And The Struggle Continues.
Author Chick's Notes: Here we go! The sequel to 'It's like having been born again." I have taken my time to think this one up. Its been nagging at me for a while too. The prequel is still writing itself in me noggin and may take some time before it's ever typed, but I am working on it.
Disclaimers: I don't own anything GI Joe…some other lucky sod does. I do however claim ownership to any original characters appearing in this fiction, namely Imani, Wyatt, and Chaz…just to name a few.
And The Struggle Continues.
Pain. Agonizing, excruciating pain. How the hell anyone survived this was beyond her, she thought as she let go of the breath she'd been holding. At least this round of suffering had finally passed. Three hours she had been going through this and for what? Well he was cute, she admitted to herself, as she felt the next contraction come to bare. Someone said something about 'one more push, come on you can do it'.
Leila snorted at the idea and wondered if whoever had said it, would be so enthusiastic if they were going through what she was at the moment. Feeling really displeased with her current situation, Leila frowned and did what she had been told. A pop and all of a sudden it was over. Doc was holding a wailing red infant in his hands and congratulating her for all of her hard work. Cracking an eye open, she looked first at Doc and the precious gift he was dealing with, then to her hand that was attached to someone else's. Fingers shouldn't be blue, should they? She wondered as she followed the hand up the arm and finally to the face of its owner.
Robert W. Graves, occasionally referred to as Grunt, the love of her life. Although after what she had just spent the last few hours enduring, that sentiment was barely holding on by a thread. What did the W stand for in his name again? She wondered as he smiled down at her, tears flowing joyfully from his eyes. Shaking her head she made a mental note to ask Doc later what was in the shot he'd given her. Her thought patterns bothered even her at the moment. W…W…the light bulb went off as Leila recalled what her beloved's middle name was. She looked up at him and saw that is mouth was moving.
"Hmm? I'm sorry I missed that." Leila said.
"I said, how do you feel?" Grunt asked again.
"I've been better. Yourself?"
Grunt laughed. "I think you broke my hand." He replied.
"Well then…I feel fabulous!" Leila grinned. Doc interrupted the two just then to introduce them to their new son.
"Here you go folks. Leila honey?" Doc started. "At an ounce shy of ten pounds, you are more then welcome to break his hand." He deadpanned, jerking a thumb at Grunt before taking a look at the hand in question. Doc barely touched it and Grunt's eyes shot wide open in pain. "Oh yeah she broke it alright." Doc looked down at the new mother and noted that she wasn't paying any attention to him what so ever. "Leila?"
"What?" She frowned. Disappointed that she had to tear her attention away from her precious baby.
"Trust me sweetie, you'll wanna see this." Doc smirked as he got a better hold of Grunt's injured hand. Leila smirked as Grunt almost passed out in sheer agony when Doc jerked the broken bones back into place. "That should do it." He smiled, packing ice around the swollen appendage.
"Okay! We're even now!" Leila chirped before returning her full attention to the little boy laying on her chest. Grunt was about to say something, then thought against the idea. Leila did have a point after all, he thought. He'd had the easy job in the creation of their son. She'd put up with what he summed up best as, sheer hell…and for a hell of a lot longer then the few minutes it had taken them to conceive the baby.
As Doc rummaged around for something to pass as a birth certificate, Grunt and Leila looked at their newborn son. He had his mother's beautiful almond shaped blue eyes and his father's soft brown hair, he had also inherited the rest of his father's features as well. Doc came back to the couple and asked them if they had decided on a name for the baby yet. The look of thought that Leila got, was so comical and Grunt couldn't help but laugh. "You're as high as a kite aren't you?" He asked.
"Uh huh." She answered. "And I'm gonna have a little talk with him later about that too." Leila added, waving a finger in Doc's general direction. Name? What had she been thinking about, right before her torture had ended? That's right! What the hell was in that shot, Leila thought before she spoke up. Just to be sure, she turned to Grunt real quick.
"You're middle name's Wyatt, right?" She asked. Grunt nodded and she turned her attention to Doc. "Wyatt works." Doc smiled as he wrote down the boy's name. "Wyatt Holt Graves." Leila announced.
Doc left the two to get better acquainted with Wyatt in private and went to the outer office. Surprisingly at this ungodly hour in the evening, there was someone waiting around for any news. Several someone's at that. "Do those two even know you guys are up?" Doc asked the small crowd in the office. Most of them thought that the new parents probably had no idea anyone was waiting for news and told Doc so.
"Well I don't know if they're up for company at the moment." Doc stated. "Leila and the baby are fine by the way." He smirked when he realised he'd forgotten the most important piece of information. "Um Leila's a little high right now on pain meds and I have to go back in there and cast Grunt's hand." Doc added.
"Grunt's hand?" Steeler asked.
"Leila broke it." Doc answered. "And seeing as the boy weighs in at nine pounds fifteen, I don't really blame her."
"Oooo." Cover Girl winced. "I'd have broken just a little bit more then his hand." Clutch stepped away from her before asking the next question.
"So? What's the little guys name?"
Doc checked the piece of paper he'd written all of the information down on before reading it off to everyone. "Wyatt Holt Graves. Nine pounds fifteen ounces. Twenty-one inches long. Healthy as a horse and the proud owner of a great set of lungs, not to mention ten fingers and toes. Born at twelve o' three this morning, the morning of…" Doc paused when he realised the date. "You guys know you've been here for exactly one year now? As of today?" Doc asked Steeler and Clutch.
Cover Girl, the Baroness and a few others who had joined in on the vigil looked to the two displaced Joes. Clutch glanced to the side as he tried to recall what they'd done in the last year as Steeler scrutinised Doc. "You sure?" At Doc's 'yes', Steeler shook his head. "Doesn't feel like it." He muttered.
