ax_main | Hank, Alex, and Fatale

After her fight with Cal, Pam wakes up in the infirmary, and she and Alex make plans.

Pam awoke slowly, clawing her way to consciousness. And when she opened her eyes, wished that she hadn't.

The lab. She was back in the lab. No - not the same one. The lights weren't nearly as bright, the restraints around her arms not nearly as tight, and a tentative, surreptitious movement confirmed her legs weren't held down, at all. The infirmary, then. But...

Belatedly, she remembered the fight with Cal, having thrown her knife and watched him start to fall with it in his throat. And then nothing except a pain in her head, and now...

"Fuck," she whispered, and immediately disappeared. She'd fucked up, even though it hadn't been entirely her fault. And now they were going to kill her.

"Now that's really unnecessary," Hank rumbled from somewhere beside the bed. "We've got you more or less patched up and as good as new, and you go and vanish on us. An invisible patient is going to make it exceedingly difficult for me to give you a clean bill of health, I'll have you know. At least, not without risking my credentials."

Pam jerked her head in the direction of the voice, and relaxed just a little when she saw Dr. McCoy. "Let me out of here," she half pleaded, half demanded. "I need to get out of here."

"We'll let free you from the restraints just as soon as you calm down, Pamela," he promised. "Right now, I'm concerned to risk your teleporting away before I've had an opportunity to administer one last check up--make certain we didn't miss anything, and that you are indeed healing properly." Hank paused, then added softly, "I've sent for Alex. I hope that's all right. It was my thought that a familiar face might ease some of your very understandable anxiety in this situation."

"Fuck yeah, it's understandable - I got Cal, but I didn't get Clint, and he's going to fucking kill me and I can't move," she replied, tugging at her restraints without any success. "C'mon, Doc, you've gotta let me go. Please?"

Hank pinched the bridge of his nose, glasses sliding up over his broad paw. "Three points of clarification. One: you did not, in fact, 'get' Cal. At last report, he was alive and well. Two: he and Clint are no longer on school grounds--I believe the Professor said they were somewhere in California, and he'll want to have a very long discussion with them when they return." Pam, too, most likely, but he was attempting to calm her down. "Third: for as long as you remain my patient, you are under the protection of Dr. Henry P. McCoy. And one of my doctorates just happens to be in kicking ass, when required."

She hadn't gotten Cal. If anything, she was more scared now than she'd been - she'd seen her knife strike home, and if he'd lived through that, he could live through anything. She didn't stand a chance, especially against the two of them. Neither did Alex. And the idea of the fuzzy blue doctor attempting to kick their asses would have been funny if she'd felt like laughing.

She didn't, though. And she couldn't seem to pull up Fatale, who might have been able to joke about it

"Doc?" came another voice from just inside the door. "They said you wanted to see me?"

"Yes, Alex, thank you," said Hank, still hovering over the seemingly-empty bed. "If you would ... I'm not able to release Pamela until I have a chance to examine her again. As you can see--or rather, not--her present state leaves me incapable of offering much more than an educated guess."

"Oh." The blond stepped toward the bed, on the opposite side of McCoy; he'd seen setups like this often enough to have an idea how they worked. So he reached for the spot just below the right wrist restraint where Fatale's hand probably was. "Hey," Alex said.

Invisible fingers curled around his automatically, and clung as if to the lifeline Tommy'd compared him to. "Hey." It was soft, almost inaudible, but it was Alex. He'd hear her.

"So. Dr. McCoy says you can go, once he's had a chance to check you out one last time." Which Alex knew she'd already heard, but still. They had to start for somewhere. "And I know you're not a big fan of the MedLab." Neither was he, when you got right down to it. Anyway. "And I'm here now, and I'm not going to let anything happen to you. So ... do you think you could help the Doc out? Once you do, we'll be back in our room before you know it."

"They're not gonna let me go. I tried to kill Cal," she pointed out.

