Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Buck regains consciousness.

Holding onto it feels like holding onto the very small body of a very precious boy as the weight of a giant wave crashes down on them.

He's fighting so hard, but it doesn't care. It's stronger than he is, and it makes him let go. 

Buck regains consciousness. 

His head is pounding. His heart is in his throat.

No, not his heart, but–something–something is in his throat. It tastes like fear, opaque, suffocating. He's suffocating, and he gasps, tries to open his mouth to breathe better–

There's something in his throat, in his mouth. Wet, shapeless. It clings to the walls of his mouth, tickles the back of his throat. 

He feels like throwing up. He swallows, convulsively, feels saliva flood his mouth. 

He can't throw up. He can't. He knows this with certainty. There's something in his mouth. He's suffocating on it. Wet, shapeless. 

Fabric. 

There's fabric in his mouth. A rag. A gag. 

Fear and his heart rate ratchet up until he feels like they'll explode out of his chest. He's been gagged. 

He wants to push the gag out, but for one hysterical second, he can't find his tongue in his mouth. All he can feel where his tongue should be is the gag, wet, shapeless. His tongue's gone.

Help.

He finds it, his tongue. Now that he has it, it suddenly feels swollen, too big for his mouth, like there's no space left for it beside the gag. 

His tongue feels clumsy, but he pushes at the gag anyway. He wants it out, out, out, he's suffocating. 

His mouth won't open. The gag stays lodged behind his teeth. His mouth won't open. 

Fear becomes panic. It bubbles inside his veins, under his skin. 

His head pounds. He can't think. He can't–

Buck regains consciousness. 

His head pounds. His heart is in his throat. 

No, not his heart. A gag. He was gagged. 

He feels like throwing up. He's suffocating. It smells sweet, and thick. It smells like a swimming pool with no ventilation. He feels sick.

His face feels itchy. His tongue and mouth and throat burn. His chest feels tight, his breath feels short.

Adrenaline pumps wildly through his body with no outlet, and he's shaking, and his bones are rattling. 

His stomach is rolling, rolling, rolling, and when he opens his eyes, the room is too bright and blinding and spinning, spinning, spinning, and it burns his eyes out. He closes them, quickly, but they burn anyway, and the rolling lightheadedness doesn't let up. 

Static runs all over his skin. White noise creeps in.

Buck regains consciousness.

His head pounds. His heart is in his throat and there's a gag in his mouth. 

He feels like throwing up. He feels so sick. Saliva floods his mouth again, mixes with the thick and sweet taste already there.

He can't throw up. With the obstruction in his mouth, he would aspirate. He would choke and die on his own vomit. How shameful, how pathetic. Pathetic sounds are already making their way through the gag, through his tightly sealed lips, little involuntary whines low in his throat. 

I don't want to die.

He's so scared. His heart beats madly as it tries to follow the whines out, to escape through the old scarred tissue of his throat just below his Adam apple. He hates suffocating. The universe doesn't care, and he suffocates anyway. On the gag, on his whines, on the heart that's lodged in his throat. He's suffocating. 

Help, he thinks, and knows it's useless. He's not a telepath. God, he wishes he were, he wishes, he wishes–

Help. 

It's useless, but he's scared, and he needs—

Bobby.

He needs–

Help. Bobby, help,

Buck regains consciousness.

His head pounds. There are voices around him, making the pounding worse. He can't make out what they're saying, but the tones sound professional, serious, hurried.

He doesn't feel safe.

They don't sound like his team. 

He always feels safe with his team, even when there is the crushing weight of a truck on his leg, or in the harrowing wake of a tsunami, or in a hospital bed on those bad days when his own body wants him dead, he feels safe with them. 

He doesn't feel safe now. 

Whatever is happening to him, he's not with his team.

His head is swimming, swimming, like it's stuck underwater. Maybe that's what's happening. Maybe that's why he can't breathe. 

He tries to lift his head, to find the surface, but only finds resistance. 

There are hands on his head, he realizes with a jolt. Hands on his head, pressing it against the hard unforgiving floor. 

Panic swims inside his veins.

He tries to find his own hands. He doesn't know where they are. All he can feel is his head pounding, his heart in his throat, that gag in his mouth, those hands on his head. He doesn't know where his body is. All he can smell and taste is that overwhelming, burning sweet stench. It makes his stomach roll, and roll, and roll. 

He feels so sick. 

He can't throw up. He knows this with certainty. 

He needs to find his body, then his hands. He needs to fight. He needs to fight back!

Panic makes breathing so hard. It latches onto his heart in the middle of his throat, makes it swell until his gasping breaths can barely squeeze through. He's suffocating. The gag in his mouth doesn't help. It makes things worse, with its sweet, burning, chemical stench. 

His stomach is rolling, rolling. He can't be sick, or he'll aspirate. He doesn't want to die. He doesn't want to die.  

Half of the stomach lies in the middle of the body, about four inches above the bellybutton, and the other half is tucked under the ribcage on the left.

Buck ignores the rolling and the smell and focuses on that, tries to visualize his ribcage, strong, sturdy. It shapes his torso. 

His muscles shake, his skin buzzes. 

He visualizes his torso, imagines his shoulders, then his arms, then his hands. He knows they're there, but finding them feels like digging blindly through wet mud. 

He finds them, eventually, his hands. They're pierced through by pins and needles, and when he makes fists, it hurts. Shooting pains, all along his arms, his shoulders, his muscles and his skin, and his stomach rolls, rolls, rolls. 

He gasps, and his throat is tight and burns and itches. He opens his eyes, and they burn and the world is spinning and rolling, rolling–

Buck regains consciousness.

He needs to fight. 

There are hands on his head, a hard floor against his face, hard voices around him.

His own hands, he balls into fists, but when he goes to move them, he finds resistance. 

Panic.

His hands are held against his back. He can't move them. He can't move at all. There are more hands, all over his body.  

Panic.

The voices and the hands are moving, in fits and starts, in jerky motions, like a poorly tuned radio.

Maybe it's him who's poorly tuned, who's in fits and starts. As if he keeps passing out, and waking up again, and passing out again. 

Buck regains consciousness.

His head pounds. There are hands on him, but the hard floor is gone. Gravity's upside down, and the world and his stomach are rolling, rolling, rolling. He feels so sick. There's a gag in his mouth, and its stench is suffocating. 

Help, he thinks, help, Bobby.

Panic. He feels so sick. His head and his heart pound.

Eddie. 

Eddie was with him, he remembers with a jolt of clarity. They were knocking on doors and there was a bright white light and his eyes hurt and burnt. 

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, help.

His clarity is a dying flame against the fog of his brain, and it's snuffed out before he can think. 

Is Eddie okay?

Buck regains consciousness. 

His head pounds. There are hard voices around him, and a carpeted, rumbling floor against his face. There's a gag in his mouth. He feels so sick. 

Eddie.

He's fighting so hard, but he's not strong enough. 

—

Eddie regains consciousness. 

It's with a jolt, and a warm, gloved hand presses against his chest to keep him down. 

He catches a pack of smelling salts quickly taken away from under his nose as his vision swims. 

"Easy, Eddie." 

Bobby. 

"You took a bad knock to the head."

There's wetness against his temple. He brings his fingers to it, and it only takes him two tries to find the sore spot. He hisses.

"Easy," Bobby repeats. 

Eddie blinks and squints. His eyes hurt. There's a bad smell lingering in his nose and a bad taste on his tongue.

"What happened?" He asks with a tongue that feels too big for his mouth. 

"We were about to ask you that."

Eddie blinks and squints. His eyes hurt, but he can just make out Hen's blurry face beside Bobby's equally blurry face. 

His head pounds. 

It's hard to think through the fog in his brain, bit he tries anyway. 

"What's the last thing you remember?"

A bright white light. 

His whole body jolts. "Flash grenade," he says, and sudden panic makes his heart pound. "Where's Buck?"

"We don't know." Hen's hands against his chest can't stop him from sitting up with a jerk. "Eddie, easy."

His vision swims and the room spins, and his head and his heart pound. "Where is he?"

He's listing to the side and before he can move to right himself, Bobby's strong hands hold him firm. 

"We don't know," Bobby repeats Hen's statement. "You both went radio silent. We found you unconscious on the floor. No sign of Buck."

Eddie's heart pounds and pounds. 

There's pressure against his temple. 

"This hasn't bled too much." Hen brandishes a blurry finger in front of his face. "Follow my finger."

"No. Buck–"

"Eddie. The faster you let me do my job, the faster we can try and figure out where Buck is."

She moves her finger from left to right, and Eddie begrudgingly follows. He knows she's right. With the way his head pounds and the way gravity tilts and the room spins, he probably has a concussion. 

His heart pounds. Buck doesn't have time for him to have a concussion. 

"I already informed dispatch that he was missing," Bobby says. "Athena's coming. Do you remember anything else?"

There's worry, tight and controlled, behind the calm facade in Bobby's voice. 

Eddie thinks hard, battles through the pain and through the fog. 

"Flash grenade," he says. "I couldn't see, could barely breathe."

He remembers confusion and pain. The fog in his brain is thick, heavy, and the pain isn't sharp enough to pierce through it. 

He grunts in frustration and distress. 

"Take your time," Bobby says. 

Buck doesn't have time, his brain screams.

"How many fingers am I holding up?" Hen demands.

Eddie blinks and squints. "Two."

Eddie blinks. His head pounds. 

"And now?"

Either she added two fingers, or he's seeing double. 

"Four." 

She nods, seemingly content enough with his answer. 

Buck doesn't have time, his brain screams. 

Buck was right beside him, he remembers. Then he was across the hallway. They were knocking on doors. Suspicion of gas leak. Abandoned building, save for squatters, so they had to check anyway. 

They just received the radio call that it was a false alert, when a flash grenade exploded in the space between them. 

"I was grabbed from behind," Eddie says. "Something–something was pressed against my face."

A chemical, pungent, ether-like smell. Like disinfectant, but sweeter. Like–

"Chloroform."

Eddie's heart pounds and pounds. 

"I was about to faint, but someone said–someone said…" He thinks, hard, pushes the pain and the fog aside. "They said: 'this one.' And then my head exploded. And then I woke up."

His heart pounds and pounds. 

The room is spinning before his eyes and panic claws at his veins. He's breathing too fast, he knows. He's sagging inside the safety of Bobby's arms before he can stop himself. 

"Easy, Eddie." 

Buck doesn't have time. 

Panic. 

"Bobby, where is he?"

Panic. 

"We'll find him, Eddie. We'll find him." Bobby's facade of calm can't quite mask his distress anymore. 

His head pounds, the room spins, and spins.

"Buck," he pleads. 

His heart pounds and pounds and pounds. He lost Buck. He failed, he failed, he failed. 

He didn't have Buck's back.

Chapter Text

Buck regains consciousness. 

Eddie.

He's alone.

There's a gag in his mouth. His hands are tied. His heart and his head pound in rhythm. 

The carpeted floor rumbles against his cheek. The motion exacerbates his nausea, and it takes every ounce of his waning and ebbing concentration not to be sick. 

(He can't be sick. He'll aspirate. He'll die.)

(He doesn't want to die.)

His grasps onto consciousness is tenuous, but he digs his fingernails in. 

The vapors from the rag in his mouth are making him nauseous, dizzy. Sweet taste, heady smell. His head pounds. 

Heady smell, like an indoor public pool on a hot summer day. Chlorine. Chloroform.

Chloroform. It's soaked into the rag in his mouth. He's been inhaling it, ingesting it. It explains the adrenaline buzzing inside his veins, and the nausea, and the dizziness, and the drowsiness.

He's got a history of cardiac and pulmonary failure. Prolonged exposure to enough chloroform could send him into convulsions, coma, organ failure. 

Help.

He's alone.

Eddie.

His concentration slips, and his stomach rolls, rolls, rolls. 

(He can't be sick. He'll die.)

He cries. 

The tears force their way through his squeezed shut eyes. They trace scalding lines on his skin, down his temples, down the bridge of his nose. 

Saliva floods his burning mouth, acid bursts from his rolling stomach and burns his oesophagus. 

(He'll die.)

Everything is burning. His tears, his skin his insides. 

He focuses on that. Anything to forget the rolling lightheadedness. He can't be sick, or he'll die, so he focuses on the heat boiling him from the inside out. 

He imagines it's a fire, hot, angry, and it eats him alive. It gnaws on his skin and on his flesh, gnaws down to the bone until he can't think of anything but the burning pain. 

Pain is familiar. Pain is his oldest ally. He knows pain. Nausea will kill him, but pain won't. He embraces it, embraces the flames.

He's walked through fire his entire life. 

The flames burn him even as he embraces them. They consume him, boil him from the inside, scorch his skin and melt his flesh until it sags off his bones in gooey bits—

Nausea returns full force. He can feel it climbing up his throat, shoving its way past his pounding heart, he imagines it flooding his mouth and his airways until he drowns in it—

He swallows convulsively, breathes through his nose. The sweet heady chemical smell almost topples the balance over, but he's stubborn, he's stubborn. He won't die. Not like that. 

He breathes through his nose, deeply, evenly. He wills, begs his stomach to settle. 

He's miserable. He cries, and the tears burn his eyes and his flesh.

Maddie. 

He needs Maddie. Maddie's arms around him. She always drove the hurt and the sickness away. Maddie's his oldest ally. She was there before pain was. 

Maddie, help. 

Maddie makes him feel safe. In a way no one else ever could. Not until–

Eddie. 

He jolts.

Is Eddie okay?

Eddie was there, before it all went to hell, right beside him. 

Is Eddie safe?

And suddenly, he needs eddie's touch. Eddie's so tactile, so gentle. A knee brushing his, a fleeting hand on his shoulder, a steady thumb against his skin.

He embraces that feeling instead; he finds it more comforting than the flames he pictured earlier, or the pain that betrayed him. 

Eddie.

He imagines an even gentler touch, Eddie's hands on his cheeks, thumbs soothing his tears. Eddie's skin warm against his own, hot even, but he bears it gladly. Eddie's touch is so soft, so gentle. 

He imagines Eddie's voice, his warm tone dripping onto him like golden honey, enveloping him like early morning sunlight. 

Eddie.

Drowsiness takes him as Eddie's voice lulls him into the dark. 

Buck regains consciousness. 

Eddie.

He's burning up.

Is Eddie okay?

The carpeted floor rumbles against his cheek. Nausea rolls around, low in his belly. He's suffocating. 

He opens his eyes. They burn, and the world tilts and dances, even though it's so dark there's nothing to see. 

He's alone. 

He's folded in two, curled up on himself. The carpeted floor rumbles against his cheek. He's burning up. He's suffocating. It's dark. The floor rumbles. 

He's in the trunk of a car. 

His heart pounds a staccato rhythm. There  isn't many reasons why he'd be in the trunk of a car. He likes none of them. 

Escape! his brain screams. 

The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard made it so that every car built since September first, 2001 must be equipped with a release latch inside the trunk compartment.

He just needs to find that latch. 

His hands are tied behind his back. 

Okay. He can–He can barely think. He's so hot. He's suffocating. He can–He can kick the headlights out, flag passing cars. 

He can't move, his body lethargic. His feet are tied too, he thinks. He can't see anything, it's so dark. 

Move! His brains screams at his body. Move! Move! Escape! Fight!

He can't.

He can–He can–

He can't think.

He's burning up. 

He's being cooked alive in the trunk of a car, he thinks hysterically.

He feels the strongest urge to laugh, for a minute, and then he feels the strongest urge to cry. 

He tries to imagine Eddie's voice and touch again, but he can't quite grasp onto his memories of them. They slip through his fingers like smoke. 

He's burning up. 

There's nothing but the heat and his nausea to accompany him into the dark.

Buck regains consciousness, clumsily, sluggishly.

He's burning, he's suffocating. 

He panics, but his panic is just as clumsy and sluggish. 

The carpeted floor is still against his cheek. 

He breathes in through his nose, but the air is stale and sweet, and his nausea takes it as an invitation.

(He can't be sick! He'll die!)

He whines, begs his body to not betray him. Fresh air hits his burning face, but he barely registers it as he shakes and swallows and whines. 

(He won't die. He won't. Not like this.)

There are hands on him. (Not Eddie's.) They grab his head, grab his face. They pull at the sticky line of tape covering his mouth with one harsh move that leaves his lips stinging, but he doesn't care. He doesn't care because suddenly he can open his mouth. 

The hands grab his shoulders and gravity shifts as he's dragged and thrown out of the trunk. He hits the gravel with a jarring impact, but he doesn't care.

All he cares about is spitting that gag out of his mouth. It resists him, and he pushes at it with his tongue, vomit already climbing up his throat. 

It finally falls out, and his relief is so complete even as he throws up into the dirt that it almost sends him into the dark again. 

He sobs as he retches, and it burns all the way up. It burns him from the inside out. 

He's miserable.

Where's Eddie? Was Eddie with him? Is Eddie okay?

Voices raise around him, but he can't comprehend what they're saying. They're all jumbled inside his brain. 

All that he cares about is that the rag is gone, the sweet taste lingers, and he's still burning up. His flesh was set ablaze, and he's vomiting nothing but bile now, but he can't seem to stop.

He's on fire, he must've forgotten his coat. Bobby's gonna be mad at him, but he'll tuck Buck under his arm and smother the flames away, and where is Eddie? It's Eddie okay? Why isn't Eddie here? 

Voices are raised around him, a background cacophony to his distress, and he ignores them until he catches Eddie's name.

"—fuck is Eddie? Eddie's not here."

Where's Eddie?

"He the guy you where with?"

Where's his team? He needs assistance. He's burning up. The fire got him. 

"They're not coming for you. They don't care about you. I bet Eddie's pretty relieved we grabbed you and not him."

Eddie. Eddie.

If he pushes past his selfish needs, Buck is relieved Eddie's not here too. He doesn't want Eddie that close to the fire. 

More voices join this one, more people. 

In a flash of clarity, Buck understands he's surrounded. He's surrounded, not by fire but by people, and they're hostile, and already trying to get into his head. 

His team cares. He knows that. Eddie cares. Eddie has Buck's back and Buck's trust, always. 

Eddie.

More hands grab him. They turn him on his back, trap his hands beneath him. Fight! His brain screams. Or flee! He can't do either. He squints against the blinding harsh light, and his eyes still burn. Something bips against his forehead. The world spins above him, the ground rolls beneath him.

Eddie.

He feels sick again, but he can't possibly have anything left to bring up. 

Eddie. 

"Shut up about Eddie."

He might throw up blood next. His stomach might dissolve, and he'll vomit that, and then all the rest of his organs until he's nothing but an empty shell of burnt out flesh.

Another bip, near his head.

"He's burning up," someone says. 

No shit. 

"Trying to kill him before they start?"

The words are threatening, (kill, they said), but he can't make them make sense. His brain is slush. The ground rolls under his back. He's laying on top of a giant tsunami wave, but the water isn't wet enough to put out the fire burning him out.

(He'll die.)

Hands on him, hard voices. "Wouldn't bet on this one," they say.

Eddie, he wants, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie,

Chapter Text

When Eddie regains consciousness, he's filled with dread. He doesn't remember why, not yet.

"Buck," he says.

Antiseptic smells, hushed sounds outside the door, a bed underneath him. He's in a hospital. Emergency room.

"Where's Buck?"

There's Bobby beside him. He looks tired. Old. "Easy, Eddie," he says. 

This feels like a bad case of déjà vu. 

"Where is he?" He insists. 

Bobby sighs, and the whole heavy world seems to drop and settle on his shoulders right before Eddie's eyes. 

Good. That's how Eddie feels. 

"There was another abduction," his captain says instead of answering. "Around the same time as Buck. Same m.o."

Bobby pinches the bridge of his nose. He looks so old.

"A police officer," he continues. "Athena says–" He looks so old. "She says it might be beneficial. To Buck. A police officer missing means they'll pull no stop to the investigation."

Abduction. Missing. Investigation. 

He feels sick. He realises his head is pounding, heavy, steady blows, right behind his eyes.

Where's Buck, he wants to ask again. He knows he would sound petulant. He almost does anyway before Bobby interrupts. 

"We're waiting for your all clear. You already underwent a CT scan. Concussion. You were pretty agitated earlier."

Eddie doesn't care. He doesn't care about himself, his health.

He doesn't understand how this could have happened. How Buck could have been abducted right under his nose. How he could have failed so spectacularly at his job. He's supposed to have Buck's back. That was their first promise to each other. 

He feels sick. 

Bobby has to leave when a call through the radio asks for him. 

"I'll be back with any news I get," he tells Eddie. 

Eddie wants to follow him out. He wants those news first hand. 

He doesn't move. Bobby leaves, draws back the curtains shut behind him, and Eddie's left alone. 

His bed is at the very end of the room. There's a window on that wall. A bed with a view, lucky him. It's dark out, and the moon stares back at him. 

It was already dark when they went to that gas leak call. It can't have been more than a few hours. He wishes he knew how many exactly. He hates not knowing. He hates being kept in the dark. If they hope to find him alive, those first hours are the most important. 48 hours. That's how many they get. After that, hope will turn twisted and bitter, and the odds will stack up against them until all the hope they have left is to find a body they can bury. 

He wants to scream. He wants to scream, and break things, and break himself into pieces.

Buck, he wants to scream, wants to feel his throat bleed around the name. Buck.

Buck always knows how to put the pieces back of him together. He's always there, so steady, so dependable, with glue in his hands, a crooked smile on his face, kindness and compassion in his eyes.  

He's not there now. 

Eddie wants to scream. 

He should do something. Anything. Not wait around for–for what? For the police to find a clue, a lead, a body?

He feels sick. 

Through the window, the moon stares back at him. 

—

When Buck regains consciousness, the world isn't spinning. 

He can't remember why he's so grateful that it isn't. He feels weak and shaky, like he's just coming out of a bad case of the flu. 

He still feels sick. 

He'd remember, if he had the flu, right? That's not what happened, he thinks. 

Digging through his memories makes his head pound in time with his heart. He lets it go for now, and takes stoke of his body and state instead. 

Weak, shaky. Check. Achy, queasy. 

There's a stinging pain in the crook of his left elbow. He's had enough in his life to know an needle was inserted there not long ago. He brushes his right hand against the pain. Nothing there. Not even a bandaid. 

He's wearing his uniform. It's uncomfortable on his skin, not meant to be slept in. His radio's not there, nor his flashlight, or his phone, his pockets empty. His boots are gone and his feet are cold.

There's a hard, uncomfortable bed under his back. A mattress. No sheet. No pillow. 

Not a hospital bed. Certainly not his room, not the bunk beds of the firehouse, not his jeep, not Eddie's couch.

There's no scent in the air, nothing, no distinctive smells to orient himself.

No sounds, either. Just a vague hum that could mean nothing and anything. 

It's just him. He's alone. He doesn't know where he is. He's not even sure he's awake.

His heart misses a beat and then pounds twice as hard and twice as fast to make up for it.

He opens his eyes. Darkness greets him. 

Relief floods his brain first. 

Relief that dark means it's not the dream. The old coma dream he'd thought he'd left behind; the one that still takes him by surprise sometimes. This isn't that. It's always broad daylight in the dream. It's never dark.  

Relief comes and goes in a flash. Once it's gone, he's only filled with dread. 

Dread that, if this is real, it means he woke up in the dark in a place he doesn't know. He doesn't like the implications of that. 

Last time he woke up in the dark, he was in the trunk of a car. 

The memory sucker punches him: waking up curled up with his cheek pressed against a rumbling carpeted floor, gag in his mouth, panic in his heart. Burning, suffocating. 

He gasps, and relief rushes back in that he can, unobstructed. 

Adrenaline kicks in, and in swings his legs to the side and gets up in one move. Too fast. Diziness almost drags him back down, but he's stubborn, and he pushes through, and he stays standing, one hand braced against a wall. He blinks, and blinks, and blinks, until the white spots and bright colors leave his vision and only the dark remains. 

He keeps his hand against the wall, using it as a guide as he shuffles around the room he's in. He makes quick work of it. A bed, a toilet, a sink. No window. One door, between the bed and the sink. No handle. Only one slim vertical gap in the wall indicate that there even is a door.

He bends down, finds the gap above the floor at the bottom of the floor. He can barely fit a fingernail through. If he stretches on his tip toes, he can touch the ceiling. It's smooth. No lightbulb. His fingers find the space between the top of the door and the ceiling m, but the gap there is just as thin. His fingers follow the rectangle of the door. No hinges. The door probably opens outward. He pushes. He pushes, and pushes, and pushes, hard as he can, until tears run down his face and screams rip through his throat. 

Help. 

We'll always come, Hen had said to him once. We always will, she'd said. 

His strength abandons him and he sags against the door, forehead pressed against it until it hurts.

Help. Please, come. Come get me. Help. 

Oh, he's panicking. His breathing is too fast, and he feels lightheaded. 

He sits back down. He doesn't know what to do. 

He doesn't know what to do.

Help. 

Eddie. 

He'd been with Eddie, he remembers. Right before—this. 

He gets back up, walks around the room again. Two steps. Two steps. Two steps. In each direction, two steps. Accounting for the width of the bed. If he stretches his step, he can cross the room in one single stride. His stride is two feet, eight inches. 32 inches. 1024 square inches. Seven point one square feet. 

Help. 

He's not claustrophobic, he's not. His breathing picks up, and he has to concentrate not to hyperventilate. He just happens to prefer large spaces. Open floors, wide outdoors. 

Eddie. 

There's nothing Eddie can do, he tells himself harshly. Or Bobby, or Maddie. Or any of them. Pull yourself together, he tells himself. 

He very much hope they're looking for him, though. Eddie was there. He'll tell them he didn't just run away. 

He walks around the room again. The sink is sturdy. So is the toilet. No lid. There's running water when he turns on the faucet. He's so thirsty. His mouth is dry, his throat raw. He lets two fingers hover under the cold water, long enough that he can't feel them anymore. He's so thirsty. 

He turns the water off. A sink and a toilet can only mean he might be here a while. 

He's not claustrophobic. He's not. 

The bed is bolted to the ground. The bolts are screwed firmly in place. The mattress is not, however. It's thin, and light enough, so he grabs it, props it up against the door. He's hoping that'll take his captors by surprise enough that he can fight his way out. 

His captors. It hits him then, hard, harder than it ever had until now. He's been abducted. There can't be many reasons why he'd be abducted. He likes none of them. 

Help. 

He walks around the room again. The walls are smooth, the sink and toilet are sturdy, the bed is bolted to the floor.

He waits. 

He tries very, very hard not to panic. 

He waits. 

He walks around the room.

He panics. 

He waits. 

He walks around the room. 

The water is cold when he turns on the faucet. He's bending down and drinking straight from it before he can stop himself. The water is cold, with an earthy, slightly rusty taste, and it is so, so delicious. He drinks and drinks, until his stomach rolls and makes him stop.

He cries. Gives water in the form of salted tears right back to the sink. 

He's exhausted. Eventually, he curls up on the ground, between the sink and the mattress. 

He sleeps. 

He regains consciousness. 

It's dark. 

He's alone. He hates being alone. 

He tries very, very hard not to panic.

He panics anyway.  

He hates being alone.

He waits. 

He has no idea how many hours pass. After a while, he gets hungry. He figures maybe half a day has passed. Could be a full day. He doesn't know how long he was unconscious for. He doesn't know how long he was in that trunk before. He doesn't know. He doesn't know. 

He walks around the room. The walls are smooth. 

He sits. 

He sleeps. 

He wakes.

It's dark. 

He holds his hands out in front of him. He can just discern them, he thinks. Or maybe his mind just knows what they look like and he's rendering the image for his eyes. Playing tricks. Use your imagination, his dad would say when he asked if he could watch TV. You have too much imagination, his mom would say when he tried to tell her stories. 

He stared at nothing. 

He waits. 

Hours pass. 

He gets really hungry. The queasiness that clings to his stomach makes just enough room for hunger to become painful. He feels sick. 

He gets up, turns on the faucet, drinks. It helps, a little. It pushes the hunger far enough that he can ignore it. He still feels sick. 

He's exhausted. 

He feels like crying, but the tears don't come. He walks around the room instead. His knees hurt when he stands up, his legs cramp. He welcomes the pain. 

The walls are smooth. The ceiling too. 

He thinks about Eddie, and Maddie, and Bobby. 

He sits, head in his hands.

Help.

He thinks about Hen, about Chim. He wants his team. Are they looking for him? Do they know where to start? Are there videos of his abduction, clues, leads? Are they just as much in the dark as he is right now?

He's alone. He hates being alone. 

He wants to feel someone against him, hear their heartbeats, feel their warmth in his arms. He thinks about Chris and about Jee. 

He shuts that thought down. 

He can't drag the thought of them here, can't stain their softness with whatever this is. "No," he says, and his voice his rough and broken. 

He walks around the room. He's frenetic as he bangs on the smooth walls, the closed door. He doesn't scream, but he's breathing too fast again. He wants to stop and sit, but he can't, he can't, he needs out, he wants out! He bangs and bangs on the walls until the skin of his knuckles splits. He thinks about bashing his head against the wall instead, until he bleeds and bleeds and dies, and that's when he stops and sits. 

He's exhausted. 

Help, he thinks. Come get me. 

He sleeps. He wakes. It's dark. 

Hunger is back with a vengeance. It twists and contorts in his stomach, like it's trying to eat itself. 

Once, he was used to going long stretches without eating. When Maddie left the house, Evan got sad. Then he got angry, and then he got apathetic. Depressed, he realized a long, long time later. He'd stay alone in his room, or stay alone outside, for hours upon hours. He'd go full days without eating.

When he was little, his parents would make a  point of eating as a family. Those meals would be an awkward affair, that none of them enjoyed. As he grew into a teenager and Maddie moved out, they gave up on that idea. 

With no one to supervise his eating habits, he would often just not go to the trouble of feeding himself. He'd lie in bed, feel his stomach twist and contort in distress until it lied still again, defeated. He'd wonder if his parents would notice as he starved himself. If they would see that he was hurting without his blood to show as proof. If they would comfort him, feed him, hug him. 

They never did. Suffering wasn't enough; their love needed to be paid in blood and bruises. Mom would make comment about the state of him, and dad's eyebrows would crease in worry. 

But they never came to his room, got him up, got him out. They never helped him. 

Even now, he still resents them. 

He sleeps. 

He wakes.

It's dark. 

He's alone. 

His body hurts.

He cries. In fear, in anger, in despair. No tears come and his eyes burn. 

Hours pass. Days now, probably. Two. Not three, he doesn't think. Not yet. He's not hungry anymore, and he feels weak. 

He hates being alone. 

He wants out. He wants out. 

He thinks about clawing the mattress open, stuffing it's insides down the sink, leaving the sink open until water fills the room. 

The room isn't airtight, or he'd be dead by now. Suffocated. Poisoned by his own CO2. 

The water would go right under the door. His captors would be bound to notice. He wonders if they're close. How far the water would have to go before they noticed. If they would ever notice at all. 

Maybe there's not captors at all. Maybe they left as soon as they dropped him here. Maybe they left him behind without a second thought, abandoned him to die in this hole. 

Maybe the water would eventually hit a dead end, and it'd fill his room, fill every square inch up to the ceiling, fill him up, his lungs, his stomach, until he's nothing but water. 

He doesn't want to drown. He doesn't want to die. 

He wants Maddie. He wants Eddie, and Bobby. He wants his team. 

Come get me. 

He sleeps. 

Chapter Text

When Buck regains consciousness, he's taken by surprise. 

The door is opened brusquely, someone curses, and the mattress falls halfway on top of him. He jumps, and his hands splash on the floor beside him. His entire bottom clings wetly to his body, and for a second he wonders with shame if he's wet the bed. 

He opens his eyes, and the bright light stabs into his skull. He squints and grunts but catches the sight of his torn open mattress. He hears the sound of a running faucet. He's sitting in an inch of water. 

He thought he'd dreamt that. 

His mind catches up to him just as the mattress is ripped from the room. 

He'd meant–he'd meant to use that as a distraction. He'd meant to fight back. 

Hands grab him just as he throws an uncoordinated punch. He feels so weak. He meant to hit a face, but instead of soft flesh, his knuckles catch a hard surface with a clang. Pain snaps through his hand.

He looks into the face of his assailant, and a blank face stares back. He stares, uncomprehending, before his brain kicks into gear. 

It's a mask.

A nondescript white mask, like a porcelain doll face without any painted details.

He's in a horror movie. 

He feels like he should panic. He doesn't, not really. His heart beats madly, but the rest of him is disconnected from it. He's probably too wrung out for strong emotions right now, he thinks.

Before he can try for another more effective punch, he receives his own blow across the jaw, and his head snaps to the side. He sees stars. 

Before he can recover, two hands wrap around his throat and squeeze. His air is cut off, and he gasps and sputters as the stars in his vision become supernovas that threaten to consume him. He grabs the hands and kicks his legs, uselessly, as the hands use their grip around his neck to stand him up. He kicks again, desperate to breathe. His head pounds, and feels like it's about to burst into its own supernova. 

The hands let go. 

Buck stumbles against the wall, bracing against the sink to stay standing. The water is still running, cascading over the edges of the bowl, almost making him slip. He gasps in raspy greedy gulps of air, blinks the tears and the stars out of his vision. 

The doll mask wearing man takes a step back. He lets Buck recover, looking around Buck's prison almost curiously. "You redecorated," he says. He sounds amused. 

Then, "Strip," he says. 

Buck freezes. No. No way. 

"Strip," the doll repeats. Buck can't see his face, but he can hear the smirk in his voice. It raises goosebumps on his skin as it turns his blood to ice. "Then we'll play a game. Then you'll get to eat. If you're still hungry."

Buck's mind immediately takes him to the worst possible place. He absolutely doesn't want to play this game. The ice in his veins weighs his body down at the implications. There can't be too many reasons why he wouldn't be hungry after. He likes none of them. 

He already feels sick. 

He doesn't budge. They'll have to make him. They'll have to fight him.

There's a strap hanging from the man's shoulder. Something hangs from it, half behind the man's back, long, metallic, with a handle and a trigger. 

Buck stares at it. His blood is so, so cold. To his dismay, he starts shaking. 

"Okay," the doll says, and Buck can hear his smile. "Strip later. We have time."

To Buck's surprise, the man with a doll face takes another step back. 

"You can run," he says. 

Buck takes a beat, and his heart hammers inside his chest. His brain is dialed up to flight or fight, but the dial keeps frantically swinging back and forth between the two, back and forth, back and forth, his mind overloading. 

He's frozen.

The dolls stands there and points a helpful finger toward the exit. "This way," he says. "Run."

It's a trap. Buck wants to fight him anyway just to be contradictory. 

The doll places a gloved hand on the metallic shape at his back, and brings it around to the front, finger on the trigger. Two prongs stand menacingly at the other end. 

A hot flush runs through Buck's cold body.

A cattle prod. 

He really, really doesn't want to deal with electricity. He's not ready, not yet. It's already killed him once. 

He's standing barefoot in water. While his brain scrambles to try and make him understand how bad this adds up to the cattle prod, his animal instinct claws at him and takes over.

He's running before he knows his legs are moving, out in the hallway, over the mattress. He stumbles, catches himself on a blank wall. No windows. It's a short hallway, a dead end to the right, doors lining up one side. They look locked, and he doesn't try them. There are stairs to the left, going up. That's where his feet take him. His legs feel like jelly, shaking, cramping, and he almost falls over himself as he climbs the stairs. 

At the top is another hallway, two double doors at the other end. He reaches them, tries them. Locked. He pushes against them, then throws his whole body against them. They're sturdy, and he's weak, and they hold. 

As he gets ready to throw his weight against the door again, he glances around. 

There are more doors lining this hallway. The one directly to his left is opened.

It's a trap. 

At the other end, at the top of the stairs, the doll stands and watches him. 

Buck wants to charge him, push him down the stairs. 

His animal instinct takes one more look at the cattle prod, rewires his brain and hijacks his body. It takes him through the open door on the left, and even as he does it, Buck knows it's a mistake. 

The room is bare, a few times bigger than the one he was locked in. There's a metal gurney on one side, shackles hanging from the ceiling on the other, and a camera set up near the far wall. 

Fuck, no, Buck thinks, and backpedals.

A kick to the back of his left shin makes him fall to one knee. He twists, punches the man in the groin without a second thought. He hears a satisfying grunt as the man's legs buckle, and he scrambles for the cattle prod with one hand, keeps the other in a defensive position. He blocks a punch, but the man uses his distraction to thrust the butt of the prod into his face, right between the eyes.

More stars, more tears, and he blinks. 

Another blow catches him right in the sternum. The air is punched out of him, and scrambles for the door, desperate to get out, get out, get out. 

A hand catches the back of his collar. He hissed, almost feral, throws his elbow into the soft belly of his captor, once, twice, into his groin again. 

He hears a gasped out 'oof' and he gets back up to his feet, but his left leg folds under him.

No.

He expects to feel the bite of electricity any moment, and his heart jackhammers inside his chest cavity while his lungs beg him to take a breath. 

The hand is still holding strong onto his collar, and it drags and throws him back, clear across the room. 

He immediately gets back up as his diaphragm finally unclenches enough for a tiny sip of air to rush through, and it leaves him lightheaded. 

He gasps and breathes, greedily, desperately. His left leg buckles but holds underneath him, and he straightens up, as much as he can, fighting to catch his breath. 

The doll stands between him and the doorway. He's breathing hard, too. But he certainly had a good meal and a good night's sleep in the last twenty four hours.

This isn't a fair fight. 

The eyes looking at him through the doll mask are hard, grey, cold. 

"Are you done?" The doll says. "Out of your system?"

Buck stares at him, defiant. He doesn't trust his voice not to break. He's still feeling like he's breathing through a collapsing straw.

"You have a choice now," the doll says, content enough with his silence. "Three options. You will get acquainted to this," he shows off the cattle prod, and the animal inside Buck screams and claws. "You can take it standing," the doll nods towards the shackles, "or lying down," he nods towards the gurney. 

He stops there. Buck waits. Those two options don't appeal to him. He's not sure he'll like the third option any more.

The doll just stands and stares. He's waiting for a reaction. 

Buck balls his hands into fists. He'll aim to go down with some dignity. Fair fight or not. 

"You want to go down fighting. That's not your third option." Buck can hear his smile, but the eyes behind the mask level him with a dead stare. "You are not our only captive. If you try to fight, I will leave you here, and use this on someone else. The choice is yours: standing up, lying down, or complicit."

His smile is all teeth, Buck thinks, and there's no laugh lines around his eyes. 

Someone else, Buck thinks, desperate. Please, use this on someone else. Please, leave me alone. Please.

Help. 

He can't. He can't be complicit in someone else's suffering. If he can save some innocent person's pain, someone in the same position as him, confused and scared and weak, then he will. He'll endure. He knows pain. Pain's his oldest ally.

He just wishes it weren't a cattle prod. Anything but that. Electricity's killed him once already. 

He steels himself. He's endured it once. He can endure it twice. 

