A/N Yes, I lied. I'm sorry; the update took longer than I thought it would. 2x13 completely rendered me unable to write anything non episode related. I don't own anything. NOT intended to be disrespectful to those who have survived terrorist attacks or the horrible events of 9/11. THANK YOU to everyone who has been reviewing, they keep me writing :). Please keep them coming!
Thank you to Katy!
Blair was beginning to wonder if this was all just a bad dream. Like that episode of the x-files he-who-shall-remain-nameless had made her watch that she'd actually enjoyed – secretly, of course. She'd even almost wished she could be stuck underground in that cave of hallucinogenic goo herself if it meant waking up next to David Duchovny – almost. At this point she'd even settle for Dr. Pain-in-the-Ass hovering over her on an uncomfortable examination table with that arrogant smirk plastered to his disgustingly handsome face when she opened her eyes, if it meant that the last twelve hours of her life were only some sick, twisted dream.
No such luck. The smarmy, pain in the ass, arrogantly handsome doctor was no where to be found. And neither was the uncomfortable and badly fashioned examination table… or anything for that matter. It was completely dark – almost as if she hadn't opened her eyes at all. She screwed her them shut tightly again and opened them as widely as she could.
Complete darkness.
What the hell was going on?
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Eric!" Lily screamed frantically into her walkie talkie, "God dammit, Eric! Answer me!" But he hadn't responded since he'd excitedly told her that someone was alive in the hell of Manhattan, almost an hour ago. If he didn't answer her soon she was going to worry a trench in the marble floor.
Why wasn't he answering?
She tightened her grasp on the little two-way radio, willing him to answer her as she scuffled past the full length mirror for the seventh hundred time that hour; red silk robe twisting behind her in a cape. He had to answer her, he had to be alright. He had to find Serena safe and sound and somewhere far the hell away from Harlem. He had to bring her home so she could fawn all over her and make a crying mess of herself as she checked over every inch of her baby girl to make sure she was alright.
Dammit Eric! Answer!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Blair felt around with her right hand, careful not to jostle the shoulder she'd dislocated being thrown through Tiffany's display window. She was sitting upright in some sort of cushy, leather chair; a hard plastic wall to her right and empty air in front and to the left of her. Where the hell was she? And where the fuck was Jonathan? If he'd left her alone to fend for herself against radiation and a crumbled New York she'd kill hi – Oh, God.
The building!
Jonathan!
Blair frantically tried to push herself from the chair, but fire tore through her left shoulder and stomped on her skull, stopping her. She gagged against the wave of nausea over taking her and fought desperately to remain conscious. It would do her no good to pass out for the fourth time that day: terrified, injured, and alone in the dark.
And more than likely buried beneath tons of shattered concrete.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Would you hurry up and get this thing fixed?" Nate whined, shoving a cold hand into his pocket.
Grant popped his head up from the other side of the plane where he was inspecting engine number two, "Doesn't look like we're going to get her airborne anytime soon, lad. Engine blew." He nodded towards the cell phone in Nate's hand, "still no reception?"
Nate shook his head; eyes glued to the little screen as he wandered around the plane, holding the device to the sky and searching for reception.
Grant breathed warm air onto his frozen hands, rubbing them together in an attempt to coax feeling back into his finger tips, "Then it looks like we're walking."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Breathing deeply to steady her quivering stomach and ease the pounding in her skull, Blair tentatively lifted a hand to her head. Latex rubbed her temple and realized she was still wearing the latex gloves.
Shit… Her mask! What had Jonathan again? They didn't need the masks inside or anymore? Fuck! She couldn't remember! Jesus, she had to get out of here and find Jonathan before the radiation did to her whatever it had done to those people quarantined in the basement.
Good Lord! The basement… all those people. Tears sprung to Blair's eyes for the first time in eight years. Manhattan lay in a broken, disastrous mess. Completely destroyed. Serena was more than likely dead, lying crushed under exploded cement buildings and crumpled metal cars – if she was lucky.
And her mother! Oh, God. Eleanor. She'd be terrified beyond belief; locked within her wooden fortress, unable to see what's happening around her! If she hadn't already been reduced to a cloud of pink mist or maimed beyond recognition by the radiation, of course.
And… Chuck. God, she hadn't so much as thought his name since she'd literally bumped into him in Europe. …Was he safe and sound in his Tokyo tower?
