The sound of a shot rang out from somewhere close by, bringing her around abruptly. She sat up, reaching for her gun before she remembered what happened and that she didn't have her gun.
"Hey…"
She looked over, still more than a little out of it, and saw Castle standing on the other side of a roaring fire. She frowned, wondering if she'd hit her head or something, because it looked like he was wearing a silver blanket draped over his shoulders and nothing else. She looked down at herself and saw that she had been covered with a thin silver blanket, too. And she was warm.
"Hey."
She stood up, and almost fell back down. Not only did she ache from head to toe but her head was also spinning.
He was beside her instantly, a steadying hand under her elbow as he guided her over to a large dead log and told her to sit down.
"Give yourself a minute," he told her. He made sure she wasn't going to fall over and then went and picked up the silver blanket and draped it back over her shoulder. "And keep that on for now."
She'd been right about the silver blanket – which she now recognized as an emergency blanket – but he wasn't naked, he was wearing a pair of boxers. And only a pair of boxers. The rest of his clothes were hanging over a couple of tree limbs on the edge of the fire area. Presumably to dry. The bright yellow case he'd practically died to retrieve from the plane was near her, open, and she saw that it must be some kind of emergency kit. A quick glance showed a wide array of items, but she turned her attention from it to him, looking him over for injuries.
There was a nasty welt running across his chest and side. It was in the same place that the safety belt would have been on the plane so there was no doubt what had caused it. There was also a bruised area on this cheek and a lot of scrapes above his left eye - probably from the cockpit window. The water had cleaned them out while they were swimming, but it looked painful and raw.
"Are you okay?"
He nodded, and turned back to the branches he'd been breaking up. It hadn't been a shot that had woken her, after all.
"Yeah. Just beat up. How do you feel?"
"I ache."
"That's it?"
She shrugged, taking a mental tally on how she was doing.
"I think so."
"You need to get out of those clothes so we can get them dry," he told her.
The blanket was doing exactly what it was supposed to be doing; catching the heat of the fire and reflecting it back to her, but the clothes she was wearing were still very wet from the dunking in the lake and a while she was warm now, they'd be chilly later when the sun went down if she didn't get them dry. He was right.
Still a little less than at full faculties, she started to pull off her shirt, and he turned his back to give her privacy. Which made it all the more surreal for her, because under normal circumstances she'd have expected a smart remark at the least and a sudden burst of amateur porn music at the worst.
"Just wrap up in that blanket when you're done," he told her without looking around. "And I'll put your clothes with mine. They'll stink, but they'll be a lot warmer."
She stripped out of her pants and blouse, but like he had, she left her underclothes on. It was awkward enough as it was, after all. Wrapping the emergency blanket back around her, she told him he could turn around.
As he gathered up her clothes and hung them with his own, she thought back to the wreck.
"What did I do wrong?" she asked him.
He shook his head, and brought her over a pack of aspirin and a little metal cup with water.
"Nothing. I was watching you."
"Planes don't just crash, Castle," she told him, downing the pills gratefully.
"A simple course change doesn't make the power go off, either," he replied, sitting carefully down with a hand pressed against his ribs while the other held his blanket over his shoulders. "Nothing makes the power shut down like that. We didn't just lose one system, we lost everything, and that just doesn't happen…"
"Poor maintenance?"
He shook his head.
"I've used it before. It's always been in top condition. Every system has a redundancy in case something happens to the main ones…"
His cut face was about as serious as she'd ever seen him, and she looked for something to say that might lighten the mood a little.
"Inflatable seatbelts?"
He smiled, glancing over at her.
"They probably saved your life."
"No. You saved my life. That was some seriously fancy flying."
If she hadn't been so close to him, she wouldn't have noticed him flush. He turned back to the fire, uncomfortable. Which made her smile.
"We're not out of the woods yet," he told her. "Both literally and figuratively. I'm pretty sure the radio was knocked out when everything else went, and that means no one heard me broadcast the Mayday. The emergency beacon might be active, I don't know, but I don't know how long it'll work under water – or even if it will. I had to manually inflate the belts, which could mean that it might not have even kicked in."
"They're going to notice when we don't show up."
He shrugged.
"We aren't on the flight plan that I filed," he reminded her. "Alexis might get worried when I don't check in with her tonight, but she might think I'm just enjoying myself and forgot. So she won't realize anything is wrong until at least tomorrow – if not later than that. Your presentation isn't until the last day, so they won't really miss you until then – unless you had plans to meet up with anyone in particular?"
She shook her head.
"No."
"So it'll be a few days before they come looking – and they won't be looking in the right spot to start."
"We'll be okay."
"I know."
She sighed, looking out over the water.
"It could be a lot worse."
That earned a smile.
"Yeah."
She studied his profile for a moment, thinking that he looked pretty tired. Of course, she'd rested while he'd managed to set up a rudimentary campsite – complete with a good fire that would make all the difference later on when it started to get cold that night.
"What's in the box?"
He looked over at it.
"Three days worth of emergency supplies for six people. First aid kit, emergency kit – and a flare gun we might be able to use if we see anyone searching."
That wasn't bad. There were only two of them, after all. The supplies would keep them alive while they waited. They were lucky he'd kept his head when they'd crashed and had rescued it. Before she could mention that, though, he spoke up again.
"I think I saw a road as we were going down. It's probably nothing more than a forest service road – and I'm not even sure how far away it is – but we might get lucky and meet up with someone up here fishing or camping."
"Or hunting?"
He frowned and looked over at her.
"Hunting?"
"There are wild animals up here, Castle," she reminded him.
Both of them looked over at the woods behind them, and she wondered if he'd just had a vision of a bear or cougar or something coming out of the forest and finding two unarmed people just sitting around a fire in their underwear.
"Tell me you have your gun…" he said, confirming that.
She shook her head.
"I didn't bring it."
She didn't mention that even if she had brought it, it'd have been in her luggage, which was almost certainly at the bottom of the lake in the plane.
"We're going to get eaten."
OOOOOOOOOOO
Author's Note: So this story has obviously taken a turn that I didn't announce (because that would have spoiled the surprise of it) but now there are a few different directions I can take the storyline. In my Stargate stories I often asked people what they want to see, and I don't see any reason to change that for this – as long as it's something I'm willing to write. So here is the question for you guys: do I turn it into a hurt comfort story? I see that there are a lot of those out there, and wonder if that's because people like it, or is it annoying? I will let you know that it won't go into a serious shippiness story because there is more I might want to do with it in the future (as in with other stories) so I don't want to make anything too permanent happen. So let me know if that's what you want, and I'll consider it. Also let me know who you want to be the hurt one, if we do indeed go that direction…