A/N: Okay, I lied. This is apparently going to be a three-parter...
Wolf floundered for a single terrifying second. Then, purely on instinct, his legs curled around the rope and he began to inch himself down hand over hand. The bullet wound on his thigh throbbed with every movement, rubbing raw and wet against the frayed line. The farther he traveled, the more frequently his hands closed on red-splotched rope.
Halfway down, he glanced up and was met with the soles of Alex's boots; the boy was following only a couple feet above him. He continued to descend, forcing himself on even as his joints and muscles burned and blood painted an itchy, trickling trail from thigh to ankle.
Tree limbs smacked his body and face as he descended past the tree line, still clipping along at a decent pace under the helicopter's power. Every branch stung like a whip.
He rushed the last couple dozen feet, and then he was out of rope. Wolf had assumed he'd feel relieved when he reached the bottom. In reality, it was quite the opposite; ten feet to go, and no painless way to get there.
Well, there was nothing for it.
He pried his hands free of the rope and let gravity take him. Without the layer of snow that blanketed the ground up-slope, his landing was a rough one. It was made even rougher by Alex falling on him a moment later.
"Blooding fucking fuck -" Wolf choked, hunching in on himself automatically. He couldn't decide which body part to clutch first when Alex rolled clear – his throbbing head, the sun-burst pain blanketing his left ribcage, or his thigh, where blood still streamed like spilled paint, saturating his ghost camo.
As with most decisions he made, visual evidence took precedence. He opted for the leg. Wolf pressed a palm over the wound to slow the exodus of blood. Within moments red squelched between his fingers, staining the skin.
Alex, noticing his predicament, yanked his hat off again and tossed it over. "For your leg," he explained when the soldier raised a questioning eyebrow. "It's kind of . . . geisering blood there."
Wolf snorted. Blunt, but true. "Thanks, Cub." He balled the scratchy hat up against the wound and held it there with one hand while he rummaged through his vest with the other, hunting for medical supplies.
It was simple enough to dig out a handful of alcohol swabs, pressure bandages, and other miscellaneous bits of gear. Alex cocked an eyebrow at the dental floss, spare change, and now-crushed Mars bar mixed in with the necessities. "Got the kitchen sink in there, too?" he quipped.
Wolf just grunted in reply as he swabbed the wound, teeth gritted against the burning sensation it caused. He could feel Alex's gaze on him, taking note of his shaking hands and the tense line of his shoulders.
"Is the bullet still in there?" Alex asked, crouching next to him to get a closer look.
"Yeah. Wasn't a clean-through shot," he replied as he pressed gauze against the bullet hole and wrapped the whole mess, crisscrossing the roll several times for equal distribution of pressure. "Not gonna risk taking it out, either." He wiped his bloody hands on a clean patch of fabric near his ankle - it looked especially gruesome covered in palm-sized streaks of gore.
"What now?" Alex's voice held a tight, controlled calm. God, but the kid was strange. Any normal teenager stranded in the frozen wilderness with a bleeding, possibly concussed companion should've been freaking out. Alex, however, seemed to be holding up remarkably well.
"Wolf?"
He jerked, raising his eyes to meet Alex's concerned gaze. Right, he'd asked a question. Wolf dredged up all the winter survival trivia he could remember. They needed heat, light, and shelter. "Well . . . first off, let's get a fire going. We should gather wood."
"I've got it," Alex offered, shooting his leg a dubious glance.
Wolf gritted his teeth. Pride surged up, willing him to protest, but he batted it down forcefully. What would be the point? So he could stagger about the woods, wobbling like an invalid?
He watched Alex go, a white blot against the darkness of the surrounding trees. As soon as the kid was out of sight and earshot, he voiced the pained whimper he'd been fighting viciously to keep in. He drew his knees up despite the pain and tucked his hands into the pocket of space between stomach and thighs. Shivers wracked his body; blood loss, sweat-damp clothing, and the frigid climate were combining to take their toll.
Alex returned about five minutes later, lugging an armload of branches and uprooted scrub brush. He arranged it in a rough pile near the center of their tiny "camp", for lack of a better term, and then vanished again.
As Alex's form faded into the trees, Wolf heaved himself upright and stood. He hobbled over to the pile and sank down before his legs had a chance to buckle – blood loss was making him light-headed. He swiped a trickle of blood from his cheek. It'd been streaking down the bridge of his nose, previously unnoticed.