Blair shook her head, tears streaming freely down her cheeks, and told herself it didn't matter; she didn't care. And she wouldn't live to find out anyway. She wouldn't find Serena or rescue her mother or even escape her own concrete tomb. She'd die, alone and terrified, and nobody would ever find her lifeless body.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Sir?" Arthur's monotone voice was really beginning to piss Chuck off.
"We're brining him with us, Arthur. It's not up for discussion." Chuck snapped, hefting the rusty metal bucket from the old well. He dumped the water on Jeffries, who was propped against the stone well muttering incoherently.
"Understood," Arthur replied, adjusting the knot of his tattered tie at his neck, "although I find it prudent to warn you that –"
"Warn me of what, Old Man?!" Chuck exploded, swinging the metal bucket into the roof of the well angrily, "I've seen EXACTLY what this thing can do. I've watched it with my own FUCKING eyes!"
"That you have, Sir." Arthur stated simply.
"THEN HELP ME!" Chuck roared, ignoring the white hot pain burning his legs and twisting down his spine. The pain had started the instant feeling had returned to Chuck's legs after the crash and been getting progressively and excruciatingly worse.
Arthur regarded him evenly, "You've made your intentions clear where Jeffries is concerned, Mr. Bass. I was merely attempting to inform you –"
"WHAT?!" Chuck snapped, his chest rising and falling with angry breaths, "FUCKING SPIT IT OUT!"
Arthur motioned calmly over Chuck's shoulder, "Someone is approaching."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Would you slow the hell down!?" Dan cried to Eric's back. They'd been tediously picking their way through the crushed concrete, scorched vehicles, and shattered glass; what little there was left of everyday life, for nearly three hours.
Eric's head snapped up and whipped over his shoulder, "We don't have time your dilly dally shit, Dan!"
"So sorry," Dan barked, sarcasm dripping from his words, "But I seem to have shattered an ankle." He flicked a pointed glance down to his feet, "Oh, yep. Look at that – that's definitely bone sticking out the side of my ankle right there."
"If you don't pick up the fucking pace all you'll have left will be your precious bones!" Eric roared, stalking forward through Manhattan's debris, leaving Dan to hobble on his own
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Nate glanced around at the nothingness surrounding them and shot Grant an incredulous look, "Where to exactly? There isn't anything for miles."
Grant bent his large frame into the tiny cockpit to retrieve the backpacks that contained their luggage. "Not so my boy," he tossed Nate his bag, slinging his own pack over his shoulder and swept a beefy hand at the horizon, "there is farmland."
Nate's nose crinkled and his brow quirked in confusion, "Yea. That's what I said; a whole lot of nothing."
"Where there is farmland there is a farmhouse" Grant chuckled, his deep laughter beginning to grate on Nate's nerves.
"Yea, well. You better hope they have a farmphone and indoor plumbing" Nate growled, shoving his cell phone in his pocket and trailing after Grant through the heavy snow.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Another tear escaped Blair and trickled down her check and across her chin. She was going to die at twenty eight, bloodied and bruised and miserable. At least then she'd finally be with –
"Blair!" Jonathan's worried voice shattered her tomb's eerie silence, "Jesus. Come on Princess, talk to me!"
Blair closed her eyes against the hope rising in her chest. Please God, let him be real. Let her not be hallucinating what sounded like rock grinding against rock and something heavy denting metal above her. "PRICE!" she screamed, blinding pain shooting through her skull, "JONATHAN!"
And then an odd blue glow joined the pounding pain at her temples in blinding her as fresh air crept tentatively into her dank cave.
"Fuck," Jonathan cursed as the light from his cell phone illuminated her pale face, "You look like hell."
Blair glared at him as best she could, "Well it took you fucking long enough to find me! Maybe if you hadn't taken your sweet ass time I-"
"Wouldn't have nearly bled to death?" Jonathan interjected harshly.
Bled to death? What?
"You're bleeding like a stuck pig," he continued as she tried to inspect herself under the punitive glow of his cell phone.
"Get me the hell out of here then!" Blair screeched and instantly regretted it as someone tap danced across her skull in spiky, metal baseball cleats.
"Hold your horses, sweetheart" he chuckled, shaking his head.
How he could be so frustratingly calm when they'd both nearly been blow to bits was beyond her. "What happened? Why aren't you dead?" Blair questioned as he reached into her cave, prodding her gently for broken bones.
"Nice to see you too," he laughed, pulling her into the cool night air, "It warms my heart to know you were worrying yourself sick over me."
