xp_logs | Nathan (and Nathan, again), Monday late afternoon

After reading his goodbye email from Amanda and making his post about not wanting any visitors, Nathan gets one anyway. Sort of. His subconscious, as before, is a bit of a bastard - but a bastard with some interesting points.

Nathan kept his eyes closed. He didn't want to see the ceiling, didn't want to think about any of the kids right now, let alone Amanda. Nor did he want to open his eyes and acknowledge that yes, he was sitting beside his own bed again being snarky. Because there really was no excuse for it anymore. The anaesthetic from Friday had long since worn off, even if it had left him feeling sick to his stomach and headachey for most of the time since. He hadn't had any pain medication in a few hours, long enough that he was starting to feel the lack of it again, and so he couldn't blame it on the morphine.

"Stop wallowing." He sounded exasperated, Nathan thought. "Did you really expect that situation to turn out at all positively?"

Maybe he had. Maybe he'd hoped. Slowly, reluctantly, Nathan opened his eyes, blinking at the blurred shape that he knew couldn't possibly be real. Hallucinating. After everything he'd been through, now he was hallucinating. That was really kind of funny.

The other him raised an eyebrow. "What were you expecting her to do?" he asked. "You know her, Nate. You know her well enough to have predicted..."

"Shut up." Nathan's voice was hoarse, and he focused on the other him instead of the ceiling, glaring at the spectre in his peripheral vision. "Not listening to this. Go away."

"If you really meant that, Nate, I wouldn't be here in the first place," was his other self's casual assessment. "Let's apply a little logic here."

"Sick of logic. Fuck off."

The other Nathan laughed, low and genuinely amused. "Now, you almost sounded like you meant that."

"Did."

"No, you didn't. You're too in love with logic to be tired of it. That, and it's a matter of self-preservation. If the only reaction you had available to you in the midst of everything you've faced over the last year had been the emotional reaction, you'd never have made it this far."

His subconscious was a mouthy bastard. "Made it," Nathan muttered defiantly. "Don't need to be lectured..."

"No you haven't, not quite. And yes, you do, or again, I wouldn't be here." The other Nathan leaned towards the bed, grinning disturbingly. "Better not tell Jack, though. He'll break out the anti-psychotics."

"Go. Away."

"When I'm done." The other Nathan leaned back again, slouching in his chair. "So how long are you going to wallow? You'll be out of the cage eventually. Sooner than you probably think. Then comes the really hard part."

He knew damned well that he couldn't be left to mull this over in his head indefinitely. Amanda and Pete and Manuel and the Hellfire Club, it was all a mess that he was going to have to deal with at some point. For how it touched the school, as well as how it touched him...

"But not right now?"

"Not right now," Nathan grated in reply.

There was a flicker of something... pleased? on the other Nathan's face. "Right answer."

"Fuck you."

"Even better." The other Nathan tilted his head. "Getting in touch with our resentment, are we? That's not a bad thing, you know. Just because you like to pretend it's not there sometimes doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

So, what... his subconscious was badgering him to cut loose with some of the uglier, more self-centered thoughts that any decent person was supposed to keep safely under lock and key? To hell with that. He might be alone, but he wasn't going to indulge.

"One step forward, two steps back," was the caustic reply. "How the hell did you ever survive Dom with this thin a skin?"

Anger flooded up, sudden and almost overwhelming, and Nathan's hands clenched into fists. "Shut up and... vanish or something!" he snarled under his breath, his voice shaking. There were things he would take and things he wouldn't, and being essentially called a wimp? Most definitely on the latter list. "Amanda's not Domino."

"No. But what did you learn from Dom, Nate?"

He really wished that the figment of his imagination would stop calling him by the nickname. He had the more bizarre impression that he was doing it just to be annoying.

"Dom was never..." he started, and then stopped, awkwardly. Really not sure what had just been about to come out of his mouth.

"Never what?" the other him prodded.

"Never..." Nathan trailed off again, uncertainly. "Dom was different. Needed different things."

"Which makes perfect sense, because Dom is not Amanda, and Amanda is not Dom," the other Nathan said, cheerfully if somewhat inanely. "And she needed... needs both more and less from you."

"Dom?"

"Or Amanda. It works both ways. And there's the third side of the triangle, of course."

"The what?"

"The third side of the triangle. What you need from yourself... or from me. However you want to look at it."

Now he was getting confused. Nathan sighed raggedly and closed his eyes again. "Can I think about this later?" he asked a bit disjointedly. "My head hurts."

"If you're actually going to go to sleep? Yes, we can definitely pick this up later," was the surprising reply. "You might not need me if your head's a little clearer."

Oh, that was so not reassuring. "Fine," Nathan muttered, trying to relax.

"Flights of angels and all that. Good night, Nate."