I'm going to dedicate this chapter to all of you guys who have reviewed and to LoveAroundEmbers for her advise. I hope I fixed the tenses thing!
Dying?
No. Emily was wrong. Wade wasn't dying. She was mistaken. She had to be. Wade wasn't dying. No. He wasn't. He would've told her if he was. He'd have said something.
She smiled patiently and shook her head. "No. You are wrong. He's not dying. No. He isn't." She said. She was certain of it. Wade wouldn't leave her. He knew how she felt about that. He knew that leaving scared her. He wouldn't just die like that on her.
Emily shook her head as well. "I saw his records, Kelly. He's dying. He has cancer. He's in chemotherapy, but he doesn't take it regularly like he should. The doctors are complaining." She whispered softly.
Kelly glared at her. "He's not dying, Emily." She snapped. Emily was bringing up things that were irrelevant. She was supposed to tell her she was pregnant. Not that Wade was going to die. Which he was not! He wasn't sick!
Emily gazed at her for a moment and nodded slowly. She got up and walked to the door of the bedroom, Kelly knew she'd be leaving the apartment like room soon, but did nothing to stop her. "I'm sorry, Kelly." She said softly.
She lay on the bed for a full hour. Her thoughts circled Emily's words. Dissecting them and coming up with nothing but the fact that no matter how hard she fought it: Emily wouldn't have made a sick joke like that.
She quickly got off the bed and walked to Stryker's office. A new camouflaged jacket covering her shoulders. She knocked and pushed the door open without allowance to enter. He glowered at her for a full five minutes before allowing her to sit down. She kept standing. "Do you have any missions to go on?" She asked quietly.
Stryker studied her quietly for a long time and nodded. He held out a folder to her. He usually had their missions stacked on piles. Ranged by their ranks and how well qualified they were for it. He just grabbed a folder off a stack and handed it to her. She didn't care. She needed to get away. It was another mutant retrieval. "Thank you, sir." She walked out. He hadn't said a word to her.
She walked right by Wade, waving the missions as an answer to his questioning look. She made the announcer call her team to gear up and meet outside at the airbase. She was there a full half hour before them. She had read through the file. The guy they were supposed to get was somewhere in Washington DC, in something of an underground club. There were supposedly six or seven of them around. They had to hit each and every one of them and find the man.
According to the file he owned something that allegedly gave him power like Fred Dukes (she doubted that, he was probably a mutant, just didn't want to say it out loud). Immense strength or something, just what she needed to get her mind off anything she'd been thinking about. She could handle something that had a certain outcome. An outcome she could control. This man either came in or died on her order. That was an outcome. That was how things were supposed to be.
Wade dying wasn't in her control. Wade dying she…
She wasn't going to think about that. She needed to concentrate on her mission and she needed all her wit about her for it. She didn't need things about uncertainty clouding her mind.
They boarded the plane in silence. For the first time in a long time she had her headphones back on and was blasting music loudly. For the first time in a long time her head felt like it was going to burst. There was safety in familiarity.
The hours didn't feel all that long. It actually felt very short. Unnaturally short. She didn't want to have to finish this so soon and then get back to Wade. She, surprisingly, didn't want to see Wade right now.
They got out and she avoided Emily by getting into a different car than the girl. There was only so much a military issued black vehicle could take. Jerry was driving the one she had taken; he would glance at her and then look back at the road.
The first six clubs didn't have anyone resembling the guy nor had anyone seen anyone resembling the guy. The last club, as they had learned the hard way, was a place for gangsters and who and what have you hanging out. And their current situation was all the fault of that.
They were all hidden behind pillars. Guns out and crouched low to the ground. Behind them, on the other side stood men, who they could see in the mirrored wall opposite them. Unlike the group of men, they hadn't fired one bullet. Not one single bullet. They didn't get the chance. The men would shoot just if they tried to make themselves more comfortably in an already uncomfortable position.
Kelly found herself praying. Praying hard in a very long time. She couldn't think with the headache and two of her squad members were already dead. "Jerry!" She shouted, suddenly remembering the kid's obsession with explosives. "I want you to throw those things you took!" She yelled at him.
She didn't look at him. If he threw that grenade he was going to blow up a lot of things, but at least they'd get out alive, hopefully. She heard the clink of the metal ball falling, the shouts of the men and the explosion washing hot air over them followed by dust. There was a crack somewhere. "We need to leave; the place is going to collapse." Someone on the team shouted.
"Go, I'll follow." She ordered as she got up from the crouch. Her body was oddly stiff. She blamed it on the position she had been sitting in for hours.
"Kelly…"
"Go, Emily." She ordered again. Jerry glanced at her in confusion and then dragged Emily away. She figured the thing this morning had them a little wary of her temper. Carter used to say it's the silent ones you have to be worried about.
She shook thoughts of her brother out of her head and slowly walked around the wreckage. The place had collapsed in. It had been built under an old ruined building. She could look straight into the lobby from where she stood. She still needed to find the ring.
