Lost and Found, part nine: The Way Home
Feb. 8th, 2005 01:22 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
x-cable.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsAfter the explosion, the Mistra operatives try and regroup to get themselves out of there. But they're short one field leader, and something is very wrong with their conditioning.
Her head hurt. Her head hurt terribly, and all Isabel Matsuda really wanted to do was lie down, close her eyes, and maybe whimper at the world until the headache went away. But she had teammates down, some badly hurt, and her job was to get them back to the helicopter and away.
She ignored the X-Men deliberately. It would strike her later that she shouldn't have been able to do that, that her tactical imperatives should have forced her to intervene, prevent them from taking the children and MacInnis' people away to safety. But she had her own wounded, and somehow, it was all right to focus on them. She even ignored the one X-Man carrying his wounded compatriot away from her team's helicopter. The aircraft was intact. They had an exit strategy. She had to stick to the exit strategy...
She had just laid Valeri down in the helicopter and was starting back to look for Forrester when someone caught her shoulders and she let out a shriek, before strong arms went around her and a familiar voice murmured in her ear. "Nash," she said, her voice shaking.
"Hey, Izzy. You okay?"
Matsuda looked up at him, seeing the dazed look he was wearing, the blood all over his face. Had to have been one hell of a nosebleed. He looked like he'd been crying blood, too. That was odd. She didn't realize until he raised a hand to touch her face, a hand that came away red, that she was in the same state.
"What happened?" she asked blankly. It was hard to think. Why was it so hard to think? The buzzing in her back of her head was almost enough to drive one insane.
"I don't know," Nash said exhaustedly. "Something... it hurt." He stared down at her for a long moment, his eyes utterly vacant. She finally roused herself to reach out to him, but he flinched back violently at the touch and she swallowed. Twitchy. Why were they both so twitchy? "Who are we missing?" he asked, and she could see the struggle for control on his face.
"Forrester," she said automatically. "Konstantakis. Morgan... Dyson's not answering. Have you see Ellie anywhere?"
"I... just find them." He looked back at the helicopter. "Find as many as you can," he said, his voice low and... breaking? Not like Nash at all, Matsuda thought, turning like a sleepwalker to do as she was told.
---
Kurt helps some of the children back to the Blackbird. Amazingly, they seem to have come through it all better than any of the adults.
"I'm cold," the girl in Kurt's arms muttered, her arms tightening around his neck. She was slight and dark-haired, maybe twelve at the most, had a broken leg from the crash of MacInnis' helicopter, and was obviously still suffering from the effects of the drugs given to the children to keep them sedated during transport. Her blue eyes were hazy as she looked up at Kurt. "Can we go home yet?"
Kurt nodded to her reassuringly, glancing around to make sure the other two were still following him safely. "We will take you somewhere safe to make sure you are well, and then you can go home."
One of the other two, a sturdy blonde girl a couple of years older, looked around warily at the snowy forest, tugging the blanket more tightly around herself. "They won't come back, will they?"
"They'll come back," the boy following her murmured, stumbling a bit in the snow.
"If they come back", Kurt answered honestly, "we will do all we can to make sure they do not take you again."
"Is Carey going to die?" the blonde girl asked, and sniffled. "She was nice. She was there when I woke up and told me it was going to be okay."
Kurt looked at her sadly. "I do not know. She is getting medical care, however, and they will look after her the best they can."
"How come you're blue?" the girl in his arms asked sleepily.
He smiled at her wanly. "I was born this way. It is part of my mutation."
"I got hit by a car and didn't get any bruises," the blonde girl informed him. "Didn't get any bruises when the helicopter crashed, either."
"Doesn't mean you can't die, though," the boy muttered and stumbled again, falling this time. The snow hissed around him, melting, and he whimpered, staring down at the flames licking at his hands.
Kurt turned sharply at the sound, and bent to help the boy up with his free hand. "None of you are going to die. Not if I get any say in it."
The blonde girl helped as well. "Come on, Jimmy. Can't stay here." She looked up and met Kurt's eyes, a very determined set to her jaw, as if she hadn't just been kidnapped, drugged, rescued, nearly killed in a helicopter crash, and then witness to a fairly horrific amount of violence. "They helped. We can trust them."
Kurt returned her gaze squarely, and nodded. "Yes, you can. We are going to get you out of here."
"It's like a movie," the girl in his arms murmured, closing her eyes. "Except not."
"It's not a movie," the blonde girl muttered, her jaw still very hard but blinking suddenly, rapidly.
"No, not a movie. But you will all be fine. I promise you that."
---
Madelyn discovers on the flight home that while Nathan is conscious, he's not precisely lucid. MacInnis' telepath tells her what happened, and Nathan is stunned by the implications of what it all means.
"Bad poetry," Nathan muttered, shaking his head despite the fact that it was throbbing steadily. He felt more alert than he had been, and he could actually move now, as if his body was starting to wake back up. The Blackbird was in the air, they were going home, this was all very good. But the bad poetry was still bouncing around in his mind, and the song, he couldn't get that damned song out of his head. "Bad poetry, lousy tune. Really. Terrible choice, just terrible. No taste in music..."
Madelyn glanced up from where she'd made Carey comfortable, adjusting the reflective blanket around her - it'd stop her from losing too much more heat. Hank was seeing to the medic with the skull fracture, and everyone else was stable and secure. And Nathan was sounding way too loopy for her taste. Even discounting the bleeding from places no-one was meant to bleed. Picking up her medkit, she made her way through the crowded Blackbird to where Nathan was sitting. "Okay, big guy," she said, sitting next to him and handing him an extra-thick wad of tissues for the nosebleed. "Time for the light that mimicks the sun. Do you know where you are?"
"'In the ranks of death'." Nathan laughed a bit wildly, jerking his head backwards as she reached out, smacking it against the wall of the cabin hard. He didn't notice the impact. "That's where you'll find me, isn't that how it goes?" A stranged laugh that was more than half a sob escaped him. "It's in my head still, how is it in my head?"
"It... shouldn't be." The shaky voice belonged to Elliot, who'd gotten up, unnoticed, and made his way over to them. He knelt down on Nathan's other side, peering at him for a long moment before he looked at Madelyn. "It's the Trojan Horse," he said raggedly. "The worm program. That's what took down Morgan."
"But Charles got rid of all that, didn't he?" Madelyn asked, preparing a syringe with a sedative. She didn't like to dope up someone with a head injury, but Nathan was going to hurt himself at this rate. "Nathan, it's me, Maddie. I'm not going to hurt you, but I am going to give you something to help slow things down in your head, okay?" She glanced at MacInnis, sitting nearby, watching it all silently. "I thought the Trojan Horse was supposed to kill him when he used it," she said, her voice definitely Not Friendly. "What the hell's going on here?"
Elliot answered, instead of MacInnis. "We... I helped Kritzer with it," the young man said, flushing as Madelyn turned her attention to him. "I studied her notes, after she... afterwards, I mean. There were always traces of it in the minds of the second-gen operatives she used it on, the test subjects. As if it had imprinted itself on their minds. Nathan... he was the only first-gen it was ever used on. The only telepath. It was the feedback that would have killed him, if his conditioning had broken at the same time that the Trojan Horse used his telepathy to spread itself." Elliot swallowed, clearly sensing that Madelyn Was Not Pleased. "I don't know what happened, how it's still there... but it is. It worked. Morgan... I just checked on him, and his conditioning is gone. All of it."
"And Nathan?" MacInnis asked, something very odd and strained in his voice.
Elliot reached out, his fingers barely brushing Nathan's temple before Nathan flinched away again with a moan. "In psionic shock," he said, almost wonderingly. "But... it's not too bad. He'll be okay, I think."
"One of these days people are going to stop springing nasty surprises on us," Madelyn muttered through the syringe held between her teeth as she took Nathan's arm to unzip the cuff of his uniform and inject the sedative. He tried to jerk his arm away, but she held on. "Easy, Nathan, I'm not going to hurt you," she repeated, hoping she wasn't going to need to get someone to hold him down. "So what does this mean? For Morgan and Nathan?" she asked Elliot, tone softening a little - it wasn't his fault any of this had happened. Some of that blame she was happy to give to MacInnis.
"I don't know," Elliot murmured, sounding troubled. "I was the junior member of Kritzer's team. Just there to do as I was told. And none of us even knew it would have killed him in the first place..." He trailed off, looking a bit hesitantly at MacInnis, who sighed and looked away, something close to open pain on his face.
"Means I'm a weapon," Nathan muttered faintly, his eyes unfocusing. He stopped struggling with Madelyn, abruptly. "Still just a weapon... still the fucking harp..." His expression crumpled and he laid his head down on his other arm, as if he was trying to blot out the world.
"It also means you got another one back," Madelyn pointed out, taking advantage of the sudden lack of resistance to inject the sedative." That won't put you to sleep, it'll just make things a bit warm and fuzzy, okay? I'm going to try cleaning you up a bit now, see if you've damaged anything with the telepathic theatrics..." She kept the gentle teasing tone she frequently used with Nathan, knowing he reacted to the human element of it far better than strict businesslike doctorliness. Too many reminders of Mistra. "I'm not going to be the only one wanting answers when we get back," she told Elliott and MacInnis, tearing open one of the sterile moist swabs and beginning to wipe away the drying blood from Nathan's face.
