Requiem

72

Sitting beside Charles and Hank in a brightly lit waiting room, Gretchen could do nothing but rake a hand shakily through her hair, shift in the uncomfortable plastic seat, and look about with wide scared eyes. She was thankful she wasn't on her own, if she was she would surely be going mad. It seemed like Charles at least sensed this, he seemed quite adamant on not leaving her, or both, until he knew they were both okay.

Though really, okay and Liesel was probably going to be a push. Once Erik had made his escape, it wasn't too long before the emergency services managed to get in. They wasted no time in looking over the injured gathered. They were most gentle with Liesel, they checked her over, got her on a stretcher and bought her straight to the hospital. Gretchen had sat in the ambulance with her, clutching her hand tightly. She was out for the count, Gretchen was concerned that maybe Charles had done more to her than just knock her out. But he had reassured her that was all he did for the sake of calming Liesel down.

If she kept moving about like she was, she surely would've done more damage to herself. Neither of them knew the extent of her injuries. Though Gretchen did ask any doctor she could spy walking past them. No one gave them any information, they just kept saying that she was either in surgery, or she was back in recovery waiting to be bought back to her room. Each time they got given something contradictory, in the end Gretchen ceased asking. They would come get them and tell them all when they seemed to know what exactly was going on. It just so happened though that the waiting was torture.

"I can't deal with this," Gretchen pulled her face from her hands and looked to Charles and then Hank, they both looked at her sympathetically.

"There is nothing else we can do," Charles stated simply while trying to be as reassuring as possible. Gretchen nodded slowly, relaxed back in the uncomfortable plastic chair and looked to the ceiling.

"What if something has gone wrong? They'd have come and told us, right?" Gretchen asked after a few moments of silence had passed. She tilted her head to the side and looked at the two males. By the looks on their faces, it was clear to her that that wouldn't happen. With a defeated sigh, Gretchen accepted the long haul; she sat, eyes shut and still.

----

Life slowly came back to Liesel, it was slow at first; groggy, agonising, calming and heavy. There was a numbing ache in her head, chest and legs. She hurt. She wasn't even going to lie, all of her hurt. What had happened? Her eyes flickered under closed eyelids. There were flashes. She remembered the White House, she was there for...something. The Sentinels, which were made by Trask, and...they were bad, because they were mutant hunters; they needed to be stopped. The stadium, and darkness. She couldn't remember the small details. The small details were on the forefront of her mind, just as she reached out for them, they vanished and dissipated into the recesses of her mind.

She remembered the short term, but anything before these events was a blank. Liesel slowly opened her eyes to a darkened room. Why couldn't she remember anything which happened beyond today? Was today even still today? What if she had been asleep for months, years? What if she was remembering things from years ago?

Her breathing picked up then, the calming beeps of the machinery around her heightened and seemed almost deafening in the otherwise quiet space. The door burst open and a worried nurse rushed over, after messing around with something, she injected some clear fluid into the cannula in Liesel's hand and then, yet again, everything went numb. Her trailing thoughts ebbed and fled as her eyes slowly slipped to a close. She couldn't remember anything anymore, just that she was really, very, incredibly tired. Sleep sounded good to her, maybe sleep would make her feel better; she certainly hoped she couldn't feel any worse than she did now.