A/N Come on folks, three reviews for two chapters isn't all that stellar. You can do better than that! :P This chapter was originally about twice as long, but I split it in half and I'll post the other part later on today if you're lucky!

Everything got a bit fuzzy for a while after that. I don't know if I passed out or my brain just decided to stop working properly for a bit, but the next thing I remember clearly is coming to in a hospital bed hooked up to an IV. As I blinked my eyes open I caught sight of Iggy sitting up in a bed opposite me, still bound up in that crazy bandage.

'Max? You 'rake?' he asked quietly, speaking carefully through his teeth to keep his broken jaw from moving too much.

'How do you do that? Did I even make a sound just then?' I replied, stretching along the length of my body and feeling the kinks in my muscles from the last few days of flying and fighting.

He couldn't grin, but his eyes crinkled a bit at the sides.

'Your 'vreathing chainsht.' His words came out strangely slurred at the consonants, making him sound like a suit who'd had one too many at the staff Christmas party. 'How you fee'ing?'

'Kinda shaky. Bit stiff. What happened?'

'They said it wasz chust a mix 'f stress, t'rdniss, 'nd dehydr'tion.'

'No, what happened to the others?' My tone was growing more urgent. Where is everybody?

Iggy started to speak, but was cut off by Ratchet's voice preceding him as he walked through the doorway.

'Dude, stop talking. It makes me feel sore just listening to you. And I wouldn't wanna stick around if you woke that one up.' He jerked his head towards another bed on the far side of the room, where Star's blond head was just visible practically burrowed underneath the blanket.

'Is she okay?' I asked.

'Yeah. Apparently some tendons or something got torn when her shoulder dislocated again, so they patched that up in surgery, and as luck would have it she hasn't come around properly yet. Thank God.'

I nodded and swallowed hard.

'And the others?'

Ratchet crossed his arms, tilting his head back to look at the ceiling as he went through a mental list.

'Black Hat and the Gaster are both in surgery at the moment.' He rubbed a palm across his face. 'Haven't had any news yet but from what I can hear through all the noise in this place nothing's gone bad so far. Fang-Man got his stitches re-done and he's in the next room with Angel. Um…' He screwed up his nose as he tried to remember what he'd been told. 'They said they're gonna have to check up on her properly later on, but right now they're just wanting her to rest and she's hooked up to, like, a million IVs with liquid nutrients or something like that. That doctor dude was in a room with your mom and sister, but he took off somewhere about half an hour ago, and the other three are just down the corridor. Everybody crashed pretty hard after we got here, but I think a couple of them were waking up as I left, so they might be turning up soon.'

I sat still for a moment as I took it all in. Was it actually possible that we'd all come out of this alive? Don't get ahead of yourself, Max. You're not out the other side just yet.

'Gazzy and Nudge – what's wrong with them?' I felt my throat constrict at the thought of two of my kids in theatres somewhere in the building, having God knows what done to them by people I'd never met before.

Ratchet shook his head, looking uncomfortable.

'Sounded like the little guy got a good few hits to the gut – his intestine got ruptured during the fight, so now I think they're just sewing that up and clearing away any other damage. Nudge…' He stopped and grimaced.

My heart started pounding about ten times faster.

'What is it, what happened to her?'

'She broke her back.' The words were blunt, blurted out as quickly as possible. I stared at him, unable to comprehend what he'd just said.

'What? Oh my God.' I breathed, turning to look at Iggy; the look in his eyes told me that he'd already known. Spinning back around, I threw the sheets off me, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. 'I-… Well, I've got to go an-'

'And what, Max?' My mom's voice was gentle as she came into the room. Her arm was plastered up to the elbow in a cast, and she was still wearing her General clothes, but the woman walking towards me was my mother – there was no doubt in my mind. I choked up immediately, feeling myself slipping at the sight of her.

'Mom?' That was all I managed to get out before I was crying, outright sobbing as I sat in my hospital bed, unable to see my family safe and together and not knowing who to worry about the most. I felt the mattress dip as she sat down, and then she was enveloping me in her arms, pulling me into her as my shoulders shook and my breath came in desperate gasps; I was the child again.

'Sh, sh, shh, it's okay,' she whispered, stroking my hair as she rocked us slightly and echoed the words I'd said to Gazzy when we were sitting in the holding cell back at the School: 'It's all going to be okay.'

She pulled away slightly, taking in my face, and staring back at her I noticed how deeply sad she looked; I couldn't even begin to imagine the things going through her head about everything that had happened.

'I remember it all,' she said, as if reading my mind. 'Which is awful, because I can remember everything that I did and all the people I hurt. I can't believe…' She paused for a second, sniffing hard and screwing her eyes up shut for a moment before looking at me again and running a hand down the side of my face. 'But I can also remember you – I know how strong you've been, how much you've been through and how much you've achieved. I think this would all be so much harder to deal with if I'd come out of it not knowing who you were. My brave girl.'