He was struck by the wrath of the sky. A typical lightning bolt carries around 125 million volts. Some of the bolts recorded the night he was struck were at 300 million volts. 30 thousands amps. And he got back up. Lightning bolt are fifteen thousands degrees Celsius hot. Hotter than the surface of the sun. And he got back up.

This is nothing. 

Cattle prods are high voltage. (Up to 10 thousands volts, and it's nothing, it's nothing against millions and millions of volts.) Cattle prods are low current. They're made to hurt, not to kill. 

It's nothing. It's just pain. 

Pain's his oldest ally. Pain's his oldest tool.

He stands beneath the shackles. There are two more manacles bolted to the floor. 

He can take it, and he'll take it standing. 

"A good choice," the man in the doll mask says. 

Buck stares at him. He makes his gaze hard. He's unwilling to show any more fear. 

"Strip," the doll says. 

Buck's heart is beating so fast inside his chest, he's afraid he'll give himself a heart attack before the electricity even has a chance to touch him. 

He doesn't want to strip. He wants dignity. 

"Strip," the doll repeats. "Or we'll go with the third option."

Yes, Buck thinks. Please. He wants the choice taken from him. He wants the man in the mask to decide he's not with his time. 

He can't. He can't think like that. He's stripped in front of many strangers before. Exposed himself, laid himself bare. His body is a tool, nothing more. He's not ashamed of it, and he's not afraid of pain. 

He strips. He stares straight at the man. He ignores the camera blinking ominously to the left of him. 

"Good," the doll says. The cold, dead eyes behind the mask look him up and down. "You'll be popular."

Buck stares at him. He's unwilling to show any more fear. 

"Feet first."

Don't, the animal inside screams. Don't, don't, don't! 

He puts one feet inside the first manacle. He's already shaking. Don't! the animal screams. He closes the manacle. It snaps shut around his left ankle with a click. It feels so final, like he's sealing his own fate.

He is. Don't! the animal screams.

His fate was sealed the moment they threatened someone else. 

He slides his right foot into the manacle, closes it with a click.

The choice was taken from him.

He stands back up. His heart is about to punch out of his chest. 

"Hands go in the circles."

Don't! the animal screams, pleads, begs. Don't! Don't! Don't!

The doll and the camera stare at him, unblinking. 

Help.

He raises his arms. He's hesitant, tentative. He's showing fear, when he swore he wouldn't. 

Help.

The shackles are padded. But the skin of his wrists is already sore, raw, red. 

Help. 

His hands shake so badly he struggles to fit them through the circles.

Help.

He closes the shackles around his own wrists. The resulting twin clicks echo around the room. Buck's heartbeat echoes around his head, so fast, so fast. 

He uses one of his hands to squeeze his other hand. His body's instinctively trying to comfort itself. It's not working. It's not working. He squeezes harder, digs his fingernails in. Be brave. 

"So brave," the doll says. 

Buck jumps, and the manacles clink. He's so exposed. He's so vulnerable. 

The man advances. Buck wants to step back, but he's stuck. 

"Ready?" 

No. No. No. No. Please, he wants to beg. 

He's so exposed. 

A whine builds in the back of his throat. The man advances, raises the cattle prod. 

Buck stares at it, breathes hard through his nose. He feels sick. 

Help.

He thinks about the places the doll is going to aim for, the places that would maximise his pain. The tips of his fingers and the soles of his feet are not in easy reach. They won't be the targets. There are other, more accessible places. The back of the knees. The inner thighs. The genitals. He's so vulnerable. It takes everything in him not to let the whine slip out. 

Help.

The cattle prod hovers near the skin of his left flank, over the fleshy part just above his hip.

He won't beg. 

Cold, dead eyes stare at him through the mask. There are no laugh lines around them. 

"You're allowed to scream," the doll says. "Or beg." He won't. He won't. "Or even piss yourself. No judgment." 

Buck thinks he can see glee in the depth of those cold, dead eyes, and then the prongs touch his skin. 

The shock of it makes his body jolt. A grunt is punched out of him. He's expecting to feel electricity course through his body, but it doesn't. The pain stays on his flank, heating, searing, burning. 

He's seing stars again, and he clenches his teeth shut. He won't let the whine slip out. A grunt is all they'll get. 

The current stops, and his body shakes. 

The pain doesn't go away. It heats his skin, sears, burns. 

The smell of burnt flesh hits his nose then, and he gags. Tears cling to his lashes. He doesn't let the whine out. 

A soft exhales comes from behind the mask. It sounds like a breathy laugh. "Stoic."

The man chooses another spot, higher on his flank, just above the first mark. He pulls on his trigger again, and electricity sparkles between the two prongs.

Buck braces himself. 

The shock of it robs his breath anyway. 

The pain is just as bad. It burns. It burns, like living fire. His flesh sizzles and this time he can smell it right away. He gags, feels acid climb up his throat, feels tears run down his cheek. 

The electricity stops, but the pain doesn't. 

He clenches his teeth so hard his jaw cracks. 

The man chosses another spot, higher along his flank, right below his ribcage. 

It burns, it sizzles, he gags, he cries. He doesn't beg, but he does throw up. There's nothing but bile in his stomach.

The electricity stops; the pain doesn't. 

There's a gloved hand on his chin, wiping the bile away. Black and white spots fill his vision. The room spins. His ears buzz. 

The gloved hand lifts his chin. "You in there?"

Despite himself, he gives another grunt. He doesn't want that hand touching him. He's shaking, making his chains rattle. There's a line of fire across his side.

He feels sick.

The hand lets go, and the prongs return. Higher, and it burns, it sizzles, it melts his flesh. 

His heart galops inside his chest. It bangs against his ribs, against his sternum, desperate to escape the hurt.

The pain doesn't stop. 

The man keeps going. 

The pain keeps going. 

He doesn't beg, but the whine does make it through. 

Chapter Text

Buck doesn't pass out, not really. 

Pain is his entire world. He's fine with it. Pain makes him stubborn, and tenacious. Pain doesn't make him give in. It clears his mind.

He does still expect, deep in the recesses of unlabeled folders in his subconscious, to be rewarded for it. He's working on that, but rewiring his brain takes patience and effort, and he's not an electrician. God, he doesn't want to touch electricity ever again. 

Electricity's too insidious to be the kind of pain he can draw purpose from. 

Shuffled steps and muddled voices are background noise to his oversaturated senses. He concentrates and he pulls himself together, little by little, using the pain as a crutch. His body is only a shell, a bodyguard to his spirit. His body can take the hits, but he's determined to not let his mind fall into oblivion. He's lost enough time. 

The gloved hand taking hold of his chin is a stab of clarity through his skull. He doesn't flinch. His body is only a shell. 

The hand lets go of his chin to fumble with the manacles. He forces himself to not tense up as he prepares to hit the ground. 

He doesn't. His arms drop and the pins and needle are excruciating. But before the rest of his body drops too, the same hands catch him and hold him against a warm chest. 

His body is a shell, but his insides clench and curl up. His eyes prick, and the tears fall backward to form a lump behind his Adam apple. He hasn't been held in so long. 

This is not a reward, he reminds himself. You're captive. They tortured you. They're a threat. 

Just like mom and dad, he thinks, and feels mean. Yet, he still craves his parents' affection despite how many times and how profoundly they hurt him.

His feet are freed, and he's pushed up onto the man's shoulder before he can decide if it's time to try to escape. They're not talking anymore, but he remembers hearing voices, plural. Several feet. He's outnumbered. 

He plays dead as the man deposits him onto the metal gurney. It's cold against his hot skin and despite himself he shivers at it, and at the loss of physical contact with the man.

He hates himself a little. 

The people in the room don't pay attention to his trembling. It's not unusual for unconscious people to shiver and shake. They only adjust one strap across his body to keep him on the gurney and leave his hands and feet alone. His cover's not blown. 

A bundle of fabric is deposited at this feet. The material feels familiar. His clothes, probably. He has to quell the urge to reach for them. 

He very much hopes they're not taking him back to his dark cage. He can't take another minute in there, he can't. He'll lose his mind, he'll go insane.

It's already so difficult to keep a grip on his mind. He's hanging by the skin of his teeth, using the pain of his injured shell to keep himself alert. 

He hasn't eaten in days. He's been drugged, tortured. He's not exactly fit to fight his way out, but he's intent, as much as possible, to learn about the layout of this place, maybe about the true intentions of his captors, should they like to start talking again. 

He's wheeled out of the room. To his relief, they steer him in the opposite direction of the stairs leading to his dreaded cell, and through the double doors that were locked earlier. A spike of adrenaline hits him then, but he stays still. His side hurts. 

They make a right turn, into another room. Harsh bright light stab into his skull through his closed lids. Could be nighttime, could be another windowless room. For all he knows, they're in a bunker and escaping might be close to impossible. 

One thing at the time. 

They come to a stop. He feels the brakes scrap against the floor. 

He hopes they'll leave the room now. The pain in his side is radiating, coming and going in strong, almost overwhelming waves. He doesn't drown in the pain, pushes right through. He's always been a good swimmer. 

Please, leave me alone. 

"I'm prepping the next one," one voice says – the man from earlier, the man in the doll face. "Call the Pig if you need to," he adds, amidst retreating footsteps. 

Yes, good, leave, he thinks desperately. He wants him far away from him. He fleetingly wonders who the 'next one' might be, and feels guilt churn in his guts, right at home among his other pains.

One thing at a time. 

He waits, prays for the other person to leave, but they don't. He hears them moving aroundin the room. He might have to take his chance now. He opens his eyes to mere slits, and the lights blind him. They're right above him, he can feel the heat of them on his naked, already burning skin. He only catched a glimpse of a white coat. Too close. 

He hears a wooden door open and close, like a cupboard. More rummaging, then the familiar sound of an IV bag being filled. 

He desperately needs fluids. Maybe some preventive antibiotics for his wounds. He hasn't felt this weak since he was recovering from clinical death and a consequent coma. 

But he doesn't know what else they intend to put in that IV, and he absolutely would rather not be drugged. They had no qualms exposing him for a prolonged period to chloroform earlier. He doesn't remember much about his abduction, but he does viscerally remember just how miserable he felt. 

He'd like to not repeat the experience. 

He'd also rather not be sedated. 

The person moves closer to him, and it's clear they don't intend to leave the room. He wonders if he missed his best shot when their back was turned. 

A strong smell of antiseptic reaches his nostril just before he feels the swab of a cotton pad in the crook of his arm. 

Time to move. 

He grabs the strap still holding him down and slides right under it, across the metal of the gurney and falls to the ground at the foot of it. He can't help a whine as he climbs on shaky legs. 

His side burns and sizzles as he straightens, a tingling sensation spreading to his entire left side. 

This was a bad plan. He won't be standing long. 

He looks around, fast, taking the room in in an single glance. 

The room is brightly lit, no window, one door, closed. Metal gurneys and a metal table in the center. A tall and heavy-looking, brown wood, glass-paneled cabinet stands against the wall by the door, filled with old books, vials, curiosities. Buck catches sight of a lifesize human skull, before he brings his gaze back around toward the pressing matter at hand. 

He locks eyes with the other person in the room. Another white, doll-like mask stares back at him. It makes the hair all over Buck's skin stand up. The eyes behind the mask are round, surprised. 

They both stand still, for only a second, before their eyes flicker at the same time to the side, toward the metal table carrying a syringe, a scalpel. 

The white coat reaches the table first, and Buck doesn't waster time before punching them straight in the solar plexus. The white coat drops, taking the content of the table on their descent. Buck drops to his knees, feels them crack against the hardwood floor with a reverberating pain through his body, right up to his teeth. 

He grabs the scalpel right as the person grabs for him. He shoves them off and raises the scalpel  and they raise their hands. 

Buck hesitates at the show of surrender. He scrambles back, aiming for the door. 

His knees crack again as he gets back up, ready to race for the door. 

He stops short. The door is opened, and a tall man is standing in its threshold. His face is hidden away behind a pink, grotesque mask. The depiction of a pig, its face twisted in apparent agony. There's blood splattered on it.  

Buck freezes, when he knows he should probably charge. Behind him, the white coat stands up. Only one exit. He's outnumbered. He's surrounded. 

Adrenaline runs like liquid fire through his veins. He charges. 

The Pig braces, and uses Buck's momentum to throw him back around into the room, like he weights nothing. His hurt side pulls with the move, but the pain feels distant, detached. 

Buck uses the opportunity of close quarters to stab at him. The mask prevents him from reaching for the neck, so he aims for the arms instead, and the brachial artery. 

He absolutely does not want to kill, but he's getting desperate.

He misses. He cuts through skin and makes the Pig bleed, but misses the artery. He's both relieved and terrified. 

The Pig doesn't falter a second and charges at Buck. 

Buck takes a stumbling step back. His brain screams at him to sidestep, run for the door, but his body doesn't know how to cooperate. Black spots fill his vision and he feels the blood leave his face as the floor lurches under his feet.

He's not gonna make it. 

The Pig grabs his forearm in a forceful grip as Buck swings the scalpel again and slaps his wrist against a knee, once, twice. The scalpel falls from nerveless fingers and clatters to the ground. 

He didn't think this through. He never does. He's too impulsive, too reckless, too impatient. He never learns. 

The Pig pull at Buck's arm and throws him around again, straight into the large wooden cabinet. He feels his shoulder wrench before his head collides and plunges his world into white noise. Glass breaks on impact; he feels it slice his skin open as he slides all the way to the ground. Vials rain down on him, crash and explode in thousands of minuscule pieces all around him, splash him with various liquids and powders. Ancient books fall, heavily, spines cracking.

"No!" The shouted word cuts through the white noise. 

A human skull hits the ground right before him, its jaw breaking clean in two, its empty eyes sockets staring at him. 

He hears a loud, long, creaking noise, feels the wood at his back tilt and lurch, hears an outraged "It's an antique!" and in the next instant, before he can even brace himself, what feels like the entire house drops down on him in a deafening cacophony of breaking wood and breaking glass and breaking skin. 

Things quiet until he can only hear his own heart, beating faster than the wings of a hummingbird. He's breathing in a cloud of vapours and particules, and he coughs, painfully, his diaphragm held in a vice grip, his vision swaying. He blinks blood out of his eyes. 

He's pressed face down against the floor, a crushing weight pinning him there as glass cuts into his palms, and for a terrorising second, it's not hardwood under his cheek but asphalt, and it's the smells of sulfur, engine smoke and exhaust gases in the night air, and it's a ladder truck on his leg, crushing, crushing, crushing until he has to become cold and numb to escape the pain. 

He gasps and comes back to himself, one sense at a time. Hardwood floor against his face. The smell of antiseptics. The taste of settling dust. A human, jawless skull staring at him. 

Angry, frustrated voices above him. 

"—know how valuable a piece like this is? How ancient? Older than you or I are!"

Buck claws at the hardwood floor. He wants out. 

"Some of those vials have been here since the nineteenth century," the voice continues, outraged. "Irreplaceable!"

The heavy weight pinning him down won't budge. It's so heavy. He's covered in debris. Books, broken bottles, a broken skull, broken glass, broken wood.

His head swims.

The entire apothecary cabinet fell on him. Not just its content. The entire cabinet. 

He understands the white coat's indignation. That had been a beautiful piece.

He'd just like to get out from under it. He hates being pinned down. It's too close to being crushed. 

As he tries to extricate himself, a pair of feet appear in front of his face. He looks up to find a pink, grotesque mask. 

"Well," the Pig says, entirely uncaring, "it's broken."

Chapter Text

He passes out this time. 

The sharp, bleach-like odor of smelling salts pressed right against his nose brings him back from the bliss of unconsciousness. 

"Welcome back," an unsettlingly familiar voice says. 

Buck blinks sluggishly against bright white lights. He should file a complaint to the hospital. They never think to turn those lights down, even when their patient is very obviously trying to sleep. Maddie could file the complaint for him. She always takes care of everything. 

There's a pinch in the crook of his inner elbow, a sharp point of pain. The rest of him aches. A far away, persistent, generalised ache that tells him he's been hooked to the good painkillers, but their effects are waning.

His left side, his right shoulder. Those feel wrong. A deeper, harsher pain, barely hidden away. His brain feels too big for his head.

He feels like he got blown up and crushed by a ladder truck. A stab of worry makes him stretch the muscles of his left leg and wiggle his toes. It hurts, but not like that. He lets out a relieved sigh, and opens his eyes all the way. 

Bright white lights. A man stands by his bedside. He's wearing a white, cracked mask. 

Reality crashes into him with the force of a tsunami. He chokes on his own inhalation as panic sends a wave of adrenaline into his bloodstream that pushes his heart into a frenzy of trepidation.

He tries to raise his hands, bud they are secured to the uncomfortable, metal gurney he's been laid on. So are his feet. He'd breathing so fast he's about to choke on air. 

"I hear you made quite a show." He gestures vaguely at the mess of the room. "Too bad our cameras weren't pointed at you."

He's in his uniform again. The fabric scrapes against the sensitive wounds on his left flank. Wounds inflicted by this man, standing here now, talking to him so calmly, so friendly. It makes his skin crawl.

He's grateful to be wearing clothes again, but he hates to imagine their hands on him again, that they touched and dressed his sleeping body. It feels so violating. He's nothing but a prop to them. A plaything. A doll.

He wonders how long he was unconscious. He hasn't seen daylight in what is most certainly days. How many? Two? Three? Four? He has no idea, and the absence of passing time to fall back onto is deeply unsettling. It feels like he's been thrust into a cold, cruel void, with nothing to latch onto. Emptiness. 

"So we decided," the man continues, and as he speaks, he's drawing the needle out of Buck's arm, slowly, carefully. It makes his skin crawl, "that you should be the costar of our next little movie."

Buck's blood runs cold. He doesn't know what that means. He doesn't want to find out.

The man drops the used needle into a trashcan he locks away in a cupboard.

"Remember this?" The man asks as he makes his way back to Buck, showing off the cattle prod strapped to his shoulder. 

His blood feels so cold. His side feels hot. As dull as it is now, the burning pain is ever present. He can still feel the thrum of electricity against his nerves.

The warning is clear. 

Then, just as gently, carefully, the man unbuckles Buck's left wrist from its restraint. 

"You're a big boy, I'll let you unbuckle the rest. Then we'll take a little stroll."

Buck considers resisting. But his desperate want to not be tied down wins over. 

He undoes the right hand first. As he sits up to get to the restraints at his feet, he feels lightheaded, but it passes quickly. He feels, all in all, much better. His wounds are dressed, he's been given fluids and painkillers. 

That they'd go to the trouble of keeping him relatively healthy (in spite of the torture) probably means that they intend to keep him for a while. That, or they need him for a purpose. Adding in the presence of camera narrows the field of possibilities for why he would be abducted. 

Couldn't be for a ransom. He's no one. He knows no one of influence. He has no rich friends. His parents aren't as well off as they like to pretend to be. (He wonders, even if they were, if they would care to pay a ransom in exchange for his safe return. He thinks he's being unfair. He wonders all the same.)

Could be they're making snuff films. Could be they're presenting their products to sadistic wealthy people looking to buy them on the dark web. 

These options are bleak, and the reality of his situation and of the world he lives in turn his insides. He is fucked. 

For all he knows, literally.

When the man in the cracked doll mask tortured him earlier, he stayed clear from his genitals, when that would have been the obvious place to cause maximum pain and break his spirit in one clean swipe. 

Either they're building up to it, or they're saving his goods for—for what? The highest bidder? He's not a virgin, he can't be valuable. 

He races from theory to theory, teetering on the edge of hysterical, his mind going a mile a minute, while the world around him seems stuck in slow motion. 

He watches himself unbuckle his feet and stand up, like he's a prisoner in his own flesh and his eyes are tiny windows. 

"Let's go," the man says. There's a length of rope in his hands, and Buck shakes his head despite himself. No. I just got free. 

The man stares at him. Buck wonders if he expects him to hold out his hands. 

The man lets out a breathy exhale of a laugh, hangs the rope over his shoulder, and steps aside to let Buck pass. 

Buck walks, his body entirely on autopilot, refusing to feel relieved. He anxiously waits for the other shoe to drop. 

The apothecary cabinet is still in pieces on the ground, a mess of debris surrounding what's left of it.  

They walk past, out into the hallway. There are wooden stairs to his right, going up. To his left, the double doors he'd already seen–when? Yesterday? One hour ago? Two? Ten? 

He understands what they mean by 'time is a concept' now. He's living a reality where time doesn't exist.

He hesitates, itching to climb up those stairs, run away, escape, find his back to time and reality and sanity. 

His captor notices. "We're going left. But you can try the stairs if you want." He can hear the smile dripping from the words. 

It's another trap. 

He's lost every fight he's been in since he arrived. He should try to learn from his mistakes. 

He's always been too stubborn for his own good. He goes for the stairs, taking off at a run. The stairs are wooden, creak under his feet, and make a u-turn halfway through. He turns, and stops short. The wood strains before settling under his feet. His breath catches.

The Pig stands there, at the very top, mask in place. He looks like a giant, staring down at him. He makes Buck feel small.

He doesn't stand a chance. 

He's so stupid. Antagonizing his captors at every turn is a spectacularly bad move, Eddie would say. 

The thought of Eddie makes his heart clench. He's so alone. 

The pains in his body take this moment of weakness as an invitation to return, full force. He can suddenly feel the hundred cuts and bruises marring his body from head to toe. The strained ligaments in his shoulder. His side burns a constant, deep, gnawing pain. His head pounds. 

He presses his back against the wall, desperate to disappear into it. 

That's not an option. He digs his fingernails into his palms. Be brave. 

He takes a deep, steadying breath, counts to three in his mind, exhales, and goes back down the stairs. 

The man in the cracked doll mask is patiently waiting for him. "We're going left," he says with a nod of his dead. He doesn't sound angry. He sounds amused. 

Buck goes past him, expecting a blow or the bite of the cattle prod in retaliation, or the feel of rough ropes sliding around his wrists, but the man lets him pass. 

They go through the double doors. The stairs leading to his dark tiny cell are still there, straight ahead. His heart pounds. 

"To the right," the man says. 

To the right is the door leading to the same room he was tortured in. His heart stutters to a stop. His body tenses up, rigid, as his step falters, and the man almost bumps into him. 

"Go on. You're not the main attraction this time," he says. "You're fine."

The prongs of the cattle prod dig into the small of his back, and he doesn't really have a choice. He goes in. 

There is another man, hanging from the same shackles Buck had been, his body naked and his face bare. He looks scared and confused, his eyes wide. 

He's instantly familiar to Buck. He doesn't know him, but he has seen this man's face before, somewhere. He sees a similar spark of recognition in the man's eyes. Neither of them say anything, but the gears in Buck's mind are back into overdrive. 

What do they have in common? He wonders. Does the fact they've seen each other before have anything to do with their abduction? Is it only coincidence? Where has he seen him before? He looks to be in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, tall, fit, handsome. Buck is instantly aware of the similarities between them, and wonders if this is a case like those serial killers who only go after a very specific type as their victims. 

Movement in his peripheral catches his attention. There is someone else in the room, bent over two cameras, their back facing them. One camera aims at the shackled man, the other points directly at Buck. When the man stops fiddling and turns, he's wearing the face of a horse. 

It's so grotesque, unexpected, that Buck takes a step back straight into his own captor, who presses a hand to Buck's back to push him forward and off him, gently, if slightly annoyed. Like Eddie would. 

His captor clears his throat, like he's about to go into a rehearsed speech.

"Our friend here's job," he says, waving a hand to indicate the shackled man, "is to care for the sick, the injured, the infirm. A very dedicated nurse. Very gentle." And suddenly Buck remembers where he's seen him. A friendly face in a hospital hallway. During handover of a patient. Or during those long empty days, after the lightning strike. He feels sick. "Likes to go the extra mile. Likes to give out candy bars to old ladies stuck on hospital food."

His captor turns to him. "Why don't you do the honors?" 

Buck sputters. "Wh-what?"

"I want you to hurt him like I hurt you before."

Buck shakes his head, frantically. He won't be complicit. 

"No?" There's a smile in the word. There are no laugh lines around his eyes. "What about you?" He turns to the nurse.

"Will you torture him?" The man under a horse mask asks the nurse, nodding in Buck's direction. "It's you choice. Do it and we won't touch you. You'll exchange places right now." He jingles the key to the manacles for added effect.  

"Scout's Honor," the man behind Buck says. 

The nurse blanches. Buck stares at him, his own face blank, unwilling to invoke pity and sway his decision. If he says yes, so be it. Buck can take pain. 

"I can take it," he says aloud. "You can take me."

Please, don't, a small voice begs inside of him.

It seems to take every ounce of willpower for the nurse to shake his head. "No," he says, "I won't," and his voice his firm, steadier than Buck's was. 

"What if I say," the man in the doll mask tells Buck, a hand sneaking over his shoulder in a false comforting touch, "that I wil kill you if you don't hurt him for us."

The rope descends around Buck's neck, fast, too fast for him to react in time. He only manages to slip three fingers between his throat and the rope before it snaps taut. It instantly cuts circulation in his fingers, cuts his airflow.

Two kicks to the back of his knees make them crack against the floor, and the pressure of the rope increases to the point of utter suffocation. 

With his right hand trapped by the rope, he fumbles with his left, trying to reach for the cattle prod, but it's too far back behind the man's back and he can't reach it. He can't reach, and the movement pulls on the burns in his side, and the scream that's ripped from deep inside him gets trapped in his throat. 

He panics, tries to reach anything but can't keep a grip, tries to breathe but can't. 

He panics, thinks, Eddie, and, as fast as it appeared, the pressure disappears. He coughs, and gapes, and gasps. His throat feels raw, and air scratches its way past as it finds its home inside his lungs again. 

His eyes swim with tears. There's a firm hand on his shoulder, keeping him down while he pulls himself together. 

The white noise clears from his ears just as the man starts speaking again. 

"Still no?"

Buck grinds his teeth together. 

"What if I say we will kill him if you don't hurt him."

With that, the horse strides behind the nurse — Williams, he thinks he remembers, his name's Williams — grabs his hair and slaps a wide hand onto his nose and mouth. 

Williams jerks, but the chains prevent him from going far.

Buck jerks too, but the man holds him down, presses a knee against his injured left side. It hurts. It hurts. 

The scream that makes it past his throat is angry, furious, desperate. 

Before him, Williams' chest is spasming, his body convulsing. 

"I'll do it!" Buck screams. "I'll hurt him, l–don't kill him, I–I'll do it! Let me do it."

The horse stops suffocating Williams, who gasps in greedy gulps of air. 

"Maybe later," his own captor says with a satisfied pat to Buck's shoulder. "I don't think putting a weapon in your hands is in our best interest. You're too impulsive. But I appreciate the enthusiasm."

Despite the bone deep relief he feels at not having to inflige pain himself on another, Buck feels a twinge of vexation. This man is playing him, at every turn. 

He also feels a twinge of something else he can't quite place. A deep hurt. You're too impulsive. He's heard that so many times in his life. 

"But you're staying to watch," the man murmurs in Buck's ear, watching as the Horse gets ready with his victim. "Hands behind your head."

No, Buck wants to say. 

"You never learn, do you?"

Slowly, against his every instinct and with gritted teeth, Buck complies. First one hand, then the other. It pulls on his side, on his shoulder, and tears sting his eyes. 

The ropes coil around his wrists, once, twice, three times. The man doesn't bother to knot it, keeping both strands in hand. 

"Mouth open."

No. No. Last time he had a gag in his mouth, it almost killed him. 

"Mouth open."

He can't go through that again.

Help. 

"I won't say it again."

Buck wants to push his luck. The last thing he wants is another gag in his mouth. He wants out. He wants—He wants—

You want to not antagonise the sadistic torturers, Eddie's voice says in his head. 

Eddie's right. He can't risk it. He knows. Not while there's an innocent man in the room with him. He can't risk retaliation. He can't risk making the torture worse. 

He opens his mouth. 

The same thick rope slides between his teeth, once, twice, three times. He gags and sputters, feels the rough material dig into the corners of his mouth, feels his tongue shoved back, feels his dry lips stretch and crack and bleed. 

The man guides the end of the rope around his wrists again and pulls it taut, pressing Buck's wrists into the back of his head and digging the rope into his cheeks. 

His side is a hot flush of agony. His shoulder burns, deep in the joint. He can't stop the tears before they cling to his eyelashes, before they break free and run down his cheeks. 

The man catches one with a gentle finger, like Maddie would, when he was a child and his biggest problem was thinking his parents didn't love him. "Don't cry."

The man settles on his knees behind him, one hand holding the ends of the rope, the other pressed against his injured side, almost carelessly. "Let's watch the show."

There's something long and metallic in the Horse's hands. Buck expects another cattle prod, but when the long fingers press on the trigger, a blue flame jumps out. 

Buck jumps too. A gas ignition lighter. 

He whines into the rope and fight against its hold, but that only makes it slice deeper into his skin.

The nurse – Williams, his name's Williams –whimpers in anticipation. He has to know, first hand, how unrelentingly painful burns are, how easily they kill nerves, infect the skin, poison the body. He keeps sending involuntary, pleading looks Buck's way. 

There's nothing Buck can do to help. He's scared he's already made it worse. He's got no power, no leverage. Buck's captor's hand tightens until it digs into his bones, to remind him anyway. 

The flames touches Williams' skin, and it seems to take a second for his brain to catch up before he screams. The Horse traces a slow, deliberate line from the back of the knee to the achille hill. Williams screams, and screams, and screams. 

The familiar scent of burnt flesh reaches Buck's nostrils, and he screams too. 

He screams, and he sobs, and the man behind the cracked doll mask holds him tighter. His hand creeps along Buck's jawline, thumb ghosting over his stretched lips, until his chin is gently cupped in a warm, gloveless palm. 

"Smile for the camera," says the voice in his ear. Shame coils and intertwines with Buck's guts, until his insides feel too full to hold all his hurts in. He squirms under the man's hands, his skin feeling too tight, too stretched, like he's about to crack open. 

He closes his eyes; his tears fall faster.

Williams screams. His flesh melts. Buck shakes. 

"Stand down, firefighter. Watch him burn." 

Buck watches. It's the least he can do. 

—

The precinct is in shambles. Three days ago, one of their colleagues was abducted. James Morales. Jay. She's met him, just once, only a month ago. A lifetime ago.

Today, they received a video of his torture. 

Tensions are high. The entire detective force is mobilised, and none of them are counting their hours. It's one of their own out there. 

Two of her own, in Athena's case. 

The abductors must know this, because she receives another video on her personal work email address.

'Kindly forward this along to your husband,' the tag says. 

She sits alone in her car, thrumming with anticipation. She only caught a glimpse of the other video, and it was gruesome. 

She steels her nerves, and presses play.

It's a wide shot of Buckley. On his knees, hands behind his head, gagged with rope. A masked man is holding him down, a possessive grip on Buck's chin. Shallow cuts, bruises, and tears mar his face. His uniform seems whole.

The video has sound: screams of pain echo around the interior of her car, from someone out of screenshot. Not her colleague's. Possibly their third male abductee, nurse Wren Williams. 

Athena's used to seeing the worst, most gruesome atrocities imaginable, and beyond, but her skin crawls anyway. 

Buck's own screams are subdued, muffled, but his distress is evident. Beyond the terror, there is still fire in his eyes, and Athena takes that to heart. He's fighting. 

The video ends abruptly. 

She immediately forwards it to her superior. 

Then, she puts her car into drive, and drives home to Bobby. 

She parks on the street in front of their shared home. She kills the engine, and she waits.

Only for a moment, she lets the stress of the last few days weigh down on her shoulders, press her against her seat. She only bends, she doesn't break. Not yet. She's still in uniform, and her job isn't done. 

She waits until the door to their home opens, and her husband steps out. He's still in uniform. As he makes his way to her car, she climbs out, schooling her features. 

He sees right through her, but immediately jumps to the worst conclusions. 

"Athena, what–" he blanches, seems to age ten years right before her eyes. 

"He's alive," she says quickly. "Or at least, he was alive on the video his captors just sent me."

"They sent you a video?" His expression stays neutral, but his eyes are wild. 

"Yes. Come inside." She goes to sit back behind the wheel. 

Bobby doesn't move. "Athena–"

"Please, Bobby. Sit."

He relents. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath while he goes around the car, getting ready to catch him when he falls. 

The passenger door opens, and she opens her eyes to face him as he settles in. 

She holds her phone between them. "It's not..." She looks for the right words, and falls short. "...as bad as you're expecting."

It's still going to wreck him.

She doesn't let him wade in suspense, and presses play for the second time. And there Buck is again, bound, gagged, kneeling in his captor's hold. 

She turns her gaze to Bobby, gauging his reaction. His face hardens immediately, but his eyes soften, love and sorrow bleeding through his irises and exposing his mutilated soul.

The video ends. Bobby's mouth is set in a firm line, his eyes haunted. 

She waits for a moment, her hand on his forearm, her thumb brushing his pulse point, and lets him compose himself. 

He keeps his gaze on her phone, stony faced, where Buck's face is still pictured as the last frame of the video. His hand curls under hers.

"I swear to you," she promises with ardent conviction, "that I will do everything in my power to bring him home safe."

Bobby nods, just once. She watches him swallow, with difficulty, like his throat is swelled shut. 

"They already hurt him," he says. His voice is steady. His eyes are haunted. 

She knows. That boy has one of the biggest heart she's ever known. His captors deliberately aimed to hurt him as they forced him to watch an innocent man be tortured in front of him, powerless to help.

Bobby seems to follow her train of thought. 

"I don't just mean... mentally. Or emotionally." He shakes his head, once. His lips take a downward curve. "They already hurt him."

She frowns, and he continues. 

"I know him, 'Thena. I know the way he holds himself, when he's in pain, and when he's trying to hide it." His voice is warm with affection, and broken with grief. "He's barely hanging on," he says, just above a whisper. 

"He's still fighting." She makes her voice strong, and her grip on his hand stronger. "He hasn't given up."

A noise escapes her husband's lips, low and wounded. "I know," he breathes. 

He presses play again before her screen can turn dark.

She watches him as he watches Buck, watches him take in the naked distress on the kid's face, the terror and guilt in his wide eyes, watches them reflected in her husband's. 

The video ends again, and she watches as his features crumple. A sob breaks free before he can hold it in, and he folds in on himself. 

Athena embraces him, feels his body quake with grief, and she stays strong for them both. 

"I couldn't protect him," he sobs, his voice bleeding. "That's my job. I should have kept him safe."

She holds him as he breaks in pieces inside her arms. 

—

Eddie finds them, not two hours later. 

They haven't told anyone about the video. Not the 118. Not Maddie. 

Eddie finds them anyway. 

He knocks on their door, and Athena opens it for him. 

He looks both exhausted and manic. "Athena, hey, uh–" He fists a hand in his hair, looks over her shoulder, to see maybe if Bobby's there.

"Come on in," she says against her better judgment. Bobby is too cracked around the edges to keep a clear head with a frantic Eddie. The subject of the video is bound to come up.

He stays on her threshold. Racks a hand through his hair again. 

"Christopher's with Carla. I, uh–I couldn't–I was–"

He stumbles over his words, agitated. 

With a displeased frown, she feels Bobby come up behind her just as Eddie faces them fully. 

"Do you have any news?"

Athena's about to deny everything, for the moment, but Bobby falters. He hesitates, a little too long, and Eddie zeroes in on him. 

"You do." It's not a question. 

They both look at each other, trying to get their story straight. Eddie spirals. 

"What? You found–what? His body? He's dead?"

Athena wants to quell his fear immediately. "No, Eddie–"

"He's alive," Bobby says. 

"How do you know that?"

Bobby hesitates again. Athena stays silent, shoulders set. It's his call. 

"Athena was sent a video."

"A–A video?" He starts pacing again. "Can I see it?"

Athena intervenes. "It's a piece of evidence confidential to the investigation." He's definitely not in the right state of mind to be seeing—that.

"But you've seen it." Eddie aims his accusatory tone at Bobby, his jaw working. 

Her husband stands his ground. "Yes."

"And what, I dont–I don't get to see him because, what? I'm not important enough? I'm not his pretend father? I'm not sleeping with the investigator?"

"Eddie, you're out of line."

Eddie drags a hand across his mouth. His eyes are wild, pleading. 

"I didn't have his back, Bobby," his voice breaks. "It should have been me. I was right there. They should have taken me."

He presses both palms against his eyes, hard. 

"He doesn't... deserve..." He shows his teeth, mouth twisted in a grimace. 

Athena's heart twists with him. She feels for him. For them both. Buck doesn't deserve what's happening to him. And they don't deserve to be left in this limbo, wondering, wondering, hoping, praying.

Bobby makes an aborted movement, maybe intending to hold Eddie the same way Athena held him earlier. 

Eddie doesn't let him. He takes a step back, raises a halting hand, and shuts his features like he flipped a switch.

"Don't–" he starts, and cuts himself short. His eyes are shining. He turns on his heels. 

"Eddie!" She calls after him. 

"Don't!" He repeats, before climbing inside his truck and speeding away. 

Athena stands in her threshold, the ghost of Bobby beside her. 

She has to stay strong, a little longer. 

Chapter Text

Eddie drives home.

He sits behind the wheel, and watches his house. He watches the blurry shadows of Christopher and Carla through the windows, through the curtains, through the tears.

He sniffs, hard.

He thinks the little figure of Christopher looks sad, even from over here, through the curtains and the windows and the tears, his frame smaller than usual, his shoulders drooping. 

He should be in bed already. 

Eddie aches to go to him and hold him in his arms. To comfort him, to tell him everything is going to be okay. 

He can't do that. 

He can't lie to him. Eddie's not an optimist by nature. He likes to look at the glass half full, but he's not naive. 

He wishes he had Buck's unwavering enthusiasm and faith. 

He wishes he had Buck.

That's the crux of the problem, isn't it. 

He aches to go to Buck.

He can't do that.

Hot tears burn tracks down his cheeks, and he wipes them angrily. 

He puts his truck back into drive. He can't be near his son when he's so close to bursting open and falling apart. 

Buck would have gone to Chris. 

He ignores the voice in his head and drives. He drives and he's careful, controlled, his hands white where they grip the steering wheel. 

As he drives, the clock strikes eleven. Six full days since Buck was taken from him. A full week tomorrow. Last time, Buck had already woken up by now.

(He'd been confused, and in pain, and more often asleep than awake, but he'd been there, tangible, alive, and Eddie had come into his room, he'd touched him, and Buck had smiled so bright, and Eddie had breathed.)

Eddie keeps driving. His hands cramp on the wheel, and he makes himself breathe.

He's alive, Bobby had said. Eddie prays that stays true. Please, he prays, please, please. Stay alive. 

In just under twenty minutes, he's in the historical center, stating at another window. This one is dark. There's no life behind it. No moving shadows, just empty shadows. 

He climbs out of his truck before he knows what he's doing, climbs stairs, finds himself in front of a door as familiar as his own. 

He needs to be close to him. The key slides in, perfectly, right at home, and the door opens. He steps in. 

Six days, and it still smells like Buck. 

It's dark inside, and he takes a few tentative steps inside. He doesn't know what he's doing here.

