(no subject)
Rating/Warning: PG-13 for violence and some language
Word Count: 1982
Summary: “Ace is outside,” Doctor D returns simply, and there’s something in his voice that has Frank immediately getting to his feet.
“Ghoul! Wake the fuck up, Ghoul.”
The whisper is urgent and loud enough that Frank feels sure Doctor Death Defying’s been trying to get his attention for longer than should have been necessary - he’s always been a heavier sleeper than the others, but he’s been sleeping like the dead in the two weeks since he got away from BL/ind. The other Cobra says he just needs the extra rest after everything that’s happened, but he still feels more than a little guilty about how much he’s been sleeping when he should be working on getting the others out.
He got lucky, himself. Korse had noticed the other times he had felt the conditioning slipping and had ordered a fresh run of drugs and another session with BLI’s so-called counselors. Finally, though, he had hesitated in the face of a too young dust bunny whose name he hadn’t even known, but who he had wounded and who had still stood up to him to protect the children huddled behind her - and whose teammate had felt no qualms about applying a board to the back of his head while he was distracted. They had apparently done some panicking when they realized who they had on their hands, because Pony waited exactly half an hour after Frank had gotten upright to start teasing him about the fact that they had locked him in a storage truck they happened to have in their van while they radioed desperately for anyone who could get them in touch with WKIL.
He still needs to track them down and thank them for it.
“’m awake,” he whispers now, opening his eyes to see the DJ above him, crutch in hand like he was about to start poking him with it. The older man doesn’t look as concerned as Frank knows he would if they were under attack, so he doesn’t immediately go for his blaster, newly repainted and hanging in its holster on the back of a nearby chair. He glances down to see Motorbaby curled against his side, arms wrapped around her robot, eyes closed, breath slow and steady; she’d started sleeping with him not long after he’d gotten back, before he even knew which way was up and even before the adults had stopped standing guard in case he was still dangerous. He still can’t even begin to say how her faith makes him feel. “What is it?”
“Ace is outside,” he returns simply, and now there’s something in his voice that has Frank immediately and carefully moving away from Grace, grabbing his shirt and pulling it on over his head as he follows the wheels of the other man’s chair back through the darkened diner.
It’s pitch black outside but for the headlights of a car Frank knows is Hat Trick’s, and Frank squints into them for a moment as he makes sense of what’s happening. The car’s top is down, both doors flung wide, two figures bent over the backseat. He recognizes them a moment later as Show Pony - helmet and skates off for once, which means Pete really did wake them all up -, and Ace himself, and the latter looks up when Frank lets the boards swing down behind him.
“Fun Ghoul,” he says, though his smile is lacking most of its usual wattage. “Welcome back.”
Frank nods to him as he moves to join them at the car, and then whatever he had been about to say in reply is lost when he sees the object of their concern.
It’s Mikey. He’s at least mostly unconscious, shivering violently despite the mound of blankets piled in the backseat. His face is too pale and covered in a thin film of sweat. There’s a bandage on the side of his head. It’s all familiar from his own escape, and he stops short of reaching out to his friend - his brother - to look at Pete. “How did you….?”
Pete opens his mouth, but Pony interrupts. “Let’s get him inside, and then Ace can get us up to speed.”
Frank nods, stepping back as Pete squeezes into the backseat, pushing aside the blankets, and Frank feels a surge of anger when he sees Mikey is still in the gray Exterminator’s uniform, and that his wrists are bound with rope. “He made me. He was afraid he couldn’t hold on,” Pete whispers over his shoulder, and Frank squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. Before he can dwell too long, though, Pete’s sliding an arm under Mikey’s knees and shoulders, and Frank steps forward to take him, adjusting his hold as he turns to follow Show Pony back into the diner as Pete leans into the front seat to kill the car’s lights before he’s following, too.
Doctor D’s cleared the table in the front room and gathered up some necessary supplies by the time they get back inside, and Frank carefully lays Mikey down, gently brushing sweat-soaked black hair off his forehead. For the next few minutes, the room is a bustle of activity, the four of them working efficiently to get rid of the ropes and S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W uniform, changing him into his own t-shirt and pants. The head wound is mostly superficial, but there’s a laser burn on Mikey’s shoulder that needs care. He wakes once in a panic Frank also remembers, and it takes both Pete and Frank to get him calmed back down, and it’s still ten minutes after he apparently falls back asleep that he stops clinging to Frank’s hand.
Motorbaby wakes up at some point during the commotion, and she stumbles into the main room, rubbing at her eyes - which go wide when she sees what they’re doing. “Kobra’s back?” she asks Frank too hopefully, looking as young as she actually is instead of how old she acts.
