Madelyn, Nathan - Tuesday night

[x-madelyn.livejournal.com]

After her debriefing, Madelyn stops by Nathan's room with various bits of news. Some of it's good, some not so much.



Madelyn was tired after the trip to Washington, but she insisted on heading straight down to Nathan as soon as she and Kurt got back. Over the teleporter's objections, even. She knew he'd want to hear her update as soon as possible. Nodding at Moira as she passed her office, she stopped at Nathan's room, tapping the door fram gently as she peered in the dimly-lit room. "Nathan? Are you awake?"

"Wide," was the rather shaky response. Nathan mustered a very strained smile for Madelyn as she came in. He was noticeably white around the lips. "Hank was just in here. Changing the dressing on my shoulder. Have I mentioned recently how much I hate burns?"

"Only the last time we changed the dressing." Madelyn used the collective word without thinking, even though she was still off the roster. At least they were letting her back in the medlab now. "Do you want anything for the pain?"

"No, I'm good." Well, that was a blatant lie, but there was a funny sort of clarity that he was really kind of enjoying. He blinked at her as she moved into his field of vision. "Tired... you look tired. You were in Washington today, weren't you?"

"Debriefing," she confirmed, adjusting her arm in the sling absently. It was aching dully, reminding her she'd been more active today than she had in a while. "Which is always fun in that way it's completely not. And I made a couple of stops, checking up on things." He was sounding less dead, she was glad to see. Hopefully her news would help. "I visited the hospital where they're keeping the second gens."

Nathan's breath caught in his chest. "And?" he asked, his voice breaking a little. "How are they... and is that the same place they have Gavin and Chris? Nash and Cole, I mean..."

She nodded, going for the easiest question first. "Same hospital, but they're on different floors for security reasons. They're both looking a lot better this week - it'll still be a while before either of them is up and around, but they're out of danger." Awkwardly she pulled the chair closer to the side of the bed, so he could see her face as she sat. "Of the second gens, there's a few still in pretty bad shape physically - we might still lose one or two from their injuries. But they've started the initial psionic therapy on the stronger ones, and I think you'll be pleased to hear that there's been some positive responses."

"That's... that's really good news, Maddie." He would keep his voice steady. He would. Blinking rapidly up at the ceiling, he found himself staring at one of the stills of the rescued children, and that nearly undid his self-control right then and there. "I just... I've been so afraid it wouldn't work for any of them."

"They're the ones with some degree of telepathic defences, for whatever reason, but yes, it looks like there's a good chance a significant amount of their functioning can be restored." Madelyn reflected wryly she was spending too much time with Hank, to be sounding like him. "One of them in particular... Goran Radonic? He was resisting the trigger while he and Kurt were..." She let that trail off in favour of more pleasant images. "He actually managed a few words to Kurt."

"The one Kurt was talking about. I remember..." He trailed off, his voice breaking. His hands clenched and unclenched helplessly, and he took a deep, shaky breath, ignoring the way his ribs ached. "That's good. Really good. I know Kurt was upset..." Upset, and he hadn't been any help at all, had he?

"That was why I took him with me - it seemed like the best thing to do," Madelyn caught the note of guilt in Nathan's voice, and frowned. If it had been up to her, she wouldn't have let Kurt in to see him, not in the state he'd been in. Nathan had enough burdens without people adding theirs to the pile. "He thought he'd taken a life - I wanted him to see that he hadn't. She glanced up at the pictures on the ceiling and smiled at the line drawing of Moira. "It seemed to help, at least a bit."

"Kurt's not a killer." His attention was caught by the glitter-framed picture of Clarice. "Really not, I mean. Not even... in extremis."

"That's what I told him - I'm not sure how much he believed me, considering what he saw me do..." She didn't feel guilty about what she'd done - it had been the girl's life, or Kurt's. But... there was always a but. "I doubt I'll be going on any more field missions with the team, but if it does eventuate... I'm sticking to the tranq gun," she said at last. She wasn't sure why she was telling Nathan this - maybe as an apology? His guilt over the failure of the Trojan Horse had been a daily reminder that the second gens had been victims in all this too.

Nathan suddenly focused on her, all at once, his gray eyes sharper than they'd been for nearly two weeks. "Don't close doors." His voice was exhausted, tight with pain, but firm. "Either way..."

