A/N - Since you guys are so awesome (thanks for all the votes, your comments, adding my stories to your reading lists or simply just reading & sticking with it!) and because I feel inspired by my own wonderful skiing trip that I am currently on, here is the next part already. Enjoy!
++ Jordan's POV++
An involuntary groan escapes my lips. My whole body feels...trapped?
I force my eyes open.
When and – more importantly – why did I even close them in the first place?
Everything around me is dark at first. But once my eyes adjust a bit to my surroundings, I realise that the dark is actually kind of white-ish. Slowly, consciousness gains the upper hand and with that, gradually my understanding for what is going on increases. A tingling sensation travels through my limbs and I notice two things: my arms are wrapped tightly around something, and my left knee hurts like a bitch.
I ignore the second thing, since I don't want to deal with that right now, and focus on the small body that I am holding in a vice-like grip instead.
Lily.
Once that realisation has manifested itself in my foggy brain, it is like a wave of recollections and instant flashbacks invades my memory at once.
We got caught in an avalanche.
While my mind is still processing this, my body automatically switches into survival mode. Life-threatening situations are what I have been trained for ever since I joined the military. I slow my previously rather erratic breathing and my heartrate instantly goes down, too. Then I take a couple of deliberate breaths to determine the level of oxygen around me.
I almost choke when I suck in some snow. That was as pretty dumb move, I realise, since my whole face is more or less covered by snow. However, I notice with relief that the pressure on my head is not too bad, making me hope that the amount of snow around and above me might not be too alarming.
Next, I try to move my arms to figure out just how stuck we are. Luckily, I manage to shift around quite easily, so I push against the snow to test if it gives way. It takes a bit of effort, but it doesn't take me long to create some wriggle room.
Once one of my arms is completely freed, I make quick work of removing the snow from where I assume my little sister's face is, making sure to clear her airways and to carve out an air pocket around her head to allow her to breathe more easily. Since I am not yet able to turn my body enough to be able to look at her, I have to rely on touch alone to figure out if she is okay. I put my hand on her neck to feel for her pulse but quickly realise that I have no chance to do that with my thick gloves still on.
I am just about to pull the glove off with my teeth when I feel a movement in my hold.
"Lily?"
My voice is strangely hoarse, which makes no sense to me at all.
Surely, we have not been stuck under the snow for much more than a few minutes?
"Jo-Jo?"
Relief washes over me at the sweet sound of her voice.
"I'm here. I've got you," I reply and squeeze her against me to show her that she is safe with me.
"No! Jordan!" Lily yells, startling me.
She must only now have noticed that something is wrong.
Was she unconscious, too? Is she hurt?
"Hey, hey, you're okay, I've got you," I try to calm her down, cuddling her even closer to me. "Are you hurt?"
"I...I d-don't kn-know. I cannot move!" she chokes out, sounding slightly panicked.
Please, don't freak out on me now, pumpkin.
"Lily, I need you to be a really big girl, okay? We got caught in an avalanche. But it's fine. I'm gonna get us out of here. I just need to you stay calm. Can you do that for me?"
"I'm scared," Lily whimpers and I can tell that she is trying really hard not to panic even more.
I am so proud of her.
"I know. And that's okay. But we'll be fine, I promise."
My body forces me to take a deep breath. That worries me a bit. It must mean that the oxygen levels are slowly dropping. I need to get a move on if I want us to get out of here.
The thought of my brothers flashes through my mind.
Are they okay?
I force myself to remain calm and to push any negative thoughts to the back of my mind. This is not the time to lose control. I have been trained for extreme situations like these. My life has been in danger more than once in the past couple of years, and the only reason I always made it out pretty much unscathed was my ability to forget about everything else around me and to only focus on the task at hand.
Looking around, I am quite certain which way is up, since it seems to be a bit brighter when I slightly turn my head to the right. I decide that I am lying on my left side, which would explain why my left arm is still kind of trapped underneath Lily's body.
