The Luckiest Girl In The World

"Yeah. That'd suck."

Gorgon could think of a few things that would suck more, though. Being vivisected for science didn't sound like a super great time, for a start.

"So, I'll just be going to get that bike now."

Yeah, that would work well.

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"What are you crazy?" Banzai snapped, even as she gently tucked his arm into the sling she crafted. "You're in no shape to do anything but sit there while I call for an ambulance." She glared up at him, catching sight of herself in his goggles.

His goggles.

Oh. Oh shit.

"This is about your eyes, isn't it?" she asked, feeling stupid it had taken her this long to piece it all together. Maybe she didn't think as quickly as she thought.

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"No shit." Hey, she had to figure it out sooner or later. Gorgon gave her a wry little smile, swaying a bit. Everything was sort of inside out and super light right then. "Fuck, it feels like I could launch myself into orbit right now but get lost on the way. Is that normal? That's not fucking normal."

No, Nikolai. No, it's not.

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"That's not at all normal." Well, it was normal--for shock. What were they supposed to do? He was right when he said no hospital, but they were thousands of miles away from Rapunzel and her healing hair and Banzai wasn't sure what other options there were. "Okay, we have to get you...somewhere. Somewhere we can at least clean your wound and examine it. Maybe I can--" She was probably going to enroll in a premed program when she went to college. Did that count for anything? "Gorgon, do you think you can get to the truckstop motel over on the edge of Glendale?"

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"You really want me steering a bike right now?" That wasn't technically a no. Gorgon was looking back over his shoulder, trying to see if he could spot where he dropped the poor thing. He really didn't want to know the extent of the damage he did to it when he fell, but he was sure it wasn't pretty. "Just help me get it off the road. I've probably fucked up some part of it and I don't want to be the one to find out what while I'm driving around with a bullet in me."

What? Did she think he was going to be walking like this? Because that was kind of almost cute.

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She did, actually. Because she'd thought several steps ahead again.

"Gorgon. Look at me."

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"Hnnn?"

It was probably for the best that he was wearing his mirrored goggles right then. He furrowed his brow and looked straight at her, but so help him, focus was hard.

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Except it wasn't really. Not for what she had planned anyway.

"No, Gorgon. Look at me. Between what you've got already and what I can give you, you'd be strong enough to get to the motel. Probably while carrying your bike, too. That gets you somewhere safe where you can relax and I can catch up."

She reached for his face, guiding it down towards hers as if she was pulling him in for a kiss. "Look at me, Gorgon."

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The whole mess of it, her pulling his face down to hers, the weird intimacy of just how close he was to her now, the pull in his shoulder as he leaned down and the idea of just taking a hit from her all managed to startle an incredulous laugh out of Gorgon, then.

"What? You want me to take a hit from you and... what? Leave you here? How much relaxing do you figure I'll be doing if I knock you out and leave you on the side of the road?" He let himself linger there for a moment, licked his lips and took a shaky breath and for a moment it almost seemed like a good idea to just close his eyes and rest his face against hers, except then he was leaning back and nodding toward his bike instead. "Just help me get it off the road. If it's still there when I come back for it, great. If not... I'd rather it be missing by morning than you."

Edited Date: 2015-02-25 05:01 am (UTC)

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Banza--Kathy--shook her head. "Even if we leave the bike here, what's going to happen? I can't carry you. I'm superhumanly fast, not strong." She glanced up to the rooftop high above the awning that she'd jumped from. "You could leave me up there? No one will find me if I'm tucked away on a rooftop somewhere. I'm light and small, so once you took a decent hit off me, you should be able to get me up there no problem."

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Sigh, the hero types. Nick couldn't help but roll his eyes at that. Not that she could see them, behind his goggles as they were.

"If I take a hit from you, baby, it'll be you I carry. Not the fucking bike."

Duh.

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Takes one to know one! Or something!

"Fine!" Kathy threw her hands into the air and stomped off to get to the bike first, ostensibly so he didn't do something stupid like try to use his arm to grab several hundred pound hunk of metal. And also because she was feeling pretty dumb for having missed the obvious there. But mostly the first thing, really.