"Xavier's the only one who can figure this out, I think," Elliot said helplessly. "I just don't know what's going on."
"Morgan?" Nathan murmured suddenly, sounding calmer. "Is he okay?" He opened his eyes, blinking at Madelyn. "It all exploded. I felt it. Like stained glass."
"He's fine," Madelyn assured him. "He's out like a light, but he's fine." She glanced at Elliott. "They tell me his conditioning's completely gone."
"Gone..." Nathan said, his gaze almost focusing on her. "If he's... they're crippled." There was a growing awareness in his voice, breaking through the shock. "They're crippled."
"There's no one to replace him," MacInnis said quietly, as if to explain, when Madelyn looked back at him. "No other field commanders. When Nathan... went, they still had Tim. Tim's replacement would have been Mick, or Anika..."
"Tim..." Nathan suddenly grabbed at the inside wall, trying to pull himself to his feet. "Need to see him," he muttered. "Maddie, help...?"
"Well, that explains why they fell apart when Morgan was dropped..." Maddie dropped what she was doing as Nathan tried to climb to his feet, grabbing his arm. "Okay, okay, I'll help you see him, but nice and slow, okay? Your nose is still bleeding on and off and you don't want to do any more damage. Easy does it." She knew better than to try and stop him, and maybe seeing Morgan would help settle him. Easing herself under his arm, she got his wrist in a good grip and nodded. "Okay, on three, all right? One, two, three..." Elliott joined her on Nathan's other side, and between the three of them they got him to his feet.
Crippled. And if Morgan's conditioning was gone, if Tim was... Nathan swallowed, trying not to gag on the taste of blood. But even with that, even with the pleasant haze of the sedative and the lingering shock of that psionic explosion in the snow, part of him couldn't help but start to realize what this meant.
Crippled. Tim was free, six children who might have been conditioned were saved, and Mistra was crippled. He turned that over in his mind as Madelyn and Elliot helped him back to the stretcher where Morgan was stretched out, still dead to his suddenly altered world.
---
Madelyn, Hank and Kurt regroup a little and take stock, in one of the flight back's rare quiet moments.
Patients comfortable, or as comfortable as you could get in an over-crowded Blackbird. Kids settled, doing remarkably well for a bunch of kids rescued from brainwashing and dumped into the middle of a firefight. Now for the team... She'd seen Kurt moving awkwardly, and heard stories of guns and fortunate body armour, and he wasn't essential to flying the plane or debriefing... Madelyn made her way to where the German X-Man was sitting near the unconscious medic from MacInnis' team, watching Hank monitor her life signs and praying, if the way his lips were moving were anything to go by.
"Hey," she said. "How're my two favourite blue men doing?"
Kurt looked up at her with a rueful smile, abandoning the prayers for now. "Sore. Although it could have been worse."
"Ditto for me," Hank said, giving her a tired smile. "Although I think I rallied quite well, given how little combat training I've been doing lately. It all comes back." He turned back to the monitors... holding steady for now, thank goodness.
"I'll say - I can't tell you how glad I was to see you come through that shield of Bourne's..." Madelyn glanced over to where the Darkforce manipulator was out like a light, broken arm secure in the inflatable cast she'd put it in. "Now, I've heard rumours you got to test out the body armour," she went on, turning to Kurt. "So this would be the part where I get to poke you in the ribs and see if there's any broken."
"You hear correctly", Kurt acknowledged, wincing a little as he moved. "The metamorph was armed, and I could not teleport away in time - for the first two shots. The third time was as I disarmed him."
Hank stifled a grumble. He had sore places too, and Madelyn hadn't offered to inspect them... on the other hand, he was a doctor, and perfectly capable of determining the extent of his own injuries. Oh, well... he watched out of the corner of his eye as he monitored the medic.
"Uniform jacket off," Madelyn told Kurt, and while he was complying, turned to Hank and his patient. "How's she doing?" she asked quietly. "I've already got the girls prepping the lab for us when we get back..."
Hank nodded. "Good. We're going to need every pair of hands we can get, given the number of casualties," he said softly. "She's stable, for now - let's hope she stays that way."
Nodding and turning back to Kurt, Madelyn raised her eyebrows at the livid bruises showing up on his torso. "Ouch. If you weren't that way already, I'd have to make a joke about being black and blue all over..." Motioning for him to stand, she lay one hand carefully on the right half of his ribs. "Okay, stand up a bit straighter and breathe in for me," she instructed. "And let me know if there's any sharp broken rib type pain, okay?"
He obeyed, and was relieved to note that there was no pain worse than the bruises. "It feels... not fine, but I do not think anything is broken."
Feeling down his other side, Madelyn nodded. "I think you're right. I'll take an x-ray later, when we're done settling our guests for the night just to make sure they're not cracked, but I think we chalk up another brownie point to Kevlar." She nodded at the jacket. "I think that's going to be a bit uncomfortable to put back on, 'though..." Reaching into one of the lockers overhead, she pulled out an Xavier's sweatshirt. "That one might be a bit more comfortable."
He smiled, taking the sweatshirt from her hands. "Thank you. And yes, indeed - I am very thankful for the Kevlar just now."
Hank nodded. "How well do I know that feeling," he said with deep feeling. "I love my kevlar." He touched Maddie's shoulder lightly, checking for winces or stiffness as she turned. "Any injuries?" he asked, realizing he hadn't earlier. They'd both been too busy with patients to think about themselves or each other. "You were out of sight for a while... any hits?"
She shook her head. "Not a one. Mind you, being that close to the kids... they were looking at retrieval, not taking them out. So they were being careful not to aim too close to them, which is where I was." Glancing over at where the rescued children were fitfully dozing, she couldn't help the relieved smile. "A much better result than Vermont."
Kurt, having pulled his sweater on - carefully and slowly - followed her gaze and nodded. "Most definitely. How are the children, physically?"
"A bit dopey still, some of them - they were drugged for the trip. Slightly hypothermic, given how long they were out in the weather, and a couple are in shock... Bruises and cuts, but really, not much worse than the broken leg. MacInnis and his people did an amazing job of taking care of them considering the circumstances." Now the adrenaline was wearing off, Madelyn was realising how tired she felt. And how cold. "How about you, Hank? You okay? I noticed you were a bit out of things for a little while there - you took a few hard hits from that woman, didn't you? The energy projector?"
Hank nodded. "The random twitching wasn't any fun, either." He shook his head and smiled. "I'm fine now, though. Just tired." Okay, tired and a little fuzzy, but nothing worse than he'd expect after the kind of day he'd had. "Tired and cold," he added, looking down at his feet. He couldn't wear boots without losing most of the use of his flexible feet, and the thin sock-type affairs with roughened soles didn't do a lot to keep out the cold. It was a good thing the fur insulated them a bit. And having bare arms and hands hadn't been whole barrels of fun in the snow either. "Even with the fur."
"Well, I can tell you that us not-furry people are definitely feeling the cold as well - or not feeling it, since I've lost feeling in both feet." Madelyn grimaced a bit. "Long hot bath for me tonight, at least until my extremities thaw out."
Hank made a concerned noise. "Lost feeling completely? Let me take a look. The last thing we need is a doctor with frost-bitten toes." A big enough proportion of the X-Men were more or less resistant to cold that he sometimes forgot that not everyone was that way.
Madelyn opened her mouth to protest, but knew That Look Hank was giving her. And it did make sense, considering how cold it had been out there. "Scoot over, Kurt," she said, indicating the small amount of space next to him - seating was at a premium in the crowded 'Bird. As he complied, she squeezed in beside him, unable to repress the sigh of relief at finally sitting for the first time in what seemed very many hours. "Okay, I may need hauling back up again once we're done," she said wryly, looking down at her wet hiking boots. They seemed an awful long way away. "Help?"
Kurt gave her a slightly worried look, and bent to lift her feet into his own lap. "Let me do that."
Hank took one boot while Kurt worked on the other, unpicking the wet laces and tugging it off gently. Her socks were damp, too, never a good thing. Her feet, though, were a little pale, and cold to the touch, but he didn't see the unnatural whiteness of real freezing. "They seem all right..."
"No frostbite," Madelyn agreed, then squeaked as Hank inadvertently found the ticklish part on the bottom of my foot. "Ack! No tickling!" she protested, trying to squirm away but finding it difficult with both feet trapped.
"No frostbite, but they are very cold," Kurt muttered almost to himself, taking her nearest foot in both his hands and trying to warm it, without thinking.
Hank released the foot he'd accidentally tickled, and watched it settle back onto Kurt's lap. "You'll be fine," he said, a little more cheerfully than he felt, and turned back to check on the medic again. Head injuries. How he hated head injuries... so dangerous, so difficult to treat...
