Alison and Nathan, Sunday morning

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Very early Sunday morning, Nathan continues to try and process what happened. Alison tries to help, and in the process finds out something about him she didn't know. Then, she's called away on a team emergency...



The bodies were in his sleep, too. He ran and ran, looking for Amanda, but there were only the corpses, burned and broken, silent screams lingering in the psychic atmosphere. Part of him was dimly aware that he was dreaming, but he couldn't pull himself out of it, couldn't break through to anything approaching a lucid state, and Nathan moaned in his sleep, his battered body twitching violently, his good hand clenching around the blankets.

The irony of the situation didn't escape her, considering their roles had been reversed the last time Alison had been in the medlab herself. She had been sitting quietly, waiting for him to wake, but the nightmare was enough for her to reach over, carefully laying her hand over his and ready to dodge if he should wake badly.

The touch was enough to jar him out of the nightmare finally. He hadn't been sleeping all that deeply, really - too much of the drug cocktail for the virus in his system to risk a sedative, according to Moira. His eyes fluttered open, and he stared up blankly at the ceiling for a moment before he recognized the presence sitting next to him.

"Amanda?" he asked in his ravaged voice. "M-Manuel?"

Her hand tightened around his and she leaned over a bit, so he'd not have to move too much to see her. "Amanda will be fine. She just needs rest and quiet to recover, that's all. And Manuel is in his room, resting as well."

"Good. 'S good..." He let his eyes roam back to the ceiling. Nice, blank ceiling. "H-How many this morning?" He had to force the words out. It hurt to talk.

"Forty-three in all. A few didn't make it through the night." She still remembered their names, although thankfully she'd had the time to mute the sadness at the news, and kept the information in the back of her mind. The light psychic shield she'd asked the Professor to help her with, to keep Nathan from just plucking at the details he didn't need to know right now had been, she hoped, a wise idea.

The ceiling was blurring in his vision now. "F-Forty-three," he repeated numbly. "More... still in hospital?"

"Yes. They're expected to recover, though some are still in ICU." She had made sure to have that information at hand, as well. She looked at him quietly for a moment, trying to gauge his state of mind - well, beyond it clearly being in the pits, of course. "You gave us a bit of a scare..." Stating the obvious, but well... he had.

He remembered Moira's barely-suppressed panic, during the worst of it last night. #Antipsi,# he thought faintly at her. Didn't hurt so much. Funny, given how his head felt. #Scrambled TK. Virus... got out of hand. Doesn't matter.#

Alison frowned slowly, puzzled. Still holding his hand she leaned on the bed, propping her chin in her other hand. "Virus?" What was he talking about? "What virus?"

Nathan struggled to focus, to pull his thoughts out of the miasma of grief and guilt and their fixation on a new number. Forty-three. #From China. Last mission. Control it with... TK, drugs.#

Oh. That mission. Oh man. "Ah..." It was a pitiful response, but what else was there to say? It explained Moira's state and why Hank had been so grim. "How did that happen?" Hank has said getting him to talk about something unrelated would be wise. She just wasn't sure this was it, but it was something at least.

#Firefight in a bioweapons lab. Generally a stupid idea. Dropped my TK shield too soon.# He tried to laugh, but it felt like someone was dragging a tangled mass of razorblades over the inside of his throat. #Too soon then. Too late yesterday. Shouldn't have fought.# He remembered, dimly, Pete's words in the car about the pointlessness of saving lives if Mistra would just turn around and send him back out to take them. Still couldn't process the logic. #Or made them kill me...#

"Do you honestly think you doing nothing would have changed much, Nathan?" She tilted her head to the side, knowing she herself wouldn't be at all listening to reason in his situation. "They very clearly demonstrated that killing people wasn't an issue for them. More like the chance to make a statement," she added acidly, remembering how one of the reporters had ranted on about mutants during the newscast - thankfully, not all of the news hounds had reacted that way.

