Same Time Next Year

Disclaimer: I don't own The New Avengers, nor the characters of Mike Gambit, Purdey, and John Steed. Sadly. They're the property of The Avengers (Film and TV) Enterprises. This story is for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement intended

Timeline: Ninth in a series. Takes place in November, 1977, a few months after the conclusion of the series in the Canadian episodes. It is strongly recommended, but not essential, that you go back and read the previous stories in the arc: Lost Boys, Anew, Aftermath, Dance With Me, The Anniversary, Merry Christmas, Mr. Gambit, Brazil, Life on Mars, and 'Til Death.

For more information about the series, please see my profile.

John Steed looked up from securing the sniper's wrists behind his back and watched the warehouse fold in on itself with no small amount of dismay. Pressing a restraining knee to the stirring sniper's back, he picked up his radio from where it was lying on the ground nearby and keyed in. "Larry, do you have eyes on Gambit and Purdey?"

"Afraid not." Larry sounded tense and on edge. "No one's come out of there, but I'm not sending anyone in so the roof can fall on them."

"That's quite all right. I'll volunteer." Steed was already climbing to his feet and starting down the incline. "There's a package waiting for you just outside the treeline. Be a good chap and collect it."

"On our way, but Steed, you can't possibly intend on going in there?"

"I can," Steed corrected, "and I do." He was on the flat at the foot of the hill now, which made his progress faster and easier. He made a beeline for the warehouse, weaving around the agents watching the building shudder worryingly with a certain amount of trepidation. Larry had abandoned the radio now, in favour of intercepting Steed in person.

"At least wait until it's settled a bit," he protested, walking backwards to keep his eyes on Steed as he strode forward.

Steed glared sternly at him. "Purdey and Gambit can't afford to wait. As it stands, it may already be too late."

Larry darted in front of Steed, arm outstretched as a barrier to halt his progress. "I can't let you go in there, Steed."

"'Let' isn't in it," Steed warned congenially. "But I understand your position. I'll be happy for you to tell McKay in your report that I went rogue and refused to obey orders." He nodded at Larry's outstretched limb. "I could break your arm, if that would make your story more believable."

Larry laughed a little at that, then quickly sobered up when it became clear that Steed's smile was meant to reinforce the threat rather than undercut it. He pulled his arm away quickly, as though he'd been stung. "It's your funeral," he said sharply, backing away.

"Send lilies," Steed suggested, before diving into the breach.

The aftershocks of the explosion were just starting when Steed reached the door. He peered into the dust cloud and coughed automatically, wafting his hand in front of his face as he peered into the fog of plaster dust.

There was no sign of Purdey and Gambit.

Steed frowned as he skirted neatly around some falling debris, narrowly missing becoming collateral damage in the process. It distracted him to the extent that he didn't fully comprehend the difficult journey ahead of him until he was forced to slow down and pick his way over a large beam on the warehouse's debris-strewn floor. From deeper into the building's depths, he could see the entire space was covered with pieces of what had been the building's roof and surrounding walls. It was easy to spot where the explosives had been placed. There was a large hole in the ceiling through which the pale afternoon sunlight was making itself known, framed by jagged beams and the odd idly flapping cable. The walls on either side of him had also accrued damage, large apertures that had sent an avalanche of bricks spewing forth onto the concrete slab below, some shattering on impact, others intact. Steed knew what they could do to a human being if they fell on one from a great height, and tried not to think about the possibility of finding Gambit and Purdey with their heads caved in. He had to admit Thyme knew her business—the meeting would have taken place in the middle of the space, neutral territory, with neither party closer to an escape route. The explosions had been perfectly placed to stop anyone who might be trying to flee by sending destruction raining down upon them.

Despite the warehouse having gained a new skylight and a pair of unorthodox windows, it was still difficult to clearly see the scene. The room was thick with dust hanging in the air, obscuring Steed's vision and clogging his lungs, and the jagged holes did nothing to illuminate the spots on the floor that weren't directly below them. The warehouse clearly hadn't been emptied out before it fell into disuse, and the floor was still crowded with crates that had toppled over and split open, spilling their contents and packaging out onto the floor, adding to the general mess of the place. Gambit, Purdey, and Thyme presumably, could be anywhere in the disarray, but Steed couldn't see them. Walking amongst the wreckage and searching it inch by inch was going to be time-consuming and difficult, but there was no other way, and Steed wasn't about to turn around and leave Gambit and Purdey to their fates simply because he found the task daunting.

