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> ”Be careful”

That's what she'd said, wasn't it? Noel disentangled herself and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. He probably wasn't even going to remember this. She'd leave him a note... Or. Maybe that sounded too much like leaving behind evidence of premeditated somethingsomething? She had all kinds of premeditation going on in her head. She just hadn't settled on the right one yet. If the girl had beat Ranger to a pulp up close, maybe range was the way to go. Surely no one at BlackTac would stop her if it was for the boss' revenge.

Noel started to slip her shoes back on, but stopped when Michael spoke.

> ”I love you.”

She smiled. Who wouldn't?

"Yeah." Noel leaned back over and pressed a kiss against one of his facial bandages. "I'd love me too if I was on a morphine drip." But for now, she certainly wouldn't hold it against him no matter how much the idea felt wrong. Loving NOel was like loving a beach. High tide, low tide, shifting sands... She would definitely try not to come back changed, but between this personal business and the mission she'd agreed to on Haven's behalf, there was a very real possibility that Noel would be different the next time they met. And, for the first time, she was afraid that might matter.

When you get out give me a call text. Don't be too lonely. ~N

She had some notes to make, a trail to find, and a long range rifle to acquire. Ranger would be fine... right?

When Noel opened the hospital door, Jude appeared to be delighting in blocking the way of a nurse.

"—elevated heart rate and if you do not let me—!" She Noticed Noel and switched tactics. "Ma'am. Is there a reason why I should not be allowed into this room?"

"He was awake for a second there." Noel shrugged and stood aside as the woman picked up the chair that Jude had vacated and set it inside.

That surprised the woman. "That can't be right."

"Oh. I don't know. I think you'll find he'll heal faster that you expect." Noel eyed Jude who had moved into looking entirely too self-satisfied.

"You said he isn't a healer!" The nurse was now frantically checking under bandages and gauging Michael's heal rate. No doubt some things about his medical treatment would have to change now.

"Not last time I checked. Jude?" Noel motioned with her head to the door and they stepped into the hall and away from the nurse.

"I know, I know. I'll be careful with him." Jude tried to head off whatever she'd been about to say.

"You think the hospital would work with you? Sort-of a combined treatment plan?"

She could see the answer in his face before he said it out loud.

"I don't think that's a good idea." He sighed.

"I think it's a great idea for Michael."

"And if they want me to visit the cancer ward? The whole hospital?"

"You don't want to?"

"This is not my-" He seemed to catch himself and changed the direction of how he was talking. "This isn't my strong suit. I've mostly handled the small stuff. Little cuts. At most a broken bone. Michael's going to be more than I can handle in a day. If I have to be careful of his pins or whatever human healing they've got going on, it'll be slower."

"But still faster than normal."

"Yeah. Mos def."

"So you'll stay with him?"

"I mean, not a night or whatever, but I'll probably stop by at least once a day. I've got papers for him to sign that're no good if his hands don't work."

Noel waffled on the idea of making Jude stay, but she didn't really have anything to make it happen beside the threat of a knuckle sandwich and that seemed a bit over the top for someone who was already helping.

"He'll be fine." Jude assure her. "Go straight up murder a chick."

The nurse edged between them and shot Jude a dirty look.

"Kidding!"

"Okay. I guess... call me if something changes or if you see the girl conveniently drop her name and social security number during the fight."

"Can do, boss' girlfriend."

Noel rolled her eyes by way of a goodbye.

There was nothing to hold onto. Noel cast around, but the buildings were too far and despite— or maybe because of —her flailing, it was taking forever to fall.

And then he was back, ready to gloat no doubt about how easy it was to play with life and death. Noel all but climbed up out of the princess carry that Hadden had her in before she realized that it was Hadden, not Party Devon. Her terror didn’t leave, but she didn’t manage to keep herself from using his face as a push off point in order to try to reach one of the buildings rising next to them.

By the time Hadden had them back on his patio, Noel was down to a tense shaking. That had been just a little too wild for her tastes, too out of control. She had to work to make her hands unbunch from Hadden’s clothes.

> “I’m sorry. I could not prevent everything he was causing.”

”You did great. I- uhm.” She touched her forehead and came away with blood. The rain was making this messier than it should have been. "That was inexcusable on my part. I should have kept my wits better. He was just one drunk guy…" And she'd let him touch her. Noel rolled her shoulders forward and wrapped her arms around herself. There wouldn't be a shower hot enough.

”I should, uhm, go write down everything I can before I forget.”

Hed removed his gloves so that he could type faster because now they were getting to the good stuff.

"MRC, huh?" Now that was worth jotting down. It seemed the government oversight had failed in their world and the mutant problem had trickled down to the police level. At least it was still being handled, but it was absolutely shocking to hear that the X-men worked with the police. Directly. Unashamedly. Like, in broad daylight. "In this world the X-men are a black-hat group of vigilantes. They're organized and dangerous criminals. Not an honorary arm of the police or whatever. Wow. That's nuts."