"It had to be done," Madelyn said softly. "I know that. But I can't help thinking that if I hadn't been there in the first place, or if I hadn't had the gun, I would have had to find another option. Being armed... it limits my thinking." She reached through the traction rig and squeezed his hand briefly. "And like I said, it's all academic anyway - once Jean's got control of her powers back, I can't see myself doing anything except medlab duties."

"I had to do what I did, too. Didn't make it any better." Nathan swallowed, squeezing her hand back. He didn't say anything about the whole Jean issue. Maddie would find her place, and he somehow doubted it would be passing out glow in the dark bandages and the like. "Hard for a lot of people. The mission. Not what we expected it to be..."

"At least you had the option to not kill anyone. Me, well..." she shrugged. "It doesn't matter, not right now." And certainly not with Nathan - she didn't want to add to that guilt. "It was hard on everyone, in various ways. The X-Men... it was bigger than anything they've done before."

"I've been going over it in my head," Nathan muttered, flinching at what he sensed from her. "Over and over... how it should have happened. It would have worked, you know. Without the Masada trigger."

Madelyn cursed herself at the flinch, and did her best to reinforce her mental shielding as Charles had trained her to do. "It would have," she agreed. "And that trigger... it's the thing that everyone keeps coming back to, that we never considered the possibility. Here and in DC - they're working on finding out how it was done, so hopefully they can help the second gens. Elliot's been involved in that, actually."

"I bet it was Kritzer." Nathan focused on Madelyn again, tried vainly to smile at the doubtful look he was getting. "Before she left Mistra, I mean... something she came up with. She was a genius, you know."

"A warped and twisted one," Madelyn almost growled. It had been hard, seeing those second gens who had physically been fine but who had been reduced to a vegetative state by the Masada trigger. "I don't suppose there's any chance of asking her about it?"

"I think they killed her," Nathan murmured. "Should ask MacInnis... he had her mindwiped and sent back to them. After August. I think Elliot probably did it..." Something the kid had said to him in Galicia had made him think that.

"Well, she's certainly not on the list of surviving personnel, so it's likely. I'll check with both of them." Another thing for the mental "To Do" list, although that list wasn't as long as it usually was. She missed medlab. "Oh, you'll like this part. They've placed another five kids with relatives. The Bureau's cult experts are doing the follow-up - they're experienced with deprogramming and the like, so they're used to this sort of situation. From all accounts the kids are doing well, 'though." That made thirty-odd who had been placed with families, either their own or foster families. Alison would be glad to hear that.

He stared up at the stills of the children. "I wish..." He trailed off. "Normal lives," he murmured. "Or as normal as they can get after something like this... the government's going to make sure they'll keep getting the help they need, right?"

Madelyn nodded immediately. "They will. Like I said, the Bureau's done this sort of thing before, although not on this sort of scale. They've got a whole bunch of people dealing with it." Again she squeezed his hand. "They'll have every chance at something resembling a normal life." A thought occurred to her, and she tilted her head at him inquiringly. "How's your telepathy, Nathan? I spoke to a couple of the kids today - you could always have a look at my memories, if you like." It was an unusual gesture for her - normally Madelyn tended to a void telepathic contact as much as possible, being a private sort of person.

Nathan looked up at her. "You're sure... you wouldn't have said it if you weren't sure," he corrected himself restlessly, his hand tightening on hers almost involuntarily. "You could... just think about them. I'll see the memories at the top of your mind."

"I'm sure." She said it any way, wanting him to know beyond doubt. And she did want to do this. If he could see... Closing her eyes even though she didn't need to, she let the memory come to the front. Two of the kids, the older ones. Samantha, who was fourteen with a feral mutation much like Anika's. Cody who was thirteen, an electrokinetic. They'd been a little subdued about talking to yet another stranger, but when they'd found out she'd been there, the words had come pouring out. Thanks, mostly.

Nathan turned the memories over in his mind, examining every detail of them with a strange, bittersweet longing. "It should be enough," he murmured. "More than enough... why can't it be?" He released the light link with her as gently as he could - his control was still a little uncertain - and stared up at her uncertainly. "I try and remember what it felt like... it was like their minds were black and white, and when the Trojan Horse hit them all the color came back."

"There's no 'should' in all this, Nathan," she said quietly, shaking her head a little at the faint tingle she always felt in her scalp after telepathic contact. Like a mild static shock. "You feel what you feel, and anyone who tells you any differently should get their head out of their ass. I thought you'd like to see it, that was all. A reminder that some good came of this, not an implication that you have no right to grieve for what it cost."