He stares at the empty kitchen. They had all been here, Christopher, Buck and himself, just nine days ago. Buck had made them a Dauphinoise alla Bobby. 

The smells of fresh potatoes, melting cheese, creamy, buttery, garlicky goodness, golden as Buck plated it neatly, like a goddam Chef at a five star restaurant. Eddie and Christopher had been salivating. Buck had been so proud. He'd been beaming. 

Those smells are long gone now. 

His gaze slides past the dark and cold oven, and settles onto the small palm tree in the corner. Its leaves are yellowing. 

He should water it. Buck loves his plants. He wouldn't want them to wither in his absence. 

Eddie grabs a glass from the cabinet, easily, without having to look for it. He ignores the layer of dust. He fills the glass with tap water, the rushing sound loud in the empty apartment. 

Glass in hand, he stands above the potted plant. He's about to dump the water in, when he remembers to dig his finger into the earth. It's humid. Oh. 

He wonders if Maddie's been here. He imagines her, wandering through the place like he is now. A ghost, like him, like Buck. 

A car honks outside, and he jumps.

He probably shouldn't water that plant. If the earth is still wet, he'll probably drown it. 

He's not certain. He's a black thumb.

He doesn't want to kill it. He doesn't want to let it die. He doesn't want to do nothing. 

In the end, he does nothing. He settles the glass down on the counter, still full.

He doesn't know what he wants to do. What, climb up those stairs, open Buck's drawers and bury his head into one of Buck's hoodies? Climb into his bed and cry himself to sleep while pretending Buck's comforters are his arms? Breathe the ghost of him in until he feels less empty inside?

He doesn't feel like he can breathe in here. It feels just as suffocating as that ICU room did, ages ago. 

He'd been so stupid then, so arrogant. He'd thought he was losing everything, when in retrospect he was still taking Buck for granted. Buck had been right there. Eddie's past self had been a coward, had skirted every opportunity to be with him.

Now, Eddie would do anything to touch him, to hold him, to feel his heartbeat against his own.

He can't breathe in here. It's suffocating. 

He backpedals. 

He's out the door, out of the loft, out of the building, and back into his car without much recollection. Distantly, he wonders if he's dissociating. Frank would have a field day with him. 

Midnight. Six days, one hour. He turns the key in the ignition, drives away. It feels like leaving Buck behind, and his body aches, and aches. 

He makes a detour, to steer clear off McArthur Park. He hates that it's so close to Buck's place, hates that Death lives only ten minutes away from Buck, that it shadows him.

He's alive, Bobby had said. 

He's being ridiculous. 

When he arrives at the firehouse, it's also dark. Either C shift is away on a call, or they're sleeping in the bunk rooms. He wonders what it's like for them. To have tragedy happen so close to home, and yet to be so untouched by it. Living life, working the job. Feeling sorry for colleagues they barely ever see.

He makes his way inside, heads for the locker room. Buck's clothes are still there, folded on the lower level of their shared locker. 

Athena was sent a video. 

He wants to breathe him in. Instead, he slides down to the ground, his back to the cold metal of the locker, head in his hands. 

He wonders what's on that video. He didn't ask. How was he? How did he look? What was happening to him? Was he unconscious? Was he awake? Aware? Was he being hurt? Maimed? What was Buck thinking? Feeling?

Is he spiraling, like Eddie is? Is he wondering if his team is looking for him, if they miss him, if they're moving on with their lives?

He's always so worried he'll be left behind. So terrified of it.

Footsteps echo around the empty space, loud and sudden. Eddie jumps, startled, but he doesn't move to stand up. 

Eddie's not sure he can gather enough strength to explain himself to C shift. He hopes they'll ignore him and let him be. 

He doesn't lift his head from his hands as the footsteps stop and a weight settles on the bench in front of him, with a sigh and creaking knees. 

"I've been looking for you," Bobby says. He sounds as exhausted as Eddie feels. 

He still doesn't lift his head. 

He knows he's retreating into himself. Just like he always does when things get really tough. When he's losing the people that matter the most to him.

He thought he was getting better. Obviously, he was kidding himself. Just like he always does. 

He doesn't know how to stop. He's still afraid, even now. That if he exposes himself, and how he truly feels, he'll also expose a live wire and jagged edges and burn and cut those around him. 

Bobby doesn't say any more for a long while. 

"They're hurting him," he eventually says, his voice so very soft, sorrowful, and still so loud in the stillness of the night. 

Eddie doesn't lift his head. He's not ready to face—anything. He's not ready. 

His eyes burn. He has to stop himself from rocking back and forth. 

The confirmation isn't surprising. It's devastating all the same.

Bobby sighs. Soft. Sorrowful. 

"He's still fighting. They haven't broken him."

Yet.

The word hangs, between them, so heavy in the air it sinks to the floor at their feets. Eddie imagines he can see it there on the tile, accusatory. Yet. the guilt gnaws at his insides, eats him raw.

"We're doing everything we can to get him back. Safe. Whole."

"We aren't doing anything," Eddie says, as he finally looks up. Bobby looks so old. So defeated. "We're just waiting around."

It's Bobby's turn to not say anything. Eddie wonders if he truly believes they'll find him safe and whole. If he's begging his God, every second, that they do. 

Eddie doesn't think begging will make any difference. But he begs and prays everyday anyway. He doesn't know what else to do. He feels useless. 

Silence hangs heavy. Eventually it, too, drops at their feet. 

"When's the last time you've eaten anything?"

Eddie scoffs. He doesn't know. He doesn't care.

Six days, one hour, fifty minutes. He tried, at first. To stay steady. For Christopher. Today, it's too hard. Today, he wants to break himself open and feel the emptiness inside. 

"This isn't the first time you've–" Bobby stops himself, starts another sentence. "You shouldn't let yourself wither away. You can't tie your fate to Buck's like that. You have a son to consider."

That brings a flash of anger. "Don't you think I know that?" He looks at the old, weary man before him. "You're one to talk."

"I know. I know that last time, I let my grief consume me, and I wasn't there for you. I'm sorry."

Eddie shuts his eyes. Last time, he feels like he himself wasn't there at all. For anyone. For Chris, for his team, for himself. Just a ghost, wandering and lost, hopeless and aimless.

"You have to keep living for you son, Eddie. I made that mistake last time. I won't now. I'm here. You're not alone."

Another flash of–something. A nameless feeling. Part grief, part thankfulness, part agony. Like he's the livewire and he's burning himself on it, endlessly, but he's also cold and grateful for the warmth. 

It's easier to express it as a flash of anger. He lashes out.

"You're not my father, Bobby." He can't look him in the eye and stares at the side. He's being unfair. But he's so tired. Too tired and too hurt to care. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm not being very receptive to your concern, or your advice."

He's being so unfair. Bobby has always been there for him, for Buck, for all of them, whenever they needed the steady shoulder and warm acceptance and gentle direction they couldn't get from their fathers. 

Eddie imagines Bobby has this hole inside his heart where his children should be, alive, growing, thriving. He imagines this deep, neverending well of infinite love with nowhere to go. So Bobby uses it to love Athena's children, to love the 118 as if they were his own. He gives it his all, genuinely invested, genuinely caring, genuinely loving. 

Eddie doesn't know how he does that. If he lost Christopher, he wouldn't make it. He's barely hanging on in Buck's absence. If, God forbid, Christopher died, Eddie doesn't think he could have any more love to give. He'd be hollowed out. He'd have lost his only reason to live. The only reason he's not dying right now. He wouldn't survive. 

His heart feels too full, suddenly, and he gets up so abruptly black spots dance in front of his eyes. He ignores them and stays standing, out of sheer stubbornness. 

"I'm being unfair," he says to the old, weary man before him. "I just..." He pinches the bridge of his nose. His eyes burns. He's pretty sure he's shed the last of his tears. He's got nothing left. "...need some time alone. I'll get back on my feet. I always do."

He leaves. Bobby doesn't stop him.

He aches. 

He's back behind the wheel before he knows it. He thinks he's driving aimlessly, has the thought that he should fill up on gas soon, when he stops his car in a familiar street. 

It's only familiar because he was last here six days, two hours, twenty minutes ago, Buck by his side. 

He gets out. With him is the radio that hasn't left his side since that night. 

He stands in front of the disaffected building. The doors are locked, yellow tapes crisscrossing them. It was supposed to be dimolished, he remembers. The investigation has probably put a brake on that. 

He doesn't go in. Instead, his feet take him to the alleyway on its delta side. 

It smells like piss and trash, but it's empty. He squats down, looks up at one of the windows on the fourth floor, thumbing his radio.

He has to stop himself from rocking back and forth.

He turns the radio on, onto the frequency they'd been on that night. The last frequency Buck had used. His thumb hovers over the call button.

Buck is long gone. He knows. There's no rational reason why he's doing this. 

He presses the call button anyway. 

"Buck," he says, "come in."

He lets go of the button.

Silence.

He presses the button. "Buckley, report. We still haven't heard from you." His voice cracks on the very last word. He lets go of the button. 

Silence. 

He presses down. "Buck," his voice cracks. "Can you hear me?" He lets go.

Silence.

"Buck, please. Come in."

Silence.

Chapter Text

"They're releasing one of the hostages."

The statement echoes through the air like the crack of a whip. 

Eddie stands rigid.

The 118 is on a call. Hit and run. The bleeding woman on the ground is wearing a yellow top, and Eddie's sanity already feels like it's fraying around the edges. She could have been hurt a lot worse: broken leg, cracked ribs. Internal bleeding is a possible concern but under control for the moment. 

They're just loading her in the ambulance when Athena arrives with news:

1. They caught the runner.

2. Unrelated; Buck's abductors are releasing one hostage. 

She means it for Bobby's ears only, but Eddie insists on not being kept out of the loop. She sizes him up. They don't mention the video or last night, and Athena, uncharacteristically, caves in. 

"This is still classified information," she tells them, voice low, "so you keep it between yourselves. You tell Hen and Chimney if you must, but no-one else, in the 118 or outside."

"What about Maddie?" Bobby asks. 

Athena pulls her lips into a thin, bloodless line. "How is she hanging on?" Her expression softens, worry creasing her brow. "I haven't taken much time, to be there for her."

"You're spending your time doing everything you can to find her brother," Bobby says with a worried frown of his own. 

Eddie bites his lips. He hasn't seen Maddie at all, since it happened. From what Chimney tells them, she's hanging on by a single, stubborn thread. She's keeping busy, at work, and spends her free time posting photos of her brother on every social media, in the hopes someone will have seen him. Eddie had sent pictures of his own, through Chimney, including the last taken picture of him, that afternoon before they ate the Dauphinoise at his loft. 

His own grief feels inadequate, inappropriate, compared to hers. Like he doesn't deserve to miss Buck as much as she does.

He drags himself back to the conversation at hand. 

"Have Chimney tell her," Athena is saying, "tactfully. I don't want to keep her in the dark. She's a strong woman. I'd go talk to her myself, but," she makes a gesture to indicate her hands are full. 

"Don't get her hopes up," she warns. "We don't know who will be freed, or if anyone will in effect be freed at all. They haven't asked for anything in exchange yet."

"You think they will?" Bobby wonders. 

Athena shrugs. "I have no idea what those animals want. We have a possible lead, but it contradicts the logic of letting one of their abductees go. They might just be playing with us. Distracting us."

Eddie feels his stomach twist, and twist, and twist. He wants to know what the lead is. He doesn't ask. In part because he's sure Athena would say nothing, in part because he's still feels like a coward. He's afraid. He's terrified. 

Athena climbs back into her cruiser, after a tight squeeze to Bobby's hand and a soft touch to Eddie's elbow. "Don't get your hopes up," she warns again, face stern. 

—

"Maddie."

Maddie grits her teeth. She just muted her station for a second. She just needs a second, and then she'll jump back into work. She's fine. 

She wants to be here. She wants to do something. She can't bare to sit around and wait. Wait, for her world to implode and collapse on itself, like it did all those years ago when she was a nine year old little girl.  

She's fine. 

She wants to be here. It's the best place for her to be. She'll know, if something happens. When the police moves, they'll have to inform dispatch. If–when they find her brother, she'll be here. She'll know, when it happens, if the operation becomes a recovery instead of a rescue. When it happens. When, not if. When, not if. She repeats it, like a mantra. 

The hard part is dealing with all the calls coming in. Possible sightings. Of her brother, and of the two other missing men. The bulk of those calls are false leads. Some calls she can instantly tell won't lead anywhere. Other calls, however, make hope flutter in her chest cavity, like the broken wings of a broken bird. 

She feels so broken, all the way inside. Like a part of her was beaten and crumpled up and ripped from her and she's still bleeding. She's bleeding, she's bleeding, constantly, and she should have bled out by now, should be exsanguinated and empty and shriveled, but she's still bleeding. 

It's like she can't stop giving and giving and giving part of herself. And she doesn't want to stop. She'll keep giving and bleeding until there's nothing left of her, and even then, she'll find a way to keep giving anyway. 

She has so much love inside her, and the love with Evan's name on it is overflowing, because he's not there to take it. He's not there. She has so much to give and he's not there to take. He's not there. So she bleeds instead. 

She can't be home. She can't be around her daughter. She'll stain her with her blood. She'll scare her. She'll damage her. She's too distracted, too high-strung, too terrified.

She has so much love inside her with Jee-Yun's name on it, that she needs to give and give but she won't let Jee take it, and so it overflows, too, and she bleeds and bleeds and bleeds.  

She's fine.

"I'm here, Josh," she says, failing to keep the bite out of her voice. "I'm not going home."

"I know," he says, and there's an expectation in his voice. She turns to look at him. He looks so worried. "Howard's here."

Her heart skips a beat. Howard should be on shift.

She feels a wave of emotion climb through her body and it must read plainly on her face because Josh shakes his head no and raises placating hands before she can spiral too fast.

"No, I don't think it's..." He pauses as he searches for the right words. "...bad news."

She breathes out her terror in a shaky exhale, and he's blurry through her tears as he extends a hand. "Come on," he says, "he's waiting for you in the break room."

Her legs shake, too, as she stands up. He leads her away from her desk. She ignores the worried glances sent her way as they pass.

"I don't think it's good news either," Josh tells her with the same worried frown. Like she's about to break apart and he's trying to figure out how to catch all her falling pieces. He doesn't know she's already broken, all the way hidden inside, she's broken, broken. "It's just news."

They make it to the break room, and there her husband is. 

He looks... Like he has news. Not bad, not good. Just news. She trembles anyway. She's broken, all the way inside, torn and bleeding, bleeding.

Howie extends his hand, and she grabs it like it's her lifeline. It is. 

He pulls her in, and she melts into the safety of his arms. 

"How are you?" He asks her, his voice low. She feels it vibrate in his chest, where her ear is pressed against his beating heart.  

"I have news," he murmurs into her hair. "It's...neither good nor bad."

Despite herself, Maddie laughs. A wet laughs, that sounds more like a nervous breakdown to her ears.

He holds her tighter. 

"I'm gonna tell you something, that might sound good at first, but you have to promise not to get your hopes up."

"Howard."

He sighs, and it sounds exhausted. She holds him tighter. "The people holding him," he says, carefully, "are saying they're gonna let one of them go."

Her breath catches in her chest.

"We don't know who," he adds, quickly, "we don't know when."

She holds him so tight, she fears the outside of her will break, too.

"Okay," she says. 

It's neither good nor bad news. She's still broken inside, and cracking on the outside. 

And she's still bleeding. She fears she'll never stop. That she'll be a gaping, bleeding wound, forever. 

But she'll never stop loving him. Her baby brother. Her baby. She'll never stop believing in him.

She knows just how stubborn, how single-minded he can be. How tenacious he is. How endurant. 

The least she can do is endure too. 

—

Hours pass. 

There's no news from Athena. They wait. They work. They wait. They work. 

A few minutes before the clock strikes eleven,–

(seven days. A full week. Last time, after a full week, Buck had been awake, sitting up, laughing, alive, solid.)

–they're called in as reinforcement for a bus crash.

When they arrive, it's chaos. There was a game tonight, and the bus was packed. A truck and seven other cars are involved in the crash. 

It's chaos. 

The night is bathed in blue red lights. People are bleeding, screaming, crying. The bus is lying on its side, two of the cars have caught fire. The air is polluted with the stench of smoke, sulfur, gasoline, bodily fluids. Sirens are blaring, ambulances coming in and pulling away every few minutes.

The 133 and the 136 are already on scene, running from car to car, extricating and transporting victims, putting out fires. 

Eddie's paired with Netson. It feels wrong. He likes the guy, Netson's a good partner. He's not his partner. They work well together. They're not in sync. Not like with– He has to ask, when he needs the jaws of life, or a fire extinguisher. He has to tell Netson what he's doing because Netson doesn't just guess. Not like–

They still work well. Netson's a good partner. 

They move the car blocking the rear window of the bus, so that the green tags can walk out without having to climb the sides of the bus. Inside, Eddie spots Lena Bosko. She meets his gaze, elbow deep in someone's blood. There's intent in her gaze, an I want to talk to you, but Eddie ignores her. He can't deal with any more pitying words, even ones with Bosko's brand of directness. 

He walks back out. It's chaos. There's so much work to do. So he works, and works, and works. He ignores the glaring absence at his side, he ignores the dread and anticipation and hope that slither and coil in his belly. 

He kneels next to another victim, who's bent over braced against the side of a car, and who's coughing is becoming concerning by the second. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Chimney all but run away from Albert. 

"I need help here," he shouts, as he lays his victim down (lips are blue, airways clear, breathing short and strained), and Chim sprints up to him. He looks relieved at the excuse to not have to talk to Albert, and for all of one second, Eddie feels less alone. 

"I got a possible collapsing lung," he says as Hen joins them. "You're okay," he tells the gasping man, "we got you."

"Let's move him!" Chim yells. 

They transfer him to a blackboard, then to a gurney, then to one of their ambulance. 

Just as they're loading him in, Bobby runs up to them, face white, eyes wild.

Eddie's heart skips a beat. 

"Athena needs us at General Hospital," he shouts over the screaming sirens. 

"That's where we're going!" Hen yells back. 

Eddie's heart won't start again. "Bobby!" He screams, a question, a demand, a reassurance.

Bobby shakes his head. "They haven't got him," he shouts. "The kidnappers specifically asked for the 118," he clarifies. He's white as a sheet. 

They close the backdoors of the ambo behind Hen and Chim, and head to the front. Eddie slides behind the wheel, Bobby in the passenger side. 

Last time they were seated like this, Buck was dead in the back. 

Eddie's heart won't start again. 

He puts the ambo into drive and follows three other ambulances out of the scene, headed for LA General. 

Eddie's heart is in his throat, and it won't start again.

The radio stays on the entire time, dispatch and medics going back and forth, Hen and Chim regularly updating their patient's status, tension in their voices that Eddie doesn't think is for the patient. Nothing from the police, from Athena. Nothing about Buck. 

Eddie's heart is in his throat. 

Three minutes later, General looms into view. Last time, Eddie keeps thinking, almost hysterically, Buck was dead in the back. Buck was dead. Buck was dead. 

There are police cars and trucks everywhere, looking freshly arrived to the scene, still setting up a perimeter.

Eddie wastes a few seconds moving through their barricades before they finally reach the emergency doors. 

Eddie puts the ambulance in park, and climbs out. 

It's chaos. 

Cops are running all other the place, blocking accesses, creating a bottleneck as more ambulances arrive. 

Eddie opens the back doors with Bobby, and they wheel their patient in, Hen and Chim rattling off his vitals as they hand him over to nurses and doctors.

Inside, the ER is overcrowded, packed full of injured people and emergency personnel. Victims are crying, orders are shouted.

A wave of adrenaline kicks in, and Eddie's heart starts again, fast, so fast, like it's trying to make up for lost time. 

Athena finds them.

She looks tense, her mask of professionalism fully in place, but there is an intensity to her Eddie has rarely seen. 

"They're here," she shouts into her radio in lieu of greeting. 

"Athena–" Bobby starts, but she raises a hand to stop him in his track. 

"They contacted us just a few minutes ago. Said they were 'dropping one off' here at General. In need of immediate medical attention. Asked for the captain of 118 to be here, personally."

"If they want Bobby present, it means it's him, right?" Eddie says. It's him, it's him, it's him. Please.

Athena shares a look with Bobby. A whole conversation seems to pass between them, and Eddie feels infuriatingly out of the loop. 

"It doesn't mean anything, Eddie," Athena says eventually. "The police are all here, and this is the place our third victim–the nurse–worked at. They want us to keep guessing." She looks him straight on the eye, the same warning from this morning clear on her face. "Don't get your hopes up."

Eddie stares back.

They have to move out of the way as gurneys and paramedics rush past them.

Eddie knows Athena's right. He's not an optimist himself, but he likes to see the glass half full. He wants to believe. He wants, so badly. He doesn't care if he's fooling himself. He's past that. 

"Whoever it is," Bobby says, "how are we going to find him?"

"We're still setting up a perimeter. Hopefully catch anyone who comes in or out. Then we'll go in, in teams, check every room, methodically. If our kidnapers are still here, we'll get them."

"How long is that gonna take?" Eddie knows he's pushing it. He doesn't care. "This is LA's biggest hospital. Look at this place, it's crowded!"

"You think you have a better—"

Athena's interrupted by her radio coming to life.

"Team leaders," a distorted voice sounds through the radio, "listen in."

Athena frowns.

"Since we're all finally gathered," the voice says, "we'll play a game."

Eddie's blood runs cold as the hair all over his body stands on end. 

Athena's already taking off at a run, back out the ER sliding doors, towards the police trucks. Eddie and Bobby follow.

"This asshole is within radio signal," she shouts. "Trace that signal down and find him! Stay off the radios!"

Around them, other officers are giving similar orders, and Eddie can't shake off the chill clawing at his spine. 

Athena's radio crackles again, along with the other team leaders.

"We have safely delivered one of our participant," it says. "Each team leader will take a side, and look for our participant. To speed things along, we'll give you hints. Guide you along."

"So that's your game," one of the team leaders scoffs through the radio. "Some kind of treasure hunt?"

Buck loved treasure hunts, Eddie thinks, and immediately catches his mistake. Loves. Buck loves. 

"Not quite," the voice says after a chuckle. "No prize. Just the satisfaction of winning. Team leaders, whenever you're ready."

There is a single second of standstill, before chaos breaks loose again. 

"Alright," one of the commanding officers says, out loud, bypassing his radio. "Johnson, organize the team on the south side! Ramon, you deal with the east wing!"

Both men take off at a run, shouting their own orders as they go.

"Gather up everyone!" The commandant shouts. "This might be one of our own out there!"

Or one of mine, Eddie thinks. 

"So let's find 'em! Harrison, Julliard, you take Alpha. Bukoski, Lopez, you have Beta. Grant, Ransone, you're on Foxtrot,–"

The man keeps talking, but Athena's already turning her heels, weaving through ambulances and police cars, headed for the west side of the building with Lou Ransone and two dozen men. 

"Athena," Eddie runs after her. 

"Eddie," she shouts back without stopping, "you stay there!"

"No, Athena!"

She turns around so fast he almost runs into her. "Eddie, stay here!"

"If they dropped him here, he has to be injured!" 'Him,' he says, and they both ignore the way he means 'Buck.' "You need a medic!"

"I have a hospital full of them."

"Athena, I was a combat medic!" He insists. "We both know you're not putting civilians at risk!"

"You're not military anymore, Mr. Diaz."

And they both know they don't have time for this. Athena glares at him but, once again, she relents. 

"Better keep up," she warns. 

Eddie turns back, just for a second, searching for Bobby, for his ok, for him to catch up.

Bobby, a few steps behind, looks at him, his radio halfway up, Chim and Hen nowhere in sight. Just for a second, Eddie can see the fissured soul behind his eyes. 

"Go," Bobby says, and Eddie strains to hear him over the sound of sirens. "I'm right behind you."

Eddie's doesn't wait to be told twice and catches up to Athena.  

"You," she says once they're inside again, past the crowded emergency department and into the bowels of the hospital, "stay right behind me. No heroics. We do not know what we're walking into."

They reach the Foxtrot side, and climb up a flight of stairs. On the next landing, they separate from Ransone and his men, who keep climbing, while Athena and her team stay on the second level.

They start to methodically search each room, ushering the orderlies out, careful but watchful with the necessary medical personnel and the inpatients, Eddie on their heels, feeling like a lapdog. 

He's too high strung to feel self-conscious, however. Buck occupies his thoughts, and so do his captors. 

They're not playing the game. 

Athena and the others are working exactly as they planned, silently, and Eddie wonders what's in store. How the bad guys will react to being ignored. Whether they're all walking into a trap. 

LA General Medical Center is the busiest hospital of the city, exponentially so tonight. He wonders whether the bus crash was really a coincidence. Whether they're dealing with terrorists. Whether they planted a bomb in this very hospital.

Was the abduction of three apparently random men a distraction?

Is the distraction this, tonight?

Athena's radio crackles to life once more. 

"Team leaders," the distorted voice is back. "We can't help but notice that you aren't playing by the rules."

Dread pools in anticipation in Eddie's stomach at the menace in the otherwise jovial voice. 

"I'm told to remind you that, if you don't want to play, we have other participants, still here with us, with whom we could play other games."

The threat is clear enough. 

Athena raises her radio. "Grant," she says, sounding very calm. "We're in Neurology."

They wait for the response, tense. 

"Thank you for your participation, Mrs Grant. Unfortunately you are cold."

Eddie can't quite believe his ears. For a dizzying second, he's floating, detached from reality. Buck is missing, and Eddie's playing a children's game with his captors. 

Silence, for an instant, as they look at each other. 

Then, another voice comes in through the radio.

"Ransone, in oncology."

"Cold."

"What do we do?" One of Athena's men asks. "Keep searching this department, or move on?"

Eddie can see the gears turning in Athena's mind, as she weighs the balance for the right decision. 

"We move on."

More voices keep coming through the radio, as all teams start the search.

"Harrison, for intensive care."

"Cold."

"Julliard, headed for the surgical suites."

"Cold."

They descend the stairs, as Athena keys her radio again. "Grant, heading for cardiology."

"Cold."

"Lopez, entering the burn units."

"Nice try," the voice says. "But cold."

"Ransone in nephrology."

"Getting colder Ransone."

Eddie freezes. This is the first hint they've gotten. Wherever...the man they're looking for...is, they're all far from him. But Ransone is moving farther away.  

He shares a look with Athena and can tell she's on the same train if thoughts. 

"Harrison in pediatrics."

"Getting colder."

"Julliard, anaesthetics."

"Colder."

Eddie's heart rate speeds up.

"Bukoski for nursing department."

"Cold."

"Kimura in pharmacy."

"Brrrr, you're frigid."

More and more men rattle off their locations, their voices laced with anticipation and restraint. Cold, it's always cold, or getting colder.

They're back on the ground floor, heading south. Athena raises her radio. "Grant for the outpatient department."

"Getting warmer."

The air is punched out of Eddie's lungs like he's been shot all over again.

In front of him, Athena doesn't falter in her step, but he notices the spasm that runs through her body. 

Eddie ignores all other voices (cold, they're all cold) as they run through every room. He's about to tell Athena that they'll need to be more specific if they want to find the needle in the haystack, but Athena takes off at a run, leaving the outpatient department behind.

Eddie stands for a second with Athena's men, before they all follow suit. 

"Athena!" He screams after, forgetting altogether he's in a hospital. "What—"

She doesn't pay attention to him as she descends another flight of stairs.

Something in him doesn't want to follow. Something wants to hold him back. Those stairs are suffocating. Like Buck's loft. Like that ICU room, a lifetime ago.

"Grant heading for the basement!" She all but shouts. 

He doesn't want to go to the basement. Dread is a beast lurking beyond those stairs, and it wants to eat him alive. He goes anyway.

His brain knows what else they'll find there. It tries to scream at him, but Eddie shuts it down. No, he denies.

"Oh, warmer!"

Eddie's blood is getting colder, though. 

They run past the hallway leading to the kitchens, further into the bowels of the hospital. Dread is a beast inside of him, and it's eating him alive.

His brain tries to scream at him. Eddie shuts it down. No. 

It's suffocating.

They run past a sign that says 'mortuary'.

Eddie's blood freezes in his veins. It freezes the beast, but it freezes him, too. He's suddenly made of ice, uncoordinated, heavy.

No.

Cold, so cold. 

"Grant for mortuary!"

"So warm, so warm."

He's sweating. 

Abruptly, Athena slows. "Room 1," she says into the radio. 

"Hot."

Athena slows to a complete stop. "Room 2," she says. Her voice is steady, but Eddie watches her hands shake. 

"Athena Grant, you're standing in the hot springs of Blue Lagoon!"

The words give way to the deafening rushing sound echoing between Eddie's ears.

"No!" Eddie doesn't hear himself as he forces his way through, pushes past her. "Buck!"

"Careful not to burn yourself," the voice says, piercing like a gunshot through the white noise in Eddie's ears. 

"Eddie, no!"

"Buck!"

He reaches the door, and there's a window smack in the middle of it, and Eddie looks in. There, in the middle of the room, not neatly aligned with the others on the side, is a metal gurney under a white sheet over a body—

"DIAZ!"

That's all he sees as Athena's men grab him and pull him back.

"Athena!" He screams, "we have to get to him!"

"Diaz! This is the morgue! What exactly are you expecting to find here?"

I brought him back once.

"We don't know," he pleads, "not until–"

He was dead, he was dead, and I brought him back. 

Athena cuts him off. "Get a hold of yourself! Get him away from here!" She orders her men.

I brought him back.

He fights against their hold, but he's outnumbered, and in the deep recesses of his mind, he's ashamed of himself. He's always cool under pressure, that's how he is, that's what made him a good soldier. He's stoic. He respects authority and has mastered self-control and knows how to shut down his emotions. That's what makes him a good soldier. 

Except... He's not a soldier anymore. He's changed, and he's grown, and he's free. More free than he's even been in his life. 

Free to feel, and free to be honest about what he feels. At least to himself. 

And right now, he feels fucking terrified. 

No prize, the distorted voice had said earlier. Minutes earlier. Ages ago. No prize. 

More hands grab him, and Eddie fights, until he recognizes their hold. 

"Eddie," a warm, broken voice says, keeps saying. "Eddie. Eddie. Come on, Eddie, get up."

He hadn't realised he's sunk to his knees. 

"Bobby."

"I know. 

"Bobby."

"I know, Eddie."

"This was all for nothing," Eddie says. He's breathless. "All along–It was all for nothing."

"I know," Bobby says, broken and haunted but solid, and Eddie shatters into the safety of his arms. 

Chapter Text

It takes a while before Athena is allowed to step foot inside room 2 of mortuary. 

Before she can, they evacuate that entire corner of the hospital. It's a complicated operation, and tensions are high.

Diaz pulls himself together exceedingly fast. He's an absolute wreck one moment, on the floor in Bobby's arms, toeing the line between nervous breakdown and panic attack; the next, he's a collected professional, as he realizes the hospital is going to be very understaffed, very soon, and will need all the hands it can get. 

She'd be impressed, if she wasn't so angry. At him, for losing it in the middle of an operation. At herself, for giving him the opportunity, and maybe, for wanting to lose it herself a little bit, too. For having to stay strong, constantly, every day of her damn life. And, especially, for failing at her job. 

She's angry at her fellow detectives, who haven't made any real headway of consequence, who are failing at their jobs, too.

She's angry (that's an understatement; she's beyond livid, so enraged she'd shake apart if she weren't on a mission) at the men who did this, at the voice through the radio. Men who play games and kill people and toy with human lives like they're playthings in a dollhouse, and who dared to put their hands on one of the kindest, sweetest man she knows. 

She's angry at him, at Buck, for getting abducted and possibly killed in the first place. 

She's unfair. She's unfair, and that makes her more frustrated with herself. Despite her warnings to Bobby and Eddie and Maddie, despite her better judgement and her rational mind, she still hoped. 

She still does. She hopes and she prays that it isn't his body in that room.

The confirmation comes quickly enough, while the bomb squad makes sure there are no booby traps involved:

It's a body.

Deceased. Identification impossible. No recognisable features. 

Athena's stomach drops further down with each new information; before long, it's a dead weight sitting somewhere low in her belly. Dread. 

It's a while before she's allowed into that room.

While she waits, that dread swells inside of her. She ignores it by keeping busy. 

She has to wonders how exactly the perpetrators managed to drag an entire body to the morgue, without the hospital notifying the police, when there is a ongoing Clear Alert for three missing people. 

She's angry. Someone was either incompetent, or malicious. 

Tracing the radio signal leads to a dead end.

The cameras don't. They show the first few ambulances that arrived right after the bus accident. One of those ambulances is an older model. The cameras show a man climb out, slide a gurney out from the back with a body bag on top. 

The man strides right in, straight to the mortuary docking bay. He's dressed like a paramedic, wearing gloves and a surgical mask. The hospital around him drops into action and prepares to receive the mass casualties, and there's no one to stop him, to check him in, to check his identity, to take over for him. 

He strolls right in. The cameras show him take his time in the morgue. He finds a white sheet and drapes it carefully over the body bag.

Then, he strolls back out, just as chaos starts to erupt around him.

They missed him by a hair. He leaves, on foot. There are reports that street and store cameras show his progress for a couple of blocks. After that, he disappears. 

They find the ambulance in the parking lot. An older model, property of a collector. Reported stolen two weeks ago. No fingerprints, no hair. 

Only an empty ambulance left behind. And a body bag containing a body. 

Identification impossible, they said. No recognizable features.

Athena prays that it isn't Buck. It absolutely cannot be Buck.

She feels guilty for her colleague, James Morales. From what she knows of him, he is one of the good ones. One of the few left. Young, eager, but reluctant to violence. A good negotiator. The entire police force is tense, his squad most of all. They're all praying it's not him under that white sheet. 

The hospital staff is also on edge. They have to handle the fallout of the bus crash, with the police on their backs and an entire section of the hospital out of limit. The third abductee, Wren Williams, is one of their own. A nurse in the emergency and critical care departments, who's absence is very much felt by his co-workers on a day like this one. They're all praying it's not him in that body bag.

Buck doesn't have a lot of people in his corner tonight. Just a handful of firefighters. And Athena. 

It absolutely cannot be Buck. 

She would lose him, and she would lose her husband in one fell swoop. She's sure of it. 

It's a while before she's allowed into that room, and the dread inside of her begins to resemble grief. 

Eventually, she's let in. She's the first to step foot inside. 

She's joined by Orlando's partner, Andre McArthur, and a medical examiner. Forensic expert.

Another staff member of the hospital, one of Wren Williams' fellow nurses, has been called on. Bobby too. They're waiting on the other side of the door. A second line of defence, there to identify the victim if the three of them fail to, before family has to be involved. 

Athena thinks of Maddie as she steps closer to the body. 

The white sheet is gone, the bag opened all the way. 

It's grief inside of her, clawing to be let out. She holds it in a vice grip.

She thinks of May, of Harry.

She thinks of finding her daughter on the floor of her bedroom, an opened bottle beside her, pills scattered around her. She thinks of the terror she felt. 

She thinks of the long atrocious hours her son had been taken from her, all alone with a monster that wanted his mother to suffer. She thinks of the horror she felt. 

There is a body in that opened body bag, and it is charred beyond recognition.

She thinks of a little girl from long ago, taken and lost forever, only her bones left behind to be stumbled upon decades later.

Nice try, the voice had said as Lopez entered the burn units. Careful not to burn yourself, it had said, when she entered mortuary. 

The body is charred. The hair was burned out. The skin is blackened, cracked, shriveled, raw, entirely missing in places. There are no recognizable features. 

Athena can't tell if it's their Buck. 

But the build of the body fits him. Tall, long legs, thin waist, wider shoulders. 

The weights of dread and grief and terror and horror return her vice grip, crush her from the inside. Outwardly, she keeps a straight face. Her hands shake, and she clenches them into fists. 

The medical examiner is talking. No recognizable features, he says. Will have to wait for dental records, he says. He slides a gloved finger into the victim's mouth to show off the set of teeth. Some are broken, some are missing entirely. 

Athena pictures Buck's smile. His wide grin, his infectious laugh. She thinks about the way it lights up a room, how genuine his smiles are, unrestrained, all teeth, his eyes and his glee shining through. She pictures the way he'd sometimes slide a finger against his teeth when he's feeling bashful, just like the medical examiner is doing now. 

She can't tell if it's him. She can't tell. 

She looks at the bone structure of the face, and she still can't tell. Bones were broken, the medical examiner says. 

"But," he adds, looking at the body closely through a hand glass, "I discern the lines of a partial tattoo, right here," he taps the left side of the chest twice with a gloved index. "Do you happen to know if any of our missing men had any?"

There is the curve of a deliberate black line peaking through blackened skin on the left side of the torso, just under the pectoral. 

MacArthur clears his throat before he speaks. "Yes, Jay– Uh, James does."

So does Buck. 

She says so. Her voice doesn't shake.

"And so does our own Wren Williams, I'm told," the examiner says, thoughtful. "But, if the rapport his colleagues passed along is up to date, he doesn't have any on his torso."

"Jay does, but–" MacArthur's voice is hesitant, but there is a determined set to his jaw when he speaks again. "His tats all have a specific design. Pretty angular. This doesn't fit." He nods to himself. "No, this isn't it. It isn't him."

Athena envies his certainty. She can't tell. She can't tell. 

She knows he has tattoos on his chest, his torso. She pictures a head drawn on his left side with a heart for a brain. Had the occasional peak at it when Buck would sleep in their guest room, during those days when physical therapy was too grueling for him to manage the stairs at his own place. After the crush injury. 

"Buckley suffered a crush injury, years ago," she says, slowly, a frown on her brow. "His left leg."

The examiner is nodding along, hands on the victims legs. "Almost every bone here is broken. An x-ray will differentiate fractures that are older," he says. "Will be a while, however, to sort through this mess."

Athena grits her teeth. She looks at the curved line of the tattoo again. Her mind supplies the rest: a head, a heart. 

She doesn't want to jump to conclusion, but she fears it could be him. She prays it's not. She can't tell. She doesn't know Buck the way Maddie, Eddie, or Bobby do. Inside and out. 

She can't tell. 

Her hands shake. She digs her fingernails in. She feels incompetent, lacking. 

The mere thought of asking her husband to identify another burnt, broken body turns her stomach.

She wishes she could spare him. She doesn't have time to dwell on wishful thinking. They are wasting too much already. 

She excuses herself and leaves the room. The oppressive tension, the terror, the horror; they follow her out the door.

Her eyes find her husband's right away. Horror, terror, they're in his eyes, in the way he holds himself. They permeate everything. 

She turns to the nurse. "If you're ready to go in," she tells her, as kindly as she's able. "The examiner doesn't think it's Wren Williams. But he does need a second opinion."

The nurse takes a breath, visibly steels her nerves, and goes in. The door closes behind her.

Bobby grabs her arm, looking for support just as she reaches for him. "Athena," he says in a breath, pronounces her name like it's a lifeline. Like she's not about to sent him adrift. 

