Sagarmatha
by Alicia McKenzie
DISCLAIMER: The characters belong to Marvel, and are used without permission for entertainment purposes only.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Set sometime during the six-month gap. Rated PG-13 for some language and a truly staggering amount of self-flagellation. ;)
He was alone on the mountain.
No, that wasn't quite right; he was alone for the moment, and that would have to be enough. An illusion, but a satisfying one. All he had, he thought, almost feverishly. Everest was a crowded place these days; there were countless other climbers in various stages of the ascent, all wanting to join the club and stand on the roof of the world.
He only wished he could truly be alone. Listening to the sound of his own ragged, labored breathing, Nathan Summers continued grimly upwards, his crampons biting deeply into the snow as he left the barren windswept plateau of the South Col behind. His head was throbbing steadily, as if someone were pounding pitons into his temples, but determination, the likes of which he hadn't felt for months, drove him onwards. Just as it had driven him out of his tent an hour ago, despite the pain.
He'd had to go when he did. There were ten climbers huddled in their tents on the South Col, at Camp Four. They wouldn't be making their summit attempt for a few hours yet, although they wouldn't spend too much precious time resting. At twenty-six thousand feet, it was a race to reach the summit and get back down before the altitude killed you. No one wanted to linger in the death zone.
But that wasn't why he'd started for the summit early. No, it was much simpler than that. More logical. The truth was, he'd come a very long way for this, and he didn't feel like sharing.
The climbers at Camp Four had no idea he'd been there, although for some time yesterday he'd climbed right alongside them. Right from the time he'd walked into Base Camp, three weeks and thousands of vertical feet ago, he'd masked himself telepathically. It had worked like a charm. No one had seen him. No one had asked him questions about why he was here alone, climbing without oxygen, with a bare minimum of equipment--
All he wanted was to climb. Nathan paused for a second, taking as deep a breath as he could, hoping to avoid another coughing spasm. They'd gotten steadily worse overnight, but he'd kept going. Had to keep going.
Everest was--real, somehow, in a way that nothing had been for months, and coming here had actually managed to crack the depression that had been choking him since Akkaba. It was still there, lurking in the shadows. But he was headed upwards.
And the sunrise--it would all be worth it, he told himself, fighting past the lightheadedness. Just for the sunrise.
***
The sight of Base Camp this year had shocked him. Wasn't what he'd expected, to put it mildly. It was larger by far than any base camp he'd seen, and he'd seen a lot of them over the years. Climbing had been a hobby of his for a very long time, even predating his arrival in this century.
Of course, he'd wound up taking it too far, just like so many other elements of his life in the here and now. The regular rock-climbing was one thing; it helped him keep fit, and let him get away from his chaotic excuse for a life. A nice little hobby. Everyone needed a hobby, even would-be saviours of the future.
The mountains had always been another matter entirely. In the context of who he was and why he was here, risking his life to climb a mountain, for nothing more tangible than personal satisfaction, was--had been idiotic. Blaquesmith certainly felt that way, and his mentor did have a point. Mutant physiology and enhanced strength counted for a lot when you were hanging off the side of a rock face, but the effects of high altitude were unpredictable. The T-O virus in his blood could only complicate things, and had, more than once. He'd made it up Annapurna and Cho Oyu with no significant trouble, but he'd nearly gotten himself killed on K2. Blaquesmith had been--incensed, to put it mildly.
And Nathan himself had been wary, after that. He hadn't tried another high peak until--
Until Everest, when the Phalanx Citadel had been perched atop the summit.
Nathan didn't consider that a real climb. The mission, the battle with the Phalanx, that had been the important part. The mountain itself had been incidental, an obstacle, and that had always bothered him afterwards. He'd undoubtedly been infected by the curious ethics of his fellow climbers, but it just hadn't seemed like the proper way to treat the highest mountain on Earth, the 'Mother of the Universe', if one used its Nepali name, Sagarmatha.
That was part of why he'd come back.
But Base Camp--the size of it--"Shit," he'd muttered, estimating at least three hundred tents huddled together in the natural amphitheatre of rock. It had been a spectacular sight to see the glaciers, immense as the tents were fragile, hugging the escarpment above, serving as a compelling reminder that the mountain ruled here and its supplicants were liable to be swept away by avalanche or storm at its will.