I start digging with my right arm, ignoring the whimpers that are irregularly coming from my little sister.
I have been digging for about five minutes when my hand suddenly doesn't meet resistance anymore. Instead it grabs what I believe to be air. I let out a small shriek of excitement which makes me laugh at myself, despite the less than funny situation we are currently in. But me yelping like a girl is embarrassing even if nobody heard me other than Lily, and I doubt that she cares.
"We'll be out of this trap in no time, baby girl," I assure her, feeling a lot more confident now than I did only a few minutes ago.
She doesn't respond but instead grabs my left hand even more tightly. Although it is kind of arduous to dig with only one hand, there is not much I can do about it since there is still not enough space for me to move enough to unwrap my other limb from around Lily's body. But I start to move my right leg around a bit now, too, to hopefully push some more snow off our bodies and speed up the process of getting us out.
Suddenly, it all goes a lot faster and it takes me a moment to realise that someone is helping me.
"Jordan?"
I don't think I have ever been happier hearing Sam's voice.
"Sam!" I call out towards my younger brother.
A hand grabs my own and squeezes it tightly.
"Are you okay?"
Sam's voice sounds kind of muffled, which is not really surprising, seeing as practically my whole body is still covered by layers of snow.
"I think so, yeah. Lily's with me. Just help me get us out of here," I tell him and then cough when I swallow a mouthful of snow that has come lose above my head.
"Jordan!" Lily screams, sounding terrified.
I suqeeze her against me to show her that I am okay while I try to get my coughing under control.
"You guys are okay, Lily. I'll get you out!" Sam calls from above us.
Then, my little sister starts to wriggle around frantically until she can move her arms and kick her legs a bit. I have gotten my own breathing back under control and smile at the energy she is displaying all of a sudden. Looks like she is as fed up as I am with us being buried in this white, wet and cold substance.
With Sam's help, it is only a matter of minutes until our heads and part of our upper bodies have finally been freed. I take another deep breath, enjoying the sensation of the fresh, cold air in my lungs.
"Oh my god, you guys, are you okay?" Sam repeats.
"Can you pull her out?" I ask him, ignoring his question.
Sam grabs Lily under her armpits and I push her up gently. He easily manages to get her out of the pile of snow and immediately wraps her up in his arms.
I feel like a weight has been lifted off me – literally and figuratively speaking. With her gone, I now have enough space to pull myself into a sitting position. I hiss involuntarily when I bend my left knee to get the necessary foothold to push onto my feet.
Sam, who has been busy patting Lily down to assess any potential injuries, turns to look at me with a concerned expression on his face.
"Are you hurt?" He asks, but it sounds more like a statement than a question.
"My old limbs are just acting up a bit after having been constricted," I claim, not meeting his eye.
"Bullshit, Jordan. Is it your knee?"
"Nothing I haven't dealt with before."
I clench my teeth and count to ten in my head before I push myself first onto my knees and then my feet to climb out of the icy trap.
Although I was anticipating the pain that shoots through my tortured knee, it takes a lot of self-control for me not to curse out loud. But I am glad that I manage to hide my discomfort, because I don't want to freak out my little sister any more than she already is. When I lock eyes with Sam, he just shakes his head in disbelief.
"Is she okay?" I ask him, hoping to distract myself from the throbbing in my treacherous body part.
"Seems to still be in one piece, aren't you, squirt?"
Lily just nods wordlessly. Now that I can take a proper look at her, she appears to be just fine, if a little shell-shocked. Not that I blame her. It's not every day that you get caught in an avalanche.
Then my other siblings spring to my mind.
Where are they?
"Any sign of Luke and Will?" I ask.
I already dread Sam's answer. The thought of them being...
No, Jordan, don't you dare go there!
I have to divert my eyes that were previously firmly set on my little sister, when I see how she pales as she considers my question and what the possible answer could be. I feel bad for doing this to her, but I just have to know.