The deeper he ventured into the warehouse, the more perilous Steed's journey became. The damaged roof of the building creaked ominously over his head as he approached the epicentre of the explosion. There were no longer bare patches of floor in-between pieces of wreckage for him to step on, and his footing became increasingly precarious as he was forced to scrabble over chunks of debris that shifted worryingly beneath his feet. Matters were made worse by the need to move large lumps of rock and wood in search of Gambit and Purdey, who Steed knew could easily have been covered by the avalanche. Steed was painfully aware that doing so slowed his progress and increased the risk of something falling on him from above, but he couldn't bear the idea of walking right past them if they were buried just beneath the surface of the rubble. It was a losing game either way, and Steed prayed he hadn't bet Gambit's and Purdey's lives on the wrong strategy. The whole situation reminded him, rather horribly, of his wartime experience, searching for bodies amid debris. He shook the memories off like clouds of plaster dust.

Without warning, a beam detached itself from the twisted mass above and hurtled down to where he was prodding through the wreckage with his umbrella. Steed caught sight of its shadow as it grew ominously in the puddle of sunlight at his feet, and flung himself sideways just in time, narrowly avoiding skewering himself on a piece of rebar in the process. The beam hit the ground with a deafening clang, sending up another cloud of dust that stung Steed's eyes as he lay coughing in the rubble. He pushed his bowler further back on his forehead and gave himself half a second to recover before he climbed to his feet and resumed his search.

Progress continued to be slow, and Steed spared half a thought in rebuke of Larry for keeping his people back. This was not a one-man job, but as he was all he had, Steed was determined to do the best he could. A thorough sweep took more time, but Steed knew there were virtues in being methodical.

All the same, as precious minutes ticked by, and Steed did the mental math about how long his oxygen had lasted on the odd occasion he'd found himself buried alive, he started to doubt his methods. His anxiety had reached its peak when his eyes alit upon something small and black that stood out against the general pallor of the rubble.

Steed made a beeline for it, skipping over stone and wood alike to crouch next to his target. Brushing some dust away revealed what was, unquestionably, the heel of a boot, sticking up from a foot pointed downwards. Steed knew Gambit's fashion sense well enough to identify it as one of the younger man's. Steed cast around in the vicinity for other appendages. If this was Gambit's foot, where was his head? Steed followed a straight-line trajectory, roughly measuring where the other end of Gambit's 6' stature would end up, taking into account a possibly strangely contorted pose. There was a rather large beam lying above where Steed estimated the rest of Gambit was, which he forced himself not to worry about for the moment. He peered down the length of the wood, sight eaglelike in the dusty gloom. There! A hand. Too small to be Gambit's, but then he wasn't only looking for Gambit. And knowing his colleagues as he did, he suspected they would stick together—he couldn't imagine either Purdey or Gambit abandoning their partner to save their own skin. Find one and one could easily find the other.

Steed circled around and lifted the hand carefully, immediately recognising Purdey's ring on the little finger. He searched for a pulse and sighed in relief when he found one. Carefully, he felt his way down the arm, using it as a guide to locate the rest of Purdey. It disappeared under the beam, and now Steed could just make out the outline of her profile in the gloom. Steed felt blindly for an armpit to get a grip, used his other hand to support her head, mindful of the possibility of spinal damage. She shifted, but something heavy was weighing her down. Steed reached into the gloom and groped around, found another head-covered with curly hair no less. Gambit. Steed quickly amended his plan, gripping a handful of Gambit's jacket and tugging, minding his head as he had Purdey's, so he could pull him forward. Thus began a long, slow process of sliding each individual out a bit at a time, trying not to shift either partner too violently lest he exacerbate an already serious injury. Eventually he got them free of the beam—which, luckily for his colleagues, had landed propped against a large chunk of concrete to form a pocket of protection. Purdey and Gambit emerged from beneath it tangled up like the lovers they were, arms still loosely wound around one another for protection. Steed didn't need to be told to guess that Gambit had been attempting to shield Purdey from the avalanche. "I understand the impetus for gallantry," he murmured, as he gently tipped Gambit sideways, cupping the back of his head to keep it from smacking on the rock, and starting to peel him, quite literally, off of Purdey, "but Purdey will never forgive you if you die for it. Or me for letting it happen."

