xp_logs | Angelo and Domino, late Friday/very early Saturday

They have a meeting of Insomniacs Anonymous in the kitchen and talk about Nathan.

Late on Friday night - or possibly it was Saturday morning, he wasn't sure - Angelo finally gave up on fighting his insomnia for a while. Carefully disentangling himself from a sleeping Paige, and waiting for a moment to be sure she wouldn't wake up (and that he hadn't woken the puppy, who might also disturb Paige), he left the room, making for the kitchen.

Domino opened the fridge, frowning as nothing jumped out at her as worth eating. She wasn't even sure why she was hungry - they had eaten far too much junk food at the movie, after all - but some sort of craving had driven her downstairs.

Angelo pushed the door open without looking, only glancing up when he heard Domino moving around. "Hey, Domino", he called out quietly.

Domino looked up. "Oh, hey," she said, managing a friendly, if weary smile at the young man in the doorway. "Can't sleep either?"

Angelo smiled back, equally wearily with a touch of rueful. "Never can, when this sort of thing's goin' on. Which is way too often..."

Domino straightened, rubbing at her eyes. "Well," she said wearily, "it's done. For good or bad. You'd think we'd be able to sleep now, huh?"

Angelo moved further into the room and slumped ungracefully into one of the chairs. "If only. Now it's not so much worryin' about where he is, as how he is, I guess..."

"I was up there with him for a while," Domino said. "He was awake, a little... on and off, really." Her jaw tightened a little as she removed a carton of juice from the fridge. "Not really with it, though. Still got all kinds of shit in his system, Moira was saying, between what Mistra pumped into him and what they had to give him in the medlab last night."

Angelo's eyes hardened and he wished, not for the first time, that he'd stand any chance going up against Mistra. Revenge was sounding better and better all the time... "He'll be okay now though", he answered, trying for conviction. "Now he's back. Might take awhile, but he will be."

"At least his conditioning's gone," Domino said, trying to cheer herself up. "And they can't do it to himself again. That's not to say they might not come at him somewhere down the line, but at least we won't be looking at a repeat of this week."

Angelo nodded. "Always a bonus. An' if they can't trigger him, they won't get him. I'm pretty sure."

"Hell, from what I gather, they barely got him even when they did trigger him."

"Scott told me he escaped", Angelo remembered with something like pride, figuring Domino'd know so it was hardly to be kept secret from her. "After they took him from the warehouse."

"Drugged to the eyebrows, and yet he still fought his way out of there." Domino smiled a little. "He is very, very good, you know," she said a bit wistfully. "Suppose that's why they wanted him back so badly."

Angelo didn't miss the wistful note in her voice, even tired as he was, and took a good guess at why it was there. Tilting his head at her, he asked quietly, "An' why you still wish he'd come back to the Pack? Apart from you just missin' him, of course."

Domino smiled a bit more, but it was a very wry expression this time. "Stop trying to read my mind, junior."

Angelo chuckled, and was relieved to find it only sounded a little bit forced. "Sorry. Force of habit."

"I think you all live with too many telepaths. You imagine you can start doing it yourselves," Domino said dryly, pouring herself a glass of juice. "So were you there at the art exhibit? I know Amanda was."

Angelo's eyes darkened at the reminder. "Yeah, I was. Kinda wish I hadn't gone, now."

"Why?" Domino asked, her eyes studying him.

"Could've lived without seein' what those bastards turned him into", he answered simply. "An' not bein' able to do anythin' but take cover..."

"Still shocked to hell that he and Pete didn't kill each other," Domino said with a sigh. "Thank God for Amanda's sleep spell."

Angelo winced, remembering. "I guess killin' Pete wasn't the mission. An' Pete didn't want him dead."

Domino didn't say anything about being fairly sure that Nathan had wanted Pete to kill him. That much had come clear to her, talking to the two of them, but she didn't want to think too hard about that herself. "They're both okay," she said after a moment. "That's the important thing."

Angelo nodded, wondering about the pause but not sure he wanted to know. "Yeah, it is. And Nathan's back."

"You think there's going to be trouble with any of the other kids who were there?" Domino asked seriously, leaning back against the edge of the counter. "About trusting him again, I mean..."

Angelo gave that due consideration. "...There might be", he answered honestly. "Not all of them know him as more than someone on the staff an' the doctor's boyfriend. But most of them should be okay when they see the Professor trusts him to stay here."

"I suspect it'll be helpful that he's been upfront with so many of you about Mistra, before all this happened," Domino pointed out. "At least that way it won't have come out of the blue."

Angelo nodded earnestly. "Oh, yeah, definitely. An' to be honest, most of the less trustin' ones here... Well, we're the ones that know him better than the others. Mostly."

Domino laughed suddenly. "Funny how that works out, isn't it?"

Angelo gave her a half-grin, amused himself. "Yeah, I guess it is. He's been pretty good to all of us. Helped us..."

"He'll be okay," Domino said after a moment, sipping her juice. "He will. He's free, now... they haven't got half-a-leash still on him."

Angelo nodded fervently. "Yeah, that's the best thing t'come out of this. That the conditionin's dead."

"Silver lining," Domino said as firmly as she could, then glanced at her watch. "Hrrm. It is really ridiculously late."

Angelo grinned suddenly. "More like early. But you have a point."

She waved a hand at him. "Go to bed, tough guy. I'm going to go find mine. Need my beauty sleep and all."

Angelo grinned. "Well, I do have a girlfriend an' a puppy waitin' for me. Maybe I'll even manage t'sleep this time."