Walking Ghosts: Liminality

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Nathan finally makes a reappearance. Jean-Paul picks him up at the airport and shares the good news of the week. But it's very obvious that something went very wrong while Nathan was away.


He had no idea where they were, what piece of land they were flying over (apart from the fact that it was obviously the East Coast). Nathan stared blankly out the window at the darkening sky. The psychic buzz of the other passengers and the crew barely registered on him.

He'd caught the way a few of them had looked at him during boarding, however. And the flight attendants had been a little more solicitious than they should have been.

No surprises. He'd seen the way he looked in the mirror.

"Sir?" There was one now. She was a pretty brunette, who was looking sweetly concerned on his behalf as she peered down at him. "Did you need anything?"

"-did you need anything?" The medic was looking at him with a mixture of concern and something else. Something darker and more suspicious. "For the pain, I mean."

"Nothing heavy." That, from the SHIELD agent standing by the door. "He has to be debriefed."

Nathan looked away from the window and back at her, forcing a faint smile. "No. I'm fine. Thank you," he added after a moment.

Her smile was hesitant. "Just let me know if you change your mind. We're about two hours from landing."

"Thank you." Nathan watched her vanish back up the aisle, then turned his attention to the view out the window. The clouds were red and gold and rosy pink. Bright, and he half-wished they'd stay that way. Night could hold off just a little longer, surely?

One of the passengers ahead of him was talking on the in-flight phone, quietly but fiercely. "-need to have a straight answer on that, Joe. Ask him to lay out precisely what happened."

"Lay it out for us, please." The agent was mid-thirties, perfectly composed. All business - except if you looked in his eyes. There was no tolerance there for equivocation, for anything but the absolute truth. Only fair. "We need to know precisely what happened."

The mirror on the wall wasn't a mirror, Nathan knew that much. Just as he knew that Nick Fury and three other agents were on the other side, and that two of them were arguing that they should slap an inhibitor collar on him, just to make sure...

"Mr. Morrow. Nathan," the agent said, a hint of steel under the words. "I need you to focus. You have to understand our position."

"Of course."

"Then start from the beginning, please."

Nathan realized he was rubbing at his neck, at where the collar could so easily have been, and made himself lower his hand back to the arm of the seat. Blinking rapidly, he stared out the window.

And the sun kept going down.

--

Only the fact that he'd have to carry Nathan back to the school himself had kept Jean-Paul from simply flying out to the airport to meet his friend. As it was, he'd been obnoxious as hell on the road and had a crumpled speeding ticket resting in the glove compartment of the school's loaner to prove it. He spent ten minutes pacing in the receiving area before Nate's plane unloaded, and his friend's appearance stopped him dead in his tracks. He'd had it in his mind to make good his threat to strangle Nate, but the bandages, the hollow stare and the pallid, haggard appearance that spoke of sleepless nights stopped him in his tracks.

"Sacrament! You could not tell I was joking about throttling you?" Things had most definitely not gone well wherever Nathan had been; there were perhaps two inches of exposed skin total on the man not mottled with burns or bruises. Jean-Paul moved to take his hand and his carry-on at once.

The slight smile Nathan gave him seemed to struggle to take shape. "I thought I wouldn't test my luck," he said, his voice hoarse. He flinched as Jean-Paul reached out, however, and for an instant, there was something resisting the other man's effort to take the duffel bag. Telekinesis, obviously. It was gone in the next moment, if not before its presence had made it all too clear that Nathan wasn't actually carrying the bag.

"How the hell are you still on your feet?" Jean-Paul hefted the bag over one shoulder, further disturbed by the fact that it wasn't even all that heavy -- less than fifteen pounds. Nate's appearance was starting to draw some attention as well. "Is there anything waiting in pick up? No? Good. I'm taking you to Dr. Grey, then to your boathouse so that you can collapse."

