Nathan and Angelo, Thursday evening

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Right after sending this email to Alison and Pete, Nathan runs, without waiting for a reply. He doesn't run very far, but it's definitely running. Angelo happens to find him, and finds Nathan busy having a delayed reaction to what happened on Muir, as well as wrestling with some old issues that appear to have just been playing dead.


Shields. Shields were good. He had told Moira he needed some air, and suggested that he might not be reachable through the link for a little while. Of course, he'd also had to swear to her that it wasn't because he was going to do anything stupid. But he'd been able to promise that, and mean it, because he wasn't. He just... needed not to share this.

Sitting cross-legged in the snow, he had his face in his hands. He had stopped trying to force his thoughts into any of his meditative patterns quite a while ago. It wasn't working. It wasn't working, and all he could do was seal it off from Moira, because she had too much of her own to deal with, too much...

Angelo found him there completely by chance, out for a walk for no particular reason except to get his nicotine fix somewhere other than the smoker's porch for once. He started to walk faster on seeing Nathan, worried by what he saw.

Nathan flinched, sensing Angelo's approach, wiping his eyes hurriedly and diverting one of the layers of shielding he had on the link back to his regular shields. Didn't want to be projecting. That would be bad.

Angelo reached him in a few moments, dropping down into the snow without ceremony. "Hey."

"I'm not real good company right now, Angelo." His voice came out pretty much as he'd expected, a hoarse scrape that didn't sound much like him at all. He'd had this mental image of knives shredding his throat from the effort it took to hold back a scream.

He had held this all more or less in for nearly a week. Doing pretty well, for someone who wasn't supposed to have natural mechanisms to control his emotions anymore.

"Figured on that when I saw you", Angelo answered quietly, drawing on his cigarette. "Now, if you're sayin' you want to be left alone, say so an' I'll be on my way. But if you really just don't think you'll be good company... well. That's different."

"What do I want?" Nathan gave a rough laugh, rubbing at his eyes again. "What I want doesn't make a damned bit of difference, as per usual. The more things change."

"Does when it comes to if I stay or go right now. Your call, Nathan."

"It's cold out here," Nathan said dully, resting his head in one hand as he struggled to lock his emotions down again. "But, you know. Up to you." Control. Damn it.

"I was out here already. I'm used to the cold, by now. So I stay." He finished off with another pensive drag on his cigarette, ignoring the melting snow soaking into his jeans.

Angelo's presence was wearing at his too-thin shields, sharp with worried and caring thoughts flickering outwards like tiny arrows. Nathan tried futilely to trace another meditative pattern in his mind and it fell apart. Fell right apart, ineffective. Just like him.

Angelo glanced sideways at him, not sure if it would be best to press the issue, to let Nathan have his silence, or to simply wait it out.

Not working. Not working, damn it... Nathan ran his hands through his hair, his fingers instinctively clenching, and a sound that was half-pain, half-fury escaped him.

Angelo's gaze sharpened, his attention suddenly entirely focused on Nathan in a way it hadn't obviously been before. "Nathan?"

"I can't do this. I can't DO this." The words spilled out seemingly of their own accord, and he couldn't stop them, even knowing that he shouldn't be speaking them--at all, let alone to Angelo of all people. "I can't. I can't sit here, and pretend that we got through these things, so they're done..." His voice broke and he pushed himself up out of the snow, swaying a little as he took a few steps away, leaning heavily against a tree. "I feel so trapped. Every bit as trapped as I did before, and the stakes are so much higher now..."

Angelo sat there in the snow, watching him quietly until he stopped talking. Unsure what to say or that he wanted to know the answer, he finally ventured, "So... what're you gonna do?"

Nathan laughed. It wasn't a very nice-sounding laugh, and he couldn't help himself. "What am I going to do? Nothing, Angelo. Absolutely fucking nothing. Stand here and hope the sky doesn't fall. Learn to be passive."

Angelo nodded slowly, never taking his eyes off Nathan. "Sometimes it's all there is to be done..."

