xp_logs | Nathan and Jean-Paul, Monday night

Nathan is back in the land of the living, if less than enthusiastic about that fact.

It hadn't really been a very good day.

Nathan supposed he should feel otherwise; after all, waking up was good. Breathing on his own was better, even if getting the damned tube out had hurt like hell, painkillers or no painkillers. But he'd had one redhead or another bustling in and out all day, running tests, poking at him, making him move around. Moira sitting by the bed holding his hand for a while hadn't been bad at all, but that had given way to more tests, and although he could tell by the feel of his head that he was very well-drugged, it was only taking the edge off the pain. Not banishing it entirely.

Maybe that was only fair. He deserved to hurt. You weren't supposed to be able to walk away without a scratch from what he'd done. One of us in the hospital, the other in the morgue... Nathan turned his head slowly on the pillow, away from the door, as his eyes blurred and stung.

Jean-Paul hesitated as he approached the door to Nathan's room. Moira had let him know that Nathan had finally woken, but his demeanor didn't suggest any great desire for company. He considered another moment, then knocked quietly on the door frame.

Almost involuntarily, Nathan looked back. A faint, almost fragile-looking smile took shape on his face for a moment before it was gone again, Nathan's gray eyes going in and out of focus as they tracked Jean-Paul's movement into the room. "No scolding." His voice sounded awful, and he couldn't manage any volume at all. Mostly because he couldn't breathe properly.

Jean-Paul answered the smile with an involuntary one of his own. Nate still looked awful, but there were fewer tubes snaking out of him now and, most important, he no longer lay so frighteningly still. Seeing his eyes open and hearing him speak loosened the band that had been cinched tightly around Jean-Paul's chest since Nathan had been carried back.

"I am not feeling quite that heartless," he said, crossing the space to Nathan's bedside. "I will save the scolding for after I am done being relieved."

"Big softie." Nathan gladly took the opportunity to focus on something other than what was going on in his own head. Jean-Paul looked tired and worried, an expression he was getting a little too used to seeing from people lately. Does that not tell you something, Nathan? "Amelia better not chase you out of here. Don't like being alone right now..."

You really should not be able to say something without thinking when talking took effort like it did right now. Nathan blamed the painkillers.

"Well..." Jean-Paul cleared his throat, the worry on his face giving way to sheepishness. He was capable of acknowledging his own brattish tendencies, but usually not until well after the fact. "She has been trying to teleport me out, and I am sure she will again. It will probably keep you amused. Your wife is likely the only reason I am not locked up again with a needle in my ass."

The mental image the words provoked got another faint smile, one that faded again after a moment. "Can feel the babies," he murmured, and the brokenness in his voice wasn't all due to the damage from the tube. "Moira says they're off to Muir soon."

"So I have heard." Jean-Paul's voice was quiet. "It seems like the best place for them, at least for now." There was not a lot of conviction in that statement; Jean-Paul was not privy to the complete details of the infants' rescue, but that they had to go from one research facility to another was somewhat saddening. At least at Muir, though, they would receive care, not be manipulated to someone else's ends. "Will you be heading out there to recover?"

"Can't," Nathan muttered. "Getting on an airplane would be bad." The uneven, shallow breathing was audible enough in the quiet of the room to make it very clear why. "Jean was... managing the pressure in the 'Bird, on the way back."

Jean-Paul lay one hand over Nathan's carefully, though he was touching more bandages than skin. "I suppose I can resign myself to looking after you for a while longer."

Nathan stared up at him for a long moment. "Moira tell you?" he asked finally, his breathing growing more unsteady. What little color there was in his face (beneath the bruises) had faded. "About Carly, and J-John..."

Jean-Paul nodded. Two more people tied to Nathan's past, one killed defending the children, the other by Nathan's own hand.

"You did not have another choice, Nathan. I am sorry; I wish you had." He could think of nothing else to say, nothing that could begin to give comfort...or at least nothing that would not ring utterly false.

"Carly... it breaks my heart. And John..." The brightness in those exhausted, reddened gray eyes was all too obvious. "Wanted to save him. So much. And instead I killed him. Killed him." The emphasis would have been vehement, if his voice had been stronger. "And he wanted it. I gave him what I wanted, and I was n-never going to do that..." Nathan squeezed his eyes shut, tears trickling free despite the defensive gesture, and focused desperately on keeping his breathing as steady as he could.

There was no point in trying to bring logic to bear against his grief, no point and no kindness. Whatever victories had been won in the presence of those small lives in the medlab, the larger part of the cost had been taken out of Nathan's soul. There was no lessening that raw pain, as much as Jean-Paul would have given anything to aid this man who had literally held his body and mind together so often over the last months. Nothing to do but be there for him as he mourned lost people and lost chances and hold him as best he could while he cried.