A/N: Sorry for the confusion. It was rather late last night when I posted the last chapter and didn't realize it had the rest of the story attached. The issue is now fixed.
A big thank you to all of those who have been reading and reviewing, following and favoriting my stories. It truly makes my day to know what people think of them.
I don't own Leverage or any of the characters. I write for fun and not for profit. I don't write slash. Enjoy the new chapter. Thank you.
Chapter 8
She had tried to check in, but there was no signal in the valley where they hid. She turned on the special beacon built into her phone, one that sent a signal which was supposed to be decipherable only to them, and hoped it wouldn't lead their captors right to them. Many times during that long night, Eliot's body had been wracked with coughing fits, and she was terrified she was going to lose him. At least he didn't have the gag to worry over, but by the sounds he was making, she feared a punctured lung. The first hints of daybreak lightened the sky some, and then streaks of color poured out across the sky. Holding her head down to Eliot's chest, she was happy to hear that his heartbeat was still strong, if a bit slower than normal, despite the cold and the condition he was in. As soon as it was light enough to see, she began treating his injuries as best she could, without her bag, or any of the materials she normally carried with her. She found some old rags in a corner of the hut—old but surprisingly clean, and wetting them in the icy water of the river, she used them to clean away the dried blood, and stem the flow of fresh blood from the gunshot wounds. Along with the rags, she found a few herbs for which she knew the medicinal values and uses, and she made a poultice to place on each of the gunshot wounds, and covered it with strips she had torn from the remaining rags. Soon, she had done all she could, and she could barely bend her own fingers, she was so cold. If they didn't start moving soon, they would both die there in that hut, from hypothermia, if the frostbite didn't kill them first.
Eliot was physically better than he had been even just a few minutes ago, but she worried that dragging him out of the cabin and through the woods would undo any of the good progress he had made. She didn't see any other choice, though. Grasping the unconscious man under the arms, she dragged him out of the hut, and began trying to find a place that was high enough for her phone to find a satellite uplink. She couldn't count on the beacon getting through, and they both needed treatment as soon as possible. She had only made it a mile or so when she had to stop and rest. Of course, that meant also finding a place to hide that was large enough for the both of them. She finally settled for burrowing into a thicket of trees, like a rabbit, but the canopy overhead still let the odd bit of sleet through, and so they would need a cover. She didn't want either of them any wetter than they had to be.
Her hands didn't have any feeling anymore, anyway, and she could still use them for dragging Eliot, so she went out, looking for what sticks she could find that might be buried underneath the surface layer of the forest floor, and therefore, dry. Searching underneath the surface layer meant that she had to dig through a layer of cold, ice-covered, wet earth, and though she couldn't feel it, her hands were soon torn up. As she started back to the thicket where Eliot waited, she thought she heard a whippoorwill whistle. She answered it , and then fell silent, and listened hard, straining to see if there was another one. Faintly, underneath the rush of wind and the steady tinking sound of ice bouncing off of frozen things on the ground, she thought she heard another. She whistled again, as loud as she could, this time making the sound of the Bob White.
Hearing nothing else, even after listening for awhile, the cold began to seep down into her core, and she moved back toward the relative warmth of the thicket and Eliot. She wasn't willing to die out there listening for another whistle that might or might not come. She had a wounded man to care for, one she wouldn't leave, and so, the price for her was too high. She was prepared to hole up in that thicket, at least until it stopped sleeting, and then resume their trip. She settled in next to Eliot, tucking one of the blankets as tightly around him as possible, with the exception of the side she sat on, and then took the other blanket and tucked it around the both of them, as tightly as she could get it. Waves of exhaustion swept over her as she grew still. This had been an ordeal, physically and mentally, and she wondered how much longer they could hold out. As the sleet continued to fall, and the temperature continued to drop, she felt her eyelids growing heavier. Twice she stuck her head out of the trees, allowing the sleet to sting her face, keeping herself awake by force of will. Finally, her eyelids slipped closed before she realized they were closing, and they both slept.
(0o0)
Sometime later, she became aware of a sort of warmth blanketing her body. She was comfortable in the twilight greyness between sleep and awareness, and she didn't wake up. A short time later, she felt the sensation of hundreds of bees stinging her face and neck, felt herself go weightless, and then felt a heavy weight on her chest. In the state her mind was in, she could make no sense of any of this, and no matter how hard she tried to pull herself up to consciousness, she found it impossible to do so. There was a slight buzzing in her ear, and then nothing.
"Doc," a commanding voice said, "wake up."
"Doc!" she heard again, sharper and more urgent.
She opened her eyes, but she could see nothing, as shapes and colors swam around overhead, and she had a sense of a sort of gelatin between her and the shapes and colors—a liquid that caused distortion. The weight was still there, pressing in on her, making it impossible to sit up. Unsure of what else to do, she closed her eyes again, only to open them as she howled in pain a moment later. A searing fire ran up each of her fingers, encompassing her hand like gloves of pain. She sat bolt upright, and heard an amused voice from somewhere off to the side of her. It wasn't until just that moment that she remembered the weight that had been pressing down on her before, and realized it was no longer there.
"Well, it's about time you woke up," a male voice said, with a hint of amusement. She tried to pull her hands out of the fire, but he held them fast, as he spoke again. "I know it hurts, but it is necessary to get you warm. Now, open your eyes for me."
She did so, and was surprised to find that her vision had cleared. She recognized the man in front of her, but he wasn't who she had expected to see there. He was a field medic she had trained, and after that time, they had worked one or two missions together. Now she struggled to remember his name, but that sense of exhaustion was still there, so she finally gave up and simply asked, "Where are we?"
"Airborne. Headed somewhere safe."
"Eliot?"
"In the back. I started an IV, but he's going to need more treatment than I can give him. That's why we need to get you warm as fast as we can."
"Where's Vance?"
A shadow fell over the man's face, and she knew she wasn't going to like what she heard next. He looked down at the ground.
"John?" That was his name, she thought. "What is it?"
"The Colonel hasn't checked in, and we aren't sure what has happened to him. I was hoping you could give us a little more information about his mission."
She shook her head. "I'm sorry. That's classified." Then, she shook herself, and said, with a bit more confidence than she felt, "He'll meet up with us when he can."
