He could feel his heart thud once as the muzzle of the black semi- automatic pressed painfully against his sternum. Just once, before Aithne holstered the gun with the same blinding speed and turned to face the bed. Realizing he had forgotten to breathe, the young man corrected that as a thought floated through his mind. The weak light in the room did not reflect off of the matte finish of Aithne's gun. What had been that flash of light he had seen earlier?

"Christ... Aithne, are you alright?"

Throwing him an indecipherable look over her shoulder, Aithne turned back to the bed. Lightly grasping the hand lying limply on the sheet, she began rubbing her thumb gently over the knuckles. The young man was not completely sure, but he thought his friend began breathing a little easier. They stood beside the bed, just watching, for a few moments.

"Aithne... how long's Ethan been here?"

No response.

"Damn it, Aithne. Talk to me!" Fear was beginning to tinge his anger "Please ... I need to know how he's doing."

There was a moment's pause before Aithne reached over and smoothed out several wrinkles in the sheets. In a movement that seemed completely natural, she twirled her pinkie twice and gave a small nod towards the bed. It took a few seconds before the young man remembered what that signal meant. Closing his eyes, he made that peculiar mental twist peculiar to shifting his sight of the world.

With a deep shuddering breath, he looked out at the world again and nearly yelped in surprise. An intensely bright white light surrounded Aithne, extending at least half a foot out from her in all directions. Completely opaque until the very edges, the light was so iridescent it was bleaching out her features. Whatever shielding Ethan had, the young man could not see it through Aithne's. Fortunately, she seemed to notice his discomfort and forcibly pulled her shielding in, ramping down the intensity.

Finally able to see his friend again, the young man was once more startled by the sight that greeted him. The wreath of hazy green surrounding Ethan certainly indicated a weaker shield than he knew his friend could build. But it shouldn't even be up, not when Ethan was ill and sleeping.

What had these two gone through to have gotten this much stronger?

Shaking off his unease, the young man finally looked at the energies he had been asked to in the first place and realized just how sick his friend was. The majority of Ethan's body was bathed in the pale green of stressed functioning, occasionally shot through with black and a dirty off white. The kidneys and liver, at least, showed as a healthy blood red, but the heart was strained. The lymphatic system, typically faded and in the background, pulsed the brilliant pure white of a stressed, overworked state. A splotch of brown-black sludge sat on Ethan's right shoulder, both mixed with and sitting over the deep green of healing muscle and tissue. Tendrils of the sludge spiraled down to and filled the lungs, leaving no room for the pale flowing sky-blue of healthy lungs.

Moving to stand beside the bed, the young man tried to ignore the feeling that time was crawling. Physical movement while observing the energies always felt slower, even if he was actually moving at his normal pace.

Reaching his friend's side and finding an open spot among the machines, he wanted nothing more than to blast away the infection slowly killing his friend. Yet somehow he felt he need to ask for Aithne's permission. Looking over, the question died on his lips for a moment. Where Aithne was holding Ethan's hand, their shields seemed to have blended until the young man couldn't see where one ended and the other began. As he watched, a small red sphere issued forth from the interlocked shields and began working its way up Ethan's arm. Reaching the sludge in the shoulder, the sphere flared once and then died as some of the brown crumbled and dissolved away. As soon as the first sphere died, another emerged and began proceeding up the shoulder as well.

"Aithne?" She looked up with the same blank expression on her face as earlier. "Is it alright.. if..."

A look of contemplation stole over her features as he trailed off. He could almost see the internal debate play out over her face. Finally, with a half shrug and a resigned look, Aithne simply nodded.

He reached within a few inches of the shoulder before it suddenly became like trying to move his hand through molasses. The harder he pushed, trying to get through Ethan's shields, the harder it became to make any headway. When he finally lay his hand on Ethan's shoulder, a sharp shock surged through. With a yelp, he pulled back and shook his hand out at the wrist, more in surprise than pain. As he watched, the shields diffused somewhat as they shunted the borrowed pale green energy back to Ethan. More white streaks had appeared within the green.

As the young man reached over to try again, he suddenly found his wrist in a vice-like grip. Anger flashed briefly across Aithne's face before settling back into the blank-page look as she relaxed her grip and let go. Letting it drift over, palm down, she held her left hand several inches above the sternum, almost directly over Ethan's heart.

After a moment the shielding over the back of her hand disappeared. Marveling again at her growth over the past five years, the young man slipped his hand over hers, their fingers intertwining. Her shielding sprang back up to enclose his hand and shield, brilliant white sitting atop a deep orange. They could feel Ethan straining to breathe as they dropped their hands down to rest lightly his laboring chest. Several seconds passed, their hands still resting lightly, before Aithne's shield again merged with Ethan's.

Suddenly, with the sensation of having just been kicked in the stomach, the young man felt his energy draining away and out. As he watched, both his and Aithne's energies gathered in a swirl below her hand, swirling in faster and faster until at last they coalesced into a ball. The young man stood, gasping for breath, for several seconds before the ball of energy leapt from under Aithne's hand to Ethan's shoulder. The drain on his energy ceased as Aithne concentrated on directing the ball of energy, beginning to slowly work its way down Ethan's shoulder, moving towards his lungs. Never taking her eyes off the exact spot her energy ball occupied, Aithne gave a quick head nod towards her vacated chair. The young man carefully untangled his fingers, withdrew from the merged shields, and collapsed bonelessly in the chair. Hard pressed to keep his eyes open, sleep descended like a ton of bricks.

**** A/N: all right, I have no excuse. This chapter was beta-ed and ready to get put up in May. I just forgot. *sigh* on the plus side, I have two more chapters written. Those'll be up once my beta looks at 'em, I review them, and then remember to post 'em!