The view hadn't been his first concern, at that moment. The press of his fellow climbers' thoughts, the babble of stressed and intent minds, had nearly overwhelmed him. He'd felt daunted, overwhelmed by the massive pyramid of rock and snow rising into the sky before him, afraid of what it meant if he tried and failed.
He was all too aware of his own mental and physical state. By all rights, he shouldn't have even made the trek to Base Camp. He had no business climbing this mountain.
Which was why he had to try.
***
The sun was barely up, and already the light reflecting off the snow was incredible. Letting his pack drop to the snowy ground of the Balcony, Nathan doubled over, coughing violently. *Oath, Logan would be laughing his ass off if he could see me now--* The four of them had climbed the North Face, with little equipment and no time to acclimatize, and he hadn't been nearly as affected by the altitude. None of them had. He remembered thinking how strange that was, writing it off to the Phalanx citadel affecting the environment, the oxygen levels in the air, something like that--
Closing his eyes, Nathan shook his head almost violently, concentrating on breathing until he stopped seeing spots. Moving slowly, irritated by how clumsy he seemed to be, he struggled back into his pack. Blaquesmith had been right. After being in that damned T-O cocoon for weeks, he'd lost muscle tone. More than that, he was beginning to suspect. He was out of condition, badly, even if the fucking thing had de-aged him--
Nathan shuddered. He didn't think he was ever going to get over the shock of looking in the mirror and seeing the change in himself. Fifteen years - at least - gone in a flash. It was obscene that he should have been given those years back, when--
Gritting his teeth, he moved on. Ski poles. He'd forgotten his ski poles. Oath. The extra support would have been helpful, at this point. Unbidden, the thought that he had another option for support came to mind, but he pushed it away savagely. No telekinesis. That wasn't an option when he was climbing. He'd broken that particular personal law of his only once, and only because G.W. had been trying to fly off Mount McKinley instead of descending in the preferred method--
One foot, then the other. Place your steps carefully. Axe in the uphill hand.
Oath, a little telekinesis would have gone a long way, though. Exhaustion was setting in at a speed he hadn't experienced before - the altitude was bothering him enough that he'd hardly slept or eaten since he'd left Camp Three - and the wind was picking up, howling over the rocks like it wanted to snatch up the mountain and fling it at him.
The snow was a problem. There'd been heavy snowfall this year, and the wind was stirring up the surface layer with increasing strength. Nathan stopped, taking off the sunglasses he'd been wearing and fumbling for the goggles in the pocket of his coat. Only when he had them on securely did he open his eyes. Like his hearing, his eyesight was far better than most people knew; the T-O virus had augmented both. But it also made his eyes too sensitive, at times. People though he wore sunglasses just to hide the way his eyes looked, but if that were the case, he'd have masked the scars and so forth the same way he sometimes blurred the T-O virus, and left it at that.
The blinding snow-light cut to a manageable level, he turned his attention to the rock face before him. Higher up, the blowing snow was obscuring the edge of the ridge leading up to the South Summit, and Nathan grimaced, the pulsing of his headache increasing in tempo as he thought about how easy it would be to slip off one of those cornices and off into infinity.
Taking advantage of the fixed ropes left by other expeditions, he hooked himself on and started to ascend. It took too long; the muscles in his arms and legs felt weak and rubbery, and he'd been trying so hard to keep his breathing shallow that he collapsed at the top, gasping in huge lungfuls of oxygen-poor air.
*Oath--* But he wasn't turning around. He wasn't. Pushing himself up to his hands and knees, he nearly groaned as he looked across at the ridge. The snow--oath, it looked so deep up here--
Hauling himself back to his feet, Nathan slid out his axe and started forward carefully. If he took it slowly, he could--
Snow slid beneath his feet, and he fell, catching himself with the axe before he could fall off the ridge. *Stupid idea,* he thought, rattled, as he tried to catch his breath. Was his judgement going? He hadn't--
Rope. Shit, he wasn't roped. He laid there for a long moment, eyes squeezed tightly shut as he tried to concentrate. If he'd had breath enough to swear aloud, he would have. He'd packed a set of snow stakes, for the Bright Lady's sake. It wasn't as if he didn't have the right equipment--
Focus. He had to focus, Nathan thought, pulling himself back upright and fumbling to set the stake properly. Careful. Had to be careful. He couldn't risk a fall here.
Once had been enough.
