Writer: Sabaku No Kel
Fandom: Hellboy
Pairing: Hellboy x John Myers
Title: Hospital
Words: 2399
Rating: Overall rating M
Disclaimer: I don’t own Hellboy or it’s characters and do not make any money out of writing this.
AN1: I said I was going to write angst this week but I think I might have gone a little over the top with it but I suppose you all can be the judge of that!
Just on a side note while I was typing this the song <i>
What Sarah Said</i> by <i>
Death Cab for Cutie</i> came on and it just fit the whole scene of the fic so perfectly I just had to incorporate some of the thoughts and feelings I always get when I hear that song into this fic. Also mentions of Hellboy II: The Golden Army in this fic.
Enjoy!
000 Hospital 000
They shouldn’t have gone through with the plan. Should have found another way to distract the creature, something less risky then this might never have happened.
Hellboy stared at the dirty white tiles in his direct line of view, not wanting to look at the dingy excuse for a hospital where they had been forced to bring John to after his accident. The mission they had been on was nothing special, just a simple take-out-whatever-the-fuck-was-killing-everyone-before-the-thing-could-kill-some-more assignment. The creature they’d been after wasn’t anything special either, Abe had informed them of what it was but he hadn’t been paying attention, something big and with lots of teeth like usual. The problem was that it had hidden itself in the sewer after they chased it out of its nest and was now hiding somewhere in the dark. Abe’s sensors couldn’t locate it either, something the monster did was messing with his signals so they had to find another way to locate the damn thing and fast or else they were going to lose it.
That was the moment everything had started spiralling downwards though he didn’t know it then. While they were all trying to come up with a plan to find the monster before it got the chance to get away John suggested they lure it out of its hiding place. Selflessly offering himself up as a decoy no matter what he or anyone else said, John was still trying to prove his worth to all of them after having been brought back From Antarctica, feeling like he had to make up for missed time by taking all the dangerous tasks on his own shoulders. After some more useless protests they relented and allowed John to be the one to lure the thing out of its hiding place so that they could finish it off once it revealed itself. Bad decision, should have told the kid ‘no’ when he still had the chance.
After some short planning John set out with his handgun and a flashlight, moving out of their sight as he rounded a corner. They could still hear the light sloshing sound made from the human walking through the polluted sewer water so they waited for the sound to fade before moving in after their fellow agent as quietly as they could. They progressed through the tunnels like that for at least five more minutes before the sound of a scream and gunfire going off alerted them to the situation. John had found the monster, or maybe the monster had found him they had no way of knowing and they may never find out either though that was the least of his concerns right then.
They followed the sound of a struggle down the sewage pipes, ready to blast the thing as soon as they got the chance. What they found however made their blood run cold. The monster was perched on top of the young agent, its claws digging into the frail, human chest as its teeth ripped at his flesh. John screamed bloody murder as the creature attacked his vital organs, his flashlight having fallen from his hands and into the dirty water illuminated his pale, pain stricken face in the blood splattered tunnel.
The sight of his partner in such agony quickly snapped the demon out of his moment of shock, unloading round after round of bullets into the monster’s back in an attempt to distract it from the agent. The amount of blood and gore on the creature’s claws and maw as well as dripping into the water made it almost painfully clear that they were losing the kid, they had to get him some medical attention and quick or he might not make it out of the dirty sewage alive.
The monster retracted its claws from the agent’s chest as a ragged scream followed the action, they were still shooting at the creature but the bullets didn’t do much harm. Liz threw a fireball at the monster which got its attention, part of its skull was now scorched and the smell of burning flesh was nauseating though he kept shooting until he was out of bullets, trying to find a weak spot in its armour like skin.
Liz was still blasting the monster with her fire, careful not to hit the dieing agent during her attack as the creature finally focused on them instead of trying to eat his partner. The thing jumped at them, trying to rip them to shreds with its claws but they quickly rolled through the water to evade its attack. Now that John was no longer the creature’s main focus Abe managed to sneak past it and do what he could for the agent as he and Liz continued their attack.
The creature screeched at them as he threw his, now useless, gun over his shoulder and started pummelling it with his stone hand instead. He aimed for the skull as the monster trashed back and forth trying to escape his attacks but he didn’t let the thing out of his sight for more then a second. He kept smashing until he heard a crack and the monster went down, throwing in a few more punches for good measure as Liz cooled down enough to let go of her fire. The corpse of the monster was burned almost completely black, looking more like a pile of charcoal than a vicious partner eating monster as the large fist size dent in its skull left a sense of satisfaction in him he hadn’t felt since Russia. He turned away from the charred mass of flesh and bones as the sound of ragged gasps and moans reached his ears.
John was barely breathing, his skin was pale like a ghost as blood and gore covered and surrounded him. Abe was supporting the kid’s head in his lap, trying to keep him conscious long enough to take a few sips of water but they could all see he was failing to stay with them.
“We need to get him some medical attention.” Abe said, voice cracking with grief and pain for his friend. “He won’t last another ten minutes like this.” The Icthyo Sapien said as he brushed some of the kid’s blood covered hair out of his fluttering eyes.
“The Bureau is at least thirty minutes away from here even if we speed and run every light, we’ll never make it in time!” Liz tossed in her two cents on the matter speaking the thought in everyone’s mind even if they didn’t want them to be true, a decision had to be made and fast or they were going to lose not only a valuable asset to their team but a dear friend as well.
“We’ll take him to a hospital.” He said, the decision on his shoulders as team leader and though he knew they were supposed to remain hidden he wasn’t about to let a good man die on his watch.
