A/N: Oh, sadness. We left off with Tezz and Agura (never thought I'd write that!). I like this chapter's title because the entire team is trying to cope with the same situation, but in their own separate ways. Hope you like it too.
Chapter 3: Same Battle, Different Levels
When Agura awoke her eyes met a room that was not familiar. The color scheme would indicate that it was Tezz's and she quickly sat up in worry. There was a blanket wrapped loosely around her but other than that she was lying on top of the covers and Tezz was nowhere to be found.
And she was so, so tired. For a second she couldn't remember what she was doing there, but then it all came flooding back.
"Vert!" She gasped and shot out of the bed. Agura threw open Tezz's door and decided to worry about why she was there in the first place later. But when she reached the infirmary, the sign was still posted, and she could hear furious beeping from behind the door. Her watch read 6:30 am; she had only slept for a few hours.
"Agura. You're awake." A hand on her shoulder sent her spinning around defensively, but it was only Tezz. Agura relaxed, but only for a moment before tensing again.
"I woke up in your room," she said quietly. Tezz's eyebrows rose.
"Yes, I could not access yours," he explained. "It would have been rude to leave you in the hallway."
"You shouldn't have done that."
"It was not an inconvenience." Tezz shrugged.
"No, Tezz, you really shouldn't have done that." Agura said firmly.
"Agura, it did not mean anything—" Tezz started, his efforts in vain.
"But it could have!" Agura snapped and instantly regretted it upon seeing the hurt expression in his eyes. It was not often that Tezz showed such concern for his teammate, and she regretted not being more grateful. "I-I'm sorry. I know you were only trying to help but…with Vert, the way he is…I just can't take that chance."
Tezz allowed himself a soft, forced smile, for the sole purpose of easing her guilt. Her reasoning was understandable. Logical, even. So why did it feel like she had stuck a knife in his back? "I would not want you to," he swallowed hard.
"Thank you." Agura closed her eyes and sighed heavily. "Do you…do you know anything?" She did not need to elaborate for him to know she was referring to procedures in the room they were standing in front of.
"No." Tezz shook his head. "Sage still has the med-bay in lockdown." He saw the disappointment in her eyes and then the dark circles beneath them. "You should sleep."
"I've slept plenty." Agura avoided his eyes.
"You've only slept for a few hours, two and twenty-six minutes approximately. That's hardly enough for the human body to function." Tezz frowned.
"I can't sleep knowing he's in there." Agura said firmly. "I…I think I'll go for a walk," she murmured, more to herself than him. Tezz watched as she slowly drifted away, more floating than in any particular direction. The night had been dark and long but by morning they had all managed to find each other, wandering into the game room not so much by choice but by instinct. No effort was made to organize a meal or even communicate, they operated unconsciously but somehow in harmony at the same time. If Zoom got up for a drink he would bring a few glasses back to the room with him to be shared with the others. If AJ stood up to leave the room he would offer to retrieve anything anyone else might need. They didn't speak of the incident, or the med-bay, or Vert. Only of the little things, the mundane, daily conversations that might have taken place, just short snippets of meaningless talk punctuating stretches of silence. Agura was probably the worst off; she hadn't spoken and moved only to accept a mug of tea from Sherman. It was still cradled in her hands, untouched, the steam long gone. When the clock above the door chimed noon it startled all of them, and the cold tea in her hands spilled all over her clothing. It was an ordinary event that usually would set off an array of responses, some mocking and some concerned, but because it had happened now, in their situation, nobody knew what do say or do. The room was frozen for what could have been an eternity until finally, Sherman stood up.
"Let me help you with that," he offered, taking the mug and offering his free hand for her to stand up.
"No." Agura said suddenly, taking the cup back from him and standing on her own. "I've got it." She left them, retreating into the kitchen, and her teammates exchanged worried glances, but nobody said anything. She was gone for thirty minutes and Sherman was about to stand up when Agura returned, a tray in her hands. On it, six sandwiches, a water pitcher along with cups and plates and a bowl of neatly cut apple slices. She wordlessly placed the tray on the center table and sat down in silence, and her teammates slowly took their plates and cups and began to eat.
Nobody mentioned that she was wearing Vert's t-shirt.
The nourishment lightened the mood, even though it worried them that she still wasn't eating.
Around four Sage finally made an announcement. It boomed over the Stormshock alert speakers all throughout the base but only truly resonated within the seven individuals clustered together in the game room, left with only each other to hold on to.
"All team members please report to the Hub."
Everybody had stood up and was gone in seconds. Sage met them in the center of the massive structure, the underground fortress that seemed to Agura much too big for the nine of them now, with an odd expression on her face.
