cunningwolf | And the walls come tumbling down...

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with } cora

And the walls come tumbling down...

"Talia!"

Many men will tell you that you knew the heart of a hero when it came to fire. Normal men would run away from it. Heroes would run into it.

But no one would ever call Peter Hale a hero. Yet into the fire he dove, recoiling back from flames as he tried to make his way through the house to find his sister. The screams from the tunnels threatened to deafen him, but he still kept his focus, trying to find her.

Talia had always taken care of her brother, even at his worst points. He refused to not give up on her now. We are all going to burn for this he had warned her, but as always, the stubbornness of the Hales kept her from seeing the reality of the situation until their world was ablaze.

One of the walls cracks and came at him, and he was barely able to duck out of the way in time. "Talia!" he screams, then coughed as his lungs started to remind him that they can only heal if he has actual oxygen going to them. He knew he had to leave, but he couldn't abandon his family.

"Help me!"

Peter's head snapped around as he heard the voice of his eleven year old niece. He pushed away from the wall, heading for the stairs and climbing up them as fast as he could, and then when her bedroom door wouldn't open, he smashed it in. And there was Cora, crouched into a corner and crying. He made his way over, kneeling down in front of her. "Cora, honey, focus on me. We need to get you out of here."

"I want mommy."

"I know. We'll find her outside." The floor under them shifted and Cora screamed. Peter stood up and looked at the window. If he opened it, the fire was be sucked into the room from the rush of oxygen. "Come on, we have to go."

He pulled the tiny werewolf into his arms and started back downstairs, using his own body to shield her from the fire. As they got to the bottom, one of the stairs broke and his foot went through it, sending him crashing to the ground and he felt his knee pop as he twisted to land on his back to keep Cora from being crushed.

"Cora, the front door is open. You need to run outside and hide. Hide from the hunters like I taught you, okay?"

Cora bit her lip, scared. "I'm scared."

"I know, but you go, and I'll find you. I always find you, don't I?" He could feel the fire starting to burn along his leg, trying to keep the pain off his face. "Ready? You hide, and I'll seek."

Nodding, Cora did as she was told and took off running for the woods. Peter focused his hearing to make sure she wasn't stopped by any of the Argents that may be lingering in the woods, and then he howled in pain as the rest of the staircase came down on top of him.

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Melissa McCall is nobody's fool.

Not that she thinks her incredibly charming patient is trying to play her for one, but if he thinks she didn't realize that there was something odd about this case, then he's not as intelligent as she takes him for. But the fact that he's recovering as well as he is from burns that serious is suspicious at best. The doctors don't seem to want to pay much attention to it, but she thinks it's odd. And she can't help but get the feeling he's hiding something.

Maybe it's just the way that his sheets are a little bit rumpled in a spot where no one seems to have been sleeping, or maybe it's just that mother's intuition, but it's starting to get to the point where it's bugging her. And when something's bugging her, she has to do something about it.

Tonight, she makes her way back into Peter's hospital room with a few balloons and a teddy bear tucked under one arm. She greets him with a warm smile, before moving to place them on the table across the room from him. "Someone dropped those off for you." The lie is a smooth one, as she glances back with a smirk. "Guess they want to make sure you get better."

He wished he felt like he was healing as fast as the hospital made it sound. Being from the side of still having three fourths of his body covered in burns - the fact they looked more like second degree and not third degree burns was not as helpful to him when he was still burnt.

But at least he was able to sit up more. Being flat on his back for that long had started to irritate him. You can only count the ceiling tiles so many times before you risked going mad. And now he at least could dull his brain with the mindless television mounted in the corner.

When Melissa walked in, he offered her a small smile, but he eyes the gifts cautiously. "Is there a card with them? So I know who to make the thank you card out to?" Because there was a very short list of who would actually care enough about Peter to send something like that now that most of the people who he loved were gone.

She shakes her head at that, before giving a bit of a shrug. "I wasn't there when it was dropped off. Guess they wanted to remain anonymous." Or they're just a snooping nurse, trying to hide a nanny cam. Either or.

She makes her way closer to the bed, and picks up his chart to check him over. "How are you doing today?"

No, that really didn't make him feel all that better. Not that he could tell Melissa that. If it was flowers, he could at least pass off that it would be better suited at the nurses' station, but a bear with balloons?

At least he wasn't getting a scent of wolfsbane off it. He would have Cora check it later though in case the balloons were the offending agents in that gift.

"Better each day," he told her with that charming smile of his. Though I fear I'm going to become addicted to this afternoon soap operas if I'm here much longer."

