A/N: So... Viper is definitely doing a thing. Thing is probably a bit less complicated than trying to repatriate the Winter Soldier on paper. (That's really hard, by the way.)
I was not talked out of medical things. Twice. In fact, Mom basically said "go type already" for the second one.

Two weeks ago...

They'd been walking to join Viper while he talked with one of the Base Hospital doctors when the doctor escorted him through a set of double doors. Hollywood frowned, looked back the way they'd come, and was startled to see Carole Bradshaw enter the hallway, her son in her arms and Jester behind her. He nudged Wolf's shoulder and they went back to the nurse's station to join them. "Hey, Carole."

She stared at both of them, looked them up and down with calculating eyes as if she was deciding something, and then nodded. "Where is Pete?"

Hollywood frowned. Why wasn't she asking for Goose? "Here somewhere. No one is telling us anything yet." He nodded to Jester. "Sir."

"Someone called Jenkins before me," Carole explained, her tone all but snarling at them before she shook her head and took a deep breath. "I spoke to Al. And I know Pete is in shock. So where is he? Now."

"I talked to Jenkins," Wolfman told her, and handed the slip of paper to Carole. "Coast Guard diver gave that to me, said Mav was repeating it. You know this Jenkins guy?"

Carole stared at the piece of paper for a moment, then handed it back to him with her free hand, adjusting Bradley, who was staring up at her silently, as she did. "Yes. Call him to talk if he told you that you could." She stepped up to the nurses station, glared at both Nurses seated there. "I am Carole Bradshaw, one of Pete Mitchell's emergency contacts, as well as listed as one of his next of kin. Update, please."

One of the nurses glanced down at the file she currently had open, checking, and then nodded. "Doctors are still assessing him, and he passed out when the helicopter got here, ma'am. I can not tell you more right now."

Carole nodded. "Thank you."

"You're not going to ask about-"

"No," Carole cut him off, glaring at Hollywood. "Because there are few reasons why Pete would be in shock and then pass out after flying."

Hollywood dared to glance at Jester, and found him watching Carole with open admiration. "You know. We don't even know anything yet, but you do." The flicker of emotion that crossed her face in that instant answered his assessment. "Oh, Carole..."

"No time for that right now," she bit out, and Bradley squirmed, causing her to look down at him, blinking as if suddenly remembering she was holding her son. "Oh. Bradley, honey."

"Want Daddy," he said simply. "Uncle Mav."

"I'll take him," Wolfman said suddenly, holding his arms out, and Carole's eyes went to his name patch. Then she handed him over, and Bradley was staring up at him. "Hey, kiddo. Mom needs a moment, all right? Let's go see if the waiting room has some blocks, what do ya say?"

"Blocks?" Bradley asked.

"Yes. Blocks."

Hollywood watched them go, then glanced up the hallway again, and there Viper was, coming towards them with the doctor he'd been talking to before. When they got close enough, he held up a hand. "Sir, she wants to see Maverick."

Viper's gaze went to Jester, who glared back at him. "What is she doing here?"

Jester shrugged. "She was already on her way out the door when I got there, and if it had been one of us, with our families on base, they would want to be here, sir."

Viper nodded thoughtfully, then focused on Carole, who was waiting impatiently. "He is being moved to a room as we speak, Mrs. Bradshaw. He's bruised from the spin and ejection, and unconscious right now. Would you come with me, so the doctor can update you on-"

"There is nothing to update me on," Carole interrupted, eyes flashing with not at all restrained impatience. "We can talk about it after I see Pete."

Viper froze and stared at her, then turned to look at the doctor. "What room was he being moved to?" The doctor told him, and then they were both moving, and Hollywood stared after them for moments before Jester prodded him in the shoulder. They ran to catch up.

When they got to the room, Viper hesitated to open the door. "Mrs. Bradshaw-"

"He's my husband's pilot, Commander," she said and opened the door for him. "And I've seen him in his underwear, because he lived with us." She went in alone and Viper was left staring after her.

A hand on his shoulder, and he looked back to find Hollywood, and Jester behind him. "How is she-"

"Next five minutes," Jester said simply, to the point, and Hollywood glanced at him in confusion.

Viper nodded, understanding catching up him. The three of them chanced to look into the hospital room and found Carole seated on the bed, watching Maverick intently as he slept, blessedly unconscious.

"Get in here and shut the door," Carole said, and Hollywood frowned at the emotion he heard. "Don't stand out there gawking. He'd hate that. Sit."

