Author's second note: MAJOR thanks to Lily C.! Without her help, I would've been extremely inaccurate about the situation with Cammy.. And the proper medical procedures that Tanya would have utilized to help save him. Many, MANY thanks, Lily! And that thanks extends to my grammar and spelling beta-reader, Orenda! If you think our current RP is bad, just wait until Tanya starts brooding! *Cackles*

The trip back to the Pond was silent, only broken by the occasional whisper from Tanya to the child she had rested on a blanket she had found within the Migrator. She had already taken to mothering the child as if the boy was one of her own, as she dressed and cleaned the wounds on his arms and legs that she could with the limited supplies she had stored on the Migrator. The rest, especially the ones that were infected, would have to wait until they got the boy into the Infirmary.

Wildwing glanced back at the two during a red light, his eyes softening as he regarded them. A child of the boy's age should not be as still as he was. His body should have been full of energy and life, instead of laying there like a limp ragdoll. It sickened Wildwing to think that someone could have hurt such an innocent being. He was barely more than a newborn duckling!

He sighed and pressed the gas pedal as the light turned green, focusing again on the road. He thought about the others. How would they react to the new addition?

And then he began to worry about how the sight of the boy would affect them, Nosedive especially. Nosedive was still having nightmares about the camps, although less often, but the sight of the child's wounds would likely make them come back full force. He was more injured than Wildwing and Nosedive had ever been from the camps put together. How could it not scare Nosedive, who had gone through that hell at such a young age? To see a child so much younger in a much greater pain . . . .

Wildwing lost himself in his worried thoughts, paying more attention to them than to the road in front of him, driving as if on auto-pilot. He was only jarred back into reality once more when he parked the Migrator in the hangar and Drake One's alarms went off. Sighing, he unbuckled his restraint and got out of his seat, glancing back to Tanya as she carefully picked up the child once more. The child looked so impossibly small and defenseless in her arms that Wildwing couldn't help but wonder if the child had any chance of survival, even after the pep talk he had given Tanya only a little bit earlier.

Shaking his head, he quickly pushed his doubts aside and followed Tanya out of the Migrator. He'd have to deal with them later. Right now, he needed to worry about the child and Nosedive. The only two things they knew about his injuries were that they did not belong to a body Chameleon created through his shape-shifting ability and that they were serious. Tanya had also mentioned something about the child having a lack of blood. Enough that she'd have to give him an artificial supplement for the blood he had lost.

As they went towards the Infirmary at their hurried pace, Wildwing stopped briefly to shut off the alarm because it would most likely terrify the youngster. He then jogged back up to Tanya's side, matching the timing of his steps with hers once more as they walked through the hall which housed their rooms. Wildwing knew that he could do little to help Tanya with the boy, but at least he could make sure that she didn't go through it alone.

They went along in hurried silence, neither speaking of gravity of the situation, each too firmly lost in their own thoughts to say them out loud to the other. Tanya looked down at the boy once more, letting out an unconscious sigh as she went through the training she had undergone to become a qualified team medic back on Puckworld which she had finished shortly before their arrival on Earth. Knowledge that would grant her the power to save the little life close held to her bosom.

She was silently thankful that she had taken a course in the treatment for victims of the Saurians' cruelty; the course had been called something else, some insanely huge scientific name, but it was essentially that. Always desperate to be in control of any situation, Tanya had thought it would be useful in the future, especially after they defeated Dragaunus. But when they followed Dragaunus through the dimensional gateway and were separated from Puckworld, she was certain she'd never find a use for it on Earth.

Tanya, in one of the few times of her life, had been wrong. She invoked her memories of the course as best as she could, finding herself pleasantly surprised when she realized she remembered nearly all of it. The rest she would be able to find in the medical logs she had transferred from the Aerowing to Drake One and the Infirmary's computer upon their construction. She'd be able to do this, Tanya told herself, she'd be able to save the little boy's life. She had to!

