Fractal [Oneshot]

Three days was an awfully long time when you're counting every second as it ticks by.

They had been a tumultuous three days at that, and Nolan had been aware of every motion of the hands around the clock from the moment the Peacekeeper had delivered the news about Brody, to learning that he had lived through surgery only to have his hopes dashed yet again when the doctors put his baby in an artificial coma to try and save his mind, to the surprising and relieving number of visitors Brody received while he lay there motionless in bed.

Like he was right now.

Airmid, Brody's primary physician, had come in hours before to tell him and McKenna that the three days were over, and having found no signs of the infection they were worrying about, they were going to taper his son off the anesthesia keeping him under.

It was killing Nolan to see his boy this way, and he was painfully aware of every click of the second hand as he watched his son's chest rise and fall as he breathed, and his eyelids flutter as he dreamed.

He hoped he was dreaming of something nice. Dreaming of anything but the disaster that had put him in this bed in the first place.

There had never been any great tragedy in Nolan's life to compare to this; his parents and sisters were all still alive, his wife's job working for the coroner's office was mercifully unexciting in the way of physical danger, and though Brody had occasionally come home bruised or scraped he had worn them like a badge of honor.

Nolan had felt his heart turn to lead and drop into his stomach when he'd been sitting vigil at his son's bedside when they changed his bandages, sick to his stomach seeing the stitches in his skin, the bruising on his side where his ribs had been broken, the raw, badly scarred skin on his back where the bullet had torn through him. But he refused to leave; Nolan wouldn't allow Brody to be alone for an instant.

Not when he could lose him at any moment.

This was so wrong... it was so unfair. Parents weren't supposed to have to think about burying their children. Having to think about funeral arrangements.

He didn't want to imagine it.

A hero's sendoff in a flag-draped casket borne on the shoulders of Peacekeepers in crisp white dress uniforms.

A somber military funeral march played on the reveille.

Being presented with a folded Panem ensign by an absolute stranger, with sympathy in their eyes that could never match the grief they would feel from losing their only son, and lovely, meaningless words in their mouth.

'On behalf of a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one's honorable and faithful service.'

Nolan had never much been given to crying. But those images and those words played in his mind over and over no matter how hard he tried to force himself not to think about them, and not once had he been able to bite them back.

Brody's first night at the hospital, Nolan had wept, his son's pale hand clasped in his own. The pain clamped like a vice around his heart, his lungs, and his mind.

They had one child. A son Nolan never expected but always dreamed of having. He was intelligent and willful and confident like his mother. He was strong and proud and brave (so very, very brave) like his father. He was better than both of them, a shining white light with his mother's blonde hair and his father's blue eyes that had been their pride and joy for 21 years.

He couldn't imagine what life would be like if Brody's light was snuffed out.

But he made it. Brody had made it through the surgery and through the three days. But if only the clock would stop ticking... The doctors could only guess as to whether or not their precautions had been enough.

Love and devotion had kept Nolan and McKenna at Brody's bedside. Fear had made it impossible to sleep through any of it.

McKenna was walking around the nearly empty hospital corridors to stay awake; Nolan hadn't looked at the clock in a while, not wanting to find that what felt like an eternity waiting for his son to wake up had only been minutes. For the first time in a very long time, Nolan felt his age weigh on him like an impossible burden. He knew there were dark lines under his eyes, the whiskers on his face longer than usual not having the wherewithal or the desire to worry about trimming them, and sleep tugging at his eyes with a persistence that was growing continually harder to fight.

He couldn't go home and sleep. Brody didn't live with them any more, but that house was only a home as long as his bed was slept in and his sword and shield were hung on the wall in their place of honor, waiting for the next time his boy would come home again.

Brody always came home.

Nolan stroked the back of his son's hand with his thumb, and he was as unresponsive now as he'd been two days ago when his father had cried over his comatose body. The color had returned to his face, and under the oxygen mask a few days' worth of scruff had grown in, the way Brody always claimed made him look older and more like his dad.

You'll be okay. You have to be okay. If you need my blood, my lungs, my heart, you can have it, all of it. As long as you come home.

Because Nolan could never go home if Brody didn't.

It was like swimming in smoke.

Dark, and hazy, unable to tell which was was up or down... he couldn't see anything.

But Brody could hear something. Voices, many of them unfamiliar, but some he recognized and clung to like a lifeline.

"Brody... oh god, my poor boy..."

Mama? Mama, I can hear you, I'm alive...

"You have to get better. You have to fight this. Don't let him win, you hear me? Please don't let him win. Don't let him..."

Kyanite? What happened to the baby? Where's Matthew? What happened to Jins?

The unmistakable sound of his father crying softly beside him, clenching mercilessly around his heart.