***
It had been thousands of feet below, on his first ascent to Camp One. He'd managed the Khumbu Icefall, the first and most difficult obstacle of this particular route up Everest, without too much difficulty - he'd done enough ice climbing that he was familiar with the proper techniques, and the danger from the leaning ice towers, or seracs, hadn't distressed him overmuch - only to run into problems in the relatively easy stretch of the Western Cwm. The glacier was prone to fracture as it moved across the uneven floor of the valley, and the resulting crevasses added a certain element of difficulty.
Again, his problems there had been the fault of the snowfall. There'd been so much this season that the aluminum ladders which served as routes across the worst of the crevasses had been covered in it, sheathed in so much snow that they almost looked like natural snow bridges, rather than something man-made.
Halfway across a relatively narrow crevasse, he heard a crack--a very ominous crack. He hesitated, his pulse suddenly racing. Muttering a soft curse, he started forward again very carefully, willing it to stay stable, just until he could reach--
An enormous chunk of the opposite wall of the crevasse split away from the side of the glacier and fell, taking the ladder, the anchor for the opposite end of the rope, and him along with it. Nathan grabbed frantically for the rope, but lost it in the snow as he fell. Another sickening crack resounded above him. Then more ice and snow was falling, and there was no pull at all from the rope still attached to his climbing harness.
From above, the crevasse had looked to be about a hundred feet deep. That had been a bit of an underestimation on his part. Fortunately, he had the luck to slam into a serac on his way down. It slowed his descent, which was good, and also ensured he wasn't conscious to feel the impact at the bottom--a nice, if somewhat questionable fringe benefit.
The next thing he remembered was coming to his senses, half-buried in snow and ice and not entirely sure of where he was. Gasping, he struggled up to a sitting position, trying to find the breath to curse at the fiery pain in his shoulder. Dislocated, from the feel of it. But given how far he'd fallen, he thought, appalled as he looked upwards, that wasn't so bad, was it? Everything else seemed to be working--
"Oath," Nathan muttered thickly, wincing as the movement made his head spin. He rubbed the base of his skull with his good hand, feeling the lump starting there. "Lucky I didn't kill myself--"
It took a certain amount of creativity to pop his shoulder back into its socket, and even then that arm didn't seem to want to work properly. By then, the initial few minutes of shock were beginning to give way to anger. If he'd just moved a little faster, he would have been across before the damned thing collapsed, instead of sitting at the bottom of a hundred and fifty feet of ice. Nathan's mood only got fouler as he reflected that he had to have slowed himself unconsciously with his telekinesis after he'd hit the serac. Otherwise a dislocated shoulder would probably have been the least of his problems.
Nathan closed his eyes and muttered several savage curses under his breath, wondering if the part of him that preferred the idea of a broken neck was really as perverse as his logical self was claiming. But knowing that he'd 'cheated' bothered him. The whole point of this had been to do this on his own, relying on his own strength, his own willpower, to get him to the top.
Strength. He supposed that enhanced strength thanks to a fucking techno-organic virus didn't really fall into the category of ascending 'by fair means'. The thought made the anger drain out of him, leaving only emptiness behind.
But it was true. Trying tentatively to rotate his shoulder, Nathan winced again and then took a deep, unsteady breath. This was--all wrong, he thought painfully. Not the way it was supposed to be. This was supposed to mean something, to let him feel like he'd accomplished something--
Thinking deep thoughts was a bad idea, these days. Whenever he tried to concentrate on anything except the here and now, it inevitably led back into that same old mental loop - his failure at Akkaba, Scott's death, his inability to do a fucking thing to make things right - and from there it was only a matter of time until he was lost in that endless gray bleakness again. No matter how hard he tried to forget, even for a day, it could all come back in an instant and swallow him whole--
He'd been staring blankly at the rippled, blueish wall of ice opposite him, and paying no attention to anything overhead. Thus, the chunk of snow that chose that moment to slip off the uneven edge of the crevasse and fall on him came as a complete surprise.
Sputtering, Nathan pushed himself back up - the impact had been enough to knock him flat - and tried futilely to brush it away, not quite understanding how some of it had gotten down the back of his jacket. "Oh, THANK you!" he shouted up at the top of the crevasse, nearly overwhelmed by a sudden surge of irrational rage. "Just what I needed, you stupid fucking--"
Another load of snow slid loose, probably jarred by the echo of his voice, and he swore, diving out of the way as it fell towards him. All he managed to do was trip over a large chunk of ice, fall flat on his face, and jar his injured shoulder so badly that his vision darkened slightly at the stab of pain.