She hissed in a breath when he jostled her injured shoulder, making it throb in tune with her already pounding skull.
"I'm sorry baby," he murmured into her hair, cradling her close to his chest in an effort to avoid jolting her any further. And again she was struck by how very similar his tone of voice and mannerisms were to…Chuck's. She'd already thought his name once and it hadn't killed her, what could once more hurt?
"You were inside," Blair stated, shifting her mind to the present as he carried her over the uneven wreckage of the 'hospital'.
"I was nearly out the back door when she blew," he replied, stepping over what Blair thought was half a ceramic toilette, though it was entirely too dark for her to be sure.
Blair smirked into his shoulder, "Oh?"
"Yes," Jonathan nodded, careful not to knock his chin against the top of her head, "I was on my way out to save a certain frail, little woman from herself."
Blair would have huffed or sunk her teeth into his taught chest if her head wouldn't have exploded with pain. "I don't need you to save me from anything," she spat with as much venom as she could safely muster.
"Well then by all means," he halted abruptly and she swore viciously as she jerked in his arms, "let me just return you to your metal castle, milady. Or better yet, let's take a walk on over to Fifth Avenue and we can warm you up by the fire?"
Blair sulked silently.
"That's along the lines of what I thought," Jonathan quipped arrogantly, resuming their tedious trek through the wreckage.
"Where are we even going?" Blair demanded, pissed off.
"You are headed to the roof of that relatively stable looking truck over there," Blair didn't bother turning her head in the direction he'd nodded; the cleat wearing tap dancers were at it again. And she couldn't see in the dark as well as Dr. Superman could apparently, anyway.
"And just where the hell do you think you are headed?" She questioned haughtily, risking inciting the tap dancers further by pinching the good doctor's side
He merely shook his head and muttered something under his breath. Blair caught the words 'feisty woman' and 'spoiled rotten' and pinched him again, hard. He didn't react.
"I need to salvage what I can from my office," the deep timber of his voice was beginning to lull an already exhausted Blair to sleep, "and then we get the hell out of here."
Blair's eyes flew open, "This hasn't changed anything. I'm not going anywhere but to find Serena and my mother."
Jonathan jerked to a halt, "Your mother? We're starting a list? Why don't we just single handedly canvass all of Manhattan for survivors while we're at it?"
Blair hissed in pain and pinched him yet again, using her nails this time, "Lovely of you to offer, but no; Serena and my mother will do just fine, thank you." She patted his chest in a gesture of mock comfort, "Just think of this as a sign from God that you were supposed to help me in the first place."
He growled angrily as he circumvented a downed light post, "You've dislocated your shoulder, required thirty five stitches to date, most of which will need to be re-stitched as you've torn half them to hell, and will need at least forty new ones just at first glance. Not to mention I'm nearly positive you've earned yourself a second degree concussion from flying through that limo's wind shield," so that was what her dark cave had been, "and or that you've left a quarter of your blood splattered about Manhattan!" He yelled as he set her down gently atop the truck, "I've had to pull you from burning buildings, stitch your numerous wounds closed, and dig you out from cement rubble. Is it really too much to ask if we could just get the hell out of here before we need to add anything remotely related to radiation to the list?!" He finished his with his arms cross angrily against his chest in front of her.
She stared at him silently for a moment as he glared at her, before replying evenly, "Multiply that by a million and maybe then you'd understand."
His chest rose and fell, his breathing labored from carrying her across the sea of shattered concrete and fighting tooth and nail for his composure. Her determined, coffee coloured eyes held his fierce gaze for what seemed like forever. "Fine," he finally spat, slapping his palms down on the hood of the truck on either side of her and leaning his face dangerously close to hers, "But just your precious friend and your fucking mother – nobody else."
Blair smiled a sickeningly sweet smile, victorious, but he'd already turned to stalk back towards the flattened hospital, leaving her once more cold, terrified, and alone in the dark.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Shit!" Chuck swore heatedly, flicking a frantic glance at the soft glow of a torch in the distance. "Help me get him up; we need to get the hell out of here!!"
Arthur remained standing where he was, "You don't wish to save this one too?"
"NOW!" Chuck roared, ignoring the blinding pain as he bent to drag Jeffries to his feet.
"He is unable to support his own weight," Arthur observed as Jeffries wobbled and slumped back to the grass. "Perhaps he is best left here."
"FUCKING HELL!" Chuck bellowed, "He comes with us! HURRY!"
