everythin', Nate", he said, not quite dodging the question, just deferring it. "You, Scott, the Professor... everythin' I've got now is because of you. Even Marie, I wouldn't have Mom here if she hadn't set it goin'. An' if anythin' happens to you... I think I have to pay you back."

Nathan let his hand fall back to his side. "You don't owe us anything," he said. "It wasn't a transaction, Angelo. Any of it. I think I can speak for all the people you just named when I say that."

"I know you wouldn't claim it", Angelo said quietly. "But this is mine. An' it still wouldn't change it if anythin' happened to you. You know I'd have to keep goin' with Elpis even then."

Nathan rubbed at his eyes. Took a deep, slightly shaky breath before he even thought about saying anything. "I swear to God, I'm so tempted to fire you just to prove to you that you don't have anything to prove to me."

"Fire me an' I'll still turn up for work tomorrow."

"I suppose if I arranged to have you dropped off in Outer Mongolia you'd find your way back, too." If Angelo wasn't going to talk about this with Jack, he sure as hell was. Had he made some colossal series of mistakes here, left Angelo... feeling indebted, or whatever the hell name you wanted to put to it? I have never been the poster boy for healthy mentor/pseudo-father relationships...

"Too right I would." He smiled crookedly. "No gettin' rid of me now, Nate."

"Right. Well." Nathan sighed. This was fundamentally pointless, it wasn't like he was going to snap Angelo out of this, or talk him around, or resolve anything. The jet-lag really had nothing to do with it, although it made the prospect of berating him some more heartily unappealing. "What the hell did I do with the coffee... did I even pour it..."

"Don't think you did", Angelo said helpfully, watching his back with something between wariness and hope. "You got distracted." He was wrong, as it happened.

Nathan retrieved the cup of coffee and took a sip. "You need to think about what you're doing to yourself," he said wearily. "And not necessarily about what you think anyone else needs from you, beyond the needs of the given day. One day at a time. It's the hypotheticals that will kill you."

"Our days aren't like normal people's", Angelo pointed. "We don't get normal, remember?"

"No, but we get days. Is it more important to worry about what might be coming a week or a month or a year down the line, or to do what you can to help here and now?"

Angelo blinked at him. "I never even talked about months an' years down the line. Weeks, maybe, but... doin' what I can an' what people let me now is what I do."

"You keep talking in hypotheticals. What you should be able to do. How far you should be willing to go. Not just tonight, either." You're having an existential crisis, but I'm not tired enough to call a spade a spade.

That got obvious consideration, before Angelo's eyes dropped again. "Maybe. I just... this stuff used to be so easy. An' then I came here an' I thought I'd get to be a normal person, but I'm not."

"Normal." It wasn't derisive, just tired. "Normal people don't get the chance to do what we do - make the difference that we do. We take risks, get hurt, lose people we care about. But we can accomplish things that someone living a normal life never could."

"An' that's why I didn't run off to be a carpenter out of school", Angelo said wryly. "But I didn't mean the work. Some days I feel good about it, y'know? Like with mi amigita in San Diego. But then other days I just feel like a crazy scarred freak." The last was completely matter-of-fact.

"And you think that's not normal, for us?"

"Then why are you goin' on at me about it?"

And now they really were going around in circles. "This is not where we started," Nathan said finally, "but it's probably where the conversation should end. At least for the night. My brain is just about gone, and you've got... well, you've probably got better things to do than listen to my mostly-nonsensical ramblings." He offered Angelo a faint smile.

"Maybe." He hadn't moved from the door, through all this. "But there's one more thing. I got into this to save people, Nate. But people just keep dyin'. Save strangers, don't save people you know... what's the balance?"

"There is none," Nathan said, and refrained from elaborating. There was a reason Angelo kept coming back to this over and over, and Nathan's own answer to it wouldn't do him any good. 'Stop looking' wouldn't go over very well at all. "Go to bed, Angelo. Leave tomorrow until tomorrow."