"Thanks, Hank," Madelyn said, sighing happily as blood started flowing again in her feet as Kurt kept rubbing them. Much better. If there was anything odd in Hank's tone, she didn't notice it. "I've got some dry socks tucked away in my medkit - I figured I'd need them." She made no move to get said kit, however, leaning her head against the side of the 'Bird and closing her eyes. "Keep that up and I'll drop off, 'though."
"You should sleep, if you can," Hank said, giving her a quick smile. "I'll wake you if anything happens, but otherwise, I'd like you to rest as much as you can before we get back. You're going to need to be alert and very busy once we land."
Kurt nodded his agreement. "Trust us to wake you, if anything should happen?"
Opening her eyes again briefly, Madelyn grinned. "I think so. Because you both know how very cranky I would be if you didn't."
---
Haroun tries to hold it together despite his injuries, knowing he's still got to land the Blackbird. Luckily, Alison is there to help him hold on.
Haroun slowly flicked the toggle to arm the autopilot, a small smile coming to his lips when he thought of the modification that he wanted to make but Scott wouldn't let him do. He just couldn't appreciate the merits of an inflatable airline pilot. His hands then slowly came down to the release on the five-points harness, undoing it slowly. Then gravity, so very much not his friend today, took over and sent him spilling out of the pilot's chair and to the ground. Every muscle he possessed hurt. Even his beard hurt.
"No, it's fine, sweetie," Alison said, backing into the cockpit while directing the young girl handing her the emergency medkit back towards Hank after accepting the box, several ice packs stacked on top of it. "You go and stay with the others, okay?" A look over her shoulder, and she hissed faintly, gently ushering the girl away one last time before closing the cockpit door behind her. The medkit was dumped on the pilot's chair, several of the icepacks nearly slithering over the side before Alison caught them and placed them on the floor next to Haroun. "Talk to me. Your back. What else? Don't answer everything," she added, kneeling down to very carefully ran her hands down his sides, hovering hesitantly over his shoulder.
"I hurt." he said. "I feel like I've been hit by Piotr. Everything hurts." he said, disregarding her instructions and failing to pull himself to a sitting position. "'Bird's on autopilot. Got some time to rest." How's the team?" he asked, eyes not quite focused towards Alison. "We won, right?"
"Don't. Move." She was going to sit on him if he tried that again and it was frighteningly easy to keep him in place with one hand, even as she reached for one of the ice packs, folding it in two and using the floor to snap the seal, the coolness nearly instant in her hand. "I'm going to need to peel you out of that for the cold to help. It won't go through the suit." She had enough packs for his lower back and a few to spare at that. "Entire team is on board and fine. We got the kids and Mac's team. And Morgan." Technically speaking, they'd won and were bringing back extras as well.
Haroun fumbled with the release to his uniform jacket, but his hands were shaking too badly for such fine manipulations. He cursed in Arabic and kept trying, finally managing to grab the zipper and pull it down on the sixth try. He left it open, though, as the effort was too exhausting and too painful to shrug out of the garment. "Think I got burned." he said quietly, trying to conserve his strength.
They had at least two seriously wounded in the cargo hold, one of whom had taken a turn for the worse and was taking up both Hank and Madelyn's attention entirely, but Alison was cataloguing the list of injuries as she eyed the ugly mass of bruises peeking under the jacket, near his shoulder. He was still moving the arm, though - not broken, at least. "Your bruises have got bruises on top of their bruises," she murmured, not seeing any burn marks - yet. If he thought he'd been burned, odds were high it'd be nasty. "You need ice on your back, now. Shoulder too," she added. She still wasn't feeling any of her aches, the adrenaline not having yet let go of her. This was, she decided, a good thing. "Stick to the not moving. I'm lasering the top off you. And I'll owe you a new suit, okay?"
Haroun tried to struggle to a sitting position again. "Painkillers. In the medkit. Give them to me - I can crash when we get back." he asked. He was hell-bent on getting the hell up off the deck plates and carrying his own weight around here. He was the XO, he needed to look in on the team, make sure everybody was OK...
"Stop it." She snapped the words out, giving him a flat look. "We need a pilot and Hank's got his hands full. If you're unable to land the 'bird once we're back, we're in trouble." She couldn't push down on that shoulder, damn it and cutting the suit off wasn't happening until he stopped trying to push himself up. "I'll help you up on the pilot's chair after I get ice on your back and-" she stopped, staring. "Damn. Move and not only am I knocking you out, I'm having a go at landing the 'bird myself." His arm was burnt and from the smell she was willing to bet his back was worse. A quick check and she confirmed that the leather wasn't sticking to his arm - this meant taking it off and giving the burns room to breathe was the first thing to do. Cold water wasn't an option, so the cold packs would have to do in a pinch.
Haroun tried to scowl, but it came out more as a vacant drooling nod. He held himself as still as he could, which was difficult considering all the muscle cramping that was going on. "You can't land the 'Bird." he pointed out. "Do it. Cut it offa me."
Now that he'd stopped fighting her it was considerably easier to do just that, the short laser beam kept away from him and the occasional muscle spasm not hampering her too much, thankfully. The skin of his arm was red and hot, but nothing more - first degree burn only, Alison waiting to see the rest of his injuries before deciding what to do, though she whispered a few words to Hank over the comm, warning him to be ready to help with Haroun once the graver cases has been dealt with. Once the the top of his suit was neatly lasered off, she bit back anything she might have said and instead started on his shoulder first. Two ice packs were applied carefully and then the bandage, winding it around his torso to anchor everything in place. "Shoulder isn't dislocated. Arm has first degree burns. Leaving that to air for now. Back..." She sighed, and picked up a new ice pack, snapping it active. "Second degree, at least. Talk to me."
"Ow?" Haroun said. "Power burn. Got caught in some sort of a well. Had to go full-burn to get out of it. That's where most of the bruising is from. Arm is a grab from a flame-wielder back at the chopper. No plasma burns, though." he rambled. "Need a full system diagnostic. Balance unit is malfing a little, and I think the balance rods are bent."
"Ow is good," she answered, pausing to give him a poor attempt at a smile, even though it was anything but good as far as she was concerned. No ow at all because there was no reason to say ow would have been much much better. "Ow means it's not third degree." Though even those stayed numb for only a short amount of time. No ice, no running water. The ice pack it was, for now. "I'll tell that to Hank after we land. Don't move. No moving until we have to." She sighed, keeping the ice pack in place as gently as possible, settling down next to him after sparing a glance at the autopilot. "Green across the board. You sure you don't want to try and talk me through the landing?" That'd get his attention.
Haroun blinked and looked at Alison. "Might not be a bad idea." he said with a wince. "Just standing to get back into the chair is gonna be bad enough." he said. "Gotta strap in for landing." He then fought through the fog of pain and managed to shake his head. "No. Need to land the plane myself. Too complex, too many people onboard. You're not ready."
"Okay. Rest up and move at the last minute? Or move now and then get it back together for the landing? I'm thinking option number two myself. You?" Moving him now would at least let them know if he'd be able to land them afterwards, really. "We've got a little while until we get there. And the pain meds are fairly fast acting. I'll ask Hank what the proper dosage is and we'll make sure to time that right so they don't knock you under." And at the very worse, Scott could talk her through it. If need be. Hank had his hands far too full keeping an eye on his patients right now, even with Madelyn there, to be able to do the landing himself. "We're nearly out of the jamming zone. Whatever it is Mistra used, it's localized. They didn't take it with them."
Haroun grinned and flipped Alison a thumb's up. "Up now." he said, attempting once again to climb to his feet. With Alison's help, he finally made it there, although judging by the expression on his face it sure didn't feel good. He took two steps, and then collapsed roughly into the pilot's chair. "Just gotta hold on for another few hours." he muttered to himself, half in English, half in Arabic.
Reaching into the medkit, Alison peeled several of the sterile gauze free. "Lean over just a bit," she murmured, voice soft and low. "Those burns shouldn't be directly against the seat. I'll just place some gauze on them and if you can stand it, we'll see what we can do about keeping the ice packs there too, okay?" They weren't ice cold, just cool, which was exactly what he needed though they'd probably feel freezing cold to him. "Then we'll keep that last pack on your arm, for that burn." Working in the confined of the cockpit was starting to remind her of the fact that she'd been thrown in a tree, shield or not shield, but not enough to pay attention to it yet. She'd got off easy, considering everything that could have happened.
Haroun did as was instructed. "We won, though." he said with a grin. "A victory for the X-Men. Feels pretty sweet, makes all the pain worth it." he added. "Post-op is gonna be a whole lot of fun. Threat DB is gonna get huge. And I'm gonna get medical-downchecked again. Dammit."
Moving hadn't affected him too much and he was still talking in a coherent way, the words slightly more precise than they'd been when she'd found him collapsed on the deck floor. This was, she dared to think, good. A short, sub-vocalized message to that effect was sent to Hank, quickly. "Post-op will be interesting to sort out. And we're not due for active duty for another few weeks," was the calm reply. Her hands shook slightly as she laid down the last gauze and Alison took a deep breath before moving to pick up the first of the ice packs. Now was not the time to lose it.
