Shake Your Foundations

6. The Morning After

Thanks in no small part to the sedatives and painkillers in her system, Andi slept through most of the night despite her broken arm and ribs. During that time, Zartan refused to leave her bedside. If it hadn't been for doctors popping in every hour or so to check on her condition, he would have sneaked the dog into the infirmary. She handled confinement in the infirmary a lot better when one or both of the animals stayed with her.

He was re-reading a Russian arms manual when she began to stir, a groggy moan sounding from her lips as she tried to re-adjust herself. Deep blue eyes flew open as the pain forced her into awareness, causing her to sit nearly bolt upright in the bed. He quickly set the book on the food tray and moved to stop her from slamming herself back against the bed too quickly. "Easy, little one." He told her as he hit a button on the side of the medical bed, causing the front third of it to rise to a slightly-upright position. Once he felt assured that she wouldn't hurt herself in the process, he released his tentative hold on her, allowing her to fall against the raised mattress.

It was then that she seemed to notice the cast on her left arm and the oxygen tube running under her nose. "Huh?" She scrunched her eyebrows together in confusion, her good hand reaching up for the oxygen tube.

He immediately swatted her hand back down. "Don't try to move anymore, and you had certainly better not try to remove any tubing or needles." He kept his tone soft and even, not wanting to agitate her. "You took quite a beating last night."

"...How bad was it?" She murmured. She winced as she lay her hand back down on the mattress, likely the result of pulling at the stitches running across her chest.

"Three broken ribs requiring minor surgery to fix, a punctured lung which resulted from the broken ribs, a fractured left arm that the technicians needed to break to properly re-set, and no fewer than thirty stitches." Not counting the ugly purplish-black bruises already covering her skin, he thought to himself as he sat down next to her on the bed. "What the hell were you thinking? You can't just run off like that and not tell anyone where you're going! If we had shown up any later than we did to that dump of a bar, you would probably be dead!"

"He wouldn't have left me there if the cops hadn't been called; never has any other time we've fought." She sighed, the look of pain in her eyes saying much more than she knew.

"Does this happen every time you two had a fight?" Try as he might, the mercenary could not keep the anger out of his voice. Sure, there had been times where he and Zanya had gotten into some rather loud screaming matches, but he'd never hit her during any of them. The only time they ever traded blows was during training sessions.

"…not usually this bad." She admitted softly. "I think he was trying to punish me for something." She refused to look him in the eyes, focusing on her hands instead.

"That was a torture session, not a punishment." He corrected her. "You won't be doing any work until those injuries have properly healed, which was likely why he inflicted them in the first place."

"I'll take this over sleeping in the bathtub while he and the hooker go at it on the motel bed." As soon as the mumbled words left her mouth, he could tell she regretted it. Her uninjured hand immediately moved to cover her mouth as her eyes went wide with shock. Zartan clenched his fists.

"There will certainly be no more of that." Of all the detestable things to put a child through… "In fact, you will not be spending any time with that animal in the foreseeable future. This has gone far enough."

Terrified sapphire eyes stared back at him. "No! I shouldn't have said… He never actually…"

"Child, if you lie to me, I will have you pulled off the team indefinitely."

"B-B-But...but he's my dad!" She gazed back at him, uncertainty swirling behind her eyes. "He loses it sometimes, but he's still family."

A forlorn sigh escaped his lips. "You may not understand this right at the moment, but I am going to say it anyway. Just because you share the same DNA with him does not give him the right to treat you like this." How someone could do this to their own child was beyond him, even after living through all the years of Cobra Commander's terrible attempts at parental concern. It just didn't make sense to him. "You do not owe that man anything."

She looked down at the dog again, confusion and other emotions he knew she didn't understand swirling through her mind as her scales turned a muted blue-gray color. "...He saved my life."

"And has done nothing but ruin it since." Zartan remarked. "Just how did you children come to be wandering in this business unsupervised, again?"