Dad... Don't cry, please don't cry over me...

*BANG*

A gunshot, jerking his body as the bullet tore through him. Looking down, his shirt already darkening with blood as his legs gave way beneath him. Kyanite lowering him to the ground, pleading his name as Brody screamed. As white-hot fire tore through his belly like acid, begging for someone, please anyone make the pain stop...

And then it was blank. It was as silent as it was dark.

His eyes opened.

It took a moment for his vision to come into focus, blinking slowly as if his eyelids were suddenly impossibly heavy. The pneumatic hiss of a respirator beside him; the beeping tracking the beat of his heart; a deep feeling of numbness, like he'd been packed in cotton and tied down to keep him from breaking any further.

The lights were dim. The clock on the wall indicated it was just past four in the morning. Brody started to blink a little more now, looking side to side and willing his neck to let his head follow.

And his gaze fell on his father, asleep in the chair at his bedside, arms folded on the mattress to pillow his head.

Just out of his reach.

Brody felt that invisible hand tighten around his heart again. His father looked so much older, the sleep-deprived face a stark contrast to the youthful vibrancy that hid Nolan's age so well; he had a beard now, too, and he could almost glimpse a smattering of gray in his normally fiery red hair.

So he had been crying. Brody doubted either of his parents had left his side.

He could read the pain, the grief, the helplessness and the sleepless nights in the lines on his face; the hope brought once and smashed to pieces, and slowly returning needing to believe the best.

His eyes fell on his hand, an IV tube taped to the back of it; Brody frowned involuntarily, thinking of nothing but moving his fingers. Those worked, slowly but surely...

So too did the pain coming back.

Right... he'd been shot. Brody had shoved Kyanite behind him and he'd been shot. In the stomach.

And he was alive.

For a moment, his eyes turned back up towards the ceiling. He hadn't considered in the split second he'd decided to put Kyanite behind him what the consequences would be; only that if she died, and if the baby was lost, it would kill Matthew.

Matthew... where was he? Brody didn't remember hearing his voice.

But he'd heard his father's, more than anyone else's. Brody's attention turned back to his hand, his mind still floating around in a haze as if he were under water, but with renewed vigor; his hand lifted, clumsily resting on his father's, and the reaction was instant.

It would seem age had caught up with Nolan. When he was younger, two or three nights without sleep was a trial, but not an impossibility.

And now of all nights to succumb to the bone-deep exhaustion that had been plaguing him for every second of these three days; the emptiness, the numbness, the anger, the sorrow, and eventually his own body had all weighed him down until he couldn't fight any longer.

None of those things could make him stay there when he felt something touch his hand.

Nolan's eyes were open in an instant, sitting up only half-awake trying to regain his bearings and blinking his vision back into focus. How long had he been asleep? Was Brody--

He nearly gave himself whiplash turning to look at his son. His son looked back.

Brody had his father's eyes.

"Dad?" His voice was hoarse, fragile-sounding, nothing like the easy rumble Nolan knew and loved.

"Brody--" Nolan's breath caught in his throat.

Nolan had cried three times in his life. The first time twenty-one years ago, when he had been called into his wife's room, the tiny little bundle had been put in his arms and the doctor had told him he had a son.

Three days ago, when he nearly lost his son, and counted down the seconds until he would come back.

And now. When Brody came back again.

"Brody," He said again, tears rolling freely down his cheeks as he moved to sit beside Brody on the bed, encompassing his son in his arms, kissing his forehead and repeating his name over and over again. "Brody, Brody, Brody..."

His boy blinked slowly, still in the haze of the various painkillers fed through the IV in his arm, and with great effort raising his arms to wrap them around his father; he was still weak, fingers clenching in the material of Nolan's shirt, but he seemed impossibly stronger now that he was awake.

Brody was alive.

Nolan didn't know how long he stayed there for, feeling the vice around his heart slowly loosening as he felt Brody breathe, cradled against him as if letting go for a moment would cause him to be gone forever. He kissed his forehead, his cheeks, his hair, in a state of enraptured disbelief that all of those seconds of waiting were over. Brody didn't speak, his throat rough and his mind numbed, but Nolan knew from that first look into his son's eyes everything he needed to know.

Their shining light, their pride and joy, the culmination of their best parts and then some... were all intact.

He barely heard the footsteps of the orderly making their rounds to check on the ICU patients until she gasped, running back down the hallway from whence she'd come, no doubt to go get McKenna.

The longest, most terrifying three days of his life were over, and when it came time to go back home, Brody would be coming with them. Battered and bruised and fragile, but alive.

The road to recovery was going to be long, Nolan knew that much. But he'd be there every step of the way.