Fury Said To A Mouse: Salvage Duty

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After the battle, Jean and Marius work to treat the wounded -- a number they find is ever-increasing.



Red. It was all Red. He couldn't feel his face. There was something cold and wet hitting like a hammer against his skin. There wasn't any air, anywhere. Every breath just seemed to pull in needles. His feet wouldn't move. They always moved when he told them. Darker spots splashed against the Red. One. Two. Three...eventually a whole constellation. Spots of blood hanging in the air.

Eyes.

It was coming for him. His friends. Everyone. It wouldn't die. It wouldn't stop. It was going to kill everyone unless he could figure out how to fucking move. But his feet, his legs-were they even there?-he couldn't look down. Couldn't get them to respond. And those Eyes were moving closer and closer and he still couldn't find any air and closer and closer and air and move and blood and Red and die and kill and-

"AHHHHHHHH!!!!!" Fred jerked up on the table, his screaming ripping new blood and gore from the wounds on his face. He picked up the gurney next to it and threw it, swinging his arm and leaving a massive crater in the wall behind him. Fred still couldn't see, couldn't hear, and was barely even anything close to conscious, still somewhere in his own nightmare...but he was still fighting, "KILL YOU! I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!"

"Fred!" Almost immediately, Yvette was by his side, laying her hands on his arm so that he would know she was there. While considerably less armoured and spiky than before, her powers were still heightened, and his uniform sleeve shredded under her touch. "Please, Fred, it is being all right. You are safe. The monster is dead." Her voice trembled as she looked at the burned, pulped mess that was Fred's face, but she stayed there, murmuring softly to him. "I am here, Fred. You can stop fighting now."

Fred jerked away from the touch, stumbling back and smashing a small table under his still enormous and shifting girth. He couldn't hear Yvette, couldn't see anything save what was in his head, "WHO'S THERE!? WHAT'S HAPPENING? WHERE IS THAT FUCKING THING!?" Fred shouted as he felt some outside force pushing against him, trying to hold him, and tried as best as he could to push back against it...

Jean telekinetically worked to keep Fred still as best she could but it was like fighting a bull and she wasn't at the best at the moment. She normally had drugs to keep her patients asleep and dulled from the pain, but they had run out hours ago so she had to resort to telepathy. The exhaustion that had been gradually creeping in was now at an overload and washed over her like a tidal wave. It had made her concentration slip. He woke up.

She already felt guilty at putting Fred in the predicament he was in, even if it was for the good of the team. Now they were in the aftermath and the plaintive cries of a woman who sounded more like a girl over the screams of her beloved was not helping her.

"Yvette," Jean said firmly, trying to keep her patience. "If you're going to stay in the room I need for you to step back and let me work." There was a reason why she didn't let loved ones stay with the patients while she was trying to treat them. This was it. But she had made an exception for Marius's sake and she was sadly beginning to regret it. She knew, she understood why he thought the way he did, but it was the heart ruling and the heart was sometimes not the best captain in this instance.

Jean shook her head, meeting Fred's eyes or at least the general area of where they had been.

"I'm sorry. It's my fault. You can rest now," she said gently, sending out a telepathic signal to Fred's brain that shut it off to allow him to sleep.

She lowered her head as she watched the thrashing man suddenly go still, and kept a telepathic eye on him, shifting around the other voices to focus. She felt her eyes water again and brushed them away, keeping her face away from Marius and Yvette to see, then let out a breath.

"He's out. I'm keeping him sedated telepathically. Hopefully we can find more supplies soon."

"She'll be right, Yvette," Marius reassured his teammate. "Just give us some room, eh?" He could tell Jean was stressed; she hadn't been happy when Yvette had asked to accompany them, and even less so when Marius had pressed to allow it. But he hadn't felt like they could say no; while he had experience with fleshcrafting, re-shaping was not the same as healing. Treating Clarice's infection was one thing, but Fred was missing half his face. He owed Yvette too much to risk not letting her be there for Fred if something went wrong.

Especially since none of it would have happened if Marius had succeeded in killing the Fury when he'd had the chance.

Yvette nodded, letting her hands fall limply to her side. After so many adrenaline rushes, this one was short-lived, leaving her tired and weak. "~Please, help him,~" she murmured, unaware she had reverted back to her native language even as she stepped somewhat shakily out of the way.

Marius didn't need to understand the language to guess the meaning. His fingers flexed nervously as he glanced at their re-sedated teammate. "Am I safe to start?" he asked Jean, noting the number of levitating materials she'd been using to clean the area had lessened.