They cling onto each other. Bobby's wild gaze searches every inch of her face for reassurance. It breaks her heart that she can't give it to him. 

She deals a devastating blow instead. 

"It's not James Morales. MacArthur's certain."

She watches as the meaning behind her words, now, and to the nurse before, dawns on him. 

His eyebrows raise, his eyes widen, his face opens, and his entire soul is laid bare before her. He looks into her eyes like he can see hers too.

He mouths her name, again, like she has the power to drag him from this nightmare; his voice is barely there. 

"I can't tell." She feels herself crack around the edges. It's so hard to keep herself together. "I'm sorry Bobby, I can't tell."

His eyes tear from hers and dart toward the door, his face a mask of pain and denial. 

She feels her own mouth twist downward; her eyes burn and her sinuses sting. She hardens her face, and her resolve. She won't shed her tears. Not yet. 

His grip tightens on her arm. She squeezes back, as hard as she can. They'll leave bruises on each other. 

"Bobby–" she starts, can't bring herself to finish her sentence. I can bring Maddie in, she meant to say. Eddie, maybe. 

It's selfish. Bringing either of them into that room would destroy them as surely as it will destroy Bobby. Her instinct to keep her husband's soul safe from harm can't come at the expense of two other people. Two people she cares a great deal about. 

She fears she's already lost him anyway. His gaze is locked onto the round window in the metal door, miles away. Years ago. He feels further away from her than ever, slipping out of her grasp.

His eyes are wider than she's ever seen, terror and horror warring in them. 

The door opens again. The nurse comes out, stops short before them.

"It's not Wren," she says, sounding both relieved and sorry for them, so sorry for them. 

MacArthur follows her out. He shakes his head at Athena, contrite. He spares a glance for Bobby, and he looks so sorry, too, before he escorts the nurse out of mortuary. 

Bobby's gaze follows them out.

"MacArthur," he says, his voice so low Athena only hears him by force of habit. "He died at MacArthur."

MacArthur park. Lightning strike. This very same hospital. He'd died then, but he'd come back, Athena wants to scream at him. He'd come back. The team, and then the doctors, they saved him, brought him back from the brink.

It had been five days, between Buck dying and coming back, and for those five days of uncertainty, she'd seen her husband become a shadow and a ghost, and she'd known with absolute certainty that if they lost Buck, she'd lose him too. 

They're alone again in that cold hallway. Bobby lets go of her arm. He's slipping, slipping from her grasp. She's sent him adrift, and she knows she's about to lose him, now. 

He pushes the door open, and steps into the room. 

She follows. For better, for worse. In health, and in sickness, she once promised. 

Her husband's steps are measured as he walks up to the cold metal gurney. She sees the tension in his jaw, the foreign look in his eyes, the tightness of his muscles making claws out of his hands. 

Turn back, she wants to tell him. Be safe. I'll protect your soul. I'll bring him home to you. 

She can't. 

There's a burnt body on a metal gurney, and horror and terror permeate everything. 

She watches as he stops, close to the body, his hands hovering as he takes the whole sight in. 

Her heart beats against her ribcage. Hard. Hard. 

Her body is tensed, thrumming. She waits for him to break, waits to catch the pieces of him. They'll slip right through her fingers, she knows. 

The medical examiner points to the partial line, on the left side of the chest, below the pectoral, peaking through cracked skin, blackened skin. 

Her mind fills in the blanks. Black ink lining the shape of a head, neck, jawline, ear, up to the rounded top and back down again in symmetry, a heart in place of a brain. An approximation. She hasn't seen that tattoo in years. 

She has an excellent memory. She should have been able to tell, with certitude. She shouldn't have to put Bobby through this. 

But she watches him as he considers the line of ink, and sees something else hiding among the horror and the terror on his face. Hesitation. 

He's not sure either. 

"He–" His voice comes out rough and broken. He clears his throat, and it sounds painful and loud in the quiet room, and tries again. "He should have another tattoo, here." 

His hand twitches as he points a bit higher up, closer to the center of the chest. "Four X's, right here."

The skin is damaged. Enough that it might hide the X's from sight, the examiner points out. 

"He–" Rough, broken. He clears his throat. It's painful and it's loud in the quiet room. "He suffered a crush injury, five years ago. His left leg."

His hand hovers. 

"Yes, I've been made aware," the medical examiner says, his eyes shifting to Athena for an instant. "I've already ordered postmortem imaging in addition to dental records and DNA analysis. We'll figure it out."

They're made to leave the room when another forensic expert comes in. They leave the room, they leave mortuary, they leave the hospital. The parking lot and the entrance to the ER are still busy, but the chaos from earlier has abated. The night is still dark. 

The terror and the horror follow them out, but they're muted, muddled by Bobby's hesitation. 

"Bobby," she says. 

He turns to her. There's hope in his eyes. The kind of hope that's bloodied and guarded. The kind of hope that's not fragile, but stubborn and rugged and resilient, breakable still, but tenacious.

"Athena." His voice, however, is wrecked. His face is a mask of grief, his body language screams agony. Terror and horror. Hope is holding on by it's fingernails, by the skin of its teeth. 

Bobby composes himself, faster than he has any right to, and makes a beeline for one of the 118 ambulances parked not far down the parking lot. 

None of his team is here, the ambulance sitting empty and unused. 

Bibby stops there, staring at the white numbers on red paint.  

"What should I tell them," Bobby wonders, voice so low, so vulnerable. "Should I tell them the truth?" He's bent, almost in half, the weight of the word on his shoulders. "I don't even know what the truth is."

For the first time since this all started, Athena feels at a complete loss for words. 

"The odds are against us. Is it fair to keep them hoping? Is it unfair to Buck to tell everyone he's dead when I can't even identify his body?"

Athena's composure, her control; they're fraying around the edges. She'll be ripped in half, soon. 

"You tell them," she says, and she doesn't recognize her voice, "what you think is right. You follow your instincts. You cannot carry everyone else's hurts."

Bobby looks at her, and once again, she can see his soul. Once again, he can see hers. He can see her unraveling. 

Eddie finds them before she can fall apart in front of her husband, in a busy hospital parking lot, in the middle of an investigation. 

Eddie finds them, and Athena can tell the second the Captain makes his split decision. 

"Eddie," he says, voice placating, tremors imperceptible to anyone but Athena's trained ear. "It's not the nurse, and it's not the cop." 

He doesn't glance at Athena, stares straight at Eddie, begs him to see through his omission, maybe. 

Eddie doesn't, it seems. He stumbles back, puts distance between him and his captain. 

"No," he says, voice steady enough. "You're wrong," he says. 

Despite his words, and his stumble, and his trembling jaw, he stays very, unnaturally calm. His gaze keeps sliding over Bobby's shoulder. He doesn't ask to see the body himself. 

"You're wrong," he repeats, like he can change events with enough conviction. Then he says, steel in his voice, "You're lying." 

Athena doesn't say anything. She doesn't think Bobby's making the right choice. She doesn't think he's not making the right choice. She doesn't think. 

She's unraveling, right here, right now. She holds the one thread that stills holds her together in a death grip. 

Eddie stands there, eyes wet and gaze hard, jaw so tight his teeth visibly grind together. 

She can't bear to look at Bobby. She squeezes his arm, and when she makes her exit, she doesn't look back. 

She's back into the emergency room, back into the bowels if the hospital. Every corner of it is still so busy, so full of tragedy.  

She finds a bathroom, eventually. The lights that turn on with her presence reveal it to be empty. She locks herself into the very last stall. 

She presses her back to the locked door. Lets it support her weight.

She stays in that position for a long time. Her breaths come in short, as the stress of the day, of the whole week, shred her from the inside as it claws its way out. 

She thinks about one of the sweetest, most gentle man she knows. She thinks about a big heart, about a genuine laugh and a wide smile that lights up a room. She thinks of the light he brought into her husband's heart. 

The automatic lights turn off. She's plunged into darkness. She doesn't move. 

Her gasping breaths take on a rasping quality. She hears the first sob tear right out of her, forcefully; she tries to hold it back, but she can't catch it as it slips right through her fingers.

The dam's opened and she's powerless before it.

She stays in that position for a long time, so still the lights never turn back on, her sobs too loud in the quiet of the dark.

She lets the locked door hold her up, keep her on her feet, while she falls apart in that bathroom stall.

Inside room 2 in mortuary, the charred body in the body bag is wheeled away to be autopsied. 

—

Maddie learns about the situation at General through dispatch. 

The police are there, and so are the 118. The perpetrators might be. One of the victims might be. 

On TV, the news have barely begun covering the incident, juggling between the bus crash and this new development, scrambling to figure out what's happening. 

Maddie stands there, frozen, watching, until her eyes meet Sue's, whose lips part to mouth one word: "Go."

Maddie scrambles, too. 

The drive from Metro Dispatch to General Hospital should be a short one. But the streets are overcrowded, large sections of road deviated, or closed entirely to traffic. The stadium is close, the crash site closer. Emergency vehicles are zooming past regularly. People stuck in their cars are honking, angry, stressed.

Maddie's own stress is eating her alive. So is her guilt. She should be at dispatch, aiding in coordinating the general chaos. Instead, she sits in her car, an open line with Josh keeping her updated. 

Inside of her, hope grits her teeth, soaked in the blood draining from the gaping wounds that are her soul, her heart.

The confirmation comes long before she makes it to the hospital: they found a dead body. 

Her hands are so tight around the steering wheel that the plastic whimpers and her knuckles split. Blood seeps into the lines and creases of her paper thin skin. 

Inside of her, hope turns dark, sharp, acidic. 

Don't let it be him, it prays. Anybody but him. Don't let it be him. Don't let it be him. 

She's choking on the taste of it.

Don't let it be him. Please. Please. Please. Please.

Another miracle, she begs for. He's good at pulling them off. He's good at overcoming the odds. He's tenacious, and he survives. 

He survives, he survives. 

It takes a while before she makes it to the hospital. 

All the while, blood seeps through the pores of her dry skin. All the while, she bleeds out, and she doesn't die, and she hopes, she hopes, she hopes.

She believes in him, and she won't give up. She won't give up. 

She won't, not until reality hits her like an angry fist, knocks her down, flat on her back, beats her to death. 

She won't give up. 

The hospital looms into view, large, tall, suffocating. 

Please. Please. Please. Please. Don't let it be my baby. 

She all but abandons her car. She's not ready to face reality, but she runs toward it anyway. Until a cop stops her right in her stride. 

"I'm–I'm the sister of one of the—" she cuts herself off. "Buckley," she says, "Buckley."

Buckley. Buckley. Her little finger twitches, blood caked into the creases of the knuckle.

The cop's hard gaze turns pitying. He lets her through. 

From this point on, the rest of her night happens disjointedly, in dizzying snapshots of awful clarity. 

She's searching for the number 118 among the many ambulances. Before she finds it, Chimney finds her. 

The devastation on his face brings her to her knees. He holds her, and she holds him. He's her only lifeline. 

They find Bobby and Eddie. Eddie won't look at her, at anyone, but Bobby. Every one of his muscles is locked tight, his body screaming denial, devastation driping off him in waves. Bobby's face is inscrutable, carefully devoid of emotion. He can't mask his eyes, and she sees devastation there. 

Bibby tells her they found a body in the morgue. He tells her it's disfigured, beyond recognition. He tells her it's not either of the two men who were abducted alongside her little brother. 

He asks her if she wants to see him, and all she thinks about then is little Daniel, lying in a too big bed, unrecognisable, dying, dying, dying, dead. 

She's shaking her head before she's made her decision. 

No. The word comes and goes around her mind, around and around and around. No, no, no, no, no, no. 

She knows what it is. Denial. 

No, the word echoes inside her head, no, in response to those other words: dying, dying, dying, dead. 

—

It takes a while, before Eddie finally makes it home.

It's Saturday. (Close to 10 in the morning. He and the 118 stayed all night and almost all morning at the hospital.)

Buck is dead. (Maybe. Maybe not. The uncertainty is killing him, chirping away at his sanity, little by little. It's eating him from the inside, one bite at a time.)

It's Saturday.

Christopher is home. (Should he tell Chris Buck is dead? Should he put the final nail in the coffin, lay Buck to rest, let Christopher grieve?)

It's Saturday. 

(Is that fair to Buck?)

It's Saturday. 

Saying it makes it real. If he tells his son that Buck is dead, if he puts the final nail in the coffin, let them rest, let them grieve, then he has given up hope. (Hope doesn't change anything. He believes that. Hope doesn't change facts, it doesn't change the course of events, it doesn't change fate.)

Buck wouldn't. Buck never gave up---

Buck never gives up. 

Eddie can't give up hope. He can't. It doesn't matter that every odd is stacked against them. That would be another betrayal. (You can have my back any day, he'd once promised. Or, you know, you could have mine, had been the answer. You could have mine. You could have mine.)

(He didn't. Not when it mattered. That's Eddie's first betrayal.)

Eddie doesn't want to tell his son Buck is dead. He doesn't want to put that nail in that coffin. He doesn't want Buck in that coffin. 

Eddie wants to believe; in mistaken odds, in a benevolent higher power, in a less indifferent universe. If nothing else, he believes in Buck. 

He believes Buck never gives up. He's never been more sure of anything. 

It's Saturday. 

(One week, twelve hours.)

He doesn't want to tell his son Buck is dead. 

(Is that fair to Christopher?)

—

Eventually, Maddie makes it home. 

She makes it to her bed, where she sits. The bed is made, and the sheets are cold. There is an absence against her chest. She wants Jee Yun. She wants to hold. She wants her baby. 

Her hands reach for the bottom drawer of her nightstand. There, held by a rubber and, she finds a stack of postcards, letters, pictures. 

She rumages through them, her heart in her throat. 

Dying, the words echoe, dead, dead, dead. 

No.

No.

She studies the handwriting. She studies the words, the sentences, the hope written between the lines. The longing. 

Her heart is in her throat, and it's broken, and it's bleeding. 

She wants Jee. She wants to hold. 

Eventually, she studies the photographs, too, photographs of places, of things. Of him. 

Eventually, she makes it to the end of the stack, and to the first picture he sent her. A Polaroid, faded. In it, he's young. 

She remembers receiving it, then. She'd studied the photo, just like she's doing now. She'd studied his face, then, his eyes, his smile, trying to gauge his mental state, wondering if he was still wearing a mask, pretending, pretending, pretending.

Dying. Dead. 

No.

Then, she'd been trapped at home with a hateful husband. She'd been trapped, with danger, and pain, but he'd been out there. Away from it and from her, free, safe, blooming.  

Now, she's safe at home with her loving husband, and danger is out there, and so is pain, and so is he.

She stares at the Polaroid, drinks in the sight of his young face. Open, earnest. Eyes still guarded by his tormented childhood, but his smile is so wide. So bright. 

His smile used to fill her with such pride and gratefulness. She used to take every crumble of happiness he'd display and feed it to her soul, and her soul would swell. 

Now, his smile catches on the jagged edges of the wound in her chest, stuffs her soul full of grief and guilt. 

She stares at his young face, and she feels so much love, but her heart is broken, cracked open. There's a jagged hole in her chest from which love pours out, and it overflows and it bleeds her out. She bleeds and bleeds and bleeds. She's been bleeding for days. Ten days.  

She wants to hold. She wants her baby. 

She holds the too small picture in her hand, and there's a jagged hole in her chest from which love pours out, and that love tries to find a place to land there, in this picture. It does, and it pools, and it overflows, and it tries to pull the picture back into the jagged hole of her chest, but the picture catches on the jagged edges.  

It doesn't fit. It doesn't fit. It catches at the jagged edges, like a square she's desperate to pull through a circle. It doesn't fit. Her chest is still empty, ripped open, bleeding out. 

His picture doesn't fit, and he's not there to fit in instead.

He's not there.

Dead. The word echoes inside her mind. Dead. Dead. 

No, she fights back. 

—

Eventually, Eddie makes it home. 

Carla greets him with a smile on her drawn face, exhaustion in her eyes. 

"Hey," Eddie says. He doesn't really recognize his voice. "How's he doing?"

"He misses you."

(You. Eddie? Or Eddie and Buck? When did 'you' become 'we' in his mind?)

"He's quiet," she continues. "He doesn't want to talk to me."

"Does he know?"

Does Christopher know? Does Carla know? He doesn't remember if he texted her at all yesterday, or tonight. His memory of the last twenty four hours is nothing but a whirlwind of gut churning apprehension and trepidation. Dread made solid inside his flesh. 

(Does Eddie himself know? Does he know that Buck is dead? He doesn't. He still doesn't know what he'll tell Christopher today.)

"I didn't let him watch the news. But he knows something happened last night."

There's no smile on her drawn face. There's exhaustion in her eyes. She's Buck's friend, too. She must be so worried. Eddie wishes he could reassure or comfort her.

He takes a step toward Christopher's room.

"Eddie," she stops him. "He's locked himself in his room." She sounds exhausted, too, and so, so worried. 

Dread is solid inside Eddie's flesh. It crushes his organs against his bones, and yet, he's alive anyway. 

Eddie nods, and makes his way to Christopher's room. 

He knocks. 

"Christopher?"

Silence. 

Dread. It's suffocating. 

He knocks. "Christopher, please," he says, and his voice is steady. "Are you there, mijo?"

Silence. 

Dread. Eddie presses his forehead against Christopher's door. He wants to respect his son's privacy. He also wants to hold him in arms, more than he's ever wanted anything in his life. There's an ache inside of him, that longs to hold his son close. To make sure he's there. 

"Christopher."

Silence. It's deafening. 

Until a tiny, quiet sob cuts right through it. 

Eddie's heart wakes up, beats a mile a minute while his hands spasm against the door. 

"Chris?"

"Go away."

He can't do that. "Christopher, please."

"Go away!"

Christopher's voice breaks, Eddie's heart breaks, and then, something else breaks inside Christopher's room. Something heavy.

"Chris?"

More noises. Like Chris is throwing things around, breaking them. Like he's destroying his bedroom. 

Dread. This is familiar, but he's on the other side of the door, and Buck isn't there to save them. Buck is gone. Buck is—

Dead.

Eddie's heart breaks, and his soul breaks, and he's suddenly so, so terrified of losing Christopher. He can't lose him. He can't lose Christopher. 

More noises. Dread. Terror. "Chris, I'm coming in!" 

He throws his entire weight against the door. It resists, so he tries again. 

Before he knows it, he's stumbling inside Christopher's room. 

His son looks up at him, his eyes red. There are books and toys strewn all around him. His bedside lamp is on the floor, his crutches, too.

Just as he watches, Christopher's legs stop holding him up and he slides down to the floor, his back to his bed. 

Eddie feels the strongest urge to catch him before it's too late, but he's too slow, and it feels like Christopher slips right through his fingers like sand. Like water. Eddie kneels beside him, hands hovering over empty air.

There is accusation in his son's eyes, and Eddie swallows. The lump in his throat doesn't budge. Dread. 

What should he tell Chris? He can't tell him Buck is dead. Not yet. Not until–Not before they have confirmation. 

Ten days. The odds are ugly, but Buck still has a fighting chance. He has. They can't give up on him. Even if—

He's dead. 

He hates that he has to prolong his son's suffering. That he's resigned himself to let Chris linger in this limbo. To allow him to keep hoping instead of grieving and healing.

Hope cuts harder than grief. 

"Is he dead?"

"No." That's the word that comes out of his mouth before he's even figured out what to say. His dread and his terror, and his grief, though, they must be so obvious. They scream yes, and before Eddie can school his face, Christopher's fall.

"You're lying."

"Chris—"

"No!"

"Ten days means—"

"No!"

"—we have to be ready for–"

"You're a liar!" Christopher shouts over him and won't listen, his hand curled into a tight fist. "You're a liar, you're a liar!" There's a distinct shift in his tone; Eddie suddenly feels like his son's not talking to him anymore. Chris opens his fist. There's a piece of paper there, tucked into his palm. He throws it to the floor. "You're a liar!"

Eddie stares at the crumple piece of paper. It's a picture. He can't see it too well, but he recognises it instantly. He sees that picture every day, whenever he opens or closes the fridge. 

It's Buck and Chris, on that picture, Buck holding the camera, both of them smiling bright. 

Chris screams at that picture, now. "You said you wouldn't leave me! You said—"

Eddie takes his son in his arms, careful not to jostle him, desperate to let Chris know he's here with him. 

Christopher doesn't resist. "He said he wasn't going anywhere." Chris looks up at him, eyes red, and as Eddie watches, the tears start flowing again. "Dad—He said—"

"I'm sorry," Eddie says, because he doesn't know what else to say. He didn't abandon you on purpose. He didn't want to leave. I didn't have his back. It's my fault. 

"He didn't want to," Eddie says. That's the most important thing Chris needs to know. "Chris, he didn't want to leave you."

A small sob forces it's way through Christopher's lips, and he wipes at his eyes angrily. 

"He didn't–" Eddie stops himself, holds Chris tight against his heart. "He doesn't want to leave you. He loves you."

Christopher lets himself be held, even as he reaches for the scrunched up picture of him and Buck. He uncrumples it, tries to smoothe the creases out of the picture, tries to make it as flat as possible, but the creases stay, unforgiving.

"You're leaving me." His voice has lost its rage. It's timid now. Instantly, just like he did before, Eddie knows his son is speaking to him. "You're never here. You're leaving me alone and I hate you."

Christopher cries, and Eddie cries. Chris is right, and he's lost, but Eddie is lost, too. He hasn't had to be alone for so long, and he forgot. He forgot he can never be alone while he has Chris, unless he makes him alone too.

He buries his nose in his hair, kisses the top of his head, thumbs his tears away.  

"I love you." He holds his son against his heart, wishes he could hold him even closer. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Chapter Text

The news comes in later that day. 

It's not Buck. 

The dental records don't match. The DNA doesn't match. The bones in the left leg show no sign of the old injury. 

The tattoo had been a coincidence, and Bobby's subconscious had understood, from the second he laid eyes on it, that it hadn't matched either. 

(Chim had, all while apologizing profusely, sent him every single shirtless picture he could find of Buck, begging him to compare the tattoo there to the line of ink he'd seen on that calcinated body. He'd begged him, desperate for Bobby to figure out whether it really was Buck in that morgue.)

(The uncertainty had been unbearable for him, for Maddie, Bobby figures.)

It's not Buck. 

Bobby had expected the relief to be immense, and staggering. 

But it's not, it's not. He still feels on edge. He still feels nauseous and lightheaded, his blood still thrums beneath his skin, in anticipation, like he's standing on the edge of a precipice, like he's about to fall. 

He realizes it's not grief that's been weighting on his bones, as much as the uncertainty. 

That uncertainty is still ever present, and leaves no room for relief. 

The image of Buck, restrained, held down, his cries muffled behind a gag, is burned into his retina. He sees it, every time he closes his eyes. He sees it, when his eyes are wide open, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the day. 

There's no room for relief. 

Not when that's his last image of Buck, playing on a loop in his mind. Not when he doesn't know if Buck is being hurt, right this moment. Not when he doesn't know if there isn't another corpse, somewhere, lying in a ditch, that used to be Buck. 

God, Bobby prays. Please, he prays. 

He can't bear to imagine Buck, dead, for another second. He can't bear to imagine the earth keep spinning, even after Buck is lost to him. 

He knows it will—keep spinning that is. The world doesn't stop for anybody, not even for a grieving parent.

He misses Buck. He misses the kid, so much.

God, he prays. I beg you. 

(The phone in his hand cracks under the pressure of his fist. The screen is already fractured; he doesn't remember when that happened. He has to make the effort to hold it less tightly.)

The phone call to Chimney has been painful. He'd taken the news (it's not Buck) the same way Bobby had: with no relief. The forced lightness in Chim's tone when he'd insisted it was the best news he'd heard all day hadn't fooled Bobby. 

He almost thinks that it might have been better, for Chim, and for Maddie, if it had been Buck in that body bag. If they had gotten him back, even in death. If they had been able to bury him and mourn him and eventually move on. Leave behind this limbo they're all stuck in. But he's not fool enough to entertain that idea any longer. 

Chim and Maddie, they both lost people; brothers. They both now that grief and pain of loss kills you just as slowly and insidiously as the pain of not knowing.

Bobby remembers, too. 

He remembers the smell of smoke and fire in the biting cold air of a Minnesota night. He remembers his insides folding on themselves and his soul screaming out as two little bodies he loved with every fiber of his being were laid out under white sheets. He remembers the absolute hysteria at knowing it was over, while incapable to understand it.

Incapable to understand it, incapable of finding the words for the prayer, but begging God all the same, begging, begging, begging. 

He remembers the smell of smoke and fire and ozone and rain in the night air. He remembers the world falling away again from under his feet as another body was lowered into his arms.  

He remembers holding that body close to his chest, where Bobby's own heart beat against his ribs, so hard, so fast, and knowing with absolute, horrifying certainty that his kid's wasn't. 

It's the uncertainty that's killing him now. 

God, he begs. Father.

(The phone cracks again under his fist.)

Please, he begs. Please, Father. Keep him whole. Bring him home. 

He longs, selfishly, to wrap Buck in his arms again. To feel, this time, his heart beat against his own. 

Father, he begs. 

Buck, he thinks, Buck had been trouble from the minute he knew him. 

Not for his flaws, or his rebellious tendencies, or his occasional but frustrating disdain for authority.

Buck had been trouble for Bobby's heart, even at a time when it was mutilated, cold and guarded and, he'd thought, forsaken by God. 

Buck had always been so easy to love.

He'd burrowed his way past Bobby's protective shell and right into his heart, right into the wounded tissue that Brooke and Robert's absence could never heal. 

Buck had hit him where it hurt the most, and Bobby had welcomed that pain. Paternal love, he'd felt, for the first time in years, for someone living, breathing. Someone in desperate need of a father. 

That's when Bobby made a mistake. He lost sight of where his kids ended and Buck started. The more he looked, the more alike he found them, the less he could pretend he didn't love Buck like his own. 

Even now, Bobby can't unfeel it. Buck is too much like his first children. He's so full of joie de vivre and boundless energy, like Brooke. He loves and cares so openly, so earnestly, so honestly, like Robert. 

And it is unfair to Buck, but Bobby's become too dependant on Buck's wellbeing. 

He can tell Athena sees that. That she's worried. He knows her, often better than he knows himself. She's afraid that she's losing her husband.

Bobby wants to reassure her, he wants to prove to her that he'll never leave her, that together, they can survive anything. 

But he's not sure. He's not sure. He's not sure that he can survive losing another one of his kids. One in whom he has put, quite unconsciously and very much against his better judgment, so much of his lost children's spirit in. 

(The pads of his fingers catch on the fissures webbed all over the screen of his phone. He wishes they would bleed. He wishes he could give something, anything.)

He's so afraid that if he loses Buck, he'll feel like losing them again, and he'll lose himself, too. 

—

When Buck wakes up, he's lost. 

He stares at the ceiling. The ceiling stares back, indifferent. 

He doesn't know where he is. He knows he's not home. 

That feeling seems familiar, though, he thinks. But he's not home. He's not safe. 

"You're awake too soon."

Buck's heart jumps, startled by the voice. His body tries to jump , too, but only twitches. It feels so far away from his thoughts. Disconnected from his brain. 

He manages to turn his head to the side, just enough.

There's a man, standing beside him. White coat, white mask. Buck bleats out a little sound if denial, rolls his head to the other side. 

He aims to clench his eyes shut and forget the world, but, standing there is another man. 

He's wearing a mask, too, and despite it, Buck instantly knows him. The stance, the eyes. As familiar as that ceiling above him. 

He's not safe. 

The familiar man is wearing an unfamiliar mask; the face of a bear, staring down at him. It's got fake fur all over, all tangled up. Drawn-on sharp teeth make a frozen sharp smile

The mask has got two fuzzy, rounded ears. Between them sits a little yellow helmet, right on top of its head. That, too, is instantly familiar.

Blaze Bear. The firefighter charity official mascot. 

Buck's mouth is dry. 

The eyes behind the mask are grey and cold, no laugh lines around them. 

It's the man, the man—it's the same man. He knows it. Knows him.

Buck can't feel much of his body, but he feels it as his heart jumps and jumps inside his chest. 

"Do you like it?" The man asks, his head tilting to the side. 

Buck opens his mouth, and it takes an effort to unclench his teeth, his jaw. Only a garbled little noise escapes him. His tongue feels too fat for his dry mouth, like it's ready to choke him. Shame burns his skin. 

"I wasn't meant to stay with you, at first," the man says, leans in close to Buck. "Some people, though, they thought we had chemistry."

Buck only stares. There's a whimper in the back of his throat. 

The man leans back, straightens up. 

"And the Bear was late. So I'm the Bear now."

He circles the gurney Buck is laid out on, makes his way to Buck's left. The other, silent man—white coat, white mask—steps to the background, and Buck forgets he exists. 

The man—the Bear draws a syringe, and Buck can't move his body but he can feel his heart jump and jump and jump against his chest wall. 

No, Buck thinks, don't. His tongue is fat, and numb, and won't let him speak. He lets his head fall to the side, watches as the man plunges the contents of the syringe into the crook of Buck's elbow. The needle slides right in. Buck can't feel it. There are other track marks littering his inner elbow. 

No, he keeps thinking. Don't. 

"But you," the man puts away the syringe, leans in close again, makes his voice soft, "you can call me Teddy."

He makes his eyes soft, too, for the first time, and something inside Buck splits open.

Something like dread, and when it splits, something else comes rushing out, something different. More scared, more desperate, more vulnerable. Something childlike, like a cry for help, or for mercy. 

There's a whimper stuck in his throat. 

The man observes him behind the shadows of his mask, his eyes still soft, still grey; for the first time, there are lines in their corners. 

"We're not ready yet," he says. "Go back to sleep."

He holds a hand to Buck's temple, thumb just brushing soothing circles into his eyebrow, his birthmark, like Maddie would, like Maddie had, so many times in his life. It makes Buck's skin crawl. Yet, despite his brain and his gut screaming at him, and despite his weak muscles, Buck leans into the touch. 

He's always been weak for affection, even forced, or faked. 

The man seems to disagree. "You're strong," he says, thumb drawing delicately into his skin. He's not wearing gloves, and his fingers are cold. "We'll play a different game when you wake up."

Above him, the ceiling rolls. 

Sedatives.

No, instinct screams. Fight. 

Clarity suddenly cuts right through the fog of his mind in one clean strike even as the rest of him starts shutting down, and for a second, memories overwhelm him.

He remembers waking up, in this exact position, in worse positions. He remembers pain, and cold voices, and unwanted touches.

He's been here for days.

"The Wolf has taken an interest in you," Teddy—the man says. "He's lost his last sheep."

Buck stares at the face of the Bear, so close to his own he could count every fake hair. He hasn't seen a wolf, or any sheep.

He doesn't understand this conversation. The man is throwing sentences at him, disconnected, fragmented, and Buck's brain is too slow to follow. Always too slow, or too fast. Never just right. 

Above him, the ceiling rolls, and Buck instinctively tries to grip the edges of his gurney, scared he'll fall off if he doesn't hold on. His fingers are numb, and he can't find them. 

He remembers this man, under a different mask, standing over him. He's always there. Causing pain; with a cattle prod, with a blow torch, with ropes, with his fists, with his hands.

He remembers gentle touches, too. Not letting him fall, cradling him close, hands on the nape of his neck, on his face, his chin, his temple, thumb brushing his skin. 

Like now.

Buck's skin crawls. The ceiling rolls, and his stomach rolls, and his vision swims. He can't feel the cold touch of metal under his hands, under his back. Only the cold touch of gentle fingers drawing patterns against his temple. It helps with the headache he's had for days. 

"I've got you, for now," the man says, voice still soft. 

Buck blinks, once, twice, fast, but his vision doesn't clear. It blurs until he can't see, and his nose stings, and he thinks he's crying. 

"I'm not leaving you," the voice says. 

He can't feel his body, not even his heartbeat anymore. He's just a head, floating, sinking into the abyss. He can't see; it's too dark. 

His ears are underwater, but he hears the voice anyway. 

"If you promise you won't leave me."

No, Buck thinks. Yes, he thinks. I promise. He never wants to leave. He never wants people to leave him. But he always holds on too tight, and people have to shake him off before they bruise. They have to. They have to. His grip his too strong, and too hard. 

I promise, he promises anyway. I promise. Pinky promise. He tries to lift his little finger, but he can't find it. It's on his hand, he knows, but he can't find that either. Can't feel neither. 

He can't feel the tear falling down his temple. He barely feels the thumb that catches it, the touch so soft. Like Maddie's. He wishes he himself were this gentle. 

He blinks, slow. 

Maddie, he wants. Maddie. Maddie. 

He blinks, and it's slow. The lids are heavy, and his eyes fight to roll back inside his head.

For a suspended moment, he's weightless. He tries to reach for Maddie, for someone, for anyone, but he's alone, alone in the dark. 

He blinks, slow. 

His body aches. The realisation is sudden, and takes him by surprise. His body hasn't felt like his own for so long. The ache keeps him company in the dark, and he feels less alone. 

He blinks, slow. 

There's something...digging into the meat of his ass. He's still more than half asleep, but it's uncomfortable and he shifts and wiggles, trying to dislodge whatever that is. 

It doesn't take much effort; he moves, the thing moves. 

He hears a clatter, like metal falling on cement, and his body drops. 

It's like that feeling, when you're about to fall asleep, and you suddenly feel like you're plummeting to your death. 

Buck startles awake, his heart flying into his throat, his stomach trying to punch its way there too, his insides clawing at his skin. 

His body drops. It's less than a split second. The second completes, and a hard tug under his jaw stops him short.

Buck jerks. A bleeped sound escapes him right as his airway completely cuts off. His eyes fly open, and bright light stabs into them, into his retinas, into his brain. 

His hands fly up, too, try to find purchase on whatever's choking him. They finds metal, looped around his neck. 

His hands can't close around the chains, his body's too heavy, he's choking—suffocating—hanged—he's being hanged—

He can't—he can't move his feet. He can't get them under him. He can't breathe. He can't—

Pure panic explodes inside of him, undiluted, animalistic, burning hot in its intensity. A high-pitched noise beats his eardrums while his entire body flushes with the shockwave. Black spots crawl over his vision. He can't see. He can't—see—can't breathe—

He's dying. He's dying.

Maddie, he wants. Bobby. Eddie. 

The names bounce around inside his skull, too fast, and he can't grasp them, can't hold onto them. They're not here. He's alone. He's dying alone. He's so sorry. 

The names disintegrate, one after the other, pulverised by the long, drawn-out scream of rage and pain and fear and loss that reverberates around and around inside his cranium. 

He can't breathe. Can't see. His heart beats so madly, ricocheting all over his entire chest cavity like a ping-pong ball. It'll drive him insane before the chain can suffocate him to death.

He wants—he needs to breathe. His fingers scramble for purchase, try to slip between metal and skin to no avail, follow the chain higher up, to where it reaches up above his head. 

He needs to breathe. He'll die if he doesn't. His grip tightens around the chain, his fist white-knuckled; he makes use of every single muscle in his arms and his shoulders and his back, and he pulls. He pulls himself up. 

Around his neck, the chain loosens, just enough, and he can breathe. He can breathe! 

He's dizzy with euphoria, raking in desperate gulps of air. It hurts going in, but it's sweet, and he's starved, and he gorges on it greedily.

He blinks, but the black spots won't clear. He feels light-headed, residual panic and adrenaline playing tug of war with his body. He's shaking like a leaf.

He can't pass out, he knows. 

He readjusts his grip on the chain. His arm shake harder than the rest of him. His abdominal muscles, too. His back and shoulders pull and stretch, painfully, and his legs—

His legs won't move. They're stuck, and they won't move, and panic starts to claw its way up to abject terror. 

Why can't he move his legs? There's a weight against both his feet and calves, hard, unyielding. Images of red, hot metal and red and blue lights flash between the black spots in his vision. 

He's pinned. He's pinned. Help. 

His fingers tighten around the chain, until he's sure the bones will split right through the skin. His arms shake. 

He blinks. 

The harsh light stabs into his skull, and he blinks again. 

Through tears and black spots, he looks down at himself. 

He's...restrained. He can't make sense of it for a second, can't figure out where gravity lands, can't figure out what is wall and what is floor, and he blinks again. His body shakes. 

His calves are secured to the wall, facing it, from feet to knees. His toes are pressed against the floor, bearing his entire weight. 

His body is bent backwards, pulled away from the wall by the chain around his neck, leaving the rest of him suspended parallel to the floor.

His hands are getting sweaty around the chain. He can taste his own fear in the back of his throat. 

He looks up. The chain looped around his neck is secured to the ceiling, but not straight up above him; it's reaching the ceiling at an angle, diagonally, behind his head. 

His hands sweat, and his arms shake. He's using almost every single muscles in his body, straining to keep the chain around his throat just slack enough. He's breathing in noisy gasps, muscles cramping already. 

Stress position. 

He can taste fear on his tongue. 

He can't hold back the whimper that shoves its way out his throat. It hurts as it comes out, the pain pulsating in time with his wild heartbeat. 

He glances to the side and sees the blinking light of a camera, and wonders how long they intend to leave him like that. If they'll take him down before his muscles fail him. 

He doesn't have high hopes. He thinks that they intend to watch his muscles fail and abandon him, one by one, that they intend to watch him suffocate to the point of unconsciousness. Maybe to death, he thinks, and his chest heaves. 

He hasn't been this scared for a while. He hates that he's alone. That he's wishing for his captor's presence. The man in the mask. The—the man in the bear mask. 

His eyes sting. He thinks he'll choke on fear and self hatred before the chains can do their job. 

He readjust his slipping grip on the chain. Collects himself.

He's lost a lot of his muscle mass in the last few days, but he's strong. In any other context, he would have loved this exercise. Minus the strangulation. 

He centers himself. Takes calming breaths while he still can. Wills his strength to hold out. 

He looks around again. 

There's a gurney behind the camera. His clothes are neatly folded on top of it. 

He can't stop another whimper, or the chill that suddenly wracks his frame, or the tears that squeeze their way to freedom. His arms shake. 

He can hold out. 

To the side, there's a door. It's closed. 

He looks over his shoulders again, but he can't see the man anywhere. The one in the doll mask—the—the bear mask. Teddy, his mind supplies, but Buck can't remember being told. Like the teddy bear. Like a parody of comfort. A mockery of his need for affection. 

He blinks away the sting in his eyes. 

He's alone. Aside from the winking camera. 

He looks at his legs. They're secured with a single contraption that hold his calves tight against the wall. There's no room to wiggle them. 

Don't panic. 

He looks at the locks on the contraption. It's mechanical. Spring locked. There are two levers on each sides. Buck looks at them, and it seems obvious that pushing down the levers will spring the locks open. 

That easy. 

Buck's breathing picks up even more as he stares at the locks. His chest heaves and his muscles cramp and his body shakes. There's a catch. There has to be a catch. 

He readjusts his grip anyway, placing all of his weight in his right hand. He slowly unclenches the fingers of his left hand. His right arm shakes harder, full-on trembles rocking him, but it holds.