Nathan closed his eyes to - hopefully - hide the flash of misery. Making a mess of this. As usual. "It's not... anyone else's standards I'm afraid of not meeting. I know you didn't... I know." He opened his eyes again, making himself meet hers. "It's so... me, though. See the cost, not what was gained. But costs are heavy, and they drag you down... victories are too light." It struck him as soon as the words were out of his mouth, how strange they sounded. But he thought they made a certain amount of sense.

Madelyn hesitated, then spoke. "One of the things I got from MacInnis, months ago, was a copy of the conditioning protocols for the first gens. What they intended, how they achieved it. The pack structure, the extra training command types received, all of it. They taught..." Her voice failed for a moment, not sure if this was a good thing to tell him or not. "They taught you to see that way, Nathan. To focus on minimising the cost, and not look at the outcome except in flat terms of success and failure. As a way to ensure you didn't develop a conscience about what they had you doing, give you an obligation to bring your people home." Her mouth twisted a little in memory at some of the cold, assessing words used to determine a life's value. "Apparently it was more cost-effective that way - conditioning first gens was expensive."

Nathan closed his eyes again, clenching his jaw as it tried to tremble. It didn't surprise him. One more example of how it was all still with him, conditioning or no conditioning. "I'm never really going to be free of it, am I?" he asked dully. "Not really. Always going to be... assessing myself. Wondering. What's behind the decision, what's driving me..." It was a profoundly depressing thought.

"I'm sorry, Nathan." Madelyn's heart ached, and she was wondering if she'd done the right thing in telling him. "Even the stuff that's not actual conditioning, but just patterns of behaviour that you learned... it's going to take time to learn new ways of thinking. But if you know what to look for, then at least you can start to change, pick up those habits." She frowned a little. "Would it help, having those protocols? Or maybe I could give them to Jack...? I only held onto them because you really didn't seem to be ready for it, not on top of everything else."

"To Jack? He'll know... what's useful to tell me. How to approach it all." He managed a pained little smile. "Knows my head inside out by now. Lucky him." Letting his gaze move back to the ceiling for a moment, he focused on the picture of Muir in the sunlight. Tried to summon up the same feeling of peace he felt whenever he was there. "I like my ceiling," he said after a moment, knowing he was changing the subject but figuring she'd probably let him. "All kinds of patterns in it."

Madelyn nodded, letting the change go by and resolving to pass on the files to Jack at the earliest opportunity. Moira would have his email address. "It's definitely a study in human nature," she said with a small, ironic grin. "What people chose is pretty telling, actually."

"It gets me out of my head," Nathan murmured hoarsely. "Every time I open my eyes, I see something new... makes me think about something other than Youra."

"Which, I suspect, is part of the reason why Jack plotted it," Madelyn said with a small smile. Her eye caught the modelling shot Betsy had sent the link to, and the smile broadened. "I'm still surprised they managed to get all this stuff up there, myself."

"Sneaky little witches and their sleep spells..." He trailed off. "I've slept a little better since, though," he admitted. "The dreams aren't as bad, and I'm not having trouble telling them apart from what's real... or maybe that's just less morphine." Which he was really kind of regretting, at times; the pain was still pretty steady, and not being able to move only seemed to make it worse.

"A little from column A and a little from column B, I suspect," Madelyn replied. "Having something else to focus on has to help - I know I'd be climbing the walls myself. Hell, I've been downright cranky even with just the arm."

"Oh, I'd be climbing the walls if I could..." It was almost a joke. He seemed to be getting better at those. "Think Moira would give me the head injury I inexplicably missed this time out if I tried, though."

"She wouldn't be the only one," said Madelyn with a warning wag of her finger. "Just because I understand the frustration doesn't mean I condone the attempt." She shifted, and sighed a little as her shoulder grumbled. "And talking of pain killers, I should go and have a hot bath so I can avoid taking any myself. I'll come by again in the morning, do my bit for the great cause of distraction, hmm?"

"Hold you to that," Nathan murmured, his forehead creasing as he closed his eyes. "Okay. I am a wimp and yes, something for the pain would be good?"

"Sure, hon." Madelyn patted his hand, and climbed to her feet to adjust the drip. "There. I'll see you tomorrow. And no escape attempts, or you'll set off Hank's pants-stealing obsession again.."