Hollywood sat on Mav's other side on the hospital bed and looked at him first (out cold, bruises forming on his right arm), and then Carole while Viper and Jester pulled chairs closer and sat down. "Carole?"

"I've seen him repeat that phone number and name before," she admitted. "It's how I was the one to call Jenkins, once, because we needed answers quickly and Pete wasn't able to give them after he'd had a severe nightmare." She glanced up, met his concerned gaze. "Jenkins explained that it was a trauma response, that he'd made Pete memorize his phone number so he could call him if things were bad, because he was only one person and couldn't be there, where ever Pete was, all the time."

"A social services case worker?"

"Both parents died when he was young, Lieutenant," Viper supplied quietly, and Hollywood glanced at him, wondering how the Commander knew that, and then remembered the orders they were all given, about the scuttlebutt that followed Mav. Of course he'd know that. "Alan Jenkins, Mrs. Bradshaw?"

"Yes." She nodded to Hollywood. "His RIO called him... Wolfman, or do you call him Leonard?"

"Wolf, usually," Hollywood said, then looked at Viper, who was mildly glaring at him. "Honestly, we didn't know what the phone number was, and he didn't say that he knew Carole, from what I overheard when Wolf was talking to him. Just to watch out, for some reason, for singing a certain song and to just let him if he did. Which doesn't make any sense." He looked down at Mav, still out cold. "How bad is this?"

Carole sighed, and in that moment he didn't need an answer. It would be bad, so incredibly bad that there were no words for it. Mav started twitching and vocalizing, and she put a careful hand on his shoulder. "Hey, Pete. There you are. Wake up for me, huh?"

"Mmmph," Mav muttered and opened his green eyes. He found Carole immediately and stared at her, and she shushed him.

"Don't talk right now, all right? I'm here." She glanced at Hollywood again, frowning... "Rick is here. We're here, okay?"

Hollywood wondered for a moment why she was explaining it like that, that he wasn't alone, and then Mav's gaze landed on him and the pain in those eyes was so intense that he felt like he'd been punched. Oh. "What she said. We're here, Mav."

"Sore," Mav told them, voice breathy and full of emotion, and then Carole was leaning down and cupping his cheek with her hand. "Carole-"

"Not now, Pete. Go back to sleep, okay? We're here." She held his gaze, stroking his cheek with her hand, until he was out again. "Lieutenant Commander Heatherly? Go find my son and Wolf, if you don't mind. Bradley wanted to see Pete. We can do that now." She pulled the hospital gown away to get a look at his chest while Jester left the hospital room, then put it back the way it had been. "No wonder he's sore. Those are going to look a lot worse before they get better."

"Probably also has full-body aches right now," Viper said thoughtfully. "Ejection is hard."

"Also that," Carole agreed. They were silent for a few minutes until the door opened and admitted Jester, Wolfman, and Bradley, who was handed off to Carole.

Bradley stared at Maverick with wide eyes, then looked at his mother. "Momma?"

"He's sleeping, honey. Needs it, after today." She let go and Bradley scrambled over to Mav, tucking into his left side and Mav unconsciously cradled him and turned so he fit better. "There you go. Remember that he's sore, okay? No kicking at him."

Bradley nodded and then Carole stood up, looked between Hollywood and Wolfman, then nodded. "You two stay here with them. I need to talk to the Commanders."

Hollywood watched her go, Viper and Jester following, and then looked down at Mav as Wolfman joined them on the bed. They sat there a long time, watching and listening as Bradley hummed and sang a lullaby that wasn't quite familiar to either of them.

Now...

In the infirmary, Hollywood should have been surprised by Turner pulling a mostly full male urinal out of the bag he'd been carrying and passing it off with instructions for testing, but he wasn't. Not after the day they'd had. "Paid the price for, huh?"

Turner paid him no mind as he motioned to both of them to sit down and wait in chairs against the wall, and then pulled another Corpsman aside for a discussion in hushed voice tones, too low for either of them to catch.

Hollywood glanced at Slider, whose facial expression was curious but also kind of a blank blandness. "This doesn't worry you."

"No. What worried me was the breathing exercises and the finger counting."

"Ron..."

Slider shook his head. "Give a man a focus, work past the triggers. Turner was doing fine, but he'd been in there since very early this morning, a little after midnight." Now he looked over and Hollywood realized that there was emotion, a lot of it, just under the surface being held back. "And he had to wake me at some point, too. I think. It's fuzzy."

Hollywood nodded, understanding. That long with them, with multiple people having problems like they were... "Hard."

"Yeah." They sat there in companionable silence until Turner pulled up a chair, reversed it, and sat down. "Done already?"