She stood gazing up at the lobby and couldn't help but shiver at the cold emptiness of it. The dark hadn't been scary for almost six months now, but the building scared her. Wade dying scared her. Wade being ill scared her. She couldn't really picture anything without him anymore. He was as much part of her life as anything else now. The dark emptiness of the building made her think of the possibilities. The reality that he could be gone and never come back.
That she wouldn't get her picketed fenced life with him.
She was wrenched from her thoughts by a swift punch to the gut. She crashed into the wall behind her and slid down with a whimper (the standing wall surprised her slightly, but pain has a tendency to not really make one care). She had never been trained for combat. She was just trained to do interrogations. She pressed her hand into the ground before she fell forward and felt it shake under her.
He didn't give her much of a chance to retaliate to anything he might throw at her. He lifted her by the front of her jacket and threw her clear across the room. He was wearing the ring, and she was certain now that it had nothing to do with the ring for real. Pain crashed into her as she hit the rubble at an angle, her side stung. Pain seared across her abdomen. The burning sort of pain of something stabbing into her. She looked down and closed her eyes against the tears burning them.
She figured out what felt like something was stabbing into her. A rusted thin metal pole stuck about two centimetres deep into her stomach. She was sure it wasn't deep enough to do any real damage, but it burned like hell. She tugged it out of her stomach and hissed in pain. She slowly stood up again. It felt like the cut was tearing deeper. "You walked through that door expectin' me to come with no retaliation? Don' make me laugh!" He sneered and stalked across the room.
She clenched her hand around the thin metal pole. It was long, but not really that long in length. Long enough to hit someone over the head hard with, though, with a good grip of course.
She laughed at his words. Tears burning her eyes along with the still unsettled dust. "Actually, I didn't plan on finding you tonight. I planned on being away from work for a while." She answered.
Why the hell did Wade have to get sick now? Why does he have to be dying now?
He was a few steps from her. Maybe it was her backing up, but just didn't seem to be getting closer. For a wound that wasn't supposed to be that deep, it felt like the thing was tearing up, she could feel the blood slide into the top of her pants. The idea of just pulling the guns from its holsters at her sides or hips just didn't come up.
She held the thin pole like a baseball bat. She clutched it tightly and held it a little behind her. He chuckled. He probably knew she was in pain. And he probably knew she hadn't played on game of baseball in all her life, but there is supposedly a first time for everything. "You ain't going to live through this, little girl."
She was frozen for a moment. Not sure if she heard him right. Did he just call her little girl? As if she didn't already feel small against half the human population, he has to go and call her little.
She stopped backing up and waited for him to come closer, and he did. It was like he really didn't expect her to hit him with the damn pole. When he was close enough, she slammed the pole into the side of his face. The worst that happened, it bent. "Shit." She whispered and stumbled towards the door over the rubble.
She was maybe six or seven steps from the door before it collapsed in after something like an earthquake travelled through the door. She coughed on the dust and cursed. "Ya'd think ya have brains. Bad things happen in threes. First I hit you, then you have dat pole stuck in ya and now this. This where it ends, ya know." He didn't have an American accent. She wasn't sure why this occurred to her now.
She turned around slowly, deciding to ignore his jibe and just wait. There wasn't anyway out. She didn't know how else to bring this guy to his knees. And she had a good feeling that nothing but his own memories would haunt him. "Captain!" She heard someone shout on the other end. Emily, she was sure about it.
She looked around and sighed. No more weapons she could pick up either. She shifted into as much of a fighting position as she could and waited. When this man ran, it sounded like he moved everything. It even looked like he made the rubble hop. She was unprepared for the hand around her neck, she hadn't exactly thought he'd grab and not punch. She automatically lifted her hands and tugged at his arm. She planted her legs against his chest and pushed, or at least tried to push him off.
She couldn't concentrate with the sudden lack of energy. Somewhere outside a helicopter was in the air. She could hear pounding steps on the wooden floor, which had not caved in, above her.
The shot rang in her ears. The hand around her neck went limp. And everything else stilled. She dropped to the ground and realized a moment later she was the one with the gun. She sat on the large piece of ceiling, staring intently at the gun in her hands and wondered when she'd taken it out. And how she failed to realize this is what she had been doing. "Captain!" It was Jerry now. A thick black rope fell into the room and he slid down it.
"Get a doctor!" She yelled and scrambled over to the man. He wasn't going to die because of her. No.
Wade wasn't going to die either. She won't let him die. She'll just get Victor to help her. The thought of Victor helping people was repulsive. A nearly unimaginable thing.
It took five of them five minutes to get the man on a stretcher. And the other four had a hell of a time trying to lift the man out of the hole. It took them another five minutes to get him into one of the cars and then driving as if hell itself was chasing them to the landing strip. She was also still bleeding. To her it didn't matter much. It took them and the two pilots to get the bastard on the plane. Mostly because they didn't want to worsen the wound.
It was early morning when they got back to the base. Emily had kept the man from moving too much during the flight. The moment they landed Kelly was out of the plane, shouting orders. She ran, while regretting it, straight to the medical centre. She was glad that no one but a few doctors was there. "A man has been shot, he's still at the airstrip, you need to go and get him here." She ordered quickly.