Arthur nodded and moved to help Chuck lift Jeffries to his feet once more. Chuck winced, fire lapping at his spine as his knees gave out. Exhaustion and pain robbed him of his strength and coordination, and he wilted like a delicate flower in the wind. His head connected with solid ground; stars exploding behind eyelids he didn't remember closing.
Arthur stared down at him, the back of his pink dress shirt white under the moonlight and stained with sweat, "Your spinal and leg injuries appear to be more serious in nature than I had originally hypothesized." He peered over his shoulder at the glow of the approaching light and then quickly back down at his disabled employer, "Can you feel your legs, Mr. Bass?"
Arthur's voice came to him from somewhere farm off in the distance; barely discernable over the ringing in his ears. Waves of nausea threatened to drown him as he attempted to push himself into a sitting position. But his body wouldn't do as he was commanding it to; his legs would not obey him. Chuck dragged in a ragged breath and whispered his answer face down in the dirt, "No."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"How do you even know we are going in the right direction?" Nate grumbled as he tugged his leg free from a bottomless snowdrift.
Grant smirked over his shoulder, green eyes twinkling, "would you believe keen sense of direction?"
Nate laughed despite himself. "More like green sense of direction," he quipped, referring to the years the bearded man had spent in the Australian military.
"You'd be quite right, my boy" Grant boomed, laughter in his tone as he dredged through the knee high snow. "This stuff's beginning to pile up pretty quickly," he tugged his collar tight around his thick neck, seriousness creeping into his words "we need to pick up the pace. Sun went down an hour ago and its heat isn't going to stick around for too much longer."
Nate nodded, and forced his soaked, half frozen legs through the snow in an effort to keep up with the older man.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"ERIC!" Lily cried into the plastic device gripped in her hand. God, why wasn't he answering? What if he was hurt? What if he was lying in the middle of the street bleeding to death? She pressed her ear firmly to the speaker, hoping to hear any sign of life on the other end of the line, but all she was met with was static.
"Oh, fuck this!" Lily screamed, hurling the walkie against the foyer wall. It bounced violently off the wall, landing in four unusable pieces on the marble floor. But Lily had already begun to scramble across the dark penthouse; pointed table corners clawing her shins as she blindly made her way. Her instep came down hard on something sharp somewhere in the living room but she didn't stop to inspect the damage. She hobbled into her bedroom, threw on the old sweatshirt of Bart's she still slept in and jammed her legs into the jeans she'd been too tired to put in the laundry hamper down the hall. Blood trickled from the sole of her foot onto the plush white carpeting as she crammed her feet into the first pair of shoes she could find. She raced back through the unnaturally dark penthouse, shoving her cell phone into her pants before she was racing down thirteen flights of stairs into the desolate remains of Manhattan.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Jonathan reappeared through the still unsettled cloud of dust before Blair, "Alright let's get a move on, Joan."
She studied him, baffled; "I thought I was the one with the concussion, Johnny."
He quirked an eyebrow at her use of the nickname, "Of Arc. I figured if you you're going to be claiming He leveled my building as a means of communicating His all mighty plan to you, you'd need a saintly name to reflect your new conduit status. Joan of Arc, patron Saint of crazy, seemed appropriate."
She rolled her eyes before she could stop herself and lifted her right hand to the pounding it produced behind her eyes, "Was leaving me here alone and injured to play hero at least worth it? Salvage anything stronger than aspirin by chance?"
He nodded, tilting her chin to better angle it under the glow of his cell phone, "But only enough to keep the stampeding elephants at bay for a few hours. You'll want it more tomorrow, trust me."
"Not any further than I could throw you," she mumbled under her breath.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Dan's metal crutch slipped against concrete slick with blood from his injured ankle and he jolted violently. "FUCKING HELL!" he yelled, pain radiating from his ankle to his hip.
"I don't have time for this!" Eric roared, stalking back to stand before Dan, arms crossed angrily against his chest, as Dan crumbled to the debris in pain.
"So sorry to be an inconvenience," Dan snarled up at Eric through gritted teeth, "Next time I'll try to shatter a joint that's more convenient for you!"
Eric's chest heaved, his breath coming in angry pants. "I should have just left you in Harlem," He growled, voice dangerously low.
"Jesus, FUCK!" Dan screamed, throwing his arms wide in frustration, "YES! You should have! You should have just left me behind to find the sister you can't be bothered to! The sister who dropped everything to save her little brother from himself, if I remember correctly! If she dies, her blood is on your hands!!"
