Nathan hardly knows how he'd managed all that. It had been a difficult time for all of them, but Lazarus had been in the worst state. Maybe it was because he'd had Tony's help. Maybe it was just that he'd needed to do it and there had been no other choice but to do so. No choice but abandoning Lazarus, and that was nothing Nathan had considered to be a choice at all.

He closes his eyes, swallows again, concentrates on his breathing. Slowly. In and out.

Finally, voice quiet and small: "Most of them. They just died all around me."

Nathan usually takes pains to separate himself from his Other when he discusses his Echoes. The distancing helps. But it doesn't happen here. Because this hadn't been simply a memory of some horrible thing. It feels like it just occurred.