Nathan and Jean; Nathan and Carly, Monday morning

[x-cable.livejournal.com]

Jean drags Nathan out of bed to attend yet another debriefing; the two have the sort of bizarre early-morning conversation that only those who've literally shared their brains can have. Later, Nathan visits a fellow Spartan in her cell, and makes a promise.


Someone pulled the curtains open, flooding the room with light. Someone who was going to die, seriously. "Go away," Nathan mumbled into his pillow, "you... impossible harpy."

"So, could you actually tell it was me specifically or did you simply assume it was a harpy because you, Jim and Angelo are the only men on this mission?" Jean asked, sounding curious. And also remarkably awake for someone who'd passed out in a deep pain-killer semi-coma the night before. "Or," she added after a moment, "did you just not care if you called Jim a harpy by accident? Cause I could kind of see it applying to Angelo some days."

"Sore arm. You drank Hungarian egg coffee and actually liked it. And no, you haven't had it before," Nathan said, cracking open an eye. "That was me, in 1994. And I liked it too."

"Well, terribly sorry I didn't take another dose of painkiller this morning," Jean said, refraining from sticking her actual tongue but blowing a raspberry that sounded remarkably like one of Rachel's inside her own head. "Wanted to be clear headed; we've more debriefing to do."

"You have more debriefing to do, Ms. 'Brainscanned The Terrorist Leader'." Nathan groaned as he sat up. Everything hurt, and he needed a couple of bandages changed, from the look of it. "I told them everything I knew last night. Seeing as though I was one of the few walking around without a broken brain." He gave her a mock-cheery look. "Aren't you proud of me?"

"Oh, very!" And Jean's tone was alarmingly cheerful - the lack of painkillers wasn't something she was fond of, she'd just thought it necessary. "And you definitely need to come to my debriefing. Because. Your brain keeps trying to sink into mine and that will be useful, in case I know anything that I don't know I know. You will see it and see that it is important. Get up, Nate."

Nathan muttered something uncomplimentary and hauled himself out of bed, rubbing at his eyes. "If you're making me come to your briefing and make nice this early in the morning, a, I want coffee, and b, I need help changing these bandages once I run through the shower."

"Your brain's working, kind of, but your nose clearly isn't. There's coffee on the table in the front room. Go. Clean. Then the not-as-pretty-as-your-doctor-lady doctor lady will wrap it all up again." Jean waved him towards the bathroom.

"Everyone okay today?" Nathan asked ten minutes later, a little less grumpily. The shower had helped, although Jean checking the gashes before she rebandaged them wasn't all that pleasant. He wasn't even sure what had gotten through his body armor to that extent. Yesterday evening had really been a little hectic.

"Better than yesterday by far, although still a ways to go in some cases," Jean said, settling back in one of the comfortable chairs with another cup of coffee, making sure not to bump her arm. For all that it was useful, the echo effect between the two of them was less than fun when they were both in pain; things seemed to rebound back and forth in a most unpleasant way. "Angelo says he's feeling all better but he's lying, but he knows I know he's lying, so it's ok." She shrugged.

"I wonder where he picked that up from." He tilted his head at her as he pulled on his shirt. "You know, I can do that little trick of mine. It doesn't impair thinking." And yet, ironically, it wasn't something a telepath could do for themselves, at least not easily.

Jean considered for a moment, then smiled faintly. "Can't say as I would object to not being in pain, thanks. Would you like help as well or are you going the traditional, chemical method of becoming pain-free?"

"Oh," Nathan said a bit vaguely, "I'm good with tradition." He focused on dulling Jean's pain centers; it was about fifty times as easy as it had been with Angelo and Zanne, which really ought to have been a little alarming. "Besides," he said, heading over to retrieve the small bottle of painkillers, "I'm infinitely more personable when I'm on drugs."

"So true, so true," Jean said, shaking her head and smirking faintly. "I've often remarked on it. Secretly it's why Amelia and I keep you doped up as often as we do." She was definitely feeling better; setting down her cup she stood up. "Come on then. Grab your caffeine and we go to meet our doom in the guise of some very serious and well meaning but highly rattled civil servants."

"I wonder if Lil got laid last night," was Nathan's idle, completely-out-of-the-blue comment as he poured himself a cup of coffee.

Jean was glad she'd set her cup down, as there was a good chance she'd have either dropped it or spit coffee all over him, but the reasoning behind his statement was right up front in his mind, so all she did was blink and then shake her head. "I'm sure she had the opportunity but at a guess... I think she'd not take it. From what I know of her, things are still... unresolved with her husband."

"Mmm," Nathan said. "Fond as I am of monogamy as a life choice, I think someone needs to smack that girl's husband a few times."

"With a chair," Jean agreed succinctly. "Or a brick."

"Speaking of husbands, you should call yours, once we get done with the briefing. Something tells me he got very little sleep last night for fussing about how you were or were not sleeping," Nathan said with a quick, 'don't-hit-me' grin.

This time she actually did stick her tongue out. "I called him before I passed out, told him he wasn't allowed to obsess the whole night. Although, given I was already kind of loopy on pain pills, I can't imagine for a moment that it worked."

"Moira gave me orders-" And it wasn't a euphemism. "-to call her before we flew out. Apparently I am to report on both my health and everyone else's. How did we ever survive without our spouses?" His eyes twinkled.

