It was jarringly bright when he opened his eyes.

And it was noisy, a quiet constant hum of people and machines and movement that most people wouldn't have called noisy but it never relented.

His head ached, a dull, pounding ache that echoed through his teeth and down through his bones with a resounding reverb from his right ankle. He was lying in a comfortable bed and the cotton sheets, worn smooth from daily washings might not have been Egyptian but they were soft and rested gently against his skin.

He glanced around the empty room, taking note that the intravenous line taped to his left hand and some bulky contraption around his lower right leg were the only obvious evidence of treatment. There was another hospital bed between his and the door, but it was empty. On it, a pillow rested atop a folded blanket as if they were both waiting.

"I tell you, he's not awake yet…"

Dominic Santini's voice, rising in volume, trailed in from the other side of the door, presaged the turning of the handle, the door opening, Santini backing into the room, facing someone outside and continuing to talk.

"The doctors said a concussion and dehydration on top of the surgery they had to do on his foot. I swear I'll let you know as soon as he's awake."

He let the door close and then turned around, the furrowed brows and tight expression melting away into bright eyes and an expansive grin. He opened his mouth and then shot a quick glance at the door. He moved towards the bed, smiling broadly.

"It's about time you came back to the land of the living. We have half the Firm and the NTSB waiting to talk to you, not to mention me and Cait."

He grinned and grabbed Hawke's right hand between his two.

"That was a hell of a scare you gave me, String. I didn't know if we were going to find you at all, much less in time." He let go of Hawke's hand and dragged a visitor's chair closer. "We've been taking shifts and she went back to the hotel to get some rest. The doctors told us you'd come through the surgery on your leg just fine but then you didn't wake up and we didn't know what to think."

Hawke blinked, dazed by the deluge, as if a dam had given way and Dominic's words and emotions roared out, buffeting everything in its way.

"NTSB?" he said, scowling as he heard the hoarse croak.

"They want to know what caused the crash. For their investigation."

Dominic sounded as if he wanted to know too, which was fair considering it was his helicopter that had been totaled in the crash, and because he considered Hawke one of his few remaining family members and had probably been out of his mind with worry.

"Honestly, Dom, I don't remember any of it," Hawke admitted, looking away, towards the sunlight streaming through the hospital window as he spoke. "Michael told me that we hit a squall line that we couldn't get around or above. The wind shear put us in the treetops. I hit my head in the crash and when I woke up, my head was spinning so badly, I couldn't tell you what happened."

He glanced back and was alarmed at how the color had drained from Santini's face and how his eyes slid away.

"What?"

"Archangel told you that?" Santini said quietly.

"Yeah." He didn't mean that to come out as defensively as it sounded.

"When did he tell you that?"

Hawke blinked, trying to remember the exact sequence of events but that first day after the crash was jumbled, with starts and stops and nothing in a coherent flow.

"After he pulled me out of the wreck and wrapped my ankle."

Somehow that was the wrong thing to say. Santini's heart was in his eyes and his heart was sinking.

"String," he said in a harsh whisper. "When the Search & Rescue team pulled you out of the wreck, they said you were delirious from dehydration and from the pain. You kept talking about a demon, that he'd caused the helicopter to crash and…" Santini swallowed hard. "And you said the demon killed Archangel. You remember any of that?"

Hawke turned away, the thudding in his chest demanding that he recognize his increased heart rate. Belial had cut Michael nearly in half with that damn sword and there hadn't been a thing Hawke could do except hold him as he bled to death in that godforsaken forest. The sunlight coming through the windows blurred and he brushed at his eyes with a fist

"Yeah," he said gruffly.

"That what happened?" Santini's voice was gentle and the worry that underlay the gentleness caught Hawke's attention even as he continued to look blindly toward the windows.

"You tell me," he answered, voice deliberately dull. "From what I hear I was delirious."

He felt Santini grab his right hand, again enfolding it between the both of his, offering wordless comfort.

"You probably don't want to tell that story to the NTSB and…" the hesitation was long enough that Hawke turned his gaze back to Dominic, "you definitely don't want to mention it to anyone from The Firm. It might…"

"Michael didn't make it, did he."

His voice was flat and lifeless; it wasn't really a question so he wasn't surprised by the slow headshake from Santini.

"He was killed in the crash, String. A main rotor blade…" Santini choked up and swallowed hard. It was a minute before he spoke again. "His people are plenty upset about it enough without you talking about demons and swords and a battle over souls."

A spark of something fired in his brain, cutting through the bleak fog that had settled over him when he'd started remembering. A main rotor blade and a sword…

"They blaming me?"

Santini sighed, a long slow exhale as if he was deflating. "No, I think they're looking at the guy Archangel was supposed to meet, trying to determine if he had anything to do with the crash. They got about fifty people at the site, NTSB, FIRM, you name it, collecting evidence." He gave a small shrug. "I think they're looking for a needle in a haystack. In that forest, they'd be lucky to find all the missing pieces from the tail much less any hint that a SAM was used."

He stopped talking suddenly and covered his mouth with one hand, wincing dramatically.

"Oh hell, I'm not supposed to discuss it with you, or speculate. Might impact what you tell the NTSB." He scratched the hair above his ear. "I'm supposed to tell the doctors that you're awake, and then there's a line up of people who are going to want to talk to you."

The thought of it was enough to make Hawke close his eyes and wonder if they'd believe that he was still unconscious. He needed time to sort through this, try to organize what he remembered into a logical sequence and test it for accuracy, and he reluctantly admitted, for sanity and credibility. And he needed to come to terms with the painful, hollow feeling in his chest, with the loss of another friend.

"Yeah," he said.

As the chair scraped back, signaling Santini rising to his feet, Hawke had a sudden thought and opened his eyes.

"So how did you find us?"

Expressive brows rose and fell and Santiti gestured extravagantly with his hands.

"After Archangel missed his check-ins, his people tracked the refueling stops you'd made. Guess Marella knew what credit card he'd use to pay. So they figured out the general route and then they tried to get a fix on his satellite phone. It wasn't transmitting or receiving, but the last satellite ping," he shrugged, "that's what they called it, came from Northwest Montana in the Kootenai National Forest region. They started fly-overs and sent out alerts."

Hawke's head ached at the thought and then he saw Santini's expression shift, eyes widening in wonder or disbelief.

"String, you have any idea of how the vest from Archangel's suit ended up about ten miles from the crash site? With his business card in the pocket?"

Finis