Leaning closer, he examined the brush. It was dry – good. The bigger fire they could get going, the better. The wreckage of the chopper would attract the rescue team's main focus, but their bodies would be noted as missing and other signs of life would soon be investigated.
He riffled through his pockets for matches and struck up a flame in the dry tinder. From there he coaxed a tiny, reluctant fire to life. He added a few pieces of bark and brush at a time until he had a respectable blaze going. Satisfied, Wolf held his hands close to the flame; his gloves were lying abandoned back at Point Blanc, and right about now he was sincerely wishing he'd kept them on.
Footsteps crunched behind him, amplified by the still night air, and Alex dropped another armful of wood to the ground beside him.
"Wish we had some greenery," Wolf remarked, shifting and wincing as he reached for a couple extra branches to layer on top of the fire. "This won't get us much smoke."
"I'll see what I can find." Alex held his hand out, a silent request. Without a word, Wolf slipped his combat knife free and tossed it to him handle-first.
Alex trudged away through the brush, rustling and snapping branches, and Wolf scrawled yet another mental note. Had the kid received any stealth training? Quiet didn't matter right now, but it should've been ingrained enough for Alex to creep around like a burglar on reflex. This kid was quiet in a hallway, but out in nature he was definitely no ghost.
Alex returned a bit later with a dozen sawed-off evergreen boughs. The needles, still a lush, dark green, would produce plenty of smoke.
"Think this'll last until morning?" Alex tipped his head, indicating the pile of limbs, scrub, and prickly boughs.
Wolf appraised the supply and nodded. It was better than he had any right to expect under the circumstances. "Yeah, should be fine. Cut a few more to lay down, though. It'll be warmer than sleeping on the ground."
Alex nodded mutely. As he stood to go, Wolf turned his attention to the boughs already collected. With one armed curled protectively around his ribs, he laid two separate pallets near the fire: two boughs deep, three across, and four down. Lucky neither of them were particularly tall. It made for less work.
He huddled on the pallet to the right, facing the fire. An errant gust of wind sent a shiver down his spine, and he tensed, biting down a groan at the stab of agony it caused. Even after the tension passed, the pain lingered. He focused on his breathing, hoping shallow, measured inhales and exhales would keep his ribs from shifting too much.
When Alex returned he tossed his load of boughs on the pile, then settled on the second pallet without a word. Firelight shone on his fair hair and illuminated the lines of fatigue creasing his face. He looked tired and washed-out, not that Wolf had any right to criticize. He probably looked twice as bad.
Quiet enveloped them for a few minutes, as if the cold, heavy night air blanketed all sound.
A particularly vicious gust of wind had the flames guttering. Alex swore under his breath, burrowing his face deeper into the neck of his jacket, and Wolf did his best to curl up even smaller on his pallet. Needles and twigs snapped and prodded him from below – what little he could feel of his chilled limbs, anyway. Was it worth the extra discomfort to have some insulation and another thin layer of "padding"? It sure as hell didn't seem like it. The smell was nice, though. He'd always liked the woods despite (or perhaps because of) growing up in a string of run-down city apartments.
Wolf shifted restlessly, hoping to settle the majority of his weight on his right side. His thigh throbbed like a bitch, but the ribs made it difficult to breathe when he lay on his left side. Discomfort all around, but so long as he could find somewhere else to direct his focus, he'd cope. "So, kid . . . tell me about yourself."
"Why?"
"Humor me, Cub. If I sleep I could fall into a coma and fucking die. Besides, I'd rather not freeze to death." He rubbed a careful thumb across the gash on his forehead, his reminder that a sleepless night was, in fact, the better option.
"Shit." It was just now occurring to the kid that resting tonight was a pipedream.
"So . . ."
"So what?"
"You never answered my question."
"There's not much to tell," Alex replied tersely.
He found the boy's reticence odd. What normal teenager passed up a chance to complain about their life? Wasn't puberty jam-packed with woe-is-me self-centeredness? All of his sisters had certainly been that way, and with random crying jags to boot.
"Come on, kid, don't bullshit me. I bet you've got a few interesting stories squirreled away."
"Fine," Alex sighed, giving in. "Eye for an eye?"