"They're up there, by the trees."
Sam points up the mountain and to the right where a small forest lines the slope – or lined the slope, before the avalanche made said slope disappear. I let out a breath of relief at this news, but then it hits me that Sam sounded rather guarded.
"Are they okay? Did they managed to keep out of harm's way?" I continue to question him.
Lily stoically watches our interaction. Sam is still crouching down next to her and he seems to notice her distress because he puts an arm around her small shoulders and pulls her towards him.
"They didn't get buried as you guys did, if that's what you're asking."
I don't like the way he avoids giving me a straight answer. But considering that he is staying relatively calm and is taking his time, I deduct that even if they are injured, it is not too bad.
"So they're okay?"
"They rushed for the relative safety of the trees when they realised what was going on. I haven't gotten all the details from them yet, since I was busy looking for you two."
From his expression and the fact that my other two brothers didn't help Sam looking for us, I cannot help but fear that he is not telling me everything.
"What exactly happened, Sam?" I decide to ask him straight out.
There is no point in delaying the inevitable.
"Why don't we go join them," he replies noncommittally.
Dread washes over me at his being so cryptic. We exchange another look and he almost invisibly nods towards our little sister. It is pretty obvious that he does not want to elaborate on their condition right now. Although I am totally on board with us sheltering her from the worst news, it almost tears my insides apart not knowing what he is keeping from me.
Sam takes a step forward, pulling Lily along with him and reaches his hand out towards me. I only then notice that I am, again, on my knees in the snow. Preparing myself for the imminent pain, I grab his proffered hand and get to my feet. My knee is literally on fire and I have to bite my tongue not to scream out loud. I must have twisted it when the masses of snow caught up with us and literally bowled us over.
This damn knee has been giving me nothing but trouble ever since that accident ten years ago.
"You good?" Sam asks quietly once we are standing next to each other.
"I'll live."
"You sure?"
"Where are they?" I change the topic.
I hate nothing more than people treating me like I am damaged goods or something. Just because I am in pain does not mean that I cannot pull my weight and get the job done. The best strategy is to ignore it and plough on.
"About two hundred yards up the mountain", Sam replies.
I am grateful that he accepts the boundaries I have set, so I nod.
"Let's go then."
I stomp off in the general direction Sam has pointed me in, ignoring the stabbing pain in my knee.
It is only now that I realise that we are still in the middle of a full-blown snow storm. Visibility is as bad as it was before the avalanche, if not worse. I can barely make out the treeline behind which, apparently, my younger brothers have found shelter.
"Come on, squirt," I hear Sam prompting Lily behind me.
Normally, I would have offered to carry her, but I am too busy keeping myself from groaning with every step that I take. Also, she seems to be physically fine, so there is no reason for her not to walk by herself, no matter how freaked out she might be. Keeping her occupied and therefore distracted is probably not the worst tactic, either.
"So, what happened exactly?" Sam asks, startling me.
How did he gain on me so quickly?
I glance to the right and find him marching up the hill, matching my speed, which I now notice is slightly off. Normally, it is not the easiest task for any of my brothers to catch up with me when I had a head start. I guess my stupid knee is slowing me down, if even Lily manages to keep up with my pace.
"Umm...what are you asking me? We got caught in an avalanche, obviously," I reply dryly.
"Yeah, but the rest of us managed to pretty much get out of the way. Why didn't you?"
"I reckon we were too far on the right side of the slope when it started. It took me a moment to figure out what was going on, and then I went after Lily to try and get her away from it. When I realised that we wouldn't make it out of the immediate danger zone, I forced her to stop and we discarded our boards so we could make a run for it. The snow hit us before we could make it all the way to the treeline. I grabbed her and tried to shelter her as good as possible as the snow masses descended upon us. I guess we were kind of lucky, after all, since we were not that deep in and got out so quickly," I summarize.
"Quickly? You were buried in there for over 45 minutes!" Sam exclaims.
