The X-Project

Cain, on watchdog duty, has the obligatory chat with his friend about idiotic lone wolf stunts and why Nathan Won't Be Doing That Again Anytime Soon (Or Else). He also reminisces happily about his encounter with Shaw and taunts Nathan with his coffee, just a little.


From an objective standpoint, Nathan was glad that Moira was back at the mansion. Plenty that she needed to be doing back at the medlab for Haroun, and Rachel would be much happier with her mother back in the same house for most of the day. One of us needs to be doing what needs to be done. The thought brought with it a surge of dull frustration, and Nathan concentrated on keeping his breathing shallow so that he didn't start coughing again. The coughing spasms were making the staff here twitchy... twitchier, and he wanted to be released as soon as possible, after all.

Familiar footsteps in the hall outside, and Cain reappeared with a cup of coffee that Nathan blinked at a bit longingly. "You're going to sit there and drink that," he rasped. "Aren't you? Cruel and unusual punishment."

"If y'ain't been paying attention," Cain replied between sips of coffee, "Wasn't a week ago I had to gargle with military-grade decontaminant solvent, and I'm only now just getting to taste things that don't remind me of sucking on a car battery. So you'll forgive me if I enjoy this wonderful cup of hot coffee." He set the styrofoam cup down on a table, calculated to be just out of Nathan's reach. "Besides, last thing you need is to be spilling hot coffee all over yourself, and getting Moira all flustered when she's got enough to do what with Haroun all torn up and your daughter plotting all sorts of evil behind everyone's back. Not mine, though, I got my eye on her."

Nathan smiled, briefly and almost involuntarily. "You just think you do. Part of the grand plan." One of the nurses passing by in the hall outside paused at the door, eyeing him, and Nathan stared right back at her, willing her to walk right on. He was so not in the mood to be poked and prodded at the moment. She gave him a faint smile and then turned away, disappearing down the hall. "You know," he said to Cain, "you probably don't really need to be sitting here. If I haven't had any unwelcome visitors at this point, imagine they're not coming..."

"For one, you're in a hospital bed and that means you don't get to make the tactical decisions. And two..." Cain let out a loud sigh. "I'm grounded, so I'm on lay-low duty until some of this backlash washes over. I mean, geez, you throw ONE Fortune 500 executive out a skyscraper window..."

"So wish I'd seen that." Admittedly, it would have been more fun to watch if Shaw had actually gone splat, but still, the entertainment value would have been high. And it had been a successful tactic from what Cain had told him, which was the important thing. The frustration hit again, and Nathan looked away, staring for a long moment out the window. He was in a private room, of course - small mercies, and a questionable one, given that walls didn't block out the telepathic noise. "Suppose it's a good thing I wound up here. Things are too busy back home... they didn't need one more patient." No, he'd just run Moira ragged by ensuring she felt pulled in two directions.

"Well, between the kid that's all beat up and barely breathing, and Haroun ripped limb from limb, I'd say you're the least of the problem cases here. At least the civilian hospital can fix you, instead of needing to be zipped off to some hell dimension or whatnot," Cain said quietly, reminding Nathan of the last time they'd found themselves in the care of the public medical system with Alison.

"Yeah. Got off light, I guess..." It was irking him, trying to figure out why. Trying to read Pete's mind in the non-telepathic sense of the word, he supposed. "Keep wondering if the only reason he didn't finish me off is that he didn't want certain people coming after him." Nathan stopped, realizing he'd said that aloud, and he looked back at Cain with a faint, twisted smile. "Hey... the other reason you're here is probably to explain away anything I might blurt out to a nurse before the damned virus settles and my fever goes down, you know."

"No, I'm supposed to kill you if that happens," Cain said, deadpan look on his face. "Cyclops' orders."

"Uh-huh." It got another, slightly less bitter smile out of him, though. "Guess that's why Charles pays him the big bucks. Makes the tough calls and all." Nathan reached out for the cup of water sitting on the table-thing, wincing as the burns on that arm protested. "He and Moira came up with a cover story, I gather," he went on once he'd taken a sip, his voice a bit stronger. "I'll have to be careful when I get back, about what I say." Keep it simple. All good lies were simple.