And the snow fell on him anyway. Coughing, he pushed himself up to his hands and knees, realizing that his nose was now bleeding profusely.
Oh, this was just too funny. Hunched over, Nathan tried to stop coughing, but the strange little hiccuping gasps of laughter that kept slipping out weren't doing much to help.
"Are you trying to tell me something?" he rasped, tears that were part laughter, part something else pouring down his face. "I'm getting the definite impression that you are--"
The mountain ignored him loftily.
The rage came back like a tidal wave. "Well, I'm not LISTENING!" he snarled, hauling himself to his feet and yanking his ice axe out of the loop on his pack. With shaking hands, he tore an ice screw off his belt, and disentangled the rope from the debris of snow and ice. "You can drop the whole motherless glacier on me if you want!"
The rope was all right. He checked the carabiner, then attached the end of the rope to the screw and slung it over his shoulder. "The whole glacier," Nathan hissed, planting his axe with one powerful stroke and breaking footholds in the ice with his crampons. "Go ahead! Go RIGHT AHEAD!"
His shoulder was a solid mass of agony by the time he was five feet off the ground. Nathan didn't give a flying rat's ass. He was climbing out of here the hard way, if it killed him--
"Dump me in a--crevasse?" he wheezed, getting high enough to plant the first screw. "Drop half a ton of snow on top of--m-me? I'll--show you, you miserable--chunk of ROCK!"
He yanked on the rope to check the screw. It was set. Good enough. He wasn't going to mess around with perfect technique, not for this. He wanted out of here, and that was it--
"You think--it's going to be that easy to get rid of me?" Breathing was coming harder, now. Not just because he was climbing the ice at a rate that was bordering on the recklessly unsafe, either; the pain in his shoulder was incredible. He must have torn something falling, and the climbing was just making it worse. The pain only made him angrier. "Well F-FUCK you!"
It worked very well for a time. Moving on pure adrenalin, he made his way upwards as swiftly as he could, knowing he was burning precious daylight the longer he was here. But the anger started to fade at about sixty feet up, and took the rest of his energy with it. Stopping to set another ice screw, he couldn't seem to keep his grip. Despite the pain in his shoulder, the fingers of that hand were numb, as if they weren't getting the signals from his brain clearly. He dropped the screw, and swore weakly as he saw it land in the snow below. "To--hell with this," he rasped, and kept going, knowing he was taking a huge risk going unroped. But he had to get out of here, back out into the open air--
Each time he moved his axe, the jolt as it struck the ice seemed to jar him from head to toe, and his head was spinning. *Upwards*, Nathan thought, swallowing hard. *Just keep heading upwards, moron--*
His crampons slipped, gouging the ice, and a hoarse cry escaped him as he lost his footing completely. Dangling there, his techno-organic hand gripping the axe as tightly as he could, he tried desperately to get a piton off his belt. His injured arm was almost useless at this point, but he somehow managed to jerk a piton free. Swinging himself around, already bracing himself - this was going to hurt like hell - he put all his weight into it and slammed the piton into the ice.
The movement was too sudden, too 'dynamic', as the term was. The axe slipped - he hadn't had it planted firmly - and if the loop hadn't been securely around his wrist, he would have dropped it. As it was, once it went, he found himself dangling from the piton, all his weight on his bad arm.
Nathan managed, with great effort, not to make a sound. He bit his lip, hard enough to taste blood, and then kicked himself a foothold. First one. Then the other. Only then did he swing the axe up and plant it again. He let go of the piton, knowing he could never manage the rope with one hand.
One step at a time. And a rhythm crept in there, almost despite itself. He didn't really hear it, though; all he heard was his own breathing. Too fast--he was breathing too fast. Hyperventilating at this point would not be helpful.
It took him over an hour to get to the top. Hauling himself up over the edge, Nathan managed to stagger a few steps away into relative safety before he collapsed. He managed not to land on the bad shoulder, which was all he could ask for, at that point.
"T-Told you," Nathan muttered, exhausted. "Not--giving up that easily." He raised his head, blinking to try and clear his vision as he stared up at the mountain. The plume stretched away from the summit, standing out in sharp contrast to the perfectly clear blue sky. Waving at him, he thought, light-headed.
