If he had come out here on his own he might have been able to see things with a more objective eye, in the same way he approached the jobs he used to take back home. He's come across bodies plenty of times, he's left death and destruction in his wake just trying to claw through to something he thought he'd earned and deserved more than the competition, and it's the kind of stuff he's learned to brush off because if he didn't, it would leave him catatonic.
The travelers on Marco Polo's ships who had eaten the resin from Shambhala, who tore each other apart - the citizens of Iram who drank from a poisoned well and hallucinated themselves into their own self-inflicted genocide - the Spaniards, the natives in El Dorado who underwent experiments at Nazi hands, twisted into something else, something horrifying and wrong. He saw the footage then, the aftermath, and was afforded distance by virtue of denial. He didn't think about it unless he had to.
Here, it's everywhere. It isn't just present in the fetid, decaying body of an old host or the slick fluids on the floor, the stench of death - it's in his teammates' faces, staring at him, looking for answers he doesn't have.
Grief and fear and old traumas coming up for air and had he known what this place would show them, Nate never would have invited anyone, would have come out here by himself to wrestle with those demons later.
He slips into a side room to escape, because confronting it means confronting himself and he isn't fucking ready for that, but even here he has company and Nate recognizes the tousled dark hair of the pilot, shoulders shaking with every labored breath. Self-preservation seizes and he wants to back out, but he brought these people here. He didn't force them, but he led them.
Nate steps through broken glass to close the distance and rests a hand on the back of Poe's neck. His voice is tight, a fist clenched around emotion.]
no subject
If he had come out here on his own he might have been able to see things with a more objective eye, in the same way he approached the jobs he used to take back home. He's come across bodies plenty of times, he's left death and destruction in his wake just trying to claw through to something he thought he'd earned and deserved more than the competition, and it's the kind of stuff he's learned to brush off because if he didn't, it would leave him catatonic.
The travelers on Marco Polo's ships who had eaten the resin from Shambhala, who tore each other apart - the citizens of Iram who drank from a poisoned well and hallucinated themselves into their own self-inflicted genocide - the Spaniards, the natives in El Dorado who underwent experiments at Nazi hands, twisted into something else, something horrifying and wrong. He saw the footage then, the aftermath, and was afforded distance by virtue of denial. He didn't think about it unless he had to.
Here, it's everywhere. It isn't just present in the fetid, decaying body of an old host or the slick fluids on the floor, the stench of death - it's in his teammates' faces, staring at him, looking for answers he doesn't have.
Grief and fear and old traumas coming up for air and had he known what this place would show them, Nate never would have invited anyone, would have come out here by himself to wrestle with those demons later.
He slips into a side room to escape, because confronting it means confronting himself and he isn't fucking ready for that, but even here he has company and Nate recognizes the tousled dark hair of the pilot, shoulders shaking with every labored breath. Self-preservation seizes and he wants to back out, but he brought these people here. He didn't force them, but he led them.
Nate steps through broken glass to close the distance and rests a hand on the back of Poe's neck. His voice is tight, a fist clenched around emotion.]
I know.