"Christina! Practice is starting! Let's go!" Wildwing shouted back into the locker room before skating to his goal. It was nearly ten minutes before the human appeared on the ice, not saying a word to anyone. Mallory shot her a dirty look.
"It's about time."
"Leave me alone, Mallory." There was no hint of anger or nastiness in the comment; it was mostly just tired.
"Ex-cuse me?"
"Leave it, Mallory," Wildwing sighed. "We've talked about his, Chris. If you're going to live here, you're going to train with us, and if you train with us, you're going to follow the rules. When you're late, there are consequences. You'll do laps after practice."
"Whatever," she muttered, using her stick to separate out a handful of pucks from the pile dumped on the ice. Wildwing narrowed his eyes.
"You just doubled your laps from thirty to sixty." He was going to work this attitude out of her one way or another.
She sighed and set up a shot, this time responding more appropriately. "Yes, sir."
Shaking his head, Wildwing rearranged himself in front of his goal and called for practice to resume. He was forced to turn his attention away from her then, but he was certain he'd seen her wince as she'd drawn back her stick to shoot.
A half an hour later, he was reminded of his concern. Tanya had just checked Christina into the boards, and where normally the girl would have recovered about as quickly as anyone, this time, she didn't. For several long seconds she leaned heavily on the boards, eyes squeezed shut, gasping in apparent pain. Then she started skating again, slowly at first, almost unsteadily, as if trying but not entirely succeeding in shaking off whatever had stopped her.
"Chris? You all right?"
She nodded, but she wasn't looking at him. Tanya skated toward her, an almost motherly look of concern on her face.
"I didn't think I hit you that hard... Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine, all right? Lay off!"
Tanya looked stricken, and Wildwing resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "All right, Chris, all right. Let's try it again." He gave a few extra instructions, and they started over. Again Christina failed to dodge Tanya's check, and again, the girl appeared as if she was in intense pain. This time, in fact, when Tanya let her go, she fell to her knees, doubled over and gasping.
Wildwing was away from his goal instantly, calling for the others to stop the play. When he reached Christina, she was struggling to get her feet back under her, swatting away Tanya's attempts to help her, and was again leaning heavily on the boards. He grabbed her elbow to support her; she tried to swat him away, too, but he wouldn't let her.
"Chris, what is it? What's wrong?"
She shook her head, but the grimace on her face and the tears rolling down her cheeks betrayed her. She tried to pull her arm away from him, and all at once he remembered how abruptly she'd given up the argument after her temper tantrum the night before. He let go, but only long enough to pull his own gloves off. Then he grabbed her forearm and pulled it toward him.
"It's your hand, isn't it?"
"I'm... fine..." She pulled on her arm again, but this time he held strong, his voice rising a full two octaves in disbelief that she was still trying to deny that anything was wrong.
"You are not 'fine', you just collapsed! It is your hand, isn't it? Let me see."
"What's wrong, Wing?" Duke had appeared next to him. In fact, the entire team had crowded around them in concern.
"Nothing," Christina growled, trying again to pull away. Wildwing frowned at her, pulling back.
"She's hurt. Let me see your hand, Chris." He started to pull her glove off; she curled her hand to stop him, squeezing her eyes shut again in such obvious pain that her denials were now absolutely absurd.
"Lemme go."
"No."
"Let go!"
"Not until you let me see your hand!"
"No!" She tried harder than ever to pull free, this time with her whole body. Growling in frustration and holding her injured hand out of harm's way, he grabbed her by the collar and shoved her hard against the boards, using his greater weight to his advantage to hold her there and free both his hands. The team watched wide-eyed as Wildwing pulled her sleeve up, ripped off the padding from her forearm, then wrapped his hand around her arm just below her glove and squeezed.
"Stop it!" Christina yelped.
"Let me see you hand." he returned through gritted teeth.
"No! Damn it, I hate you! Just let me go!" She struggled, but to no avail—Wildwing was simply too strong.
"Uh, b-bro..."
