12. Chapter 12

Peter blinks and feels his brain coming back online in much the same way his old Gateway brick of a laptop suffered through launching Windows95. After a few moments his other senses kick in and the unlamented, familiar bleach-filled aroma of a hospital assaults his nose and eyes. He wonders if the last five years have been a dream, but then then registers the fact that he’s looking at the mattress. As in, his arms are resting on it and he is suspended above it, bands holding his chest and head and hips and legs suspended in the air. It is not how he remembers waking up from his coma last time, and nothing makes sense. Pack bonds are fuzzy and there is something important that he knows he’s forgetting. Someone.

He grits his teeth and tries to shift around and that’s when a gentle hand is placed on his arm.

“Easy, Uncle Peter.” It’s Derek’s soft voice, followed by the pack bonds rushing through Peter’s nerves, filling the nooks and crannies of his isolation. It calms him down from the edge of the panic attack he was not even aware was starting.

“Your back was badly burned.” Cora actually leans over and smushes her face against the mattress so she can look him in the eye. “They elevate you for a few hours every day after cleaning your wounds.” She tangles her fingers with his. “You’ve been out for nearly two days. We’re trying to get them to let us take you home but they won’t while the risk of infection is still high.”

Peter frowns as Cora stands back up. He has a pack now, and an alpha. He should be healing quickly, but instead he’s upside down in the burn ward, and again he fights off panic. “I’m not healing?”

There is a long silence as the siblings argue, using just facial expressions if Peter knows them at all. Finally Derek sighs and leans over, also smushing his face against the mattress. “Stiles says your slow healing time has to do with Chris, who is still in serious condition.”

Hearing Chris’s name slots his feelings into place and Peter’s blood quickens with the conscious awareness of the mate bond. It is weak and limpid, a thready pulse he can barely feel. He bucks instinctively against his restraints. “Let me out, I need to see him.”

“I told you,” Cora hisses at her brother over Peter’s back.

“Yo Uncle Peter!” Stiles announces himself before Derek can respond by banging the door open and shouting.

Peter grits his teeth. “Don’t call me that, and get me out of this damn hammock.”

“No can do, Uncle Big Bad. You were severely burned and admitted to the hospital as a bona-fide patient. We can’t just spring you without raising very awkward questions if you get my drift.”

“My mate—”

“Is recovering. Spectacularly fast, too, which is not suspicious at all, for anyone. Apparently whatever mojo you give up and slows your healing is gifted to him and speeds his up. I’m not jealous at all, nope.” Derek lets out a quiet ‘hey!’ but Stiles bends over to look Peter eye to eye. “How is this even comfortable?”

“It’s not,” Peter growls and flashes his eyes, for all the good it will do him. The brat is definitely not getting a damn fruit basket.

“Well too bad. You need to hang in there for a while.” He snorts a laugh but thankfully, Derek smacks the back of his head. Stiles squawks and stands up. “No one appreciates my elevated humor— okay, okay! I’m leaving! Here!” There is a short scuffle and Peter assumes Cora has dragged Stiles out because Derek leans over again.

“Here.” He shoves something onto the mattress in front of Peter’s face. It’s a wad of material and Peter takes a deep sniff of it without thinking, only to be completely overcome by the smell of mate and love and home and Chris.

“What?” Peter croaks out.

“I’m not asking how Stiles got into Chris’s apartment, but he did. I thought this would help you stay calm.

“I am calm,” Peter snarls. Because he is. Totally, completely, utterly calm. He is a Zen master of calm, and if they would just get him the fuck out of this ridiculous contraption—

“Stay still,” Derek says, shoving the shirt into Peter’s face again and nearly smothering him with it. Peter zones out for a moment then feels Derek’s hand on his forearm, along with the tell-tale zip of magic that comes with pain drain.

“You don’t...Derek, stop.”

“It’s okay. It’s what.” Derek stops to take a deep breath before continuing. “It’s what we should have done after the fire. We should have stayed, not.” He stops again.