Even her eyes became a duller shade of blue. "I chose working with a team over him. He didn't want to deal with the other kids." A shiver started at her shoulders and rippled across the rest of her body. She did not handle emotional turmoil well at all, and it tended to manifest physically.

"That was his excuse. If he was so willing to make you sleep in the bathtub, of all places, he obviously did not want you there to begin with."

Another twitch shook her, temporarily robbing her of the ability to speak. Tears formed in her eyes as she fought to contain the emotions she did not want to feel. He hadn't seen her look this conflicted or confused since her suicide attempt two years ago.

He placed his left hand on her right shoulder. "You don't need to fight it, kiddo." He used a lower and gentler tone of voice to communicate with her this time. "It's okay to let it go. It'll only make you feel better."

The girl would never admit to it, but she was definitely the kind to snuggle up to another person if she felt scared or confused. He'd lost count of how many times she'd drifted off to sleep with her head on his shoulder during their "let's watch a foreign language channel" sessions when her nightmares kept her awake after everyone else had gone to sleep. No matter how tough and independent she was during the day, she simply could not keep it up once the night terrors came.

So when she finally gave in and buried her face in his shoulder, he wasn't surprised. She couldn't seem to find her voice, only managing agitated moans and whimpers as she tried to tell him something. "Ssshhh." He soothed, stroking her golden hair with his ungloved (he really hadn't had time to put his uniform on before flying out last night) hand. "I know, kid. I know."

…And this was the scene that Destro chanced upon as he tried to find the Dreadnok leader and discuss what the next plan of action might be. The Scottish laird wasn't entirely sure what to make of what was in front of him. Sure, he knew that Zartan was rather fond of the girl, but he hadn't realized that the mercenary had adopted her. It was a rather startling revelation, one that the arms dealer might be able to use against Zartan at a later date. For now, however, the girl and her health took priority over all else, and he wasn't foolish enough to think that the Dreadnoks' leader wouldn't pick a fight if anyone tried to convince him otherwise.

It was in that frame of mind that the Scotsman turned on his heels and returned in the direction he came from. The sun's rays were barely peeking over the horizon outside; he would have the entire morning to speak to the mercenary. Now, if only this base had some proper tea…

"...How's she doing?" Zarana asked, looking at her older brother through the video chat monitor. It didn't look like Zartan had gotten any sleep last night, which wasn't a good thing since he'd already been up for the last two nights straight. That meant something was wrong.

"Not well, but she's stable for the moment." He answered with a sigh. He would rather like to get some sleep while everyone else was preoccupied with other things, but any attempts at that could wait until Destro had left the compound. "Not happy about needing an oxygen tube, but until the doctors are confident that she won't suffer any further damage to her left lung, she'll have to deal with it."

"Sounds like that monster Sabertooth did a number on 'er." She frowned. "How are we going to stop him from doing anything else to her?" From the report he gave last night, the kid must look like death warmed over. She didn't want to take any chance of the girl's dead-beat father deciding to start round two anytime soon.

"She's banned from going anywhere near him for the foreseeable future, but I don't know that we can legally stop him from trying to get to her." He was far from pleased with that. Unfortunately, the only person who would have any idea how the custody arrangements were ordered was her mother, a women whose identity and recent contact information Andi had doggedly refused to disclose. He hadn't pressed the issue before, as the woman was obviously content to let Andi remain in Chicago; due to recent events, he felt it would be a good idea to track the woman down and question her. If he played it right, he might be able to gain full custody of the girl. "Whenever you have time, start looking through Andi's records and see if you can come up with her mother's name and last known address. If we can find her and inform her of this recent development, then we might be able to strip Sabretooth of his visiting rights…if he ever had them to start with."

"I can put a rush order on this, if we need to." Zandar offered. "Getting this sorted out is more important than the mission."

"I highly doubt that the Baroness or Cobra Commander will share that opinion." Zartan scoffed. "Destro maybe, but not those two." The arms dealer took family matters very seriously as long as the family involved was his own.

