xp_logs | Nathan and MacInnis, Tuesday night

Awake in the middle of the night in Galicia, Nathan heads downstairs to find MacInnis still at work. MacInnis does some very pointed reminiscing, and scores a definite hit with some information Nathan didn't know. The old rat bastard isn't through playing games just yet.

Nathan opened his eyes and stared up into the dark, uncertain for a moment of where he was or what had woken him up. There was a choked noise, almost a sob, from the other side of the room, and memory came rushing back. Galicia. MacInnis' safehouse. He sat up slowly, staring through the blackness at where he could sense Tim, tossing back and forth on his cot in restless, troubled sleep.

Nathan sighed, rubbing at his jaw, and then reached out tentatively, soothing Tim's thoughts back into something approaching calm. Banishing the nightmares. His head started to throb dully, but he'd take the headache and consider it a fair trade. Tim was not someone you wanted to be having bad dreams, not when he might lash out with his powers.

He was good and awake himself by this point, though, so he got up and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. The sprawling old house that MacInnis had taken as his new base of operations was nearly silent at this time of night, most people asleep where they should be. As he moved downstairs, Nathan brushed the thoughts of those on watch, identifying them automatically, and then frowned as he sensed a more familiar set of thoughts in the computer room.

The door was open, and he stopped in the doorway. "Don't you sleep?" he asked MacInnis. The older man was seated in front of one of the larger screens, scrolling through what looked like some kind of encrypted file.

MacInnis grunted. "Could ask you the same question."

Nathan shrugged uneasily, sitting in one of the other chairs. "I tend to sleep lightly when I don't feel secure," he said a bit dryly. MacInnis didn't look away from the screen. Nathan was silent for a long moment, watching him, before he spoke again. "So Tim's fairly determined to stay," he said. Leaving the opening.

"I'll be glad to have him," MacInnis said in a neutral voice, closing that file and opening up the map of Europe. Various spots glowed red - Mistra facilities? "Question is, are you going to let him stay?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"Suppose I should be glad that you're giving it a chance," MacInnis conceded, a touch of wry humor in his voice. "Given our history together."

"There was that. Alison thinks I'm insane. Charles looked very dubious."

"Hrmph," was MacInnis' only response to that. "I don't need to be a telepath to know he's not stable," he went on, his voice heavy. "Timothy, I mean. But then, I think of what you did, when you first got out. He's a lot better off than you were. Hopefully he can handle this."

"What I did," Nathan muttered, rubbing at his jaw again. He needed to shave. "What I did caused more problems than it solved."

MacInnis finally spun around slowly in his chair. His face looked almost skeletal in the eerie glow from the monitors, the only light in the room. It was the way the shadows fell, Nathan thought, gazing back at him warily.

"I was there," MacInnis said simply. "When you showed back up at the home facility that day."

Nathan felt his expression freeze. "You didn't tell me that."

"Didn't think it was relevant. Obviously I got out - I'm still here." MacInnis smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile. "I was actually the one that ordered the evac. When it became clear that no one was going to stop you. Hell, you were shrugging off the EM charges that should have put you down."

"I... don't really remember," Nathan said faintly. "I wasn't... really thinking that day. At all." The director who'd ordered the mission that had killed Aliya and Tyler, all the operatives and auxiliary staff who'd worked on it... they'd all been dead by then. He hadn't had any specific targets in mind when he'd come home that day.

He'd just wanted to level the place. Bring it all down, turn it into rubble and dust. It had been the last thing that had needed doing, or so he'd told himself. He knew better than to think he'd been anywhere close to sane, but it had seemed to make such perfect sense.

"You killed close to a hundred people that day, you know. In what... about twenty minutes, from the time you blew through the security checkpoint?" MacInnis' smile twisted even further. "Eighteen of them were kids in the candidate barracks. Their minders ran, instead of staying to get them out. When you brought the house down, they were still locked in their cells."

Nathan tasted bile at the back of his throat. It was a struggle to keep his expression level. "I didn't... I didn't know that," he said, his voice hoarse.

"Well, no shit, son. I didn't ever think you'd have done that deliberately." MacInnis shook his head, turning back to his screen. "I remember having to drag Crawley out to the helicopter. Fat bastard was pissing and moaning about how you were going to kill us all. Should have left him under his desk." He snorted. "It's too damned bad that so many of the field teams were out that day. Would've been interesting to see how they reacted to you coming down on the place like the Wrath of God. Suspect it would've cracked the conditioning for a few of them, at least..."

Nathan got up. "Not interested in playing what-if," he said as steadily as he could. Which wasn't particularly. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, almost spasmodically. "I think... I need some air."

MacInnis made a noise that might have been a snort. "Don't wander too far. I don't want Timothy waking up and thinking I had you dropped off a cliff or something."

Nathan supposed he should say something about bizarre senses of humor, but he was a little more concerned with getting the fuck out of the room. He headed out the nearest door, out into the cool night air. Away from MacInnis.

That accomplished, he leaned over and threw up. He hadn't had much to eat in the last twenty-four hours, so there wasn't much to come up. But even when his stomach was empty, it took him a while to stop.