“Shhhh, pup. That’s over and done with. I’m okay. We’re okay. I think...I think Laura is okay now too.” Peter says the last part unintentionally, the pain and Derek’s taking of it both making him light headed.

The hand withdraws. “What?” Derek’s voice is scratchy.

Right. They never talk about Laura. For a reason, for a very good reason, and Peter curses himself for mentioning her at all.

“What do you mean, Peter?” Derek’s voice takes on an edge of steel and Peter knows he needs to respond.

“It was her spark. The reason for the ignus fatii. It was her power all along. The strength of the Hale alphas.”

“But I got it, when...back then.”

‘When I killed you’ is the part he’s leaving out, but Peter doesn’t blame him. Those were dark times, and he understands that now from the distance of time and sanity.

“It was there, a little, in me. A tiny piece stayed. It fed the mate mark.” Peter closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “She saved me, Derek. Maybe not her spirit or soul, or what-have-you, but it was a part of her. She saved me and avenged Chris and protected us from the fire so we didn’t burn.”

There is a weird hiccuping sound and Peter is immediately thrown back in time to when Derek was a toddler and cried over, well, pretty much everything. He was a crier. Still is, apparently. Peter flexes his fingers. “Der-bear,” he says, the old, unused nickname little more than whisper.

“Unca?” Derek’s fingers grab at his in a crushing grip that would snap bones if Peter were a weaker wolf.

“I’m sorry, little one. I’m just so damn sorry.” Peter blinks back tears, realizing for the first time that he’s never apologized for what he did to Laura, never even thought about apologizing. Now he’s not even sure what he’s apologizing for — killing Laura, not protecting Derek from Kate, not saving their family. It’s all of it and Peter knows he’ll never live long enough to make up for his failures or his crimes. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, because he’s got nothing else to offer.

Derek is hiccuping again but stays standing, out of sight. “We left you.”

“She left me, and dragged you with her. But she came back for me, too.” He rubs a thumb over the back of Derek’s hand, just like he used to do whenever Derek had a spell of tears and angst as a baby. “We’re Hales. It’s what we do.”

Derek lets out a high-pitched laugh at that, then pulls his hand back. Peter suspects he is wiping his face.

“And no, you still can’t get out of bed to see Chris,” Derek says lightly.

“You bastard.” Peter tries to snarl the words but Derek clearly sees through him, laughing, before he pulls more of his pain again. Peter gladly goes back to being in a floaty place between pain and sleep, the scents of Chris’s well-worn shirt lulling him into oblivion.

He wakes up when a searing burst of red pain hits him. He knows even as he is jolted into consciousness that it’s not his own. “Chris? Chris!” He struggles against the fucking straps. The pain disappears as fast as it came, but the mate bond is intact, at least. Chris is alive. Peter breathes in that thought, and breathes out his fear. Chris is alive. In pain, for whatever reason, but alive.

It is dark in his room, deep into the night time and visiting hours long over. He’s not so critical that they will let family hang out overnight, so he’s alone with just filtered light from under the door and through the window blinds. His back hurts but he can tell he’s healed significantly from when Derek was there earlier in the day. They will have to check him out soon or it will be more than awkward to explain his rate of recovery to the medical staff.

With that thought in mind, Peter does what he’s always done best when cornered: fight his way out.

Pulling out the IV, which is mostly saline and an antibiotic drip he doesn’t need, is easy. He uses his claws to cut at the straps on his legs so he can at least rest on his knees and pull himself all of the way out of the hammock. It hurts his back to move that much but mere physical pain is familiar and easy to manage. Standing is a bit more challenging, and he realizes that he was burned from the back of his neck to his heels. Walking is not something he is looking forward to.

They did not have any kind of heart monitor on him, not even attached to a finger, which means that short of calling for a nurse or making a racket of noise no one will be by to check for a while. He scouts around the room and finds one of the horrible hospital robes and wraps it around himself, wincing as it clings to where some of the burns are still weeping. It’s only then that he notices the mate mark.