“Yeah, ‘baby, he is. He’s gonna feel like shit for a while, but he’s back. You’ll help us take care of him though, right?”
She just nods and heads over to the table, standing beside Pete and sliding her hand into Mikey’s.
--
Pete fills them in over weak coffee.
The Cards had been out on a supply run, and they had run into the unit. The rest of the crew had taken off, but the story of Frank’s encounter with the Coasters had reached every runner in the zones, and Pete had gotten a flash of brilliance - or stupidity, one or the other - and stayed for Mikey. Getting him away from Gerard and Ray had been the harder part of the plan, but finally, a pair of Dracs had come after Pete, and Mikey had followed them.
Pete had taken out one of the Dracs, but the other had gotten lucky and blown out Pete’s back tire, and then he had lost his gun trying to keep his bike upright. Before he could pick himself up, there was a white blaster in his face - that was suddenly dropping into his lap as the Draculoid went down, the back of its mask scorched black, and Mikey was gasping Pete’s name.
It got tricky after that, Pete holding tight to Mikey as he fought to get control of himself, waiting for Trick to lose the others and swing back around with the car, the two of them piling into the backseat. There was another chase when Mikey had taken the shot to his shoulder, but finally, they had gotten away. They had stopped long enough to catch up with the rest of the Black Cards. By then, Mikey was already shaking so hard Pete had begun to fear for him, so he had left Trick with the others and hauled ass to the diner.
“You did good,” Doctor D offers when the story’s finished. “Did stupid facing S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W by yourself when we don’t even know how these two broke free, but you did good.”
Pete just chuckles, reaching for his coffee. “They’re my friends, too,” he says after a sip, looking seriously at Frank, who finally just nods and excuses himself to check on Mikey and Grace, not trusting himself for anything else.
--
It takes four days, in the end - four days of the other Cobra wandering in with medicines (and it doesn’t escape Frank’s notice that he brings enough for two more people), of struggling to keep Mikey’s fever down, of holding a bucket and rubbing his back as he throws up until there’s nothing left, of giving him water to keep him from getting dehydrated, of running a hand over his hair and talking him through the fever dreams and hallucinations. On the third day, the fever finally breaks, Mikey slipping into what looks like real, normal sleep, and Frank finally grabs a few hours himself.
On the fourth, Mikey finally regains full consciousness. They moved him to the bedroom after they got him cleaned up, and Frank’s beside him on the mattress, a radio he’s been working on repairing on his lap as he keeps watch. Then, there’s a hand closing gently around his ankle, and when he looks, Mikey is blinking up at him. “Hey.” His voice is rough, but it’s definitely his voice, not the monotone Frank remembers from all of them under S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W.
“Hey yourself,” Frank returns, setting the radio aside. “How do you feel?”
Mikey considers for a moment, frowning deeply, like he’s trying to find the words. He probably is; it was a few days after Frank woke up that he didn’t feel like names and memories were constantly slipping away from him. “Like that time you gave me food poisoning, and like the time you nearly blew us all up when you tried to rewire that blaster.”
Frank has to fight back his grin to fake affront. “Fuck you,” he says, punching Mikey’s shoulder gently. “Neither of those were my fault. You ate the entire basket of cactus apples yourself, and I know it wasn’t my idea to cut the green wire.”
“Oh, right,” Mikey returns easily, then falling into silence for a long moment. Frank knows him well enough to wait it out. “You never came back,” he says finally and softly, eyes on the filthy ceiling above them. “Korse said you’d failed. He dusted the one Drac that came back and made us all retrain using you as an example. And I hadn’t had a fucking thought of my own in two months, and all I could think was that you never came back.”
It takes Frank a long moment of his own to find his voice again. He’s spent the last three weeks missing the others so badly it’s made his stomach hurt and knowing he needs to do whatever it takes to get them out of Battery City. He’s barely let himself think about what might have happened if that crash queen had still had her blaster instead of a plank and upper body strength, because it means thinking about what one bad raid could mean for the others, what might happen if there is no way to get them out. What he hasn’t thought about at all is how it would have felt if he hadn’t been the first one free. “I’ve been here,” he says finally, reaching down to rest a hand gently on Mikey’s shoulder. “The Coasters didn’t exactly take well to me trying to kill them, and I woke up here.”
Mikey reaches up, resting his hand over Frank’s and squeezing gently, eyes drifting closed. He’s silent again for a while, long enough that Frank’s starting to think he’s fallen back to sleep before he speaks again. “Gee was starting to remember, I could tell. And Ray, too. We’ll get them out.” He opens his eyes, looking at Frank and squeezing his hand again.
“Fucking right we will,” Frank returns immediately, and it’s as much a promise to Gerard and Ray as it is to Mikey.