Haroun eased his way back into the pilot's chair. "Strap me in." he told Alison, not sparing her a look in favor of checking the Blackbird's instrumentation panels. So far, it looked like everything was just where it needed to be. Fuel was good, stealth was running at a hundred per cent, all systems were green. Unlike him. He really, really wanted a painkiller. And then about a gallon of Gatorade to drink. And then he wanted to sleep for a week. But he had to hang on.
The ice packs in place, easily removed when they warmed up. Nodding, Alison carefullly set about clipped the harness in place, loosening the straps before buckling anything in place and then slowly tightening them to something approximating safe but not too snug either. She then retrieved his tabs and the comm unit from the remains of his jacket, placing both on the console within his reach. "There." She should probably, she knew, go back and check on the people they were bringing back once more at one point, as well as the team. Instead she leaned over, lips brushing against his cheekbone lightly, delaying just a bit longer. "Is there anything I can get you?"
Haroun smiled a very sore and bruised smile. "Not right now. Go check on the others, make sure everyone's going to be all right." he said, pain leaking out all over his voice. "And when you come back, a painkiller and some Gatorade would be lovely."
She glanced one last time as his comm, making sure it was well within reach. "Okay, I'll go do that. Give me an update on the flight now and then over the comm, mm?" A transparent way to ask for him to just check in with her at regular intervals, but it would do to keep her from peeking into the cockpit every other five minutes. "I need to check in on Nathan." At least, she told herself, the medical emergencies were under control, everyone was fine, taking care of Mac's team or the children, if not assisting Madelyn and Hank. "I shouldn't be too long."
"We did good today." he said, then winced as some of his more battered muscles protested. Loudly. "Go on, check the others. I'll give you sitreps as things change."
---
Alison checks on Nathan, who's remembered something else from the moment of the explosion, something that makes their victory bittersweet.
Morgan was unconscious, deeply enough unconscious that Nathan couldn't make clear contact with his thoughts, not even to offer a little reassurance. Though maybe that had more to do with the state of his head than the state of Tim's. Nathan laughed suddenly, shakily, ignoring the wary looks he got from elsewhere in the cabin. He pressed the heels of his hands to his forehead, willing his thoughts to slow down. Was the sedative wearing off? He didn't feel quite as panicked as he had been, but the words were still bouncing around in there. "His father's sword he hath girded on," Nathan heard himself mutter almost desperately. "Not the harp. Really not the harp."
Stepping out of the cockpit and closing it behind her, Alison nodded at Hank as he looked up at her - nothing had changed since the last time she'd updated him on Haroun's more obvious hurts and pulling him out of the cockpit wasn't happening, just yet. Nathan's quiet mutters drew her attention though and she veered slightly away from her original destination, heading for him instead, the soles of her shoes making enough noise on the decks of the cargo hold of the 'bird to warn him of her approach.
Nathan shivered and flinched away from the person who knelt down beside him, before he realized it was Alison. "He's out," he said, and the words spilled over each other as he went on. "Right out. Torn his chords asunder and all that. I didn't know. This is a good thing, right? But I didn't know. I didn't consciously do it. It's still in my head and I don't know how..."
Alison first thought was that somehow, Nathan had kept it there - she couldn't think of any other reason why it should still be there, when Charles had been working with him so closely for so long. "Nathan, look at me." She reached out slowly, hands open and projecting each next move as best she could. "Need you to concentrate just for a second, ok? Maybe this will help a bit..."
Nathan bit back another unsteady laugh. Didn't need to be laughing like a maniac. Really, really didn't. "Help?" His unfocused gaze moved, almost of its own accord, back to Tim's still face, and he nearly gagged at the taste of blood at the back of his throat. Nose was bleeding again? "My fault, you know, I was trying to reach him telepathically, get around the triggers..."
Sense didn't have anything to do with this but Alison still shook her head gently, reaching out to lightly tilt his head, noting the beginning of a nose bleed - the least to be expected, considering what had happened. "Give me a second," she fetched a compress pad and an ice pack from one of the many medkits secured to the floor around them, snapping it shut before returning to his side. Calm. She had to be calm and steady, for a while still. "Here... easy now."
"I know now," he muttered more faintly. "I know now, I get it... why..." He trailed off, his eyes moving unerringly to MacInnis, even though he couldn't quite make the old rat bastard out among all the others crowded into the plane. "Doesn't really change... nothing really changed..."
"Lean forward just a bit, there you go." It was, in a way, almost like when Miles woke up from a nightmare and still very much had difficulty seperating the bad dream which had been his way of life before, and the reality of now. "Saaaa, nareth ne," she crooned lowly in Askani, simple soothing words, settling her breathing into something slow and regular, focusing on being calm. The ice pack was wrapped in the compress, applied lightly and then a bit more firmly to help slow the nose bleed.
Almost without realizing it, he was echoing her slower breathing, echoing the pattern tracing itself slowly in her mind. Basic meditation pattern. And his thoughts wanted to stop spinning, he guessed, because it wasn't as hard as it should have been to concentrate on it. "I could have killed him," he mumbled, some of the implications of what had happened beginning to sink in.
"But you didn't," was the soothing reply, Alison sparing a glance towards Morgan, but only just that. Now wasn't the time to dwell on her own issues, not just yet. Helping Nathan was what she was concentrating on now. It helped a great deal to keep her calm as well, in fact. "He's right here. The kids are here too."
"The others..." His vision was blurring suddenly, wetness trickling down his cheeks. Blood? No, it had been blood earlier. Not again. Bleeding from the eyes was bad. "It reached the others, I felt it... didn't break it for them, just cracks..." It had come to him out of the confused mess of his thoughts, finally. The memory of that moment, of nearly a dozen thought-patterns reflecting in his mind, all in stained-glass. All with cracks, now. But they'd run. They'd gotten away...
The words hit hard, even as Alison nonetheless struggled to hang on to the quiet and calm within. Had to, for Nathan's sake - she could break later. But there were tears as well and it was possible, she discovered, to grieve like this. The memory of Nash smiling at her as he disappeared in the storm, wishing her luck while taking the out she'd offered him would come back to haunt her, she knew. "We got Mick. We got Morgan." She left the rest unsaid, for now. But it was there, just as the offer to get the first had been there, months ago.
"They're alone." He couldn't see. The plane was breaking apart into shimmering blurs, and he could hardly catch his breath. "They're alone, there's no one left to help them live, and they tried so hard... Alison, they could have killed some of us, but they didn't." He'd seen it in Morgan's mind as they'd fought, his memory of turning off the radio. The faint smiles, or at least acceptance, on the faces of most of the other operatives in the aircraft. Flexibility. Giving them flexibility, one little act of defiance that had meant everything.
"I know. I know they didn't." It was getting hard to stay calm, or at least to not let the sorrow surge through, even if the jagged edges of it all were still deep under the surface, for now. So she stopped struggling with that at least, because they deserved that much. Regardless of everything else, they deserved that and she wondered how many of the reports would show that some if not all of the Mistra operatives had held on just enough to give their opponent small hints and clues, breathing room to win over them. "But we know. We know. It's not over yet," she whispered, not caring if MacInnis or any of his people - or anyone else in the cargo hold, for that matter, might hear her.
Nathan wiped at his tears with a sudden, sharp movement, trying to catch his breath. Find his composure. "My head," he whispered shakily. "I still... it's slowing down, but I still can't think. Can't sort through this..."
The nose bleed had finally ebbed and Alison pulled away the ice pack and the compress, setting both next to him, still moving slowly, as though the physical control she was imposing on herself might help with keeping her mental condition stable as well. "Shh. Go through the pattern. Doesn't matter if you can't stick to it through everything. Think later. You don't need to now."
Drawing in on himself, Nathan laid his head down on his folded arms, sighing raggedly. Beside him, on the stretcher, Tim laid there, his breathing labored but constant. "~We take our victories where we can... is that what I'm supposed to be telling myself, sister?~" Nathan murmured brokenly.
She leaned forward, sighing tiredly but still holding on to the calm and the self-control, and rested a hand on his shoulder. They had gained something here, more than expected - especially considering that this had been meant to be a simple medical evac run. "~We've won a battle among many. Several of which have yet to be decided and may still be ours to claim.~" It felt odd, to be offering him that answer, but right at the same time. A reminder that there was still a chance they might get some of the others as well. Not all - even she couldn't fool herself there. But some.
Thinking about the future was just a little more than he could manage right now. His grip on the meditative pattern was slipping again, his thoughts splintering, if more gently than before. Exhaustion was catching up with him, and he hurt, inside and out. Body and soul? "I want to get to the third verse," he murmured faintly. "I want us all to get to the third verse..."
She couldn't give him that, just at that moment or even in the time to come, no matter how much she may want to - for him and all the others, as well. So instead Alison settled for something she could do, as small as a gesture as it felt, telling her that it would, at least be something, even as she started to lowly hum through the end of the song.
The minstrel boy will return, we pray,
When we hear the news we all will cheer it.
The minstrel boy will return one day,
Torn perhaps in body, not in spirit.
