Nathan and Illyana, Tuesday

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Nathan and Illyana chat for the first time since the art exhibit, in the kitchen, sometime around lunchtime. Illyana is not visibly relieved and Nathan does not fall asleep, so we'll call it a success for both of them.

He was cutting cheese for a sandwich - Moira hadn't eaten yet today, he could feel the hungry thoughts coming across the link - when something about the glint of the knife started to bother him. The cheese in one hand, the knife in the other, Nathan stared blankly at it, trying to chase down the source of the feeling. It wasn't making him fall asleep, at least - Charles was as good as his word - but it was being awfully. Not the knife itself, he thought. Just the way the light caught off it...

Well, there was a face she hadn't seen around in a while. "Hey, Mr Dayspring," Illyana said, shooting for casual, from the door, slightly out of breath from a run. She ran a hand through her hair, flipping it over her shoulder finally, and settled on a tone that was definitively not tentative or weird. Because she wasn't feeling tentative or weird. At all. "How's it going?" She went for the fridge, hoping to find some cold water and fresh fruit -- something they usually managed to stock, although after Asgard the supply had suddenly diminished.

Nathan was still frowning at the knife. The fact that someone else was on the kitchen didn't dawn on him until Illyana had gotten her fruit and water out of the fridge and turned around to face him. "Hi," he said uncertainly, then realized he was still holding the knife in what was almost a threatening way. He laid it down again, his hand trembling a bit. "I was cutting cheese."

Ah, she thought, not tracking too well, are we? He looked kind of unhinged -- well, it wasn't like she didn't know the feeling. "I noticed," she said lightly, raising her eyebrows. "Getting some lunch?"

"Moira promised she'd eat if I did. We have a mutual... thing about keeping an eye on each other when it comes to stuff like that." He blinked at Illyana, feeling too alert suddenly, the shift from one state to another almost dizzying. "You were at the art exhibit," he said abruptly.

She looked at him with keen blue eyes, trying to figure out how they'd gone from lunch to the art exhibit. "Yeah," she said, shrugging. "Great art. Pity about the violence."

"Pity," he echoed, staring off into space for a moment, waiting for the 'Nap! Now!' nudge. It didn't come, and he let the air in his lungs out on a sigh, wondering just how far Charles would let him push it. "I remembered seeing you," he said, focusing on Illyana again. "I saw all of you. They left me just enough... space in my head to know what was happening."

Of course. Mind control wasn't fun without something like that backing it up. Been there. "Ah," she said, "I see they've been reading the evil bastards' psychological torture handbook from front to back. You holding up?" She took a long drink of water, grateful for something to do with her hands.

Nathan nodded. "Charles isn't making me fall asleep anytime I feel anything anymore," he said, "although he told me he'd start again if I got too upset." He looked at the block of cheese, and the knife. "I'm feeling strange, though, now that I'm not so tired."

Fall asleep? Probably some weird psychic thing, she decided. "Shock," she suggested blandly, thinking back to the days -- well, weeks -- she'd spent in a haze, barely conscious of doing anything until after the fact. "Mind control's tricky, screws up your thinking, how you interact with the world. From what I hear, anyway," she added. "Getting used to dealing with things here again can't be easy in any case."

Nathan smiled a bit feebly. "I'm having trouble believing it's real sometimes, still," he said, picking the knife back up and cutting the cheese - carefully. "With not panicking when I wake up. I have this recurring dream about the walls changing. I think it's something they put in my head when they were in there..."

"Or it's just one of those nightmares people get," she said quietly, taking another drink. "Coming here after being stuck in hell -- literally or figuratively, I mean -- is a bit like being tossed into cold water when you're not sure you can swim." She looked at him thoughtfully. "The panic stops being so bad after a while. Did for me, anyway."

"I handled it for seven years," Nathan said after a moment. "I have to keep telling myself that. And it wasn't even conclusive, the last time... I always knew they'd come back for me." He smiled, tightly this time, as he remembered begging Morgan not to make him go back. "It was my nightmare for so long, the idea of going back. I suppose I should concentrate on the fact that I survived it, not get caught up in the fact that it did come true."

"At the risk of sounding like I've swallowed a book of bad metaphors, conclusion isn't always what cauterizes those wounds," she said, shrugging. Not that she had any right dispensing advice, but... "It did come true. Surviving it, ending it don't make that better -- at least, not those things alone."

Nathan finished cutting the cheese and set the knife aside, swallowing. He remembered what it was, now. "Maybe the narcolepsy wasn't so bad," he murmured, then looked up at Illyana, trying to smile. "Still reading your Russian history?"

She glanced at him coolly, gauging his reaction. People were so weird. "'Course," she said airily, switching tacks with grace. "Not much else to do, after all. Are you still going to teach that class?"

"I don't know." Nathan turned, rather like an automaton, and went over to get some bread. It was a question no one had asked him yet. So, Nathan, what are you going to do once you get over having been a brainwashed homicidal maniac yet again? "I'd... like to, I think," he said, his voice hoarse.

Yeah, she was just never going to get this people thing down. She leaned back on her elbows on the counter, picking at the skin of the nectarine she'd grabbed and watching him carefully; it wasn't that she thought he was going to go postal, but if he was going to pass out or (gods forbid) cry or something... "Hope you do," she said cheerfully, opting to keep her own tone as light as she could without sounding like an idiot. "If you're up to it, that is. Sounded more interesting than the rest of the stuff they teach here."

"I'll... talk to Charles about it in a few days. I had most of the material prepared..." Nathan took a deep breath, reminding himself that Charles had warned him that the posthypnotic suggestion was going back, full-strength, if he started having too much trouble. "Shouldn't take too much more work to get the syllabus finished. I know we're down to the wire here."

"Not too much," Illyana said matter-of-factly. "I mean, another week or two before classes start, and then it's not like you can't put us reading the textbook while you figure it all out." She left that purposely ambiguous, her own slightly backward way of being gentle.

But if he didn't get right back to teaching, he wasn't... Nathan stopped, took a deep breath, and, wonder of wonders, that particular vicious bit of circular thinking sort of wandered off and got lost. "There will be a lot of reading, anyway," he said after a moment.

"Sounds like you're set then, if you decide to do it, I mean," she said, not quite brightly but close enough that she suspected it didn't matter.

Nathan glanced at her, his smile almost wry this time. "Just when I think I've become immune to logic," he said lightly. "I'll let you know, Illyana. One way or the other, since you were interested in the course."

"Immune to my logic? Impossible," she said loftily, and grinned at him. "Thanks. Do let me know. I have a feeling they'll stick me in something awful like music otherwise, and I need to know if I should start lobbying."

Nathan started to assemble the sandwiches, the wry smile lingering. "Fate worse than death," he agreed. "Feel free to nag me if I don't get back to you about it in a few days."

"I will," she said seriously. "Do you know who teaches music? I'd be dead or underwater by the end of the first class."