#Were there for me. Should've let them have me.# For a moment, he almost wished it had ended that way. If he was back at Mistra now, he wouldn't care about all of the people he'd killed. They would take the guilt away along with everything else.

"From what some of the intel we're getting is saying, Nathan, they were there for you. And they fully intended to make as much of a show of it as possible. Even if you'd turned yourself in," she sighed, shaking her head, "they would have made a statement. At least you kept them busy enough so that the statement wasn't on a grander scale."

Intel? Nathan considered it dully, trying to fit in into the picture he had tried to assemble during his more lucid moments last night. Still, none of the pieces seemed to fit together into a coherent whole. "Didn't," he said aloud in his broken voice. He raised the wrist that was swathed in pressure bandages, bringing it back down against the bed, hard. The white shock of pain that blasted through him sharpened everything in its wake, even if only for a moment. "T-Two teams..." he rasped almost angrily. "Didn't even... g-give me the chance to surrender... first."

"Don't move." Her voice was rather flat and she could practically hear the metal grinding under Hank's hand in the observation room. "Please," she said, tone softening. "And honestly, Nathan, why would they give you the chance to surrender when they wanted as much damage as possible? They'd have found a way to egg you on, no matter what."

She didn't understand. Didn't see... #I did this.# The thought lashed outwards at her, whip-like in its bitterness despite his weakness. #I. Did. This.# By being here, by asking for help... Charles had gone to the President, and the President had started an investigation, and now Mistra was murdering American citizens in cold blood to prove some sort of twisted fucking point, and... The ceiling was blurring and sparkling in his vision again, and he realized there were tears trickling down his cheeks, his breath coming in helpless gasps that didn't have anything to do with the current state of his lungs.

She gasped at the thought and the emotion within it, shaking her head. "You did not use your powers against innocent civilians yesterday." She held onto his hand, knowing Hank was going to ask her to stop soon, although he was still giving her a last chance, or so it seemed. She took a deep breath and reached within, trying to calm herself despite Nathan's obvious distress. Light blossomed to life slowly in the room, swirling softly in soothing patterns. "You are not responsible for their decisions. You didn't make them do this."

He tried to resist the effect of the lights, but his mind was drifting already. Like it had in the snow, in the woods, the light was pushing the cold away. But he needed the cold, part of him thought desperately. Deserved the cold. #Leave me in the woods,# he thought disjointedly. #Leave me in the woods so I don't kill anyone else...#

"I'm not leaving you alone, Nathan," she murmured, breath hitching over a sob. She suspected she'd have broken down then and there, were it not for the Professor's shield screening some of the thoughts and emotions he was radiating. "No one is leaving you alone anymore." She reached down as best she could, making sure not to hurt him even as she hugged him lightly, light still spilling into the room steadily.

Too close. He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the light. But he could see it still, somehow. #Doesn't matter,# he sent, numbly this time. Pull yourself together. Have to start somewhere. #When can I get out of here?#

"Does too." Calm but well, not really willing to budge on the matter. She considered the question, pondering how to answer - Hank's first words when she'd come down to visit had been along the lines of keeping Nate strapped to a bed with adamantium chains if need be. "When Hank says. When you're healed."

Today, Nathan thought, closing his eyes. A few more hours. He'd convince them. No more medlab. Hospitals were for people who got hurt because other people were stupid and selfish and wanted to pretend they had normal lives... #Had worse. Don't need to be here.#

"If you say so," she just answered agreeably. He wasn't the one he had to either talk into this or sneak by and she wasn't going to give him a hard time. She had brought a book to read by, to keep him company and simply decided she'd return to that, once he feel asleep again. However, the beeper on her belt quivered firmly, drawing her attention. "Damn. I have to go," she said, reading the message on it.

#Oh. Bye,# Nathan thought dimly, all of his attention focused inwards now. Would have to put on a good act. He could do it, though. He'd done it before.