Wildwing concentrated on remaining as quiet as he could, keeping his eyes open for Nosedive and the others as he worried about the child. Despite if the child lived or died, Wildwing knew his brother's nightmares would return. How strongly they would return would be based on how badly the child would look when Nosedive would finally see him for the first time. He'd prefer that his little brother didn't see the youngling until after he had been cleaned and bandaged and if possible, not until he was able to eat solids again. But Wildwing knew that the second possible situation was, in fact, not a possibility. Nosedive would find out about the boy and would wish to see him sooner than later because he'd figure out something was wrong by Wildwing's disposition and would pester him until the older mallard told him the truth, the full truth, even if he was afraid to hear it.

That moment came even sooner than Wildwing had expected when the door to his and Nosedive's room suddenly slid open as the younger of the two brothers stepped out into the hallway. Smiling, Nosedive gave a sleepy wave and took a few steps towards them, his greeting lost in a yawn. Wildwing panicked and stepped out in front of Tanya to hide the injured child, but only succeeded in pulling Nosedive's attention to what he was trying to keep out of Nosedive's sight. The teenager saw the boy.

The effect of seeing the broken child in Tanya's arms was immediate. Nosedive's smile was replaced a look of blind terror akin to the look of a deer caught in the headlights. He backed away frantically, tripping over his own feet in his panic and falling onto his backside before he started pushing himself away with his hands and feet, too scared to even think about picking himself up off the ground, his beak opening in a silent scream.

Wildwing rushed to his brother's side, kneeling by the scared teen, who had begun to shake violently, and pulling him into an embrace as he whispered words of comfort to Nosedive. The teenager struggled in Wildwing's arms, desperate to get away from the memories. He only calmed down when Wildwing blocked his view with his body and nuzzled his cheek. In Wildwing's arms, Nosedive broke down and began to peep, clinging to his brother's shirt as if his brother was his last link to sanity. Wildwing sighed, stroking Nosedive's hair and nuzzling him from time to time.

"Tanya, I'll be there in a few, I just can't leave Nosedive like this . . . " Wildwing stated gently, glancing up only briefly to Tanya before returning his full attention back to his terrified sibling.

Tanya sighed as well, nodding softly even though she knew Wildwing wasn't looking at her. "R-Right, I'll go start a body-scan."

She watched Wildwing hold his trembling sibling close for a minute before she began to journey towards the Infirmary once more, going over in her mind what she would need to get ready while the body scan was being completed. In truth, Tanya knew that Wildwing offered to stay with her, and it wasn't because he could assist her in any great way, but instead to help her stay calm and in control of herself. Well, as calm and in control of herself as possible. Either way, she appreciated him caring about her enough to make sure that she wasn't facing one of the Saurians' evil deeds alone.

Sighing, Tanya laid the pale child onto one of the bio-beds ever-so-gently, pausing for a moment to stroke the part of his fine hair that wasn't coated in blood. So soft, like the rest of him. So innocent and defenseless . . . .

The child let out a small whimper and she was brought back to reality, looking down quickly at the tiny being in front of her. He didn't move again, and she sighed sadly. Poor thing. Tanya walked over to the Infirmary console and began typing into it rapidly. She couldn't stand there; there wasn't time to waste!

***

"Oh, Nosedive . . . " Wildwing sighed as he terrified younger brother clung to him, shivering, showing no signs of wanting to let go anytime soon. "I know you're scared, but Tanya-"

He winced, falling silent as his brother clung to him tighter, another peep escaping from the younger brother's beak. Wildwing's eyes softened, regarding the teenager clinging to him with a concerned gaze. It had been a long time since Nosedive had been too scared to cry and could only peep in distress. He knew his brother was terrified of the camps, but the teenager had never gotten so upset around the camps before that he was beyond crying. At least, not when Wildwing was around to see it.

"The boy's probably terrified," Wildwing began again, stroking his brother's hair. "Just like you are, baby bro'. He's just as scared as you are and probably more so. He's gone through the camps, like we did."

Or so Wildwing assumed. How was he to know the awful truth?