"Well you have to admit, you have been busy." Doc suggested before shooing everyone out of his office. "Come back in the morning to visit. I have to go entertain Leila now by causing Grunt some serious pain." Doc cackled as he turned to go back into the operating theatre.
Outside in the hall Steeler paused. The Baroness stopped when she realised he wasn't walking at her side anymore and turned to look at him. She frowned. He had that look again. The one that meant he'd be thinking things over for a few days and would be very quiet and introspective. It happened every once in a great while and she had gotten used to it. The Steeler she loved, and had long since buried didn't have this peculiar habit, but then the man she was looking at was quite different from the one she originally fell in love with. She had learned early on that though they looked the same and in fact were the same man, they differed greatly in personality. Knowing better, she didn't say anything as she took his hand in a show of understanding. No matter who he was, she would stand by his side. She'd vowed that a year ago, on the night she had found him.
Several hours and several thousand miles away, Short Fuse stood at the doorway of his next assignment. He was about to knock again when one of his quarries answered it, his left arm in a sling. "That thing still bothering you Sea?" Short Fuse asked as he stepped inside.
"Yup. I have my good days and my bad ones…this is a bad one." Sea, also known as Sci-Fi answered. "Shoes." He added pointing to Short Fuse's feet.
Short Fuse raised an eyebrow and frowned. "Y'know? That monk you sleep with, ain't the only one who grew up in Japan." He snorted as he bent down to take his shoes off.
Sci-Fi couldn't help but smirk. "Yeah. But said 'monk' isn't gonna slug you one if you forget. I on the other hand, will get nailed for forgetting to remind you." After Short Fuse had removed his shoes the two went into the main living room of the townhouse. "Babe? Eric's here." Sea called out to the other occupant of the place.
"Be out in a minute. Hi Eric." Tripwire called from somewhere off of the kitchen.
"Hey yerself, Tor." Eric called back as he flopped into the armchair. "I'll dump my shite in a sec, if you don't mind." He added, referring to his travel bag. Sea asked Eric if there was anything he'd like when something dashed past on the floor near Eric's feet. "Jesus! What the fuck?"
Sea looked out into the living room and spotted what had startled his friend. "Squirrel."
"That thing's still alive?" Eric asked incredulously. "And fat too. It's huge compared to the last time I saw it." He added.
Sea came out with a cup of coffee for his guest and smirked. "No. He's all grown up now. Diz was just a baby when I found him."
"Ya mean when ya almost killed him test firing that sonic gun." Eric corrected. "Uh…why's he got a towel with him?" He asked when he saw the burgundy hand towel Diz was carrying.
Sea explained how his pet had pretty much claimed the house as his, within days of moving in after the final conflict. The towel was just the first of several claims Diz had made on the couple's stuff, not that either of them really minded. "It amazes me how nine ounces of deaf rodent has full run of this place." Sea laughed as he finished his story.
Tor came into the room and after dumping Diz in Sea's lap, took a seat next to him. "How was your tip Eric?"
"Bumpy. I hate friggin' turbulence." Eric growled.
They talked some more before Eric got down to business. "As I'm sure you've guessed by now, this ain't a social visit…or I'd have brought along the club clothes. As you know, cleaning up COBRA's mess is taking a lot longer then anyone figured." He began. "What I was sent out here to find out was, would you two mind shipping back east to help with the logistical side of things?"
The couple on the couch looked at each other first before looking back to Eric. "Mind specifying exactly what it is that we'd be doing?" Sea asked.
"Well for starters, the Baroness can't even find half the shit Cobra Commander had swiped and stashed during the occupation. And believe me, she's looked. You two were real good at sniffing supplies out and stealing them back, so she figured that you'd be able to do that again for her, and a lot better then anyone else has so far." Eric explained. "Basically, you'd be working with Mainframe. We did find a bank of CRAY's with a shit load of info on em, but he needs help going through it all."
"Define shit load?"
"Blaine figures that they contain just about every bit of info from the five years COBRA was in control around here." Eric replied. "He's spent the last four months in just decoding it all, and he's still working on that. Steeler and me have been trying to use what we do find with little success. So you wanna come over and show us up?" Eric grinned.
Sci-Fi and Tripwire glanced at each other before speaking. After a few moments Tor spoke up. "Want to give Angel a ring?"
"Angel?"
"Local drag queen slash house sitter." Sea replied.
"Okay…" Eric muttered.
"Yeah. Might as well call Chaz too while we're at it." Sea added.
"Chaz?"
Tor smirked before answering that one. "Tall, sinfully beautiful, Afrikaans boy, who was our right hand during the occupation." Eric raised an eyebrow as Tor continued. "Believe me, he'd help make things go a lot faster, not only in finding stuff but in helping filch it back." Tor explained.
Eric shrugged. "Hey, whatever works for you two. So I take it then, yer gonna help?"
"Just give us a couple of days to get organised here and we're all yours." Sea grinned. He rose from the couch to go make the necessary calls, leaving Eric and Tor alone in the living room.
"I've got a plane waiting for me at the airport." Eric started. "I'll call ahead and say you two are coming, along with company. I have to take a detour first though." He added.
"Oh?"
Eric frowned as he considered his friend. "We don't just need help with the recovery, we have problems with cells of COBRA forces that just don't know when to give up." Tor bit his lip as he took the information in. "My next stop involves rounding up some really mean and nasty help on that front." Eric continued.
"Mean and nasty?"
Eric smirked. "Yeah, all four feet eleven inches of it." Both men howled in laughter as Tor figured out whom Eric was referring too.
"Courtney will be thrilled."
TBC…