Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.
It was past two o'clock in the morning when Ilsa arrived back at the cabin. Her anger about that charity breakfast crone had subsided and she was thinking clearly again. She just couldn't let Connie handle Carmine's transportation. The poor boy, how would he feel when strangers came, put him in a box and sent him on such a long journey, all alone? It was just not fair, making decisions for him and not sparing a thought on his feelings. She had decided to fly with him to San Francisco, have a word with Chance and the others about disappearing for private business and then go off to Madrid for a significant period of time. Would she go back to San Francisco eventually? At the moment she didn't feel like it. Apparently they didn't care about her after all, so why should she care about them?
"I'll never let you go, Ilsa." Well, going away himself was obviously a totally different story.
At least the cabin's windows weren't black this time. She had left the lights on for Carmine.
When she crossed the doorstep, she noticed that the TV was off. Immediately her instincts, significantly honed by her recently acquired ownership of a certain San Franciscan security company, sprung into full alert mode. Not only the TV was off, someone had also lit the fireplace. The soft glow of the flames and the natural warmth of the fire welcomed her like a soothing embrace. Carmine was lying sound asleep in front of the armchair right by the fireplace, snoring deeply. He was comfortably sprawled out – over somebody's feet!
Ilsa froze and stared. Carmine opened his eyes, noticed her presence, got to his feet and trotted towards her to greet her.
His feet suddenly getting cold, Chance woke up from his slumber and realized that Ilsa must have arrived. Preparing himself for an onslaught of accusations, he stumbled to his feet to face her.
Well yes, as should be clear by now, Ilsa had quite a few accusations to sling at him. But she shoved them all to the far back of her mind the second she caught sight of his uncharacteristically stumbling figure and his face.
"Oh my…" She pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle a shocked gasp.
At first Chance was puzzled by her reaction, then it dawned on him that the bruises and cuts on his face must look a lot worse now than they had a couple of hours ago, when he had said goodbye to the rest of the team.
"You need to cool that!", Ilsa finally managed to utter. What happened from then on for the next two hours or so was not thought through, not at all. It was Ilsa acting on pure emotion alone. She dashed off in the direction of the kitchen. When she came back, she carried icepacks and a first aid kit. "This cut above your eyebrow looks really bad", she told him, leaning in closer to get a better look at it, now that she was over the first shock. "Why didn't Guerrero stitch it up properly?"
"Guerrero's right hand is not quite in order…" Chance let the words sink in. Under normal circumstances it was Guerrero's job to stay on top of things from a distance, usually aided by a wide range rifle with a scope. When he got into the picture for close combat, things must have gone really bad.
"Did Winston patch you up?", Ilsa asked, now alarmed. Nothing against Winston, but his skills with delicate objects such as needles were limited. "Take off your sweater!", she ordered Chance.
"Ilsa, really, it's nothing…"
She grabbed its hem and rolled it up herself, revealing a soaked, bloody bandage around his stomach area. "Lie down on the sofa, flat on your back", she ordered him. As soon as he had made his way across the room, she took it upon herself to carefully take off the sweater completely.
"You'll ruin your dress", Chance cautioned her as she proceeded to remove the bandage.
"I don't care", she replied, and it came out with much more edge in it than she had originally intended.
Chance noticed that edge, but, to be honest, he was way too relieved that she wasn't making a scene and way too tired to go into that. Tomorrow…
As Ilsa meticulously cleaned the ugly, clumsily stitched up gash across his stomach, his eyelids grew heavier and heavier. He didn't even notice her unbuttoning his jeans, opening his flies and pulling his trousers a little bit down to get better access to the far end of the wound. By the time she was finished re-bandaging his injuries, he was sound asleep.
Ilsa decided against putting the sweater back on him again and thus risking to wake him up. Instead she covered him with a blanket, switched off the lights, relocated to the armchair by the fireplace he had abandoned, wrapped herself in the blanket he had used and soon dozed off, too, lulled to sleep by the regular rhythm of his breathing and Carmine's light snoring.
She hadn't forgotten what he had done to her, of course not. But his well-being was obviously far more important to her than anything else. That realization followed her into her dreams and woke her up far too early the next morning.