Eric glared down at his sister's blood soaked boyfriend, "The FUCK it is! This is all your God damn fault! You no good piece of shit! It's your fault Serena is even in this mess! If you weren't such a shitty ass fucking boyfriend she wouldn't have even been anywhere NEAR Harlem to begin with!" Eric swooped to the ground and grabbed a small concrete shard, "What the fuck is wrong with you? Why couldn't you just SUPPORT her? Why did everything have to be about her FUCKING NAME? Why were you always trying to make her feel like SHIT!?" He vaulted to his feet and began pacing, crushing the concrete painfully in his hand as he did, "Did it make you feel like a big man, Dan? Making my sister feel guilty for your own fucking short comings? Do you even see her anymore, really FUCKING see her? She's a shell of the beautiful, vibrant girl she was before she met you! Before all this BULLSHIT!" He whirled to face Dan again, rage etched into his handsome features, "It's all your fucking fault!" He threw the concrete dust in his hand at Dan's face, "I should have just left you to ROT!!"
Dan stared up at Eric, mouth gaping. "Don't you even DARE try to lay this at my feet Van der Woodsen! I wasn't the one behind the scenes pulling the strings! I'm not the one pouring vodka down her throat or shoving coke up her nose!"
Eric stiffened, a wild look in his eyes, "What is that supposed to mean?"
Dan averted his gaze, realizing what he'd just let slip in his rage, "Nothing, forget it."
Eric launched himself at Dan, grabbing his shirt by the collar and shaking him violently, "What the FUCK are you talking about!?!"
Dan's slowly brought hatred filled eyes to meet Eric's untamed gaze, "Ask your fucking precious Chuck Bass."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Awareness came in murky spurts. His throat was dry, his tongue heavy with imaginary sawdust.
His body jostled oddly from side to side, and he realized he was lying down, his head propped on something cushy, but rough. And his head hurt, really hurt. It reminded him entirely too much of how he'd felt the morning after she'd told him to chose, after the pills, and the booze, and …who knew what else.
Was that an engine? His eyelids crept open slowly, the dull ache at the base of his skull intensifying as they did.
"Are you among the conscious again, Sir?" Arthur's voice drifted from somewhere to Chuck's right, foggier then he remembered hearing it the last twenty four hours.
Chuck blinked and his blurry vision cleared. It had been an engine; he was lying down in the back seat of station wagon.
Realization crashed into him forcefully.
"Jeffries?" He demanded, propping himself up on unsteady elbows to glimpse Arthur's profile.
It was an odd angle. Chuck could see the outline of Arthur's ear and into the darkness over the man's shoulder but wasn't able to lift himself high enough to see out his own window or search the front passenger seat for the infected co-pilot.
"Accounted for," Arthur answered, his gnarled hands crossing over each other on the steering wheel as he took a right turn. The wagon bounced precariously to the right and then left and it dawned on Chuck the man he'd known for nearly ten years, and had been his personal assistant for nearly four, had never driven a vehicle before in his life.
"Arthur," Chuck began but his dry tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, robbing him of his words.
Arthur glanced over his shoulder quickly and the car veered sharply to the left. "The time is eight p.m.; we are currently passing through Indianapolis, and, remarkably enough, the vehicle came equipped with bottled water and several errand protein bars." Arthur turned to focus his attention on the road, and the car gradually realigned, "One of each should be located on the floor in front of you, Sir."
Chuck lowered himself back down on the seat and searched the floor blindly. His fingers came into contact with a plastic wrapper and he brought the protein bar to his chest to fumble for the bottle of water. He found it quickly, twisted off the cap and lifted his head to bring his lips to the rim. He drank swiftly, gulping nearly half the bottle's contents before his tongue would work and words came out.
"The case?" Chuck demanded, lying once more on his back, staring at the ceiling as the fog in his brain began to clear.
"Safely accounted for," came Arthur's reply from the driver's seat.
"Jeffries?" Chuck repeated, suspicious of the lack of 'safely' associated with the scrawny man's condition.
"Jeffries is safety quarantined in the trunk." Arthur returned evenly.
Chuck sighed, relieved that Arthur hadn't left the man on the side of the road somewhere. "How did you manage the wagon?" Chuck questioned, curious .
"Unimportant details," Arthur dismissed unemotionally, "and though it may be unpleasant for you to discuss, I feel it pertinent to the situation at hand to inquire; have you regained the feeling in your lower extremities?"