Word Count: 1982
Summary: “Ace is outside,” Doctor D returns simply, and there’s something in his voice that has Frank immediately getting to his feet.
“Ghoul! Wake the fuck up, Ghoul.”
The whisper is urgent and loud enough that Frank feels sure Doctor Death Defying’s been trying to get his attention for longer than should have been necessary - he’s always been a heavier sleeper than the others, but he’s been sleeping like the dead in the two weeks since he got away from BL/ind. The other Cobra says he just needs the extra rest after everything that’s happened, but he still feels more than a little guilty about how much he’s been sleeping when he should be working on getting the others out.
He got lucky, himself. Korse had noticed the other times he had felt the conditioning slipping and had ordered a fresh run of drugs and another session with BLI’s so-called counselors. Finally, though, he had hesitated in the face of a too young dust bunny whose name he hadn’t even known, but who he had wounded and who had still stood up to him to protect the children huddled behind her - and whose teammate had felt no qualms about applying a board to the back of his head while he was distracted. They had apparently done some panicking when they realized who they had on their hands, because Pony waited exactly half an hour after Frank had gotten upright to start teasing him about the fact that they had locked him in a storage truck they happened to have in their van while they radioed desperately for anyone who could get them in touch with WKIL.
He still needs to track them down and thank them for it.
“’m awake,” he whispers now, opening his eyes to see the DJ above him, crutch in hand like he was about to start poking him with it. The older man doesn’t look as concerned as Frank knows he would if they were under attack, so he doesn’t immediately go for his blaster, newly repainted and hanging in its holster on the back of a nearby chair. He glances down to see Motorbaby curled against his side, arms wrapped around her robot, eyes closed, breath slow and steady; she’d started sleeping with him not long after he’d gotten back, before he even knew which way was up and even before the adults had stopped standing guard in case he was still dangerous. He still can’t even begin to say how her faith makes him feel. “What is it?”
“Ace is outside,” he returns simply, and now there’s something in his voice that has Frank immediately and carefully moving away from Grace, grabbing his shirt and pulling it on over his head as he follows the wheels of the other man’s chair back through the darkened diner.
It’s pitch black outside but for the headlights of a car Frank knows is Hat Trick’s, and Frank squints into them for a moment as he makes sense of what’s happening. The car’s top is down, both doors flung wide, two figures bent over the backseat. He recognizes them a moment later as Show Pony - helmet and skates off for once, which means Pete really did wake them all up -, and Ace himself, and the latter looks up when Frank lets the boards swing down behind him.
“Fun Ghoul,” he says, though his smile is lacking most of its usual wattage. “Welcome back.”
Frank nods to him as he moves to join them at the car, and then whatever he had been about to say in reply is lost when he sees the object of their concern.
It’s Mikey. He’s at least mostly unconscious, shivering violently despite the mound of blankets piled in the backseat. His face is too pale and covered in a thin film of sweat. There’s a bandage on the side of his head. It’s all familiar from his own escape, and he stops short of reaching out to his friend - his brother - to look at Pete. “How did you….?”
Pete opens his mouth, but Pony interrupts. “Let’s get him inside, and then Ace can get us up to speed.”
Frank nods, stepping back as Pete squeezes into the backseat, pushing aside the blankets, and Frank feels a surge of anger when he sees Mikey is still in the gray Exterminator’s uniform, and that his wrists are bound with rope. “He made me. He was afraid he couldn’t hold on,” Pete whispers over his shoulder, and Frank squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. Before he can dwell too long, though, Pete’s sliding an arm under Mikey’s knees and shoulders, and Frank steps forward to take him, adjusting his hold as he turns to follow Show Pony back into the diner as Pete leans into the front seat to kill the car’s lights before he’s following, too.
Doctor D’s cleared the table in the front room and gathered up some necessary supplies by the time they get back inside, and Frank carefully lays Mikey down, gently brushing sweat-soaked black hair off his forehead. For the next few minutes, the room is a bustle of activity, the four of them working efficiently to get rid of the ropes and S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W uniform, changing him into his own t-shirt and pants. The head wound is mostly superficial, but there’s a laser burn on Mikey’s shoulder that needs care. He wakes once in a panic Frank also remembers, and it takes both Pete and Frank to get him calmed back down, and it’s still ten minutes after he apparently falls back asleep that he stops clinging to Frank’s hand.
Motorbaby wakes up at some point during the commotion, and she stumbles into the main room, rubbing at her eyes - which go wide when she sees what they’re doing. “Kobra’s back?” she asks Frank too hopefully, looking as young as she actually is instead of how old she acts.