Cain nodded. "They told me you were going after your wacko uncle, found out he's been dealing with Pete. I had Remy run through some of the stuff we pulled from Shaw - no sign that anyone in your family's been working directly with him, or they've hid their tracks well. All this spy shit," he threw up his arms in frustration. "Whatever happened to the days when the good guys wore white hats, the bad guys wore black, and it was easy to figure out who to shoot at?"

"I don't think I remember those days." Nathan set the cup back down, staring at it. "He's... Pete, I mean... he's involved somehow with those camps in Africa. The ones the Pack and Ani's team are looking for." He took a too-deep breath, his jaw clenching at the pain in his side, but managed not to start coughing. "Business," he rasped more quietly. "Said it was business. Mutant kids being... and it's just business, to him. Why we fought. Wasn't going to let him walk out without..." Nathan trailed off, blinking. "So much for that idea."

"I kept telling anyone, folks that drive on the left ain't to be trusted," Cain quipped, leaning heavily on his knees, surveying the burns that were mostly bandaged on his friend's arms and torso. "I already had to read Remy the riot act on trying to go solo on him and take him out - didn't think you'd be dumb enough to try it. Maybe when you get to be my age - IF you live that long - you'll know better."

"I couldn't." It came out, bizarrely, sounding almost like a plea. "Not when Dom and GW and the others are right there... I told him, I would have turned around and walked away if it had just been information we might have been able to use somewhere, sometime..." Nathan looked back at the window. "Didn't know it was him. Not until I got there. I wouldn't have been that dumb. I knew I was walking into something-" Gideon's involvement had meant it was a set-up of some sort. "-but I thought I could handle it."

Growling, Cain reached out to slap Nate lightly on his chest, over one of the burns. Showing no remorse for the wince of pain, he leaned over his friend. "You thought wrong, dumbass. And you're lucky Wisdom didn't fry you into charcoal and make Moira into a widow. Christ, how many times do I gotta say it, Nate? You ain't a fuckin' lone wolf anymore. Quit actin' like one."

Nathan managed a glare, despite the fact that his eyes were watering. There wasn't a whole lot he could say in response to that. "Clearly... still having occasional backsliding issues. And I know I'm lucky. Pete didn't want any more complications, I guess." Nathan shifted on the bed, his jaw clenching. "Wonder what Gideon got out of it, and whether he's still doing business with the Inner Circle after setting up their White King..." Nathan stopped, blinking. "He wouldn't have torpedoed that relationship just to see what I did in that situation," he said, more uncertainly.

"These guys seem like they'll go to any end to screw you up, Nate," Cain said slowly. "I was reading the file - your uncle's my age, looks like he's barely older than you, and he's batshit insane if you ask me. Sane man can't figure out the game he's playing. I tell you, next time I see him - he can't use his mutant mojo on me. I'm taking the bastard down." Cain seethed internally, still not quite over letting Gideon escape in Chad.

"He's playing chess for the future. Maybe the Inner Circle's just another piece," Nathan said, and then blinked at the way Cain was looking at him. "What?" he asked with a sigh. "Hundred and four degree fever this morning, remember? Not that I really need the excuse to sound loopy, do I?"

"No, you really don't," Cain laughed, slapping his knee. "And I ain't one for chess, but I play a mean game of poker. When you get back on your feet - again - you ought to come on down by the boathouse when Remy and Jake get going."

"Just might take you up on that. Not really looking forward to the kids seeing me shuffling around looking like I got hit by a truck. Again. Beating your asses at poker would take my mind off that nicely, I think." Nathan tried to relax a little. The head of the bed was elevated almost to a forty-five degree angle - made it much easier to breathe. "Still mulling over the irony," he said tiredly, "of using my telepathy offensively for the first time against someone who used to be on the very short list of people I trusted. And all I can think is that I wish I'd been able to hit the bastard harder. As it is, he'll probably have a migraine for the next month."

