Amanda and Nathan, Manuel and Nathan, Sunday afternoon

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Nathan, quite serious about not staying in the medlab, plots his escape. First step, getting Hank to let him sit with Amanda for a while. She comes to while he's there, and some of the consequences of Manuel's display of power the day before become clear. What's not so clear, however, is who's reassuring who as they talk briefly about what happened.


Nathan lowered himself into the chair beside Amanda's bed, letting the air in his sore, bruised lungs out on a raspy sigh. He had talked Hank into letting him sit with Amanda for a while, with the rather vague promise that he would go back to his own bed afterwards. Which he fully intended to do - eventually, that was, and to his own actual bed rather than the one here in the medlab that he really didn't need to be occupying. Hank would have to cope with that. His control over the virus was back - the coughing spasms had stopped entirely hours ago - and for the rest of it, he could heal just as well upstairs. Didn't need to be coddled. There had been times on missions when he'd been hurt worse than this and kept fighting, so...

She could feel him there, all pain and guilt and fear, and she had to do something, make it stop... Amanda's eyes glowed just the faintest bit red as she opened them, but it faded as consciousness reasserted control over the link. She gave him a tired half-smile and tried to speak - nothing more than a half-cracked squeak came out, and she winced.

He leaned forward, propping himself up with his good arm against the edge of the bed. No sling. Hank had waved one vaguely at him, but he'd refused it. The sort of half-upright position was working, he decided a bit fuzzily. If he actually got into anything resembling a reclining position, he didn't think he was going to get back up for a while. "Hey, trouble," he said, his voice gravelly and broken from all the coughing yesterday. "You look... like I feel."

"Get... number of... the truck?" she managed to ask, with a faint hint of a grin, which faded as she shifted and whole new areas of bruising made themselves felt. "Ow. Guns... suck."

"Have to take your word for it," Nathan rasped, smiling exhaustedly. "Didn't have any... pointed at me. Would've preferred that, I think..."

"Bastards shot me..." Amanda rasped, then pushed herself up on her elbow so she could get a good look at Nathan. "You all right? You look like shite."

"I'll be fine. Like the... Energizer bunny, you know. Takes a licking and keeps right on ticking." Okay, so he was maybe sounding a little concussed. Which was fair, given the fact that he was concussed. "Hank even... let me out and all." Stay focused on her, he told himself. Just her, in this room. Pretend he didn't 'hear' anything else...

He didn't look fine, but Amanda wasn't in a state to push the point. And if McCoy had let him out of medlab, well, that was good enough for her. Besides, there was the oddest sensation in her head, almost like the echo of someone else's thoughts - she felt for the link and shied away almost immediately with an involuntary whimper of pain. She let herself fall back onto the pillow, closing her eyes tight against the pain. When it had receded somewhat, she cracked open her eyes and looked at Nate's beaten, exhausted face. "Ow."

He shook his head slowly. "Don't... do that for awhile," he murmured in his broken voice. "You and Manuel... overlapped. Going to take a while for it to f-fade." He patted her arm awkwardly. "Will, though. You'll both be okay..."

"Definitely not doin' that again, trust me," Amanda replied, swallowing against the soreness of her own throat. Memories were slotting into place, not hers, not exactly, but Manuel's; it was a bit like watching a movie of herself. "He... saved us both... didn't he?" she asked, even as the knowledge came to her. "An' Strange... he all right? The college, those people..." Now the initial confusion was wearing off, she couldn't help the rush of images, half what she had seen, half Manuel's. "Oh Christ, those people... I couldn't... I tried t' stop 'em..."

"Don't," Nathan said brokenly, reaching out to her again. Her thoughts were crashing against his too-fragile shields, and the pain and helpless guilt in them were too familiar... "You t-tried, Amanda... can't blame yourself..." For a terrified moment, hearing the anger growing in her thoughts, he half-expected her to turn on him, to shout at him that it was his fault, that none of those people would be dead if he hadn't been there. And he drew back away from the bed, unable for that moment to hide the sick, agonized grief and self- loathing blazing through him from reflecting on his face.

"No." Amanda reached out and grabbed his arm clumsily - her hands were lightly wrapped in gauze, to cover the grazes on them and her forearms. "It weren't yer fault, you couldn't have known, don't you bloody well dare blame yerself..." Her voice failed her entirely, but her grip was surprisingly strong... and her eyes had taken on just the faintest reddish cast again. #They're the ones, not you,# she thought at him as hard as she could, even though the effort made her head swim.