“Yeah, ‘baby, he is. He’s gonna feel like shit for a while, but he’s back. You’ll help us take care of him though, right?”
She just nods and heads over to the table, standing beside Pete and sliding her hand into Mikey’s.
--
Pete fills them in over weak coffee.
The Cards had been out on a supply run, and they had run into the unit. The rest of the crew had taken off, but the story of Frank’s encounter with the Coasters had reached every runner in the zones, and Pete had gotten a flash of brilliance - or stupidity, one or the other - and stayed for Mikey. Getting him away from Gerard and Ray had been the harder part of the plan, but finally, a pair of Dracs had come after Pete, and Mikey had followed them.
Pete had taken out one of the Dracs, but the other had gotten lucky and blown out Pete’s back tire, and then he had lost his gun trying to keep his bike upright. Before he could pick himself up, there was a white blaster in his face - that was suddenly dropping into his lap as the Draculoid went down, the back of its mask scorched black, and Mikey was gasping Pete’s name.
It got tricky after that, Pete holding tight to Mikey as he fought to get control of himself, waiting for Trick to lose the others and swing back around with the car, the two of them piling into the backseat. There was another chase when Mikey had taken the shot to his shoulder, but finally, they had gotten away. They had stopped long enough to catch up with the rest of the Black Cards. By then, Mikey was already shaking so hard Pete had begun to fear for him, so he had left Trick with the others and hauled ass to the diner.
“You did good,” Doctor D offers when the story’s finished. “Did stupid facing S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W by yourself when we don’t even know how these two broke free, but you did good.”
Pete just chuckles, reaching for his coffee. “They’re my friends, too,” he says after a sip, looking seriously at Frank, who finally just nods and excuses himself to check on Mikey and Grace, not trusting himself for anything else.
--
It takes four days, in the end - four days of the other Cobra wandering in with medicines (and it doesn’t escape Frank’s notice that he brings enough for two more people), of struggling to keep Mikey’s fever down, of holding a bucket and rubbing his back as he throws up until there’s nothing left, of giving him water to keep him from getting dehydrated, of running a hand over his hair and talking him through the fever dreams and hallucinations. On the third day, the fever finally breaks, Mikey slipping into what looks like real, normal sleep, and Frank finally grabs a few hours himself.
On the fourth, Mikey finally regains full consciousness. They moved him to the bedroom after they got him cleaned up, and Frank’s beside him on the mattress, a radio he’s been working on repairing on his lap as he keeps watch. Then, there’s a hand closing gently around his ankle, and when he looks, Mikey is blinking up at him. “Hey.” His voice is rough, but it’s definitely his voice, not the monotone Frank remembers from all of them under S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W.
“Hey yourself,” Frank returns, setting the radio aside. “How do you feel?”
Mikey considers for a moment, frowning deeply, like he’s trying to find the words. He probably is; it was a few days after Frank woke up that he didn’t feel like names and memories were constantly slipping away from him. “Like that time you gave me food poisoning, and like the time you nearly blew us all up when you tried to rewire that blaster.”
Frank has to fight back his grin to fake affront. “Fuck you,” he says, punching Mikey’s shoulder gently. “Neither of those were my fault. You ate the entire basket of cactus apples yourself, and I know it wasn’t my idea to cut the green wire.”
“Oh, right,” Mikey returns easily, then falling into silence for a long moment. Frank knows him well enough to wait it out. “You never came back,” he says finally and softly, eyes on the filthy ceiling above them. “Korse said you’d failed. He dusted the one Drac that came back and made us all retrain using you as an example. And I hadn’t had a fucking thought of my own in two months, and all I could think was that you never came back.”
It takes Frank a long moment of his own to find his voice again. He’s spent the last three weeks missing the others so badly it’s made his stomach hurt and knowing he needs to do whatever it takes to get them out of Battery City. He’s barely let himself think about what might have happened if that crash queen had still had her blaster instead of a plank and upper body strength, because it means thinking about what one bad raid could mean for the others, what might happen if there is no way to get them out. What he hasn’t thought about at all is how it would have felt if he hadn’t been the first one free. “I’ve been here,” he says finally, reaching down to rest a hand gently on Mikey’s shoulder. “The Coasters didn’t exactly take well to me trying to kill them, and I woke up here.”
Mikey reaches up, resting his hand over Frank’s and squeezing gently, eyes drifting closed. He’s silent again for a while, long enough that Frank’s starting to think he’s fallen back to sleep before he speaks again. “Gee was starting to remember, I could tell. And Ray, too. We’ll get them out.” He opens his eyes, looking at Frank and squeezing his hand again.
“Fucking right we will,” Frank returns immediately, and it’s as much a promise to Gerard and Ray as it is to Mikey.