"Then you probably had all this coming to you," Cain said matter-of-factly. "I know it's what you do and all, but poking around in someone's head, doing that kind of stuff - I ain't never going to be comfortable with crossing that line. You got a million other ways you can deal with a problem, and it just chaps my ass to have to admit you and the others bein' able to just go into someone's head like that to solve a problem... don't seem right. But if you got to do it to take the bastard down, well, now you know not to go half-assed on it next time."

"He was in the process of psionically electrocuting me, Cain," Nathan said a bit crankily. "TK was out, and I could hardly stand up... I couldn't have managed a second blast if I'd tried. Not sure how I managed the first. Charles sure as hell hasn't been teaching me that sort of thing." He sighed and reached out for his water again. "He had a few new tricks of his own. Or maybe old ones. Nothing I'd ever seen him do before."

Cain pushed the water close enough for Nathan to grab it firmly. "That's where you remember you've got almost a good sixty pounds on the smelly British twerp and break him in two," he scolded. "You start relying too much on your brain, you're gonna forget how to use the other stuff. You know how Scott and Alison are always on me to use my head instead of my fists? Maybe they oughta get on you to do the opposite."

"But--" Nathan stopped, took a sip of water, and then went on. "Mixed bloody signals," he muttered. "All around, here... well, if nothing else, things are clearer." He sighed, took another sip of water, and continued. "I was really hoping he'd just lost it, you know. With what happened to his father. I know what it's like to stop caring and do stupid things out of grief, but you can come out the other side of that. I did. Mostly because I had Moira and GW, and they weren't going to write me off no matter what I did. But this is..." Nathan grimaced. "Crossing the line," he said more quietly, remembering what he'd said to Pete. "You were there in Chad, Cain, you saw that camp and those kids before we dropped them off with Charles' contact in Niger."

"I saw it," the big man responded, "and I've seen worse. Don't make it any less horrible, or the people responsible any less evil. And part of why we put on the uniform is to deal with folks like those - family or not, Nate. This bullshit of going off on your own... I'd be surprised if Ro and Summers and Alison aren't fighting over who gets to yell at you when you come home for being an idiot about it. You want to get info, ask the fucking intel team for some assistance, it's what they do. Yeah," he said, poking the pillow beside Nathan's head for emphasis. "It's your family. And yeah, they're evil bastards. Suck it up, life's hard, wear a helmet. And we'll bring them down. Not you, we."

"I took a chance," Nathan said, "and if it hadn't been Pete, I would probably have walked out of there with information GW and the others could use to shut down those camps. Pete as much as confessed that Gideon told the truth about what was in the files. Okay," he went on tiredly, "so I didn't walk out of there with the information, and in retrospect it was a pretty dumb thing to do all around. I clearly need to hang up the phone the next time I pick it up and it's Gideon or my father, because obviously I can't be trusted to think clearly when it's them, let alone when they're hitting me in a sore spot. I just..." He shifted awkwardly on the bed again. "Not clear-headed," he said a bit bleakly. "I'm not clear-headed on any of the things that landed me in a fucking hospital bed, yet again, and I don't know how to be. Not when it comes to homicidal uncles and mutant kids being trained as soldiers and one of my friends turning into something I don't recognize. I have to think more, damn it," he concluded in quiet frustration.

"Hey," Cain's voice was quiet and hushed. "Your head's all messed up, but if I ain't said it enough, I'll spell it out clear - you're part of a team now. You were with Mistra, you were with the Pack, and now you are with us. Just remember that, okay? Because you go out again like this, you're gonna make that evil redhead daughter of yours into an orphan, because if I find out about it, I'm gonna kill you."

"Okay. Deal." Not much to say to that, either. And it was surprisingly reassuring, even with the implicit threat. Funny how that worked. Nathan swallowed and closed his eyes, only to discover that they rather liked being closed, apparently. "If I wake up to a damned soap opera again," he muttered, realizing that he was indeed crashing, again, "never going to let you hear the end of it. You realize that..."

"Hnh," Cain snorted, leaning back in his chair as he watched Nathan's chest begin rising and falling in that peculiar rhythm of medicated sleep. Pulling a weathered paperback out of his pocket, he kicked his feet up on the end of the bed and began reading, his only comment being "I hate watchdog duty."