The objects, ointment, gauze, cotton, and etc. came to rest on the table, as a couple of bloody bits of gauze landed in the trash. It was almost a futile gesture given there was no one left to take out the trash. Jean couldn't stand up to do it so she was having to work from a chair. Making one more glance over at what was left of half of Fred's face to check for any debris, Jean nodded.

"I think so."

She was grateful that it was possible to heal him at all this way, otherwise it would've been a long, long road to recovery. His life would've been forever changed.

"Right." Marius moved forward, reminding himself there was no need to disinfect a fourth time; his hands were already itching from the repeated alcohol scrubs.

He started with the internal injuries. What was left of Fred's uniform had already been cut away to allow easy access. The flesh on his arms was shredded and bubbled with defensive wounds, but Jean had informed him there were more critical problems. Marius lay his hands on the younger man's stomach and used that same extra sense he'd used to locate Clarice's infection to search out the damage. To his surprise Jean's assertion had been correct; though the surface tissues seemed intact, Marius could feel considerable internal damage. Fred's insides had been boiled -- pulverized.

While he wasn't sure what organs were affected Lionel's power provided enough somatic awareness to locate the source of the injuries. Concentrating, Marius willed the blood to recede into torn arteries, knitting them together as he did. Bruised organs healed, burst tissue closed. One by one, systems began to recover.

At last everything in the abdomen seemed to be sound again. The X-Man pulled away and dragged the back of his hand across his forehead.

"How's it . . . looking?" he asked, suddenly lightheaded. His hair was soaked, and sweat was dripping into his eyes. He didn't even remember breaking a sweat. The session must have taken longer than it had seemed.

A gentle telekinetic nudge kept him from wobbling backward and Jean, from her place in the chair, took a moment, green eyes losing their focus as she delved into the depths of Fred's mind and body. Her skills as a doctor paired surprisingly well with her abilities, making it relatively simple to ascertain a diagnosis.

Slowly nodding, she blinked a couple of times, attention turning back to Marius.

"So far, so good."

"Right." Marius turned to the damage on Fred's face and realised he'd almost been hoping he could avoid this. No one who'd gone hand-to-hand with the Fury had come off well. While it was difficult to tell through her armor, Yvette was looking exhausted, and knowing that Garrison's skin darkened in response to damage raised alarming implications when the man looked as dark as asphalt. Fred's face, though -- Fred's face was obliterated. The sinuses had caved in, and his eyes were nothing but burned-out sockets. The result was so inhuman it didn't even register as gore.

Still, he didn't want to show his trepidation in front of Yvette. Drawing a deep breath, Marius now moved his hands to Fred's cheeks. For all the ruin in the centre of the face the tissue at the edges was strangely intact. The Australian sent his attention deep, first mending the eardrums: they gave him little difficulty. As he drew nearer to the damage to the eyes and sinuses, however, he paused.

"I can't do this."

Jean was silent for a moment or two. "Do what? Heal him?" she said gently, through she suspected she knew the answer. It was a lot to ask from him, from all of them. Everyone of them had been pushed to the breaking point, then broke, and figuratively (and sometimes literally) crawled on their hands and knees to survive. And it was only through working together did they even have a chance. To ask more...she knew it was a lot.

"No, I can, but . . . here, look."

Marius pulled his hands away. While the majority of muscle and bone were no longer exposed, the result could not have been called a face. Instead of features Jean saw only a blank expanse of still-forming skin stretched across the hollow of empty sockets and missing sinuses. The nasal cavity was nothing but a hole puckering back into a missing chunk of palate.

"I'm -- he'll be healed, right, he can live like this," Marius said, keeping his voice low and his back in such a position Yvette couldn't see, "but I'm only speeding up the natural process. Jefferies could do more -- his powers feel like Masque's, and I know Masque could reshape things, even make organs -- but I'm not him. I don't know enough to reconstruct." He fixed his yellow eyes on her.
"But you do."

Jean tilted her head. "So you mean...me showing you telepathically?" she said. It made sense. She had done some similar things with certain skills, but never restructuring a face before. It was somewhat fascinating, and exciting as a prospect, despite the circumstances.