Then may he play on his harp in peace,
In a world such as Heaven has intended,
For all the bitterness of man must cease,
And every battle must be ended.
Her head hurt. Her head hurt terribly, and all Isabel Matsuda really wanted to do was lie down, close her eyes, and maybe whimper at the world until the headache went away. But she had teammates down, some badly hurt, and her job was to get them back to the helicopter and away.
She ignored the X-Men deliberately. It would strike her later that she shouldn't have been able to do that, that her tactical imperatives should have forced her to intervene, prevent them from taking the children and MacInnis' people away to safety. But she had her own wounded, and somehow, it was all right to focus on them. She even ignored the one X-Man carrying his wounded compatriot away from her team's helicopter. The aircraft was intact. They had an exit strategy. She had to stick to the exit strategy...
She had just laid Valeri down in the helicopter and was starting back to look for Forrester when someone caught her shoulders and she let out a shriek, before strong arms went around her and a familiar voice murmured in her ear. "Nash," she said, her voice shaking.
"Hey, Izzy. You okay?"
Matsuda looked up at him, seeing the dazed look he was wearing, the blood all over his face. Had to have been one hell of a nosebleed. He looked like he'd been crying blood, too. That was odd. She didn't realize until he raised a hand to touch her face, a hand that came away red, that she was in the same state.
"What happened?" she asked blankly. It was hard to think. Why was it so hard to think? The buzzing in her back of her head was almost enough to drive one insane.
"I don't know," Nash said exhaustedly. "Something... it hurt." He stared down at her for a long moment, his eyes utterly vacant. She finally roused herself to reach out to him, but he flinched back violently at the touch and she swallowed. Twitchy. Why were they both so twitchy? "Who are we missing?" he asked, and she could see the struggle for control on his face.
"Forrester," she said automatically. "Konstantakis. Morgan... Dyson's not answering. Have you see Ellie anywhere?"
"I... just find them." He looked back at the helicopter. "Find as many as you can," he said, his voice low and... breaking? Not like Nash at all, Matsuda thought, turning like a sleepwalker to do as she was told.
---
Kurt helps some of the children back to the Blackbird. Amazingly, they seem to have come through it all better than any of the adults.
"I'm cold," the girl in Kurt's arms muttered, her arms tightening around his neck. She was slight and dark-haired, maybe twelve at the most, had a broken leg from the crash of MacInnis' helicopter, and was obviously still suffering from the effects of the drugs given to the children to keep them sedated during transport. Her blue eyes were hazy as she looked up at Kurt. "Can we go home yet?"
Kurt nodded to her reassuringly, glancing around to make sure the other two were still following him safely. "We will take you somewhere safe to make sure you are well, and then you can go home."
One of the other two, a sturdy blonde girl a couple of years older, looked around warily at the snowy forest, tugging the blanket more tightly around herself. "They won't come back, will they?"
"They'll come back," the boy following her murmured, stumbling a bit in the snow.
"If they come back", Kurt answered honestly, "we will do all we can to make sure they do not take you again."
"Is Carey going to die?" the blonde girl asked, and sniffled. "She was nice. She was there when I woke up and told me it was going to be okay."
Kurt looked at her sadly. "I do not know. She is getting medical care, however, and they will look after her the best they can."
"How come you're blue?" the girl in his arms asked sleepily.
He smiled at her wanly. "I was born this way. It is part of my mutation."
"I got hit by a car and didn't get any bruises," the blonde girl informed him. "Didn't get any bruises when the helicopter crashed, either."
"Doesn't mean you can't die, though," the boy muttered and stumbled again, falling this time. The snow hissed around him, melting, and he whimpered, staring down at the flames licking at his hands.
Kurt turned sharply at the sound, and bent to help the boy up with his free hand. "None of you are going to die. Not if I get any say in it."
The blonde girl helped as well. "Come on, Jimmy. Can't stay here." She looked up and met Kurt's eyes, a very determined set to her jaw, as if she hadn't just been kidnapped, drugged, rescued, nearly killed in a helicopter crash, and then witness to a fairly horrific amount of violence. "They helped. We can trust them."
Kurt returned her gaze squarely, and nodded. "Yes, you can. We are going to get you out of here."
"It's like a movie," the girl in his arms murmured, closing her eyes. "Except not."
"It's not a movie," the blonde girl muttered, her jaw still very hard but blinking suddenly, rapidly.
"No, not a movie. But you will all be fine. I promise you that."
---
Madelyn discovers on the flight home that while Nathan is conscious, he's not precisely lucid. MacInnis' telepath tells her what happened, and Nathan is stunned by the implications of what it all means.
"Bad poetry," Nathan muttered, shaking his head despite the fact that it was throbbing steadily. He felt more alert than he had been, and he could actually move now, as if his body was starting to wake back up. The Blackbird was in the air, they were going home, this was all very good. But the bad poetry was still bouncing around in his mind, and the song, he couldn't get that damned song out of his head. "Bad poetry, lousy tune. Really. Terrible choice, just terrible. No taste in music..."
Madelyn glanced up from where she'd made Carey comfortable, adjusting the reflective blanket around her - it'd stop her from losing too much more heat. Hank was seeing to the medic with the skull fracture, and everyone else was stable and secure. And Nathan was sounding way too loopy for her taste. Even discounting the bleeding from places no-one was meant to bleed. Picking up her medkit, she made her way through the crowded Blackbird to where Nathan was sitting. "Okay, big guy," she said, sitting next to him and handing him an extra-thick wad of tissues for the nosebleed. "Time for the light that mimicks the sun. Do you know where you are?"
"'In the ranks of death'." Nathan laughed a bit wildly, jerking his head backwards as she reached out, smacking it against the wall of the cabin hard. He didn't notice the impact. "That's where you'll find me, isn't that how it goes?" A stranged laugh that was more than half a sob escaped him. "It's in my head still, how is it in my head?"
"It... shouldn't be." The shaky voice belonged to Elliot, who'd gotten up, unnoticed, and made his way over to them. He knelt down on Nathan's other side, peering at him for a long moment before he looked at Madelyn. "It's the Trojan Horse," he said raggedly. "The worm program. That's what took down Morgan."
"But Charles got rid of all that, didn't he?" Madelyn asked, preparing a syringe with a sedative. She didn't like to dope up someone with a head injury, but Nathan was going to hurt himself at this rate. "Nathan, it's me, Maddie. I'm not going to hurt you, but I am going to give you something to help slow things down in your head, okay?" She glanced at MacInnis, sitting nearby, watching it all silently. "I thought the Trojan Horse was supposed to kill him when he used it," she said, her voice definitely Not Friendly. "What the hell's going on here?"
Elliot answered, instead of MacInnis. "We... I helped Kritzer with it," the young man said, flushing as Madelyn turned her attention to him. "I studied her notes, after she... afterwards, I mean. There were always traces of it in the minds of the second-gen operatives she used it on, the test subjects. As if it had imprinted itself on their minds. Nathan... he was the only first-gen it was ever used on. The only telepath. It was the feedback that would have killed him, if his conditioning had broken at the same time that the Trojan Horse used his telepathy to spread itself." Elliot swallowed, clearly sensing that Madelyn Was Not Pleased. "I don't know what happened, how it's still there... but it is. It worked. Morgan... I just checked on him, and his conditioning is gone. All of it."
"And Nathan?" MacInnis asked, something very odd and strained in his voice.
Elliot reached out, his fingers barely brushing Nathan's temple before Nathan flinched away again with a moan. "In psionic shock," he said, almost wonderingly. "But... it's not too bad. He'll be okay, I think."
"One of these days people are going to stop springing nasty surprises on us," Madelyn muttered through the syringe held between her teeth as she took Nathan's arm to unzip the cuff of his uniform and inject the sedative. He tried to jerk his arm away, but she held on. "Easy, Nathan, I'm not going to hurt you," she repeated, hoping she wasn't going to need to get someone to hold him down. "So what does this mean? For Morgan and Nathan?" she asked Elliot, tone softening a little - it wasn't his fault any of this had happened. Some of that blame she was happy to give to MacInnis.
"I don't know," Elliot murmured, sounding troubled. "I was the junior member of Kritzer's team. Just there to do as I was told. And none of us even knew it would have killed him in the first place..." He trailed off, looking a bit hesitantly at MacInnis, who sighed and looked away, something close to open pain on his face.
"Means I'm a weapon," Nathan muttered faintly, his eyes unfocusing. He stopped struggling with Madelyn, abruptly. "Still just a weapon... still the fucking harp..." His expression crumpled and he laid his head down on his other arm, as if he was trying to blot out the world.
"It also means you got another one back," Madelyn pointed out, taking advantage of the sudden lack of resistance to inject the sedative." That won't put you to sleep, it'll just make things a bit warm and fuzzy, okay? I'm going to try cleaning you up a bit now, see if you've damaged anything with the telepathic theatrics..." She kept the gentle teasing tone she frequently used with Nathan, knowing he reacted to the human element of it far better than strict businesslike doctorliness. Too many reminders of Mistra. "I'm not going to be the only one wanting answers when we get back," she told Elliott and MacInnis, tearing open one of the sterile moist swabs and beginning to wipe away the drying blood from Nathan's face.
