39 Aftermath - Homelander I

I greedily drank out of the glass and with each gulp the refreshing liquid cooled the fiery feeling I felt inside of me.

As I finished slurping the last drops of water I handed the glass back to Martin and let out a satisfied sigh.

"Thank you. I really needed that."

I looked inside the large gown I was wearing to stare at the bandages that were covering me from the waist up to the neck.

I felt weak, fatigued, each breath was heavy, muscles screaming of being sore as if they had been pressing against an unstoppable force though admittedly the pain numbed a little bit with each rising of my chest.

I raised my bandaged right hand barely able to bring it to shoulder level. I had to turn my head slightly more to the right to get a good look.

I couldn't see out of my right eye…no correction I couldn't feel my right eye, only a throbbing sensation of pain like a drumbeat following the rhythm of my heart.

My right hand, was too thin even with the bandages I felt no strength in it.

"Martin" I'm seated halfway up on the bed and my head turns to him. "What happened?"

The older man sitting in a chair next to my bed, sighed and leaned back.

"I'm not going to lie to you it was pretty bad. For a little while we thought we were going to lose you."

I was actually taken aback by his words, I knew I had been in bad shape but not close to dying. I motioned for him to continue.

"You fell in Harlem, busted up some buildings on your way down, it was only pure luck that we got to you before the police…then again most of them were evacuating the affected neighborhoods-"

"Neighborhoods?" I interrupted him.

"Ah, well more like a few of the city blocks around us, Soldier Boy's laser beam wrecked a few buildings a bunch of people died evening workers and falling debris and all that." He said almost as an afterthought. "We also have a radiation warning for about five blocks all around us" He saw me scrunch the visible part of my face in worry "that's mostly for show. Don't worry none of the buildings came down." He paused.

"Ok, you said I fell in Harlem?" I nudged for him to continue.

"Yea, you were a mess, burns all over you, melted skin and suit, bruising and bleeding well from everywhere." I could feel his weariness at bringing up the images of how he found me.

"We brought you back, the medical team was ready to operate, we did what we could to help you but broken as you were for the first three hours we couldn't penetrate your skin." He paused briefly.

"You were as sturdy as ever, problem was you weren't healing or mending back together then around the three hour mark suddenly you heated up and started emitting large amounts of radiation. We weren't sure what was going to happen so we evacuated and only observed you." He paused briefly once more.

"That lasted about forty minutes then our instruments indicated you had cooled down and the radiation reduced to, well, more, reasonable levels. That's when we came back and found we were actually able to cut you" my eyes immediately widened in shock "so we started to fix you."

My hands immediately shot up in front of me and as if reading my mind Martin answered my question. "Don't worry you're still super…I think."

Not waiting for him to elaborate I took a breath and willed myself up off the bed, instantly I felt myself rise above it though I felt pain from my muscles trying to stabilize my core.

"Well that confirms it you can still fly and you're at least still very much invulnerable again."

As I plopped down on the bed I looked at him confused and waited for him to elaborate.

"We operated for about twelve hours straight, stopping internal bleeding, skin grafts, setting bones the whole works." He says. "You were losing quite a lot of blood so we had to get you some new ones also to counteract the radiation damage we needed to do a bone marrow transplant"

"Bone marrow but from where" I interrupted him "I don't have anyone-" then it hit me.

"Ryan" we both said at the same time.

I instantly felt an energy surge in my belly and my whole body heating up. My right arm weak as it was shot up to grab him by the throat and machines in the room started beeping wildly in that radio static sound indicating high levels of radiation.

Martin's eyes bulged as my thump pressed against his throat box but he managed to squeeze out a few words that clamed me down.

"He's fine! Completely fine!" he said through choking breaths.

I let him go and I put my face in the same right palm that was just squeezing him. "I'm sorry Martin, I'm so sorry. I just-"

"It's fine, it's ok. You've been through a lot." He said rubbing his neck. "Ryan is ok, perfectly fine, his healing factor is outstanding, and everything we took he regenerated back in a few hours. He's truly a fine specimen."

I immediately shot him a glare and he put his hands up in resignation. "Sorry, poor choice of words."

"So his bone marrow healed me?" I asked and I saw him shift a bit uncomfortably.

"Eh…we're not quite sure…" I looked at him incredulously.

"You're not sure?"

"Well, his blood and bone marrow were needed since, well you needed it and he was the only compatible donor but we also used stem cells from him along with a concoction" he hesitated a bit "experimental of course, of subject Black's stem cells and compound V."

"And that's what worked to bring me back? To being super?" And once again I saw the man hesitate.

"Eh…not exactly, uh I think maybe, that's the best theory we have" He said rapidly as he saw my un-amused look.

"I had hoped the V would restore you immediately like it did for subject Black but that didn't happen."

"So what happened then?"