"Betsy helped me revert people to form with Masque's power, but this is a bit more involved." Marius made a frustrated gesture. "The power is givin' me a sense of how it'd be done, but I don't know how to go about it. So show me, take me over, play me like a fiddle -- whatever you've got to do." His discomfort at the prospect was obvious, but he said with absolute conviction, "If there's any chance this can be done right, I don't want him having to settle for this."

Pausing, Jean glanced him over. "I..." Doing it herself was the easiest and best way to do it properly but she didn't particularly like the idea either. The mind was sacred to her. She didn't feel comfortable reading other people's thoughts without their permission, but to take someone over... She'd only do it if she had to. Rubbing her forehead, Jean suppressed a sigh. She had had to do a lot of those things that day.

"Okay. I...I'll try to be quick."

Jean held out her hand. "Can you help me up? I think I need to have my hands on him for this."

"Certainly." Marius started to take her hands, then changed course and slid an arm under hers before she had a chance to protest. It allowed him to take most of her weight -- and to sense the extent of her own injuries.

"Doc, I think you've got a bit of internal bleeding," he murmured as he helped her over to Fred.

Trying to not lean against him too heavily, Jean nodded a little, managing a soft smile.

"I figured," she said. With the force she had hit the wall she had expected worse. But she had others to worry about.

"Let's get to work on Fred," she said, then let out a deep, sharp breath, putting one hand on Marius's and the other on Fred's arm. "Okay Marius, this is going to feel disorienting at first. You're going to feel yourself move but not be able to do anything. Please try to stay calm...even though I know it's hard. Like I said...I'll try to be fast."

Marius shook his head. "No worries. The experience is not precisely unknown to me. An' I trust you not to engage me in any embarrassing antics."

Taking over and controlling one's mind could be compared to picking up a video game controller and being put in charge of a video game character. You could see them on the screen and have the ability to control their actions, but you were never them and they were never you, despite that ability.

As Jean settled into Marius's mind she could feel a light switch turn on as she looked at Fred's body. It was no longer something she needed tools to piece back together. She, or rather, Marius, was the tool. Marius's hands lifted off the table, reaching for the extra flesh around Fred's stomach. Pushing up a small mound, she had Marius gently lift a medium sized, thinner patch of skin off, but given the flesh crafting ability, was able to keep the body from bleeding. Forming muscle and tissue and glands and capillaries to replace what she'd taken in the spot on his stomach, she pushed the sides of the skin back together and gently stretched out the skin around it to close the wound, leaving a smooth, unbroken surface.

From there, she took the patch of skin she had removed and gently had Marius place it on Fred's face where the open wounds were and smoothed out the edges, working out the imperfections and gradually building up his caved in face like she were molding a model bust of a person out of clay.

A faint, wet cracking noise was heard as she placed Marius's hand over what remained of Fred's nose and, with a simple, fluid motion of his fingers coaxed the cartilage and sinuses back into forming, then shaped his nostrils and nasolabial folds, using hers and Marius's memory of Fred's face as a reference for what it would look like again.

She moved to Fred's eyes next, forming Marius's fingers over the space on his face between his ears into a claw shape. Within the confines of Marius's fingers a cavity began to form until it became two eye sockets and eye lids. From there, two white, milky balloons blossomed into being, filling up with fluid, and soon darkened in the middle in the shape of a circle. A small hole remained black, the pupil, while the circle around it turned green, the iris. Red veins shot out around the whites of the eyes like lightning bolts, and traveled down the back of eye to make an optic nerve that connected to the rest of his brain. Above his eyes, patches of hair began to spring up, growing into thick, brown bushy eyebrows like grass on a lawn.

Under the surface of his skin she worked next, repairing the small veins and other intricate things that the body needed to function properly that had been burned and damaged. The new skin on Fred's face began to flush red as blood returned to it, and sweat formed on his brow from the heat in the room.

Jean then took a couple of minutes to fix some of the other problems Marius might have missed, such as any lingering damage to his arms and internal organs, and soon found herself trembling uncontrollably, her skin blanched. Marius's control was returned to him rather abruptly as Jean's eyes fluttered.

"I...I think...he's--" Her vision swam and she physically ripped herself away from Marius, dropping to her knees as she threw up blood and what remained of her last meal on the floor.

Marius blinked, briefly disoriented both by Jean's psychic departure and the sheer amount of repair that had been effected. Unfortunately, any awe he felt at their accomplishment was immediately spoiled by Jean's retching.