His legs! Jesus, how the fuck could he have forgotten about his legs!
He slowly lifted his head to stair down at the limbs in question. Well, he could see them. His heartbeat pounding a heavy tattoo in his chest; he carefully ran a palm from his ribcage over his hip to midway down his thigh. He could still feel them against his hand. But had he felt his hand against his leg? Chuck took a wobbly, deep breath and closed his eyes. He poked just above his right hip. OK. So far so good; he could feel that. He took another, slightly more steady breath and poked a few inches below his hip. Ok, ok, this was good; he could feel that too. Chuck held a breath as he moved his hand down to poke his thigh. Had he felt that? Had he even poked himself? He repeated the movement. Nothing. He opened his eyes and lifted his head, wiggling his toes. The expensive leather of his shoes didn't even twitch – nothing. Chuck's heart plummeted to the toes he couldn't feel.
"No."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
They'd been walking in comfortable silence for the past twenty minutes, but as they neared thirty; Grant sensed Nate's mood shifting behind him. He peeked over his shoulder at the man who was like family to him; his hair was white with snow, his cheeks red from exertion and the biting winter air; his eyes drowning in worry.
It nearly broke Grant's heart to see him like this; utterly lost in misery and alone despite Grant's presence. Still carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders; still trying to make up for sins that weren't his.
And probably completely preoccupied with his soon-to-be wife and child. Grant had completely forgotten about the phone call Nate had finally answered just before the old girl's engine blew. It bothered him somewhat that Nate hadn't brought it up again; normally they would talk about Vanessa and Janine and their respective antics or adorable foibles until there were blue in the face or nauseous from all the 'woman' talk.
"She's got a good head on her shoulders," Grant's ventured, diverting his attention back to picking a path of least resistance through the mounting snow. At this rate they would be hip deep in the frozen flakes in less than a few hours.
Nate startled from his dreary thoughts at Grant's words. "Hmm? Oh. Vanessa. Yea. She does," he nodded, burying his neck deeper into the collar of his jacket.
"We should hopefully be by a phone in a few hours," Grants breath puffed out in hot clouds and frosted his auburn beard.
"Yea," Nate nodded distractedly.
"You can give her a call then," Grant continued.
"Yea," Nate repeated absently, bending down to remove cold snow from inside his boot.
"Let her know we're both just fine and dandy," Grant hinted pointedly, "poor girl is probably worrying herself sick about you."
"Huh?" came Nate flabbergasted response.
Grant rolled his eyes heavenward; sometimes the boy was just too lost in his own way of thinking.
Nate jogged as best he could through the sea of snow to Grant's side.
"Betsy's number two blew and you lost the call." Grant explained turning patient eyes to meet Nate's confused expression, "musta sounded like an explosion to the poor girl. She's probably worried herself into a mighty fine tizzy by now."
"Oh, God," Nate jolted to a stop, stunned, "What the fuck is wrong with me?!" He swiped a hand down his face, "Jesus. She's going to think…especially after what she was trying to tell me…"
Grant spine stiffened, an uneasy feeling creeping up on him. He turned and stalked back to face Nate, "what was she trying to tell you?"
Nate began to wade through the rising snow, pacing as best he could. "She was nervous when I answered – off, kept actually calling me Nate; I haven't heard her call me Nate in over ten years. I just thought she was upset about this morning. God, I should have known, should have listened to her. FUCK, I'm an idiot."
Grant reached out to halt Nate's fidgety movements as he paced back toward him, "Slow down. What was she trying to tell you? What didn't you listen to?"
"She was talking about New York being hit by something. I just thought she meant some kind of storm. I didn't listen, all I could hear was her disappointment in me, I didn't listen." Nate babbled, his voice thick with emotion.
"Nathaniel," Grant said sternly and Nate's forlorn eyes snapped to his, "What was she trying to tell you?"
Nate gulped. "She said she couldn't get a hold of friends of ours in Manhattan. I think… Jesus, I think she was trying to tell me there had been some sort of attack." He closed his eyes against the images flooding him, "Fuck I thought she was just upset and worried about the baby… Oh, God." His blue eyes flew open again, wide with fear, "She's got to be panicking – thinking I've been blown to smithereens. Stress isn't good for the baby! What if she loses our baby!?"
Grant blinked, surprised. All day Nate had been referring to the baby as just that, the baby. He'd never once acknowledged the fact that it was a part of them, of both of them; was theirs. And now it all possibly hung in the balance.