"I have had no such instruction from the Professor," Hank assured her. "Certainly, he's not exactly sanguine about how these events played out, but he doesn't see the need to confine you over it. He'll want to speak to you and Cal and Clint, at some point, I'm sure, but keeping you strapped to a bed in the MedLab ... that would be a bit draconian, by any standard."

"There, see?" Alex added. "When has Dr. McCoy ever lied to us?"

"When he said your arm would be better in no time," Pam grumbled, even though it more or less had been. Still. "Fine. What does he want me to do?"

"His recovery was quite speedy by most modern medical standards," Hank protested, a touch defensively. "And if you could just ... erm, be visible for a bit, I can finish your final examination and discharge you."

Be visible. Right. Because it was going to be just that easy. Pam took a deep breath and locked her eyes onto Alex, and tightened her grip on his hand. She flickered a few times, then sighed and let go. "Hang on," she muttered, and dug her nails, hard, into her palms. He could always patch that up too, right?

Alex's eyes brightened when he saw her, and he reached for her hand again. Only for Dr. McCoy to give a slight tsk, and gently wave him away.

"I'll clean these minor lacerations on your palms first," he said. "But I do not note any other areas of immediate concern. I'd like you to check back in at the MedLab in two weeks for a follow-up, just to be on the safe side; however, I think I can give you a tentative clean bill of health." He dabbed a bit of antibiotic onto a cotton swab and began carefully cleaning the small cuts left by her own fingernails.

"You don't have to do anything with those," Pam protested, the fingers of her other hand waggling toward Alex in entreaty. "That happens all the time. And can't I just follow up with Simon?"

Alex twined his fingers with Pam's readily, now he could properly see them again, and gave Dr. McCoy his best, most earnestly-entreating stare.

Henry McCoy, sadly, was not possessed of a soul forged of steel, and his resolve quickly melted in the face of the teens' combined assault. "Well," he conceded, reluctantly, cleaning the last of the cuts on the hand he had managed to get hold of, "I suppose it's nothing all that serious. Just promise me you'll clean it properly once you're back in your room. And Simon is certainly more than capable of attending to your follow-up, if that is your preference. I'll speak to him about it."

"I'll clean it up. Alex'll help. We've got bandaids. Can you untie me now, please?" There was a note of near hysteria in her voice and the light around her flickered. Being in the infirmary was bad enough. Being in the infirmary tied down? Yeah, no.

"Oh," Hank started. "Well, yes. Of course." He began undoing the restraints on her left side, and, at his nod, Alex quickly began loosing those on her right. As soon as she could sit upright properly again, the younger Summers threw an arm around her protectively.

Still flickering, Pam wrapped an arm around Alex and looked up at him, a stubborn sort of determination on her face. "Help me up? We need to get the fuck out of here."

Obligingly releasing he other hand, now he had finished seeing it was properly disinfected, Hank stepped back. "Don't forget to follow-up with Simon. I will be checking with him to make sure you do," he said with one last, half-serious wag of his finger.

"She will," Alex promised, gently helping her off the bed and back to her feet, though his arm continued to encircle Pam's shoulders as she regained her footing. He tilted his head toward her. "You up to 'porting us back, or would you rather do it the long way?"

"Portal's easier." She paused, though, her forehead furrowing. "How'd they knock me out?" she asked Hank. Cal had cut her, yes, but it hadn't been so bad she'd have passed out from blood loss. Which meant it must've been Clint - but how?

Hank hesitated a moment, curling a clawed finger thoughtfully beneath his chin before answering. "Telepathy," he told her shortly. "It is another ability Calvin was mimicking, at the time."

Telepathy. On top of Billy's knives, and whatever he'd all borrowed from her. Wonderful. "And people say I'm the dangerous freak," Pam complained. She opened a portal to Alex's room and headed towards it. "Thanks Doc," she remembered belatedly.

"To be fair, you say that almost as much as anybody else," Hank pointed out mildly, turning back to his other work. "And you're welcome. It's all part of the service we provide here at Chateau Xavier."

Alex quirked a small smile back at the blue-furred physician, and followed Pam back to his room. "Look at you, remembering your manners and everything," he said, tugging her close to plant a kiss on her temple.