The older brother sighed, not knowing what else to say. The child needed much love and care to get through this. And the child would recover all the faster if Nosedive helped with him. The hardest part, however, would be getting Nosedive to conquer his fears.

"He needs us, baby bro'. . He doesn't have a big brother to hold him close and tell him everything's okay. . . He doesn't have anyone." Wildwing stroked his brother's hair, smiling sadly as Nosedive looked up to him.

"N-Nobody . . . ?" Nosedive's voice was barely above a whisper, shaking. "H-He's all alone. . . ?"

Wildwing only nodded softly in response, relaxing a little mentally; Nosedive was finally beginning to understand.

"But h-he's so little!" Nosedive continued, becoming alarmed. "H-He's really all alone?"

"He was," Wildwing corrected gently, directing his thoughts to his brother. -C'mon Nosedive, put two-and-two together..-

"Was?" Nosedive's brow wrinkled slightly in confusion, then his eyes widened as the realization of what Wildwing was trying to convey hit him.

"H-He's got us now, though, r-right?" Nosedive replied quickly, causing his brother to break out into a soft smile.

"The child has me and Tanya . . . Does he have you as well?" Wildwing asked, hiding a grin, already knowing the answer.

"Of course he does!" Nosedive answered immediately. "I-I'll be there for him like y-you were for me.. Since h-he doesn't have a big brother to protect him like I-I did.. Like I do."

Nosedive smiled weakly, his smile growing a little more when his brother nuzzled him once again. Wildwing smiled back to him in obvious relief.

"W-We won't let him down," Nosedive whispered and Wildwing nodded.

"We won't, baby bro'. You're right, we won't." Wildwing shifted and stood up, offering Nosedive his hand. "So let's go start taking care of him right now."

Nosedive took it and stood up, grinning a little bit more to Wildwing, although he didn't let go of his brother's hand. "Yeah.."

Wildwing smiled at this, giving his brother's hand a gentle squeeze. They'd get through this, and the boy would recover. He had to . . .

They had started to make their way towards the Infirmary, hand in hand, when Tanya suddenly let out a scream of shock and horror. Glancing at each other quickly before looking back down the hall, the brothers broke into a run, still holding onto each other. A minute later, they ran into the Infirmary, finding Tanya trying to contain her tears . . . And failing.

"No, no! T-These readings *can't* b-be right!" Tanya choked back a sob, hands flying up to her beak as she backed away from the console.

"Tanya, what's wrong?" Wildwing asked in alarm, strode over to her side with Nosedive hovering close to him as the teenager glanced nervously between Tanya and the boy.

"H-He's dying!" Tanya shook, looking back to the others with horrified eyes.

Wildwing and Nosedive found themselves staring at her in shock. The child was already going to leave them? Nosedive refused to believe it. The child would survive, w-wouldn't he?

"He can't b-be dying!" The younger brother whispered after a minute. "H-He has to live!"

Tanya shook her head. "I-I can't save him. . He's got a rare blood type and there's no time to make a synthetic replacement b-before h . . he . . ."

She cut herself off with a choked sob, turning away from them to hide her tears.

Wildwing's eyes softened and he slowly let go of his brother's hand, placing it on Tanya's shoulder instead. "It's okay Tanya, y-you did your best . . ."

She let out another sob, turning back to them quickly, and practically threw herself at Wildwing as she burst into full-blown cries. He sighed, wrapping his arms around her as she clung with her arms around his neck. Nosedive's heart dropped . . . If Tanya said the boy was going to die, then they couldn't save him . . . But he hadn't the heart to comfort her and looked away instead, towards the boy.

The fear he had felt before at the sight of the boy had been replaced by an overwhelming sadness. The child was going to die without even knowing he was free from the Saurians. If only there was a way to save him . . . He didn't deserve to die now that he could finally be able to learn how to be happy again! Nosedive wanted to help him, wanted to save him, wanted to save himself from the fear. But now all of that was impossible. The only thing they could do now was stay with the boy as he faded away from the world...