"The sad thing is that the actual answer is more than a little depressing: you suffered from a seemingly incurable respiratory ailment and I had total amnesia for two years." Jean shook her head abruptly, realizing she was verging on maudlin and that was just wrong this early in the morning when the sun was so bright and the day looked to be pretty. "Sorry. Don't mean to be, you know, all thingy at you, but I got shot yesterday, you see, and then that bitch got away again and now I have to go tell what I saw over and over and over again." She offered him a bright, if somewhat false, grin. "Which is why you get to join me. Keep me sane. Ish."

"It is a near-overwhelming job," Nathan said with a perfectly straight face, "but I will wrestle with it. Manfully."

---

He'd been working up the courage all the way down here. The trip hadn't been long enough. Nathan's expression was painfully neutral as he waited for the guard to open the door. This had taken some arranging, although Lakatos had been helpful enough, once he'd finally explained just who she was and why he was interested. I wonder if I can ask him to pass it on to Barath...

Carly was sitting in the holding cell, wearing no restraints but the inhibitor collar around her neck. Nathan made a mental note to mention to the guards that she was perfectly capable of killing them with her bare hands, telepathy or no telepathy. "Hello, Carly," he said quietly, the door closing with a steely clang behind him.

"Nathan." Her expression was no less neutral, her voice very nearly blank, but every time she spoke, it was like watching windowglass shudder under a heavy blow. There was so much beneath the surface, just waiting to break free and tear her ragged, but she maintained her poise. At last, she looked away from the opposite wall, whatever faint rattling the sight of him had given her smoothed over on the surface. "You have something to say?"

"I have a number of things to say," Nathan murmured, moving to the opposite side of the cell and leaning back against the wall. "I doubt you want to hear most of them. 'Sorry that I landed you in Hungarian custody' would ring a little hollow, especially."

She regarded him with calm, dark eyes. "Did Tara escape?"

Nathan's jaw tightened. "Yeah," he said, with a bleak sort of humor, "you did that much. Kudos. She'll live to blow up well-meaning people another day."

Carly relaxed minutely. "Maybe." A heartbeat. "Why are you here now? You cut off my bit and bridle. I..." Something in her gaze flickered and she finally did break eye contact. "What do you want?"

"I want to tell you," Nathan said, strangely shaken by the metaphor, "that I'm going to do what I can for you. You didn't choose to be involved in any of this, and what the US government was willing to do for the rest of us... well, I'm hoping they'll see you as someone who slipped through the cracks." At the very least he should be able to get her the sort of help she needed, with her conditioning broken. Surely he could do that much.

"No..." Carly swallowed hard, a miasma of angry denial and hurt churning beneath her surface, leaking easily past shields tattered by the recent combat and the new strain that came with the barrage of newly uncapped emotions. Carly's expression remained unchanged, but her hands curled into fists. "No. I don't need...I don't need you. I did it for Tara. If I had it to do over again, I would. For her." It was an almost childish defense -- she hadn't been abandoned, oh no. She'd chosen to sacrifice.

"For the woman who held your leash," Nathan said. Too tired to be outwardly angry, too angry to be silent. "You're not her guard dog. Damn her for making you feel like you were." He pushed away from the wall, moved closer. "What you're feeling right now - we all went through it. There was a lot there to break. All the crap they put in our heads over all those years... but now you're free of it. Your life is your own again."

The anger went from leak to stormsurge, lashing out against him. Carly was on her feet in an instant, throwing an elbow for his throat.

Nathan froze her in place with a thought. "Ordinarily I'd let you whale on me a few times," he said, "get it out of your system, but I think the folks outside would probably take exception. And I don't want your time here to be any harder on you than it has to be."

Carly's emotions had whipped themselves in an unchecked storm, but it was all impotent fury behind a paused snarl. The turmoil in her mind had all but stripped away cogent thought, but one overriding sentiment remained: Get out!

"Not until I say the rest of what I came to say." He hadn't expected any other reaction, in the end. He remembered all too well the emotional instability, the shattered control, after the Trojan Horse had been used on him. "The only possible way I'm going to be able to get you out of here is if you make yourself useful." He kept his tone deliberately harsh, business-like. It might get through to her. And touchy-feely was not going to help. "Think about it, while you're sitting in here. Do you really want more children going through what we went through? Living our lives - or worse? You were close enough to Trask to know more about Taygetos than any of her idiot disciples," he went on. "If you can bring that to the table... the people sitting on the other side might be able to make you an offer. Something that would get you out of here and free to do as you liked."

He suspected they would do more, if she actually rolled over on Trask herself - the woman had been doing a very good job of rising from 'irritant' to 'dangerous whack-job' to 'serious threat' lately. But he wasn't sure Carly was ready to hear that, given her early reactions.

Carly's reply was another incoherent wave of fury...but something, a phantom of rationality, flickered in the depths in the wake of his words, then was gone, leaving only the maelstrom again.

"Don't despair in here," Nathan said, more quietly. Hating himself, knowing that he was going to walk out and leave her in this cell for who knew how long. "I know we all have bad memories of little rooms with locked doors. But this one won't stay locked forever." Limping slightly, he went over to the knock, knocked on it from the inside. "I promise, Carly."

Comments

[x-wolverine.livejournal.com]

"So, could you actually tell it was me specifically or did you simply assume it was a harpy because you, Jim and Angelo are the only men on this mission?"

Did Jean forget about Logan, or is he a girl again and nobody told me?