He reaches down with his left hand. Pulls his shoulder as low as he can, stretches his arm as far as it will go, until his fingers just brush the lever. 

It's not enough. He'll need to put weight on the lever, he knows. He ignores the gnawing fear that the lock might not open anyway. That it might just be there to taunt him. 

With his right, he stretches the chain as taut as it will go between his hand and the ceiling. Tentatively, he pulls his head down, stretching the chain there too, until he feels pressure on his throat. 

It's not enough.

With an animalistic grunt, he pushes himself forward, choking himself, presses his hand as hard as he can against the lever. 

It doesn't budge. 

With panicked, breathless gasps, Buck brings his left hand back up around the chain above his head and pulls himself up again. 

He coughs, desperate and terrified. He's so stupid. He's so stupid. If course the lock is there to taunt him. He's so stupid. Everyone watching is probably laughing at him. 

His entire body is quaking, an adrenaline spike adding to the stress of his position. He wants to scream, and rage, but doesn't have the breath to spare for it. 

He doesn't want to wait for his own body to desert him. He doesn't want to die like that. It takes long minutes to suffocate. He doesn't want to die alone. 

Don't panic, he begs himself. Please don't panic.

It takes every ounce of willpower he possesses to remain calm, to keep his head clear. He looks at the contraption again. 

The springs are connected. It should work if—He has to pull both levers at the same time. 

He'll have to let go of the chain, reach down with both hands. Strangle himself while he's at it, and pray he doesn't pass out before he manages to free his feet. 

He doesn't waste any time. His muscles are quaking; he's not prepared to hold a stress position for long. He's malnourished, exhausted, probably drugged to the gills. 

He takes as deep a breath as he can, fills his lungs, and let's go with both hands before he can overthink this. 

Impulsivity was always his strong suit. 

The noose instantly tightens around his throat, but he ignores it, single minded in his determination to see this through. 

He can't reach. 

His fingers just graze the levers, and he can't apply any weight to them. He pushes his head forward, against the chain, desperate to gain the few inches he needs. 

Wrong move. The ringing comes back tenfold , his vision completely whites out. His head feels like it's gonna explode, like it'll pop right open and spray his brains everywhere. 

He's not strangling himself. He's pressing on his carotid artery. He'll pass out in seconds. 

With an aborted bleat, he scrambles to grab the chain again and pull his weight up and the pressure away from his carotid. 

He manages. Waits while struggles to get his breathing back under control. He's exhausted. He's so exhausted. His body screams at him to give up. 

He's stubborn. 

That's another one of his strong suit. 

He holds onto the chain for dear life, scans the room while he's at it. 

Under him, flat on the ground, is a metal rod. Cattle prod, his brain thinks, and his heart leaps right into arrhythmia. 

He looks again, and it's not. Just a metal rod, smooth, one end wider and flatter than the other.

Calm down, he tells himself.

He remembers something digging into his ass. It was probably the only thing holding him up before, preventing him from choking before he came to his senses. One move from him threw off the balance, and the rod clattered to the flood to set the trap in motion. 

Another thin length of chain connects the roof to the contraption at his legs. 

He tries to reach it, but his fingers don't even come close while his other hands still holds his own chain slack. 

He takes another breath, holds it, and lets his noose choke him. He stretches his arm, manages to reach the road. With one last pull against his chain, he closes his fingers around it. 

Except he's got only one free hand now, and he's shaking, and he can't heave himself up again. He can't. His right hand's grip is too weak around the chain, and he hits himself in the head with the rod when his left instinctively reaches up. 

His vision whites out, and his head is full of bees crashing against the walls of his cranium. 

Get up, he begs himself, get up, get up, get up!

Another round of adrenaline kicks in, and with empty lungs and a soundless scream, he does get himself up.

For a second, even as the chain goes slack, he can't get a breathe in, his insides too constricted, throat, windpipe and lungs. 

He just goes, his right hand trembling so badly the links of the chain rattle against one another. 

His veins feel like they're gonna burst. His muscles too. His lungs too. 

For a second, he wonders if his throat collapsed, if he's about to choke to death anyway. 

Then, he manages to sneak in a sip of air, and it's like breathing through a straw, and it hurts, but once he starts, he can't stop. He breathes, and breathes, and breathes, and the sound is raspy even through the rush of his ears, but he's so grateful. He wants to breathe. He wants to live. 

He wants to live.

He doesn't just not want to die. He wants to live. He wants to live. He has so much to live for. So much to miss. 

Christopher, and Jee-Yun. He wants to see them grow up. He wants to take them to the zoo. To the park. To the planetarium. To the swimming pool. He wants to celebrate birthdays and christmases and moving outs. He wants to help with homework and driving lessons and apartment huntings. He's got so much to miss. 

Eddie. His sister. The team. The job. Even his parents. 

He wants to live. 

Just like that, he's suddenly so full of anger at the injustice. It explodes into rage before it slithers into a quiet kind of fire, and his head clears. 

He lets go of the chain again, chokes and suffocates again. He blinks through the spots in vision, his focus unshattered. 

He angles his body, lets his left shoulder go as low as it will and pushes the rod, horizontally, against both levers with all the strength he can muster. 

Just like that, he's free. 

The locks snap open, and his heels hit the ground with enough force to rattle his feet. 

He drops the rod and grabs the chain again, instinctively, as he takes a few stumbling steps back, his legs so shaky they almost drop him right there and then. 

As he makes it backwards to the middle of the room, the chain around his neck goes slack enough that he can slide it right off over his head.  

He falls to his knees, then, fingers clawing at his throat, his breath ragged and desperate and wheezing.

He waits, a moment, two. Three.  

No one comes through the door. He looks up, blinks through black spots and white spots and blurry tears. 

No one comes in. 

His uniform, neatly piled onto the gurney, is too tempting. 

He climbs to his feet, adrenaline comedown leaving a bad taste on his tongue. He's weak as a kitten. 

He reaches for his clothes, puts them on as fast as he can. 

They make him feel better. Marginally. 

He waits. No one comes in. 

He wonders if they expect him to lie on the gurney. He wonders if he should try the door. He wonders whether it's locked. He wonders if it's a trap. He wonders if anyone was even watching. If he's worth even that. 

He wants to live. He wants to fight. He never learns his lessons, and he never wants to wait around when he can do something. 

He goes for the rod. It's chained to the contraption, which is chained to wall. He pulls and beats at it, but he can't free it. He tries the noise, then, but he can't unhook that either. 

He feels like he's running out of time. Like they're expecting him to do just what he's doing, like they're expecting him to realize he's just a fool. 

Joke's on them. He is. He's known that all his life, and it never stopped him. 

He tries the door, and it opens. 

It's a trap. 

He never learns his lessons. 

He walks out. The cement floor is cold under his bare feet, and the hallway is empty. The stairs going down on the far end make his skin crawl, and he goes for the double doors instead. 

It's a trap. 

He strains his ears, but there's nothing. No sound. 

It's a trap, his gut and brain both agonize.

So what, Buck thinks rebelliously, even as his lungs spasm and his muscles cramp. He's not going to wait around. He'll fuck around and he'll find out, just like he always has. 

He roams the hallway, eyes and ears wide. He keeps looking over his shoulder, but the stairs to the cells stay empty.

He thinks of Williams, the nurse. Wants to help him. Wonders if he's behind one of those doors. He tries them as he passes, but none open. 

It's a trap. 

He's grinding his teeth so hard, his jaw will break soon. He's so scared, and he's so angry. 

He goes through the open double doors. The door to the infirmary and broken apothecary is locked. 

Slowly, he climbs the wooden U-shaped stairs, expecting to find the Pig, or the white coat, or his Bear blocking the path when he turns. 

There's no one. 

It feels like he's walking straight into the wolf's den. 

The Bear, he had said something about a wolf. Before. The memory is muddy, but his anxiety is hard and sharp and crawling all under his skin. 

He's so scared. 

He makes it to the top of the stairs, and into a hall. It's well decorated, old fashioned, rich. The walls and floorboards are wooden, bright tapestries brightening up the space. 

He looks at those, and his stomach twists, and his hairs stand on end, and his skin pricks and stings and shivers. 

They are scenes of Hunt. Graphic, colourful. 

He hurries past. The floor creaks under his careful steps.

It's a trap. 

He enters another hallway. There's an archway leading to a living room on one side, what looks like a changing room on the other. Despite the relative average size of the corridor he's in, the house feels huge around him. He feels like he's in the stomach of a giant beast. 

Straight ahead is another double doors. Glass doors. Through the intricately woven glass, he can see green. 

His heart stutters and his step falters. 

It's a trap! alarm bells ring and warn but he ignores them. 

He pulls on one of the heavy door open. The muscles in his arms and shoulders scream in complaint, but he ignores them, too, and swings the door open. 

He braces himself for—something, anything. 

He is hit; with the scents of earth, and sun-warmed stone. 

The day is bright.

So bright that he blinks and squints, turns his head to the side and raises a hand to shade his face. The light of the sun is blinding, shining straight into his face. 

Buck blinks, and squints, taking stumbling steps while his sight adjusts to the piercing light. He feels the warmth of the sun on his upturned hand, on every part of him exposed to it. 

It's a soft warmth. Gentle. 

Buck blinks, his sight struggling to adjust after so long spent between darkness and artificial lights.

He can hear birds. 

They're chattering, babbling, singing, singing, singing.

Buck blinks, and tears cling to his lashes, wet his eyes, sting his nose. 

The birds are singing. They're so loud. They're so carefree. So free. 

He listens to them, and his heart lifts inside his chest, like suddenly it's a million times lighter, like it hopes to take flight, too, and sing among the birds.

He listens, and he can hear more than birds. He can hear cicadas, calling to each other across the treetops, their buzzing rhythmic, rising, falling, rising again, unending. He can hear leaves, rustling in the wind, dancing to the birds' melodies, moving to the cicadas' drums.

The sounds are so joyful. So alive. He blinks and scalding tears fall onto his cheeks. He wonders if this is peace. He wonders if nature does heal. 

He blinks, drops his hand, squints, and he sees trees. A forest of trees. 

The sun warms his skin, birds and cicadas sing and leaves dance, but Buck's heart drops just like his hand. 

He doesn't know where he is. He doesn't know where to go. 

Away, his brain, his guts scream. Away. Away. Run. Run. It's a trap. 

I'll get lost, Buck thinks, even as his feet start moving. I won't last, Buck thinks, even as he all but jumps from the porch.

His feet hit gravel. It bites into his skin, even as it shifts and crunches under his strides.

Behind him, the house is huge, and made of stone. He can feel its presence at his back, menacing, threatening, shaped like a 'U'; two wings extending on either side of him, like two arms stretching to catch him. Like It wants to drag him back into its dark and angry fold. Like It wants to devour him whole, swallow him, digest him. 

Buck runs, straight for the trees, and the gravel crunches under his feet, and the sun blinds him. 

He's about to clear the last of the stones that make up the house. He's running so fast his legs scream in pain. He feels like he's flying. 

The gravel crunches under his feet, and he doesn't hear the echo of it. The sun is so bright, straight ahead just above the treeline, and it blinds him.

He's about to clear the last of the house, when another man rounds that very same corner.

Buck can see his face. The man's mask is pushed up to his forehead, like a cap. He's wearing a white coat and a startled expression on his face. There's a cigarette in his hand, that he drops in surprise.

Buck's feet almost trip over themselves. Buck's instincts scream at him to stop! turn back! and he almost falls on his ass. It's in a split second decision that he stays on his feet and barrels straight for the man. 

He collides with him, full speed, sending them both crashing over a short ledge to the ground below. 

The man breaks Buck's fall, but the momentum makes Buck roll right off him. Gravel bites into his skin, cuts him up wherever it can.

Buck embraces the pain. He gets up to his knees, grabs the man's clothes in a fist.

He has to get the first hit in, or he'll lose. 

He throws his punch, hits his target. The man's head whips to the side, but he grabs Buck's wrist and hits him right back. 

White stars explode all over his sight, make him blind all over again. 

He can run blind. He pushes through the pain, holds onto it like he held onto his chains earlier, uses it. 

End this! his brain and his gut scream. End this!

He grabs the man's head before he can hesitate, slams it right into the stone wall to their side. 

The impact rattles up Buck's arms all the way to his teeth, and the man falls limp beside him. 

Buck breathes hard, tears blurring his vision. His heart is trying to punch its way out of his chest. 

"Phone," he mutters to himself. "Please." He pats the man down, tries every pocket. "Phone, phone, phone." His voice breaks, ends on a whimper. 

His ears stain to catch any approaching footsteps. He jumps at the slightest sound, at the call of birds, expecting more people to show up. Hands to snatch his hair and pull his head back. The burn of electricity before he can catch the hum of it crackling behind him. His side throbs at the memory. His skin stings. His heart won't slow. He feels like prey. His entire body is shaking and begging him to run away! get away!

He feels so sorry, too. Watches blood drench the man's face and hide his features like another mask. He feels sick. 

He turns his gaze away, even as he keeps putting the man's body, and it lands on the man's feet instead. He's wearing shoes. Hiking shoes. He wishes he had time—he wishes—

His searching hands find something hard, and flat, in one of the man's back pockets, and Buck's heart leaps right into his throat. 

He pulls at it, feels it grate between the body and the ground before it's free.

It's a phone. 

Buck turns it in his palm, and finds the screen cracked and broken, webbed all over, more white than black. 

Buck doesn't allow himself to think about that. He grips the phone so hard the cracks dig into the skin of his fingertips, takes off running, leave the hiking shoes behind. 

He runs, heading straight for the cover of the trees. He feels so exposed, in this no man's land between house and nature. 

His ears strain to try and catch the call of voices, but there's nothing but gravel under his feet, and birds, and cicadas, and leaves, and wind rushing past his ears in rhythm with the beat of his heart against his eardrums. 

He keeps expecting to hear gunshots. He hasn't seen a gun yet, but the fear has latched onto the nape of his neck, making his hair stand on end. 

He keeps expecting the knock and breath-stealing pain of a bullet tearing right through his insides, his blood spraying all over the ground in front of him, no one to catch it, to catch him, and he can still taste the blood, he can still taste it, metal sweet on his lips, on his tongue—

Eddie, he thinks. Please, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. 

Hold on, he thinks. Hold on. 

He's almost at the tree line. He's so close. The soles of his feet hit grass and sing in relief. He needs—shoes—He needs—

Help. 

Even as he runs, he raises the phone to be level with his eyes. He presses the power button to the side, once, slides his thumb across the screen. Nothing happens. The display doesn't show, the screen stays cracked and unresponsive. 

There's a sob, lodged somewhere between his chest and his throat, but he doesn't have the breath to spare for it, so it stays where it is, sitting heavy, its edges hard and sharp. 

His head pounds, and pounds, and pounds, in time with his heart, in time with his strides. 

He doesn't need the phone's display to make an emergency call. His fingers find their positions on the phone, on instinct, before Buck's finished formulating the thought. 

To make an emergency call, he thinks, hold the side button and the top volume button, at the same time, until a countdown sound starts. It'll be loud. Can't miss it. 

He's so close, so close to the tree line. It seems to extend its arms, just like the house before, and Buck runs for its embrace. He's so close. 

He holds the buttons, and he waits, and he runs, but nothing happens. There's no sound, no countdown. 

He still doesn't have any breath for the sob stabbing his soft tissues. 

He's so close. 

He tries again, almost drops the phone, his hands shaking and sweating. 

Come on, he begs, come on. Help.

There's no sound. No countdown. Nothing. 

A sound does make it through his lips, this time. It burns on its way out. His muscles burn. His lungs burn. His breath is getting wheezy. He pushes himself anyway, doesn't know how to give up. He doesn't have the stamina for this. Not anymore. His oxygen saturation levels are now always slow to come back up, ever since—

Rain. 

Thunder. 

White light. 

He turns the phone his his hands. It's not an iPhone. Android. Short key's not the same. 

Sharp sob and swollen heart both stuck in his trachea, he presses on a the power button, once, twice. Three times. Four. Five. 

A countdown starts, and Buck nearly chokes on air when he breathes in too fast. 

Come on, he begs, come one. Please. 

A dial tone sounds, and Buck nearly chokes on gratitude.

Then, a voice sounds.

"9-1-1, what's your emergency?" it says, and Buck nearly chokes on words, too. 

"This is—This is—" he wheezes, takes another gasping breath. His lungs burn. He'd never been so acutely aware of his lungs, before—before—

Rain.

Thunder.

Wh—

"This is firefighter Evan Buckley," his words tumble into one another, and he makes an immeasurable effort to slow down and enunciate every syllables. He's desperate to be understood. To be heard. "I was abducted on October first, I'm at—I'm at—"

He doesn't know where he is. He doesn't know where he is. 

"I-I-I'm—I'm in a forest," he looks around as he runs, passes a sycamore tree, its gray and white bark peeling with age. He sees giant sequoia and Douglas fir, oak species, pines. "De-definitely California?" He says it like it's a question because he's not–he's not sure. 

He can't smell the salt of the ocean, but the wind isn't coming from the West. He could still be close.

"I was held in an old, farmhouse style, stone villa."

He doesn't know what else to say. There's nothing, nothing but trees. Trees and forests that extend for thousands of miles, in every direction. 

"I-I can hear birds, and—" he pants, his lungs burning, his legs aching, his head pounding. "—and cicadas."

He's desperate. Birds and cicadas. 

He runs, straight toward the sun. It's low on the horizon, getting lower by the minute. The light is golden, softly filtered through the leaves, hitting the ground between the trees in honeyed patches. The cicadas' calls are so, so loud, enveloping him entirely. 

Happy hour. 

Buck runs, his heart beating madly, his lungs burning and straining, his throat closing up. He can feel his muscles trembling beneath his flesh, feels his blood pump wildly in his veins. He wonders if he's about to break apart, if he's killing himself. He can barely get a breath in, a whistling sound accompanying each inhale.

His numbers must be catastrophic. Hen would tut at him, as she'd press the bell of her stethoscope to his chest. Chimney–, he would give that disapproving downward tilt of the mouth while reading his blood pressure, the one that Jee-Yun got from him. Jee— she did that exact little face just a couple days before, before—before he was— She did that little face, the dissatisfied downward curve of the lips, when she commissioned the drawing of a horse from her mom. In her eyes, Maddie clearly hadn't gotten it right. They'd all thought it was so funny. 

A horse. His brain calls up a nightmarish figure to the front of his mind. He wonders if the nurse—Williams—he wonders how he is. Those burns had seemed bad. He wonders if he's angry at Buck, for letting him be hurt. He wonders if they're making him play games, too. If he's sick with infection. If he's alive. 

Buck wonders all long he'll stay alive himself. 

They'd all be so mad at him for pushing himself too hard. His team. Maddie. They'd be so worried. They'd care so much. They'd care, even if he weren't hurt. 

He misses them. He misses them so much. He needs it now– their care. He needs their playful tones and their gentle touches.

A shiver races up his spine at the idea of anyone ever touching him again. 

He runs straight towards the setting sun, towards the ocean. West. 

He runs, and his brain runs too, too fast, it wanders, it jumps from thought to thought, and it takes him too long to realize the voice hasn't responded back. 

The world screeches to a stop, and his heart slams into his throat. It takes a moment for his legs to understand he wants to stop running. 

"He-Hello?" He says, presses the phone against his ear, then lowers it to look at the display. He knows it's useless, the screen still broken, still cracked, and he presses the phone back to his ear. "Are you there?" He gasps, and his feet are numb, and he can't feel the ground anymore, and the cicadas' calls culminate into a high-pitched buzzing sound, deafening to his ears. 

"No, no, no," he looks at the screen again, presses the pads of his thumbs against it, and it catches the pad of his thumb, and his voice is so high he doesn't recognize it. 

"Tell me you can hear me," he pleads, to the voice on the other end of the phone, to the universe, to no-one in particular. 

His brain kicks back into gear, tries to make sense of it. He knows he didn't imagine or hallucinate the first responder's voice. He's sure of it. He's not that far gone. He hasn't lost his mind yet. 

Except.

They drugged him. They've been drugging him since day one, and the high emotions he's experiencing might have triggered an episode. For all he knows, this entire escape attempt is a made-up, very vivid figment of his mind, a last ditch effort of his brain to soothe itself while his body is suffocating on that chain inside that house, caught in the throes of death.

Except. 

He can smell it. Earth, and moss, and spruce. Wild mushrooms, and red huckleberry, and the menthol of eucalyptus trees. He touches the closest tree, and the bark is rough under his fingertips. Textured. A couple of ants climb onto his hand, and if he concentrates, he can feel the featherlight pressure of their tiny legs on his skin. 

He can't have lost his mind. This is real. It has to be. 

It has to be the phone, his brain races. It has to be. It's broken.

Or it could be the forest. 

No reception, he realises. No signal. No networks to pick up his call. He's running straight into wilderness. 

Buck's heart plummets. There's nothing ahead. No civilization. Probably not for miles and miles and miles.

He doesn't know how much of his call went through, before the signal stopped. He wasn't listening. He was talking, talking, talking, like he always does, and for all he knows, nothing he said went through. There's irony there, he thinks. He's spent his entire life fighting to be heard. 

Frustration and despair are bubbling under his skin. His blood froths with stress. He wonders if he'll shake apart and dissolve into the earth.

He has to make a choice now. Keep running towards uncertainty, or turn back, towards the house, and call for help again. 

His feet stay frozen. They're so numb. He can't feel them. Can't feel the ground. Can't feel the bark under his hand anymore. 

No. This is real. 

He just has to get in range. That's it. He doesn't need to be back inside the house, or even close to it. He just has to get in range. His call made it through earlier, he's sure of it. He's sure. That was real.

He gulps in air, tries to catch his breath. It's near impossible. 

He's stalling, he knows. 

He can't afford to. He grips the phone so hard it cracks, and turns back around. 

Once again, his heart plummets. Like it's a yo-yo on a string. So fast, this time, that he feels motion sick even as he stays rooted to the spot.  

The man is there. His man. The man with the bear mask. 

Teddy.

He's standing still between the foliage, staring at Buck. His shoulders are heaving, like he's breathing hard, too, like he's been chasing Buck all this time. Right on his heels, just a pace behind. All this time. 

Buck stares back. 

I can take him, he thinks, even as what he can feel of his body hurts and cries with pain. I can take him. I can. I can. I don't have a choice. 

He swallows past the rock in his throat. Can't be his heart, his heart is at his feet. It's being swallowed by the earth, devoured by the tree roots. 

"Out of your system?" He taunts. "You said you'd never leave."

No. He never—he never said–

"Should we head back?"

Buck can only shake his head, words failing him. 

"Or do you want to keep going?"

All of Buck's inside are made of lead. He can't breathe. His head keeps shaking, and he can't even control that anymore. He takes a single step back. 

The fact he's made of lead is probably the only thing keeping him upright anymore. 

The man waits him out, a moment, two. Always so patient with him. 

"Can't you see?" Teddy— The Bear— The–the man, stretches his arms to either side, makes a show of looking around. Like he can't believe Buck brought them all the way out here. Even from over here, Buck can see how the wind ruffles the hair of his mask. 

"You're lost without me."

Buck is. He's lost. He's so lost. He needs—He needs—

Teddy lets his arms drop to his sides. Tilts his head, like he always does. Like he's appraising him, studying him. Like he's understanding him. He raises a hand again, in a forward motion. 

"You can run," he says, and Buck can hear the smirk in his voice. He wonders if there are laugh lines around his eyes. 

Chapter Text

"Run."

Buck stares. 

He stands his ground. To be contradictory, maybe. To catch his breath, too. He's exhausted. His breathing's ragged. His muscles burn. He's taken them close to the point of failure. That pain will be worse in a day, two, settled under his skin, lurking below the surface, waiting to lash out with every move he'll make.  

Now that he's stopped, he's not sure he can start again. 

He's not sure he can fight either. He's too tired, too weak, too hungry. 

So he just stands, the sun warm on the back of his neck, and stares, like a deer frozen in headlights, waiting for the inevitable crash. 

He's been broken so many times. He used to think it was fair trade: split his skin and break his bones as sacrifice to mend his heart, his soul. Offer his blood in exchange for his parents' love, for their arms around him. 

He wonders if the Bear will hold him after—after whatever he has in store. He's done it before. Place his palm against Buck's cheek and warm his chilled skin, like the sun is doing now.  

Buck longs for it, almost. He longs for gentleness.

The Bear stares back, unmoving. 

Buck plants both torn feet on the ground, straightens his spine, pretends the Bear can't see the tremors shaking through him.

"I'm not your prey," he says, and feels stupid. "Y-y-you can't just hunt me."

The stutter is back, and he hates it. The Bear will think it's fear. And it is. It is. His tone of voice is firm, though, commanding even. His voice, rough from unuse and near strangulation breaks anyway, betrays him on the very last vowel. 

The Bear stares.

Buck's skin tingles with the need to touch and be touched, even as his mind recoils in horror. 

You're lost without me, he'd said. And he is. He is. 

He should run.

That's what the Bear wants. Buck remembers that first day out of his dark room. Run, the man had said then, and Buck had, and the man had caught him. 

Like a game of tag. Buck probably shouldn't run. He should stand his ground, have this be over with, not let the Bear make a game of it.  

He never learns. That's the thing about him. He never learns. He repeats his mistakes again, and again, and again, and again. 

He takes a step back, two. The soles of his feet sting and throb in time with his pulse, and his calves cramp. His lower back, too, and his thighs. Three steps. Four. 

Across from him, the Bear takes as many steps forward. There's an emotion rolling and tumbling inside Buck's thumping heart that makes him feel sick. Like he wants to be caught just so he'll be held. Buck doesn't wait to understand it, or for the man to catch up; he tightens his grip on the sweat slicked phone, and turns on his heels. The sun blinds him again. 

(He never learns.) 

He runs. 

The vegetation is denser here, and he struggles to build momentum again. 

His feet are killing him. 

Turn around and fight! It's Pride, beating its fists against his skull, in time with his heartbeat. Buck doesn't listen. 

He won't run forever. He just needs more time to figure out what to do, how to get out of this. His mental state is all over the place, and he needs to get his wits about him. 

He can't fight. He's too weak. He'd lose in a second. He'd wake strapped to another gurney or another set of chains, and he doesn't want that. He really, really doesn't want that. Please, he doesn't want that. 

He's had a taste of freedom, and as he runs straight for the sun, it's intoxicating. 

He runs, and his feet are stabbing pains as they sting and throb and bleed, and his muscles ache as they steadily release toxins into his bloodstream, but he's always been an outdoor kid anyway. 

Even now as he runs for his life, it's exhilarating. He runs, reduced to basic instincts. All he knows is that he can't return to the house. He's not ready. He can't go back yet. It's suffocating in the house, and confining, and oppressing, and cruel, and he feels so small in the house. 

He's always felt so small in the house, for years and years and years and years, insignificant and lonely, caged and desperate and hungry and unloved. 

He escaped then, in the end. With Maddie's help. Maddie gave him the key that set him free. It was Maddie–Maddie–Maddie–

He hears Teddy's steps behind him, boots thumping against the forest floor. He'll catch Buck, and he'll drag him back to his house.

He needs Maddie. He can't do this alone. He can't. He can't. He can't go back to the house. He can't. He can't. He can't. 

Buck's mind is stubborn, but his body is stubborn too, and it is past its limits. 

He can't run forever. 

He stumbles.

His body's playing against him, and it's begging him to stop, and he only just manages to stay on his feet and keep running. Behind him, his captor's footsteps echo his own, much louder, stronger, closer with every stride. Buck's lungs burn, and his wheezing drowns out the songs of birds and cicadas above his head. 

He can't run forever. 

Turns out, he doesn't. 

Something glints in the sun, ahead in the distance, something tall, and grey, checkered—

Fence!

Teddy's steps thunder, too close, much faster than before, and he appears to Buck's right so quick, so sudden, that Buck's heart climbs right into his throat as if to hide itself. 

Instinctively, Buck steers left, between two marked trees, away away away, right into the trap the Bear laid out for him. 

He steps on something hard; there's a snap, a snag, and a startling grip onto his left ankle jars him to a dead stop. 

He's eating dirt and swallowing blood before he can comprehend what happened to him. 

He doesn't have a chance to cry out, the breath knocked clean out of his lungs. He lays there, gaping, scrambling to get his bearings. 

He hit the ground hard, chin first, jaw snapped shut onto his tongue. Copper fills his mouth, overflows. If he could breathe, he'd choke on it. Like that time—his own party, Bobby standing right in front of him—Bobby, Bobby—and he'd thrown up—blood!—all over himself because he kept ignoring—

His leg. It's his leg. He can't breathe. 

Bobby, Bobby–help–

He claws at the ground, tries to find purchase. Dirt slips under his fingernails. His palms sting. He can't feel his face. He can't feel anything other than sudden, blinding panic. 

He can't feel his—

His leg.

His sternum seizes, and twitches. Air suddenly rushes in, and he chokes on that. Chokes on blood and grime and panic. He claws at the ground. 

God, his leg.

He doesn't get far. There's an unforgiving grip on his left ankle, and it won't let go. The pain pulses, travels up his nerves, all the way up to his teeth. There's a weight on his leg. It won't let go, and the pain flees from it, flooding the rest of his body. 

His face is pressed to the ground, drowning in his own blood and panic and agony. His leg. It's his leg. It's always his leg. Air finally makes it all the way to his lungs, and he finally has voice to scream a gargled sound. His heart beats so fast. The rush of his blood is thunderous in his ears.

There's a weight on his leg. He takes everything in him to stop clawing at the ground, to get up onto his elbows, to look back. It won't be a truck, he has to convince himself. There's dirt under his bloody palms and clenching fingers, not hard asphalt. It's not the truck. The truck had been so heavy, and a reminder of its weight had followed him for weeks and weeks afterward. It's not the cast, he tells himself, it's been years, over and over and over as he finally looks back, it's not the truck, and it's not the cast, it's not—

A trap. 

It's–it's an animal trap, it's a bear trap, wrapped around his calf.

Buck stares, mind refusing to comprehend the meaning of what he's looking at. 

A bear trap. I'm not your prey, he'd taunted earlier, stupidly, and the universe must hate him so much. Not for the first time, he wonders why, wonders what he's done to it, and feels the strongest urge to cry and beat his fists at it. 

It's metal, the trap. It must taste like the blood between his teeth. It has teeth too, the trap. They're large, and blunt. Didn't even break skin in places. But the trap is snapped tight around his tibia, so tight it's certainly ruptured every blood vessel in his leg, could have broken the bone clean in two, could have crushed—

He can't feel his foot. It's bloodless already, white under the dirt and blood staining it, white against the darkening forest floor. Buck gasps in utter disbelief, tries to move his toes with new desperation. He watches them wiggle between the dirt and dead leaves, and Buck's exhale is a sob wrenched out of him. 

Two boots enter his field of vision, and Buck looks up.

The Bear stares down at him, the fur of its mask matted and tangled. Hysterically, Buck feels the urge to run his hand through it and feel the hair between his fingers. He feels just like that spaceman must have felt on that planet of apes, chained down by an animal smarter and stronger than him, in the movie Chim had insisted on showing him–

God, he wants Chimney. He wants Maddie. He wants Maddie. 

There'd been more, Chim had told him. Of those movies. There'd been more, he'd told him with such a glint in his eyes and an amused grin. He'd wanted to show them all to Buck–

The mask in his blurry field of vision tilts its head to the side, and Buck is snapped right back to the reality of the moment. 

It'd been Earth. All along, the planet of apes had been Earth, and there'd never been any escape. 

There's no escape. There is no escape, he realizes, and hysteria overwhelms him.

"No," he hears himself cry, barely comprehensible amid the blood and terror. "No, no, no, no–"

He claws at the dirt, pulls on his leg, but the trap won't let go and the pain is loud, but he ignores it and pulls and claws, because he has to get away. He has to get away. 

He pulls, little wounded noise escaping his throat, but he's not going anywhere, he's not getting away. 

The Bear bends down, and Buck snarls, ready to lash out, but he's just out of reach. His gloved hands rummage through the dead leaves, before they come back up clutching a chain between them. 

It lays there, in sharp contrast with the nature around it, highly textured and defined, and Buck swears he can taste the smell of it.

The Bear pulls on it, just like Buck is doing, like they're playing a twisted game of tug of war. 

The pain takes a second to reach Buck's brain, and when it does, his hysteria triple folds. 

The Bear drags him back by the chain connected to the trap that's biting down onto his leg, and Buck slides. The Bear nods, once, like it's satisfied, then turns around, hooks the chain over its shoulder, and starts walking, dragging Buck along with him, along the uneven forest floor. Dirt and rocks and roots carve cuts deep into his fingertips, his palms, all along his forearms, into his belly, his chest, his face. 

It has to sting, his skin scraped raw, but Buck is too far gone to even notice. He's fallen into pure single-minded animal instinct, one thought taking hold of his mind. 

Get away. Get away. Get away. 

He's prey. He's prey, and he's about to be eaten alive. By that house, by those men's hunger for his pain. They'll eat him whole until Buck is nothing but discarded bones, chewed up right down to the marrow. 

Marrow. His marrow. They won't eat it because they must know it's worthless. It was made to save his brother, but he failed his purpose. If he hadn't failed, Daniel would be here to save him now. 

But he failed. He fails, always, he fails. He fails. 

A continuous whine pulsates low in his throat in time with his heartbeat. He feels it echo through his entire body—his heartbeat. It's fast, fast, fast and fluttering and panicked. 

Get away! it screams. Don't let them get you! Don't let them eat you! Get away! it screams, and nothing else matters. Get away!

He can't feel his foot at all as he pulls on it, wishes the bite of the trap would tear it straight off him. 

Get away! Get away!

He's dragged along the ground for what feels like hours and hours and hours. The light diminishes, slowly, surely. His survival instinct burns bright, though, and he struggles all the way. 

His struggles get him nowhere. He tries to put weight onto his hands and remaining leg, but the Bear's pace is steady, and Buck is too weak, too clumsy, and he can't get up. He can't get up, can't get away.

He's getting dragged, to the Bear's den, to be eaten, to be swallowed whole. A drawn out keening sound follows Buck along the ground. He sounds like he's dying. 

After an eternity, the Bear gives a last, harsh tug. Just as the sun dips behind the trees, its body flattens over Buck and pins him to the ground, heavy and constricting. 

Buck lashes out. He's still nothing but primal instinct, as he cries out and claws and bites at the arms holding him down. His heart beats right out of his chest, it seems, and his panic consumes him whole. 

Get away, is all his mental capacity can cling onto. Get away!

He digs his nails into the arms holding him down, tearing what's left of them, his cries incoherent, desperation dripping out of him until he's soaked in it. 

The last light of the sun sets, and the navy light of dusk settles over them like a blanket. 

His mind comes back to him. All at once.

Suddenly, he's human again, he's a first responder again, with one very real fear to the forefront of his mind. 

He can't feel his foot. 

He stills. The circulation to his foot is completely cut off.

"Wai—wait," he says, voice rougher than ever before, like it's traveled over gravel all the way up his throat. 

His brain is back on, like it never left. You shouldn't leave a tourniquet on for more than one point five to two hours, it tells him. It can't have been this long already, right? It can't. He looks up and only sees forest. The sun has gone into the ground. How low was it before he lost his mind?

The chain is wrapped around his ankle, tight, and the metal bites into his flesh, into his bone. 

"I-I-I c-can't–cant feel my foot," he stutters, suffocating under the weight of the man that took him down so easily. "T-take it–off–" He struggles to bring air into his lungs, struggles to push the next word out. "Pl-plea—"

Shame creeps back up and swirls inside Buck's belly. He's supposed to be big, and strong. He shouldn't be so easy to manhandle, to be held in place, kept down like a disobedient dog. 

He's so weak. He's so weak, so helpless–

Help, please–

"I will if you behave," Teddy breathes. Buck can feel the muzzle of the bear mask brushing the raised hair on the back of his neck. He burns with shame, and he's too weak and helpless to resist as Teddy pulls one arm, then the other behind his back. He's gentle but firm, like he doesn't really want to hurt Buck, like he only wants him to behave.

His arms are crossed behind his back, wrist to elbow, and a rope slides around them, over and under and over and under again. 

"No, no, no, no," Buck whines into the dirt. He doesn't want to go back, please, leave him alone. 

He squirms, and his skin feels so tight, scrapped raw, cracked, about to split open, only held together by his blood like it's glue. His skin is an organ, he learned once and never forgot. Three layers. The largest of them all. His skin is an organ, and it's flayed open. An open wound, exposed and bloody and pulsing.

The shadows of the falling night are growing around him, black spots dancing in his vision. Teddy is still pressed against him as he ties the knots, and Buck can't breathe, he can't breathe, he can't breathe. 

There's the rush of blood in his ears as he slowly passes out. Beyond that, there is the rustle of fabric. All at once, his vision is eaten away as darkness falls across his eyes, too fast for the night to have settled, too fast for him to have passed out. 

Fabric drags across his face, over his head. Something tightens around his neck. He's about to panic again when Teddy's weight lifts off his back and air comes rushing in all at once—he can breathe! He can breathe! He sucks it in greedily, but it's stale, and his feeling of claustrophobia only intensifies. 

He can't move his arms, can't move the leg that's being bitten off, and he can't see. There's a bag over his head, and he can't see, and he can't move. 

He's scared. 

Bobby! he wants, but Bobby hasn't found him yet. Bobby hasn't saved him. 

"He won't find you," the Bear says, and Buck barely hears him over the rush of panic. "No-one will."

Daniel! he wants. But Daniel is dead. 

Tears soak through the material over his face, but he doesn't have enough breath to give them voice. 

"You're stuck with me." Teddy tugs on the chain tied to the jaw around his ankle, and Buck's scream is silent. "Literally."

Please, please, please, he begs inside his mind when his voice abandons him. Take it off, you said you'd take it off, please,

He forces himself to calm down. Behave. He's dragged by his foot again, and he should be beyond pain but he feels it eat away at him. He's dragged up, and gravity tilts and so does his stomach, until he feels a shoulder under his belly. He feels the ground fall away, his head hanging, and it's so disorienting. Nausea ripples through him, and the world is rolling, rolling, rolling. 

It's infinite, neverending, Buck lost in a churning sea of darkness as he breathes through his nose as best he can, Teddy's shoulder and hands on his body his only points of anchor. 

He can't see it, but the house looms behind him, over him, closer with every step, enormous and sinister and gaping and hungry.

Teddy walks, straight for the mouth of the beast. And Buck behaves. Through the terror he behaves, but when he passes out, the jaws of the bear trap are still biting hard into his flesh.

Liar, is his last thought.   

Chapter Text

When Buck wakes, all he sees is red. 

He can't feel much of anything. He's laid onto a metal gurney, like all of it—the escape, the running, the chase—was all a fever dream. Maybe it was. He can't tell, his mind sluggish, his memory wispy. 

But his skin looks raw and red. There are white rags dancing over his body, held by white gloves, washing the red away. It stings, Buck thinks, distantly, but his brain can't seem to make the connection to pain. 