Taunting him. Just like the rest of the whole fucking world. Laughing at him for being alive--
Nathan hauled himself back to his feet, swaying drunkenly, and started back up the valley, heading for Camp One.
***
He'd dragged himself into Camp One and stayed for nearly three days in his tent, nursing the shoulder and a truly staggering number of bruises. Once he'd felt up to it, he'd started his acclimatization runs up to Camp Two, and begun the whole process of ascent in earnest, making sure he took the time to do it right.
Nathan stopped, leaning against a shale outcropping for balance as he fumbled for his canteen and drank. His motives might be questionable, but at least he'd gone about the climb properly when he'd gotten here.
The decision to come back in the first place had been purely spur of the moment. He'd been--in the neighbourhood. In the midst of wandering aimlessly through Asia, actually. Three months of wandering, and he still wasn't any closer to figuring out what the hell he was doing wandering in the first place.
Nathan gave a weak, cracked laugh that turned into another coughing fit. He just--hadn't been able to figure anything out. Hadn't been able to think straight. Honestly, he couldn't say this was helping, either. *Kill off a few thousand brain cells climbing to twenty-nine thousand feet--yeah, that would solve the problem, for sure--*
It wasn't like this had been an obvious choice. He'd had--options, he guessed. Places to go, people that probably would have preferred him to stay with them rather than take off with no fixed destination in mind--
But no, the options hadn't been real options. That was the problem.
Jean had urged him to stay with her, but he was still angry. He needed time to sort out his feelings about what she'd done at Akkaba. How she'd stopped him from killing Apocalypse--
Sam had asked him if he wanted to come to San Francisco and stay with X-Force. But that part of his life was over--forever, he thought. The kids had moved on.
Dom had moved on, to--wherever Dom had moved on to. He didn't know, and felt no real desire to go after her. It would be--so selfish. He'd been selfish enough in the past. She didn't deserve it, and he didn't deserve whatever comfort he might have gotten from seeing her again.
So here he was. Mount Everest. Next best thing--*don't laugh,* he told himself feverishly. *Breathe. Don't laugh.*
So much snow, up here on the summit ridge. The chances of an avalanche in conditions like this were very high, Nathan knew. He should turn back, he really should.
But he was so close. So close--
He kept going. The headache was like a vise now, slowly tightening around his skull, but somehow it wasn't getting in the way, or slowing him down. All it did was make everything so--perfectly--clear. The air at this height was almost crystalline. He didn't think he'd ever seen a sky quite this color--blue tinged with indigo, almost surreal. White snow, gray rock, purple-blue sky, and each standing in such sharp contrast to each other. Why couldn't life be that simple? His never had. As far back as his memories went, nothing had ever been simple. Oh, life wasn't, as a rule, but there were supposed to be flashes--moments of clarity. When you could see the road in front of you, know where you were going to place your next step.
Was that why he was here? Complicated and dangerous the ascent might be, but in so many ways it was so very simple. Get to the top, get back down. Don't die.
Clarity. Would be nice if he found it here, but the real miracle would be if he could take any of it away from the mountain with him. But that was probably too much to ask--
He moved slowly along the summit ridge, sacrificing speed for caution. Supplemental oxygen might have been a good idea, he admitted to himself painfully. It was getting increasingly difficult to breathe without coughing, and he knew his coordination was going. He was just so tired.
But he hadn't dared rest at Camp Four--not at twenty-six thousand, with no oxygen. Come to think of it, he hadn't had much rest at Camp Three, either. Nathan shuddered. Dreams. He thought he'd get away from the dreams, coming here. Too much to ask, again. And maybe he had no right to ask--to expect that anything could be, should be easy--
***
He'd been lying in his tent at Camp Three, almost too exhausted to move, and mustering what little strength he still had in reserve to drink as much water as he could keep down. Dehydration was always a risk at altitude.
He hadn't had enough to drink on the way up from Camp Two, and he was certainly feeling it now. Sixty-five hundred feet to go, and he was already feeling like he'd been hit by a truck. His shoulder was holding up, but the pain was still there, still constant. It hurt, and he knew it wouldn't heal quickly. Not up here.
Up here, his body was too busy just trying to survive. Nathan took as deep a breath as he could manage without coughing, and laid back against his pack. Not particularly comfortable as an impromptu pillow went, but it was easier to breathe if he wasn't lying flat.