Purdey and Gambit came apart with a sickening sucking sound that Steed knew only too well, and as Gambit flopped onto his back, Steed's worst fears were realised. The agents had been sealed together by a large measure of already-drying blood. Each bore a large matching red blotch on their torsos, like a grisly ink blot. Steed could see traces of it on their hands, too, where they weren't coated in dust. Steed sucked his teeth and cleared Purdey and Gambit's noses and mouths out while he tried to work out whose blood it was and where it was coming from. Using past events as a guide, he checked Gambit over first, quickly located the stab wound with a grim smile. "Without wishing to cause offence, I'm not entirely surprised," Steed told the unconscious man, pulling his handkerchief from his pocket and pressing it hard to the wound. "You do make rather a habit of this sort of thing."

Gambit gurgled a little as Steed pressed down hard on the wound, then transitioned into a cough without regaining consciousness. Steed checked his pulse and frowned when he found it weak. He liked the clamminess of Gambit's skin even less. Gambit coughed again as Steed unbuttoned his collar. From Steed's elbow, Purdey also started coughing, as if in sympathy, and Steed turned just in time to see her start to sit up. "Easy, my dear." Steed reached out a hand to help pull her upright while keeping the other hand pressed to Gambit's wound. He was painfully aware that he was too shorthanded, literally, to deal with any more serious injuries, if Purdey had any that needed treating. Where the devil was Larry?

Purdey sat up gingerly, still coughing to clear her lungs of dust. Steed kept a reassuring hand on her shoulder, trying to keep one eye on her and one on Gambit. "How's your head?" he asked with concern, assessing her pupils for any signs of concussion.

Purdey slid her fingers into her hair, sending up a fine cloud of dust. "Fine, I think," she said uncertainly. "It doesn't hurt, anyway. I don't think I hit it on anything." She was blinking like she was disoriented, but Steed knew that could just as easily be her eyes trying to clear themselves of dust as a sign of head trauma.

"You passed out," he pointed out mildly. "Are you certain you didn't strike it on something?"

Purdey shook her head, as if to prove her point. "No, I don't think so. I think it was a combination of shock and having all the air left in my lungs pushed out when Mike tried to protect me—Mike!"

Purdey had reached up to wipe some dust from her eyes so she could see Gambit better, and been temporarily distracted as she realised her knuckles had been scraped raw from protecting Gambit's head from the worst of the fallout, a bloody mess that had been lost in the midst of the rest of Gambit's gore. She didn't have time to linger on it the second she saw the man lying there, leaking like a sieve, so she wiped her eyes again and went into action, taking care not to check whether Steed was looking at her, or give her injury further attention, lest he start looking at it, too. She didn't need fuss. She needed help for Gambit.

At the very least, Purdey's alarm cleared away any lingering bleariness, and she moved to Gambit's side with a speediness and ease that half-convinced Steed that she didn't have any broken bones, at least. She'd still need a full check-up, and Steed meant to have Kendrick have a look at her just as soon as Gambit was in better hands. All the same, as Purdey pushed Steed's hand aside to pull Gambit's shirt from his trousers, he vocalised his concern. "Purdey, are you sure you're all right?"

"Bit bruised, that's all," Purdey rattled off automatically, assessing Gambit's wound firsthand before snatching Steed's handkerchief away and pressing down hard. "And I've swallowed a lot of dust. But nothing's broken." She reached out a demanding hand. "Give me your tie."

Steed acquiesced but wasn't about to let the matter lie. "And the blood?"

Purdey frowned in incomprehension, then glanced down at the large red stain on her dress for what was presumably the first time. "Gambit's," she said shortly, taking the tie from Steed and wrapping it tightly around his waist to hold the handkerchief in place. "Vanessa Thyme stabbed him." She frowned at the wound before she pressed down on his side once more. "I thought it would be deeper."

"Perhaps this ran interference." Steed slid a blood-soaked envelope out of Gambit's inside breast pocket and held it up to the light. There was a narrow slash through the middle.

"That's the evidence that Gambit was set up by Thyme," Purdey identified, momentarily transfixed by the narrow gash in the centre, outlined, almost decoratively, by Gambit's blood. "Do you think it's ruined?"

"Not irretrievably," Steed pronounced, laying the envelope carefully on a nearby chunk of rock. "I've rather a lot of experience in getting blood out of things." He smiled grimly. "If this is what you say it is, it might have saved Gambit twice over."

"I hope so." Purdey pressed the back of her hand to Gambit's cheek, frown deepening when she felt how clammy it was. "Where's Larry? Gambit needs medical attention."