"Xavier's the only one who can figure this out, I think," Elliot said helplessly. "I just don't know what's going on."
"Morgan?" Nathan murmured suddenly, sounding calmer. "Is he okay?" He opened his eyes, blinking at Madelyn. "It all exploded. I felt it. Like stained glass."
"He's fine," Madelyn assured him. "He's out like a light, but he's fine." She glanced at Elliott. "They tell me his conditioning's completely gone."
"Gone..." Nathan said, his gaze almost focusing on her. "If he's... they're crippled." There was a growing awareness in his voice, breaking through the shock. "They're crippled."
"There's no one to replace him," MacInnis said quietly, as if to explain, when Madelyn looked back at him. "No other field commanders. When Nathan... went, they still had Tim. Tim's replacement would have been Mick, or Anika..."
"Tim..." Nathan suddenly grabbed at the inside wall, trying to pull himself to his feet. "Need to see him," he muttered. "Maddie, help...?"
"Well, that explains why they fell apart when Morgan was dropped..." Maddie dropped what she was doing as Nathan tried to climb to his feet, grabbing his arm. "Okay, okay, I'll help you see him, but nice and slow, okay? Your nose is still bleeding on and off and you don't want to do any more damage. Easy does it." She knew better than to try and stop him, and maybe seeing Morgan would help settle him. Easing herself under his arm, she got his wrist in a good grip and nodded. "Okay, on three, all right? One, two, three..." Elliott joined her on Nathan's other side, and between the three of them they got him to his feet.
Crippled. And if Morgan's conditioning was gone, if Tim was... Nathan swallowed, trying not to gag on the taste of blood. But even with that, even with the pleasant haze of the sedative and the lingering shock of that psionic explosion in the snow, part of him couldn't help but start to realize what this meant.
Crippled. Tim was free, six children who might have been conditioned were saved, and Mistra was crippled. He turned that over in his mind as Madelyn and Elliot helped him back to the stretcher where Morgan was stretched out, still dead to his suddenly altered world.
---
Madelyn, Hank and Kurt regroup a little and take stock, in one of the flight back's rare quiet moments.
Patients comfortable, or as comfortable as you could get in an over-crowded Blackbird. Kids settled, doing remarkably well for a bunch of kids rescued from brainwashing and dumped into the middle of a firefight. Now for the team... She'd seen Kurt moving awkwardly, and heard stories of guns and fortunate body armour, and he wasn't essential to flying the plane or debriefing... Madelyn made her way to where the German X-Man was sitting near the unconscious medic from MacInnis' team, watching Hank monitor her life signs and praying, if the way his lips were moving were anything to go by.
"Hey," she said. "How're my two favourite blue men doing?"
Kurt looked up at her with a rueful smile, abandoning the prayers for now. "Sore. Although it could have been worse."
"Ditto for me," Hank said, giving her a tired smile. "Although I think I rallied quite well, given how little combat training I've been doing lately. It all comes back." He turned back to the monitors... holding steady for now, thank goodness.
"I'll say - I can't tell you how glad I was to see you come through that shield of Bourne's..." Madelyn glanced over to where the Darkforce manipulator was out like a light, broken arm secure in the inflatable cast she'd put it in. "Now, I've heard rumours you got to test out the body armour," she went on, turning to Kurt. "So this would be the part where I get to poke you in the ribs and see if there's any broken."
"You hear correctly", Kurt acknowledged, wincing a little as he moved. "The metamorph was armed, and I could not teleport away in time - for the first two shots. The third time was as I disarmed him."
Hank stifled a grumble. He had sore places too, and Madelyn hadn't offered to inspect them... on the other hand, he was a doctor, and perfectly capable of determining the extent of his own injuries. Oh, well... he watched out of the corner of his eye as he monitored the medic.
"Uniform jacket off," Madelyn told Kurt, and while he was complying, turned to Hank and his patient. "How's she doing?" she asked quietly. "I've already got the girls prepping the lab for us when we get back..."
Hank nodded. "Good. We're going to need every pair of hands we can get, given the number of casualties," he said softly. "She's stable, for now - let's hope she stays that way."
Nodding and turning back to Kurt, Madelyn raised her eyebrows at the livid bruises showing up on his torso. "Ouch. If you weren't that way already, I'd have to make a joke about being black and blue all over..." Motioning for him to stand, she lay one hand carefully on the right half of his ribs. "Okay, stand up a bit straighter and breathe in for me," she instructed. "And let me know if there's any sharp broken rib type pain, okay?"
He obeyed, and was relieved to note that there was no pain worse than the bruises. "It feels... not fine, but I do not think anything is broken."
Feeling down his other side, Madelyn nodded. "I think you're right. I'll take an x-ray later, when we're done settling our guests for the night just to make sure they're not cracked, but I think we chalk up another brownie point to Kevlar." She nodded at the jacket. "I think that's going to be a bit uncomfortable to put back on, 'though..." Reaching into one of the lockers overhead, she pulled out an Xavier's sweatshirt. "That one might be a bit more comfortable."
He smiled, taking the sweatshirt from her hands. "Thank you. And yes, indeed - I am very thankful for the Kevlar just now."
Hank nodded. "How well do I know that feeling," he said with deep feeling. "I love my kevlar." He touched Maddie's shoulder lightly, checking for winces or stiffness as she turned. "Any injuries?" he asked, realizing he hadn't earlier. They'd both been too busy with patients to think about themselves or each other. "You were out of sight for a while... any hits?"
She shook her head. "Not a one. Mind you, being that close to the kids... they were looking at retrieval, not taking them out. So they were being careful not to aim too close to them, which is where I was." Glancing over at where the rescued children were fitfully dozing, she couldn't help the relieved smile. "A much better result than Vermont."
Kurt, having pulled his sweater on - carefully and slowly - followed her gaze and nodded. "Most definitely. How are the children, physically?"
"A bit dopey still, some of them - they were drugged for the trip. Slightly hypothermic, given how long they were out in the weather, and a couple are in shock... Bruises and cuts, but really, not much worse than the broken leg. MacInnis and his people did an amazing job of taking care of them considering the circumstances." Now the adrenaline was wearing off, Madelyn was realising how tired she felt. And how cold. "How about you, Hank? You okay? I noticed you were a bit out of things for a little while there - you took a few hard hits from that woman, didn't you? The energy projector?"
Hank nodded. "The random twitching wasn't any fun, either." He shook his head and smiled. "I'm fine now, though. Just tired." Okay, tired and a little fuzzy, but nothing worse than he'd expect after the kind of day he'd had. "Tired and cold," he added, looking down at his feet. He couldn't wear boots without losing most of the use of his flexible feet, and the thin sock-type affairs with roughened soles didn't do a lot to keep out the cold. It was a good thing the fur insulated them a bit. And having bare arms and hands hadn't been whole barrels of fun in the snow either. "Even with the fur."
"Well, I can tell you that us not-furry people are definitely feeling the cold as well - or not feeling it, since I've lost feeling in both feet." Madelyn grimaced a bit. "Long hot bath for me tonight, at least until my extremities thaw out."
Hank made a concerned noise. "Lost feeling completely? Let me take a look. The last thing we need is a doctor with frost-bitten toes." A big enough proportion of the X-Men were more or less resistant to cold that he sometimes forgot that not everyone was that way.
Madelyn opened her mouth to protest, but knew That Look Hank was giving her. And it did make sense, considering how cold it had been out there. "Scoot over, Kurt," she said, indicating the small amount of space next to him - seating was at a premium in the crowded 'Bird. As he complied, she squeezed in beside him, unable to repress the sigh of relief at finally sitting for the first time in what seemed very many hours. "Okay, I may need hauling back up again once we're done," she said wryly, looking down at her wet hiking boots. They seemed an awful long way away. "Help?"
Kurt gave her a slightly worried look, and bent to lift her feet into his own lap. "Let me do that."
Hank took one boot while Kurt worked on the other, unpicking the wet laces and tugging it off gently. Her socks were damp, too, never a good thing. Her feet, though, were a little pale, and cold to the touch, but he didn't see the unnatural whiteness of real freezing. "They seem all right..."
"No frostbite," Madelyn agreed, then squeaked as Hank inadvertently found the ticklish part on the bottom of my foot. "Ack! No tickling!" she protested, trying to squirm away but finding it difficult with both feet trapped.
"No frostbite, but they are very cold," Kurt muttered almost to himself, taking her nearest foot in both his hands and trying to warm it, without thinking.
Hank released the foot he'd accidentally tickled, and watched it settle back onto Kurt's lap. "You'll be fine," he said, a little more cheerfully than he felt, and turned back to check on the medic again. Head injuries. How he hated head injuries... so dangerous, so difficult to treat...
"Thanks, Hank," Madelyn said, sighing happily as blood started flowing again in her feet as Kurt kept rubbing them. Much better. If there was anything odd in Hank's tone, she didn't notice it. "I've got some dry socks tucked away in my medkit - I figured I'd need them." She made no move to get said kit, however, leaning her head against the side of the 'Bird and closing her eyes. "Keep that up and I'll drop off, 'though."