Nosedive glanced to the console with the child's fading life stats, sighing as he stepped past Wildwing and Tanya to get a better look at the console. He sighed and winced at what it reported. The child was indeed dying of blood loss. Tanya had managed to stop all the bleeding, both internal and external, but the damage was already done. It was too late.

Shaking his head in disbelief, Nosedive let his gaze wander to regard the boy again. The boy already looked dead, his skin almost a stark white, easily visible through his semitransparent feathers. Semitransparent? Nosedive's eyes widened as he stared, horrified. The child had gone through the camps? Was there no end to the Saurians' cruelty?

He knew the condition was caused by severe malnutrition, to the point where the body just couldn't waste the energy to make the pigments for the child's down. And in order for his entire feather coat to be clear, it would have been months since he had a proper meal. In some places, his feathers were missing entirely, but that wasn't because of malnutrition, Nosedive suspected. Even in his sleep, there was a look of sheer terror etched into his face. The teen regarding him clutched his hands into fists, trying to push back the memories with his anger. He didn't want to remember the time, still far too close in memory and time, where his own feathers had been nearly the same hue. Nearly, as in the child was in a worse state than he had ever been in his entire internment in the camps.

The beeping of the boy's heart rate, a monitoring technique Tanya had picked up from the humans, began to steadily get slower, drawing Nosedive's attention back to the monitor. He would've felt better about the entire situation if the child had been at rest. And if he had at least waken up so they could've told him he was free and made his final moments more comfortable ones.

Nosedive forced back tears as they began to obscure his vision. He didn't need to cry right now. If there was anything he could do for the boy, he wouldn't be able to do it if he gave into his emotions. He needed to think! The least he could do was ease the boy's pain. The least one victim could do for another.

His eyes scanned the screen as his wracked his brain trying to remember what Tanya had told him the readings meant. Eventually, though, he gave up and started concentrating on the few he did remember. Glancing over them, he began to let out a sigh of despair when he stiffened, his blood running cold and his heart skipping more than one beat.

The child had his blood type.

His blood type.

And that meant there was still a chance they could save him.

Nosedive's eyes lit up in determination, and he turned his brother as he continued his failing efforts to comfort Tanya. "Wildwing!"

The older brother looked up, looking to his brother in confusion at the sound of triumph in his voice. "Nosedive, what . . ?"

Tanya lifted her head to regard Nosedive as well.

"I have his blood type!" Nosedive exclaimed, trying to keep his hope from overtaking him completely; in the end, though, he didn't care. Any hope was better than having none. And he wanted to hope.

She stared at him in shock for a few moments before roughly breaking away from Wildwing, rushing over to Nosedive's side. "A-Are you sure?"

Nosedive nodded. "I'm positive!"

Wildwing walked briskly to the console in front of the other two, then nodded. "He does."

"Then let's do it!" Nosedive begged, turning to Wildwing before the older brother had time to react. "I can save him, 'Wing!"

The leader of the Mighty Ducks opened his mouth to ask Nosedive if he was sure he wanted to go through with it, but one look into his brother's eyes said it all. He had never seen such determination before, even in the camps. Nosedive wanted to do it and nothing that Wildwing said would deter him from that path. And Wildwing had not the mind to.

"Just be careful," Wildwing cracked an encouraging smile to his younger brother and Nosedive grinned back his relief.

And without waiting another second, Tanya rushed Nosedive to a bed adjacent to the child's, getting out the equipment in a hurry. Every second counted and they had already waited too long to start helping the child. She hurriedly ran to one of the cabinets, searching through it desperately.

As Nosedive watched Tanya set up the equipment, he couldn't help but smile weakly to the child. -Don't worry kid, I'm not letting you down without a fight.-

There wasn't time for Nosedive to bleed into a bag for Tanya to test the blood and make sure it was safe for the boy. Any minute he could die and he would be dead by the time she got around to testing the blood. Instead, she stuck a hollow needle into one of each Puckworlders' arm, then had Nosedive's bed elevated so that gravity drew Nosedive's blood into the boy's veins.