"It's your turn -- lie flat," Marius ordered as the redhead's vomit transitioned to blood-streaked bile. His powers of mimicry meant even passive telepathy was reciprocal, and while he lacked Jean's sensitivity Lionel's powers and the direct mind-link had been more than enough to reveal just how much pain she was really in. The X-Man reached out to press the point with a hand on her shoulder, but stopped dead as he caught sight of his hand.

A fissure was opening on his palm.

Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, Jean awkwardly turned as she felt a burst of panic rush over Marius, coupled with his thoughts descending upon her like buzzards upon carrion.

"Are you...." she began, ignoring his earlier order for the moment.

no no no no "Lie flat," Marius repeated, trying to keep the shaking from his voice. "Your belly's full of blood." He quickly turned his palm down, but purplish mottling was beginning to form on the back of his hand and arm -- the arm that had been dislocated, the one that Lionel's powers had automatically repaired. His head felt hot and light. This first. Healing first. He couldn't think about this right now. They still needed him. If he stopped long enough to think he might start screaming and never stop...

Jean's hair fell in front of her face, untethered from her ponytail some while ago as she tried to steady herself and nodded. She pulled herself up into a sitting position, without the aid of the chair her broken bones rubbed against one another and she whimpered, scooting over past her vomit as best she could.

She unzipped her uniform and telekinetically slipped off the arms until only the bottom half of her uniform remained, gathered at just below the hips. He had to be able to put his hands directly on the flesh to be able to manipulate it. She gently lay down on the ground, letting out three sharp, heavy breaths at the blinding pain that shot through her. The immediate action of it made her nauseous again and she coughed and gagged, reflexively turning her head as struggled not to throw up.

Yvette had watched everything with an increasing feeling of distance, as if it – and her body – were somewhere far away. At some point it had gotten too difficult to stand alone, so she’d leaned against the wall for support, but now the room was spinning and her head was pounding so much she was having trouble from adding her own vomit to the floor. But Fred was all right, he had a face again, that was all that mattered…

“~Mama? I cannot find my school bag? Where did you put it?~” Unaware of her surroundings or what she was doing, Yvette staggered forward, intent on finding her missing school bag. She was late for school and the teacher would be so angry… She flailed somewhat, trying to keep her balance, but the floor was rolling and tilting so much. And why was it so hard to breathe?

Abruptly, Yvette dropped to the floor, completely unconscious, limbs jerking slightly in a small seizure.

Marius had just begun to knit the fractures in Jean's pelvis when he heard the collapse. He jerked away to catch a glimpse of a clawed hand twitching and a strange rattling noise he realized were her spikes against the tile.

"Yvette?!"

Jean had decided that Marius's new power was a miracle. Had it not been temporary she would have asked him to work in the medlab. As it stood, she was grateful for what he had been able to do so far.

"I've got her," she said, slipping her uniform back on quickly as she climbed to her feet with a small grunt. She herself still had a bit of damage and would probably need further assistance but it was manageable now. Less pain. Out of the woods. She needed to be that way, especially to help the convulsing woman on the floor.

She could immediately sense something was off by the way the mind was reacting, unconscious cues giving the sense of something hot, radiating off of her like a kettle about to boil off its top. Reaching for a nearby stethoscope, she crouched down and pressed it to Yvette's chest, listening for her heart beat, then pulled it away after a few moments and touched the base.

Seizures, rapid heartbeat, shallow breathing, warm skin.

"She's got heat stroke...basically she's cooking inside her own skin. Marius, there should be some cooling packs in one of the fridges that they use to cool down medical samples for transport. It's the third door on the right. I need you to grab as many as you can," she said, tilting her head at the skin tight suit Yvette was wearing. She knew the technology wouldn't allow it to tear easily so she'd have to improvise.

Focusing on the suit, a small tear began to form on the base around her neck. The tear widened, and a horrendous ripping noise erupted through the room much like the sound of duct tape being pulled. She had to get her out of the suit to cool her down. It was keeping the heat in.

"I saw a ceramic tub in the bathroom of Jefferies' office, first door to the left. I'm headed there, meet me. Hurry!"

"Right." Marius scrambled to his feet and had to catch himself on the wall as he nearly blacked out at the motion. Familiar symptoms. Trying to tell himself it was only the exhaustion, the X-Man fought the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach and forced himself on.

The cooling packs were where Jean had said they'd be. Marius stuffed as many as he could in an empty garbage bag and made his way to where Jean said she'd be. Yvette was already in the tub.