I hear Lily whimper at his outburst and when I turn my head I find her clinging onto Sam.
That explains why they are matching my pace.
"45 minutes? No way."
"Yes way, Jordan. I was ready to completely freak out because I couldn't find any signs of you nor Lily anywhere. You cannot imagine how relieved I was when I suddenly saw your arm sticking out of the snow."
"I guess we are the lucky ones here, since you happened to be near us when I did that, or I would probably still be busy digging us out of there," I concede.
"I had a rough idea of where you should be, if you had not completely gone off track, which you luckily hadn't. By the way, you did good, running towards the left side of the slope, instead of going the other way."
Sam points towards our left – which was our right when we were coming down the hill. It does not take an expert to figure out that this is where the avalanche's main path of destruction is. The right side of the slope only got grazed by it, which is what must have saved our lives.
Due to the fog that is still sticking to the mountain almost like a second skin, it is hard to see much further than to the other side of the slopes. The chair lift follows the slopes but there is no sign of it. I wonder for a moment if it is actually still standing or if the avalanche has taken it down, too. If it did, I sincerely hope that we were indeed the last people on it and that nobody got hurt.
An image of the lift attendant, who chastised us when we got off on top of the mountain, flashes through my mind.
What a mess!
But before I can dwell on it much longer, we arrive at our destination.
"Oh thank god, you're okay!" we are greeted by an anxious Luke.
My breath hitches in my throat when the first thing I notice is the blood covering the left side of his face. He is a horrible sight to be seen and it does not surprise me when Lily lets out a howl-like sound when she looks at him.
"Shhh, it's okay. He's okay," Sam soothes her. "It looks worse than it is, I promise."
Luke hurries towards us. He first goes to Lily to try and comfort her but she immediately buries her face in Sam's shoulder. I understand why she is not welcoming him with open arms. He looks like something straight out of a horror movie and if I hadn't seen him moving towards us so easily, I would be very worried about his condition, too.
Luke settles on placing a kiss on top of Lily's head, which is actually pretty pointless since she won't feel it with the helmet still on. He must have whispered something to her, too, because she whimpers again but continues to hide her face.
With a sigh, my younger brother turns away from them and comes towards me. As soon as he is within reaching distance, I grab him by the upper arms and roughly pull him into a bone crushing hug. I feel him shudder in my hold and comfortingly start to pat his back.
"Other than your zombie get-up, are you okay?" I want to know.
Luke pulls away and meets my eyes. He nods.
"I must have banged my head against one of the trees when the force of that avalanche wiped me off my feet," he explains.
"Concussion?"
It wouldn't be the first time. With a houseful of boys, there is almost always someone who suffers from one or the other injury. Concussions are at the top of the leader board in terms of popularity. We all know what it feels like to have one, and we have become quite good at determining if it is just a small one, or one of the more serious kind.
Luke nods.
"Yeah, probably, but nothing too bad."
"Let me see."
I pull my glove off and carefully try to push his dark hair aside to get a better look, but I am unsuccessful, since the hair is stuck to what looks like a cut above his eyebrow. I decide to let it be. It would just hurt him unnecessarily if I try to pull it off.
But we need to make sure to clean the wound as soon as possible to avoid infection. Head wounds generally bleed like a bitch, which explains why he looks like somebody threw a bucket of red paint at the left side of his face.
"I think my helmet took most of the brunt", he tells me.
Just to be sure, I grab Luke's chin and force him to look straight at me so that I can check the size of his pupils. They look normal enough and I feel relief wash over me.
"That and your hard head were your saviours," I smirk.
Reaching into one of my pockets, I pull out a packet of paper tissues and hand them to him.
"How about you try and wipe some off that gory stuff off your face? There's no need to scar the little one for life because you look like a Walking Dead reject," I suggest.
"Love you, too, man," Luke replies sarcastically but grabs the tissues.
I clamp my hand on his shoulder and give him a small smile.
Four down, one to go.