"How is he?" Zoom was the first to break the silence.
"Vert is…fine." Sage managed to say. "His condition is stable. He cannot have any visitors for a weeklong lockdown period in which even I will avoid from the med-bay and allow his body to heal and the graft to be integrated into his immune system."
"Why is that?" Agura asked softly, and Sage's eyes darted around uneasily.
"The new layer of epidermis is still extremely susceptible to antigens. I do not want to risk infection," the Blue Sentient explained uneasily.
"A new…skin layer?" Spinner repeated dubiously, as if trying to process it. "Sage…why?"
Sage faltered. "The Vandals, as some of you have seen, were cruel to him."
"How cruel? What did they do to him?" AJ demanded angrily, defensive of his best friend.
"He appeared to have been—"
"Sage!" Sherman stopped her. Zoom and AJ had still not seen the pre-med-bay body and he didn't want them to know the grisly details. "The details don't matter—"
"What, you think I can't handle it?!" Zoom stepped forward angrily. "I've been with this team for two years, Sherman, I've seen things most kids never will! If you can't tell me now then I don't even see why you guys have me here!" His outburst left his comrades frozen in silence; nobody sure of what to say or do. Zoom held his defensive position for just a few more moments, waiting for someone to pick a fight, before his shoulders finally sunk and he stepped back in line.
"I just…wish you guys would stop trying to protect me from this stuff."
"They burned him alive."
Everybody turned their heads in surprise to the person the cold, detached words had come from.
"They lit his body on fire until everything was burned away and his skin was scorched black, black like ashes and red like blood, and in some places there wasn't any skin left and then all you could see was what was underneath—"
"Agura…" Sherman said quietly. The way she was speaking disturbed all of them, like she was reading a ghostly description of a human corpse that had been slowly roasted to death. It was robotic and disconnected, and her eyes were far away, as if the words hadn't even come from her. Zoom looked uneasy.
"And that was just more muscle and flesh and blood, blood everywhere, all over the black and all over the body until your vision just blurred and all you could see was him and that red covering him, covering the black, covering everything—"
"Agura, that's enough." Sherman warned, but his words didn't even register with her. She was in another place and another time and they clearly weren't part of it, but she was dragging them in and it was terrifying. She looked haunted.
"His face was so scorched you wouldn't have known it was him unless you saw his eyes, because they were open and red, and the eyelids scorched and black, and he just looked so broken and so hurt—"
"STOP!" Zoom clamped his hands over his ears and closed his eyes as if he could erase the image she had just depicted. "Please, stop, I don't want to hear any more!"
"You wanted to know!" Agura snapped, yanked from the trance-like state by his cry and fully furious. "Just because you're tired of being protected doesn't mean you can go trying to prove yourself all of the time! You think you're some sort of fearless warrior who can hold the world on his shoulders without anyone's help? Nobody here needs to prove that they haven't gone soft! Nobody here needs to feel responsibility for keeping somebody else out of danger! You may think you can handle something but don't you see what happens when you can't?!"
Her outburst left everybody silent
"Agura…I don't think it's Zoom you're talking about." Stanford finally said softly, and she clenched her fist and turned away from them, facing the wall of the Hub.
"You're right, Stan," she murmured. "I'm sorry."
Zoom was still pale from the incident but he still managed to respond. "Don't worry about it," the scout said shakily.
"No," Agura repeated faintly, more talking to herself than any of them. "I'm so sorry."
Something told her teammates that she was not referring to her tirade.
The next week was a long one. Thankfully no Stormshocks arose because the team simply wouldn't have had the heart to fight. Instead time was spent as it normally would be in lulls of activity. In fact, unless you had truly spent time with the Battle Force 5 and become familiar with their team dynamic, you hardly would have noticed a change at all.
Not the loneliness in Zoom's usually attentive eyes.
Not the worry lines perpetually etched on Sherman's expression.
Not the tiniest slouch in Stanford's once haughty posture, or the missing arrogance formerly so identifiable in his voice.
Not the half-heartedness Spinner now constantly displayed, or that even in his video games there was no fight in his eyes.
Not the droop of Tezz's nose so that he wasn't always looking down on his teammates from behind it.
And only if you were truly familiar with him would you have picked up on the listlessness in AJ's massive form, the vibrancy gone from his once so animated personality.
But even a complete stranger would have known something was wrong with Agura.
Agura, who had never let them see her sweat.
Agura, who had always been so strong.
Agura, who had loved Vert more than anything.
Agura, who was broken.