"Got it," Marius said, fumbling the bag and wishing Clarice was around to take over. As it was, he could only try not to look anywhere but Yvette's face; Jean had removed most of her bodysuit.

Jean was running the cold water when Marius came in and ignored the places his mind went to. She went to grab more supplies. "Put the ice packs around her neck, armpits, groin, and back. It should help cool her down," she said, then began to pace a little. She was slower than she'd like, hobbling.

"I need to give her an IV for the dehydration once she starts to cool down but I can't get through her skin..."

Marius began to do as instructed, his movements mechanical. "It doesn't breathe, either," he remarked vaguely, the assertion coming from personal experience. "Her skin. When she's hardened -- you plate up, you don't sweat, you don't cool properly." He frowned as he slid an icepack on either side of her neck, barely noticing as a tendril of hair opened a gash on the back of his hand. His attention was on the girl's face, frozen and stiff as a mask.

"Jean, I don't know if this is workin' . . ."

Crossing over to the tub, Jean pulled out her stethoscope and crouched down, pressing it to Yvette's skin again. She waited a few moments, then felt the surface and clenched her eyes shut, gritting her teeth.

"Damn it. You're right...it's not," she said. Shaking her head, she pulled herself to her feet with a heavy wince but pressed on.

"I could try to force water down her throat but she could choke...the airway could collapse...I don't...I don't know what to do...." She covered her mouth with her hand, bereft of a clear idea as she tried to focus but was coming up short. Without cooling down the body there was a possibility Yvette could die. So far no one had died, even despite it all no one had died, and then just when it'd gotten to the point where they could go home safe and sound there came this.

It was all Jean could do not to let out a frustrated scream at the universe, and bit her knuckle instead, keeping quiet for Marius's sake.

Jean was exhausted. They both were. But while he could muster no more energy for Lionel's powers even if he'd had any idea what to do, Marius did know how to dampen Yvette's. More, all the old physical symptoms screamed that his body was in desperate need of resources. Either he could indulge it now to benefit Yvette . . . or wait until he no longer had a choice.

Marius made a decision.

"I can . . . help." Marius swallowed hard and moved to the side of the tub. "Get the IV ready, eh? It's been a while since I've done this, so it's best to get it all over with at once. And grab a bit of the bodysuit to wrap around your hand. I can soften her, but she'll still be a bit rough."

Glancing up, Jean paused, blinking. She would've asked him if he was sure but so many of them had had to do a lot of things they normally didn't want to do that day. Finally she let out a breath, then nodded. "I'll be right back."

Marius stayed by the tub as Jean went to fetch whatever she required. Yvette did not move. Her face was blank, expressionless -- just like it had been when they first met.

He gave Jean a sideways glance as she settled on the other end of the tub, saying nothing as she organized her materials. When she seemed ready he took a deep breath.

"Sorry," he whispered. He reached over the edge of the tub and wrapped his hand around Yvette's leg.

And began to feed.

Muscles that had dwindled to nonexistence years ago flexed again as tiny, shark-like teeth punctured the armored skin of Yvette's shin even as the water began to pink with blood from the Australian's lacerated palm. The same predatory adaptation that had allowed him to extract the marrow of other mutants without fear engaged now, dampening the girl's power and softening her skin to something more permeable. Dark red faded to deep pink, and Yvette's frozen face began to go slack.

The moment Yvette's color started to change, Jean worked quickly, using the patch of the bodysuit as a buffer for her to feel around to find a vein, then swabbing the area with alcohol. The needle came next, encountering some resistance because Yvette's skin was not entirely as supple as a normal person's, but Jean pushed it through. She used heavier duty tape to adhere it to the woman's skin because she knew that it would return back to normal soon. A brief concern crossed her mind about the needle breaking off under the skin and being impossible to retrieve so she used a heavier gauge needle for durability.

From there, she set up a bag of saline solution and other pertinent chemical cocktails for dehydration. She could tell the softening of Yvette's skin was helping her cool down as well by the way her breathing had started to become more regulated.

"I think it's working," Jean said with a relieved smile.

"Good." Marius' reply was flat and distant. His own lightheadedness was subsiding.

With some difficulty, Marius managed to disengage his grip on Yvette's leg. Her body was already overtaxed by heatstroke and battle; he couldn't risk taking more marrow than she could afford to lose. What he'd already taken should do; her powers would be weakened for another few hours, hopefully long enough for the cooling to take full effect.

