Kyle and Nathan, Tuesday night

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Returning from Kosovo, Kyle finally catches Nate awake. They talk about things both current and pre-coma. Then Kyle forgets to check behind him at a key moment.


Knowing what had happened in Kosovo should really have been enough to keep him awake and restless, especially given that he was still in the infirmary and forbidden anything but the laptop - he had emailed Joel, of course, who had promptly told him to leave it alone and "focus on recuperating, before I call your doctor. Or your wife." Despite it all, he'd managed to sleep half the day away again, but was both awake and relatively alert when Kyle limped through the door.

"So," he greeted the younger man with a wry smile. "Apparently the curse of the Westchester office extends even to those who don't officially work for us. I need to keep that in mind."

Kyle dropped into the chair next to Nate's bed and propped his injured leg up on the bed itself. He was down to a couple of aspirin to cut the worst of the ache, instead of the prescription strength ibuprofin he'd been on just after having the bullet removed, but resting his leg, and thereby not risking the wrath of the doctors was a very good idea. "I think it's payback for all those times I was an idiot and people got hurt rescueing my stupid ass." He absently scratched at the bandages that poked out from the bottom of his cargo shorts and grunted. "Laurie got all cut up too though. Maybe there -is- a curse."

Nathan grimaced. "I hadn't heard about Laurie... I gather those of you who had to do the rescuing handled the situation as well as could be expected." It wasn't a ringing endorsement, as such comments went, but it was hard to be ultra-positive about the situation.

"I'm not totally sure what happened, I was a little busy bleeding at the time." Kyle answered. "Something with her and Yvette and an accident but I'm not totally sure." He shrugged, not entirely invested in the whys of Laurie's injury. His concern had ended as soon as she was declared 'okay' and was stitched up, and now he was back to 'grouchy' about her. "It was pretty fucked up. But we got Angel and Yvette out safe, so eh, I'll take a bullet wound. At least I'll heal from it."

"I'd prefer to see you skipping the bullet wounds whenever possible, though. We'll have to work on that." Nathan reached out and retrieved his water glass from the bedside table. "I'm sorry it went so badly," he said more quietly. "Makes me wish I'd been there." He'd been gloomy enough, thinking about the world going on without him when he was stuck down here, and now, when his people had gotten into trouble and he'd been lying here useless? It was a pity that you couldn't recover faster via sheer force of will.

Kyle scratched his head and frowned. "Okay, revision. If someone -has-to get shot, I'd rather it be me than anyone else, because I'm the least likely to die from it." He shook himself slightly as if trying to dismiss a thought he didn't want, and slumped into the chair, rocking it back on it's two back legs. He considered just telling Nate that he was being stupid and to quit being all emo over it, and rejected the idea. Lying didn't help. "It'd probably have gone ... I dunno, less bad, I guess, with you there. But, you know, if wishes were dollars, I'd have more dollars and less bullets in me." He wasn't entirely sure that made sense, as he said it.

"It's just frustration talking. First Julio and the goddamned jaguar cult, now this." Nathan sighed and took a sip of his water. "I don't handle inactivity well, and lying here fantasizing about beating John into insensibility only fills so much of the day." It was strange that he didn't hold more of a grudge against Saidullayev, but, well. He was a strange man sometimes.

"Wait. John your employee or John Lense? Because John with the fire is mouthy but he totally helped us rescue Yvette and Angel." Not that Kyle didn't sometimes want to throw the pyrokinetic into the lake. "Lense, on the other hand, dude, I think everyone wants to beat him up. I know I want to beat him up. A lot. He was all "Kid, this isn't personal" and dude, does he get that it totally is now? I mean, I'm holding a grudge here." Kyle ignored the Julio comment. He wasn't -entirely- convinced that Julio wasn't still a were-panther. It hadn't been a full moon yet.

"The firebug's not done anything to warrant beating lately. Just thinking of Lense, yeah." Nathan paused. "You know, I don't think of him as Lense. It's always John. I'm sure Jack Leary would have something interesting to say about that..."

Scratching his head, in part to not scratch at his bandages, Kyle considered that for a few seconds. "Habits? I mean, I don't know I'm gonna ever be able to call Ms. Munroe by her first name, but I can call you Nate, and you're older than she is. Or some kind of like, you know him so you... try to be familiar? I dunno, there's a reason I'm not majoring in head shrinking." He was in fact, slightly terrified of his Psych 101 class in the upcoming semester.

