Heroes Assemble!

Not What We Once Were

"I couldn't save him! I couldn't save him!" she babbled into his shirt.

Pulling back slightly, Harry moved his hands to her face, pushing her hair aside so that he could see her properly.

"It's alright, I'm here, you're safe, you're alright," Harry said, kissing her forehead before pulling her back into a hug.

"I couldn't save him!" she repeated.

"What? Who couldn't you save?" Harry asked.

In response, Skye half-turned, her eyes going to the black rock that she'd been leaning over when he arrived.

"Trip," she replied. "Trip. He ... he died. The terrigen. I saw him trying to save me. He kicked the Obelisk, its crystals. But it killed him. There was nothing that I could do."

Harry nodded and held her to him.

"I'm sure that you did everything that you could," he said. "It didn't get you did it?"

"Yes!" she gasped. "There was something. Like an air current. It knocked us back. Me and Raina and Trip ..."

Suddenly, Skye pivoted in his grasp.

"Raina! She was here!" she exclaimed.

Harry looked around but, apart from a lot of rocks on the ground, he couldn't see anything that could be a person. The fact that one of the other rock doors had tilted to the side leaving a gap caught his attention.

"Homenum revelio," he incanted. "I'm counting two others down here, both nearby although one is moving away."

"That'll be Raina," Skye said. "Don't know who the other is."

"Probably Mack," Harry replied. "I was told that he was down here somewhere."

Skye nodded.

"What happened, Skye?" Harry prompted her to continue her story.

"At first I thought that we were going to be fine," she said. "But then a crust began forming on me. On Raina, too. It completely covered us. I thought that I was going to die."

"But you didn't," Harry reassured her. "You're fine, you're okay."

"I don't know how long it lasted," Skye continued. "A piece of it fell from my face and I saw Trip. It was like he was a statue, completely covered in the crust. And then it all fell off me and I saw what was left of Trip just falling to pieces."

"The earthquake. You weren't hurt by the falling rocks?" Harry asked, raking his eyes up and down her body.

"No. No, nothing touched me," she replied, shaking her head.

It was then that Skye seemed to take in the fact that Harry was there.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" she asked.

"Rescuing you," Harry replied with a smile. "Although why I had to, I don't know. I thought that I gave you a way to get yourself out of trouble?"

Skye's eyes widened and she looked down even as she brought up a hand to grasp hold of the pendant around her neck. Finally, she looked back up with a sheepish look on her face.

"Yeah, right, it can just whip me away magically, can't it?" she said. "Kinda forgot it could do that."

"Obviously," Harry replied. "If you're going to keep getting into trouble, then you're going to have to work on that."

Skye nodded absently before narrowing her eyes at him and punching him lightly in the chest.

"Mind you, Magic Man, you took you sweet time getting here," she accused.