He closed his eyes, listening to the howl of the wind outside. No good planning anything until the weather calmed down a little, he thought dazedly. It had been snowing on the way up from Camp Two. Was snowing still. He'd almost missed the camp entirely, the visibility was so bad. It'd break soon, though, he thought. He hoped.
Oath. Seeing spots, again. Dancing on the insides of his eyelids this time. Oxygen really would have been a good idea--
"I think that goes without saying."
The words were loud - the wind had stopped, somehow - and Nathan twitched, jarred out of the drifting somewhere-else he'd been. "Shut up," he muttered, and burst out coughing, curling up on his side as he fought for air. "Don'--need advice." He forced his watering eyes open--no, not watering, he realized feebly, raising a shaking hand to wipe at them. Bleeding. It happened sometimes. Spontaneous retinal--hemorrhaging, whatever they called it. Annoying. Not really dangerous.
It was wreaking havoc on his vision, though. Nathan blinked, trying to focus on the blurred figure he was sure he saw sitting beside him. "G'way," he said, the words coming out slurred. "'m soloing--don' need help--"
"You look like you do."
"No--" Nathan wheezed, and turned away, rolling onto his other side. So unfair. He was supposed to be running away from his problems. They weren't allowed to chase him. "Y-You're dead. Stop--nagging me."
The familiar figure shook its head, wearing that same half-confused, half-disapproving look that Nathan had seen a thousand times before. "Why can you never ask for help? There are ten other tents, just outside yours. Some of the climbers know you. All of them would help if you told them you were in trouble."
"Not--in trouble."
"Oh?" Leader-voice, now. Nathan wondered to what he owed the privilege. "Let's go over this again. You've had a headache for days. You can't stop coughing. You're bleeding from the eyes. Your pulse is racing, you can't keep food down, and now you're seeing the ghost of your father." Scott leaned closer towards him, his face almost coming into focus. "And you're telling me you don't have a problem, Nate?"
Something embarassingly close to a whimper escaped him. "Not--going back down," he protested weakly.
"You're sick, Nate. You know that. You have to go back down."
He wasn't going back down.
"Nathan, I know you know better than this."
He wasn't going back down. He wasn't--
"You'll die."
He wouldn't. He had to find something before he went down. Didn't matter if it hurt--it was SUPPOSED to hurt--
"That isn't what you want, is it?"
No--
--maybe--
--NO!
Nathan opened his eyes again, and turned his head towards where Scott had been sitting. No one there, of course. "Not--going back down," he whispered hoarsely.
Scott had had a number of good points, though. He wiped at his bleeding eyes, cursing inwardly and wishing he had the breath to do it aloud. A nice string of profanities would have hit the spot right about now.
The wind had died down. Nathan pushed himself up to a sitting position, and undid the zipper of his tent, just a little way. Enough to see out onto the Lhotse Face and gauge the weather.
The snow had stopped. He started to gather his gear, ignoring his clumsiness as he tried to pick things up and return them to his pack. Another warning sign, he knew. But it didn't matter. He wouldn't let it matter.
Sixty-five hundred feet to go.
***
And he'd climbed. Up into the death zone, to Camp Four, and then beyond, until the summit itself was so close, almost within reach. It was all behind him.
Except this. The Hillary Step--one of nature's greatest ironies. Nathan started to haul himself upwards, using the fixed ropes. How many people had lost their nerve here? Forty feet of near-vertical rock and ice, one of the worst parts of the entire ascent, but just steps away from the top was the summit itself. How could anyone turn back at this point? To come so far and fail, right at the end--
He reached up to take his next handhold, but another fit of coughing hit him, and he lost his footing. Five feet into the fall, the rope snapped taut. The shock of his sudden stop only made the coughing worse, but he reached out determinedly, pulling himself back upright and clinging to the rock in front of him until the spasms eased.
*Oath,* he thought disjointedly, recoiling as he saw the gloved hand he'd used to cover his mouth. Red. Frothy. Not good. The coughing had gotten worse, moving up the summit ridge, but this--
HAPE. High altitude pulmonary edema. Wouldn't that be a laugh. He tried to think, but it was hard to concentrate, as if his thoughts were swimming through mud. Common sense told him to head down, right the hell now. HAPE was the worst that could happen, the nastiest manifestation of altitude sickness. It wasn't just a risk. This was a death sentence if he stayed up here, and the only reprieve was a rapid descent--
No. "Fuck you," he rasped weakly at the mountain, clinging to that absolute denial as he kept climbing. *Let's see how well mutant physiology copes,* he thought feebly, dragging himself upwards. No strength left. Just willpower. Good enough. It'd have to be.
