Chapter Text
“Wake up! Malcolm! Wake up!”
The screaming wouldn’t stop; it sounded like Hoshi. Hoshi’s in trouble? Malcolm fought his way through the fog in his head, reaching out toward her voice and what felt like the world shaking as a dull, grinding roar accompanied by metal screeching filled his ears.
But always there was the screaming, Hoshi’s voice drawing him closer and closer to wakefulness until suddenly—
—he snapped into consciousness, into a hot, quaking metal room. He was handcuffed to a wide, rusted metal pipe, his wrists shackled on either side, through a long, thin loop of steel. Something was banging to his right, ringing with each rhythmic blow, accompanied by Hoshi’s voice, piercing and high and unlike her usual calm tones. His head hurt and his vision faded in and out, sound was echoing, but his eyes were finally open.
Blearily looking to the side, he saw Hoshi; she was handcuffed to the same pipe, but unlike him, her feet weren’t touching the floor. She was gripping the pipe and was balanced on her toes on a narrow ledge attached to the wall, slamming her foot into the metal as close to him as she could reach in a bid to catch his attention. But even as he watched, the wall crumpled a bit as the ceiling moved inexorably lower.
Hoshi’s face was contorted as she screamed at him. Why was she screaming? Was she hurt? His dazed eyes picked up blood on her face, on her arm, on her leg, and slowly his mind grasped that someone had hurt her, had hurt his Hoshi and made her bleed, wounded her, made her panic, and sheer rage blasted through him, washing away the daze and—
“Malcolm! Malcolm, I need you! Wake up, wake up, WAKE UP, MALCOLM!”
—he jolted into full awareness and heat flooded him, intense heat outside the room in which they found themselves and the walls were inching closer, the ceiling jerking down by degrees, the tortured scream of crushing metal shrieking along his nerves, and he realised they were in a shrinking metal box with no way out and Hoshi was screaming—
“Malcolm, look at me! Listen to me, Malcolm! I need you to focus! Break the pipe, Malcolm! Use your muscles, break the pipe!”
—and he grabbed onto the rusted pipe with both hands, hot beneath his palms but not yet blistering, and brought his full weight to bear, muscles writhing beneath the constraints of his shirt, lifting his legs to shoulder height and jackknifing them down as hard as he could, again, and again, and then again, Hoshi lifting herself and doing the same, pistoning her legs up and down—
and he did it once more, a roar of rage leaving him as he put every ounce of his considerable strength into breaking the pipe like Hoshi wanted and—
the pipe came apart at the join like it was aluminium instead of steel and Hoshi’s hands slid off her end, but the break had come outside the loop and his hands were still trapped inside the thin rounded loop that would not come apart no matter how he kicked and she pulled—
and then she was gone and he sagged in relief because she was safe and he could relax and go to sleep and let the heat get to him but it was okay because Hoshi was safe—
and then she was there again and digging a metal rod into one side of the strut, slamming against it, getting the rod into where it joined the pipe and twisting and she needed to get to safety why was she still here—
and suddenly the strut broke and he was falling, unable to stop himself, the heat sapping his strength, the ceiling crushing down further—
and he was on his knees, unable to move, sound echoing and garbled, and Hoshi was pushing him, why was she pushing him?—
and then she was behind him, her handcuffed arms thrown over his neck and pulling and he was choking but it was okay because it was Hoshi and she wouldn’t hurt him—
she had dug her feet into the ground and she was yanking him and screaming his name—
“Malcolm, push! Push with your legs! Malcolm, help me! PUSH!”
—and he had to help her, he had to help Hoshi, so he dug in his heels and he PUSHED—
and they fell out of a hole in the wall (was that a door?) and sprawled on the ground and he felt himself crushing Hoshi, he was too heavy for her, but her arms were around his neck and she was still screaming in his ear, why was she still screaming?—
“Pull your feet back, Malcolm, pull your legs back, get your feet out!”
—there was a blaze of fire and shriek of metal in front of him, like an angry overheated dragon, and Hoshi curled her legs around him and pushed her feet under his knees and yanked so that his legs came flying upward—
a crunching roar sounded and the metal box in front of them slammed shut and they were hit with an intense pressure wave, a wave of heat that sapped his strength in one fell swoop, and now Hoshi was sobbing in his ear, why was she sobbing?—
and as the world receded from him again he heard her voice, her beautiful voice, wracked with coughing, “Malcolm, I’ve got you, got your feet out, you’re good, we’re out, we’re out, thank all the gods—”
and the world went black, but that was okay, because Hoshi was safe and she had her arms around him and he could handle anything as long as she was safe and holding him.