xp_logs | Nathan and Jean, Nathan and Angelo

Nathan stops in the infirmary to let Jean check him over, then tries to go back to work.

There was one disadvantage to walking around with one's shields up all the way. One did things like walk into the infirmary and find the wrong redhead. Nathan paused in the doorway, briefly contemplated flight, and then girded himself for the inevitable. If he turned and fled now that she'd spotted him, this really would turn unpleasant.

"Hey," he said, his voice neutral - and more tired than he liked, still. It wasn't as if Pete's not-dead status hadn't been the best news to come home to, pretty much ever. But good news didn't miraculously wipe away ten days' accumulated stress and fatigue. Especially when 'not dead' didn't mean 'hale and healthy', and he really needed to talk more to Dom.

Jean looked up from her work at Nathan's voice, a bit surprised not to have sensed him coming, but she smiled brightly at him. "Hi you. Long time no see. What can I do you for?"

Nathan's hand went to the bandage on his temple, and he swallowed at the stab of pain in his arm. His voice, when he spoke, was still steady. Her cheery demeanor, even in the face of how he knew he still looked this morning, was helpful. "Got a little banged up while I was away. I need you to check up on the work the SHIELD medics did. I could have changed bandages myself, but, well... trying to be smart, here."

"Smart's good," Jean said, still smiling. "Smart earns you a private room so we don't start any more stories about your Medlab Frequent Flyer card. Come on in back."

In back was good. He wasn't into declothing in public. Moving carefully - so long as he was slow, he didn't limp noticeably, or favor anything, he followed her into the room. "I may need a little help getting my shirt off," he said, more heavily.

"What?" Jean's eyes widened as she turned around, then narrowed. He might not be limping much, but the slow, careful gait was almost as obvious... if one was looking for it. "Nathan... how many bandages are we talking here?"

Nathan paused, his eyes unfocusing briefly. "Seven," he finally said, not quite reluctantly. "The pants are going to have to come off, too." Before Jean could respond, he went on, a little more rapidly. "They were checked right before I got on the plane yesterday. That's the only reason I didn't come in last night." Well, that and he'd needed to see Pete. But Jean would take that as a given, most likely.

"Seven," Jean repeated, and all traces of her smile were gone. "Right. Take a seat," she said, waving towards the exam table. "I think we're starting at the top."

He'd killed her mood. He hadn't really intended to do that. It took a little more effort than he expected to get up on the exam table; the movement sent his hip throbbing more sharply again. Watching her move around, gathering supplies, Nathan made one last feeble effort to distract her.

"I miss a lot, when I'm gone for a week and a half."

"Yeah, well, the speed of life at Xavier's..." Jean said, but her mind was definitely not on the banter as she pulled the bandage away from his head, eyes catching the edge of the bandage peeking out from under his shirt, and the lighter ones wrapped around his wrists. "Nate..." Her eyes widened as the gauze fell away. "What the hell happened?"

His throat tightened. "Our body armor is better than SHIELD's," he said. Carefully. "I should have brought my leathers with me."

The cut was... that was not a cut. "This is a bullet graze, Nathan," Jean said, scowling even as she pulled antiseptic and more gauze out of the cupboards with her mind. "What. The hell. Was going on. For a bullet. To get. This close. To. Your. BRAIN?"

"I didn't - it wasn't that-" The look Jean got was almost pleading. "We're not infallible. With the bullet-catching."

Reaching out she measured about an inch from the edge of the graze in towards his eye. "That far. How many bullets do there have to be for you to miss the one that's an inch from your brainpan?"

"There were plenty of bullets involved." It was all he could safely say. The way she was looking at him was the very definition of unsettling, but they were not having this discussion. They weren't. He held very still so she could see to the graze, and then let her help him pull the shirt off.

Jean stepped back as the shirt fell to the table, eyes taking in the numerous bruises and smaller cuts, in addition to the collection of bandages. "Plenty of bullets..." she repeated quietly. "Yes. Yes, I can see there were." Looking up she caught his eyes, and she wasn't glaring, but there was definite steel there - she was tired of his evasions. "Do you have any intention of telling me what happened?"

Nathan swallowed convulsively, trying to keep the reaction off his face. I should have made sure it was Amelia. He couldn't tell her. Not when it was this.

"No." His voice was hardly recognizable as his own. "No, I don't want to talk about it."

"Fine." And now the steel was in her voice as well. "Perhaps you need a doctor you can trust more." Jean set the bandages down on the table with rather more thump than one normally got out of gauze and added, as she turned away, "Like your wife."

The rush of anger was sudden, and not all that rational. "Fine," he grated, sliding off the table - and blanching as his weight came down too hard on the wrong leg. His hip screamed in protest at him. "I will... go wait. Until Thursday. Sorry to bother you."

"You're not going anywhere," Jean said, and she didn't turn, but suddenly there was no more weight on Nathan's leg as he was lifted, albeit gently, back on to the table. "I'm going to go make a phone call, it's not that late in Scotland, and then I will be back." She opened the door and was halfway out in to the hall when she stopped, and she still wasn't looking at him, but there was a hitch in her voice when she said, "Or, if you really can't trust me, I'll... I can go get Amelia."