Pam let the portal close, then turned, let the determination that was holding her stiffly upright fade away, and buried her face in Alex's shoulder. "I fucking killed him. Or I tried to. It should have killed him, Alex. And it didn't."

"That's not such a bad thing," Alex pointed out cautiously, holding her against his side. "I mean, you can't un-kill somebody. Maybe it's better nothing permanent happened."

"Except for the part where he's got my powers. And Billy's knives. And some kind of telepathy, and Clint. Who said I'm gonna have to go through them both." Pam shook her head. "Surprise was pretty much the only advantage I had, and I lost that."

"I seriously doubt the Professor is going to let either of them come near you until he's sussed this whole thing out. He's got a pretty consistent track record when it comes to homicide on campus, right?"

"He's going to stop them, how?" Pam let go of Alex and stalked over to the dresser, pulling off the hospital gown they'd put her in as she went to reveal a large, white bandage over her stomach. "You stay if you want. I'm getting out of here."

"By being the most telepath on Earth?" Alex ventured, though he paled visibly at the sight of the bandage. Swallowing, he strode up next to her, and place a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "If you really think you need to run, I'll be right there with you. Always. But nobody's getting to you that doesn't go through me. I can fight dirty, too, when I need to."

"I know, but we came here so you wouldn't have to," Pam countered. She sighed and pushed her hand back through her hair, then turned towards him. "Besides, if I don't get out of here for a while? Someone's going to end up dead. And I'm thinking they'd frown on that."

"That's a fair point, I guess," he conceded, draping his arms lightly around her hips. "Okay, we should get away for a while. But where should we go? Back to Asteroid M?"

Pam frowned. "Not unless we're gonna stay. It doesn't seem right to just go hide there."

The blond offered a nod. Then, "So ... where are we going to go? It's not like two broke fugitive teenagers have a huge number of options, right?"

"Fuck if I know. Reno? I know places to crash in Reno." Pam paused and made a face. "Or I did, four years ago." She sighed and thumped her forehead against his shoulder.

After mulling it over for a few moments, tracing the curve of Pam's spine comfortingly as he did so, Alex ventured, "There is one thing I can think of. You probably aren't going to like it, though."

"Am I going to like it less than dying? Because the bar's pretty low at the moment," Pam pointed out, having melted in closer against Alex.

"Honestly? It might be too close to call ..." Alex trailed off, took a fortifying breath, then plunged ahead. He made a point of keeping her close, just in case she decided to jab him with something for what he was about to suggest. "But if we're talking broke fugitive teenager stuff, I'm pretty sure Scott would have some ideas."

Pam's eyebrows climbed and she pulled back just enough to stare up at Alex,incredulous. "Your brother, Scott. And...he'd be willing to help, why?" Or, well, maybe he would. He hadn't been a prick when she'd talked to him in the danger room. "When he took off, he went camping ," she added anyway. Because seriously, the closest she'd ever come to camping was being a runaway in Reno. She was pretty sure there wasn't much correlation.

"He'll help 'cause he's my brother," Alex insisted. "And ... well, what's wrong with camping? It's not like we've got any better ideas. Or friends. Or money. It couldn't hurt anything, right?"

"Have you ever even been camping? Because I haven't," Pam pointed out. He had a point about not having any better ideas, granted. But still, she was pretty sure that was a big flaw in the plan.

"Yes," he told her decisively. "Y'know. Probably." And a lot less decisively, "Maybe. I'm pretty sure my parents must have taken me once or twice--there's not exactly a lot else to do in Alaska. But if you're asking me if I remember any specific details that might be helpful on an actual camping trip ... not so much, no. But Scott's good at that sort of thing. I'm pretty sure we can let him handle the little stuff."

So...camping with Scott. This was getting better and better. Unfortunately, she didn't have any ideas that were any better, so... "Fine," she mumbled reluctantly as she dropped her forehead back onto his shoulder. "Tell him to bring Tylenol, ok?"

"All the Tylenol," he nodded, combing his fingers through her hair reassuringly. "It won't be that bad. I promise."