"Now, don't you mean always?" Nathan said bitterly. "Hell, you've been the victim of that, haven't you? Apparently fighting back is just inappropriate in general, hadn't you heard?" Oh, fuck, he needed to stop this... squeezing his eyes shut, something very close to a moan escaping him, he turned away. No lashing out at Angelo. Not at Angelo.

Angelo was still watching him, eyes calmly sad. "Not always. We do what we can, when we can, an' when we can't, if the sky falls, we pick up an' keep on. Because if we don't..."

Nathan shook his head almost violently. "This isn't about endurance. This is about knowing the sword is dangling over your head and not being able to do a damned thing about it. This is about not being able to act to protect the people you care about."

"Isn't that another kind of endurance? If you can't act, if there's nothin' you can do, then you get ready while you wait an' you do what you can an' what you have to when the sword falls. To protect them, to survive yourself..."

"I can't LIVE LIKE THIS!" And it burned to say that, to admit that it was that selfish, what was eating away at him. But if there was nothing else he could manage to do, maybe he could at least manage to be honest. "I can't! I tried, Angelo, damn it... I tried for years," he went on feverishly, "until it got to be too much!" Until the price of restraint was higher than the price of action. "And I acted and I blew it, I killed them--"

Angelo went very still, and prompted gently, "Who, Nathan?"

"Aliya and Tyler." His voice broke on their names. "I thought I was protecting them, but I killed them... maybe I'd have done the same with Moira and the baby, if I'd gone after the people responsible for what happened on New Year's. Amanda, too, if I'd done anything..." He took a deep, shaky breath, fighting for control. "Damned if I do, damned if I don't, and it won't stop happening... what's the good of it? To have people you care about again if you can't protect them, if they're just going to be taken away anyway--"

Angelo shrugged helplessly. "All I can tell you is, Moira an' the baby an' Amanda're still here, an' they're okay. An' the question is, d'you want to never ever have anybody you care about just 'cause they might get taken away?"

"You're missing my point!" Nathan turned away, his jaw clenching almost spasmodically, his eyes stinging. "I can't live afraid to act. Unable to act. I can't." He laughed again, raggedly. "And it's worse when what's stopping me is love and concern... I almost prefer the fucking conditioning. At least then I knew I didn't have a choice."

"If you can't do that", came the quiet reply, "then what are you goin' to do instead? If you can't act 'cause of the danger, but you can't not... what else is there?"

"I don't know." Nathan leaned his forehead against the trunk of the tree in front of him, breathing unsteadily. "Nothing. What did I say? Sit here and wait for the sky to fall."

Angelo got up, brushing loose snow off his jeans, and moved quietly to Nathan's side, reaching to put a hand on his shoulder. "An' if it does, you won't be alone. We'll come through - don't we always?"

"And how many times does that happen before we run out of luck?" Nathan asked dully. "Before someone dies, and it all..." His voice broke. "... is gone, again."

"I don't know", was the only answer Angelo could give.

"Of course you don't." There was no edge to Nathan's voice this time, just weariness and pain beneath it all. He straightened, turning to Angelo and managing what had to be a pretty ghastly smile as he reached out to squeeze the young man's shoulder. "Wasn't asking, really. I think... I'd better go in now to Moira." He wasn't sure he'd managed to shield all the way through that, and he just wanted... to hold her, to hold her and forget about all of this for just a little while.

Angelo looked at him for a long moment, then suddenly pulled him into a rough hug. "Yeah. We'll be okay."

Nathan did jump, startled by the sudden movement, not to mention the very firm grip Angelo had on him. He let out the air in his lungs on a shaky sigh and hugged back, letting himself by comforted, just for a moment, by the steady wave of support coming at him. Angelo and his wide-open mind.

What the hell was with the role-reversal, though? Very hard on his pride. Very hard...

"Okay," he said a bit more gruffly, swallowing past the lump in his throat. "I'm not going to drown myself in the lake or anything on the way back. And you haven't got nearly enough on to be out here in the cold. Come on..."

Angelo grinned and nodded, following him back up the path towards the school. "Right behind you."