Chapter XI


Rogue and Remy were too stunned to do anything when Kitty leapt from the jeep and ran towards the remains of the châteaux. They soon recovered and leapt out of the jeep after her. Kitty was attempting to shift a huge chunk of masonry to no avail and as Rogue and Remy approached her she broke down, beating the masonry with her fists as she sobbed. Rogue put a comforting arm around her and as she tried to calm her down Remy turned to look down the landing strip.
Erik's minions had all but vanished, leaving the landing field deserted apart from the two women and him. Realising that there was nothing he could do to help he disconsolately turned to look at the rubble that lay where the châteaux once stood and said a final goodbye to Pietro.

Pietro's head felt as though it had been split open. He had a terrible headache and when he finally forced one eyelid open - the other was bruised shut - he thought for one horrible moment that he had gone blind. Slowly his eye accustomed to the near total darkness and he realised that he could see very thin trickles of light coming from a long way above. At least he wasn't blind.
His next attempt was to move. He tried to bring his right arm up off the floor and found that it was twisted at a very unusual angle beneath him. He knew it was broken, he just wasn't sure where. His left arm was in slightly better shape than his right, it was bruised but he could move it. However, when he attempted to prop himself up a pain so intense that it threatened to cause him to black out flared in his ribs. He dropped onto his back again, the pain in his chest too much to bear. That meant at least a couple of broken ribs to add to his list, maybe even an internal injury. His investigation of his legs added a couple more broken bones to his list.
His left leg was definitely broken, it was twisted at an almost one hundred and eighty degree angle beneath him. His right leg might have been broken, he wasn't sure. It sure felt like it was though.

Rogue and Remy had managed to get the still sobbing Kitty back into the jeep and she was now sitting in the back seat, one of Rogue's arms still comfortingly wrapped around her. Remy was sitting in the driver's seat when Rogue voiced the question he had been thinking about for some time. "How are we gonna get out of here?"
Remy turned to face her, and even Kitty's sobs quietened. "I'm not sure. Have either of you got a phone, or anything that we can use to contact the outside world with?" Both of the women shook their heads. "Great!" Remy slumped in his seat dejectedly.
"Well, what are we going to do?" Rogue pressed him.
"What can we do? Make smoke signals!" Remy snapped and then instantly regretted it. It wasn't Rogue's fault that they were stranded here.
"If we have to, yes!" Rogue snapped back and then the jeep lapsed into a tense silence, both Rogue and Remy seething.

Wolverine grinned slightly as he watched the antics of Rogue and Remy. Even when they were potentially about to die from exposure they were still arguing over the most trivial matters. He glanced up at the sky. Chuck better hurry up, if they were caught outside overnight then all that would be left by morning would be their frozen corpses.

Pietro wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep, but he was sure that he had managed to doze off for a while because he'd thought that he'd been back in his apartment in London with Kitty and then he'd woken to the blinding pain of his current situation.
Briefly he wondered where he was. He surmised that when the building had collapsed he must have fallen down into an underground basement and pure luck had stopped him from being crushed by hundreds of tonnes of rubble. Still, it wouldn't make much difference if he couldn't get out, because then he'd bleed to death or suffocate.
He managed a grim smile as he remembered his father's last words. 'Still, you have to get out of here before the whole place comes down around you. I may still have some measure of revenge'. He's certainly managed to get his revenge on me, Pietro thought with a grimly ironic smile as he remembered how cocky he had been and how certain that he would escape this place easily before it exploded.

Remy was starting to get worried. Darkness was rapidly approaching and all he was wearing was a thin shirt, and the temperature was dropping rapidly. He and Rogue had sat in stony silence for several hours, neither willing to admit that they'd been wrong and now Remy knew that he had to say something to her.
He swivelled around in his seat. "Listen Rogue,"
"Shh!" she cut him off and gestured for him and Kitty to listen. At first Remy couldn't hear anything, but eventually a faint humming noise became apparent.
"What is it?" Remy asked. Rogue shrugged.
"Whatever it is, it's getting louder," Kitty pointed out. She was right, soon the noise thundered around them and Kitty suddenly pointed excitedly upwards. "Look!"
Hovering above them was a large, twin-bladed helicopter. The helicopter swiftly descended and as soon as it touched the ground several people leapt from it and ran towards them. Kitty was the first to recognise them. "Lance!" she jumped out of the car and hurled herself at the nearest man, who responded by sweeping her off her feet and hugging her fiercely.
"I'm so glad to see you're safe." Remy recognised the man, it was Lance Alvers one of Pietro's fellow Excalibur agents. Behind him were several Excalibur operatives he didn't recognise, and a man in a wheelchair who Remy instantly recognised as Charles Xavier.
"Mr LeBeau, you and your fiancé should really get into the helicopter. The temperature is rapidly dropping and you are hardly dressed for cold weather." Lance indicated two Excalibur operatives to help them.
"Wait," Remy grabbed Lance's shoulder. "Pietro's buried under there!" he gestured towards the rubble.
"We know," Lance turned away from Remy and began directing men to set up a piece of equipment Remy didn't recognise.
"How do you know?" Remy tried to catch at Lance's shoulder again, but the Excalibur agent assigned to him placed a firm but gentle hand on his should and led him over to the helicopter.

Pietro was fading in and out of consciousness when he was blinded for the second time. This time however, the problem was not lack of light, the problem was too much of it. The masonry above him was suddenly lifted away and the dim twilight flooded in to the cellar. To Pietro's sensitive eye however, even that small amount of light was far too strong and he clamped his eye shut.
"Pietro! Pietro!"
Pietro managed to force his eye open a tiny fraction and squinted upwards. Silhouetted against the sky were several people and Pietro recognised their voices. "Lance!" he croaked as loud as his parched throat would allow.

The story nears its conclusion, but will it be a happy one? Thank you for your review ishandahalf and I hope you liked chapter 11!