Summary: Written during Endless Summer, Book 2. Set in Book 2, Chapter 11, when they’re attacked on the ice and a few characters fall in. After saving Sean from the water, Amelia makes sure he’s okay.
Although Quinn seemed to have recovered from her second The Exorcist experience, not everyone had made it off the ice floes unscathed. Grace was at Aleister’s side, running her hands over him as she searched for injuries, pressing gently at his ribs when he winced away from her touch. Zahra was loudly insisting that she was fine, even as Craig panicked and Michelle fussed over the gash in her side.
Amelia wished she could have helped all of them, but there had only been time to reach one. The moment she’d seen Sean struggling in the water, she’d had no choice but to run for him. She’d already watched him die once, and she knew she couldn’t handle it if it happened again. She’d seen him sinking and remembered the way he’d gone cold in her arms, how he’d bled out in front of her, and all she’d been able to think of was that this time, she would save him.
She and Furball had managed to help him out of the water, and the adrenaline had been enough for them all to run off the lake, but once everything had calmed down – once Quinn’s eyes were back to normal and the lake had stilled – Sean had stumbled, falling to the ground.
Amelia hadn’t left his side since.
“Sean, honey, talk to me,” she said, her arm around his shoulder. He was leaning into her, his breath shallow and his body shaking violently as he shivered. “It’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.”
He didn’t say anything.
She needed to get him out of his clothes. They were soaked through, his shaking growing worse with each minute he wore them. He had no clothes of his own to change into, his backpack as saturated and frozen as the clothes he was already wearing.
“Craig,” Amelia yelled, repeating his name until she managed to draw his attention away from Zahra. “Craig, please.”
His eyes widened when he saw Sean, and after a few quiet words with Michelle and a final look over Zahra, he rushed across the snow to her. “What happened?”
“He fell in,” she said, realising only when she saw Craig’s frown that she was speaking too fast. “In the lake. He fell in the lake. Do you have anything he can change into? He can’t stay in these clothes.”
“Yeah, yeah, I think so.”
Craig shrugged off his backpack and rifled through it. Her shouts had caught the attention of the others, and she glanced up in surprise when someone dangled a large, sloganed t-shirt in front of her. “Thanks, Raj,” she said. “I’ll take it from you once I’ve got his shirt off.”
Sean’s chest was uncomfortably cold to the touch, her fingers shaking as she pushed his shirt off. Jake came to assist, and she sent him a grateful smile when he took over from her, using his interruption as an opportunity to wipe at her eyes and brush away the tears that had been threatening to fall since she’d seen Sean in the water.
Sean was aware enough to know what they were trying to do, and his own hands were fumbling with the zip of his trousers, although they were shaking too much for him to succeed. Amelia did it for him, her own hands trembling as she stripped him.
She took a pair of trousers from Craig and knelt down before Sean. He had one hand on her shoulder, the other gripping Jake’s arm, as he unsteadily stepped into the trousers she was holding out for him. She pulled them up, a relieved sigh escaping her when Sean took hold of the waistband and managed to tug them on.
It didn’t take too long after that for Sean to be dressed almost completely in dry clothes. He was wearing both Craig and Raj’s t-shirts, and Craig had helped him into his varsity jacket when the new outfit didn’t stop the shivering. Amelia draped her own quilted coat around his shoulders, hoping it would warm him even though it was too small to zip up.
“We need to keep moving,” Jake said. Amelia glanced at the facility, grimacing at how far they still had to go. “If we don’t, no one’s getting any warmer. You can dress Captain America up all you like, but unless we get him somewhere where he can take off those shoes and let his feet warm up, it’s not going to be good. I might be wrong, but I guess he wants to get out of here with all his toes.”
Amelia sighed, tucking herself under Sean’s arm so he could lean on her as they began the walk towards Rourke’s facility. “You’re right,” she admitted. “I just don’t know if we’ll be able to stop once we’re there.”
“Don’t stop,” Sean said suddenly, his words clearer than before. “I don’t want to slow us down.”
“You’re not slowing us down,” she insisted, reaching up to grab his hand. “You’re not the only one who got hurt and you’re not the only one who needs a rest. I think all of us could do with a bit of time before dealing with whatever sci-fi nonsense Rourke has waiting for us in there.”
Sean didn’t say anything. Amelia took his silence as acceptance, and with a hand from Jake, she began helping Sean stay steady as they traipsed across the snow-covered cliffs. Now that they were moving, now that they’d done as much as they could for Sean, she couldn’t do anything but worry, glancing frequently over her shoulder at him as she led him towards the facility.
She stumbled when she suddenly felt Sean’s cool cheek against her head, a trembling kiss pressed to her hair. “I’m sorry,” he said, and she wasn’t sure if his voice was so quiet because he couldn’t speak any louder or because he didn’t want Jake to hear.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” she whispered, ignoring how Sean shook his head in protest. “It’s not like you jumped into the lake for fun. It wasn’t your fault.”
She paused, ignoring Jake when he asked why she’d stopped walking, turning towards Sean and then rising onto her tiptoes so she could press a quick kiss to his lips. They were still cold, trembling under hers, but they weren’t blue anymore, and when she pulled away, Sean’s smile was steady.
He’d be okay. He had to be.