There's a plastic tube sticking out the back of his hand. Saline, he thinks, but can't remember what it's for. Maybe something else. He feels floaty.

He scrunches his nose, and he can feel another tube there. This one bothers him, and he doesn't want it, and it suffocates him. He can feel a whine building low in his throat, before a hand settles on his forehead. 

"Back to sleep," a voice says. "Last chance for it." 

Buck is back asleep before he can comprehend the words. 

—

He dreams, and his dreams are red and unkind and cruel, and his sleep is restless. 

—

(1)

Buck is pulled from sleep, quite literally. He's standing before he's fully awake. Eyes still closed, he sways in place as a pair of hands steadies him. 

The hands turn him around to face the wall. Buck follows, rests his head against the cool texture of the wall, too disoriented and shaky to fight back. The hands grab each of his arms and pull them behind his back, hands to elbow. Rough material follows, rubs burns into tender flesh. Rope.

His heart jumps at that, and he tries to resist, thinks about it anyway, but the wall feels liquid under his forehead, and he almost falls over. His heart flutters helplessly inside his chest, nausea on the tip of his tongue. A hand appears at the back of his head, the slight pressure a warning; it disappears again as Buck swallows and settles. 

The hand returns to work on the length of rope securing his arms into a box tie, tying knots over and under and over and under. He feels like he's been in this position before.

Before he can make sense of anything, the hands are gone. Buck whines, blinks against the dizziness, tests his binds. They don't move. His chest tightens. 

He's been in this position before. 

Familiar sensations add to the pressure on his chest: fear, trepidation, dread. His breathing picks up. His throat feels raw. 

One hand settles into the small of his back, gives him time to compose himself. 

There's another sensation under his skin. Cottony, almost. A distant ache, under layers of fog. He's on painkillers. There's a buzzing in his blood, too. Stimulants, just starting to take effect. He's trembling. His left ankle feels numb, absent. Like his brain knows it should—hurt? But it's not.

He's given another minute. The hand on his back—just over his bound arms—is grounding. 

Teddy. 

Buck breathes in, out, blinks the last spots off his vision, and his gaze settles on his left foot. It's there, as it should be, still attached to his leg. That's a relief, he thinks, distantly. There's a bandage, all the way up to his calf. He frowns. A flash of something snaps before his mind's eye. Something metal. Teeth. 

He puts more weight onto that foot. It holds. He can't feel much of anything. 

"Bone didn't break," Teddy says behind his back. Goosebumps shiver down his spine. "Radial pulse his strong. Good reflexes in your foot. You're fine."

Buck nods along, like he's a spectator on a medical call. He pretends it's Hen talking, her words soothing, effortlessly demanding calm from her patient. 

"Let's go."

Teddy takes the support of the wall away from Buck. Buck wavers, blinks against the lightheadedness. 

Through squinting eyes, he sees Teddy, bear mask in place. Someone else stands off to the side, in a doll mask. 

He remembers when Teddy looked like that. Lifetimes ago. 

Teddy leads him out of the room, past the debris left behind by the apothecary cabinet that once stood there. 

He remembers smashing into it. A ghost of phantom pains shivers through his body at the reminder, but he can hardly feel it. He can hardly feel anything at all. 

He feels irrational sadness for that cabinet. It had been beautiful, and old, and durable. Now, it's nothing but abandoned broken pieces on the floor. 

Are they never going to clean it up? he wonders. 

He's led through the double doors, past the torture rooms, straight to the stairs that go down to the cells. 

Lucidity hits him like a sledgehammer. 

"N-No," he stutters, "no, no, no–"

"Yes," the Bear cuts, implacable, "you're going down." He pulls on the ropes holding Buck's arms. His hold is firm, as implacable as his voice. "Two choices: you walk down, or I push you down."

Buck almost considers it. Fine, he wants to snark. Push me down. Break my bones, break my skull. Put me out of my misery.

The thought startles him. He does not want to die. He has people to get back to. 

He hates that he's made to chose his fate. He'd rather be forced. 

He shuts that thought down too, and chooses to walk down the stairs, his heart hammering against his ribcage.

Are they gonna leave him there, in one of those cells again? For days, alone, in the dark?

At least, he tells himself, at least he'll be left alone. 

It's stupid that he's so scared. Is he that afraid of being abandoned, or rejected, that he'd dread a respite from the torture?

The weight of shame returns, a familiar heat in his stomach. Those stairs seem infinite. 

What if he's wrong? What if he's not left alone at all? What if they hurt him, again? What if they make him hurt someone? 

Teddy's steps echo behind his own, his touch a constant pressure. 

What if they do lock him down there, what if they do leave him for days? What if they leave him to die of hunger, all alone? What if that's their next experiment? To see how long it takes for him to lose it? To decay? What if they don't care, and they don't even film it?

What if they forget about him? 

They wouldn't, he tells himself. They wouldn't. They wouldn't have gone to all this trouble, to abduct him, to torture him, to mess with his head or wrap his leg or wash his wounds, only to forget about him. 

That wouldn't make sense, would it? 

He's breathing hard as he makes it to the cold cement floor at the bottom, and Teddy's hand is a steady pressure between his shoulder blades. Buck fights not to lean into it. 

They stop in front of the very first door, and Buck's eyes and nose sting with unwanted tears. 

No. 

Teddy opens the door. The room is bare. No bed, no sink, no toilet. Just one grate in the floor, smack in the middle of the tiny room.

Above it, a noose. 

Buck loses it. 

No. No. No.

An execution. He hadn't thought of that, he hadn't. He'd thought he'd have days to face his death, to mourn his life, to miss his friends, to fight it and resent it and accept it.

He's not ready now. He's not ready to die. Not now. He's not ready. No. He's not ready. He's not ready. He's not ready. He's not rea—

He's pressing his entire weight against Teddy, but Teddy's implacable. He doesn't move, even as Buck descends into hysteria, again, whimpers of fear escaping him despite his shame.

He's not ready!

Teddy pushes him forward. 

No. 

He's too strong, Buck is too weak, again, always, and he stumbles into the room. 

No. No. Buck falls to one knee. It's the loss of contact with Teddy that pulls him out of it. He blinks and pulls himself together, gets back up and turns back around, charges at the man in that stupid bear mask. 

It's like hitting a wall. Teddy grabs him and throws him against a real, hard wall, and Buck's breath is knocked out of him. He sits there, gasping, as Teddy grabs him and drags him under the noose.

It was his shortest fight yet. Shame burns right through him.

He's not ready!

He's not ready to give up yet. 

"Now—" Teddy starts to say, but Buck doesn't give him the chance. He drops down low, slams his forehead as hard as he can onto Teddy's groin, and it's his turn to take a knee, gasp punched out of him. 

"Fuck."

Buck scrambles back to his feet, unbalanced with his arms tied back and his ankle wrapped. 

He makes a single step before the other guy in the doll mask slams into him. They crash hard onto the cement floor. Teddy's gloved hand shoots out to cradle the back of Buck's head; it's the only thing that saves him from braining himself. 

Buck falters, catches Teddy's gaze through the holes in his mask. 

For all of one second, a cacophony of emotions war inside Buck's mind. His gut feels like he's just missed an opportunity. He doesn't understand what it's trying to tell him.

A jolt, as the other guy in the doll mask grabs his injured leg, pulls hard on it, slams a fist against his bandaged wounds. Pain explodes through his body, but this is pain he knows; pain that gives him strength, and willpower, and satisfaction. 

Teddy's arms close around him, and Buck trashes, refuses to be held down, almost sleeps his forehead into the hard cement again. Teddy won't let him. Buck kicks that other guy right in the face instead, once, twice, until the mask is askew and he has to let go. 

"Fuck!" Teddy, again. He tightens his grip around Buck, glares at the other man. "Is the Pig done with his piglet?"

Buck, face pressed into the cement, watches the other man pull his mask straight and nod.

"Then go get the Pig! Get the fucking Pig here!" 

The other man makes to stand up, and Buck tries to kick him in the face again. He misses. 

"Stop it!" Teddy growls right in his ear. 

The floor falls away as Buck feels himself rolled onto his back then heaved up onto Teddy's chest. Both of Teddy's legs lift up over his own, keeping them still and pressed into the floor, Buck's arms trapped between their bodies. He feels the warmth that's trapped there, too, and shivers; feels Teddy's chest rise and fall, feels Teddy's heart beat in time with his own pulse that's galloping through his radial artery. It's like—

—like a bear hug. Buck can't tell if he's crying or laughing or screaming. He feels like he's barely holding onto his mind with the tip of his bleeding fingers, like it keeps slipping away from his faltering grip, tacky with blood and sweat and fear—

"Calm down!" 

Buck writhes under the weight of Teddy's holding him down. He's not ready. Please. 

"Calm the fuck down." One of his arms snakes up around Buck's throat, and it's over, Buck thinks, it's over. "It's not here to kill you."

Buck blinks through black spots, not understanding. Teddy's arm is cutting the blood flow to his brain, turning his entire body into pins and needles. His head feels heavy, and full, pulsating, like it's about to burst. Before that can happen, the weight of Teddy's second hand comes to rest on his forehead, the gentle pressure just enough to keep it from splitting open, and Buck finds himself blinking through tears, too.

Just as he's about to pass out, thinking they never needed a noose to kill him, immeasurably glad he's dying in the arms of someone, Teddy releases the pressure on his carotid. 

It's like a dam burst. More pain rushes into his head. Air rushes in, too, and Buck breathes, ragged, throaty, needy. There's a loud buzzing in his ears.

Teddy leaves his second hand where it is, palm soothing his throbbing temple, thumb rubbing circles in his hair, high up on his head. A tingling sensation spreads from that soothing point of contact, all the way down his spine. He shivers, again. 

"I got it," Teddy yells over his shoulder. Buck wonders if he's talking to him, still, presses his forehead harder into the palm resting there. 

Too soon, the hand leaves, and he's manhandled onto his knees. His mind comes back to him, then, and Buck climbs to his feet; he'll fight. He'll never stop fighting. He won't ever give up, ever.

He brings up a knee, aiming for Teddy's balls again. He misses. Teddy sidesteps, and suddenly the Pig fills his field of vision. He's huge. 

"You sure about that?" a voice says behind the pink mask. It's tilted to the side, and Buck feels like he's not the one the Pig is talking to, feels like he's nothing but merchandise, here only to be stared at and gauged and judged and hurt.

It's still splattered in red. The pink mask. Buck wonders if he's ever washed it. If he ever even takes it off. If there's even a human head underneath. He can't picture what he could look like. Can't imagine it.

He wonders what Teddy looks like. He's got grey eyes, is all he knows. He's glad they're not brown.  

Between the two of them they get him up, keep him immobile while the third man slips the noose around his neck. 

It's over. 

His heart slams itself into his ribs. It hurts. 

He hasn't seen his friends. He hasn't seen them one last time. His family. Eddie and Maddie and Hen and Chimney and Bobby. Jee-Yun, and Christopher. 

Where are they? Are they missing him? Is Athena trying to find him? Are they moving on? How long has he been gone? Days, he knows. Forever, it feels. Can't be weeks yet?

He doesn't know. He doesn't know how long he's been here. His family feels like they're from another life. They must have moved on by now. Mourned him for a while, then forgot about him. For their own sakes. Buck understands.

The noose is tightened around his throat. Not enough to prevent him breathing, but enough that the rough material of the rope is like sandpaper on already tender and bruised skin. He swallows, and it hurts. 

"You're good if we let you go?" Teddy asks him. 

The Pig scoffs. "He better be." His eyes are dark holes behind his mask. "If he wants to keep breathing."

Buck's only response is to kick at them again. He catches the Pig in the shin, but almost loses his balance in the process. He chokes, just for a second, before he can right himself. The Pig makes to advance on him but through his blurry sight, Buck sees Teddy raise an arm to stop him. 

It's already too much. Someone must have a kink, or–or a fetish about choking him half to death. He's getting real tired of strangulation.

Is that why they've taken him, why they hurt him? He breathed, once, and they thought, yes, this one—this one needs to be punished.

The Pig and the Bear just stand there. It has to be a power play, right? They're not really going to hang him?

He can feel himself breathing heavily, his Adam apple brushing painfully against the rope with every gasp. 

"Calm down," Teddy orders him. 

Easy to say. Buck blinks tears of pain and fear away, strains his arms against their bonds. The floor is cold and hard under his feet. They hurt, his feet. He hadn't noticed yet.

"Comfortable?" The Pig taunts. 

His ankle, too. A throbbing, grinding pain, up and down, up and down, in time with his racing heartbeat. 

No. No, he's not comfortable. But his feet are flat on the floor, and if he stands very still, the noose almost feels like it's barely there. 

He can almost forget the third man is still here, too. But his presence behind his back raises the hair on his skin. 

He's holding his breath now, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for the floor to drop from under his feet, perhaps, leaving him to hang and die, helpless to save himself. 

He's probably already blue in the face, terror holding him by the neck. 

"Calm down," Teddy says, again. He raises two fingers. "Two directives. You stay up. You stay awake. That's all. We'll leave you alone."

But he doesn't want to be alone, is Buck's gut reaction. Don't leave him here alone. 

But Teddy takes a few steps back, until he's just beyond the threshold of the door.

No. 

The Pig stares at him, black eyes intimidating. Buck drops his gaze, finds Teddy again. He's reaching for something Buck can't see, on the other side of the wall, close to the door. Pulls on it, like it's a lever. Buck braces, so sure the floor is about to fall off from under him. 

Nothing seems to happens. 

Teddy re-enters the room. 

Above his head, above the door, the red eye of a camera blinks at Buck. 

They're filming his death? Buck's throat closes up, like it's already given up on breathing. No. No. He's not ready yet. 

"You're fine," Teddy tells him, like it's an order. One Buck wants to obey, more than anything. He's not ready. "You stay awake. You stay up. As long as you can, and you'll be fine."

He shrugs, like he's asking the simplest thing. 

"Otherwise..."

A kick behind Buck's knee take him by surprise. There's not real force behind it, but it's enough to put him off balance and pull on the rope around his neck. 

An alarm blares, sudden and deafening.

It's loud, so loud, shooting agony through his eardrums. Strobe lights flash, blinding, stabbing straight into his retinas even through closed eyelids. He gasps out a shout, but his voice is drowned out by the screaming of the alarm. 

His instinct is to curl away from the unbearable noise, but the rope goes taught. He can't breathe! 

He struggles, rights himself. The rope goes slack.

The alarm and the lights stop. 

He breathes hard, his ears ringing, remnants of the bright lights still pulsing through his eyeballs. He can feel his blood buzzing under his skin, his pulse going wild. 

He blinks, trying to chase the white spots away. 

The Pig and the Bear are still standing there, both hands pressed to their ears. 

The Pig is the first to drop them. "Whew," he exclaims, "that was fucking loud."

Buck's ears are still ringing. 

"Stay awake," the Bear tells him. "Stay up. You got that?"

Buck doesn't nod, doesn't talk. Just stares. He's quite literally at the end of his rope. Doesn't know what else they expect of him. 

Stay awake. Stay up. Sure. He can do that. 

They leave, just like that. 

The door slams shut behind them, and Buck is left with the echoes of a ringing alarm and his wild heartbeat. 

—

He's bored before he's tired. 

The stimulant they pumped into him is long lasting. It's left him antsy, restless. He can't stop the rhythmic shaking in his left leg, feels the touch of the noose brushing the sensitive skin of his neck with every move. 

It feels—it feels like it's been hours already. He's used to standing in place. Can do it for a while. He's more used to movements, and action.

He's starting to feel the weight of his body sink into his legs. He's spent a lot of time working on them—his legs. After the crush, and then after the strike. He's spent so much time strengthening the muscles there, taking care of the joints, stretching, exercising. 

The pain in his leg—his legs, really—never really went away. He takes strength from that. It's how he builds himself up, even now. He's good with pain. Pain is his oldest friend. 

What he's not good at, is this restlessness. He needs to move. He tenses every muscles in an effort to stay immobile, grinds his teeth when that sets off a cramp in his calf, stretches his toes.

He stares straight at the red eye of the camera and stands tall. He won't beg. 

—

It must have been hours.

His muscles are cramping more often than not. Both his legs are shaking, now, involuntary tremors running through them.

The painkillers have worn off. The stimulants too. The adrenaline crash is hard to stand. 

It's hard to stand. 

He's put too much weight on his right leg. The pain in his left ankle is gnawing, gnawing, gnawing at him. He's tried to keep his weight distributed, but the pain sets his nerves alight. He's tried, tried to fight against his body's instincts, but in the end, he put most of his weight into his right leg. 

A mistake. 

The leg was untouched, by the truck, by the lightning. It didn't matter, in the end. Over the years, he relied too much on it, and messed it up as bad as the other one. 

Like he's doing now. 

He can usually stay comfortably standing two hours. He's way past comfortable now, figures it must be somewhere between four to eight hours. Maybe more. Maybe less. He was never comfortable to begin with, here, today. His muscles were already screaming at him before they started this new little game. The drugs were a cheat code, a short cut that he's paying for now. 

He hates having no concept of time. Hates it. He doesn't even know how long he's supposed to 'stay up', wouldn't know if he's getting close to the goal even if he knew. 

For all he knows, they really are leaving him down her forever. 

He's sweating. It doesn't help the burning slide of the ropes on his skin. 

He's tried to keep the joint relaxed, as long as he could. But he's had to lock his knee for the last—hour? Hours? Half-hour? He doesn't know. 

Another mistake. 

His knee pulses in time with his heartbeat, feels too big for his skin, tight, swollen. It's about to give out. 

He puts more weight onto the left leg, feels the threat of the rope around his neck. His ankle screams and screams and screams. It won't shut up. He looks down, and the bandages are stark white. He doesn't get it. He can still feel the bite of the bear trap, feels raw and open and gaping. It should be bleeding. It should be bleeding, painting his skin red and proving his pain to the world. 

The camera stares at him. 

—

"Fuck you," he tells the red dot of the camera. "Fuck you. Fuck you."

All the nails on his fingers are broken or ripped off. He can feel the tiny pinprick pain of it radiating down his hands as he  clenches his fists behind his back. 

He can't get out of the rope. 

He shakes his head, left to right, left to right. Can't get out of that rope either. 

He's getting tired. Not just physically. His brain is starting to beg for some shuteye. His eyes are probably red, like the camera's. They burn. 

He's hungry. 

His back hurts. His legs are quaking. They're barely holding him up. He must look ridiculous.

He pushes through the pain. Keeps pushing, keeps pushing, uses every last once of willpower and stubbornness he's got. 

Once again, his body betrays him, his right leg folds like it's paper, and takes a knee. 

The rope snaps taut, and the alarm is immediate. It's loud, louder than his mind could recall, stabs straight into his brain. The lights join the assault. 

The rope utterly cuts off his air, and he can't scream, but he wants to. He wants to. The noise and the lights are unbearable. 

He shuts his eyes, and it's useless as the lights shove their way past his eyelids, can't shut his ears. Can't scream. Can't breathe. 

This is it. 

No. 

He doesn't want to die. 

His eardrums must be bursting, his eyeballs must be bleeding. He struggles, gives everything he has left to push his right leg up, begs it to work with him. 

He can't breathe—can't breathe. 

The lights and the noise are screaming. 

His muscles scream, too, but he manages to plant his foot flat to the floor. It takes more work to unbend his knee, and he thinks this is it, this is it, he'll die before he can straighten his stupid leg.

He does straighten it. The noose loosens and air rushes back into his lungs like a dam has been burst. He chokes, and coughs, and it takes a while for him to realize the lights and the siren are gone. 

His ears are ringing, sending sharp pains pulsing into his skull. His retinas feel like they've been burnt. 

He screams, belatedly. Shouts a long, drown out cry, for as long as he can, until air is gone again. 

Adrenaline rushes through him. Buys him time. 

He stands. 

—

He's....hungry. God, he's so hungry. 

When did—What was the last thing he ate? He can't remember. A vague recollection presses the sore spot that is his tired mind: a tube, going into his nose, through his throat, down his stomach.

Humiliation burns. He's no-one to them. He doesn't even know who 'them' is. He just knows he's nothing but a plaything, a toy that they have to maintain to keep it working.

Nausea swells. 

He's still hungry. 

He can't remember the last thing he ate.

His stomach groans, writhes, tries to eat itself. His back hurts.

His blood pressure, his heart rate, they feel high. His cortisone levels must be high, too. He sure feels stressed. His cytokines must be elevated, too, affecting his metabolism, his immune system. 

It has to have been a full day, or close to it. He hopes they didn't forget about him. Please, don't forget about him. 

He tests his bindings again, flexes his muscles, gives himself another cramp. It hurts. 

He's so hungry. 

He can't rememb– 

No, wait. 

He does remember.... a dauphinoise. Bobby's dauphinoise. No. No, he'd been with Christopher, and Eddie. He had made it himself, for them. Buck had found so many things wrong with it when he tried it, but Christopher and Eddie had acted like that was the best dish that ever graced their palates. 

His stomach's eating itself. His heart climbs up, away from it, into his throat. It's hard to swallow around it. 

Buck cries, and his tears are few and far between. He's thirsty. Dehydrated. His eyes burn, his skin feels hot, his veins feel too big when they've probably shrunk far into his body. He's got no control over his emotions anymore, (barely ever had in his life, if he's honest with himself), and he misses them. He misses them. He misses them. 

—

(2)

Eddie lies awake. 

It's just past midnight.

Twelve days. 

Christopher is sleeping in his arms.

He's still sad all the time, even in sleep like he is now, Eddie can tell. There's the faint crease between his brows, the downward curve to his lips, the way he's holding onto Eddie's hand like he hasn't done in years. 

He's more settled though, less agitated. Eddie took a leave of absence from work, two days ago. Bobby didn't resist him, and neither did the higher-ups. 

It doesn't feel good, to be off work. It makes him anxious—more so than before. Like he's taken a step in the wrong direction. Away from Buck, and from the chance of finding him. He knows it's ridiculous; he wasn't making a single difference in the field. He still feels guilt. He embraces it, even. 

But Christopher comes first. Has too. Always has. Buck knew that—knows that. Christopher needs Eddie home, and Christopher's needs are his priority, always. He lost sight of that, for a second, lost in his grief and self loathing. 

Something else to feed the guilt. 

He knows how to live with guilt. Has spent his whole life mastering it. 

What is harder to live with are the reminders of Buck, scattered all throughout the house. The kitchen, especially, right on the other side of the wall he's staring at, eyes vacant.

There's Buck's picture on the fridge. A hoodie on the back of a chair. A recipe next to the stove. There's a whole set of kitchenware Buck had brought once, and never taken home with him: chef's knives, spatula, whisk, baking sheets. There's a whole pack and a half of the beers they like to share, sitting in the fridge. The fridge that has Buck's picture on it.

Eddie hasn't touched any of it. 

He's thought, in passing, about putting all of it away. He's thought about it, with the idea of moving on from their grief. For Christopher's benefit. He can't bring himself to even entertain the idea for more than a second at a time. It's too soon. It's too soon. He's not ready yet. He's not ready to give up.  He knows what it would really be: a betrayal. Not moving on, or healing, but a denial of Buck's entire existence. 

Christopher would chew him out for it. He'd hate him. 

So Eddie lives with the reminders, and he holds his son, as often as Christopher will let him. 

He lies awake at night, useless and exhausted, because his house is haunted now. He's not ready to give up, but it takes an effort to convince himself, every minute, that Buck is still alive, that he'll come back to them.

His house is haunted, and the ghost of Buck breathes through its walls. 

On Christopher's wall is a drawing of Buck. Stick figures and barely recognisable animals. Chris had thought it was hilarious. 

On Christopher's nightstand are Eddie's phone and radio. They follow him everywhere. To the bathroom, the kitchen, the bed. He's never more than a few feet from either. He waits for them to come alive, ready to jump into action, or to have his hopes crushed, or––

He's hasn't given up. Not yet. But hope cuts deeper everyday. He's bleeding out, feels like. Feels like he's back on that scorching hot pavement under that scorching hot sun, getting colder second by second. 

He feels the urge to reach out, always, grab his radio, call out for Buck. Call him on his phone. He's not ready for it to go straight to voicemail, to hear Buck's carefree voice. It's not him. It's a past version of him, unburdened. Unhurt.

Every waking moment, Eddie has to fight his brain tooth and nails that's telling him that version of Buck is gone forever. That they'll never get it back. That he'll never get him back. 

Tomorrow, he'll take Christopher to school. 

He doesn't know what he'll do after. 

Maybe he'll beg Bobby to come back to work. Maybe he'll badger Athena for any news, any answer, any lead. Maybe he'll waste away at home, staring at his radio, waiting for the ghost of Buck's voice to call to him. 

He can't sleep. 

—

It has to have been a full day. More, even. 

His mood varies, from depressed to mad to annoyed to stressed to despondent. He's got enough presence of mind to realise this is more than a game of stress position. This is sleep deprivation. His eyes burn. His throat's dry. His head pounds. His back hurts. His legs and his arms are pins and needles. Bad sign. His skin feels like it was turned inside out. His eyes burn. 

Stay awake, he'd been told. Stay up. 

He's taken a knee—both knees—a few times.

He does again, now. Almost falls asleep right there anyway, breath strangled by the rope, lights and sirens cutting into him. It takes him a minute before his brain urges him to get up, get up, please, get up—

"Hmm," he moans, the sound trapped in his windpipe, as his body struggles to follow his brain's desperate command. It does. His body. Follow the command. It's resilient. 

"I'm up, 'mm up," he mumbles in the quiet of the room 

He's afraid—He's afraid they forgot about him. Left him there to starve. Found a better toy. 

It's getting so hard to get back up. 

He does, again, and again, and again, because his body's stubborn and resilient, and because this pain is too big for it. 

—

He falls to his knees, and he can't—this time he can't get up. His body fails and the siren screams and screams into his ears, and he screams with it, prays his eardrums will burst so he won't have to listen to it anymore. 

He screams until the rope chokes the voice and the breath out of him. He hangs there, both knees just brushing the floor, refusing to carry the weight anymore, and he can't breathe, can't hear, can't see, prays for it to end. 

I don't want to die

Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

He pulls his neck harder against the rope to make the process faster, delirious with pain and fatigue. He wishes it would decapitate him, saw his head clean off, and he'd watch it roll along the floor, far away from the noise and the lights and the horror. 

He wants this to be over. 

He can't hear and he can't see and he can't breathe. He doesn't even have it in him to startle when the rope goes just slack enough and both his knees hit the floor and the room goes blessedly silent. 

It takes a few moment for him to breathe again. He keeps his eyes closed. They feel like they're on fire, setting the rest of his brain ablaze, smoking his mind out.

He's kneeling on the floor. The relief is so intense he almost keels over, pitches forward until a hand stops his momentum. 

"No," a voice says, piercing right through the loud ringing, and it's familiar. It's so familiar, Buck wants to grasp at it, hold on to it, never let it go.

"Same rules," the voice says, and the hand cradles his cheek, lifts his head. His skin tingles. He keeps his eyes closed. 

"Look at me." It's a command. Buck wants to obey. Instantly, his mind comes back online, rebels. 

Don't do what he says, it says, or you'll get hurt. 

The shrill ringing in his ears is the buzzing under his skin is the shiver rolling down his spine. 

You'll get hurt if you don't do what he says. 

It's all too confusing. He moans, couldn't even open his eyes if he wanted to. They burn. 

The hand holds tighter. "Look at me."

It's a command. He pries his eyes open a squint. His sight is blurry. 

The shape of a man kneels in front of him, the grip on his chin firm. Long gloves fingers span his cheek, one finger behind his ears, one on his pulse point. His head is shapeless, big, dark. Buck's mind struggles. 

The hand lifts his chin. Something presses onto his cracked lips, as his head is tipped back, and blessed water fills his mouth.

A small noise escapes Buck. His burning eyes close in bliss, and it's like his entire body seizes, every organ, every muscle climbing over themselves to reach salvation next. 

Teddy

Buck drinks, and drinks, chokes on blessed water. He's breathing fast, too fast, like he was in the throes of death and was just brought back from the very brink. 

He's grateful. Didn't think he was this far gone. 

The water goes away, too soon, and another small noise escapes Buck. A thumb slides over his chin, over his lips, wipes the last remnants of the water away. 

"Look at me."

It's a request. He pries his eyes open. 

"Same rules. You can sit. Keep you head up, keep the rope slack. Stay awake."

Buck can tell he's speaking slow, but he still can't keep up. His ears are ringing. He has to drag every word through the molasses of his brain, dissect it and shine a light onto it to make it make sense.

"What," he says, stupidly.

His throat catches. More water. He needs more water.

"Stay awake."

The hand leaves his jaw. A chill swipes over the skin left behind. The door slams shut.

He kneels there, alone, head falling forward now that he's lost the support. His eyes slid shut. He feels the rope tighten around his neck, stops his head's forward momentum just in time. He can still hear the alarm resonate through his skull. He'd rather not add the real thing on top of it. 

Pain's waking up down his legs, shoots up into his body. He knows he should unfold them. One thing at a time. 

He can't feel his arms at all. His throat hurts. His head too. And his stomach. He's hungry. He's thirsty. 

He should have asked for more water. Asked for his arms to be freed, or at least retied in front of him. He can't feel them. 

His head falls forward. He snaps his eyes open, breathes through his nose. 

Stay awake. 

He can do this. 

—

He wants to sleep. 

He's so tired. His head keeps nodding forward, and he has to catch himself before he's startled and blindsided by the lights and siren.

Twice already, he didn't catch himself in time. Cut off his own breathing, plunged himself into this hell. The alarm sounds worse every time.

He wonders if it's getting louder, of if he's just getting weaker, more sensitive. His skin feels sore, raw, exposed, goosebumps constant. 

He's hungry, he thinks. Thirsty, maybe. Mostly, he wants to sleep. He wants to sleep so badly. 

He managed to unfold his legs, at some point. Can't remember when. They're a constant pain, frying his nerves with neverending waves of agony. He can't feel his arms. He's sitting on his ass, traitor legs loosely splayed in front of him, like he's a child on time out. 

He doesn't have it in him to feel humiliated anymore. 

He's so tired. His eyes burn. His head feels like it's lodged in an ever-tightening vice. 

He's so tired. 

He's so ti—

—

Blinding lights stab into his skull, twin lasers melting his brain. 

He doesn't understand what he has to do to make it stop. He's not breathing. 

He's not—

Black spots join the bright lights, create a kaleidoscope of fast moving colors and shadows that's dizzying. He wants it to stop. It's making him sick. 

He heaves, but nothing's coming out. Nothing's coming in. He's not breathing. 

He snaps back into himself, raises his head and takes a starved gulp of air. Coughs on it. The lights quiet. 

His ears ring. 

—

His heart feels swollen. Too big, too big for his shell. It's always been too big. He's always felt too full, and too empty. His heart is gonna burst, and he'll have nothing left but the emptiness. 

It terrifies him. 

He'll be nothing but a hole, a black hole, and everything that's him will fall into it and be lost forever. He's standing on the edge of that precipice, waiting for his heart to burst, can't tell which way gravity's supposed to go. He'll fall. He'll fall. 

It terrifies him. 

This panic is sudden, and overwhelming. It's eating him, eating him right up from the inside, creating the very hole he's so afraid to fall into. He's his own vicious circle. 

He laughs, and his heart must burst. 

—

Lucidity hits him like a truck, at times. 

His leg hurts. 

Red's started bleeding through the bandages, at some point. He can't remember when. He's worried about infection. He wonders if they ever had him on antibiotics. They seem to have cleaned the wound, at least. The bandage was clean, before. He's sure of it. 

He's worried about infection. He feels hot, warm, clammy. Sick. His skin feels too tight, cracked. 

Could be the sleep deprivation, too. 

He's craving sugar. The cupcakes Hen brought to the station last... Last time he worked there. His insulin must have tanked. 

The floor rolls under him, like he's on the deck of a boat. He feels lightheaded. His eyes burn hot. Closing them doesn't bring any relief. 

The sudden wail of the alarm makes him jump out of his skin. The lights add fire to the fire engulfing his brain. 

He raises his head, breathes. His neck feels sore, stiff. Pain shoots down his spine. 

He's never felt this miserable, he thinks, and then remembers the days following the lightning strike. He's annoyed at his brain for bringing that up, now. Piling misery on top of misery. 

At least, he reasons with the last dredges of lucidity he's got, he's so sleep deprived he's probably made it to the stage where his brain is past its capacity to create long term memories. 

He won't remember any of this, later. That has to be a relief. 

He wishes he could forget the days after the strike, too. 

His eyes burn.

Closing them brings no relief. 

—

(3)

Maddie lies awake. 

Her eyes burn. They feel raw, like she's cried too much. (She has.) Like she's kept them open too long. 

She can't keep them closed. She tries, she does, desperate for the oblivion of sleep. They won't stay closed. 

They just burn, and burn, and burn, and she lies awake. 

Beside her, Chimney sleeps fitfully, his hand gripping hers. He keeps moving, grunting, shifting, his brows pulled together, mouth pulled into a frown. The mattress keeps dipping as he moves, the pressure of his hand on hers tightening and relaxing in turns. 

Bad dreams. 

Beside him, Maddie lays still. She barely dares to breathe, the tension that holds her body together constricting her chest. Her back hurts from her lack of movement. She stares at the ceiling, watches the lights of rare cars passing by run across the blank expanse. Her eyes burn. 

She wishes she could close them. She tries. 

Maddie.

Evan's voice, his smile, his tears. She can feel the phantom pressure of his arms around her. He's gotten so big. Bigger than her. She wonders how she could ever try to protect him again when she's so small next to him. She sinks into the warmth of his embrace. 

Her eyes snap open. They burn. 

The sudden, sharp intake of breath through Howie's nose is loud in the quiet room.

He's awake. 

"Maddie?"

His voice is soft in the quiet room, barely above a breath. He squeezes her fingers, just as softly. 

"I'm up." Her voice is gravelly, so far removed from soft, barely able to leave her throat. Her eyes burn. They won't stay closed. "I'm up."

"You get any sleep?" Howie's voice is rough, too, under the soft tones. 

She nods. It's easy to lie under the cover of darkness. 

A car passes by. She follows its red light traveling across her ceiling with burning eyes. 

The car's tires screeches, and it honks, twice. Maddie jumps, belatedly, like her body's too slow to keep up with new input. 

Raised voices shout outside. 

Further down the room, Jee-Yun cries. 

She drags her hand out of Howie's, stands up on shaky legs. Howard follows. The light is blinding as he turns it on, and Maddie squints her way to her daughter's crib. 

She's crying, fat tears rolling down her chubby cheeks. Maddie feels such love for her, so overwhelming, so big and blunt that it's painful. 

She holds her baby in her arms, presses her small body against her heart. It helps keep the pain at bay, just a little. 

"I know," she shushes. "I know. I've got you. I love you."

She presses kisses to her little head, breathes her in, finally closes her eyes.

They don't stay closed. 

"We'll find your brother," she promises her baby. "We'll find your brother."

In the corner of her vision, Howie moves, like he's been startled. 

She hugs her daughter tighter. More tears break free from her burning eyes, scalding her cheeks as they go. She didn't think she still had them in her. 

—

There are shadows, in the corners of the room. In the corners of his vision. They move when he tries to chase them. 

There's a spike, spearing right through his forehead. He tries to visualise it, tries to keep it level, parallel to the floor. He imagines its weight, balanced on either side of his head, back and front. 

It helps keep his head up. 

Chimney would laugh, make a quip or a joke. He can't remember why. There's a memory somewhere, nagging at him, filled with gut churning dread and anxiety and helplessness. Broken car, broken windshield, broken glass. Broken—

The shadows move, and Buck tries to follow them with dry eyes, keeping his head very still. His eyeballs hurt, pushed too far to the side too long, and the shadows evade his blurry sight, taunt him, stay right on the edge of his peripheral, raise the hair on his skin and make him shake through constant shivers. 

It's driving him crazy, the feeling like ants crawling all over his skin, all over his brain. 

Lucidity comes and goes. 

He knows what this is. Light hallucinations. Truckers call it "seeing the black dog." Shadowy figures, slithering just off to the side. 

They're not real. He knows this. 

He shakes anyway. Dread, anxiety, helplessness. He's so exposed to their attack. 

The light feels too bright against his abused retina, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. The shadows move with the lights, like they're breathing. 

It's not real. 

Lucidity ebbs and flows. 

He keeps thinking about the days after the strike, but the memories won't make sense, conflicting. Can't remember what was real, what was dreamt. He couldn't tell what was real then, too. 

He used to look out the window, that helped. No windows here. Just walls, shadows crawling all over them. 

He used to send text messages to—to—

His eyes close.

Daniel was there, and he can't make sense of that. Daniel died, didn't he? Because Evan, he failed— But Daniel was there, he's so sure of it. He's so sure. So sure. He's real. He can't have made that up, he can't have. 

His eyes are closed, and his head and the rod in it try to dip forward. He breathes through his nose, carefully lifts his chin. His neck hurts. His back hurts. He can feel his spine, can feel every bone, can feel the way they grind and grate on the rest of his insides, can feel the way his spine stabs into the base of his skull. 

He blinks his eyes open in jerky motions. The room gets bigger then smaller, the walls and the shadows moving between every blink. 

If he's seeing the black dog, it means he must have passed the seventy hour mark. He doesn't know how he knows this. Doesn't know if it has any truth. Holds onto it anyway, desperate to hold onto anything, even if it's just the passage of time. 

No wonder he's so exhausted. 

He wants Daniel. Wants his big brother. Wants to make sure—

He's so exhausted he can barely feel the thirst, or the hunger. He knows both are killing him, that he won't last much longer without water, if it's really been three days. He's got hours left, if that.

He dreamt he drank some, once. He can't recall the dream beyond vague shapes and sensations. He imagines it was accompanied by the touch of a hand on his chin, a thumb on his cheek, on his lips. Whishes it was real. Can't recall. Maybe it was, and he's losing his mind faster than he thinks. 

He can't really think. The spike in his brain leaves little room for thought. His throat is gravel, as painful inside than out, as the rope keeps brushing skin that feels raw, open, wet. He can't tell if it's blood or sweat running down his neck, under his collar. 

It's driving him crazy. 

He can't feel the rope on his arms. He sometimes comes back to himself thinking he has no arms at all, terrified he'll never be allowed back home because they're gone and he needs them to be dependable. Some other times, he remembers the rope, even if he can't feel it. Can't feel his arms at all. They have to be there, he knows that, but they feel gone. They've been immobile for days. 

He's terrified of blood clots. He's terrified that his body's been making them, taking advantage of his trapped arms. Terrified that if he moves his arms, they'll break free, travel all the way to his lungs, choke him and drown him and kill him. 

He keeps himself very still. The clots can't move if he doesn't move. 

The shadows move again. Buck's heart jumps inside his chest, falls to his stomach. His stomach's gone, it's eaten itself. His heart jumps, and his body jumps too. Before he can stop himself, he's turned his head to chase the shadow. The spike piercing through his brain moves with him, over balances. He can't keep it level with the sudden movement, can't find that equilibrium again; its weight drops forward, and so does his head. 