It is still bright red, and it still resembles a phoenix, but it is now much more stylized. The lines are sharp and heavy, giving it a tribal tattoo look, and it has stretched to run from elbow to wrist. If anything, it is even more beautiful than when it was realistic looking. He gazes at it for a long moment before getting himself back on track.

The hospital hasn’t changed at all from when he roamed it’s corridors years before. He drifts in and out of patient rooms, avoiding staff who pad along the nearly empty hallways. Scrubs are not as easy to find lying around a hospital as movies would have you believe, so he just steals the clothes from a sleeping patient’s belongings along the way. He hates the smell of the man’s cologne, but it’s better than wandering around with his junk hanging out.

He follows the thread of the mate bond until he finds himself outside of ICU. He’s still barefoot, because shoes are harder to fit, and he hates that this has become a running theme in his life.

Getting into the ICU is harder than almost anywhere else in a hospital, but in the dead of night still isn’t that difficult. There are more nurses doing more rounds, and even doctors and family members occasionally coming and going. Still, walking tall like he belongs there gets him to Chris’s room. Unlike private rooms in the general wards, it is small and just large enough for an extra chair, since most of the space is dedicated to machines. In the middle is Chris in his slightly elevated bed, unconscious except for his fingers which scrabble against the sheet covering him as if sorting something, or counting. He’s paler than usual, partly the function of the fluorescent lighting pouring in from the hallway — there is no door to shut it out — and partly from blood loss. His abdomen is thick with bandages under the covers, and he has three bags of fluids slowly being pumped into him. Unlike Peter, he’s got leads going from his chest to various monitors, but he’s not on a respirator. Chances are good they will move him out of ICU in the morning, he figures.

Peter skirts around the bed and takes Chris’s free hand in his. The feeling Peter gets is fuzzy and warm, like being mildly drunk.

“Oh!”

Peter looks up at a nurse standing in the doorway. He frowns at her before he can stop himself, his instinct to protect his mate from strangers getting the better of him.

“We were told he, uh, doesn’t have any family.” She is frowning back at him.

Peter bristles. “He does. I’m his partner.”

“Oh. Oh! Ah. Well, we, uh, didn’t know. Did you sign in?” She waves a hand back at the nurses station.

He shakes his head. “I just got in. I didn’t know I needed too.”

“Of course! I’ll put your name down, then? Mr. …?”

Peter pauses. Would she know who was in the burn ward? “Argent. Peter Argent.”

“Right, right. We’re limiting visitation to fifteen minutes every hour. I’ll start your visit now, though, since you just got here?”

He checks her name tag. “Thank you, nurse...Fayed.”

When she disappears he takes a moment to poke around and sure enough, a duffle bag with clothes and shoes are tucked into a small locker, probably put there by Stiles or Derek. He puts on the shoes, which are a half-size too large but are just slip on boaters. They will do the trick.

Another nurse comes in a few minutes later to check the fluid bags and ignores Peter completely.

“Are you his primary ICU nurse?” Peter asks, back to holding Chris’s hand.

“Yes. Nurse Jamieson.” He answers politely. “You’re his partner?”

That at least tells Peter that the nurses in this unit are on top of things. “I am. How has he been, tonight?”

“He woke up not long ago, feeling the pain. We got him under again, though.” He waves a hand at the bank of monitors. “Seems to be sleeping fine now.”

“Thank you.”

“He’s come around really well. We only kept him here tonight because no beds were available elsewhere.” He sighs. “It’s been a busy week, unfortunately.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

Jamieson nods with a sincere smile and heads out, making notes on his tablet.

Peter leans over and presses his lips to Chris’s forehead. His mate smells unwashed and vaguely of iodine and salt, and his hair is greasy. Peter doesn’t care.

“I’m here, Chris. I’m here.” Peter rumbles the words into Chris’s ear, and he gets slight blip in his heart rate for his troubles. Jamieson looks in a few seconds later, but seeing nothing amiss, leaves again without comment.

Peter stays until Fayed comes back and ushers him out to the ICU waiting room, a grim place that stinks of grief and adrenaline. He hates it but he takes a seat along with the three other people there for their own loved ones and sets in the for long haul to morning.