"My thoughts exactly," Steed murmured, eyes flicking toward the doors at either end of the space. "But he'll also want to know where the papers are. You'll have to be prepared to give him an answer."

Purdey scowled and pulled two envelopes from the waist of her skirt, where they had remained hidden under her shirt. They, too, were stained with Gambit's blood. "Here they are," Purdey spat, tossing them angrily beside the evidence. "Bloody things—literally. Gambit's suffered too much for them. I don't think either of us will be able to stand the sight of them after this." She paused, then looked levelly at Steed. "But Gambit wouldn't want Larry to have them, either."

Steed smiled conspiratorially. "Leave them with me," he told her, gathering them up along with the evidence. He tucked the lot into his breast pocket just as a chorus of voices announced the belated arrival of the cavalry. Purdey chanced looking away from Gambit long enough to establish that Kendrick and some paramedics were with them. "Hold on, Mike," she said softly, using her free hand to brush his dust-coated hair back from his forehead. "Help is on the way."

Gambit's head lolled loosely at the news, and he succumbed to another coughing fit. Purdey frowned worriedly as she tried to hold him still. "Allow me." Steed stepped in, taking a firm grip on Gambit's shoulders to allow Purdey to keep the pressure up on his wound. Purdey flashed Steed a tight, grateful smile, but Gambit's coughing continued unabated. Purdey did a quick self-check of the state of her own lungs, which still felt scratchy, but the urge to cough wasn't as strong as it had been, and anyway, Gambit had shielded her from the worst of the dust with his body, so her lungs were obviously clearer than his. She made a snap decision and bent to cover his mouth with hers, a kiss of life in every sense of the word, inflating his lungs with fresher air while also telling him that she was there. Purdey couldn't be sure, but she thought he kissed back in spite of his lack of consciousness, and when she broke away, she thought his cheeks had a little more colour in them as well.

"You're going to be all right," Purdey said softly near his ear, and for the first time it felt like a pronouncement rather than an optimistic prediction. Then Kendrick was beside her, shouldering between her and Steed to assess the damage. "He's been stabbed," Purdey informed the doctor, pulling her hands away to let Kendrick peek at the wound. "I don't think it's deep, but he's lost a lot of blood and breathed in a lot of dust." She bit her lip as she recalled Gambit's snap decision to protect her from the beam. "I'm not sure, but he might have hit his head as well."

Kendrick nodded once, curtly, already busy taking Gambit's vitals. "He'll need a transfusion at least. We need to move him now." He beckoned to the paramedics, and Purdey was forced to shuffle aside as they set about loading Gambit onto the stretcher. Kendrick tore his attention away from his patient long enough to assess Purdey. "How are you feeling?"

Purdey shook her head. "I'm fine. Cuts and bruises and a lungful of dust, that's all."

Kendrick, far too used to agents downplaying the state of their well-being to take Purdey's self-diagnoses at face value, looked sceptical. "You should be checked over as well, just to be safe," he pronounced, then fished a plaster out of his bag and put it on Purdey's raw knuckles, as if to seal the deal.

"She will be," Steed cut in, before Purdey could protest. "I'll bring her in personally. But she has unfinished business to attend to here first."

"See that she does," Kendrick said sternly, splitting the command between Steed and Purdey. "I spend enough time chasing after him—" He indicated Gambit. "—without adding you to the list. Although I'm surprised you don't want to ride along with him to the hospital."

"I do," Purdey confirmed softly, biting her lip as she looked at the unconscious man on the stretcher. Between the blood loss and the plaster, his whitewashed skin resembled a pale ghost more than Gambit. "But I need to do something first."

"We're ready to go, miss," one of the paramedics informed her, and Purdey realised that they were waiting for her to let go of Gambit's hand, still clutched in hers with a vicelike grip.

"I'll see you soon," she told Gambit, kissing his hand before giving it a squeeze and letting it go. She watched them sweep Gambit away toward the warehouse door, passing Larry and several other agents as they went. Larry scrutinised Gambit as the grim parade passed, with Kendrick bringing up the rear, then set off toward Purdey, who was still kneeling on the debris stained with Gambit's blood.

Purdey saw him coming and rose gracefully to her feet, fire in her eyes. She was dimly aware that the agents who had accompanied Larry into the building were looking at her with a mixture of trepidation and horror. What she didn't realise, without the benefit of a mirror, was that she cut a figure straight out of a horror film: face, hair, and limbs painted white and grey with plaster dust, throwing the large crimson stain on her middle and the blood on her hands into sharp relief. Purdey glared at them as they gaped at her and they shrank back, much to her satisfaction. She looked back at Steed with a grim smile on her face just as Larry reached them.

