highlander_ii

Pain. Pain was the first thing he noticed. In fact, it's what woke him up. And he was mostly wishing he could pass out again until it went away.

Opening his eyes, he blinked up at the view of a clear blue sky streaked with orange and purple. The sun was going down. Was that just nature, or was he dying? And what were those dark stripes in front of his face?

Under normal circumstances, he would climb back up the mountain and finish what he'd started. But, he couldn't move. His legs wouldn't work when he told them to. His arms didn't seem to fare much better. His fingers moved a little, which was a good sign, but he couldn't feel much else. Aside from pain.

Pain was everywhere. His back, his legs, his head, his chest. He could deal with the pain. If there wasn't pain, there might be worse. Pain was life. Shitty life, but still life.

Once his head stopped spinning quite so wildly, he could look around a little better. He glanced upward again. Through those dark stripes again. He could see, just barely, the ledge where MacGyver had been. The little sheltered ledge of the rock where MacGyver thought he could hide. It was pretty far above him. Several hundred feet, maybe. (An impossible number of feet in his current condition.) He couldn't see below him, but he felt that there were several more feet between him and the base of the mountain. It did a lot for explaining why he wasn't a big pile of broken bones and seeping blood.

He couldn't remember if he'd grabbed some sort of handhold on the way down, then fallen a second time, or if he'd managed to brace his fall on his feet and legs. The pain was making it difficult to focus on much more than how much his whole body just hurt.

He was cold. And he was in an odd position. It took him several minutes of focused attention to realize why. He was in a tree. He had been so intent on seeing where MacGyver was likely still sitting - standing - whatever - that he had missed the branches and leaves he'd had to peer through. That's what those stripes had been.

Breathing hurt. Much like everything else. He was certain he'd broken a rib or two. All he could do, for now, was lay there and wait until someone showed up to get him out of this damned tree.

He did try. He tried to shift off the branch he was resting on and work on climbing out of the tree, but every movement sent new lightning bolts of pain through his entire body. That wasn't going to stop him. He tried again, pushing harder, but that only made him pass out from the pain.

He woke to someone shaking him and loudly saying something in the general direction of his head. He winced and tried not to complain too much about the pain he was in. A woman flicked a light over his eyes, which only caused him to wince again. Didn't she know his head was already pounding? He didn't need her to help it pound more.

He did notice that he was out of the tree. The hard, flat backboard he was on wasn't comfortable, but it was stable. That was somewhat comforting.

Then he fielded far too many questions about his condition and his pain levels and his range of motion before anyone thought to begin bracing anything or consider giving him narcotics. When his legs were put into splints, he felt searing pain shoot up into his back. He never thought he would appreciate sharp, shooting pain. But this meant he could, at least, feel something.

He feigned partial amnesia and gave a false name to keep HIT and any other potential enemies off his trail. It wasn't entirely a lie. He knew his name, but not much else. Not at the beginning. Later, he remembered fighting with MacGyver and falling, but not what had brought him to the top of the mountain for the fight or any of the other details leading up to that point. He left out the fight and trying to kill MacGyver. He said he wasn't sure what had happened, and that he only remembered falling.

He was loaded into an airlift basket and pulled into a helicopter for transport to the local hospital. On the way, he was examined and prodded. It all hurt. Thankfully, once at the hospital, it was deemed necessary to sedate him and send him to surgery to repair the damage to his internal organs, legs, back and arms.

When he woke from the surgery, he was still in a great deal of pain, but he had narcotics now. It took the edge off the pain, but didn't dull it enough for him to be comfortable. He had been fitted with screws and wires and a set of external braces all attached to the bones in his legs. He was wrapped up in so many bandages, he felt like a mummy in a bad horror movie. He was pretty sure he heard a doctor mention that he was lucky he hadn't severed or compressed his spine. From the x-rays and the consult with the various doctors, he had a minor skull fracture, a concussion, a lot of bruising and more broken bones than he really wanted to remember. Recovery would be difficult, he was told.

He spent four full weeks in the hospital, then, was moved to a nearby facility to continue his recovery once they were sure his insides weren't going to try to become his outsides. He had to endure several long, hard weeks of physical therapy. And that was before he was even allowed to try to stand on his own. Once he was on his feet, there was even more therapy. If not for his sheer determination to get walking so he could seek out MacGyver again, he probably would've stayed in that damn convalescent home and griped about everything for a year.

MacGyver wasn't his sole motivation. His own damned stubbornness pushed him too. He didn't want to be dependent on people to care for him. He was far too self-reliant for that sort of thing. And he didn't want HIT to find him in such a vulnerable state. They might deem his failure to fulfill the MacGyver contract a reason to take him off the employment roster.

And he couldn't have that.

When the day finally came that all of the doctors cleared him to venture out on his own, he did so enthusiastically - if slowly. He gathered only the items he needed, left behind nothing that might identify him, and disappeared without a trace.