Chapter Text
As it turned out, Harold had predicted that Nathan would want to take him to a hospital, instead of the morgue.
('Imagine that,' Nathan would think sarcastically much later, after Harold explained himself. 'I didn't want to drive my injured, possibly dying, friend straight to a place for dead people.')
The alarm had sounded seemingly at random, until Nathan noticed that it began ringing whenever he deviated from the path Harold had set, driving away from the morgue. As soon as he figured it out, Nathan wanted to bang his head against the steering wheel. Of all the...
Nathan was going to kill Harold himself after this, the bastard.
The good news was that there was someone with medical training waiting for them. The bad news was, that it was a veterinarian.
"I used to be a surgeon, back in Tekrit," the man who had introduced himself as Farouk Madani said. When Nathan asked who he was, as they pushed the gurney inside, Madani said that Harold had given him the deed to this establishment, in exchange for his services whenever Harold needed them. Since Harold would provide all the equipment, and was paying him an exorbitant amount of money besides, Madani had thought it a fair trade.
"This is actually a funeral home, not a morgue. If you could explain the difference to your friend, that would be great."
Nathan watched him closely, for any sign that he was merely chatting to cover up some nervousness about Harold's injuries. But no. He appeared genuinely calm.
"Was your friend in the attack? On the news?"
Nathan nodded at the same time Grace said yes. On any other day, Nathan would have been more cautious. Kept that information closer to vest. Today, he just wanted to save Harold's life.
Grace asked him how he knew.
"I saw a lot of this back in Iraq," Madani replied.
He pointed to the the little cuts and tears in Harold's suit. "No burn marks, and not a lot of damage from shrapnel. That means he was quite some distance away from the blast center."
"See those cuts?" Madani shone a penlight into Harold's ear, gesturing for both of them to take a look. "Your friend was wearing earplugs. Hopefully, that means hearing loss is temporary. We'll find out for sure in two days."
---
Harold's deafness was temporary, as it turned out. He found that out the hard way when Nathan yelled at him for being so reckless. Grace hadn't raised her voice, but the way she looked at Harold, sad and hurt and disappointed, made him wish she had.
What Nathan found out was that it was hard to stay angry at someone when they were injured. He couldn't be properly mad at Harold when the injured man was in almost constant agony.
Nevertheless, Nathan managed it for about a week, after what he referred to in his head as 'the yacht incident'. Nathan was angry, sure, and grateful (although that went without saying). There was some guilt in there as well, something he knew he'd have to work on himself. Maybe if he hadn't blindsided Harold with Grace's presence, Harold could have come up with a safer plan?
Nathan shook his head. There was no use to dwelling too much on something that he couldn't change.
In the meantime, he kept himself busy with the legwork for creating their new identities. It wasn't as glamorous as Nathan thought it would be, mostly filling up forms and mailing them, pretending he was Normal Joe going about his day. When he'd asked, Harold had told him that there were more clandestine ways, of course. Many ways to simply purchase a pre-made identity from the Black Market. But Harold preferred making them himself. It was safer that way, Harold insisted. Nathan had just sighed, and started filling out a form for a library card.
Grace was more useful, helping Harold with his rehab. Considering what she'd gone through with her father, both Harold and Nathan had expressed some concerns; they didn't want to remind her of what must have been a painful experience. But Grace had been the one to insist. And she was merciless too, pushing Harold as far as he could safely go (but allowed him absolutely no further, even on the days when Harold himself wanted to do more reps, in a misguided attempt to speed up his recovery).
Of course, Harold himself already had a number of spare identities to fall back on. The three of them had a grand time picking out which one Harold should inhabit more permanently, making things up as they went along. Nathan had a hand in creating Harold Cormoran, an investment banker, while Grace suggested that Harold Passerine own a bookstore.
"Harold Martin and Harold Wren are both burned," Harold had told them.
"One of them almost literally," Nathan had refrained from saying.
Norman Burdette too, but Harold had intimated that he had never been too fond of Burdette. He was too serious by half. Right now, he was Harold Partridge. On paper, Harold Partridge had been transferred to a hospital in New York after being in a car accident. Harold was recovering as well as could be expected, the doctors told Nathan and Grace.
Although, the doctors told them, there would be permanent damage to his hip and spine. Despite Madani's best efforts, it seemed that delaying the treatment a single day, to distance Harold's injuries from the explosion, had made the injuries worse.
Harold didn't blame anyone for his injuries except himself. When Nathan had spoken to him about it, accepting that Harold might blame him (perhaps rightly so, Nathan figured), Harold had only said that he should have known that would happen. He should have made a better plan.
Currently, Harold was wheelchair-bound, still going through physical therapy, but he was already making plans for the three of them. It helped take his mind off the pain, so the three of them had fun with it, creating elaborately detailed scenarios and identities for themselves.
---
The only problem was the Irrelevant list. The machine was still getting numbers to Harold, somehow. It had several phones delivered to him, and was sending him social security numbers. Harold had taken one look at the phones, and wanted to throw each and every one of them out the hospital window.
His companions disagreed. Between the two of them, Nathan and Grace convinced Harold that they should do something to help the people on the Irrelevant List. Had to save them using the Machine. How could they not, if they were willing to use the Machine to save themselves?
Harold capitulated, but not without complaints. He was sure that it would all turn out horribly, and that they would fail.
Honestly, Nathan was of the somewhat same opinion. He thought they would fail more than they would succeed. But then he would looked at Grace, and be more certain than ever that saving even just one life would be worth it.
Harold called it the Irrelevant List, because the people on it weren't important enough to be a involved in the nation's security. Nathan disagreed.
'Everyone is relevant to someone,' he thought.
And even though they were likely to fail (because no one became what amounted to a superhero overnight), that didn't mean they shouldn't try.