"Wildwing, I think maybe—"
"Just wait," he responded to his teammates' concerned attempts to calm him down. He didn't move but to counter her attempts to escape, his grip on her arm unrelenting as he watched Christina's expression through narrowed eyes.
"You're hurting me!" she finally wailed, flailing for whatever buttons she could press that would make him let go. But he wouldn't. He couldn't. For her sake, he had to do this.
"Then stop fighting me!" he growled back, tightening his grip.
She was caving, he knew she was. He could see it in her eyes, anger melting away, leaving only pain and exhaustion. But still, she refused to let him remove her glove, tightening her hand as much as she could manage, squeezing her eyes shut and taking deep, desperate breathes in an attempt to stave off the pain her resistance was causing. He tightened his hand one last time, trying not to think of the bruises he had to be inflicting. Because if he was right, the damage to her hand was much, much worse than he'd assumed last night.
All at once and against her will, Christina's hand went limp, and she slumped, defeated. Wildwing gently, oh-so-carefully tugged her glove off with his other hand, and only when he had that done did he finally dare to release his vice-grip on her arm. Her forearm was already bearing a faint bruise that was sure to darken in the next few hours, but it paled in comparison to what she'd been hiding.
There were gasps of horror all around. Wildwing let Christina off the boards, turning his full attention to her at last revealed injury. He felt faintly sick at the sight of it—how could he have been so stupid? A person, human or duck, couldn't just slam a bare fist into solid metal and glass without injury, not as hard as she'd struck. But he'd been distracted and he'd let that distraction lead to this.
"Mother o' Ducks..." Duke muttered, barely above a whisper. "What the hell happened t'your hand, kid?"
She didn't look at him. She wasn't, in fact, looking at anyone, but instead had closed her eyes, tears of pain flowing freely down her face as Wildwing carefully turned her hand palm-down, to get a better look at the damage. She'd bandaged it herself, but the damage to the skin, the split knuckles and cuts from the shattered display and electrical burns from the mangled electronics which Wildwing found as he began unwrapping it were nothing.
Stupid, he accused of himself. Unbelievably blind.
"Chris, why didn't you tell me?" She didn't answer. She still wouldn't open her eyes, gasping and stifling whimpers as he gingerly inspected her thoroughly blackened hand. Tears flowed freely down her face behind the visor of her mask, and she'd paled significantly since he'd gotten her glove off. Without even activating the Mask, he could tell her small, swollen hand was broken. Shattered. He shook his head, too mortified by what he was seeing to be angry anymore.
Mallory was gaping at the wound, wide-eyed. "...Is that how she busted up Drake One?"
Wildwing nodded numbly, to further murmurs of disbelief.
"Why didn't you tell me it was this bad, Chris?" he repeated. She stared at her hand and muttered something too quietly for him to make out. "What?" he asked gently as he moved to stand at Christina's right side, putting his left arm around her shoulders to support her and cradling her right hand carefully in his right.
"I didn't want t'get yelled at, all right?" she repeated, averting her eyes. He blinked at her.
"What... Chris, why would I yell at you? Especially if you're hurt?" She just shook her head, either unable or unwilling to answer. He continued to stare. That she could do this, do this to herself, and not scream or cry or seemingly react to the pain in any way, at least not immediately, was incomprehensible. That she'd deliberately hid the injury, knowing it was serious, knowing it would mean permanent damage if not treated immediately, knowing they could treat it, not just treat it but treat it better than any human doctor on the planet... And still she'd tried to hide it. Fought him desperately when he'd confronted her.
Why? Pride? Simple, blinding pride? Or was it something more insidious? His mind backtracked another minute or so through their conversation the night before. An image he'd deliberately filed away froze before his mind's eyes, and the sick feeling doubled.
She'd flinched. Just barely, but she had flinched.
My God, he thought. She's afraid of me.
Well, if that was the case, he'd just have to prove she could trust him.
"C'mon, let's get your gear off and get you down to the infirmary. Tanya, Mallory," he added with a glance, but both had already fallen into step on the human's other side. "The rest of you can go; practice is over."