xp_logs | Nathan and Angelo, Monday afternoon

Back from the Adirondacks, Nathan has some explaining to do.

The door to the office opened, and Juliette and Angelo both looked up from their desks to see Nathan step into the boathouse. The former smiled; the latter did not. Nathan gazed at the two of them for a moment, then offered them a slight smile in return and headed through the door into the family quarters without another word.

Angelo looked at Juliette, who shrugged at him, then he got up and walked silently towards the door in his turn.

Once he got through, he closed it firmly behind him and leaned against it, watching the older man.

"You put me to sleep."

"I know." Nathan's voice was soft. He was putting his climbing gear away in the closet, his back to Angelo. "I'm sorry."

"You should be." Angelo's voice was low, mostly with real anger but there was hurt there, too. "You wanted to run off to the Adirondacks on your own so bad you did that?"

"I thought I wanted to be on my own." Nathan closed the closet door and turned. He was pale and tired-looking, but he drifted in the direction of the nearest chair and sat down, the lack of tension in his posture a dramatic contrast to how he had been just two days before. There was none of the usual purposefulness in his movements, however, and the lack was all too noticeable. "I was wrong. I've been wrong about a lot of things lately."

"You've been wrong about a lot of stuff since you came back from whatever happened with SHIELD." Angelo's posture was still tense, and he hadn't moved from the door. "Are you still wantin' to be left alone now?"

Nathan gave his head a little shake. "Sit down," he said in that same soft voice. "If you want."

"I don't want to sit down", he said flatly, not ready to soften yet, even if Nathan was making it really hard not to. "I want to know what's goin' on an' if I should bother stickin' around."

Nathan looked up at him, pained sadness in his gray eyes. This was the cost of keeping silent for all these weeks, he thought; one of them, at least. He took a deep breath, let it out. Then another. The fluttering in his stomach wasn't quite nausea, but close.

"I went with a SHIELD reconaissance team to check out a Taygetos training facility," he finally said. "I was supposed to use the Trojan Horse to clear the way, once SHIELD went in in force."

It felt like someone was closing an iron fist around his heart. Shouldn't it be easier than this, now that he'd told someone? He made himself continue, knowing he was being terse, but unable to help himself.

"We were ambushed, heading back to regroup. They killed the surviving SHIELD agents to get me to talk. One of them did instead. Then-" He couldn't breathe. Nathan stopped, chest heaving and hands clenched into fists as he stared blindly ahead.

"Then somethin' happened that involved kids", Angelo surmised. "The Taygetos kids."

"Oh, this shouldn't be so hard now..." Nathan's voice was almost inaudible, but it was quiet enough in the room for Angelo to hear - and hear how it broke. "They're dead," he said, more audibly. "Firing squad, demolition charges on the building."

"Nate..." There wasn't anything he could say to that. "It wasn't your fault. You have t'know that."

"I don't. Know that," Nathan said, slowly and haltingly. When he looked up at Angelo, though, he realized. A faint, fragile smile tugged at his lips and then was gone. "Survivor's guilt," he said, under his breath.

Angelo shook his head. "I know survivor's guilt an' what you've been puttin' yourself through isn't any ordinary survivor's guilt. You're still not tellin' me everythin', are you?" That was more than faintly frustrated.

"Where do you think I was when this happened, Angelo?"

There was a moment of silence. Then, slow with dawning horror, "You said they caught you. Nate, you weren't... there?"

Nathan's fingers brushed the still-healing weal on his temple, and he swallowed. "They killed them," he said slowly, "because of me. Because they knew about the Trojan Horse and thought there might be... contamination. They were... incidental."

"They did it because they're evil bastards", Angelo pointed out with fury barely hidden behind the determination to make Nathan believe that. "Not because of anythin' you did wrong."

"It's going to take me a while to convince myself of that." If he could. Nathan took a steadier breath and straightened. "I need your help," he said, "with the office. I'm going to Muir for a while." He almost managed a smile. "I need some time with my wife."

"I would've got Juliette to drug your coffee an' put you on a plane myself if you hadn't said that", Angelo said seriously. "I'll keep things runnin' here."

"I shouldn't be too long. I'll have to come back here to see Jack Leary, if nothing else. Or Charles." Nathan's shoulders rose and fell in what might have been a laugh, had there been any sound behind it. "Charles I'll probably have to see before I go. My telepathy is projecting ghosts of dead children at me on a semi-regular basis."

"...Nate, for fuck's sake. There's not tellin' me stuff an' then there's not tellin' me you're hallucinatin' dead children."

"It's not like I'm not used to seeing dead people." Thanks again, Askani. Nathan leaned forward, running his hands through his hair and then lacing his fingers together at the back of his neck, wincing at the way the still-healing shoulder reacted. "Just... please no more 'why didn't you tell me'." It wasn't quite a plea. "It was too hard. It still is, even if I know I have to do it."

"Okay, no more of that", Angelo conceded. "But I'm still mad at you for knockin' me out. You didn't have to do that... an' did you think I wouldn't know?"

"I'm sorry. But would you have let me go by myself?" Another not-quite laugh. "Hell, I suppose Jean-Paul didn't in the end either. I just... wasn't up for the fight, Angelo. You didn't take no for an answer when it came to sleeping on the couch, did you?"

"No", he admitted freely. "But it'd been weeks an' things were only gettin' worse." He walked over and sat down, finally. "Kind of had us scared there, you know."

Nathan shook his head a little, a tremor crossing his expression for a moment. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice dropping again. "You know now, at least. I can't promise anything else right now."

"Okay." It was a concession, and the fact that he hadn't walked out much further back in the conversation - or never bothered to follow Nathan at all - said a lot. "You go to Muir. Send Rachel back here if you need to, I'll look after her."

"She'll be fine on Muir. I want to see her too." Nathan's voice was gravelly-sounding, suddenly, and he got up, his face turned away from Angelo. "I've got to call Moira. I can't handle a commercial flight."

"You do that." He pushed himself up in turn. "I'll... be out in the office with Juliette."