The alarm and the lights struggle to wake him up. 

—

He can't remember why he's supposed to keep still or stay up. Knows with absolute dread that he must. 

—

(4)

He's bored. He is so bored. 

He's supposed to stay still, and stay up, can't remember what for. Doesn't want to anymore.

His brain feels floaty. Like one of those things in those sluggish liquids. In jars. He used to know more words, feels like. 

He can't help but think it'd be easier to stay up if he had something to do. Anything. He's so bored. He wishes he could move, or read, or—or—he doesn't know what else. Can't think properly, or for long. Whishes he knew more words so he could think better. 

He's so bored. 

His brain feels floaty. Like it's in one of those jars. It has to be. When it's not, when it touches his skull, pain blindsides him. He keeps waiting for mom and dad to come and make him feel better, to bring him food and a hug. He's waiting. He's waiting. Any time. He can't wait to melt into their embrace. Fall asleep inside their arms. 

Any time, now. 

—

The siren's calling. 

Buck loves going on calls. It's his vocation. He's found what he's supposed to do, and every call of that siren is a call toward his purpose. 

Get up! 

"I'm up!" he calls back, "I'm up! I'm up!"

But he can't seem to make himself move. Not fast, anyway. He's supposed to run because time moves fast, so fast, and lives depend on him being fast too. But his feet drag, his legs are jello. He's up in the loft, and the stairs are daunting. He's never been ailed with vertigo, but he's feeling it now. His head's pounding, his breathing's labored. Panic attack? He's taken those stairs so many times.

The hall downstairs is dark, shadows creeping up. The trucks are gone. The ambulance too. 

Right, the siren's calling. They have to move fast, because lives depend on them, and Buck is too slow. Of course they left him behind. They have to. Lives depend on—

He can't breathe. 

He struggles away from the stairs. The shadows have reached him by now, and he can't see the steps anymore. Flashing lights illuminate them in pulses.

Didn't the trucks leave? Why is he seeing their lights?

He trips over his own feet, and he's falling, falling, falling. No hard ground meets him. 

He stays suspended, falling, his insides swooping. 

He cant—he can't breathe. 

Air just—air won't come. 

He coughs, can barely do that either. 

The alarm of the bell drills into his skull. Why won't it stop? The trucks and their sirens are gone, they left to help, the bell isn't needed anymore. 

Like him. 

He coughs again, can't get air in. 

He tries to bring his hand to his mouth, to his throat. Can't find his arms. 

Is that why they left him man behind? He got hurt again? Lost his arms?

They don't need him to do their jobs. They're professionals, all of them, and him clinging onto them even with no arms and as useless as he is is pathetic. 

He can't help it. He's so scared to be left behind. 

He coughs, can't breathe. 

He gets mad all of a sudden. Wants to lash out at them, make them see, make them hurt, make them cry. 

Look at me, he wants to scream at the shadowy figures. They won't look back. Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!

He can't breathe. Anger is panic is a black hole inside of him. 

Suck it up, a voice says. 

Eddie? 

Suck it up. 

He's—he's trying. Always. Trying. Trying so hard. 

He coughs, can't breathe. The flashing lights pulse, slower, dimmer, distorted. 

Hands appear on him. Eddie, he thinks, but he can't see him. 

Suck it up!

He can't. Can't breathe. Something's in his throat, in his lungs. He was scared—of something, before. Something rushing into his lungs to kill him. Is scared now. 

Suck it in!

There's red, all over him, all around him. Blood. Suck it back in! He's vomiting blood? He has before. Air can't rush in while blood's rushing out. 

Suck it back in!

He tries. He can't, he can't. Can't get air in, can't keep his blood inside himself. He never could, he never could. 

His blood's always been a gift to those who would love him in return. He never wanted to keep it inside himself, hidden away, could never keep his heart inside, or his guts, his mind, has to wear all of it on his sleeve. 

The bell keeps ringing, calling, calling, calling, calling. Buck tries to respond, he does. It's instinct. But his body won't listen to him. He can't breathe. Something's stuck, something's blocking his airway. Can't cough. The lights are gone. 

Hands turn insistent. 

He's falling, falling, and suddenly the ground meets him. 

The touch of cement is cool to his burning forehead. He must be on fire. He thought he'd stayed at the station. Did he go with them? On the bell's call? He's not sure he remembered to wear his turnouts. He feels heavy, like he is, but feels vulnerable, like he isn't. 

He hurts.

Pain pulses through him, and he breathes with it. He breathes. He breathes. 

More hands on him. 

Pain is a neverending crescendo. 

Oblivion tries to embrace him, and he tries to fall into it, desperately. 

His head flies to the side. A new, sharp pain blossoms on his cheek. It says no.

He thinks his eyes are open, but he can't see anything, eyes rolled into his head. Rolling, rolling, rolling. 

He tries so hard to fall asleep. 

He needs, he needs to sleep. He needs to sleep. He's so tired. He needs to sleep. 

Pain is set alight, all over his body. His throat feels shredded. He tries to stop screaming, can't hear if he is, if he does. 

He's being mauled, eaten alive, by starved animals and white faces. 

Cold metal under his back. 

Pain. 

Sleep. 

Chapter Text

Later, Buck wakes, and is instantly desperately aware that he's made a terrible mistake. 

He doesn't know what. He doesn't know where he is, why he can't move or why he hurts, why he's shaking, why he can't catch his breath. 

But he knows he's made a terrible mistake. Dread, regret, guilt, shame; they churn in his guts, stomach, chest cavity—beasts lurking in his insides. Foreboding made solid and writhing and nauseating, as familiar as it is suffocating.

He lost—he lost—

He can't think, his mind and vision and hearing fields of white static. 

He lost—

He can't catch his breath. 

He lost—

He's made a terrible mistake. 

He can't—He did something wrong, something he shouldn't have done, that will have catastrophic consequences. God, he lost—

He has to get up. He has to fix it. He has to fix his mistake, now, before it's too late. He tries, he tries so hard to move, to get up. He can't. His body is so heavy.

He can't move, and he can't think, and—He fucked up, God, he fucked up. He made a bad mistake—

His mind's begging him to get up, get up, please, get up, fix it, but he doesn't know what the mistake is, and his body won't listen—

Please, he lost–he lost—

His mind begs and cries and bangs desperate fists against the cage of his skull, and his body is not his, and he can't catch his—he can't—he can't breathe—his lungs won't let him—

(he's choking)

His chest convulses, his head jerks to the side.  

He catches movement in his periphery. His body barely feels his, and he can't control it, can't make it move, and still it moves by itself, shaking apart on the hard cold surface he's laid out on. 

He coughs, and he chokes, and he shakes. 

More movement, and his trembling body jumps.

He coughs, and coughs, and coughs. His chest is so tight, too tight for air to come through, and his throat closes up, too. It's terrifying.

He can't catch his breath, makes desperate wheezing sounds, choking and suffocating and drowning, drowning, drowning in this overwhelming wave of desperation. 

Drowning.

He's so cold, so tired, exhausted. 

Drowning.

He fucked up. 

Something unyielding presses on his face, around his mouth, over his mouth.

He thought his heart was beating fast, but it manages to jump and kick and go even faster, tries to break the walls of his chest. He tries to move away, get away, get away, but he can't, and this claustrophobia reaches unbearable levels.

He feels stuffed inside his own skin as his heart jackhammers faster and faster inside his chest and his mind splinters and he's suddenly utterly certain this panic will kill him faster than the absolute dread. 

No. No. He hasn't fixed it. 

His chest hurts, collapsing on itself, and he tries to move, tries to find a way to allow air in.

His head is kept immobile, hands crushing the sides of his face, and he sobs and gasps and gasps and drowns. 

He whines, low, distressed. He's terrified. 

He doesn't want to die. 

Can't, not yet. 

He has to—

fix—

(He has to find! He has to find!)

Despite the unyielding plastic around his mouth and over his nose, a rush of air shoves its way in, through his windpipe, forces open his chest, lodges inside his lungs.

He chokes on it, like his body doesn't know what to do with air, like it forgot how to use it.

He chokes and writhes, until something shifts and topples inside his chest and suddenly his lungs remember how they work, and he breathes and breathes and breathes, like a drowned man taking his first breath. 

The relief is dizzying. 

Drowned.

He lost—

Something else topples, deep inside his heart.

Swimming through this claustrophobia feels like swimming through mud, but he's so, so, so desperate for this air that he finds himself sucking greedily through what he distantly recognizes as a mask. This air is intoxicating as it finds his lungs, again and again, and it's like being born, maybe.

He blinks black spots out of his vision, finds blinding white light instead, moving in dizzying stops and starts right above him. 

His eyes water, keep rolling back into his head. 

He breathes, he breathes, greedy and insatiable, presses his face into the mask. The hands let him. 

His body shakes so hard he can hear the clicking of wheels against hard floor. His teeth chatter, his jaw hurts. His body shakes, and he's so cold. His chest itches. 

Was he—Was he struck by lightning? Is he still in hospital? Didn't he—He thought he'd gotten out. That he'd gotten better, gotten back home, rehabbed, gotten back to work. Hadn't he? Was it real? Did he dream it all?

His insides turn to lead at the thought. 

No. No. He'd made it, made it back to reality, back to work, back to his family. 

Didn't he? 

He lost—

He can't move, and he can't breathe. Paralysis, the doctors had said, hadn't they? The current of the lightning paralysed most of his muscles. Paralysed his sternum, made him unable to breathe. 

Yes, yes, but he'd gotten better. He's sure. He's sure. Temporary paralysis, the docs had said. He hadn't even been awake for it. And he'd gotten better. He's sure of it. 

His body had been destroyed, but he'd survived, and he remembers, he remembers the pain of his body mending itself, for days, for weeks. Inescapable agony, inside of him, eating him alive. He remembers the unending misery, and then, it had ended, and he'd gotten better.

Was he struck by lightning again? Is this the terrible mistake he's sure he made? Did he defy common sense to climb another ladder and offered himself to the universe? He knows better, though, he does. The universe hates him. It tried to kill him before, so many times.

He's a cockroach. He survives by the skin of his teeth every time, and still the universe tried and tries, again and again. It tried to take his legs, and his lungs, and his heart. It dropped lightning onto him, and before that a whole truck. It made his own body turn against him, time and again, and it dropped an entire tsunami on—

Christopher.

Drowning.

Pure, absolute fear suddenly spears through him. It burns hotter and brighter than lightning ever could. 

He chokes on it, terror so sudden and overwhelming—He doesn't understand where it's coming from. 

Christopher.

That's the mistake he made.

He lost–

God, he lost Christopher!

He's losing his mind to white hot panic, and he's choking once again, can't breathe, and he—he—he fucked up–oh no, no–no–no–no–no—he lost Christopher again—

Christopher!

–he lost sight of what matters most and he lost–no–no–no–

Christopher! Christopher!

He barely feels the bright sting of a needle piercing his skin under the soaking suffocating weight of absolute terror. 

He remembers—water poured down his throat—a grip so strong, too strong—no up, no down, tumbling, tumbling, Christopher!—his hands only grabbing empty water—no air—no air—

He's drowning, drowning in this terror, and he lost Christopher, lost him again, and he doesn't understand but has to look for him, has to fix this, has to find him, find him! but he can't make his body move, and he can't brea——

Christopher!

(Have you seen

a little boy)

Christopher!

(I'm sorry, he just

vanished)

Christopher!

I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. 

Christopher!

He wakes to the feeling of a cold compress on his forehead.

The touch is gentle.  

He feels wet, sweaty, exhausted, breathless. He's freezing cold. Shivers keep rolling down, tumbling down his spine.

He can't hear himself, but feels the vibrations of words tumbling past his vocal chords. He has no idea what they're saying. He's got no control. 

There's a hand on his brow, behind the cold compress, and he feels a thumb gently stroke the skin of his birthmark. 

His heart contracts. 

Maddie

Is Maddie here? He needs her. He needs her so bad. He needs her comfort, her warm words, her embrace, and he needs her love. He needs it so bad he feels like he could die without it. 

"Maddie," he whines, because he's sick, and scared. "I-I don't–" he swallows, and it is too painful when it scrapes along the gravel in throat, and his voice and his breath give out. Words and air stick to his palate, block the way, and he chokes on them.  

He chokes, and coughs, and tries to breathe in, but air is gravel scraping against gravel as it forces its way down his windpipe. He chokes again. Coughs again, and his throat closes up, his lungs seize. He feels like he's dying. 

He needs water. 

Cold dread washes over him at the thought. His body tries to breathe faster, cant—there's no air. His throat's closed up. His lungs are seizing. 

Christopher!

He's drowning. 

More cold compresses, all over his body. It turns painful. He's already so cold, so so cold, shaking apart with it, and they just make him colder. 

He feels sick. 

He's wracked with shivers; sharp, like pins and needles, traveling up and down his spine in dizzying waves, up and down, up and down. Like crushed ice beneath his skin, crushed glass inside his veins. 

His chest hurts. 

The compresses are traveling up and down, too, settling and nesting in the worst places. He's so cold. So cold. 

Stop, stop, please–

He coughs, shakes, cries broken little sounds that's destroy what's left of his throat. 

He's so thirsty, but—

(Dread.)

The water's oversaturating his body, leaking inside of him through every pore, every crevasses. 

He's drowning. 

Maddie. Maddie, please, help.

"Maddie I don't–" He needs Maddie. "I don't feel so good."

His voice is a breaking croak before it gives out again. His throat feels swollen, raw, bleeding. He doesn't know how much of the sentence made it through, but she'll know, she always knows how to make him better.

He wants to fall into her arms and never see the world again. The world is cruel, so cruel, and you have to protect yourself Evan, but he's so small, he's too small, he's just a little boy–

Have you seen a little boy?

Christopher! 

He snaps his eyes open, is blinded by white lights. 

He's freezing, trembling. His body feels so heavy, too heavy to carry. Every muscle weighs him down, past the point of exhausted failure.

That's because—because he was up all day, walking on broken legs—searching, searching, searching–for—

Christopher!

There's a mask around his mouth, over his nose, giving him air. He doesn't deserve it! He has to find the little boy, the little boy is lost, and alone, and he's failed him, god, he's failed him!

He's coughing, coughing so hard and his lungs spasm, seize. He's dying. He feels like he's dying. 

Not yet. Not yet. Please. He hasn't fixed—he hasn't found—

His whole body hurts, a deep, gnawing, heavy pain, that drags him down, down, down.  

He's choking, drowning, drowning, drowning, and he's body betrays him again as bright lights become dark spots and he doesn't have the strength to fight it, but he tries, he tries, he tries, he tr–

I'm looking for a little boy.

Christopher!

Where did all the water go?

He breaches the surface, breathes air like a drowned man. He's drenched, soaked to the bone. He's freezing.  

He breathes, and spikes of pain stab into his lungs. 

He opens his eyes, and light stabs into them. 

Lucidity's a dying flame, and he holds onto it with both hands because he's never been hesitant to get burned. 

He made a terrible mistake. 

There are two men, on either side of him. 

One is wearing one of those plague doctor's mask. Its long beak ominously stares down on him. He's injecting something with a syringe in a clear tube that goes straight into Buck's flesh. 

Buck whimpers. It's muffled by the clear mask he's wearing himself. It digs into the bridge of his nose, into his cheeks, feeds him oxygen. He's gasping, fast, his starved body fighting to take it in as fast as possible. 

On his other side is Teddy, bear mask in place, fingers resting on the pulse point of Buck's carotid.  

Buck looks at him and feels a warring range of emotions. Betrayal jumps out of the melee first. His chest tightens, itches, his heart flutters. Teddy betrayed him. He can't—that's what led to the terrible mistake he made. Teddy betrayed him. Teddy lied. And Buck—Buck—

God, he fucked up. He lost his mind, he—he—

He can't remember. The flame he's holding is dying, turning to ash and smoke through his fingers. 

He panics at having lost it.

He lost—

Cold fear washes over him, through him, fills every inches of him. His chest convulses. Thick air catches on every ridge down his windpipe, makes him gag. 

He can't breathe.

Hands turn him on his side. Thumps reverberate through his back, but his chest stays locked agonisingly tight. He gags, over and over, feels saliva and mucus and water flood his mouth. 

He can't breathe!

Secondary drowning, he hears, but doesn't understand. Lucidity's gone and left behind wisps of smoke that he can't grasp.

The ringing in his ears becomes an overwhelming rushing sound. 

His last thought is that he might have drowned, that day he lost Christopher. The rest of his life nothing but a dying man's hallucinations. He drowned, and Christopher drowned, and they all died, all died, and they were all lost.  

God, he hopes Christopher made it. 

I'm sorry, please, I'm sorry, forgive m—

Chapter Text

"We're placing Christopher in protective custody."

The words, grainy as they are through the phone's speakers, crack through the air like the sound of a gunshot. 

—

Two weeks. Fourteen days.

Eddie's back at the station.

He's betraying his promise to Christopher (again) that he wouldn't leave again, that he'd stay. He's still technically on leave, but Christopher is at school, all day, and he can't sit around his empty house any longer. He's losing his mind there. Keeps staring at the wall he and Buck fixed together after the last time he lost his mind.

He's losing his mind.

He tried driving around. (Again.) Went back to that building, back to that alley. (Again.) Visited every store in the vicinity, asked if there were camera recordings, asked if anyone saw anything suspicious on that cursed day.  

(October first.)

(Eddie doesn't believe in curses.)

He's already done all of that, days before, more than once. He's wasting everyone's time. 

(He knows that Athena and most other cops in the city already went through the same motions. Athena's already chewed him out about keeping his nose out of their investigation.)

Everyone he talked to was impatient, he could tell, or even annoyed at being bothered again. At best, or detachedly pitying. Like Buck's disappearance didn't touch them. Like it didn't stop their lives in their track. 

And it didn't. He means nothing to them. He's no one to them. 

Eddie has a hard time wrapping his head around that—people going about their day, unaware and uncaring that Buck is gone. That he's lost. That he's probably dead. 

So he goes to the station. Promised his empty house he'll be back before school ends. It doesn't change the fact he's betraying his promise to Christopher. 

(It's not his first betrayal.)

He needs to work. Needs to do something useful, if not for Buck, then for those other people that need help. 

(He tells himself it's not to surround himself by those who are as distressed and desperate and lost and hurt as he feels.)

(He tells himself it's to take his mind off it all before he loses it.)

(He's already losing it.)

— 

He's at the station, trying to convince Bobby to let him back on for day shifts, as a voluntary firefighter or a pro-bono medic or whatever he can be allowed to be without seeming utterly unstable when Bobby's phone goes off.

Eddie catches sight of Athena's name on the screen, and despite his better judgment, his heart summersaults. 

Bobby lifts the phone to his ear, lips drawn tight, that wild look in his eyes. He takes a couple steps to distance himself, and Eddie follows like a dog, that familiar weight in his guts, two words floating around each other in his mind in a macabre dance. 

Buck. 

Please. 

Buck.

Please. Please. Please.  

He doesn't know what he's begging for. Please be about Buck. Please be good news. Please don't let it be about Buck. Please don't let them have found his body.

It's dread, and hope, what he's feeling; a sickening mixture of the two his body still struggles to get used to.

Buck. 

Please.

Bobby's back is turned on him; until he spins around, abruptly, white faced, a mask of confusion trying and failing to hide horror. 

"He's here," he says, and Eddie stops short, as Bobby lowers his phone to hold it between them, thumbs a button. 

Eddie stares at it. Hope is crushed, right there in his guts, turns to bile, leaves one clear undisputable winner. 

Dread. 

Dread. Dread. Dread. Dread.

(Dead. He's dead.)

Eddie stands there, neck deep in dread, soul deep, drowning in it, watches Bobby very carefully school his emotions as Athena's voice rises through the loudspeaker. 

"Eddie," she says, tone short. Bobby starts walking, Eddie follows. "I need you at the precinct."

It's not a request. She continues before he has fully processed what she said. 

"We're putting Christopher in protective custody."

A gunshot. 

Everything that's Eddie stops—movements, thoughts, lungs, heart. His world, it shatters right there around him.

They're the last words he expected to hear.

Static.

"What," he hears himself say, distantly. His voice is off. It's thin, and high. There's ash and blood and rot on his tongue. "Why? What's going on?"

"I'll explain when you get here. We have Christopher, he's safe."

Eddie's voice raises without his say-so. "Why wouldn't he be safe?" Static. Static in his ears. Cold, spreading through his veins. Nausea. "Athena!"

Even as the world collapses around him, Eddie stays aware of his peripheral perception. Bobby's hand on his flank, pushing gently, firmly, leading him to the battalion truck. Hen and Chim and a couple of the others running towards them. 

"Eddie," Athena responds, stern. But her mask seems to slip; there's exhaustion and anxiety in her voice too.

The others are talking, their voices overlapping. 

Static.

"I'll explain everything," Athena's saying. "Come to the precinct. Christopher is safe with me."

Exhaustion, anxiety, but her words are sure, her tone strong. He should believe her, he should, he should, but he'll believe Christopher is safe only when he sees him. 

Bobby raises a hand and his voice. It's all static.  

God, is Christopher safe? Is he safe?

Athena hangs up on him. He should feel anger at that, at her, at this. There's only static. Shock, he recognises. 

"Hen, you're in charge," Bobby's saying. "This is not news of Buck. I'll explain it all as soon as I can."

He sounds just like his wife. 

More exclamations. Eddie climbs in the truck, shuts the door on them. Bobby joins him, turns the key, starts the engine. 

Christopher, his mind is on a loop, Christopher, Christopher, Christopher,

"Bobby," Eddie's voice says instead, still thin, still high, his entire body tense, like it'll snap any minute.

Something flares inside him, bursts through the static. His fingers are tingling, pins and needle shooting up his arms. His heart's fluttering inside his chest.

Panic.

"I don't know, Eddie. I don't know."

He's got that wild look in his eyes.

—

Athena's waiting for them, mask carefully in place. 

"I picked him up from school myself," she says without preamble. "He's here,"—he'll believe it when he sees him—"you can see him." Please. 

"Athena what's happening?" His mouth is dry. 

"Go to your son, I'll explain what I can."

Eddie doesn't miss the fact that's she's downgraded from 'everything' to 'what I can'. 

He doesn't comment on it, yet. He needs to hold Christopher first, before anything else. He shouldn't have left him alone, never should have sent him back to school, should have stayed with him, like he promised—

Athena leads him to a room further inside the building. Through the window in the door he sees Christopher, safe, whole, here, and Eddie rushes in without looking back. 

"Christopher," he sinks to his knees, embraces his son. He holds on, as tight as he can, his terror ratcheting now that he has him in his sight. What if—what if—

He anchors his mind in the moment, makes himself hold even tighter. Christopher's heart beats against his own as he breathes him in. 

Christopher lets him, then draws back a little to look at him, glasses askew with the strength of Eddie's embrace. 

"Dad, what's happening?"

He sounds calm, grown-up, but Eddie can feel a low current of tension running through his still too small body. 

Eddie pulls himself together. It's hard. Always is.

"I don't know yet," he says, nudging the glasses back on straight, "but I'm gonna find out, okay?" 

Christopher looks back at him, suspicion in his eyes. He keeps his features very still. "Okay."

Eddie pulls him close again, kisses his forehead. 

Dread is so, so heavy in his gut. Panic's the wild sparks of his fluttering heart that'll set it all ablaze, soon.

He holds on. 

—

"We have videos of all three of our abductees," Athena explains, once Eddie has reluctantly left Christopher in the care of two strangers and closed the door on him, anxiety flaring, pulsing in his blood. "How or why is not something I can freely tell you, do not ask me."

Eddie blanches. Cold. Anger, distant, simmering beyond the static. "You've seen videos of Buck. More than one?"

"Yes."

"What–" a breathy chuckle escapes him; it's nervous. He pulls himself together, again, continues, "what kind?"

Athena levels him with a stare. The depth of her eyes betray her distress. "What do you think?"

Anger suddenly shoves right trough the static at her condescension, even if he knows, he knows she doesn't mean it to come across like that, because there are very many various different ways these bastards could be hurting Buck. 

She relents before he can find his words. "Torture, Eddie. Psychological and physical. We don't know the extent of it. These videos show what they want to show."

She looks at him, appraising him. Beside them, Bobby is silent. 

Eddie stays silent, too, waits for her to continue, grinds his teeth so hard they must soon break and fall off in a gory mess of crushed pieces. 

"These videos are pseudo livestream. Not meant for us, meant for a specific audience. Meant to look live, demanding viewer interaction, but we've figured they're a couple hours behind."

He feels sick to his stomach, his imagination supplying exactly what kind of audience or viewer interaction this could mean. There are a lot of questions swirling around in his mind, but only one matters in this moment. 

"Christopher."

How is he involved, he means to ask. 

There's dread in his guts. It's never going away, he thinks. 

Athena purses her lips, gaze hard, keeps her voice low.

"We caught another stream today. Christopher was mentioned by name, and threats were made against him. Elaine saw it, called me. I went to get your boy straight away."

Bobby's hand is on his shoulder. 

"How does–" he stumbles on his words, then, reality too bright and too enormous, because how could this happen? How did this happen? "Why is–How is that possible?"

How was Christopher dragged into this? How do Buck's captors know he exists? Did they watch Buck, before they took him? They must have. Did they watch all of them? Did they watch Christopher? Was Christopher in danger all this time, while Eddie mopped and drove around and left him all alone?

Or did Buck betray—Eddie can't entertain that thought, can't wrap his head around it. Buck wouldn't. 

"They waterboarded him."

There is no question who she means by 'him'.

Bobby's hand contracts, like a spasm, then disappears. 

Static. 

Eddie's blood turns to lead in his veins as understanding collapses over him. It takes every ounce of his willpower to stay standing and not let it take him to his knees. 

Buck did betray Christopher. Not voluntarily. Under duress. Under torture. There's a lump in Eddie's throat that won't let him breathe. 

But he could—God, he could never hate Buck. He could never hate Buck. 

Buck probably hates himself. 

Athena stares at her husband, who stands very still, as she continues. "He suffered a severe flashback," her gaze shifts back to Eddie, "and he called for Christopher."

It all instantly makes sense, the sudden clarity staggering.

Flashback.

Tsunami.

He's looking for Christopher.

God, he thinks he's lost him. He's looking for Christopher. 

The world has collapsed around Eddie, and all that's left is hell. They're all in hell. 

"When did this happen?" he hears himself ask. It seems important.

"From what the techs tell us, between two to four hours ago, at most."

Forever ago. No time at all. Eddie feels dizzy with the revelation he hadn't grasped until now. Two to four hours ago, Buck was alive.

Alive. Buck is alive, and he's looking for Christopher. Buck 'was' alive, he corrects himself. Two to four hours ago. 

How is he now? Did he come out of the flashback? Is he still looking for Christopher? Is he alive, still? 

"I want to see it."

Is he still looking for Christopher?

"Eddie–"

"Do you have the video?"

Is he even alive?

"Eddie–"

"I want to see it. If threats were made against my son, I have a right to know what those were!"

"Those videos are evidence that I cannot just—"

"Athena," he begs, dropping pretenses, "please. My brain keeps telling me he's dead and I can't convince it—–Please. Can I see him?"

She still tries to dissuade him, with none of her usual fire. He insists, and she caves, sooner than he'd thought. She's making a habit of it. Eddie won't mention it. 

Beside them, Bobby is silent. 

She takes them into another closed office, goes back out. Returns with a tablet that she places on the desk. None of them sit down.

"I won't watch it again," Athena warns. "My stomach might take it, but my heart won't."

She pulls up a video file, opens it. The thumbnail is an image of Buck, and the hell Eddie's living in falls away.

There's no air in his lungs; around him there's a vacuum, there's a black hole. Its weight is pulling at him, sucking the very life out of him.

He hasn't seen Buck since that day.

(October first.)

(Cursed day.)

He's seen pictures of him since. Every day. He's printed some himself, copied them, pasted them, sent them, desperate to put Buck's face anywhere and everywhere, desperate for someone to recognize him and call them and say, 'yes, I have seen this man.'

Sometimes, in the middle of the night,  a sleeping Christopher tucked in the crook of his arm, he'd stare at all the pictures on his phone. 

All the selfies Buck had ever sent, all the pictures of him and Christopher, of him and Christopher and Eddie. He would look at the face smiling at the Eddie in the pictures, smiling at him through the lens, smiling down at Christopher when he's not looking with the softest expression. 

Eddie would look at that face until panic flared and drowned him and made him stop, desperate to memorize every smile, every wrinkle, every laugh line. He'd memorize the scrunched up nose and funny frowns and pink cheeks and kind features. 

He'd memorize every blue of his eyes, the vibrant sky blue peeking through Buck's squint under direct sunlight, the deep sapphire blue at dinner time in the kitchen's indirect light. The baby blue, staring through the screen right into Eddie's soul, in the very last selfie Buck had sent him. 

All those pictures had been from Before. Before October first. They were memories. They belonged to the past.

But now, through another screen, in the bleak harsh light of an unfamiliar office inside a police station, he's staring at Buck again. This picture is not from Before. (Before he disappeared into thin air. Before he crossed the threshold of their home for the last time and left absence and emptiness behind. Before he joked and smiled at Eddie for the last time, in that abandoned hallway, in that abandoned building.)

This picture is from After. It's from today. This is Buck, now, (two, three, four hours ago), wherever he is.

Buck isn't staring back at him, in the thumbnail. His eyes are closed, head turned away. He's strapped down, flat on his back on a metal gurney, one of those they use down in the morgues. 

Like he's dead. Like he's a corpse put on display for first year med students. 

Dread is suffocating 

The camera is on Buck's left side, looking down on him in very high resolution. Eddie can see every raised hair on Buck's skin, every goosebumps—he's cold, he thinks—, could count his eyelashes where they rest on his bruised cheeks. His lips are dry and cracked, the corner of his mouth torn. The birthmark is vibrant, untouched, and its sight twists Eddie's guts, makes a knot of them, pulls it tight.

He's naked.

Eddie's seen Buck naked before. In the bunk room's showers, or after an injury, or during quick changes of clothes between calls. As firefighters, they're not exactly shy about bodies, their own or other people's. 

Seeing Buck laid out like this, though, this vulnerable, on purpose, for the world to see—it still hits him like a brick to the gut. 

Buck doesn't—he doesn't deserve this. That's what keeps running through his mind. Buck doesn't deserve what's happening to him.

Eddie believes bad things happen to good people, all the time, for no reason. He doesn't believe in karma, or luck, or curses.

They've never seen eye to eye on this. 

Eddie hates, he hates that Buck probably believes there's a reason for all this. That he's done something to deserve it, or asked for it, one way or another. 

"The video is nineteen minutes long," Athena's voice is loud through the buzzing in his ears, yanks him right back from the black hole he's falling into. He almost startles. "Christopher is mentioned at the very end." 

Eddie understands her implication. He'd demanded to see and hear the threats made towards Christopher. As her finger hovers over the bar at the bottom three fourths of the way to the end of the video, Eddie knows she's giving him an out.

He can't accept it. 

He can't just skip over Buck's suffering to the end, like it doesn't matter, like his pain is just background noise, or boring exposition before the big climax. 

He doesn't get the punchline before the joke.

He stares at the birthmark on Buck's unmoving profile, shakes his head no. Words fail him. 

Athena looks him straight in the eye. Her face is hard, expression stony, jaw tense. Her eyes are hard too, but haunted.

"They're torturing him," she tells him, "for their pleasure." She was never one to beat around the punch. "They keep him drugged and sleep deprived. Today, they made him beg for a break and hurt him anyway, to the point he lost his grasp on reality. Eddie, I need you to tell me you understand."

Eddie's mouth is so dry. His heart's beating a mile a minute. He nods. 

"I need you to tell me," she insists. "He begs for Christopher. They tell him he's dead, and they tell the camera," she points a finger at the screen, "obscene things. If those who are watching like young boys. If it's worth the effort to track Christopher down to sell him to the highest bidder. Tell me you understand."

Lead becomes fury and it boils inside Eddie's veins. It burns through his soft tissues until acid rises up his throat. 

"I understand," he grounds out.

Her face is hard, unreadable. She's protecting herself, he knows. He makes his expression hard, too. 

She nods. 

Eddie breathes out, slowly, purposefully. Athena pulls Bobby aside, quietly asks him if he's ready to watch this, blatantly tells him she'd rather he did not. 

Eddie doesn't listen further, sits down on one of the chairs. He wants nothing more than to go back to Christopher. Can't pull his eyes away from the Buck on the screen. 

Footsteps, a door closes, and Bobby reappears beside him. He's white as a sheet. His eyes don't leave the screen either as he takes a seat. 

"You don't have to stay," Eddie tells him. "You don't have to see this."

"Do you want me to leave?" Bobby asks.

Yes, he wants to say. He doesn't want an audience. He wants to be alone with the sick feeling in his stomach. He doesn't want another witness to the depravity inflicted upon Buck's body.

He absolutely, desperately cannot do this alone.

The whisper forces its way out of his lungs before he can stop it

"No."

They wait, until they realize they'll have to start the video themselves. 

Bobby's the one who raises his finger, lets it hover over the tablet. He's the one that taps on it. Eddie stays rigid, frozen, feels like a coward. Wonders if Bobby feels like he just played a part in Buck's suffering. Like he's just sealed Buck's fate somehow. 

His heart feels sick. 

On the screen, Buck is naked, laid out on a metal slab of a gurney. 

(Room 2 of the morgue, down at General, a white sheet, a charred body. Eddie had been so sure Buck was dead, then. He can still feel grief grab him by the throat.)

The picture on the screen stays unmoving.

The seconds do add up, at the bottom of the bar, so the feed is not frozen. For a horrifying second, he imagines that Athena made a mistake, that Buck is dead, that he's been dead all along. Grief grabs him by the throat. 

It's never let go, really. 

Eddie doesn't dare try to breathe, but squints, stares intently at Buck's naked chest.

He feels sick, sick, sick, his life choked out of him, and then Buck's chest rises. 

He expects to feel relief—proof! Tangible proof!—but is overwhelmed by guilt instead. How can he feel relieved, when Buck himself might be wishing he was dead. How long can one man suffer, before he's had enough? How much can one, even as resilient as Buck, take?

Guilt is ash and rot in his mouth. Eddie's sitting here, staring at the vulnerable expense of Buck's damaged skin. A voyeur. He's looking because he can, and he won't make any difference. He's powerless, passive, useless. 

Eddie swallow hard, ignores the thought because... Buck is right there. 

He's right there. 

Instinctively, he starts cataloguing Buck's hurts.

And he is hurt, but he's also whole. Eddie hadn't expected that, he realises. He'd expected him to be mutilated, carved and gored beyond recognition. 

But they left him whole. 

He is hurt, though. Bruised and cut to hell. 

What skin is unblemished is pale. That's not a lot of it. He's mostly black and blue, covered in hematomas. From this side of the screen, Eddie can't tell if any of them are hiding potentially dangerous internal bleeding. 

He's covered in cuts. The skin of Buck's pectorals and stomach is scratched raw, long lines resembling drag marks. A sort of white powder peaks through the superficial gashes. Eddie stares, mind working, until it clicks. Salt? His gut lurches.

Sick, sick, sick. He swallows, tastes ash and rot and bile. Ignores it, stays focused on his task. 

One after the other in a neat little row from just under the armpit down to the hip, several circular burns cover the sensitive skin of Buck's flank. Small and red, scabbed over, innocuous and horrifying. 

The right shoulder is deeply bruised. Further down, the left calf and ankle are too, circled by dented, regular punctures. The wounds look like they've been cleaned, but the skin around it is red, swollen. What he can see of the soles of the feet is torn to shreds, as are the knees, the knuckles, the fingertips.

Pinpricks litter the inside of the elbow, the back of the hand. Needle marks. Eddie's guts revolt again, but the knots there keep them wound tight in his belly.

More bruising lines Buck's throat and jawline, the skin broken in places. Purples and reds, blues and greens, maroons and yellows disappear into the shadows behind the ears, climb over the Adam apple and crawl over the spot where the carotid pulses along, just under the surface. 

The world falls away.

All that matters in that moment is that sign of life. Proof. Proof. He finds himself breathing in time with every thump, his heartbeat instinctively getting into rhythm with Buck's.

He's alive, his soul chants, he's alive, he's alive. 

(Logic intervenes. He was alive, it says. Two to four hours ago.)

That pulse feels infinitely fragile; Eddie longs to feel its touch into his palm, hand cupped over it, protecting it. He can't.

Buck's eyes are closed, sunken in so deep, the skin purple and stretched so thin his skull is visible. 

Sleep deprivation, Athena said. 

Strangulation, he mentally adds, repeated strangulations if the varying shades of bruises and lacerations are anything to go by. Blunt force trauma, burns, drag marks, needle marks. They have him drugged to the gills, judging by the sheer amount of punctures littering his skin. Early signs of infection. Those are only the visible injuries noticeable at a glance. 

And they're about to waterboard him.

Movements on the side of the screen, and Eddie goes very still, like he'll be noticed if he moves. The figure looming over Buck is wearing the face of a bear.

Eddie's entire body tenses impossibly, stomach tightening and muscles bracing, ready to jump between Buck and his captor. He can't. He can't. He can't do anything. Can't do anything but be a passive witness, two to four hours after the fact. 

A gloved hand takes hold of Buck's chin, and Eddie feels a growl build in his throat. 

Don't touch him. Don't touch him. 

Buck doesn't react at all. 

He lays there, dead to the world, vulnerable to attack, and Eddie's instincts are all screaming at him to do something, help him, treat him, save him—

He can't!

Two gloved fingers settle onto Buck's carotid and Eddie sees red, feels like his insides will implode with the force of his sudden hatred, warring with the painful need to have his own fingers resting on Buck's pulse and count the beats—

A hand settles on his own wrist, warm, squeezes once. Eddie's fingers clench convulsively, but he doesn't pull out of Bobby's grip. 

There's a thrumming tension underlining his grip, but Eddie can't afford to spare a glance for Bobby, can't for a second tear his eyes away from Buck.

On the screen, the man takes his fingers off Buck, and Eddie breathes out. He knows it's a short respite.

Knows it hasn't started. The video is nineteen minutes long. 

The man takes out a packet of ammonia inhalants, crushes it between his fingers and holds it close to Buck's nose. 

Eddie holds his breath. On his wrist, Bobby's grip impossibly tightens. 

The smelling salts don't have an immediate effect. They should. Anxiety spreads inside Eddie's veins like poison, even though he knows Buck isn't dead.

That worse is to come. Seventeen minutes more of it.

It takes a full minute. Slow, too slow, Buck twitches. His nose scrunches, his brow furrows. Goosebumps spike all over his skin. 

Eddie watches, mesmerized, as Buck's consciousness struggles to rise to the surface. 

He wishes—he wishes he could hold his hand through it, guide him, comfort him. 

He can do nothing but watch. 

He watches as Buck's mouth twists downward, his frown deepening, discomfort obvious before Buck is even awake.

His eyes flutter, and Eddie keeps holding his breath. His lungs burn. 