Wolf hummed in reluctant agreement. In retrospect, discussing family – especially his own – had been a bad choice of topic. "Fair enough." The silence stretched long enough that he knew he would have to jump-start the conversation again. Craning his neck to see the kid's face, he asked, "What're they like?"
"I don't really have one. I live with Jack, my housekeeper, but she's not the parental type."
"Too strict?" he guessed.
"The opposite, actually. She's like a sister to me." Alex's lips quirked into a faint smile, probably the first real one he'd ever seen from the boy. Brecon Beacons sucked happiness like a leech, and Wolf had been too pissed off at the perceived insult of being saddled with the kid to do anything but magnify its effects.
"Damn, Cub. Y'know, I had you pegged for a rich kid being punished by Daddy. Guess I should never become a spy, eh?" The silence stretched. Awkwardly, he asked, "I suppose you want to hear about me now?"
Alex smirked. "You promised. Eye for an eye, Wolf."
"I've got a big family. Four sisters, no brothers. I'm the youngest. My mother's Puerto Rican – that's the accent." He massaged absently at the skin stretched taut over his ribs. He could feel the bruises forming and had little doubt that they would color spectacularly. By the end of this ordeal, he'd be resembling an over-ripe peach instead of just feeling like one.
"And your father?"
"Elisa says he was English."
Alex, thankfully, ignored the obvious question in favor of another. "Elisa?"
"Sister," Wolf grunted. He shifted his weight again, triggering a hiss. Through the tangle of branches overhead, he could see a multitude of stars dotting the night sky. If their circumstances hadn't been so dire, it might've been peaceful. Voice tight, he continued, "She's batty but well-meaning . . . most of the time."
Alex, who'd been eyeing his ginger movements with suspicion, said, "Something else is wrong with you, isn't it." His tone was laced with accusation.
"It's nothing."
"Bullshit," was Alex's prompt reply. He sat upright on his pallet, the firelight glinting eerily on his fair hair.
"Seriously, Cub, I'll be fine." He forced as much optimism into the words as he could, despite feeling a distinct lack of 'fine'.
Alex, however, didn't look reassured. "Bollocks. You're about to snuff it, aren't you?"
Wolf choked on a laugh at the kid's bluntness. Bad idea – he immediately dropped a hand to his midriff, crushing his lip between his teeth to hold in a groan. He'd ducked his head to hide the pain that spiked through his expression, and didn't notice Alex's reaction until careful fingertips had begun to prod his side. He flinched and curled in on himself like a caterpillar, batting the hand away.
"Do they feel broken?" Alex persisted. "How about internal bleeding?"
"No and no," Wolf said, squeezing the words past his clenched jaw. "Cracked, maybe. Hard to tell."
Alex nodded, seeming to finally accept his words as truth, and they lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. The conversation window, it seemed, had just slammed shut.
An hour later, Wolf had graduated from uncomfortable to miserable.
Freezing wind chilled him even through his thick jacket. He'd been plenty warm while skiing and creeping around the compound, but lying motionless so as to not aggravate his injuries generated very little warmth. Alex seemed to be suffering from the same dilemma – he'd huddled in on himself, arms crossed tight, breath puffing in the air like cigarette smoke.
When he lifted his head (for the eighth time) to check that the kid hadn't frozen to death, their eyes caught. A long, awkward pause ensued, before Alex cleared his throat and, quite plainly steeling himself, sat up. Wolf watched with trepidation as the boy grabbed his pile of boughs and rearranged them directly beside Wolf.
That trepidation bloomed into mild horror as Alex lay down behind him and edged closer. "Cub?" he choked out, voice an octave higher than he'd ever admit to, as knees bumped up against the backs of his thighs. "What the fuck?"
"I'm bloody freezing, and you're even worse off," Alex said. "Which seems worse to you - dying a slow and awful death, or sharing your body heat for a few hours?"
"Death isn't sounding so bad right about now," Wolf grumbled in response as the kid settled against his back, forearms nudging tense shoulder blades. He didn't try to shove the kid away, though, which spoke volumes about the seriousness of his condition.
"Don't worry, Wolf. I'll leave your virtue intact."
That garnered another rib-jarring snort. "Oh, good. I was concerned about that."
They both lapsed into silence. This one, though, reached a whole seperate dimension of awkward.
"If anybody asks, this never happened," Wolf growled after a long moment.
"Agreed," Alex muttered, hot breath whuffing against the back of Wolf's neck.