"I'm going to look for Miss Thyme," she declared loudly, in a voice that brooked no argument. She looked hard at Larry, eyes narrowed. "Did you see her leave?"

"No." Larry was riveted by the blood-soaked spectre before him. "No one came out, not that we saw."

"I was going to ask you what happened to Miss Thyme," Steed prodded gently, drawing Purdey's laser gaze away from the unfortunate Larry.

"I told you. She stabbed Gambit." Purdey's tone was accusatory and aimed at Larry, as though he had slipped the blade into Gambit himself. "I knocked her out just before the building came down." She executed a flawless spin and turned her penetrating gaze on the debris-littered floor. "I'm going to find her."

From Larry's expression, Steed thought he wasn't convinced that Purdey was sane—or real. "Shouldn't you get someone to check you out?" he asked carefully, clearly afraid of the response he might receive. "My men can conduct the search."

"No," Purdey said flatly, clearing some grit from her cheek only to leave a smear of Gambit's blood in its stead, more paint for the horror film tableau. "I'm going to find her." She set off without another word, leaving Steed and Larry trailing in her wake.

"You don't happen to know where the papers are, do you?" Despite how imposing Purdey's appearance was, and the fact that Gambit had been taken to hospital, Larry's concerns were clearly elsewhere.

"I've had more important things to worry about," Purdey pointed out tartly, which wasn't a lie and therefore was much easier to sell than an outright denial. She kept walking, hoping Larry would let the subject drop if she put enough distance between them.

As she moved out of the epicentre of the explosion, the rubble began to taper off, and Purdey began to wonder if Thyme had escaped. It was then that she caught sight of an unusually dark spot beneath a rather large piece of stonework. Purdey hurried over, dancing lightly over the rock that threatened to slide out from beneath her feet. The dark spot, she realised as she got closer, was a sleeve encasing an arm. A woman's arm. Purdey slowed as that particular realisation hit her. From what Gambit had told her about Vanessa Thyme, the woman was very dangerous indeed. Even pinned beneath the stone, it was entirely possible she was playing possum, just waiting for some unwary agent to get close enough to be taken hostage or worse.

Purdey circled the arm, giving it a wide berth. Now that she knew there was a body there, she could make out the outline of her body in the rubble—torso, legs, head—where the stone wasn't lying on her. All the same, Purdey knew she would need to clear away the debris to determine whether the woman was alive, and after a few evaluative circuits, she went in from behind, kicking at the woman's foot. It wiggled, shaking off the dust in the process, but in response to Purdey's kick, not any impetus of its own. Satisfied that her quarry was at least unconscious, Purdey made straight for the head, sweeping the rubble away with the flat of her hand to reveal dusty, dishevelled hair. As Purdey turned the head her way, she immediately knew the woman was dead from the looseness of the neck, even without taking into account the coolness of her skin and the placing of the stone which, on further inspection, she could see had crushed the woman's torso catastrophically. All the same, Purdey pressed her fingers to the pulse point on the woman's neck, just to prove to herself that the woman who had caused Gambit so much pain and nearly cost him his life had well and truly forfeited hers. When no pulse was forthcoming, Purdey withdrew and regarded the corpse with a certain amount of numbness. All in all, there was a sense of an anticlimax.

"You thought you had him," she told the corpse. "But he had me."

Larry suddenly appeared at her side, stared down at the body. "Is she…?"

Purdey nodded, rising gracefully to her feet. "I don't think she'll be causing any more problems in the future."

Larry looked disappointed. "Would have been nice to get her alive, see what she knew."

"From what Gambit said about her, I suspect she'd be about as talkative as she is now," Purdey murmured, letting out a long breath. She suddenly felt faint.

Steed joined them, regarded the corpse matter-of-factly. "Well, that puts the matter to bed quite neatly, at least in terms of the report."

Purdey nodded dazedly. "So that's it," she said dully, feeling a wave of exhaustion wash over her. "It's over. She's dead."

"It does look that way," Steed murmured, resting a hand on her shoulder for support, both physical and emotional. "Now that you've found her, I think we ought to listen to Kendrick and get you checked over." He glanced at Larry. "You can debrief her once she's been cleared of injury and had a chance to clean up?" It was framed as a question, but there was no doubt that Steed meant it as an order, not a suggestion.

