Fred and Yvette: Awake, to an extent

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Fred comes as close as he has to consciousness since The Fury. Yvette is there.




He could see, he thought. It was just all white. The room wasn't burning with microwaves that he could feel under his skin. It was cool, air-conditioned. The mechanical inhuman squawks and screams of his friends weren't there, as far as he could hear; just the hum of the equipment he knew to be the medlab, after ending up there so often. Hear. He could hear, too. At least, he thought he could.

What he could barely do was move. Fred sat up slowly, groaning, and put his hand on the bandages over his face. It...they had won, right? They had to have, if he was here. It was over. It was dead. It had to be dead. Fred was...he would've sworn he'd killed it. Trying to remember was almost as tiring as trying to move. Trying to say something only came out as another soft groan. Fred reached out with the hand that wasn't on his face. Wasn't there usually a button on these beds? That he could call someone with...?

Almost immediately a hand came into contact with his. It was small, tiny almost, but the skin was rough, like coarse grade sandpaper. The hand wrapped around one of his fingers and squeezed. "You're awake," came Yvette's voice, breaking a little.

"...Vette?" he finally found his voice, groggy and hoarse, but there. He wrapped his larger hand around her smaller one. It felt...different. Softer? It was hard to tell. Maybe he was still imagining things, but it felt...different. Tentatively, trying to see with his hand, Fred's palm moved higher up her arm, "Is that you? What happened? Did we...win? Where...is everyone?" He had a lot of questions, but not a lot of voice it seemed, as the hoarseness only got worse the more he tried to speak.

"Yes, it is me. And we are all home and safe." Yvette reached with her free hand for the plastic water bottle with the straw that had been waiting for this moment. "Here, drink a little before you talk any more. Dr. Reyes said you would need it." She carefully positioned the straw at his lips, the only visible part of his face.

Fred drank the whole thing without taking a breath. His mouth still felt like it was made of cotton, but at least now he could move his jaw without trying to remember how to work it, "Are you okay, Vette? What...happened?" His hand was up to her neck and the bottom part of her chin. He could feel it now, his head a little clearer, that her skin felt definitely felt...softer than usual. He tugged at the bandages on his face, gingerly trying to figure out how to untie them, get a look at Yvette, without just ripping them off...

"The powers overload, that is all," she said soothingly, gently tugging his hand away from the bandages. "I am fine, just a bit, how does Molly say it? Squishier, than usual. I should be back to normal in a few days." She smiled despite herself; it was so like Fred to be worried about her. "You are fine also, but Dr. Reyes will want to take the bandages off herself, since she went to so much trouble to make them perfect."

"You're alright?" relief mixed into his tired tone, "Everyone else is okay?" Fred tugged at the bandages again almost as soon as Yvette moved his hand away. He almost didn't want to ask, but...every time he tried to remember what happened, it was like pulling up a dream. A small part of Fred really hoped he never completely recalled the whole thing, "Vette...what happened to my face?"

She laid her hand on his to stop him pulling at the bandages. "You do not remember." It was a statement, not a question, and there was perhaps some relief in it. "The Fury... you were hurt. Your face and your eyes. But Marius used his powers to fix things." She was being deliberately vague, not wanting to bring back the memory of having his face melted off, and focusing on the positive. "The bandages are just the precaution, to protect the new skin."

Fred grasped her hand, but only held it. He didn't want to upset her, but the bandages were driving him insane. He wanted to see, to look, to move. Not that he'd have the easiest time actually doing so right now. He hesitated speaking again, squeezing her hand gently, almost to assure himself that he wasn't just dreaming, "Ah...Ah know it was bad, Copper Top. Ah...think Ah ate part a that thing...It was tryin tah kill yah, kill everyone, and Ah..."

"And you killed it." Yvette's voice trembled and there was a prickling in her eyes that she'd almost forgotten - apparently her powers were 'off' enough to let her cry actual tears. "That thing, it brought out the most frightening parts of many of us, but that was all we could do to make sure it died... I was so scared, Fred. For you, for me, for our friends... And to watch you at the end..." The tears escaped, slipping down her face. "I did not know if you would come back from that place."

Fred could hear her voice hitch. She cried with her voice. Fred tried to put his hand near Yvette's face, "Yvette, there's no need tah be-" His hand stopped moving near her at her last words. Stopped moving at all. That place.

It was a graveyard for rocks. Sky so fat with gray and rain. There was yelling, and the scraping and thumping of knived fingers and steel blackened skin. There was a wall falling. There was breathing, so fast, thoughts faster that it couldn't die and it was going to kill everyone. It had to die. And there was screaming. It was mainly Fred's. It had to die, it had to be able to die. There was red and hot and red and red and heat and burning and blackness where his vision should've been. There was ringing, there was that smell of smoke and the odd feeling of pressure in all his head before he couldn't smell anything, hear anything, see... A voice in his head? All the pain gone. Then he was up, and then something that made the ripping, the shouting happen again. There were teeth. Some were its. Most were Fred's. Blood, so thick on his arms. Splashed over him. Was it his? Was he laughing? Someone else's ears and eyes and it was there and there was red again and so many eyes and

"Ah...Vette, Ah...It had tah die, Ah don't know what it was...don't know what...Ah was...trying tah hurt everything. A monster...it was...Ah was...what Ah was was a mons...so angry and it hurt so much...Ah didn't know Ah could...even hurt that bad...it was trying tah kill everyone...had tah...hurt..." There was barely any power in his voice. The massive diaphragm behind it was a ghost and just left rasps behind bandages, and Fred wasn't even sure he knew what he was trying to say anymore.

"Oh, Fred." The words came out in a heartbroken rush and without really thinking about it, she leaned forward and hugged him, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck and burying her face in his shoulder. "I am so sorry, you did what you had to and I know you are not the monster. We are home and you are saving us and that thing is dead and gone and there are not even any pieces left. I am sorry, please be okay, I love you..." Yvette wasn't really aware of what she was saying, her own words strangled by the pent-up emotion of the last few days, all the fear and anger and terror coming out in a rush, her small frame shaking as she pressed close to him, reassuring herself he was in fact there.

Fred hugged her back with the arm on her side, moving in such a sweeping motion that is scooped Yvette almost completely prone on the bed with him, "Ah love yah, Vette. Ah'm...sorry...didn't wanna...scare anyone..." Fred shushed her a little, having enough presence of mind to know that she was probably as banged up as him, even if he couldn't see her. He sounded tired, far away, but still kept trying to talk, "Yah should...get some sleep...yah sound...tired..." Fred was probably far too out of it to realize just how hypocritical that was of him to say.

“Only if I can stay with you,” came her reply, her voice small and yet stubborn. “I do not want to be leaving you again, Fred. Once was enough.”

Fred was completely out of words, just nodding a little as he drifted back to sleep.