She chuckles softly as she checks his vitals, before glancing back to see which one he's referring to. "They are incredibly addictive. And for no discernible reason why."

You would think for something with very little plot and outrageous scenarios, people wouldn't be so inclined to watch them day in and day out.

"Remind me to make a donation to the hospital when I'm recovered to allow you to upgrade to provide more channels for your patients. I would at least rather watch the Food Network and remember what decent meals tasted like."

Melissa laughs at that, before making a few notations on his chart and placing it back in it's assigned slot. "I'll do that." She then glances back up at him. "Anything else you'd like addressed?"

He chuckled as well. "No, you have always been more than attentive to me, Melissa. I appreciate it, and I hope you'll let me repay it when I'm better."

"We'll see. Let's just focus on you getting better first." And with that she'll turn with a small smile before heading to the door. "I'll come back in at the end of my shift and check on you."

"I'll endeavor to be awake when you stop in."

He waited for her to leave, and then relaxed back into the bed again, and huffed at the television. "Humans - just tell the stupid woman you love her, Marcus," he muttered at the character on the screen.

Melissa will stay out of the room for most of the shift, and when the hospital finally starts to wind down, Cora sneaks out of her hiding space and makes her way over to her uncle's room, making sure to stay unseen and out of sight.

When she gets there she heads right to his bed, hopping up and curling into his side. As he gets better she gets less gentle about it, but here's still that same element of care to show she does realize he's not completely healed.

"Hi."

He had been lightly dozing at that point, but he woke up at her presence in the room and smiled down at her. "Hey. You have an exciting day?"

She wrinkles her nose as she shakes her head. Days in the hospital when she's hiding out are pretty boring. She doesn't really do much unless she's about to get caught, and she doesn't want Peter worrying about that.

"Not much." There's a beat. "There was chocolate pudding in the cafeteria." Which she totally stole.

He smiled a bit at that. "I will trade you my jello tonight if you go back and get me some."

She considers that for a moment, before nodding in agreement. "Deal." Hospital Jell-O wasn't really as bad as everyone made it out to be. At least, the hospital Jell-O here, anyway.

Peter knew that he should be concerned about his own priorities if chocolate pudding was something high on his list of pleasures at the moment, but at least it was something different and he did enjoy it.

He chuckled though, then looked over at the bear and he remembered what he needed to ask her to do. "Before you go though, I need you to do me a favor. That arrived today. Can you bring it over here to me?"

She frowns for a moment, before pushing up from the bed and sliding back down to the floor. "Just the bear?" Not that she knows where the bear came from, or the balloons. She certainly didn't send them.

"Both. I just want to make sure there are no hidden surprises in them. There was no card indicating who brought them, and there's no one who would send such a thing for my benefit."

He's not onto you, Melissa. He thinks the Argents have sent something akin to a wolfsbane bomb.

Cora nods, before going and fetching the gifts from the table. She couldn't smell anything out of the ordinary on them, but she brings them over and hands them off to Peter without a word. She hopes it's not something bad, but given what just happened to their family, it's hard to say.

Having only one good hand to work with, Peter pulls the balloons down to him first and smells them, but they both smell just of nylon and helium. Which leaves the bear, that he focuses on squeezing until he feels the tiny bit of electronics in the head where the doll's eyes were.

"And what do we have here..." he lay the bear face down on his lap and focused to have his claws come out to slice into the back of the bear so he could see what was inside.

Edited 2014-09-08 20:01 (UTC)

Cora mostly waits off to the side, watching as he feels his way through the bear, before frowning in concern when he found something. "What is it?"

He pulls out the tiny camera and glares at it a moment. "We need to go. Now." He crushed it between two fingers. "Find me a pair of scrubs."

Cora sucks in a breath, nodding her agreement before turning to make her way back to the door. The scrubs were a few hallways over, so it would take a little time, but before she could even get to the door, it was flying open and Melissa was on the other side. Cora stops dead in her tracks, unsure of what to do, before glancing back to Peter for help.

Melissa just holds up her hands as she comes in and closes the door behind her. "Stand down - I come in piece."

Peter's eyes narrow as he's already started to pull himself up into a full sitting position, pushing the pain aside in his mind for the most part as the adrenaline kicked in.

"You're working for them, aren't you?" he asked, a soft snarl in his voice as the normally charming patient suddenly looked very deadly.

"Them? Them who?" Melissa looks confused for a moment, before shaking her head. "No, that's mine. I knew there was something hinky going on, and I wasn't sure what it was so I wanted to have a look without bringing it to the rest of the hospital's attention."

And she's glad she didn't because she has an idea of what would happen to the girl in front of her if she didn't.

"I didn't mean any harm."

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