She was helping. Little by little. And then she put down her drink and Nolan was sure that would be a lot more help.

"Do you mind?" Nolan smiled as he picked up her water bottle while standing under the premise that he would take their trash away.

"We like to recycle on this side of the..." His hand came in contact with the place where she must have touched and all current thought processes shut down in favor of exploring Svetlana Sergeyeva Morozova's life. The other side of the rip, Stalker's rendezvous, but even more. He chased down the vigilantism angle, since he'd been thinking X-men and most importantly... the power. Nolan swallowed his suddenly dry throat. They had a booster on staff. Their booster looked like he was run on batteries compared to Svetlana.

"Iota." Nolan felt the first trickle of blood run from his nose for the sheer bulk of information he'd stolen in such a short amount of time. He wiped his nose on the back of his hand and flipped his phone around to fire off a quick text.

"From now on, you'll be an Iota. Like Stalker." In those words, Nolan put as much of his typical brainwashing package as he dared. Memories of alone-ness. Having no one to turn to... except SUPER. The government was always there and willing to help.

In fact, here were two helpful SUPER enforcers to help her now.

"It was lovely meeting you, Svetlana." Nolan smiled as he put his gloves back on and put them behind his back to hide their shaking. "I have a feeling we'll be getting to know one another pretty well over the course of your near future."

After careful consideration, Noel had spent the night at the hospital just in case he woke up. She ran back to Haven twice and it was a hell of a drive even when she wasn't driving. Every moment away she'd been paranoid that her phone would ring and the nurses would say she'd missed him, he'd died. Or, worse, that he'd woken up in a panic and no one had been there for him.

She showered, she took the dogs out, she took care of all the things that the world dared to to when it really should have stopped and waited until he was better.

Noel had been on the phone with Haven security when some of Michael's crew from Blackforest Tactical swung by. The security team was getting a new CLASS training program. She and Ranger had tossed the idea back and forth and realized that being gone was not great for their furniture when there were puppies with too much energy. Ranger had yet to implement it, but considering the circumstances Noel took advantage of her position as Michael's MyFace official girlfriend to get it done.

Now, she didn't have to leave for the puppies every few hours. She just had to manage the few odd visitors and... wait.

The last Black-Tac employee met her eyes with a question in his own before he closed the door to Michael's hospital room with Noel and Jude as the only awake inhabitants. Did she think the kid was a threat? Not really. Emotionally, maybe. Teenagers were weird.

"What's up?" Noel crossed her arms and inspected the kid. Michael's office monkey didn't like her. He'd told her briefly why. Something about the fact that she was a homewrecker, which sounded pretty damn unlikely in Noel's book. But he believed it. So, as far as truths went, it didn't matter what Noel thought. It was true to him and so long as he thought so, he'd hold that grudge.

Jude, for his part, seemed to be weighing her with his gaze.

"What?" She dropped her crossed arms.

"I want to know what happened to him."

Oh. "No."

"You haven't...?" Jude waffled his hand and Noel waited with the patience of a snake for him to finish that sentence. "You know. You didn't check? What if it was a hit? Or-or if--"

"I'm gonna stop you right there." Noel sighed and was glad to stop the speculation before it got off the ground. She'd been 'round and 'round in her head enough times that the whole thing made her feel tired.
"I told him I wouldn't. So I won't. End of story."

"But this is an emergency."

"Does he look like he's in danger to you?" She gestured grandly in the amazing Ranger log's direction and he looked.

"We don't know that."

"And we don't not know that." Which had sounded better in her head before she said it. Noel made a frustrated inarticulate sound. "I'm not compromising the trust I've built because of 'if's and 'maybe's" And saying it outloud made her realize that all the doubt she'd felt about that was easily squashed when she put it into perspective.

"And if you're not the one to get the information...?"

Wait. What? Noel was confused. "What are you asking?"

"I have a way to see, but I'm not any good at it. And there's... side effects."

"Like...?"

"Healing."

"Why are you talking to me?" She went and steered him over to the bedside.

"No. I'm- I'm not practiced and he's really hurt." It was Jude's turn to cut Noel off as she'd opened her mouth and started to make a sound. "No. I'm not saying I won't, I'm just saying I want to know who did this. And it's going to take a lot of energy so I don't know how much I can do. Plus, don't hospitals have policy or something?"

"Those are excuses. What do you need? A chair?" She could go get a chair.

"This is why I didn't want to tell you!" He complained as she brought over a chair, but he did sit. "I was pretty sure you weren't going to leave me alone with him if I asked. Look. Stop! Just stop whatever it is you're doing."

