Mending

Rating: T

Summery: Oneshot sequel to "And Hope to Die". Gil visits Liam in St Mungo's and finds that some things mend better when left alone. Liam, Break and Gil centric.

Characters: Gil, Liam, Break.

Comments: This was actually the original third chapter to 'And Hope to Die' but it really didn't go with the first two and got way too bogged down with back story. I ended up rewriting the chapter from Liam's point of view and tucked this away to make into a one-shot. Only now, months later, have I actually managed to finished it. Most of the back story here got worked into the third chapter, but Gil's perspective on these two was always something I've liked and I wanted to get back into this AU. Please tell me what you think.

Gilbert Nightray crossed the floor of St. Mungo's, his dark coat standing out notably against all of the bright robes of the wizards and witches. He slipped around the line for the front desk, not needing to ask where he was going since he had already visited here several times in the past week.

He knew the floor, he knew the room, he knew exactly who would be in there, but he had no idea what kind of condition one of them would be in.

The conclusion of that night in the woods had been among one of the worst things that Gil had even seen in his whole short career as an Auror. Privately he looked up to both Break and Lunettes, they had been, arguably, the best team the ranks had had and… well, they had saved his life back on his first mission when things had gone horribly wrong.

He was fairly sure they had even been involved in that incident with his brother that had ended with Vincent being caught at what he'd been up to. He didn't particularly blame them for that; Vince had brought that all on himself.

But Gil had been the one, that night, to find where the two had ended up after first Liam and then Break had vanished into the forest. To his dying day he would remember the scene he had discovered. How a bloody and swaying Liam had leveled a wand at him, ignoring the fact that he was on his knees and looked about to drop. How it had actually taken Gil a moment to tell who it was under all that blood but when he had recognized him he had cautiously called his name.

How, on hearing his voice, and apparently knowing it Liam had lowered his wand, said, "Oh… Gil… you…'re… here… go…od…" and collapsed across what turned out to be Break's unconscious body.

The others had arrived only seconds after that and together the group had sorted out the mess they had found. The body of Baskerville had been covered and removed and once the healer had arrived with his apprentice in tow they had immediately set to work on the two wounded Aurors.

Break's tally of injuries was short; he had a minor head wound, a concussion, a few burns, and more than a couple of truly black and blue bruises. He was revived and back on his feet after only twenty minutes, Sharon, the healer's apprentice, was very good.

Liam, however, commanded all of the healer's attention and had a much nastier list of injuries. Two of his fingers had been snapped, a cut across his check was so deep it showed white bone at the bottom, and he had been burned on his arm and hands. And those were the relatively minor injuries; much more serious was the gash from his shoulder to his hip, the amount of blood he must have lost through it obviously had the healer worried.

He had been unable to revive the other Auror and had requested, and received, permission to Apparate the both of them back to London and St. Mungo's -speed was given precedence over the danger of Apparting someone who was so severely wounded.

And now it was a solid week later and Gil still had no idea if Liam would be awake and rational this visit. It was his third visit and Liam had been asleep for two and the other… well, he might have been awake but he was so groggy and disorientated that he hadn't even seemed to recognize him. Break said that that was exactly how he had been the other handful of times he had briefly woken and he would lapse back into sleep after only a few confused minutes. Apparently it wasn't completely unexpected from someone who had to be so extensively magically healed after loosing so much blood but Gil was beginning to strongly suspect that this was an effect that lasted too long to be explained away.

However because he wasn't sure if Liam would be awake or not he had brought two sets of gifts, one a pile of paperwork, that was in case Liam was awake (as there was an awful lot of paperwork piling up on his desk back at the Ministry and getting some of it done would probably give Liam something to do while he recovered), and a tin of candies, in case Liam was still unconscious so he could gave something to Break, who would, without a doubt, be there.

Some might have considered it strange to camp out in an old friend's hospital room while they were asleep, and certainly the hospital staff had, Gil had heard, but eventually they must have filed Break's refusal to adhere to normal visiting hours under 'strange things that Aurors did'.

From Gil's point of view it made perfect sense. Not only were wounded Aurors, especially unconscious ones, easy targets for a malicious-minded or vengeful Death Eater but Aurors spent years acquiring the kind of reflexes that meshed very badly with waking up in a strange place full of unknown people. The fact that they all tended to be powerful witches and wizards did not help. Accidents had happened often enough that the staff was very careful with any Auror that they cared for, almost always isolating them in their own room for their own, and everyone else's, safety.

So from that standpoint Break's behavior made sense but that wasn't all there was to it. For the past five years Break and Liam had worked together on countless cases, they were a good team, since their wildly opposing natures compensated well for each other's weaknesses and even if Liam grumbled about the paperwork Gil could tell the partnership worked well. There were more than a few office legends about the things those two had pulled off between them.

And they had been the ones to blast into that castle in Scotland and break him out. And they'd all lived to tell the tale, which, considering the nastiness of the witch that owned the castle, was surprising.

