A/N: - yes long time no see I know. Sorry. A lot of stuff's happened kept me busy etc, dont know if I can update regularly but I'm going to try. Really sorry :s


Together they bounced across the city, Jenny constantly trying to reassure him that it was only a short distance away. It wasn't working. Hank, despite his usual resilience to such things, had to stop to puke.

"How does this work? Why can I do it?" He asked as he stood on shaky knees. Jenny looked up from where she was rummaging in her bag.

"I can pass it on if you're standing close enough to me. Here." She offered a bottle of water and Hank washed his mouth out, wishing that the used water hadn't hung in the air once he'd spat it out. "Ready?" She asked and Hank nodded. "It's only a little way now."

"Hm." Hank grunted, feeling remarkably bad tempered.

"No, look. There." Jenny pointed upwards and Hank felt his heart squeeze, the sky – usually tainted a dirty orange brown thanks to light pollution blazed with yellow light, a huge plume of black smoke curling up and away into nothingness. He looked at Jenny with a new sense of urgency and something in her gaze informed him that she knew exactly how he felt before she blinked out of existence. Hank took a deep breath as he felt the growing pull and squeezed his eyes shut as he felt the unseen vice close around him. It was like being sucked between the two pieces of glass, either of which could fracture at the slightest movement and something important, Hank wasn't sure what but he was formulating a few theories, would break. He hadn't the time to analyze the feeling as it was over as soon as he had registered it. "Oh. My. God." Jenny's voice, made softer with shock and horror, caused Hank to open his eyes again.

Time was still moving at its glacial pace and the rich orange glow from the fire reflected gently off the faces of the firemen, children and-

"Kit." Hank breathed, making his way over to her. It was like walking through treacle but he managed it. She was stood outside of an ambulance, her arms full with a child sitting on her hip, she was glancing over her shoulder – her wispy hair caught in a nimbus of slow moving tendrils – at the small ambulance bed inside. Tiny flakes of ashes floated through the air like snow on a still day and Hank reached up to brush on away from her eyelashes – half closed in an apparently everlasting blink. "What happened here?" He murmured, the glacial movements and the quiet causing him to feel as if he was in some strange sort of church, a place to be hushed and humbled. He looked up at the little house, flames blossomed through every window and doorway swaying in the breeze like the limbs of a tree. Hank turned at the feel of a hand on his shoulder.

"You wanna step back a little?" Jenny asked with a sad smile. "If you just appear in her face she's going to freak out." The P.A. slash secretary glanced at Kits face with a wary expression. "And god knows what she'll do at the moment." Hank nodded and stepped away, hiding behind the ambulance slightly and winced as time sped up. The heat of the flames hit him like a sledgehammer, sending him back into the side of the ambulance, the noise was unbelievable, the roar of the fire, the screaming sirens, everyone was yelling at each other but one voice rose above nearly everything.

"-illy get the hell away from that house!" Kit was practically screeching when Hank came around the side of the ambulance once more, putting the small child down in order to drag a boy of about thirteen, away from the flames.

"I can put them out if you give me a chance!" The boy raged against her, pushing at her with his fists.

"It's too much, Billy! Too much." Kits voice died away from a yell to something tremulous as the boy, Billy, stopped pushing at her and clung to her instead, burying his ash stained face in her neck.

"Kit?" Hank said gently, having to raise his voice slightly above the noise of flames and sirens. She turned to face him and for a fraction of a second her expression was open and completely readable, the politicians heart very nearly broke at the vulnerability he saw there.

"Hank? How – I only called you a second ago." She frowned at him. Hank glanced at his watch, it had infact been only a few seconds since he had been in his nice, calm office. Kit shook her head, gathering herself as Billy left her arms to join the group of kids who hung around the back of the ambulance like lost sheep. "Look, I need you to take the kids, they've got to take Layla to hospital and-"

"Is this the children's Father?" Someone, a man in a paramedics uniform, asked sharply, looking at Hank with narrowed eyes.

"I'm honoured that you think I could be that prolific but no. I am not." Hank said, just a little coldly, pushing Kit towards the ambulance as he realised just who the tiny figure on the bed was. "I am however a good friend of the family-"

"Fine, whatever. Ma'am we need to go, you're little girl is in a life and death situation." The paramedic jumped into the back of the ambulance, offering Kit a hand up. Hank nearly jumped out of his skin at the feel of someone's hand on his back.

"Hank, you go with her. I'll get Scott Summers or the Professor to give these kids a room for the night." Jenny said firmly. Hank turned, half prepared to argue but stopped at the look on her face. "She's a mess, she's going to be good for nothing until the child is fine." She pushed again as one of the doors of the ambulance slammed shut and Hank hauled himself up.

"Marry me Jenny!" He called out, managing a broad, if not slightly glassy, grin.

"I'm not your type!" Jenny managed to call back before the second door slammed shut and the ambulance shot off like a bullet. The scream of the sirens was loud but oddly muted as Hank turned to sit down beside Kit. She was too busy staring, eyes like saucers but her expression otherwise eerily blank, at the medics who fluttered over and around the child in the bed.