Grant felt the beginnings of his own fear rising in his throat. Please God, don't let Vanessa lose their child. Don't do that to them. Not now. Not when Nate had finally connected, finally started to think of this baby as a part of him despite all his fears.
"We will get to a phone. You'll call her and figure out this entire mess." Grant gripped Nate's upper arm reassuringly, "They will be fine."
Nate nodded faintly, averting his watery gaze over Gant's shoulder. "I can't lose them, Grant," his voice cracked as a single tear rolled down his cheek, glistening under the moonlight.
Unable to form the words, Grant merely nodded and brought his hand to Nate's shoulder, giving it one comforting squeeze before gently tugging him through white snow and black night.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"That's it?" Blair questioned, her shoulders slumping dejectedly as Jonathan lay the contents of his pockets on the hood beside her.
He pushed his cell phone into her palm and indicated she should hold it up to illuminate her face. "And here I was hoping to get more of a lecture for leaving you all by your lonesome," he smirked as he carefully dabbed at a gash she'd reopened flying through the limo wind shield.
Blair shrugged her uninjured right shoulder with care, the glow from his cell phone bouncing across her face, "If you're dead set on rushing to your death the second you finish saving my life and patching me up, then I can't stop you, Johnny."
He flinched at his own words thrown back in his face and she grinned. He selected one of the few suture kits he'd been able to retrieve, setting it in her lap to switch his tattered latex gloves for a fresh pair.
"Jesus, your hands!" Blair gasped, his phone falling from her hand as she reached out to grab his torn and bloody flesh. "They're even worse than before!" She cried, turning his hand over in hers to examine his palm.
"Most of the blood isn't even mine," he told her, glancing at her hand pointedly.
She made a face at him, "Well whose fault is that?"
"Ever the appreciative damsel," he tugged his hand from hers and bent to scoop up his cell phone. She admired the way his once white lab coat stretched across the tight muscles of his shoulders until realization slapped her in the face, "Your gloves!"
He froze, and a millimeter away from snaking between two cement hunks to retrieve the phone she'd dropped. He grinned up at her, the whites of his eyes eerie against the pitch black night, "So the Ice Princess does have a heart after all." Blair's spine stiffened and her jaw clenched painfully, fresh waves of nausea washing over her, at the familiar nick name. "Don't worry; the infection can only be passed from the original contaminant or through bodily fluids." Jonathan chuckled as he plucked his cell phone from between the two boulders and stood to face her once more. "What?" he asked when he noticed her brow furrowed in suspicious confusion.
"I thought you said it was radiation," Blair retorted, studying his face as best she could in the dim night. The city really was an eerily dark place without the light from buildings and billboards or passing traffic to illuminate it. It was beginning to creep Blair out. She reached out her still gloved right hand to snatch his cell phone from him and flip it open, the weak blue light sharpening his features.
"I did," he nodded, plucking the suture kit from her lap to tear it open and repositioning her hand so the light shone on her chin, "This is most likely going to hurt like a bitch. I couldn't get to the anesthetic."
Blair pulled away from his touch and glared at him, "So?"
Jonathan heaved a heavy sigh, lowering his hand to his side. "You aren't going to like this," he warned gravely, "You'll wish you just sat up there prissily and kept your mouth shut."
Blair scoffed, swinging her dangling legs and coming dangerously close to kicking him in the stomach. He raised his eyebrows and flicked a pointed look at her ruined Jimmy Choo's. She smiled sweetly, batting her eyes exaggeratedly, and rolled her wrist in a 'continue' motion.
He shook his head; a stray lock of dust caked hair falling against his forehead, and rolled his eyes heaven ward, "Ok, Joan. If you insist, but don't tell me I didn't warn you." He nudged her hand back up to light her chin and began suturing as he talked, "Shortly after the armored vehicle over turned in Harlem, we were informed we had a possible chemical contagion on our hands. At first they though it could have been a nerve agent like Cyclosarin or something equally destructive, but after one of the newbies over at Columbia Presbyterian nicked himself cleaning up after a transfemoral amputation, we knew we were dealing with a whole 'nother ball game; newbie was feverish and draining half a litter of blood through his nose in under an hour and a half. They figured out pretty quickly it was viral. It's a scary bitch; like nothing I've ever seen before – and I was with Doctor's Without Boarders in Africa for two years." Blair hissed as he swabbed the neat little line of x's with antiseptic before slapping a band aid over them, "There. Shouldn't even scar. Thank me with obedience."