But since Gil had been friends of sorts with both ever sense he suspected he knew the real reason, under all the obvious ones, that kept Break at St. Mungo's. It wasn't common knowledge that Liam heavily disapproved of Break's new relationship with a, admittedly much younger, apprentice healer. Sharon apparently was a childhood friend of Liam's and the other man seemed to think Break was taking advantage of her.

The rift this had driven between the two friends had meant that they went on no more missions together; it had gotten so bad that they barely spoke to each other in the office. Besides Gil no one else knew of Break and Sharon's rather discrete relationship and the breakup of the wonder team was a mystery much pondered over by the Auror workforce as a whole.

Then Liam's strange mistake on that mission that had resulted in the unfortunate and accidental death of the child of a Death Eater during said dark wizard's arrest had gotten Liam demoted back to the very lowest ranks of the Aurors, putting the final nail in the coffin of the wonder team with a spectacular fight between Break and Liam about the validity of the demotion (Break against on the grounds that the death had been an accident and Liam for on the grounds that accident or not it was still a death) that Gil had only witnessed because he'd been the only other Auror insane enough to be in the office at three in the morning on a Saturday. The things that had been said were not those easily dismissed and for a moment Gil had honestly thought they were going to come to blows.

It had seemed unlikely that the two men would ever work together again.

But then the Baskerville had started carving a path of destruction across the country, leaving poor mutilated bodies of ministry supporters and their families behind her and Break had been one of the several Aurors assigned to the case, along with Gil. Not long after they realized exactly how many bodies they were dealing with Liam was also assigned to the case, demotion or not he was still the best at dealing with the insane amount of paperwork that accumulated during long cases.

Gil had been rather glad of that, he had watched both men gradually get on speaking terms again, then move toward camaraderie, then shift toward a sort of tentative friendship that looked like, given enough time, might have sprouted back into the partnership they once had.

Now it looked like Break was taking some lessons in guilt for not being there soon enough in the forest for his friend and then, after arriving, failing so spectacularly to pull off the rescue he had meant to. That was probably the real reason that Break was all but camping in Liam's room.

Reaching out Gil gave the door a warning knock then opened it to see that Break was looking up from his book, he was seated in the tiny private room's only chair, which had been drawn up to the bedside. "You again?" he asked lightly, putting the book aside. "You're going to become a regular if you keep this up, Seaweed Head."

Making a face at Alice -Sharon's American, and slightly eccentric, cousin-'s chosen nickname for him Gil proffered the candies. "Here. I thought you might be running out."

From the eager way that Break reached for the sweets Gil had guessed right.

Cautiously Gil glanced over at the bed. Liam still was asleep, or unconscious, or in a coma, no one was really sure. Still was the operative word. "No changes?" he asked Break.

The other man laughed. "Take a closer look."

Gil did just that and noticed that Liam had glasses resting on his nose. Now that he was looking he could also see Liam had a book resting on his stomach, as if he had been reaching, had placed it down for a moment, and fallen asleep.

"He woke up?" Gil asked, incredulous. "Finally?"

"Just yesterday. Tried to jinx me before I got him to realize it was only me."

"I thought that might happen. Remember that one time with Rushford?"

With a chuckled Break said, "Well, technically there was no harm done on that one, just a good amount of embarrassment once they changed that healer back from a chicken."

"True enough." Gil glanced over at the bed again. "So how long was he awake? Did you two have a chance to…" he let the end of the sentence trail.

"We talked." Break said, but not shortly. "And we managed to even talk about Sharon without argument. It was quite… pleasant."

"Maybe even… friendly?" Gil offered.

"Don't talk about what you don't know about." said Break, but not unpleasantly. It was almost as if he was in too good a mood to properly snap at him.

All the same Gil backed off a little. "If you want, now that he's awake I can take a watch. You could go home, get some new clothes, and maybe get more rest than you'd get here."

Break shook his head. "No. That's not necessary. Sharon already brought me what I need."

"Are you sure? It must get pretty dull here."

"Not when he's awake." Break nodded toward Liam. "All I needed was candy for this little camp-out to be perfect. Now that you've supplied that I'm quite fine."

"I'm sure he wouldn't blame you for going home now that he's awake." As soon as the words crossed his lips Break went very still and Gil realized he'd crossed the line again. He might be close to these two but that didn't make him part of their partnership.

"I said I'll stay." Break said stiffly.

"Right… sorry."

The stillness broke in a smile and he waved a hand at Gil. "Think nothing of it. Now," he spun Gil before the other man realized what was going on and propelled him toward the door. "Out, out."

Catching himself from falling on the doorframe Gil made to turn back but a very firm hand on his shoulder kept him from doing it and forced him out into the hall. In spite of the fact that he was much smaller than Gil himself Xerxes Break was quite strong.

"Go home." Break told him. "I've got this covered quite thoroughly."

There was a sleepy murmur from inside the room. "… who… is… that?"

Break gave him another shove. "Come back later." he told him.

And Gil would, because he could tell that Break wanted this time for himself and was not willing to share. Well, mending a friendship took time.

He would come back tomorrow. With more candy.

End