Nosedive made a point of looking above and away from his arm, towards the boy's face, trying to ignore the sight of his blood flowing into the boy's arm. He couldn't stand the sight of blood ever since . . . Someone squeezed his other hand and Nosedive turned his head to smile weakly to Wildwing as he sat down in a chair next to the medical bed Nosedive was laying on.

"It's going to be okay, baby bro'," Wildwing's smile was infinitely sadder with his inability to shake off his worry for his brother. What if Tanya took too much blood from him?

"I know it's going to be okay," Nosedive replied quietly after a minute's silence, sighing softly and shaking his head. "So stop worrying about me."

Wildwing chuckled nervously, trying to hide his surprise that Nosedive had read him so easily. "That's like asking Phil not to sign us up for publicity stunts."

Nosedive's laugh was hollow, although he grinned to his brother still. "Point. Then try and worry less."

"I'll try, but no guarantees," Wildwing stated, giving his brother's hand another gentle squeeze.

Nosedive tore his sight away from the boy once more and shared a look of hushed worry with his brother. He tried to speak, tried to say something to lighten the grim sadness on Wildwing's face, but his voice failed him.

Silence then drew its thick curtain and the room remained deathly quiet until after Tanya had completed the procedure and was checking the boy's life signs. Tanya broke the veil with a smile after a few minutes of intense study regarding the output.

"His life signs are stabilizing," She visibly relaxed, answering the brothers' unspoken question. "Now all I have to do is give him some anti-inflammatories for the concussion and he should phase into regular sleep sometime tonight. Then, I can clean up the rest of his wounds without injuring him further. He'll be too exhausted to wake up for the next day or two, so we'll be able to bypass his reaction to the initial cleansing."

The younger brother winced, remembering how much his own wounds had hurt the first time they were treated properly after they had escaped the camps. By the stars, how it hurt. He'd never want the boy to go through that.

"Nosedive," Tanya's gaze zeroed in specifically on the teenager as her eyes narrowed into an accusing glare. "You must not do any major exertions for the next few days or you'll overextend yourself. Which means no hockey games, no battles, and absolutely no staying up late."

"What? No staying up late?? C'mon, you know I can't fall asleep before midnight!" Nosedive whined and Wildwing tried to hide his amuse smile. "That's unfair!"

"I'm not going to chance you passing out and you need a good night's sleep, so you're going to bed on time for the next couple of days until your blood replenishes itself," Tanya stated. "And Wildwing would agree with me."

Nosedive's eyes turned wide and begging as his attention snapped to his brother's face.

"C'mon, 'Wing, you can't let her bench me . . . " Nosedive whined and Wildwing smile finally showed through, although it was softer and more adoring.

"Nosedive, I'm afraid she's right. The rest would do you good, anyways." Wildwing replied, trying hard not to snicker at Nosedive's groan. If Nosedive knew how close he was to laughing out loud, despite the situation, Nosedive would kill him.

"You'll have to stay in here about an hour for observation," Tanya continued, hiding her own smile of amusement. "Then, you'll be free to go."

"Oh, alright," Nosedive reluctantly agreed, although he secretly admitted to himself that laying down sounded really nice at the moment.

"All the others should be awake and still in the Pond by then, so we can inform them of the situation then," Wildwing speculated, before adding, "and Nosedive could take a nap while I give them the news."

"But, but!" Nosedive voiced his complaints again and Wildwing shook his head.

"Sorry baby bro', but you need your rest, and if you take a nap in a bit, you'll still have some energy left by night time. Otherwise you'll find yourself drifting off early." Wildwing explained and Nosedive sighed, nodding.

"I guess I could," Nosedive sighed after a moment, again only admitting to himself the idea of a nap wasn't too unpleasant of one.

Tanya nodded, then started typing on the medical console's keyboard again. "I'll start a more detailed body-scan while we wait."

Nosedive glanced back at the child, sighing softly. He could already tell this was going to be a long day.

And he hoped, with all his heart, that it would be a long day with a happy ending.

*End of Chapter Two*