Turner smiled but it did not reach his eyes. "Depends on what you mean by done, Lieutenant. Done having a conference with a colleague? Never done. Done getting someone to run urine samples? Maybe. Done for the day? Not even close." He studied both of them of a minute, then shook his head. "Of the six of you, I would not have expected to have to pull you for a cool down, Lieutenant Neven. I understand the reasons, but... scuttlebutt? What about that upset you?"

"Are you really wanting to know, or do you already?" The glare Turner leveled at him made Hollywood want to crawl into a hole.

"Asking me questions for my questions does not help you," Turner said patiently. "And you will have to pass a psych evaluation to be cleared to fly. All six of you will. Either here or in Miramar."

"Six of us?" Slider asked.

"Wells, too. He had to fly with the emotionally unstable pain in the ass."

It shouldn't have been funny, but right then, hearing Turner say it so deadpan like that, Hollywood could not resist laughing, and Slider and the Corpsman were witness to him giggling at first, and then outright laughter, which only got worse when at least one person in the infirmary turned to look at them in curiosity. Turner waved them off without looking, and Slider put an arm around Hollywood's shoulders, bracing him as the laughter subsided. "Rick?"

"Oh God, we are not telling him that," Hollywood wheezed when he could talk again. Turner's raised eyebrow set him off again.

"Rick?" Slider asked again, not startled at all when the giggles turned to sobs against his chest. He met Turner's gaze with a frown, and Turner nodded. "You wanted this."

"Yes." Turner moved his chair closer and got Hollywood's attention. "All right, Lieutenant?"

"No," Hollywood told him, chest still heaving as if he'd run ten miles. "Why?"

"Why I'd I trigger you to release in such a way, or why am I asking?"

"Trigger."

Turner smiled. "Good answer."

"Jerk."

"The answer, however, is that holding everything in is bad," Turner told him after a silent minute, waiting as Hollywood's breathing slowed down to mostly normal. "And I had an emotional upheaval of my own not half an hour ago."

"Was hard to miss," Slider told him. "But well covered."

"Lots of practice," Turner told him, and then flinched when a glass of water entered his field of vision and he spun to find the Corpsman he'd been talking to before standing there, smirking at his reaction. "Are you trying to get punched, Evan?"

"No, I didn't want to interrupt any more than necessary," Evan said, nodding to Hollywood. "It's not my fault that you have a punch first and ask questions later automatic response after a panic attack. Thirsty, Lieutenant?"

"Yeah." Hollywood frowned at Evan. "Punch first and ask questions later?"

Turner took the glass, handed it to Hollywood. "We all have our problems. Ron?"

"I'm not fine, either, but one problem at a time," Slider said as Hollywood drank the water and handed the glass back. "Now, really: Scuttlebutt, Rick?"

Hollywood glanced at Evan who was still hovering, then at Turner, blinking in realization. "You're probably the ones who would understand the most, aren't you? This is Mav's deployment assignment. You know the scuttlebutt that follows him."

Turner nodded. "We do. Hard not to, and if it does come up, we, here in medical, combat it where we can with lots of observations about the geopolitical quagmire. Evan, go make yourself useful and see if those results are back yet, please."

"They're not," Evan muttered as he took the empty glass and the hint and left them to it.

Turner shook his head, his expression one of slight amusement. "Hurts to realize the Scuttlebutt is undeserved and uncalled for and cruel, right?"

"Yes. I didn't understand at first, because it was training and we'd been ordered in writing by Comander Metcalf not to discuss it, and then the scuttlebutt rumor seemed to be true." Hollywood craned his neck to look at Slider. "Hop 19, remember? He swore not to do that again. Twice. To me and to Nick."

"And he didn't." Slider's eyes went distant and Hollywood nudged him. "I'm fine. Just thinking we should get a copy of Comms from yesterday for you to hear." He glanced down at Hollywood. "You saw him after, but during? He made me proud. Which is weird, when we're trying not to get killed."

"Not really," Turner told him thoughtfully. "Heat of the moment can be weird as all hell." He stood up. "After I bother Evan about those results, what say we go bug Stinger for that Comms recording for when I think you're ready to listen to it, hmmm?"

Hollywood nodded. He watched Turner go, glanced up at Slider again. "What's he worried about, anyway?"

"Mav's still got a fever," Slider muttered. "Probably checking to see if it's a UTI, just to be safe."

Turner came back shortly, eyes scanning a sheet of paper with an unreadable expression, then he folded the report and pocketed it, and looked at both of them with a sigh. "Not a UTI. I'm probably just over thinking."