Standing the bike up was easy enough, though it didn't exactly wheel like a bicycle towards the alley she figured they could stash it in. She remembered seeing a dumpster in the back as she dashed through and this street didn't get garbage collected until Friday. They could hide the bike behind the dumpster and hope that no one wanted to go poking through it anytime soon.

"Okay," she said, once the bike was in the alley at least. "I'm ready."

Kathy was a little nervous, but tried to hide it. Gorgon had always been very good about keeping her safe from his gaze and she wasn't sure what it would feel like. Fernando's reaction to it didn't exactly fill her with confidence or anything. Not that it mattered. Like his narration had said, she was a hero. He had to do this, it was important, she was going to suck it up and deal. And maybe he hurt too much to notice she was afraid.

"Take the hit."

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Nick stood there. Hesitated. He wouldn't hurt her, not really, but this wasn't really a sharing and caring experience that he'd like her to be privy to. And he got so far as to open his mouth to say as much, to give her a chance to re-think it and back down, but... That was just more time arguing, and things were getting a little swimmy.

"Sorry, Banzai. This isn't going to be fun." He gave her a quick flash of his goggles first, wrapping his good arm around her to keep her from falling, before leaning in to make real eye contact. He needed the kick, desperately needed it, but he didn't exactly want to knock her out, either. Not really. Especially not if she was the one who was going to grab the bullet.

But he was pretty sure as he snapped his goggles shut again that he was cutting this one a little close.

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It felt like falling onto a mat from the uneven bars, the sensation of hitting the back of her head, but without the pain. Just...reality from very, very far away. She wanted to look away, to close her eyes, hell, even to blink, but just wasn't possible. The only thing she could do was keep staring back at him until he broke eye contact with her first.

Her strength, her will, her speed, everything drained away into him. All that was left behind was the hope that whatever it was that gave her her superpowers was enough to boost him up a few tiers.

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And fuck- if this was what it was like taking a hit from someone with powers... 'Up a few tiers' was accurate enough. Gorgon's mind was spinning a little now, and it wasn't completely from the blood loss. Some part of him was tempted to snap the shutters open again, to take more, but his sense of reason won out. He kept his arm around her firmly, picking her up easily and supporting her weight as though she was nothing at all.

"You okay, Banzai?"

He was already running. It was the best hit he'd ever taken from any one person before, but far too much of that energy was bleeding away, trying to account for his injury.

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The most Kathy could do was lie there like a ragdoll in his arms. She wanted to speak, to reassure him, but putting together coherent thoughts and then backing those thoughts up with words felt damn near impossible. She nodded, briefly, head lolling against his good shoulder and then fell into a doze as the streets sped by.

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Yeah, Gorgon really hadn't been expecting a reply anyway.

They were in the motel with a room paid up for the night after a quick conversation with a desk clerk who had been given extra money to not ask questions, and who looked just traumatized enough to agree that he didn't want to know. Kathy had been laid out carefully on the bed, and Gorgon had been not long for the waking world after doing so. The hit he'd taken had all but worn off, and while she'd done a decent job of bandaging him up, blood loss had caught up to him, now.

Unconscious on the bed beside her wasn't a bad place to be, was it?

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"Room 307, keycard in my left pocket..." Kathy woke up with a start, remembering the information she had meant to pass along before she'd gone under. The room they were in was decorated the same as hers, but the windows were on the wrong side, her stuff wasn't piled in the corner and her room almost certainly didn't have an unconscious guy bleeding all over the sheets.

Wait, what?

She flung herself out of the bed when she realized that Gorgon was collapsed unconscious next to her, bounding over to his side to check on him. He felt clammy, his breathing light and shallow, and his skin was had an unnatural pallor. He looked like the vampire Fernando had called him. His shoulder was still oozing blood, a bright red splotch already visible beneath him. Worried he was going into hypovolemic shock, Kathy was tempted to call an ambulance anyway--but he was right. He'd end up on some scientist's table just as soon as someone collapsed after prying open an eyelid to check his pupils.