Larry took the hint, almost glad to have the bloody spectre that was Purdey removed from his sight. "We'll handle it from here."

Steed beamed a classic Steed smile. "Excellent. Come along, my dear." He took Purdey's elbow and began to gently steer her toward the warehouse door.

They were halfway to the Big Cat when Steed leant toward Purdey's ear and said, "Turn left, and if anyone asks, we ducked in here because you thought you were about to have a fit of hysterics."

Purdey frowned in confusion but did as she was told, following Steed down a narrow alley between the warehouse and a wall of abandoned stock that was lined with bits of scrap and old barrels. Steed made for one of the latter, checked inside to ensure it was empty. Purdey drifted behind him, clearly confused. "Steed, what are you doing?"

"Honouring Gambit's wishes." He patted the barrel proprietarily. "This one will do nicely."

"Do nicely for what?" Purdey approached the barrel and peered inside, but saw nothing but a dark chasm ending in a rust-pocked floor. "Steed, what are you talking about?"

"We're going to solve the problem of these papers once and for all." Steed retrieved the three envelopes from inside his jacket and took care to return the one with Gambit's evidence to the safety of his breast pocket. "I'm going to let you in on a secret," he went on, pulling a lighter from his pocket.

"I've had my fill of secrets for the time being," Purdey said sharply, watching Steed with trepidation.

"One more won't hurt, particularly when it's this one. Something I haven't told you or Gambit thus far."

Purdey cocked her head. "What are you talking about?"

"You know that Gambit told me about what happened to him in Africa. What you don't know is that I was also aware that the Ministry was interested in these papers back in 1973, when they discovered that Gambit was being sent in to steal them, and was extremely annoyed when he didn't come through. Now, no one at the time would tell me exactly who had been caught in the act of trying to take them, but when Gambit told me his story, I checked the dates in the files and it added up. The Ministry knew they didn't re-emerge in someone else's hands, and when I finally got to know Gambit, I didn't believe that he would sell them or use them for his own ends. So I knew he'd either hidden or destroyed them. I never bothered to ask which to spare him having to lie." He smiled broadly at Purdey. "You see, I know what these papers are for in broad strokes, and I quite agreed with Gambit back then, as I do now, that no one ought to have them. Which is why, after Gambit having been responsible for their fate for so long, I'm going to save him from having to take responsibility for this particular act." He flicked the lighter open. "Of course, if you want to be complicit as well, I won't stop you."

Purdey looked at the envelope in his hand and grinned. "And let you have all the fun? Never." Steed presented her with the lighter and Purdey flicked it to life with no small amount of glee. She took one of the packets of the pages that Steed handed to her and held the lighter to the corner of the blood-spattered paper, the liquid dry now in the late afternoon light, a fitting touch considering how much of Gambit's blood had been spilt for the sake of protecting the much sought-after sheets. She watching the pages burn with satisfaction, held them vindictively until the flames threatened to singe her fingers, before dropping them into the barrel. She handed the lighter to Steed and watched him set his own packet alight, watched the flames hungrily consume the paper. Steed dropped the pages into the barrel with their companions and repocketed the lighter. Together, they watched the wretched things burn away into ash. To Purdey, it felt strangely like standing in a crematorium, as though this was a funeral for Gambit's past, and all the pain that had gone come it.

"We'll wait until they're completely destroyed," Steed told her, eyes reflecting the dancing flames. "All too often, people leave things burning before the job is finished. We can't afford to leave any trace behind, not even the smallest corner. Just ash."

Purdey nodded in agreement, arms crossed over her chest, feeling Gambit's blood, still damp on her dress, against her skin. "And then we'll check on him."

Steed shook his head ever-so-slightly. "First we'll get you cleaned up and have Kendrick look you over."

Purdey's hands clenched into fists where they were tucked next to her elbows. "I thought that was something you said to get Larry to leave us alone!"

"Yes, but I also meant it." Steed's tone was firm and resolute. "We can't be entirely certain you didn't hit your head or sustain some other injury. And Kendrick won't let you anywhere near his patient trailing dust and debris." He smiled to take some of the sting away. "It's for your own well-being as well as Gambit's. He wouldn't want you to fall afoul of something that was preventable, certainly not on his account."

Purdey let her hands fall to her sides resignedly. "All right," she mumbled in annoyance. "But I want to see him as soon as possible. He needs someone to be there for him when he wakes up."

"We'll be like lightning," Steed promised, reaching out a hand to guide Purdey away. "The fire's done its work. Let's go."