She ignored his quip, fingering the band aid as he prepared another needle for the gash on her left shoulder. "What's the incubation period?" she demanded a slight tremble to her voice.
Jonathan eyed her, surprised.
"I know a little something about infectious deceases and viruses," she elaborated vaguely.
He studied her face with eyes that could see more through the darkness than some could in broad daylight, "I'm sorry."
She lowered her gaze quickly, tears blurring her vision.
"I don't know what kind of time frame we are dealing with." He continued when she merely nodded her acknowledgement, eyes still on her shoes, "Newbie nicked himself at noon, was a bloody mess by two and isolated on another floor by four thirty when I left to grab more supplies from my home office. Ran into you just in time to see you blown clear through glass at five and that brings us to now at," he slipped the cell phone from her loses fingers, "eight."
Blair cleared her throat and Jonathan politely shifted his attention to his own shoes while she whipped fat droplets from her cheeks. Her voice now steady she asked, "No way we can find out?"
Jonathan's eyes locked with hers and he shook his head. "Hospital was more than likely destroyed by the blasts you were flat on your back for," he wiggled his cell phone at eye level, "and only use this has now is as a flashlight. Short of infecting one of us and charting the virus's progress – we're flying blind."
"More like sitting ducks," Blair huffed, the late November air beginning to make her teeth chatter.
"Adrenaline is wearing off," Jonathan told her as pressed the 'flashlight' back into her palm, "I know it's cold Princess," he ripped a tear in her blouse open wider above her left shoulder to suture the gash underneath, "but I need to get you all closed up before you really start to feel it."
She watched as his nimble hands patch the jagged tear in her skin. For an arrogant and brash asshole, he was surprisingly gentle. "Butterfly needles?" She asked, shinning the light on the medical supplies beside her right hip.
"Light," he demanded and she lifted the cell back up to hover above her left shoulder, "Yes. Butterflies."
She ignored the reaction hearing that word in a tone of voice so similar to his – she was back to ignoring his existence and blocking his name from her mind – had on her stomach. "What's your specialty?" She asked the top of his dusty head.
"Pediatric surgery," he replied absently, focused intently on closing her wound.
Blair's hand unconsciously fluttered to the necklace at her neck but her fingers only hit blouse and skin; no metal chain. No! Her necklace! The only thing left she had of left of Charlie! Her breath caught in her throat and she screwed her eyes shut against the fresh wave of pain crashing over her that had nothing to do with separated shoulders, or gashes, or concussions.
"Ok," Jonathan pulled off his bloody gloves and replaced them with yet another fresh pair, "All sealed back up and water tight. Let's get the hell out of here."
Blair nodded, forcing the painful memories from her mind as he stepped forward to help her of the roof of the truck.
"Think you can walk, Saint Joan?" Jonathan asked as he hefted her into his arms, bouncing his eyebrows suggestively as he continued, "or would you like to mount your noble steed?"
"You really are heinous," she grimaced, "and since the only thing you have in common with a noble steed is the barn you were both born in; put me down, Johnny."
"As you wish Joanie," he quipped as he complied, setting her carefully on her feet, "just watch where you step, would you? I'm tired of watching you do a Flying Wallenda through the nearest available window only to have to pull you from certain death and slap you back together again."
She pulled a face and stuck out her tongue like the petulant five year old she was, "Let's just get the hell out of here, ok?"
He threw his hands up in the air, frustrated, and trailed after her hobbling form.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Benson's pressed his satellite phone to his ear, listening to the voicemail that had come as he'd been setting the charge to blow that building – and the bitch along with it – sky high.
"Benson."
Benson's blood began to boil: Alexei.
"Our friend Carter tells me the virus has made its way across the bridge. Your orders were for Manhattan, and ONLY Manhattan. You leave me with no choice but to deal with your incompetence in person…. Oh, and Benson..."
Benson snickered at the bastard's love for dramatic pauses. He'd have slit his throat himself years ago if he wasn't such a key part of disposing of Bitch and the Bass.
"You better not be anywhere near the girl when I get there – she's mine."
Benson flipped the phone shut, rage boiling his blood, as he lurked in the shadows watching the good doctor follow the dainty whore down the streets of Manhattan like a love sick puppy.
A/N Butterfly needles are what they use on children :). I'm running short on time before work but I wanted to post this, hopefully there aren't too many spelling mistakes and I didn't screw anything ip:). lol
Lynne