She seldom engaged with her teammates anymore. Rarely ate, rarely spoke. Sometimes she would walk into the kitchen only to walk out just moments later. Sometimes she wouldn't walk anywhere at all, curled up in the same spot of the couch she and Vert had always shared for hours on end. At first, her teammates would avoid the game room at this time to give her peace, but they soon came to realize that even though she was there, she was not there at all. It started with Spinner, who would drop in and start a round of Slugbots to keep his mind off of things. Then one by one their other teammates would trail in, sit down, finding comfort only in each other and vacantly watching Spinner's tired thumbs fight off the animated antagonists without really seeing anything at all. Agura was unresponsive no matter what they did. Late at night when everyone finally filed out she would remain, gazing at nothing, thinking about everything. No effort was made to ask her to move because they knew it would be in vain. Sherman would catch her wandering the Hub, late at night, half awake and half dreaming. She told him, in the few words she would speak throughout that week, that she couldn't sleep without Vert.
Those had been seven long nights. Sherman had finally asked Sage for an override code into Agura's room just to make sure she got some sleep. Some nights she was too exhausted to fight him but on others he would find her out again just half an hour later. On the fifth night she stopped fighting and silently compromised, falling asleep on the couch.
Sherman was not the only teammate supporting her. On the third day Stanford stopped Agura on one of her many wanders when she was passing through the kitchen.
"Hungry?" The Brit offered as she drifted in. The question jerked her out of her daze, and she looked up at him and blinked, the shock of knowing that someone had ventured to speak to her rather than choosing the 'let sleeping dogs lie' approach like so many of her teammates had. "Mum's homemade chicken noodle soup." Stanford stated helpfully, and that seemed to bring her back.
"Not hungry." Agura shook her head and tried to duck out, but he stepped in front of her, his expression concerned but his shoulders steady.
"You need to eat, luv." Stanford stated firmly.
"No thanks." Agura sidestepped him, but Stanford matched her step.
"If you don't eat, Sage will have to open the med-bay for you and Vert could be exposed," he reminded her softly. She stared at him, eyes more focused than they had been in a long time, trying to push through that perpetual depressive haze to comprehend what he was struggling to make clear.
"You're not just hurting yourself," Stanford added gently. To his surprise, a strangled sob escaped her throat and she reached forward and wrapped her arms tightly around him. Stanford froze. He was not a hugger, hadn't been raised as one. Affection was simply something you learned to live without when you grew up with someone as 'Mummy's little favorite' as Simon for a brother. Coddling hadn't exactly been easy to come by as a child and he had trained himself to believe he hadn't missed out. Of course, little did the Brit know that this lack of being fussed over as a child was what had led to his self-esteem issues later on, but that's a story for another day. For the time being, he had a close friend directly calling on him for comfort and he had no idea how to return the plea. He could feel Agura shaking as she tried to suppress sobs, and he finally found the courage to bring his arms slowly around her. It was one thing to see Agura so listless but tears were on an entirely different level. She never shared this side of her and Stanford caught himself thinking that maybe the comforting he was doing had been done by Vert before. He wondered how much more of Agura their leader had seen than them, and almost found himself feeling jealous. But that was quickly overwhelmed by worry as he grimly realized that maybe, with the unknown effects of whatever toxin Sage had told was invading Vert's body, there would be no one to comfort her.
The thought scared him, and he pulled Agura a little closer. Maybe it wasn't his place, or his responsibility, and he had no plans of infringing on his best friend's girlfriend—
Oh.
Despite all of the complaints he had uttered, quarrels he had picked and challenges made to Vert's position as leader, Stanford still considered the man one of his closest friends. He would miss his leader's good-natured digs and jokes, his fearless and optimistic attitude in battle and the way he somehow managed to bring every typically-incompatible personality in their little team into harmony.
It wouldn't be just Agura who lost Vert.
It would be all of them.
Stanford couldn't bear to think about it any longer.
"Let's get you something to eat, luv," he swallowed the lump in his throat and forced a smile, releasing Agura but leaving a hand on her shoulder. "Nobody makes it like Mum, but I tried." Stanford guided his shell of a friend into a chair and went over to spoon out two bowls of the broth.
"Chicken soup for the soul," he cracked halfheartedly, sliding one bowl in front of Agura and sitting opposite her with the other one. Stanford tried to give her privacy by pretending to busy himself with his own meal but when she still hadn't moved after a minute of this, he snuck a glance up.
Agura had her hands clasped tightly together, head bowed and eyes screwed shut. Upon closer inspection Stanford noticed her lips moving just the slightest, silently speaking words of fervent desperation.
She was praying.
For some odd reason, the commonplace act touched him, and Stanford sent up a quick prayer as well.
If Sage couldn't find a cure for Vert's suffering, it was all really they had left.