This was suicidal. He knew that. But he wasn't going back down. Not until--not until he was done. Turning back wasn't acceptable. It made the nightmares true. Proved that he'd put everything he had into fighting Apocalypse--that he had nothing else. Turning back meant there was no point in going on, that all he was was a shell, a ghost who couldn't even make it to the top of a mountain--
A failure, without the strength left to atone for his mistakes. The ones he could COULD for, at least. The others he'd have to live with, carry with him for the rest of his life--
Tears - he was sure they were tears, this time, and not blood - trickled from beneath his goggles. No. If he went back down this mountain, he might as well throw himself into the nearest crevasse. It would be easier. More merciful than living on but dwindling, turning more and more into a shadow with each passing day until he was nothing but a memory, just like the world he'd left behind. Just like--Slym--
"D-Damn you," he sobbed in a broken whisper. Not to the mountain this time. Pain erupted upwards like a volcano from someplace locked away inside him, blasting away the bleakness, giving him one last surge of strength. "Damn--you, it should've been m-me--ME--damn you for d-dying!"
*Damn you for leaving me again--*
No more rock. There was no more rock above him. Nathan pulled himself up the last few inches and stood, swaying drunkenly, crying freely, as he looked up at the tiny wedge of snow and ice in front of him.
So quiet. No wind. No sound at all. He staggered the last few steps to the summit and crumpled to his knees.
He'd done it.
*Top of the world, Scott,* he thought, light-headed. *Wish you were here--*
The Himalaya stretched out all around him, and there weren't words to describe how beautiful it was. All the mountains--he knew all their names. They reached up into the sky, each a challenge, each a prayer, reaching out from the earth and into heaven--
His eyes blurred, and he doubled over, coughing again. It felt like something had broken in his chest this time. You could crack ribs when you had HAPE, he knew. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. He was here, and--Nathan saw the pinkish flecks on the snow, and raised his hand to wipe his mouth. More blood.
The coughing hit him again, and he fell forward, onto his hands, fighting for air. His shoulder throbbed, his throat was so raw it felt afire, and he wasn't sure his head wasn't about to explode--but he barely registered the pain.
*Can't--catch my breath,* he thought weakly as another coughing spasm following right on the heels of that one, giving him no chance to recover. He could hear the rattle in his chest, feel the heaviness even as he gasped for air between. Drowning. That's how HAPE killed you. Filled up your lungs with fluid and drowned you.
*Should have been safe--brought along oxygen--* he thought as the coughing eased for a moment. Safe. All at once, it seemed like the funniest idea in the world. Safe would have been not coming in the first place--
Safe for Scott would have been not going to Akkaba. What if he hadn't? *What if he hadn't--what if I'd been more careful in San Francisco--what if the others hadn't been captured, or I'd let Logan kill Cal and kept fighting Apocalyse--*
Death. Life. All those choices, all those chances--and he'd made the wrong choices, picked the wrong opportunities.
Failed--in--every--possible--way--
A howl of rage and pain tore itself free of his ravaged throat. It hung in the thin air, the echo dying away after a moment, almost reluctantly. His heart pounding crazily, Nathan fell forward into the snow, his mind reverberating with horror at the sudden, overwhelming urge he'd just had to crawl forward and throw himself over the edge.
No--
Never.
NEVER.
Not like this. Never like this. He pushed himself back up to his hands and knees, blood and tears mingling on his face, freezing in the icy, thin air. "I won't," he heard himself mutter in a voice as thin and stretched as the atmosphere, as broken as the glacier so far below. "Won't--I promise, Scott--I swear--"
Journeys had two parts. What goes up, must come down. NOT in a broken heap several thousand feet below. On his own two feet, or not at all.
Going on, he thought, half-deliriously. Going on until you knew why was important. All that mattered. One foot in front of the other. One day at a time.
Letting go was the coward's way out.
And it all fell together, all the pieces assembling themselves in his head. Nathan raised his head, staring up almost blindly at the perfect sky. "Nice--excuse for a moment of c-clarity," he croaked with what was left of his voice, and staggered back to his feet, nearly falling twice. But that didn't matter. Not if you got back up.
And he did. He always did.
He wasn't done yet, he thought, disjointedly, defiantly.
Not yet.
fin
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