"I don't need to see Jean tonight. I saw a medic before I got on the plane." Moving with too-obvious care, Nathan followed Jean-Paul. His hands, free of anything to hold, were starting to shake. I should have gone to Muir. Except seeing Moira would have been an entirely different type of hard, and there would have been no chance to avoid explanations for more than about five minutes. "It's nothing too serious. I just-" Am not all that happy to be home? He didn't know what he felt. Other than verging on panicky.

Jean-Paul forced himself to slow his steps until the two of them were walking shoulder to shoulder, trying to curb his irritation at his friend's state. "I take it things did not go well." After a moment, "All right. No doctor. I have some news for you, but I think dropping you in the deep end back home would be a rotten thing to do right now. When did you last eat?"

"...Friday?" Nathan said after a moment, slowly. "I had an MRE on the flight." His eyes slid sideways, lingering on Jean-Paul almost pleadingly. "I know I told you what I was doing," he said, almost inaudibly over the buzz of the crowd. "But don't... I mean, we can keep it between us, right?"

"I am trusting that you didn't lie about the medic and will see Grey as you need, so there is no reason for me to talk to anyone else about this. If you wanted everyone else to know, you would have told them." Jean-Paul knew that it was a matter of trust that Nate was letting him see him like this, but that didn't make it any easier to see. When he spoke again, he'd remembered that Nate wasn't the one he was really angry with, and his tone had lost some of its edge. "Come on, then. Let's get you fed. I know a distracting place. Think you can handle raw meat and sake?"

"Distracting, with raw meat and sake. I'm kind of afraid now," Nathan said. The attempt at a joke fell utterly flat. He decided not to try it again, and followed Jean-Paul out to the car. It was harder than it should have been to do up his seatbelt. The whole time, the same litany was running through his mind. Need to figure out what I'm going to say. Need to come up with an explanation.

But no solutions sprung to mind, just as none had come to him during the hours of the flight back to New York. He was beginning to think he was screwed.

---

Nathan would have enjoyed the restaurant, on another night. 'Raw' was the very epitome of an upscale sushi joint, sproting an exotic menu with prices to match, and he'd always liked sushi.

He was not doing any justice to the very good food tonight, however.

Jean-Paul had backed off on questioning and just let him eat, and had even given over access to the sake once they'd made their way through orders of yellowtail rolls, eel nigiri, and bullfrog sashimi. Food first, then alcohol, and finally...

"So, the news I have for you." Jean-Paul stalled, chasing a few scraps of ginger with his chopsticks before giving up the idea of gentling the revelation. "Wisdom, Guthrie, and the others are alive. They were recovered a few days ago, in conjunction with a mission to retrieve Apocalypse. The others are...altered, but more or less whole. Wisdom is...not in the best health, but he is at the school, in the Medlab."

Nathan dropped his chopsticks, his face gone ashen. The gray eyes that met Jean-Paul's gaze were empty of anything but stunned disbelief, as if Nathan couldn't process what he'd just heard - or maybe, couldn't believe it. "... what?" he finally said, his voice choked. It wasn't a request for Jean-Paul to repeat himself. He wasn't sure what it was. Hands shaking, he picked his chopsticks back up, his grip on them white-knuckled.

"Not in the best of health," he said, his voice wobbling. "Is he-he's not critical, is he?" His head jerked upwards suddenly. "Someone called Dom? Angelo would have called Dom," he said, answering his own question.

Jean-Paul kicked himself inwardly for his choice of words. "I only saw him briefly, but I do not think so. He seemed aware and lucid, but he could not walk. He has been in the Medlab since we got back."

The chopsticks hit the table again, and Nathan made no move to retrieve them this time. He rubbed at his eyes, resting his head in his hands for a moment as he drew a shaky breath, then another. "Thank you." It was almost inaudible, and Nathan's eyes were reddened as he look back at Jean-Paul. "For not letting me go back right away. I have to..." Pull himself together, clearly, but there was more to it than that. Put it aside, Nathan. More important things, for now. He actually mustered a smile, if a weak one. "I didn't expect news like this to come home to." Inwardly, he was already composing a to-do list. A) Pull yourself together. B) Find Dom, debrief Dom...