It was like he was fighting the tide, as if it were trying to pull him out to sea to drown. But her hand on his arm was like a lifeline, pulling him back, and he closed his eyes for a moment, breathing as deeply as he could as he pushed all that pain and self-directed anger down and away. Shut down. Pull yourself together. "I'm all r-right," he said weakly, opening his eyes again and forcing himself to give her a feeble smile. "Don't... worry. You just rest, okay?"

"No need t' tell me twice," she whispered - it was all her voice could manage after the abuse her vocal cords had received from Manuel's use of them. She was paler than she'd been before she woke as well. But she didn't let go of his arm, even as her eyelids started drooping. "Don't hurt yerself over this, Nate. It wasn't... yer fault."

He watched her drift back to sleep, then took her hand and laid it back on the bed, carefully. He sat there for a while longer, meticulously piecing together a facade of normalcy, something that would fool people for long enough for him to do what he had to do today. It wouldn't need to last for long.

Only when he was confident that his mask was intact did he get up and leave.


His next step is to check on Manuel, who's in a miserable state over what he did to the Mistra operatives and to Amanda. The consequences of his and Amanda's overlapping of minds are even clearer on his side of the link, and Nathan's attempts to reassure him are not particularly successful. He also tries to thank Manuel and tell him that debt between them is repaid, but gets a very surprising response.


Stop number two, Nathan told himself, halting outside Manuel's door. Once he was done here, he could go back to his and Moira's suite and stop pretending. It was taking an act of will to keep the facade intact, to act like he didn't hear the the students thinking about what had happened at Columbia, the horrors that were being splashed all over the news programs. Not to mention the fact that walking around as if he hadn't had the shit beaten out of him yesterday was already beginning to wear just a little thin. He knocked tentatively on the door. "Manuel?" he called raggedly, wondering just when his voice would come back.

Manuel didn't answer, but the door to his room was cracked open. From inside the room, it looked like the light was being provided by candles, and for once his room was completely quiet save for the low whooshing of a fan.

Nathan took a deep breath, ignoring the stab of pain from cracked ribs, and went in. Manuel was sprawled on the bed, his posture just about the opposite of relaxed, and Nathan flinched at the dull expression on the young man's face. "How are you feeling?" he said, the state of his voice making the words sound more gruff than he'd intended. For once, he wasn't positive that Manuel would be able to see that.

Manuel pulled himself into a sitting position awkwardly, like he was in considerable pain. His lips moved, but no words came out of his mouth. Using his forearms, he clumsily brought a glass of water to his lips, and sipped from it. Lowering the glass, he then tried speaking again. "I hurt." he rasped, his voice sounding absolutely shredded - and a much higher pitch than normal.

Nathan sank into the desk chair, wincing a little. "Not surprised," he said. "Think it'll fade... you're feeling what Amanda feels. Echoes. Because of the overlap." He stared at the young man for a long moment, trying to put the words together properly. "What you did, Manuel..." He stopped, swallowing. His throat felt raw. "I don't... know what to say."

Manuel struggled to speak again. "Murderer." he rasped out. "I killed them. I ... pushed the triggers. Shielded you." he said, then lowered his head in shame. "I ... always ... hurt, with my power." he said, then struggled his waterglass to his mouth again, to take another sip.

"Except that you didn't kill them," Nathan said very quietly. "I did."

Manuel shook his head. "Amanda ..." he moaned, then winced as his throat protested. "She OK?"

"Sore. She'll be fine, though. Moira, Madelyn, Charles, Strange... they all agree."

"I ... lost my mind. Pushed her out of her own body. Took over." he rasped. "So hard to move, hard to think, and everything looked dingy." he said with a sad frown.

"I still don't know... how you did it." Nathan watched him for a long moment, half-wonderingly, half-worriedly. He hadn't expected to find Manuel in this sort of funk. It alarmed him, and he didn't know what to do to help. "How... did you know? You felt her getting shot, on the link?"

"I felt her panic, her fear of death. I reached out to her - I really don't remember much else." he said, in between sips of water. "I controlled her like a hand wears a glove. Not empathy. Something else."

Something else? "Psis... very often have multiple abilities," Nathan said slowly. "Something to do with the nature of the mutation. Like me... telepathy, telekinesis and precognition." He shook his head a little. "I don't know what this something else of yours might be... maybe Charles will."

"I lifted my hand, and her body obeyed. I don't want this new power." he said. "Just something else to hurt people with."

"Do you remember talking to me?" Nathan asked after another long silence. He didn't know what to do. How to help. His own feelings about having been forced to use his powers as a weapon didn't apply, weren't useful. Telekinesis could be destructive, but it could be glorious, too. This new ability of Manuel's... there wasn't a bright side immediately obvious. Maybe there wasn't one.