Healing Fred had taken its own toll. His body told him he hadn't quite taken . . . enough . . . but Marius ignored it. Drained or not, he didn't need to take his fill. Being "hungry" wouldn't hurt him.

All he needed was enough to keep him from losing control.

Grabbing some more gauze, Jean crossed to the foot of the tub, using antiseptic to clean the wound from where Marius had fed. As she worked, she caught herself staring at Marius's hands and turned away and made sure everything was still looking alright. So far so good, even if now in the inevitable quiet she could hear and feel everything: the chaos and panic of Fred's dreams, the shame and despair billowing off of Marius, the exhaustion from the others in the reaches of the city below. When she was working she could shut it off. Now it took center stage like a bloodied circus performer demanding attention.

"I should probably clean your hands too. The wounds could get infected." she said quietly with a doctor's detachment for his benefit. His skin had started to take on an ashen tone, though she knew from prior case files in his history that that was normal. The body didn't actually turn literally grey when it was pale, not like this.

The Australian's fingers twitched at the suggestion. "They won't," he said shortly. "I've got two healing factors in my system."

Besides, they never did before.

Jean nodded. "I'm sure you do, but you also just rebuilt a man's face and repaired life threatening damage while being already injured yourself. Even people with healing factors can be overwhelmed. Sometimes the body can heal improperly because of that," she said.

She could feel the shame rise up at her suggestion, but Jean usually tried not to judge. She knew just because you were born with certain abilities didn't mean you were those abilities. They were merely a part of you.

"Please. Can I see?"

Marius was silent for a moment, then mutely offered his hand.

Jean gently took it, turning it over to get a better look at the mouth that had formed. It looked much like a lamprey, except the areas in which the teeth had formed were red and inflamed, and irregular lumps had started to form in spots where the body was trying to heal but did it too quickly, forming cysts.

When his hand started jerking and the teeth seemed to react to her presence she tried to hold it steady telekinetically but found it didn't work, so she had to use her other hand.

She nodded. "It's infected. I'm going to apply some antiseptic and give you some antibiotics once we get access to better supplies," she said. She readied the alcohol swab.

"This is going to sting. Once I get it cleaned we'll have to bandage your hands up so they can heal without being exposed to the air."

Marius doubted the diagnosis. He hadn't had an infection -- or at least not one that had lasted more than a few hours -- since he'd manifested. Still, something definitely wasn't right. Even had he not possessed two healing mutations, in the past Yvette's powers had held the flayed skin in place hard enough to prevent bleeding, and without any visible signs of swelling. He thought back to Clarice's inflamed shoulder, then looked at the purple blotching still visible even against his newly-armoured skin. Lionel's tissue had been a part of the Fury for who knew how long. Ingesting it could have brought whatever it had given to Clarice into his own body . . . or, more frighteningly, the mutation itself had somehow gone rancid.

A mutation he now had no way to expel.

Shying away from what may or may not be happening in his own body, Marius turned his mind to the only other topic that mattered. "Think Yvette'll be all right?" he asked.

Jean turned back to Yvette, giving her vitals one more glance over. Everything seemed to be going as well as expected.

"I think she's going to be okay. She's cooling down, stabilizing." She glanced down. "I know...it was a hard thing to do but you saved her life. Thank you."

She studied him for a few moments as she worked. She'd always tried not to listen in, respected the sanctity of trust she had gotten from others by not doing so. It was their thoughts, not hers. They were always private. But now she had no means to ignore them, and it was like they were being said out loud. She had no defense. And these particular thoughts had to do with his health. She found herself struggling with what to do with these facts.

"If you get any worse," she said finally, taping up his hand. "Tell me, okay? Please don't hide it."

Marius looked again at the partially-submerged Yvette. Her spikes had softened to the point her face was framed by a red halo of something almost like hair, and her face seemed more relaxed. If not for the pink tinge in the water he could have believed she was only sleeping.

His eyes dropped to his newly-bandaged hand. He knew it made no real difference, but he felt better not being able to see the mouth -- even though the itch on his left palm told him the other would be opening soon. Still, Yvette was out of danger, and Fred was whole again. As long as he concentrated on those two things he felt he could just about keep himself together.

"All right," Marius said. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. "Right, who next?"

"You," Jean said. "You're about to fall over. Take a break, get some sleep. You need it, badly. I'll finish up with Yvette and Fred and do the same."

She smiled softly. It was a bittersweet gesture but it was all she could do. They had made it, at great cost, but it everyone was alive. And that, that she was thankful for.