I must have looked like an absolute mess. I'm pretty certain that in those last two weeks or so I'd experienced more emotional mayhem than any part-human ever should. When I finally managed to kinda-sorta pull myself together again, I looked around to see Ella standing by Iggy's bed, her fingers linked loosely with his as she watched me and our mother hug it out.

'Hey,' I said, holding a hand out, my voice still thick and raw from crying. 'Get over here.'

Mom moved away from me to let Ella past and I held my sister tight.

'Told you it wasn't Mom,' I muttered in her ear, and the comment seemed so juvenile, so incredibly colloquial after everything that had gone down, that both of us started laughing, the sound coming out all sniffly and weird through our tears.

Pulling out of our hug, I sat up straight to look around the room. Seeing my mom safe and unbrainwashed had made me feel a little calmer, a little less like I had to worry about a thousand things at once.

'Okay,' I said. 'I want to see the rest of my family.'

The next week passed in a strange blur – time in the hospital felt kind of suspended, like we were on some crazy vacation from the world.

We left the room I woke up in and wandered along the hall, the squeak of the wheels on my IV stand accompanying us as we went. Being in a hospital still made me feel jumpy, the smell making me want to smash a window and fly away, but I was too focussed on checking in on everybody that I didn't have space in my head to think about it too much.

Our first stop was the room next door: Fang and Angel's. We found the two of them curled up on the same bed, Fang's arms holding Angel loosely as they slept. I stepped towards them, reaching out to barely brush against my little girl's hand, then twisted around to face my mom.

'What happened to her?'

The look on Mom's face said that it wasn't the time to talk about it, that for now, no matter how hard it felt, everyone had to take some time off from the questions and the serious discussions.

We moved across the hallway to the room where Dylan, Kate, and Holden were sitting, blurry-eyed from having just recently woken up. Star zipped in soon after that, followed by the same frog-like thing I'd caught a brief glimpse of before the battle in the School's grounds had started; once Star was done berating us for abandoning her in the hospital room, she introduced her new friend as Kokoe. We all sat around in that room for quite a while, stilted conversation occasionally making its way through the tense space as we waited to hear about Nudge and Gazzy. After what felt like ages, a doctor knocked on the door to tell us that Gazzy had come out of surgery; he'd suffered some "serious blunt trauma" around his abdomen, which had resulted in multiple tears forming along the length of his intestines, but the holes had been stitched up and the internal bleeding had been controlled. He was currently in the recovery ward and he'd be brought down to us as soon as he woke up.

Just knowing that another member of my family was safe, that he was alive and sleeping in a room somewhere above us, made me feel kind of faint with relief. I ran my palms over my face, kneading at my eyes with the heels of my hands, then looked around the room to see everyone reacting in their own ways to the news; I think we were all too drained to whoop or jump up and down, but there were a lot of tired smiles, nods, and deep breaths going round. As my gaze landed on Iggy, I noticed that his eyes were still narrowed in worry.

'Hey Ig,' I said softly, moving over to sit next to him.

'Hey,' he replied, not looking up at me. I studied his expression as best I could with the bandage in the way. 'He's okay, you know. We're just waiting for him to wake up now.'

'I noo,' he mumbled, and then he turned, shifting around to face me properly. 'But I should'f bin otching him better. In the figh'.'

'"Watching him"?' I repeated, frowning. 'Iggy, this isn't your fault. It was crazy out there, and you were already making sure Ella didn't get hurt… It's not your fault.'

He nodded, but I could tell that he was still beating himself up for not looking after Gazzy better.

When the Gasman was wheeled in fifteen minutes later, he did not look at all like someone who'd just undergone a few hours of life-saving surgery; perhaps he was still giddy from the anaesthetic, but he grinned so hard when he saw us that I found myself mimicking his expression as we all moved forwards to greet him.

'Where's Angel?' he asked once the fussing around him had died down a bit.

'Just across the hall, sweetie,' I replied. 'Fang's got her and she's okay, just sleeping things off right now.'

His big blue eyes stared at me where I sat on the bed next to him.

'"We're going to be okay." That's what you said before, wasn't it?'

'Yeah,' I said, stroking his forehead, ruffling his fringe a little. 'That's what I said. And hey, we're all here, aren't we?'

'Angel isn't,' he pointed out. 'Fang isn't, Nudge isn't.'

'They will be soon. I promise.'

It was one of those happy occasions when I made a promise that actually held true: just a few minutes after that, Fang came through the door carrying Angel with him. Without a word, Gazzy, shifted over in his bed to make a space, and when his sister was laid down beside him he pulled the sheets over so that they covered her as well. They lay there together, and it wasn't until a couple of minutes had passed that I noticed tears leaking silently out of the corners of the Gasman's closed eyes. My throat choked up so much that I couldn't speak for a while.

A/N It sounds a bit naive, but I wasn't expecting to have so much to say in the final chapters after the battle. [Review.] It shouldn't really have come as a surprise - I guess there's still a lot to tie up. [Review.] Plus, the fact that I can't really walk anywhere right now means I have a lot of time to sit and write. [Review] :D Review! Wait, did I say that already...?