"Unfamiliar places, lots of stress," Slider reminded him as he helped Hollywood to stand, steadied him when he swayed slightly. "Wood?"

"Let's go bug a CAG," Hollywood said with humor he wasn't really feeling. They did.

Knocking on Jardian's open office door, Turner could already see that maybe they shouldn't have decided to bug him after all as the man looked up from the file he was reading with a surly expression. "Sir?"

"Come on in," Jardian told them and looked down at the file again. "Hollywood, did Metcalf also read you into whatever he's doing that got the five of you ordered out here for a month, or was it just your RIO?"

Hollywood paused and turned to look at Slider in confusion. "No, sir. Wolf didn't tell me anything, and I didn't talk to Viper personally about anything, either. Why?"

"Because," and here he held up the page he was reading, or trying to read, but it was so full of black line redactions that reading it was nearly impossible. "He sent this copied excuse of a report from a classified all to hell mission and wrote 'as a personal favor, please don't let Maverick do anything stupid while you've got him.'"

Turner froze. "What's the date on that?"

"Does it matter?" Jardian took in the pained expression on Turner's face, then looked at the other two... who were simply staring at him. "What?"

"Tough day, sir," Slider answered carefully. "And Carole Bradshaw also gave us the advice to keep Mav out of trouble as we were leaving, though probably not for the same reasons."

Jardian nodded. "Date is eighteen or so years ago, Corpsman."

"And we've caught you in a mood," Turner observed. "Our apologies. Is now the right time to ask for a Comms recording from yesterday?"

"Comms recordings?"

"Wood missed the good and bad parts after getting shot down, sir," Slider explained. "And this is a distraction from... things."

"Things," Jardian said slowly with a glance at Turner, who sighed. "Are we going to be putting the things in an official medical report?"

"Right now? Not as more than a 'patient slept disturbed for a day or so when he should have been on leave' type of note. And for the other five including these two, probably the same kind of notes." Turner shrugged. "If you want to know ahead of time."

"I thought you said we had to pass psych evals."

"You do. Probably by the time we get around to actually doing evaluations, you'll pass them."

Jardian looked between them, then down at the paper in his hand. "Right. I expect you lot to keep Maverick out of trouble when he's awake enough to even think about getting into said trouble or do anything stupid, even if I have no idea why a request from the Fighter Weapons School Commander would be made like this."

"Is that a direct order, sir?" Slider asked, humor in his tone.

"You can consider it a direct order, Lieutenant." He handed a cassette tape to Turner that had been sitting near his left elbow. Turner simply looked at him with raised eyebrows, and Jardian shrugged. "Wells was going to ask for a copy to study, because he always does. Figured I'd ask Bert instead and beat him to the punch."

The bunk room was quiet when they returned with bottles of water and two bags, one from the Imfirmary and the other from the Mess. Ice didn't even look up from the book he was reading as Turner set the bags under the desk in the corner. "There better not be another male urinal in there, Doc."

The observation made Turner snort in laughter as Hollywood took his book back and climbed up onto his own bunk. "No, once was enough. I think we can actually trust him to navigate now that he's started making sense." He tapped Wolfman on the shoulder and the RIO shook his head. "Wolfe..."

"Grab a top bunk, Doc," Wolfman told him without looking away from the newspaper in his hand. "Take a nap. I don't care if you are a Lieutenant Commander and outrank me. You were up all night for us."

Turner sighed and took note of where Slider and Merlin were, and that Hollywood was engrossed in his book again. "Take a nap, huh?"

Ice glanced at him, nodded. "He's been quiet since you left, so take the reassurance right now and get up there," he motioned to the bunk above him. "And get some sleep."

"You might have to wake me," Turner said finally, and carefully climbed up onto the top bunk.

"And how is that different from how we've been, in here?" Slider asked, pointedly. Turner smiled in answer, and then, with a speed that shocked them, was asleep incredibly quickly. "What... how did he do that?"

"He's a Corpsman," Merlin said, yawning. "Can probably sleep anytime, anywhere, on anything."

Wolfman set the newspaper down momentarily and looked at Ice. Then he shook his head, shrugged. "Wish we'd realized sooner that all he needed was contact. Carole showed us, but I didn't know why she did it until now."

Ice frowned at him. "Did what?"

"Bradley was in Mav's hospital room, cuddling with him," Hollywood explained. Ice glanced downward, then nodded. Somehow, that made total sense, given what they'd learned.

They spent the next several hours in companionable silence. Turner only had to be woken once.