Damn all manipulative redheads- And she was going to call Moira. Wonderful. Nathan struggled to reassemble the suddenly shredded pieces of his composure, and swallowed past the tightness in his throat. "Jean," he said, in a voice that was almost steady. "Things... didn't go well, with SHIELD. I took a few bullets. Catching them wasn't an option. I had a vest on, so none of it's serious. Please don't think this is about not trusting you. It's not. I can't talk about what happened." His throat closed for a moment, and he blinked rapidly, forcing the words out. "Not won't. Can't."

Jean's face was composed when she turned around, but shuttered, no emotion showing in her eyes as she returned to his side, and her touch was completely professional as she examined the wounds on his chest. "Can you talk to Scott or Ororo? Or the Professor?"

His breath caught in his chest. "I hadn't even thought about a report for the database," he said, not so much intending to avoid her question, but because he really hadn't thought, and now he didn't know what the hell to do about that. He needed to... but he couldn't. And the idea of having to tell Charles...

Her hands were moving almost on autopilot while her mind ran around in circles, mostly coming back, over and over, to the question of what the hell had happened to leave him in this state. "If nothing else," and her tone suggested that this was the bare minimum, "they will need to know about your injuries, since right now you're not exactly fit for duty."

There was something discordant about the laugh that escaped him. "No worries. Don't intend to pretend otherwise." And beyond the bullet holes, the idea of being in a position where he had to make anything resembling a decision under life-and-death stress was really... not sitting well with him right now.

Jean's hands stilled for a moment at the, well, call it a laugh for lack of a better word, but she quickly picked up where she'd left off and it wasn't long before the bandages were back in place and she moved to examine his back. It wasn't until she didn't have to see his eyes that she said, "I'm making a note about this in your medical file... You're going to need Charles' pass before I take you off med leave."

"All right," Nathan said, sounding almost calm again. It would take weeks to heal up. Enough time to figure out how to... handle handling this. "You're right. I just need to get my feet back under me, that's all. I'm sorry for all this."

"Sorry," Jean repeated, and then she scowled. "You know, I don't know what the appropriate response here is, what with not knowing anything, but I'm willing to be 'sorry' isn't it."

--

Nathan paused outside the boathouse door, then took a deep breath and opened it. He'd left before the start of working hours today quite deliberately. But that did necessitate walking in and... oh, to hell with it. "Well," he said calmly as Angelo and Juliette looked up at the opening door and then stared at him. "Quiet morning?"

"The others aren't here yet", Angelo said a little blankly. "An' the people other places aren't awake. What the hell happened to you?"

"Things got overly exciting." Nathan moved across the room to his desk, and it took a fair bit of effort (and a little telekinesis) not to limp. "So where are we at with the to-do list this week?" He was perfectly aware of Juliette staring at him, her mouth slightly open, but ignored her.

"Uh... right here." Angelo shoved a stack of files in his general direction. "We've been keepin' pretty much on top of things. I think."

"Good," Nathan said, his voice clipped. The files floated over to his desk. "Obviously there needs to be a lack of me at meetings until I stop looking like someone's punching bag, so we'll just carry on as you guys were last week on that front."

"There needs to be a lack of you at work until you stop lookin' like hell", Angelo muttered suspiciously clearly. "Unless Jean said you could be back here?"

Nathan looked up, raising an eyebrow. "There's nothing wrong with me that keeps me from deskwork," he said, maybe a little more sharply than he intended.

"Fine. Get up an' walk round the office. An' don't cheat." Angelo wasn't backing down, looking unflinchingly at Nathan.

Nathan gave a gravelly laugh that didn't sound amused at all. "We're not playing that game. Look, Angelo - I'm not going to keel over." In fact, being on proper pain medication, the kind designed for mutants with finicky metabolisms, had dulled the worst of it quite nicely. "I don't intend to do a full day, but I do want to do some work. I've been away for nearly two weeks."

"We noticed." He picked up a random piece of his own work but didn't really look at it. "You're gonna stay whatever we say, so okay."

Nathan grunted and opened a file - right to a picture of a hollow-eyed Chechen child being photographed upon arrival at the DDR centre in Derbent.

Angelo was on his feet instantly, beyond worried and into frightened at the sudden draining of blood from the older man's face. Angelo himself was the only one meant to be that colour here. "Nate?"

Nathan swallowed, and closed the file, very precisely. "I want to do some work that's not this. Where's the stuff on the new shelter in Nicaragua?"

"Give me that." He held out one hand, rummaging through the stacks on his desk with the other. "I'll decide what you can have when I see what's in there."

Nathan, rather alarmingly, passed the stack of files back without a word. "Juliette," he asked, almost lightly, "could I have some coffee?" Juliette was out of her seat and halfway to the coffeemaker before he could process the fact that he hadn't said 'please'.

The file on the top, that was the one he'd been looking at. Nothing upsetting on that page, or that one.... oh. Angelo came to the photo of the child and paused, frowning down at it.

Juliette came over with the cup of coffee. "Thank you," Nathan muttered, then remembered he had email to check. Possibly phone messages too.

There was nothing else in that file that was likely to have caused that reaction. Angelo looked between Nathan and the glossy picture, then grabbed the Nicaragua folder and started going through it. Just in case.