"We may not get to it for a while otherwise." Zarana frowned. "Not with all the craziness that goes on at this school."

"I understand that, but between the three of us, we should be able to narrow this down in a couple of weeks."

"If we're still here in a couple of weeks." Zandar grumbled, rubbing his eyes. "If we get lucky, we'll be out of here before then."

"Doesn't mean we should give up searching, though." His twin sister shook her head. "Summer break is coming up fast; last thing we need is for him to decide he wants to acknowledge she exists by dragging her away from us. Sad as it is, I think we're the only stable home she's had in a long time."

"...That's both heartwarming and disturbing." Zandar stated. Dreadnoks and stability tended not to mix well with each other.

"I will be flying back in tonight." Zartan swiftly re-directed the conversation topic. "We can have a more in-depth discussion then. We also need to make plans for once our little spitfire gets out of the infirmary."

"We'll worry about that once she's actually able to put up a fight again." Zarana waved. "I don't think she'll be giving anyone a lot of trouble for now. Of course, once she feels well enough to walk, that'll change."

"It usually does." Zandar shrugged. His sister ignored it.

"Just try to get her to realize you're not just abandoning her to the Medi-Vipers, will ya?" She stared directly at her older brother's image on the display monitor. "I know it sounds stupid, but she needs to know you're actually going to come back for her."

Two years ago he might have argued that point, but after everything the team and their handlers had been through, Zartan had to concede that his sister was correct in that observation. "No, after what happened last night—what has apparently been happening for about three years, she certainly needs that reassurance."

"...So, she's awake now?" Neal asked tentatively after Zartan finally emerged from the basement levels of the compound.

"She is conscious, yes, but don't all of you rush down there at once." He admonished, glaring at the kids from his spot next to the coffee pot and the toaster. "She's still very weak." Hence why she would be getting toast for breakfast instead of something more substantial.

"In other words, only two of us at a time and only for a few minutes." Regan remarked. "We understand."

"Yeah, but what will we tell Spike Freeman when he calls about this?" Mimic frowned. "He's gonna need a damn good reason to write her out of the next few episodes."

"We can tell him she had a nasty dirt bike accident and was seriously injured." Zartan sighed. It was the only excuse he could come up with that would explain Andi's injuries outside of a wild animal attack. Given what an adrenaline junkie the kid was once she was put in the driver's seat of anything with a motor and wheels, he was confident that the television producer would accept it without difficulty. "It's her I'm more concerned with."

"We can keep an eye on her…at least until she gets released from the infirmary." Heart-Wrencher spoke up. "It'll get a little trickier once she's cleared to leave; we're a little short-handed around here right now."

"I will attempt to speed up the mission in Bayville, but the success or failure of that endeavor is currently in the hands of the Baroness." He frowned. If he'd been in charge of this operation, he'd have a good chunk of the Brotherhood working for him by now.

A chorus of groans and a few errant expletives followed that statement. He pretended he didn't hear them and turned his attention back to the toaster.

"When can we go down to visit her?" Bryan asked slowly as the toaster finally coughed up the two pieces of bread Zartan had shoved into it earlier. They were a little closer to burnt than the mercenary wanted, but given how many complaints had been filed about that particular kitchen appliance, he supposed he should feel thankful that it hadn't come back up looking like two bread-shaped lumps of charcoal.

"Once she's had a chance to eat her own breakfast, I'd imagine." Kristen remarked, giving the much taller teenager a look that clearly read 'what-kind-of-stupid-question-was-that?'. "Give her another half hour to get her bearings straight and then we can go down to visit."

"I had better not catch anyone trying to sneak in before she asks for visitors…or hear about any of you doing so when she's resting later on." Zartan stated. Virus, despite his claims of not being afraid of the Dreadnok master of disguise, gulped when the man turned an angry glare upon him. Steve bit back a grin as he watched the creepy little technopath squirm.

"In other words, give her some space." Burn-Out sighed. "She's got a lot to sort out right now and nothing to take her mind off thinking about it."