If anything was going to be done, she was going to have to be the one to do it.

"I need a better first aid kit," she mumbled, reaching into her pouch to grab a granola bar. She wolfed it down, trying to regain her strength. She wasn't quite reeling anymore from his hit, but she wasn't up to fighting trim, either. "Tweezers, isopropal, proper bandages, forceps if they have them..." She was going to have to hit up a pharmacy and hope they had everything on her ever-growing list. But who prepared to take care of a gunshot wound while stuck in a hotel room?

Maybe Mr. Spencer? Actually, that wasn't a terrible idea. She was going to have to call him.

While she was waiting for Mr. Spencer to pick up, Kathy gathered all the blankets and towels she could find, wrapping them around Nick to help prevent shock. She also snagged his wallet, taking all the cash she could find; sorry not sorry, Gorgon, but medical supplies were expensive and she wasn't the one who mugged the criminals she took down. With a quick brush of his hair away from his forehead and a whispered promise to be back as fast as possible, she flung herself out the door to find the nearest 24 hour drugstore.

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Fortunately for Kathy, Eliot didn't sleep much. He was still wide awake to take her call.

"Kathy? What's goin' on, darklin'?"

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Oh thank goodness! He'd picked up!

"Mr. Spencer, I'm so glad you answered and I'm so sorry for calling at this hour, but like I said, it's an emergency." She sounded a little out of breath, running down LA streets at thirty miles an hour could do that to a girl. "This is a very, very weird question and I won't blame you if you don't have an answer but you were the only person I could think of except Dr. Lecter's on the cruise and no one is answering their phones there..."

Breathe, Kathy. Mentally and literally.

"Do you know what to do for a gunshot wound if taking them to get it treated professionally is not an option?"

Bet you weren't prepared for that question out of this student's mouth, were ya?

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Prepared for it? No. But he couldn't really bring himself to be surprised by it, either.

"Is it a through-and-through? Where's the wound? I'm guessin' since you're talkin' to me and not gasping in pain you weren't the one who got hit."

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"No, it's caught in his shoulder," Kathy said, biting her lip. She'd jumped up to the rooftops and needed to reorient for a minute. There! She needed to go that way, right. And not at full speed, either. If she slipped on a loose shingle or something, she and Gorgon would both be screwed. "My--my friend? I guess you could say? He caught the bullet in his shoulder and then dropped his bike. Uhhh..."

She tried to remember the type of gun. "Handgun? Not too big, but I didn't really pay attention to what kind it was."

Which was funny, considering it had been pointed at her for several long seconds.

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Eliot bit back his sigh to keep Kathy from thinking it was directed at her. Fucking guns, man.

"Okay. Bullets are pretty self-sanitizing. They get extremely hot when they're fired, so if at all possible, you want to leave that sucker in there. He's better off having to deal with it later in a clean room with an actual doctor than getting it yanked out there, where you got so many vectors for infection." Kathy sounded reasonably calm so far -- for a teenager trying to do kitchen table surgery for a gunshot wound, and no, it wasn't quite the first time Eliot had had to deal with that, though the fact that Kathy was American but not military made this a first -- so Eliot didn't bother with any reassuring words. "What kinds of supplies do you have?"

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She wasn't feeling very calm, but she was pushing all that panic and worry down into a little all where she could deal with it later, once Gorgon was all right. But she definitely had some kind of emotional breakdown queued for later.

"He's not gonna go to a doctor," Kathy said. "He can't. I mean, if he made any back-alley, off-the-books doctor friends, he hasn't given me any clue about that and he'd not conscious right now so I can't really ask, but I know that he 100% can't go to a hospital or normal or clinic or anything. That is 100% off the table."

If she didn't take it out now, odds were good it wasn't going to come out.

"I'm on my way to a pharmacy now, so I can get whatever supplies you suggest."

And figure out how to get penicillin and good pain relievers without a prescription. Which probably meant stealing them, truth be told.

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