Manuel shook his head. "It was so hard to think. I could see you, and the other man - I could see how you all felt, but I don't remember much else. Sorry." he explained slowly, favoring his abused vocal cords. A touch of Brighton was showing in his English, and much less of the purebred Castillian.

They were echoing each other still. Nathan reflected dimly that he really ought to be more disturbed than he was by that. "You came running at me," he said, his voice very low. "I was standing down... but you didn't let me surrender."

Manuel shrugged. "I was angry. I remember that. Or she was - it was my anger, but not. I don't know." he said, cradling his head with his forearms. His hands, despite being unmarked in any way, are stiffly-held as if injured and bandaged.

"Whatever it was," Nathan said, just as quietly. "I... that debt we had between us? More than repaid, Manuel. You..." He shuddered, an actual chill striking him as he thought about it, really thought about it for the first time since it had happened, his mind spinning out the scenario as it would have unfolded. They would have led him away, back to a waiting car, probably. From there to a plane, then back to Mistra, wherever that was these days. Probably a day, at tops, before he would have been strapped to a table again, people digging into his mind... "I'd say you saved my life, but you saved more than that."

Manuel waved that way with a club-like hand gesture. "No debt." he rasped out. "No mine, no yours. None. Would ... have done it anyway. Debt or no." He sipped at his water again, then looked at the now-empty glass with real regret. "Saved you - destroyed her. How can she trust me now?"

Nathan levered himself up out of the chair, swaying a little as he stood. "Here," he said gruffly, taking the glass from Manuel and going over to fill it from the pitcher on the table. He went to lift the pitcher instinctively with the bandaged wrist and winced, setting the glass down and switching hands. "You didn't destroy her, Manuel," he said tiredly. "Neither of you... should've been involved, and I'm sorry..."

Manuel looked at Nathan with a cocked head. "Sorry has no meaning." he parroted, his voice dropping closer to its regular registers, and away from the more female higher ones. "I took her body!" he said, clearly agitated.

"Which she wasn't using at the time," Nathan said, coming back over with the glass of water. He sat down on the edge of the bed, not caring if Manuel thought he was invading his personal space. "And you used it to save the two of us, possibly more innocent people too, Manuel... you don't think that wouldn't weigh in your favor, even if she was furious at you?"

Manuel shrugged, then winced as nonexistant wounds tugged. "Can Empath do good?" he rasped. "People died because of me."

"Actually, no," Nathan said, his voice wavering a little as he thought again of all those bodies, strewn around the campus like broken toys. No. Back away. Can't go there again, not yet... "You want to get technical, they died because of me. You just helped to put an end to it a little sooner." He handed over the glass of water, frowning as Manuel took it clumsily.

Manuel shook his head. "I killed them." he repeated. "Triggers..." he said, then took a deep drink of his water. "They deserved death. Amanda - she will never trust now. Bad enough when it was just empathy."

"You start making up Amanda's mind for her, you will piss her off," Nathan said, startled by the flash of impatience he felt, the... normalness of it. "As for them deserving death..." Another thing he hadn't really processed yet. "They didn't have any control over what they were doing," he said softly. "They... can only do as they're told." He swallowed past another lump in his throat. "They had to die." Once the triggers had been hit, at least. "They weren't... always like that, though."

Manuel shrugged. "They enjoyed their bloody work." is all he said for a long while. Then, after a sip of water, he continued. "I'm so tired." he said. "Do you think I will be alone because of this?" he asked tenatively. "Will she leave?"

"No," Nathan said, his voice hushed. "She won't." He smiled, wearily but as warmly as he could. Manuel needed the reassurance. "Cares too much about you, idiot. Hasn't that sunk in yet?"

Manuel shrugged again. "Not exactly ordinary circumstances." he said by way of explanation.

"Have faith in her," Nathan said, that faint smile still lingering. "She might not be saying much more than 'Ow' right now, but you know that won't last long..."

"It is hard, to look in the mirror and see what I am." he admitted. "I am not a good person. I do not know if I ever will be."

"So long as you don't stop trying, Manuel. That's all that counts." Nathan leaned back with a sigh that turned into another wince. His head was spinning. Couldn't do this for much longer. "Fuck. I need to go find my own bed, I think... are you going to be okay?"

Manuel shot Nathan a disgusted look that turned into a jawcracking yawn. "I am tired. Tired of many things." he said, eyes fluttering closed.

"Then go to sleep," Nathan said wearily, pulling himself back to his feet. Yeah, he was about ready to drop. "Ravelled sleeve and all that crap..."