She waited until all of them were gone before she started looking through the things on their desks. She needed to know, see, for herself. She was half way through the second doctor's desk. "What are you doing?" When she jumped nearly a mile and scattered files all over the floor. Victor stood in his usual apparel gazing at her as if she was the bane on his existence.
She has literally never spoken to him in four years. Never. Mostly because he scared the shit out of her. "I'm…looking for a file…about how to clean wounds. I got hurt on the mission and it was a rusted old pole and I've been moving a lot." She hoped it was a convincing lie.
He didn't seem to think so. "Those aren't on the doctor's desks. I'm sure you know that."
She shook her head. "I don't exactly spend a lot of time in here." She really needed him to leave. She crouched and started to pick the files up. Wade's was among them. She stilled for a moment. She stared at the file like it was a lifeline.
Victor dropped something onto the desk and broke her thoughts. She studied the metal case then glance at him. "Stuff you'll need." He replied gruffly. There was something abnormal about him helping her.
She stuffed the files together and watched him walk out. She stuffed Wade's file into her jacket, grabbed the metal case and walked to their room. She'd report to Stryker in the morning.
The room was empty when she got there. She sat in the bathroom, reading the file and fixing her wound. She'd have to get a doctor to check it out anyway. Everything Emily had said was true. And no matter how hard she tried. No matter how badly she believed that he'd get better, she could still not stop herself from thinking that he'd leave. That he'd die and never come back.
She wasn't sure if she'd be able to live through that. Screw the fact that they've only been dating six months. When you know, you know. There's no other way. You just know. So what if he's a slight cocky bastard. That's cute sometimes. And what does it matter if once he starts talking you can't get him to shut up? All that really matters is the fact that she loves him.
How do you tell someone you love them?
She's always known when she was loved. Her parents had never said it to them. They had just known it was there. She had boyfriends before, but those never last long enough to even get past the liking idea. They didn't even last two months. It was your average fling and nothing ever happened other than holding hands.
In all truth, Wade was her first ever real boyfriend. The first guy she's basically done anything with.
And she wasn't even sure if he loved her. And was six months not too early to say it? How do you know when it's too early or too late to say I love you? Too late is probably when you never said it and the person walks away…or dies. But when is too early? Is too early a week or six months? A month or a year? When do you know for sure that you can say I love you without having the person freak out?
She had seen that. Annabelle, one of her friends from Washington said I love you two years into the relationship and the guy broke up with her. So how do you know?
And why is it so hard to figure out? Why can't I love you not be just that. Simple and real? Why does it have to be hard? And why does someone, with supposedly exceptional communication skills, who is supposed to be and interrogation dream, find it hard to find words, as way of description, to say I love you?
And why does someone, who has worked for a long time not to get close to people, have to feel this emotion for someone who will probably end up dying anyway? And why can't she just be cold hearted and pretend like it didn't matter.
And to make it all worse, on top of it all, she shot someone today. He might not die. She was fairly certain he might not die, but the idea of having done something like that. Having actually shot someone, whether in self-defence or not, it scares her.
She closed her eyes against the tears and leaned back against the bathtub.
Somehow telling herself that everything would be ok just doesn't seem to be working. She wanted it all to be ok, but something inside her just doesn't want to agree with her. She wanted to get up and find Emily and tell her to make it all better, to make Wade take the stupid chemo, but she didn't want to get up at the same time. She just wanted to sit there.
A quarter to five the alarm clock goes off. They had gotten back late morning, she hadn't slept one bit and it was already time to get up. She does it anyway. Get up, take a shower and get dressed. She needed report to Stryker about what happened. And she still needed to see a doctor.
She grabbed Wade's file from the bathroom cabinet and got her camouflaged jacket before walking to the door. Wade was on the other side. He seemed to be just staring at the door for a moment, and then he realized she was there and grinned. His bright and beautiful grin. "Hey, sweets." He greeted.
She smiled and stood on her toes and kissed him. She didn't pull away from him after they stopped kissing. She just hugged him tightly. Holding on as if she's never going to let go. "I love you." She said. Simple. Easy. And not hard at all.
He was quiet for a long time and she cringed mentally. Hoping that it wasn't too soon. "Good. That's good. I love you too." He answered.
She nodded against his chest and looked up at him. "And if something's wrong you'll tell me, right?" She asked.
He grinned and leaned down to kiss her again. "Of course." He says simply. And she cringes mentally again, because she knows he's lying.
She nodded slowly and pulled away from him, side stepped him and started down to Stryker's office. "I'll see you later, ok? I have to go see Stryker and the doctor."
"Why do you need to see the doctor?" She wasn't sure if he was panicky because she might be hurt or because she might know.
"I got hurt on the mission last night." She says while stopping and turning around again.
He looked angry at that. "What? Who hurt you?" She could tell he was itching to slide one of those swords off his back.
She smiled at him. "Don't worry so much, it was my own stupidity. See ya." She walked away before he could say anything else.
Maybe walking away was stupid. But it made sense.