“There’s a free clinic a short distance from here, they should be able to treat him there.” Abe said as he placed his gloved hands against John’s temple, moving them in small circles to try and ease at least some of his suffering, it didn’t sound like it was helping very much but it was the only thing they could do in this situation.
“Manning will be pissed when he finds out, you know we’re supposed to stay out of sight after that stunt you pulled with the whole Golden Army fiasco.” Liz said, trying to act like the voice of reason though she didn’t try to stop them. She knew this was their only chance to save John and even though it was risky she would do her part in trying to save the young man’s live.
“I’ll handle Manning when the time comes but right now the most important thing is saving John.” He moved on autopilot as he gently lifted John from the dirty sewer water and into his arms, trying not to jostle him too much.
The kid was freezing cold against him and he feared the worst, there was obviously not enough blood in his body to sustain him for much longer, he considered it a miracle, though small, that John had been able to stay awake for this long already.
They ran as quickly as they could back to where they had left the truck, careful not to add to the kid’s pain though he wasn’t really sure if it <i>
could</i> get any worse. They reached the truck and wasted no time getting to the clinic, their driver had tried to break as little traffic laws as possible but after a few threats from both him and Liz he had stepped on it.
They arrived at the hospital as Liz went inside first to get a doctor while they stayed behind to watch John. The kid had finally lost consciousness halfway through the trip but after the amount of pain he’d been through Hellboy couldn’t really blame him.
A doctor ran up to them followed by a young nurse, they only stared at Abe and him for a second until they noticed the pale, bleeding human in his arms.
“Oh my, get that man unto a stretcher and into an emergency room stat.” The doctor said as he approached Abe with his questions about what had happened to them while the nurse shouted at two paramedics who immediately came running up to them with a stretcher. They paused as they saw him holding John’s unconscious form close to him, appearing unsure whether or not they should take the man from him when he made the decision for them by moving closer to them instead, they backed up a few paces but he just ignored the action as he gently placed the agent on the stretcher.
They strapped him down and raced him into the clinic, the doctor excused himself and quickly followed after them as the nurse stayed behind to guide them into the hospital’s waiting room where they had been waiting ever since.
It felt like hours had passed but it could only have been minutes, he had no way of knowing for sure as the clock in the dingy waiting room wasn’t working. He’d been lost in deep thought since he’d first dropped down into the uncomfortable, grey chair and though he’d heard the nurse and even Abe and Liz try and shake him out of it he couldn’t lift his head long enough to actually look at any of them and see the worry on their faces knowing he could have prevented all of this from happening.
If only he had taken the job of being the bait instead of John, the kid was only human and he should have seen the risk for what it was. All of this wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t asked Manning to bring the little agent back from Antarctica in the first place either. John wouldn’t be close to death if he’d just stayed behind on paperwork duty instead of trying to prove himself to them while he had nothing to prove in the first place. No matter the situation it always came back to the point that everything could have, should have been prevented if only he’d done something while he still had the chance. Now he might never see his partner do something as simple as breathe ever again.
He glanced up from his musings to find Liz pacing back and forth across the room, rubbing her own shoulders like she was trying to keep out the cold but he knew she was simply fighting to keep her tears back, he couldn’t blame her for wanting to let them fall though. Even Abe was showing his own, little signs which betrayed how worried he truly was. He was sitting in one of the chairs across from him, staring blankly at the magazine in his lap as his foot twitched restlessly and though his aquatic features betrayed no emotions what so ever Hellboy simply knew what to look for.
He lowered his gaze back to the floor once again as they waited for news on John’s status. Time passed and though the doctors, nurses and relatives of others being treated at the clinic left them alone he still felt the looks they sneaked at him and Abe. He was sure that when Manning got wind of where they had been all night he would probably have a heart attack but he just couldn’t muster up the energy to care about the consequences anymore, not while his partner’s life was still uncertain.
The sun had already come up when the nurse that had met them outside the hospital finally approached them, their heads lifting almost simultaneously as their hopes grew. The look on the nurse’s face betrayed nothing though, not happiness but not sadness either, she merely looked tired and worn out. Her lips moved as she looked back and forth between them but the words didn’t seem to reach his ears, he could only think of what someone had told years ago; that love was watching someone die. He had assumed that had meant being beside the person you cared about in their last moments but now he knew different, it meant sharing your life with someone, watching them live their lives and grow into the people you couldn’t live without and knowing that when the moment comes when you really do have to say goodbye that you’ll never truly be apart as long as you remember both the happy and the sad times and are able to look back on them with a smile on your face.
Hellboy knew that he would always remember John as his liaison, his partner but most importantly as his friend no matter what happened from that day on.
“… it was a close call but we managed to get him stabilized.” He barely heard the nurse say over the sound of his own thoughts and if it weren’t for Liz throwing her arms around him in a hug he might have thought he had been dreaming. He was still very much awake though when he heard the tell-tale sounds of the crying female in his arms repeating the same words over and over again. “John’s going to be okay, he’s going to be okay.”
000 Hospital 000
AN2: OMG I feel horrible for hurting John like that but it just sorta happened, please don’t kill me!
At first I was going to leave it up to you guys to imagine if our favourite agent was going to survive this or not but I just couldn’t end it like that so I fixed it up a little at the last moment because I love happy endings (even though this technically isn’t a very <i>
happy</i> happy ending but it’s better than John dieing I suppose).
I hope you all enjoyed it despite the angst and lack of slash! I’m already writing some smut for next week’s instalment so look forward to that!
~~~Read long and prosper, <i>
Sabaku No Kel</i>~~~