"I don't know. It's probably something I should figure out. From the sounds of it, he's likely to cause problems down the line, too." Nathan grimaced, sinking back against the bed at the thought of what Pete and Dom had told him. "You know the awful thought that occurred to me? If we're right about what was going on in that facility... he's probably looking for the products of the program so that he can recreate Mistra. Since he misses it so."

"Aw -hell- no." Kyle groaned. "Wait, if he was doing that, why was psycho bitch and Bizzaro-you there? Do they want to recreate Mistra?" Just the idea of it made him vaguely sick to his stomach. No more kids needed to go through that, ending up with missing months or years or getting crazy head voices or -dying-. "And whatshisface, Shaw. What the hell? I mean, why don't we just have Magneto show up with them and we'll have a big ol everyone who wants us dead party?"

"I don't know, Kyle. I really don't. Maybe Trask got the idea from Gideon that Mistra was a wonderful thing, so anything like it should be wonderful," Nathan said vaguely. Totally forgetting that he had not seen Kyle for long enough since regaining consciousness to let him know about what he'd remembered.

Kyle stared. "Oh for fucks' SAKE, Nate, I was kidding!" He looked around a bit guiltily at realizing how loud he'd been, and shook his head. "So, lemee see if I got this right, psycho bitch was working with your crazy uncle, and now she's working with Bizzaro-you and Lense and Shaw?" He continued to gape slightly, shaking his head. "Seriously, double-you tee eff?"

Nathan eyed him for a moment. "Actually, Kyle," he said, "psycho bitch was sleeping with my crazy uncle. And no, I didn't know that before. I remembered it when I was dead." He paused. "I really do sound like someone with a severe head injury, don't I?"

"Uh, kinda. Maybe, you know, if you tell other people you should start 'em off slow? And, uh, not so much with the 'remembered while I was dead' part. When you're dead you're supposed to be unconscious, and not remembering stuff." Although, Kyle thought, when -his heart had stopped, he was actually awake and talking to the voice in his head. So maybe his judgement of remembering things when you were dead was a little hasty. "Also, can we not talk about psycho bitch's sex life? It's skeevy. Evil people shouldn't have sex. It'd be like Magneto getting it on with... Mystique or something. And if they are, totally please never tell me."

"I suspect evil people have more sex than we like to think," Nathan said. Unhelpfully. "But okay. No talking about Gideon and Tara... I gather they got on each other's nerves years and years ago, anyway. Too much crazy in one place, if you ask me." He fell silent, staring at Kyle for a moment. "I did say thanks, right?" he finally said. "Ray's had a hard enough time with me hurt, I don't like to think-" He bit back the rest of it, smiled faintly and shrugged.

"Ew. Ew-ew-ew." The mental images Kyle was getting were not good ones at all. And he'd been all pressed up against Mystique while she was holding him in that chokehold before Jan fried her. "I think so, yeah. No dying, dude. Not allowed. I mean, first off all, then we'd have to deal with Bizzaro-you without you and second, no dying, please." The look Kyle gave Nate was utterly serious, despite the attempt at a joke. "Next time we have to go to the Arctic, we bring someone who makes fire. I don't care if we gotta draft John into the X-men. There'd have been a lot less dying if that water hadn't been about eleventy million degrees below zero."

"And yet, I find myself fearing what John might have done to be helpful." Nathan held Kyle's eyes for a moment longer, and then let the moment pass. He'd said what needed to be said, and he knew Kyle had heard it. Long way from the angry kid we pulled out of that facility in Vermont... "So," he said, more briskly, "Amelia's now promising I'll be out of here by the end of the week. I don't know whether or not to believe her. She's strung me along once already."

Kyle gave Nate a very long look. "You know she's a vampire, right? I mean, hello, eastern european, turns into mist, terrifying... " he trailed off and went very still. "Is she totally right behind me now?"

"What gave it away, Mr. Gibney?" Amelia asked coolly, sweeping into the room. She checked Nathan's pulse and temperature, peered at his eyes for a moment, then nodded briefly to herself and departed without another word. Nathan waited until she was gone to raise an eyebrow.

"You had to be the one to actually say it to her face," he said dryly. "You're never going to live that down."