"You should sleep, if you can," Hank said, giving her a quick smile. "I'll wake you if anything happens, but otherwise, I'd like you to rest as much as you can before we get back. You're going to need to be alert and very busy once we land."
Kurt nodded his agreement. "Trust us to wake you, if anything should happen?"
Opening her eyes again briefly, Madelyn grinned. "I think so. Because you both know how very cranky I would be if you didn't."
---
Haroun tries to hold it together despite his injuries, knowing he's still got to land the Blackbird. Luckily, Alison is there to help him hold on.
Haroun slowly flicked the toggle to arm the autopilot, a small smile coming to his lips when he thought of the modification that he wanted to make but Scott wouldn't let him do. He just couldn't appreciate the merits of an inflatable airline pilot. His hands then slowly came down to the release on the five-points harness, undoing it slowly. Then gravity, so very much not his friend today, took over and sent him spilling out of the pilot's chair and to the ground. Every muscle he possessed hurt. Even his beard hurt.
"No, it's fine, sweetie," Alison said, backing into the cockpit while directing the young girl handing her the emergency medkit back towards Hank after accepting the box, several ice packs stacked on top of it. "You go and stay with the others, okay?" A look over her shoulder, and she hissed faintly, gently ushering the girl away one last time before closing the cockpit door behind her. The medkit was dumped on the pilot's chair, several of the icepacks nearly slithering over the side before Alison caught them and placed them on the floor next to Haroun. "Talk to me. Your back. What else? Don't answer everything," she added, kneeling down to very carefully ran her hands down his sides, hovering hesitantly over his shoulder.
"I hurt." he said. "I feel like I've been hit by Piotr. Everything hurts." he said, disregarding her instructions and failing to pull himself to a sitting position. "'Bird's on autopilot. Got some time to rest." How's the team?" he asked, eyes not quite focused towards Alison. "We won, right?"
"Don't. Move." She was going to sit on him if he tried that again and it was frighteningly easy to keep him in place with one hand, even as she reached for one of the ice packs, folding it in two and using the floor to snap the seal, the coolness nearly instant in her hand. "I'm going to need to peel you out of that for the cold to help. It won't go through the suit." She had enough packs for his lower back and a few to spare at that. "Entire team is on board and fine. We got the kids and Mac's team. And Morgan." Technically speaking, they'd won and were bringing back extras as well.
Haroun fumbled with the release to his uniform jacket, but his hands were shaking too badly for such fine manipulations. He cursed in Arabic and kept trying, finally managing to grab the zipper and pull it down on the sixth try. He left it open, though, as the effort was too exhausting and too painful to shrug out of the garment. "Think I got burned." he said quietly, trying to conserve his strength.
They had at least two seriously wounded in the cargo hold, one of whom had taken a turn for the worse and was taking up both Hank and Madelyn's attention entirely, but Alison was cataloguing the list of injuries as she eyed the ugly mass of bruises peeking under the jacket, near his shoulder. He was still moving the arm, though - not broken, at least. "Your bruises have got bruises on top of their bruises," she murmured, not seeing any burn marks - yet. If he thought he'd been burned, odds were high it'd be nasty. "You need ice on your back, now. Shoulder too," she added. She still wasn't feeling any of her aches, the adrenaline not having yet let go of her. This was, she decided, a good thing. "Stick to the not moving. I'm lasering the top off you. And I'll owe you a new suit, okay?"
Haroun tried to struggle to a sitting position again. "Painkillers. In the medkit. Give them to me - I can crash when we get back." he asked. He was hell-bent on getting the hell up off the deck plates and carrying his own weight around here. He was the XO, he needed to look in on the team, make sure everybody was OK...
"Stop it." She snapped the words out, giving him a flat look. "We need a pilot and Hank's got his hands full. If you're unable to land the 'bird once we're back, we're in trouble." She couldn't push down on that shoulder, damn it and cutting the suit off wasn't happening until he stopped trying to push himself up. "I'll help you up on the pilot's chair after I get ice on your back and-" she stopped, staring. "Damn. Move and not only am I knocking you out, I'm having a go at landing the 'bird myself." His arm was burnt and from the smell she was willing to bet his back was worse. A quick check and she confirmed that the leather wasn't sticking to his arm - this meant taking it off and giving the burns room to breathe was the first thing to do. Cold water wasn't an option, so the cold packs would have to do in a pinch.
Haroun tried to scowl, but it came out more as a vacant drooling nod. He held himself as still as he could, which was difficult considering all the muscle cramping that was going on. "You can't land the 'Bird." he pointed out. "Do it. Cut it offa me."
Now that he'd stopped fighting her it was considerably easier to do just that, the short laser beam kept away from him and the occasional muscle spasm not hampering her too much, thankfully. The skin of his arm was red and hot, but nothing more - first degree burn only, Alison waiting to see the rest of his injuries before deciding what to do, though she whispered a few words to Hank over the comm, warning him to be ready to help with Haroun once the graver cases has been dealt with. Once the the top of his suit was neatly lasered off, she bit back anything she might have said and instead started on his shoulder first. Two ice packs were applied carefully and then the bandage, winding it around his torso to anchor everything in place. "Shoulder isn't dislocated. Arm has first degree burns. Leaving that to air for now. Back..." She sighed, and picked up a new ice pack, snapping it active. "Second degree, at least. Talk to me."
"Ow?" Haroun said. "Power burn. Got caught in some sort of a well. Had to go full-burn to get out of it. That's where most of the bruising is from. Arm is a grab from a flame-wielder back at the chopper. No plasma burns, though." he rambled. "Need a full system diagnostic. Balance unit is malfing a little, and I think the balance rods are bent."
"Ow is good," she answered, pausing to give him a poor attempt at a smile, even though it was anything but good as far as she was concerned. No ow at all because there was no reason to say ow would have been much much better. "Ow means it's not third degree." Though even those stayed numb for only a short amount of time. No ice, no running water. The ice pack it was, for now. "I'll tell that to Hank after we land. Don't move. No moving until we have to." She sighed, keeping the ice pack in place as gently as possible, settling down next to him after sparing a glance at the autopilot. "Green across the board. You sure you don't want to try and talk me through the landing?" That'd get his attention.
Haroun blinked and looked at Alison. "Might not be a bad idea." he said with a wince. "Just standing to get back into the chair is gonna be bad enough." he said. "Gotta strap in for landing." He then fought through the fog of pain and managed to shake his head. "No. Need to land the plane myself. Too complex, too many people onboard. You're not ready."
"Okay. Rest up and move at the last minute? Or move now and then get it back together for the landing? I'm thinking option number two myself. You?" Moving him now would at least let them know if he'd be able to land them afterwards, really. "We've got a little while until we get there. And the pain meds are fairly fast acting. I'll ask Hank what the proper dosage is and we'll make sure to time that right so they don't knock you under." And at the very worse, Scott could talk her through it. If need be. Hank had his hands far too full keeping an eye on his patients right now, even with Madelyn there, to be able to do the landing himself. "We're nearly out of the jamming zone. Whatever it is Mistra used, it's localized. They didn't take it with them."
Haroun grinned and flipped Alison a thumb's up. "Up now." he said, attempting once again to climb to his feet. With Alison's help, he finally made it there, although judging by the expression on his face it sure didn't feel good. He took two steps, and then collapsed roughly into the pilot's chair. "Just gotta hold on for another few hours." he muttered to himself, half in English, half in Arabic.
Reaching into the medkit, Alison peeled several of the sterile gauze free. "Lean over just a bit," she murmured, voice soft and low. "Those burns shouldn't be directly against the seat. I'll just place some gauze on them and if you can stand it, we'll see what we can do about keeping the ice packs there too, okay?" They weren't ice cold, just cool, which was exactly what he needed though they'd probably feel freezing cold to him. "Then we'll keep that last pack on your arm, for that burn." Working in the confined of the cockpit was starting to remind her of the fact that she'd been thrown in a tree, shield or not shield, but not enough to pay attention to it yet. She'd got off easy, considering everything that could have happened.
Haroun did as was instructed. "We won, though." he said with a grin. "A victory for the X-Men. Feels pretty sweet, makes all the pain worth it." he added. "Post-op is gonna be a whole lot of fun. Threat DB is gonna get huge. And I'm gonna get medical-downchecked again. Dammit."
Moving hadn't affected him too much and he was still talking in a coherent way, the words slightly more precise than they'd been when she'd found him collapsed on the deck floor. This was, she dared to think, good. A short, sub-vocalized message to that effect was sent to Hank, quickly. "Post-op will be interesting to sort out. And we're not due for active duty for another few weeks," was the calm reply. Her hands shook slightly as she laid down the last gauze and Alison took a deep breath before moving to pick up the first of the ice packs. Now was not the time to lose it.