"God. Is that Layla?" Hank asked quietly. Burns covered a huge amount of the little body, fortunately she was unconscious – probably from the pain. Hank had often had to treat burns himself and he could never get used to the stomach churning smell. He became aware of a pressure against his side and realised that Kit was leaning against him, on closer inspection, she looked utterly exhausted and Hank risked a limb in putting an arm around her, feeling her whole body weight settle against him.

"You were a doctor before…before you were a politician, right?" Kit asked quietly without looking at him, watching as they cut Layla's once pretty jeans away from her burned up legs.

"Yes."

"What do you think her chances are?" She asked, just as quietly. Hank glanced at her face.

"I don't know, Kit." The ambulance screeched to a halt outside the hospital doors.

"Call on, Rodger, we need the crash cart!" One of the paramedics called ahead as the doors of the ambulance swung open and the bed was rushed out.

"I know what that means! Her heart's stopped!" Kit yelled, completely panicked as she rushed along beside the bed.

"Ma'am you need to get out of the way." Someone was trying to get Kit to move back but it took Hanks strength to pull her away. Together they stood to one side, listening as the flat line bleat of the E.C.G filled the room, not registering a single heartbeat until it was hooked onto Layla's finger.

"It's faint but it's still there. That's a good sign." Hank murmured, his arm still around Kits waist. She stepped away from him, somehow managing to find a spare space beside the bed.

"Layla…Layla, baby, please" Kit whispered, her tone broken as she knelt beside the tiny hospital bed, taking the child's hand so very carefully in her own, brushing her hand over a tiny brow to smooth back singed golden curls, "baby don't give up, please, you hear me?" She asked, voice swinging between begging and firmness. The off beat, staccato sound of the heart monitor stuttered once and flat-lined. "No!" Kit yelled in a strangled voice. Hank pulled her out of the way, face grim as he had to fight to hold her, letting the doctors do their work. "No! Layla!" The secretary for mutant affairs winced as an elbow connected with his jaw with enough force to threaten to break it. Kit squirmed free of him, shoving him away and propelling herself forward at the same time. There was already a crash team surrounding the injured little girl on the bed, her body heaving as volts of electric shot through it in a desperate attempt to save her life. Kit shoved her way past the nurses. "Stop! Just stop!" Kit reached out, her hand on the chest of the nurse in front of her and the other on Layla's chest – unmindful of the burns there. Both Layla and the nurse heaved, bodies arching as if something was being wrenched from them.

"What's she doing?" One of the nurses yelled. "Damn mutan-" Hank growled, interrupting him.

"You were saying?" The nurse who had spoken out fled the room. Layla's eyes shot open and she gasped for air at roughly the same time that Kit let go of her, placing both hands on the gasping, wide eyed nurse and narrowing her eyes in concentration. The nurses, as one, seemed to fold around Layla, moving her bed away from the pair and into an unseen room. The nurse relaxed as Kit let go, sagging sideways slightly, leaning on the bed with a hand to his forehead as Kit stumbled backwards, sitting down hard on the tiled flooring. Hank, the nurse and Kit seemed to be alone in a pool of calm as the others fluttered around a fully conscious and miraculously healed Layla.

"Are you alright?" Hank asked the nurse who was now straightening out his clothing as if nothing had happened.

"Hm? What? Oh, yeah, I'm fine I just…I got this craving for a coffee with three sugars. I gotta go." The nurse, completely fine, walked out of the room. Hank knelt down besides Kit who was shaking from head to foot as if she had just run a marathon.

"Kit?" Hank said quietly. "Kit?"

"Layla? Is she-"

"She's fine. Are you?"

"No." Kit shook, sliding sideways to lean on him once more. "But I will be." She added calmly. They stayed that way, Hanks arms around her as she leaned on him for a moment before she heaved a sigh and pushed away, standing up shakily. "Come on." She actually offered him a hand up, hank took it but exerted absolutely no pressure.

"Where are we going?"

"I need to phone to make sure the kids are alright, no doubt you need some explanations and I need a coffee like a fish needs water." Kit pushed her hair away from her face, wiping a streak of ash and sweat across her forehead as she did so.

"And Layla?"

"She'll be fine, she's sleeping right now – a normal, restful sleep. Released tomorrow with no burns or smoke inhalation problems, I can guarantee." Kit walked on shaky legs to the doorway, leaning against the frame. Hank moved forwards, placing an arm around her shoulders and moving to place one behind her legs. "If you carry me, Hank McCoy, I swear I will never speak to you again." She snapped, pulling away slightly – almost enough to shrug off his arm from her shoulders but not quite. Hank managed a smile, a slightly manic, sleep-deprived smile but a smile none the less.

"It's good to know you haven't lost your sense of humour." He murmured as they walked out into the corridor.

"Its good to know you've been developing yours." She managed around a yawn.

"Do you always have to have the last word?"

"Yes."

"Fancy that."

"Quite."