Since Noel was not sure what she was doing beside still leaning against the chair behind him, she stopped.

"I need you to... I don't know. Keep a look out, I guess. I'll try to say out loud what I see. Don't let a doctor see or, I guess... I just... have to trust you on this. Okay?"

"Yeah. No. Of course." She popped a chair under the door handle and called it as good a lock as they were going to get. "Don't pop a vein or whatever, but any healing you give is gonna cut down on how long he has to stay." Obviously. Ugh. Why did she say the obvious?

"Right." Jude peeled back the covers and Noel both hovered and tried not to hover. She saw him place his hand against Michael's skin and almost immediately he cringed.

"He- ah. It's a shape changer. No. Wait." Jude's eyes were open, but obviously weren't looking at the here and now. Noel wondered if she looked like that. She watched him, entranced as he winced in sympathy of something. Was healing happening? Noel couldn't tell.

"It's a girl. Brown hair. She's maybe kinda asian?" Jude's voice was sounding reedy. Noel looked between Michael and his paper pusher. He was looking downright queasy, actually.

"I think that's enough of that." Noel tugged his hand back by Jude's sleeve and the boy didn't fight. He didn't move his hand either. He did manage to whine.

"That's not enough to ID her."

Noel put her lips against his and gave him a good lick.

"Eugh. Gross."

Immediately she saw the beginning of the fight, the purse, the face changer... and the woman "Now it is." Her fists balled as she watched the incomplete memory again and again for clues.

Akshay! Right! That was totally his name; his name was Akshay. Akshay, Akshay, Akshay. Nolan did some mental tabulation in order to attempt not to forget the Iota's name. If he wanted to look invested, he should know those things. Plus, intelligence not knowing something... well, that would just be embarrassing.

> "We have mutants, we have humans, we have adapteds... police, New York... things."

Oh. Interesting. She knew about adapteds. That wasn't your everyday average joe sort of intel. Nolan sipped his drink.

"Yeah, but do you have that great Indian place down on 52nd?" He joked. Clearly, Nolan was asking the important questions. Aaaaaaaand buying time while the woman either finished or set down her water. It would not be polite to grab.

"There's got to be something different." All joking aside, no universes would exist without some small difference. The problem was that it could have been as small as a butterfly's wings being blue instead of purple.

"Have you met any agents on the other side?" If she knew about adapteds, she might have known about the agency. Just in case she didn't he refrained from asking about it by name. Besides, years could go by and Nolan would still be slightly embarrassed to call himself "super."

"What about the X-men? Or any other mutant organizations?"

It was worse than she’d imagined. Was it even really him under there? Noel assessed the man who was propped up with his arms in traction and tried to reconcile that this was supposed to be the Ranger she knew. It just didn’t add up. It just didn’t.

“I know it looks bad now--” Noel jumped from where she’d been idling near the doorway and made room for a nurse to bustle past. “--but a lot of it is bruising and swelling. Promise.”

Noel watched the woman work, not sure what she was doing exactly. She cheerfully announced her actions before she did them, but beyond the vitals checking it was all above Noel’s paygrade. Untucking, feeling, tucking, moving, replacing, etcetera. The memory mutant briefly considered making room for some medical knowledge. It might come to that, but for now she needed to stay who she was to get things done. Medical training took years. Noel did not have years to spare. Not if she wanted to keep her martial training.

”So. Just how bad is it?”

“The damage was mostly contained to his upper body, face, and arms. The most worrisome part is that he lost consciousness after so many hits to his head. At first doctors were concerned that they’d have to induce a barb coma to try to preserve brain function, but the swelling in his brain has already gone down and he’s already breathing on his own again.”

Breathing on his own again meant at one point, he hadn’t been. Noel swallowed hard still paralyzed at the doorway. He was breathing now. That was the important part.

”Sounds like he’s on the mend.” She felt so relieved. It must have come through in her voice.

“Yes. The danger, for the most part, has passed. We’re still monitoring that swelling, but everything looks quite promising. If you have some photos, that will help with facial reconstruction once surgery opens up.”

Noel felt as if she’d been sucker punched. From where she stood, she hadn’t noticed how very little she could see of Michael’s face. She took a few steps into the room and set his duffle on the lone guest chair.

”Uhm. Yeah. I have a picture on my phone. Does it need to be printed or something?” Her body answered while her mind tried to put the pieces together.

She could see the outline of his legs beneath the sheets. Could she recognize the outlines of his leg? She liked to think so, but the reality of the situation was that, no, she couldn’t. His torso was too big. His arms were up in suspension and his head lolled under more gauze than she really thought should be necessary.

Noel touched his leg through the sheet.

Of course, there were no pants in the hospital. Just a flap-happy gown that could make the most sanguine man look fragile. The thought made her brow unknit, but smiles were still too far off.

“I’ll ask about the photo.”