Haroun eased his way back into the pilot's chair. "Strap me in." he told Alison, not sparing her a look in favor of checking the Blackbird's instrumentation panels. So far, it looked like everything was just where it needed to be. Fuel was good, stealth was running at a hundred per cent, all systems were green. Unlike him. He really, really wanted a painkiller. And then about a gallon of Gatorade to drink. And then he wanted to sleep for a week. But he had to hang on.
The ice packs in place, easily removed when they warmed up. Nodding, Alison carefullly set about clipped the harness in place, loosening the straps before buckling anything in place and then slowly tightening them to something approximating safe but not too snug either. She then retrieved his tabs and the comm unit from the remains of his jacket, placing both on the console within his reach. "There." She should probably, she knew, go back and check on the people they were bringing back once more at one point, as well as the team. Instead she leaned over, lips brushing against his cheekbone lightly, delaying just a bit longer. "Is there anything I can get you?"
Haroun smiled a very sore and bruised smile. "Not right now. Go check on the others, make sure everyone's going to be all right." he said, pain leaking out all over his voice. "And when you come back, a painkiller and some Gatorade would be lovely."
She glanced one last time as his comm, making sure it was well within reach. "Okay, I'll go do that. Give me an update on the flight now and then over the comm, mm?" A transparent way to ask for him to just check in with her at regular intervals, but it would do to keep her from peeking into the cockpit every other five minutes. "I need to check in on Nathan." At least, she told herself, the medical emergencies were under control, everyone was fine, taking care of Mac's team or the children, if not assisting Madelyn and Hank. "I shouldn't be too long."
"We did good today." he said, then winced as some of his more battered muscles protested. Loudly. "Go on, check the others. I'll give you sitreps as things change."
---
Alison checks on Nathan, who's remembered something else from the moment of the explosion, something that makes their victory bittersweet.
Morgan was unconscious, deeply enough unconscious that Nathan couldn't make clear contact with his thoughts, not even to offer a little reassurance. Though maybe that had more to do with the state of his head than the state of Tim's. Nathan laughed suddenly, shakily, ignoring the wary looks he got from elsewhere in the cabin. He pressed the heels of his hands to his forehead, willing his thoughts to slow down. Was the sedative wearing off? He didn't feel quite as panicked as he had been, but the words were still bouncing around in there. "His father's sword he hath girded on," Nathan heard himself mutter almost desperately. "Not the harp. Really not the harp."
Stepping out of the cockpit and closing it behind her, Alison nodded at Hank as he looked up at her - nothing had changed since the last time she'd updated him on Haroun's more obvious hurts and pulling him out of the cockpit wasn't happening, just yet. Nathan's quiet mutters drew her attention though and she veered slightly away from her original destination, heading for him instead, the soles of her shoes making enough noise on the decks of the cargo hold of the 'bird to warn him of her approach.
Nathan shivered and flinched away from the person who knelt down beside him, before he realized it was Alison. "He's out," he said, and the words spilled over each other as he went on. "Right out. Torn his chords asunder and all that. I didn't know. This is a good thing, right? But I didn't know. I didn't consciously do it. It's still in my head and I don't know how..."
Alison first thought was that somehow, Nathan had kept it there - she couldn't think of any other reason why it should still be there, when Charles had been working with him so closely for so long. "Nathan, look at me." She reached out slowly, hands open and projecting each next move as best she could. "Need you to concentrate just for a second, ok? Maybe this will help a bit..."
Nathan bit back another unsteady laugh. Didn't need to be laughing like a maniac. Really, really didn't. "Help?" His unfocused gaze moved, almost of its own accord, back to Tim's still face, and he nearly gagged at the taste of blood at the back of his throat. Nose was bleeding again? "My fault, you know, I was trying to reach him telepathically, get around the triggers..."
Sense didn't have anything to do with this but Alison still shook her head gently, reaching out to lightly tilt his head, noting the beginning of a nose bleed - the least to be expected, considering what had happened. "Give me a second," she fetched a compress pad and an ice pack from one of the many medkits secured to the floor around them, snapping it shut before returning to his side. Calm. She had to be calm and steady, for a while still. "Here... easy now."
"I know now," he muttered more faintly. "I know now, I get it... why..." He trailed off, his eyes moving unerringly to MacInnis, even though he couldn't quite make the old rat bastard out among all the others crowded into the plane. "Doesn't really change... nothing really changed..."
"Lean forward just a bit, there you go." It was, in a way, almost like when Miles woke up from a nightmare and still very much had difficulty seperating the bad dream which had been his way of life before, and the reality of now. "Saaaa, nareth ne," she crooned lowly in Askani, simple soothing words, settling her breathing into something slow and regular, focusing on being calm. The ice pack was wrapped in the compress, applied lightly and then a bit more firmly to help slow the nose bleed.
Almost without realizing it, he was echoing her slower breathing, echoing the pattern tracing itself slowly in her mind. Basic meditation pattern. And his thoughts wanted to stop spinning, he guessed, because it wasn't as hard as it should have been to concentrate on it. "I could have killed him," he mumbled, some of the implications of what had happened beginning to sink in.
"But you didn't," was the soothing reply, Alison sparing a glance towards Morgan, but only just that. Now wasn't the time to dwell on her own issues, not just yet. Helping Nathan was what she was concentrating on now. It helped a great deal to keep her calm as well, in fact. "He's right here. The kids are here too."
"The others..." His vision was blurring suddenly, wetness trickling down his cheeks. Blood? No, it had been blood earlier. Not again. Bleeding from the eyes was bad. "It reached the others, I felt it... didn't break it for them, just cracks..." It had come to him out of the confused mess of his thoughts, finally. The memory of that moment, of nearly a dozen thought-patterns reflecting in his mind, all in stained-glass. All with cracks, now. But they'd run. They'd gotten away...
The words hit hard, even as Alison nonetheless struggled to hang on to the quiet and calm within. Had to, for Nathan's sake - she could break later. But there were tears as well and it was possible, she discovered, to grieve like this. The memory of Nash smiling at her as he disappeared in the storm, wishing her luck while taking the out she'd offered him would come back to haunt her, she knew. "We got Mick. We got Morgan." She left the rest unsaid, for now. But it was there, just as the offer to get the first had been there, months ago.
"They're alone." He couldn't see. The plane was breaking apart into shimmering blurs, and he could hardly catch his breath. "They're alone, there's no one left to help them live, and they tried so hard... Alison, they could have killed some of us, but they didn't." He'd seen it in Morgan's mind as they'd fought, his memory of turning off the radio. The faint smiles, or at least acceptance, on the faces of most of the other operatives in the aircraft. Flexibility. Giving them flexibility, one little act of defiance that had meant everything.
"I know. I know they didn't." It was getting hard to stay calm, or at least to not let the sorrow surge through, even if the jagged edges of it all were still deep under the surface, for now. So she stopped struggling with that at least, because they deserved that much. Regardless of everything else, they deserved that and she wondered how many of the reports would show that some if not all of the Mistra operatives had held on just enough to give their opponent small hints and clues, breathing room to win over them. "But we know. We know. It's not over yet," she whispered, not caring if MacInnis or any of his people - or anyone else in the cargo hold, for that matter, might hear her.
Nathan wiped at his tears with a sudden, sharp movement, trying to catch his breath. Find his composure. "My head," he whispered shakily. "I still... it's slowing down, but I still can't think. Can't sort through this..."
The nose bleed had finally ebbed and Alison pulled away the ice pack and the compress, setting both next to him, still moving slowly, as though the physical control she was imposing on herself might help with keeping her mental condition stable as well. "Shh. Go through the pattern. Doesn't matter if you can't stick to it through everything. Think later. You don't need to now."
Drawing in on himself, Nathan laid his head down on his folded arms, sighing raggedly. Beside him, on the stretcher, Tim laid there, his breathing labored but constant. "~We take our victories where we can... is that what I'm supposed to be telling myself, sister?~" Nathan murmured brokenly.
She leaned forward, sighing tiredly but still holding on to the calm and the self-control, and rested a hand on his shoulder. They had gained something here, more than expected - especially considering that this had been meant to be a simple medical evac run. "~We've won a battle among many. Several of which have yet to be decided and may still be ours to claim.~" It felt odd, to be offering him that answer, but right at the same time. A reminder that there was still a chance they might get some of the others as well. Not all - even she couldn't fool herself there. But some.
Thinking about the future was just a little more than he could manage right now. His grip on the meditative pattern was slipping again, his thoughts splintering, if more gently than before. Exhaustion was catching up with him, and he hurt, inside and out. Body and soul? "I want to get to the third verse," he murmured faintly. "I want us all to get to the third verse..."
She couldn't give him that, just at that moment or even in the time to come, no matter how much she may want to - for him and all the others, as well. So instead Alison settled for something she could do, as small as a gesture as it felt, telling her that it would, at least be something, even as she started to lowly hum through the end of the song.
The minstrel boy will return, we pray,
When we hear the news we all will cheer it.
The minstrel boy will return one day,
Torn perhaps in body, not in spirit.
Then may he play on his harp in peace,
In a world such as Heaven has intended,
For all the bitterness of man must cease,
And every battle must be ended.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}