Buck opens his eyes.

It brings no relief. There's an ominous finality to it, and Eddie's exhale is punched out of him. 

Suddenly, overwhelmingly, he wishes with every fiber of his being that Buck wouldn't wake up. He's safe in unconsciousness. 

Buck does wake up. 

It seems to take every last ounce of energy Buck has left just to open his eyes. Exhaustion is carved into every inch of him. His eyes look red, and dry, sunken in the depth of the dark circles surrounding them. 

Eddie watches those eyes, their dimmed blue, his own searching, searching. 

Buck's stare is fixed, foggy with sleep, and it is obvious to Eddie that he is not with it. There's no recognition in his glassy eyes, barely any awareness.  

Eddie's heart twists, bitter saliva floods his mouth. 

Buck doesn't know where he is. Not yet. 

He's watching Buck wake up, knowing what's coming to Buck, and Buck himself doesn't know. He doesn't know. He doesn't know what's about to happen to him.

Eddie's next exhale rattles his spine and every one of his muscles tightens as he watches Buck stare at the ceiling, for a heartbeat.

Two.

Three. 

He's watching, and he sees it: the moment Buck realises. 

Buck's eyes widen, shrunken pupils dilate, swallow them whole. In real time, Eddie watches fear bloom in their depths.

He watches as fear steadily, monstrously uncoils into terror, watches it take hold of Buck entirely and completely, made visible and tangible by minute tremors wracking their way through his body.

Despite the shakes, Buck keeps himself very still. Muscles locked, he stares straight up at the ceiling. And despite his tightly clenched jaw, a tiny noise shoves its way through the bloodless line of Buck's lips.

It's the first noise he's heard of Buck, since—

Movements from the man in a bear face, and Buck squirms on the gurney, slowly, like he doesn't want to offend but is desperate to escape. He pulls on his restraints, carefully, testing them like he knows they won't break but can't stop himself from trying. His movements are laboured, exhausted. He's breathing through his nose, noisily, lips still pressed together and jaw clenched, that shaky hum of fear still echoing. 

Eddie doesn't feel like he's breathing at all. His chest's tight, his eyes burn. He can't feel his or Bobby's hands anymore. 

Sixteen more minutes. 

"Time to play another game," the man wearing the face of a bear says. 

Eddie shakes. 

Buck stops. He stares up at the man; there's a plea in his eyes. 

Bearface tilts its head, like it's appraising a prey. 

"Want to play?" 

Buck stares up, eyes wide. He seems to hesitate, eyes locked onto Bearface, like it's a trick question, like he's expecting a trap. Minutely, without a blink of his eyes, he shakes his head no. 

"You don't have to play."

Buck, it seems, doesn't dare breathe, and neither does Eddie. 

"You're still tired?"

Sleep deprived, Athena said. Buck looks beyond tired. Beyond exhausted. Sleep deprived, Athena said. 

Despite the fear alive in them, keeping them wide, Eddie can tell how much of a struggle it is to Buck to keep his eyes open. They keep fogging over. 

Buck breathes out through his nose, shaky, the ghost of a sob, maybe. He nods. 

"Do you need a break?"

Buck looks into bearface's eyes, his body coiled, like it's on the tight end of a spring. Like he's waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the trap to close in on him.

Imperceptibly, again, he nods.

Bearface raises a gloved hand, and Buck follows it with his eyes. He and Eddie watch as the gloved fingers trace a path along the burns lining Buck's flank. Buck shudders, and Eddie watches as Buck's abdominal muscles clench, convulsively, like they're trying to get away from the touch, from the pain. There used to be a healthy layer of fat hiding those muscles from view, Eddie thinks distantly. Not anymore. 

Buck turns his head completely away, hiding his face from the camera. The hair on the nape of his neck is raised, and another shiver visibly runs across his body.

"A break from what?" Bearface asks, resting his other hand on the metal gurney, just inches from Buck's face. 

Buck doesn't flinch. 

"The pain?"

Buck has an insane pain tolerance, Eddie knows. He can take a lot, and barely let it faze him. Knows he's got a complicated relationship with pain, hasn't quite unlearned to associate it with comfort. 

Still, again, Buck nods, timidly, like he doesn't believe bearface but tries to anyway. 

"Okay," bearface says, and it chills Eddie to the core. 

He's expecting a trap, too. Knows one is coming. Knows Buck won't get his break, that he's being lied to without remorse or regret. 

"Beg me not to hurt you, and I won't."

Liar. 

Buck just stares, his eyes more red than blue, uncertainty in them. 

"Beg."

Buck's eyes shift, look around the space, like he's searching for a way out. 

He doesn't want to beg, Eddie realises. He's still fighting. Of course he's still fighting. Buck is stubborn, if nothing else. 

Eddie's heart fills. With pride, and with yet even more dread. 

Buck shouldn't be fighting right now. He's too vulnerable. 

"Beg." 

Another noise pushes through Buck's teeth. He stares at bearface, defiant. 

He's going to get punished, Eddie thinks. He won't beg, and they'll punish him. 

But then he remembers what else Athena said.

They make him beg, she'd said, and hurt him anyway. 

Eddie almost stands up as a sudden rush of adrenaline shoots right through him. He stays frozen to his chair instead.

Bearface lays his other hand on the gurney, brackets Buck's face. 

"Beg."

Buck frowns, his breathing shakier, nosier. He's trembling all over. 

"What have you got to lose? Pride?" Buck stares. "Your dignity's gone. It's been gone for a while"

Another distressed noise, and Buck closes his eyes, shakes his head no. 

"Look at me."

Buck does, eyes dry, and red. 

"Beg for a break. You need one."

The tone is different, this time around. It's not an order anymore, the sneering gone. His voice is softer, like he's giving Buck well intentioned advice, like he knows what's best for him. 

Eddie watches as Buck caves, watches as the fight is carved right out of him, right in front of his eyes. Eddie's heart tightens, climbs up his windpipe. 

On the gurney, Buck squirms, lips parted and cracked, eyes wide and fixed on bearface. 

"Please," he begs. 

Buck's voice. He's hearing it for the first time in fourteen days and it's so alien to his ears.

"Please what?"

Buck's eyes dart to the side again, a wild look in them, like he's still looking for a way out. Like he's desperate to be saved. 

Eddie can't do that. Save him.

Bearface puts his gloved hand on Buck's face, palm to cheek. Everything in Eddie recoils at the sight, skin prickling and nausea rising that this man has a hand on Buck, but Buck–

Buck leans into the touch. 

The bottoms falls out from under Eddie's feet. He grips the table, hard, nothing but the rush of blood in his ears. 

On the screen, Buck presses his face into the hand and closes his eyes. The hand abruptly moves, slaps his cheek. The blow isn't hard, but Buck's eyes snap open, and his face crumbles. 

The whole of Eddie is crumbling with him.

"Please," Buck begs, "let me sleep."

Bearface puts his hand back on Buck's cheek, pushes his head to the side, makes him face the camera. 

For the first time, Buck looks straight at Eddie, holds his gaze. Eddie grips the table. He'll fall otherwise. 

"Please, don't hurt me," Buck begs him. 

"Got to convince them, not me," bearface commands, that hard edge back in his tone. Eddie wants to kill him. 

He stares into Buck's eyes instead, wishes he could pull him to safety, almost reaches his hand, stupidly. 

"Please," Buck begs, and it sounds more desperate. His eyes water, and Eddie's burn.

"I-I-I need a break," Buck stutters, "pl-please."

"Do better."

Buck breaks down. 

"Please," he sobs, "S-stop, please, I-I need–" his eyes are red, and dry, but a tear squeezes through, runs down the bridge of his nose. "I need–I need sleep, I-I can't take anymore, please—"

There's a hand over Eddie's mouth. He can't recall putting it there. Can't feel it. 

Bearface manhandles Buck's face back into position, only a few inches between them, and Buck pleads with him. "Please," he begs, "please," again and again, "please," the dam broken, despair and terror flooding, desperate to be spared. 

It's all for nothing. They won't spare him. That's all Eddie can think about. It's all for nothing. They're just trying to break him. Eddie's watching them break him, and there's nothing he can do. There's nothing. There's nothing. 

"Please," Buck's begging, few tears running down his temples, into his hair, his ears. "Please, Teddy, please don't hurt me—"

Eddie jumps at the mention of his name, convinced he hasn't heard right. 

His insides are frozen solid.

Bearface thumbs Buck's tears, places a gloved index on Buck's lips, shushes him. 

Eddie wants to kill him. He wants to kill him, wants to fucking kill him.

"Good boy."

The man slides a thumb along Buck's temple, catches the proof of his distress as it goes. Buck stills, stops breathing, chest still heaving. 

"Thank you for the tears. It's great cinema."

There's confusion on Buck's face. "Please," he says anyway, before he can stop himself. 

"I knew you'd beg. You got the lips for it."

He'll kill him. 

Off screen, a new sound echoes. Rushing water. Thirteen minutes.

Fuck, Eddie thinks. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. God, he's not ready. Please, God, he's not ready. 

Buck's eyes widen, impossibly, fear overflowing and bleeding out of them, absolute terror in their depth. 

He strains to look toward the sound, arching his neck, exposing his throat.

Bearface fiddles with a crank on the gurney. Abruptly, the metal slab tilts at an angle, dropping beneath Buck's head, raising his feet. His whole body slides down a full inch, head first, until the restraints at his wrists and ankles quickly stop his descent. 

A strangled gasp tears out of Buck's throat with a full-body jolt, and his eyes snap back to bearface. 

The confusion and terror on Buck's face shift, change shape, turn into betrayal. 

He trusted bearface. 

"No. Pl–" his voice catches, breaks, dies in his throat. He starts again, fear bleeding, bleeding out of him, terror lacing his words. "No, no, I-I'm begging you!"

Bearface stands still. The sound creeps closer, and Eddie watches as Buck steps out of his mind. 

"No, no, no—" Buck strains against his restraints, shakes wracking through him as he clenches and unclenches his fists, "you said—you said—"

Bearface shushes him, and Eddie will kill him. 

"Don't–no–leave me alone, pl–" His voice catches, breaks, dies in his throat. Bleeding. Bleeding. "Don't–don't hurt me, pl–"

He keeps getting stuck on that syllable, like the word has abandoned him, like it's betrayed him too. 

"Pl–You said–I'm begging you–" More tears, more fear, more terror. Like the valves have been opened, and now Buck can't stop any of it. 

Except that one word. 

Please, Eddie begs for him, the word reverberating around inside his cranium, with no aim, no use, no purpose. No difference it will make. 

Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please.

Buck writhes in his restraints, muscles rippling with desperation, too out of his mind to realise his begging is useless.

Please, Eddie begs, even though he knows how this ends. 

"Don't," Buck begs, "don't, don't!"

He's straining his neck, staring at something behind and above him that's still out of the camera's sight, that Eddie can't see—but he can hear. Rushing water, louder, like a tap turned up all the way, and Eddie's heart is in his throat, his hands are damp and his skin tingles and his chest heaves. 

Panic! his nerve endings scream, panic!

"You lied," Buck cries, "you said—"

Panic

"Calm down," bearface commands, pulling Buck's head back into place. 

"No," Buck's whispering, over and over and over, voice shredded. "No, no, no—"

Panic

Panic for Buck, and his body screams at him to do something but there is nothing Eddie can do but watch; he can only watch and watch and watch. 

"I didn't lie," bearface lies, straight to Buck's face. "It won't hurt. It's a peaceful way to go."

Nausea rises up Eddie's esophagus as dread sinks solid at the bottom of his stomach. What does this mean? A way to go? What does he mean?

They mean to kill him.

They'll kill him!

Eddie watches as more tears betray Buck's own panic, his eyes so wide and beyond terrified, wild and trapped, and Eddie watches and watches as a strap is pulled tight across Buck's forehead to prevent movement, watches as a rag follows, pulled over Buck's face, watches it hide Buck's terror from view. 

He can still see the rest of his body, though, and he watches it ripple with waves of that same terror, watches muscles coil impossibly tight, close to shaking apart with Buck's hysteria. 

"No, no, no," Buck is still begging, voice almost gone, "Teddy—"

That name again, and it's not his name but it sounds like his name, and Eddie's own body locks tight, his blood thrumming under his skin, heart pumping, racing, begging him to move, move, move. 

He doesn't move. He watches. 

He watches as Teddy puts his hand over the rag, over the strap on Buck's forehead.

He watches as Buck's fists clench, knuckles white, what's left of his nails digging into skin, various wounds cracked open, bleeding in rivulets down his washed out skin.

Teddy takes his hand away.

Panic

Someone new, in a white mask, appears in the corner of the frame, hose in hand. 

Eddie can't feel his body anymore. He's breathing hard, he can tell, can't stop himself, can hear it so loud in his ears. He's lost in the rush of white noise, nothing but eyes. Eyes watching as Buck's hysteria melts into a different kind of intensity—Suddenly Buck is very calm, like he's flipped a switch, body frozen still. 

Like he's getting ready. Bracing himself. Eddie watches his chest heave with steadying breaths. 

A second later, a waterfall rushes onto the clothe hiding Buck's face. 

Eddie's lungs spasm somewhere inside the black whole that is his chest. 

He counts. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and Buck's body suddenly jolts, hard. The water's made it to his sinuses, is making him feel like he's drowning, drowning, drowning.

Panic!

Buck writhes on the table. 

The water's not letting up. 

Eddie's counting, his breathing faster than his count. 

Buck's making choking noises. Those noises lodge in Eddie's own lungs, make them tighter and tighter, makes them think he's the one suffocating.

Waterboarding won't kill Buck, Eddie knows, he knows, but it sounds like he's dying and Eddie feels like he's dying right along with him, lungs collapsing, adrenaline acidic in his veins, breath short, gasping. 

Please, stop, make it stop. 

He counts as Buck writhes, makes it to thirty, and the water turns off. 

Eddie would cry out if he had any air in his lungs. 

Buck doesn't cry out either, just keeps making those choked out noises. 

Bearface takes the rag off. Buck's face is red and wet, veins prominent, eyes squeezed shut, a high keening sound escaping bloodless lips. 

Bearface raises Buck's head, gently, almost, and Buck opens bloodshot eyes. He blinks water and tears out of them, his eyelashes clinging together, his throat working once, twice, three times. 

"Pl—pleas—" he tries to beg, the word seemingly impossible to push through those choking and wheezing noises. 

"Deep breath."

"N–d-don't—"

Bearface shushes him. He replaces the rag before Buck's managed to breathe in, and the water's back. 

He'll kill him. He'll kill him. 

Panic!

Buck writhes. Eddie counts. Buck chokes, and cries, and Eddie watches.

He watches them as they torture Buck. He's impotent, he's powerless—

Twenty seven seconds, and the water stops. 

The rag's off, bearface raises Buck's head but Buck can't catch his breath and neither can Eddie. Buck tries to beg anyway, like he hasn't understood—he hasn't understood it won't make a difference. 

Bearface shushes him. Just seven seconds, and the rag is back, and the water is back. 

Buck writhes, and

this will never end, this will never end

Buck writhes, and Eddie's hands spasm on the desk in front of him, and Eddie counts, Eddie watches. 

He knows he's not, but it feels like Buck is dying. And Eddie's watching. 

Please, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, please 

Twenty four, and they stop. 

On the table, Buck convulses. 

Bearface takes away the rag, the strap, turns Buck's face to the side as he coughs and coughs and vomits and cries. 

"Aw."

Buck coughs, deep in his chest, guttural noises that sound like he's dying, like he's getting killed right there as Eddie watches. 

Bearface turns Buck's face to him, taps his cheek condescendingly. Buck blinks and blinks, chest heaving, nose running, throat working, gagging, choking. A whine shoves its way through it all, chopped up and halting, an unconscious testament of distress Buck doesn't seem to realise he's doing. 

"Where did all that water go?"

Eddie's watching: He sees it, the second it happens. Buck's pupils dilate dramatically, eating entirely away at the blue and red surrounding them. Something shifts. The choking noises stop, the whine fades away into nothing. Under paper thin skin, every one of Buck's muscles visibly locks. 

Eddie stares frozen at Buck, who stares frozen right through the man in a bear mask. 

Bearface, oblivious or uncaring, pushes Buck's cheek until he's staring up at his fate again. Before Eddie can blink, the rag is back.

The water, too. 

Panic flares, bright, loud, overwhelming. This is it, Eddie thinks, and he's hysterical too. This is it. This is it. This is it. 

Please!

One second, two second, and Buck's jackknifes on the table. He pulls hard onto his restraints, harder than his diminishing strength should prove possible. The whole table trembles and shift under him, dark blood sliding down his wrists. 

Twenty one second, and the water stops. 

The rag goes.

Buck's eyes are black pits, unfocused and glassy as he stares straight up. His choking is more pronounced, more deliberate, like he's desperately trying to speak through the wheezes clogging his airway. 

Eight and a half minutes left. 

This is it.

Just hold on Buck, hold on, he begs inside his mind, as if he could somehow prevent what he knows is about to happen. Change the course of events. Hold on. Hold on.

He can't change it. The past. What he's watching has already happened, and on the screen, Buck struggles through the same syllable once, twice, three times, before a single name makes it through bloodless lips, loud, and ringing so clear to Eddie's ears, despite the gagging and wheezing and choking.

"Christopher!"

Bearface stops dead in his track. 

"Christopher!" Buck calls, "Christopher!" his voice climbing an octave with every cry, Eddie's heart climbing into his throat. He's suffocating on it. 

No, no no no no, hold on, Eddie keeps thinking uselessly. Hold on. Hold on. Please, hold on. 

Buck can't hear him. Buck is alone and lost and hurt, and he's got nothing to hold onto.

"Christopher!"

Bearface turns, looks straight at the camera. Like he's waiting for his audience. Like he's waiting for Eddie to react. Eddie chokes on dread and apprehension and terror.

They tell the camera obscene things, Athena had said, and Eddie chokes on sour bile. 

Bearface turns back to Buck. 

"That your boyfriend?"

Buck can't hear him. "Christopher!" His voice is utterly shredded, but he keeps calling, calling, calling. 

"Christopher!" Bearface mocks, voice climbing several octaves at once to match Buck's hysterical level. 

Eddie will murder him. He will. He will. 

Brusquely, bearface shoves the rag back onto Buck's face, cutting him off and muffling his call mid-cry.

The water's back. A whole thirty seconds. 

Buck's struggles are desperate. Blood drips from his wrists onto tiled floor. His body strains, and Eddie watches, half convinced he's about to break every bone in his body to get away. 

To get to Christopher.

The water shuts off, the rag is gone, and Buck can't catch his breath. Eyes bulging, he chokes on every intake of air, one after the other after the other, fully hyperventilating. 

Eddie's fingers spasm and convulse at his sides, desperate to help. 

"Please," Buck pants, and the word rings clear. "H-have you—" He has to stop, struggling and failing to breathe.

Bearface pushes Buck's face up and to the side, and Buck gags, retches, throws up nothing but bile and snot and saliva. 

Bearface reaches out, wipes the mess off Buck's cheek and chin. 

"Have—you—" Buck coughs, over and over and over.

He tries again, because he's stubborn, Buck is stubborn,

"Have you seen a little boy?"

         and Eddie's sinuses flood in a parody of Buck's torture. He can't feel the tears running down his face.  

"He's eight," Buck gasps, lost and desperate and terrified. "Got b-brown hair—" He coughs again, all but convulses on the table. 

Bearface stills, tilts his head at him. 

"Yellow—" a gasp, a cough, "yellow t-shirt." 

Buck's voice utterly breaks on the last word, his body shaking audibly on the metal table, legs and arms pulling continuously on his cuffs. 

"Can't help," bearface says. 

He seems to hesitate, stares at the camera again for a moment, before he pulls the rag back over Buck's pleading face. 

No, Eddie finds himself begging. No, no, no. But he should be grateful. The clothe means the water's coming, and as long as the water drowns Buck's words is as long as he won't speak Christopher's name to his captors.  

It's the worst thought Eddie's ever had. He shoves it back down with brute force, feels his heart break with the strenght of it. 

Thirty-three seconds, and the water stops. 

"St–stop," Buck begs, even though it has. "Sto–"

He wheezes, long and drawn out, throat seized up. Sounds like he's breathing through a collapsing straw. His tracheotomy scar shines through all the bruising covering his neck, just under his Adam apple. 

It'll never be over. 

There's a pitter patter echoing Buck's desperate breathing; water droplets hitting the tiled floor. Blood from Buck's wrists, mixing with the water and running into and down a drain under the table Buck's been laid up on. 

Eddie's insides seize up. He's suddenly convinced and terrified that they are going to lose Buck. His mind, his soul; it'll wash down that same drain.

How can Buck ever come back from that? 

The dread sitting heavy in Eddie's gut all this time materialises into a single unspeakable realisation: He's watching him get killed. They are killing him. If not today, then tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow.

Buck isn't coming back. 

"Please," the Buck on the screen is saying. "Have you—seen a boy?" He's still wheezing, oblivious to his own distress, still looking for Christopher. "He's...eight. Yellow shirt. Always—Always smiling. Please."

"Haven't seen him."

"I lost him," Buck cries. "I lost him."

"How'd you lose him?" 

"The water... The wave... I had him but the water—" Buck wheezes, eyes glazed over, completely seeing through bearface as the latter indulges him. "I lost him."

"Lost him in the water?"

"I-I had him."

Bearface all but shrugs. "He's dead, no?"

The words are said so nonchalantly, with a hint of challenge, like bearface wants to test Buck. 

Eddie closes his hands into fists, nails digging into palms, twin echoes of the fist holding his heart in a vice grip. 

On the screen, Buck's eyes widen impossibly more, the blue completely gone, black pupils surrounded by burst blood vessels. "No, no, no, no, no—" he sobs and shake his head from left to right, denial plain on twisted features.

"No, I-I had him—I swear—"

Grief is ugly on Buck's features, as it is in Eddie's heart. He sits frozen, feels as though he's been thrown back right there, on that night, Buck battered, Christopher missing. Buck telling him

"He just–"

vanished

Buck shakes his head again, harder, a frown carving deep lines between his brows as he fights through the traumatic flashback. 

"No," he says, decisively, "no, I had him. I-I have to go find him, I have to—"

Incredibly, he makes as if to get up, raises his head and both shoulders right off the table. Bearface seems to startle, like he's taken aback by Buck's sudden burst of strength, before he pushes him back down with a single hand on his collarbone. 

Buck falls back flat onto the table, his head bouncing off stainless steel with a resounding bang. He keeps babbling, all the while: "I have to find him—please, I-I have to get back out—havta find—"

The strap goes back over Buck's forehead. His head immobilised, the rag then the water follow before Buck ever even takes a breath in. 

Eddie watches him convulse again, can do nothing but count, useless adrenaline and lactic acid running through his bloodstream. 

Seventeen seconds in, and Buck's body shudders through a violent spasm, halfway contorting out of his straps. Then another, and another. Uncontrolled, as if in the throes of death. 

For a second, Eddie forgets Athena would have probably warned them if they'd been about to watch Buck die on record. There's only one thought going through his head. 

This is it. It's over. It's over. 

The water shuts off, the ragged pulled away. Eddie fully, with every fiber of his being, expects glazed over, unseeing eyes and a still body with no breath left. 

But Buck's chest heaves, and his eyes are glassy and unseeing but he tries–he tries to breathe. It sounds like it's costing everything Buck has, but he tries and tries and tries, fails and chokes. 

Bearface raises his head. Through guttural gasps, Buck is rewarded with the smallest and shallowest gulps of air. 

Eddie's breathing matches Buck's, small and shallow, as Buck turns his head towards his captor. His curls are plastered to his forehead and he blinks, over and over to clear grit and tears out of his eyes.

His wheezing is extremely pronounced, to the point Eddie's afraid that fluid is building in his lungs and actively drowning him. The words Buck pushes through are wrecked, barely there, but Eddie understands them clear as day. 

Have you seen a little boy?

It's like being stuck in a time loop, it's a time loop, and there is no end in sight. There is no end, there is no end, as it only gets worse and worse and worse with every repetition.

It feels like going insane, maybe, as the Buck on the screen pleads over and over

(eight—yellow—always—

—he's always smiling)

                                           and Eddie feels the crack of his heart spread and widen as they reach up into his head, fracture his mind, and Eddie is going insane. 

Panic flares, again

                                    he can't breathe around it. 

On the screen, bearface is cradling Buck's head. "Should I go get him?" he asks. 

Buck stares up at him, wheezing, eyes wide. "Please."

"What do you think?" bearface turns to the camera. "Would we enjoy a little boy?"

There's a snake inside Eddie, eating away at his every organ, cold with seething rage. 

Buck follows bearface with his gaze, eyes still glazed over. Still choking, panting, "he's...eight," still begging for someone to help him find Christopher. 

Bearface puts a hand on Buck's temple, thumb brushing the birthmark. "Should I go get Christopher?" 

Buck stares up at him, wheezing, eyes wide and pleading and trusting. 

"Yes, yes," Buck's voice is wrecked and gone as he nods and shakes more tears free, "please,"

He doesn't know what he's saying, what he's agreeing to, that he's saying yes to throw Christopher to the wolves.

Bearface straightens, lets go of his hold on Buck's face, and Buck whimpers. "I-I had him. I swear—I can't find him—"

Bearface turns away from him. He glances at the featureless man, the one in a white mask, the one that kept bringing water onto Buck's face, over and over. 

"He says yes," bearface tells him, before turning to the camera. "Should we drown the little boy next?"

Panic flares.

There's an overwhelming buzzing in Eddie's ears and he is deaf to everything but the man's voice echoed by Buck desperate wheezes. He's got no body; just ears, and eyes. 

"Should we cut him up in pieces?" bearface leans back over Buck. His gloved hand caresses Buck's face. "Should we feed him to you?"

Buck stares up, still wheezing, uncomprehending. 

"Would you eat him whole? Can't lose him if you've got him inside." His hand settles onto Buck's throat, thumb digging into his pulse point.

It seems to hit Buck, all at once—that he's made a mistake.

He jolts, moans, shakes his head. "N-No, no, no—" tries to say, but he's still gasping, still choking, body weak, spasming.

"Or maybe you should be inside him." More tears. Buck's eyes don't focus, a film of fear wrapped over them. The man's other hand trails down Buck's chest, down his stomach, follows his happy trail, grabs hold of him. Buck starts to tremble, and doesn't stop.

"That's good entertainment."

Buck is still wheezing. His breaths shallow, not fast but slow, lips turning blue, pupils wide and unseeing.

he's dying,  

 they're killing him,     

The video cuts off. On the black screen, Eddie's reflection stares back at him, white as a ghost. 

Chapter Text

Bobby stares at the screen, long since turned black. An old man stares back at him, deformed as he is, and Bobby hates him. 

The whole room is plunged in darkness. He can't tell if the lights are out, or if a black void has just eaten him whole. 

He's falling, feels like. Into that black hole, that abyss, that bottomless pitt. He's falling, and he can't find a grip, and he can't remember the name of his God, all he remembers is—

Guilt is a ravenous beast in his guts. He feels half eaten, chewed up, but still breathing. Always still breathing. God, he wants to die. He wants this to be over. 

Shame is the ravenous beast in his guts. This isn't about him. This isn't about his suffering. Even now, he's selfish. He's fine. Buck is suffering. Buck is in pain, Buck is tortured, Buck is dying. 

Buck is dying. Buck is dying. 

Bobby's throat closes up. His blood rushes to his ears. He can hear his own heartbeat, thumping away. 

God, he wants it to stop. 

This isn't about him. 

He wants to see his kids again. He wants to see them so badly, the ache physical as always, his heart swollen. He wants to be with them, and he wants to be there when Buck joins them, too. He doesn't want Buck to be alone anymore. He doesn't want him alone. God, he doesn't want him alone anymore. 

God, spare him any more pain. It was his own fault. He should have protected him. He should have been better. 

thump  thump  thump  thump 

thump thump  thump  

His heart beats loud, too loud, his own rushing blood drowning everything else out, drowning, drowning, drowning like Buck—

He can't comprehend it.

 thump

How can his heart beat when his whole chest is crushed in on itself? When his insides have been eaten away? Chewed up, spit out, rotting, rotten.

This isn't about him.

God, Father. Spare him. I beg You, spare him. 

Along with images of Buck, faceless, tied down, choking, gagging, crying, drowning, drowning, all possible consequences of near drowning keep flashing through his mind like intrusive thoughts: damage to the lungs, to the brain. Oxygen deprivation. Pneumonia, asphyxia. His lungs and his brain, and his heart! all already took a beating only seven months ago. He keeps seeing Buck sick in that hospital bed, a tube down his throat, pneumonia, asphyxia, dying, flat line, dead, white sheets, dead in the morgue—

Hold him in Your protective embrace. Give him strength and courage. Spare him. Spare him. 

thump

Is it God's Will that his blood should flow through his veins while Buck drowns in his own for Bobby's sins? 

thump

This isn't about him. 

His hands are joined together in a tight fist, pressed hard into his forehead. His head is bowed, his eyes are closed. He didn't realise he'd started praying. 

Father, Grant wisdom and perseverance to those searching. May they be guided by Your hand to find Buck. Find him. Find him. Find him. 

Too late. It'll be too late. Always too late. 

Comfort our hearts in this time of uncertainty. 

He's an old man, wallowing in self pity. Useless. Useless.

What else can he do? What more can he do? He needs the Father's guidance. Bobby's lost. He's adrift, barely holding his head up, he's drowning too and he doesn't know what to do. 

Father forgive me.

He's fine. There isn't a mark on him. No hurt, no proof of his pain. There is never a mark on him. 

Is it penance? Punishment? Irony? 

Father forgive me. 

This isn't about him! 

Eddie's not beside him anymore. Bobby didn't notice him leaving. Didn't hear his chair scrape along the floor, didn't hear the retreating footsteps, didn't hear the door. 

In Your holy name, I pray for Buck's safe return. My kid. My child. My child. Father, please.

thump thump

They should have protected him. 

   thump thump thump          

Father, have mercy. 

 thump thump              

thump thump

His prayers are drowning amidst rushing blood and a thundering heart. 

How can he still live and breathe and pray and beg and hate himself when Buck—

It's Bobby's job to look after them both, but it's Eddie's job to look after Buck. To have Buck's back when Bobby can't stay close.

 thump

Eddie failed his job.

thump  thump  thump 

thump  thump  thump  

His own rage jumps out at him through the cacophony drowning his ears, drowning drowning drowning drowning,

As soon as he recognises it, shame curls back inside his guts. The feeling leaves him nauseous and cold and clammy and sick. 

This is not Eddie's fault. Only his own. 

This isn't about YOU!

When Athena comes in, he selfishly takes her comfort. 

—

Eddie paces the small room, left to right, left to right, left to right. 

He should have—

He's breathing fast, hands shaking. The room is too small, the wall are closing in on him.

How could he fail so badly?

He paces the room, keeps his eyes straight ahead, avoids looking at his own reflection passing him by in the mirror. 

Why didn't he have Buck's back? That's his one job on the job, to make sure his partner gets home safe, and he failed, he failed, and now Christopher is in danger too—

What is wrong with him? 

He paces, faster, his breathing harsher. 

What is wrong with him? How could he let this happen? Why didn't he save Buck?

His skin is buzzing, his whole body shaking. Adrenaline is crashing through him, with nowhere to go. 

What is wrong with him?

Nowhere to go. 

He paces, breathing so fast he must be hyperventilating. 

How can he protect Christopher when he couldn't protect Buck?

His skin's buzzing, his blood's boiling, too hot for his insides. It needs an outlet. 

Nowhere to go. 

God, he fucked up. 

Why didn't he save Buck? Why didn't he? Why didn't he? Why didn't he?

They're waterboarding him. Torture. They're torturing him. He knew that. Of course he expected that. Seeing it made so, so real. Inescapable. The long term effects could be devastating. 

Eddie catches himself. Long term, he just thought. But he doesn't know how Buck can ever make it through this. They'll never let him go. They'll kill him first. Because Eddie didn't save him when he had the chance. 

He failed. 

His breathing's ragged, loud through the rushing in his ears. His eyes burn. 

Fuck. 

His chest feels so tight, like everything that's in it—ribs and lungs and heart and stomach—is desperate to burst through. 

Nowhere to go. 

Fuck.

He paces, rubs a hand over his face. He can't even feel it, his hand. He feels the clammy heat of it, sees the blurry shape of his fingers halfway over his eyes, over his nose, hears his ragged breaths echo in the palm pressed over his mouth. 

He fucked up. 

FUCK!

He fucked up. God, he fucked up. 

He paces, can't feel his legs anymore. Can only feel the way his blood boils boils boils inside him, trapped in his veins and arteries, desperate to be let out. 

What is wrong with him?

He paces. Left to right. Left to right. He miscalculates his turn, comes face to face with his reflection in the mirror. 

It stares back at him, haggard, eyes wide and wild, mouth stretched in a horrified grimace. 

Nowhere to go. 

He punches it straight in its face. 

The glass cracks, a webbed pattern that leaves the sight of him deformed, grotesque. 

What is wrong with him?

He punches it again. 

The glass cracks. There's red caught in its web. 

He punches it again. 

The glass shatters, and he doesn't. He doesn't, but that's all he wants. Please, let him shatter, let him shatter, let him break in pieces. 

He punches, again and again and again, until the mirror is gone and he's punching the wall behind it. 

He punches the wall, again and again and again, watches it turn red.

He doesn't even make a dent in it.

–

"Maddie?"

Maddie stares at the computer screen. Her reflection is twisted, dark around the edges. She tells herself that's why she can't recognise her own face. 

She knows better. 

"Maddie."

It's been two weeks. She feels weak, and lightheaded. Her breath feels short, all the time. Like she's bleeding, bleeding, bleeding. Drowning. 

She knows the shock is never going to kill her. 

"Maddie."

She's survived losing a brother once. Despite the symptoms, and despite the pain, the grief, the terror, her body knows how to survive. 

And it does. Even when she doesn't know how to keep living. 

"Josh."

He's a blue blur in her peripheral. Always in her peripheral, hovering, worrying. Her nails are biting into her palms. They're clammy, her palms. Bleeding, bleeding. 

"Your shift ended fifteen minutes ago," the blur says. "Marlene's waiting to take over."

Maddie tears her gaze from her deformed reflection and turns dry eyes to Josh. Sure enough, Marlene's waiting right beside him. 

Maddie stands up, keeps a bleeding hand on the desk as she fights through another dizzy spell. 

She moves away from her desk. She walks, aimless. Josh falls into step beside her. 

"I'm not leaving," she hears herself say. 

"I know." One of his hands is near the small of her back, the other by her elbow. Hovering, worrying. "But you are taking a break in the break room. With me."

She lets the motions and Josh's worry carry her forward. She's barely conscious at all. 

"Howard's trying to be strong," she hears herself saying, but she's now sitting on a chair, and there is a cup in her hands, and she doesn't remember starting speaking, "but he keeps crying, and Jee-Yun keeps crying, and I promised I wouldn't run anymore, and I won't. I'm not running. I'm not leaving. I'm staying." 

"I know, but you are running yourself into the ground, you need to—"

She shuts him out. She thinks of Evan's wide smile and of the birthmark she used to kiss when he was small and sad, so small, so small. 

"I can handle things myself," she hears herself say. 

There's flecks of blood on the cup she was holding a minute ago. It's now sitting on the table, undrunk and cold as she stares at it.

"I'm fine."

The palms of her hands are still bleeding. Her nails are still biting into them anyway. 

—

"I don't need you to help me."

Bobby only hums in response as he wraps another layer of paper towel around Eddie's bleeding knuckles. It'll need real bandages. Maybe sutures. The skin broke, the bones probably did too. Fractured. Like Bobby's thoughts. Like his prayers. His own hands aren't bleeding, but they're drenched in blood. 

The mirror is broken, too. Bobby understands it, the urge to punch his reflection until hands bleed, until it cracks and stops staring back. He and Eddie are alike in many ways. 

They don't say anything more as Bobby tries to staunch Eddie's bleeding. It's a suffocating kind of silence. The kind of silence that would so easily be filled with Buck's—

God.

God, please. End this suffering. End his suffering, Father, please. 

There is so much more to mend than split knuckles. 

This silence is suffocating, palpable but empty, and there are no words to be said. He and Eddie, they're both hurt. They're both fine. They both wish they had been better men. They both wish they had saved Buck, that Buck were here, instead of the other. Instead of themselves. They both wish they had been hurt instead. 

But they're not. They're fine. 

—

Maddie dabs at the thin cuts on her hands with the paper towel that used to hold the cup she never drank. Her palms aren't bleeding anymore, but she can't seem to stop the motion. She keeps thinking she should disinfect them. A passing thought, that keeps coming and going, one she doesn't intend to put into practice. 

She has better things to do. 

She keeps wondering what was in that cup she never drank. Just another thought, passing by, coming and going. Coffee? Tea? She was right not to drink it. She's nervous enough as is. Her heart always feels like it's beating twice as fast as it should, these days. Her fingers drift down to her wrist, count her pulse. 105 per minute. Light tachycardia. She's fine. 

She's sitting at another desk, away from the main room. The archives. She finds herself here often, listening to every call that hasn't already been flagged down as a possible lead to the abduction cases. Just in case. 

It's taking most of her free time, and it's not helping her mental state. She knows all this. She's not spending much time with her daughter, and she hates herself for it. She said and she keeps saying she wouldn't run, but she is. Of course she is. She's running from her family and from her own life. She's such a hypocrite. 

Her palms sting, and it's never enough. She understands Evan better now. 

She's listening to call after call. Medical emergency. Syncope. Dehydration. False alarm. Prank call. Lost kid. Somebody died in their bed. Another syncope. Witness to a car accident. Lost kid. Prank call. False alarm. Witness to a hit and run. Allergic reaction. Kid's mom fell down. Chest pains. Witness to a suicide attempt. Lost kid. 

She's been doing this for two weeks, and it still feels strange. To be a passive witness to people's worst day, days after the fact. To be helpless in the face of stranger's fears and shock and suffering.  

Some of those calls she listens too are ones she took. She sounds so professional to her own ears. So detached. She hears her own voice responding to a panicked call, and it's like hearing two strangers. She keeps nitpicking, thinking she could have handled that particular call better, could have said something more humane here, more firmly there. 

"911, What's your emergency?" a voice that isn't hers says on the recording. 

The response, if there is one, is intelligible. Broken sounds, only for a few seconds, before the caller hangs up. 

Nothing about it. But her blood freezes in her veins. 

She replays the recording. 

There's nothing to it. Broken, distant sounds. Like ones they'd get from a crowded café, a crowded kitchen, a crowded street, before the caller realises the mistake and hangs up. 

But the hair raises on her skin. She feels as though Doug is about to hit her. 

She replays the recording. It doesn't sound like a crowded room. Noisy, maybe. Not crowded. Like the sounds are distorted because they are damaged, not distant. 

There are tears in her eyes, blurring out the world. She doesn't need to see. She listens, as hard as she can. 

Broken sounds, only broken sounds. Only nine seconds long. What could be heavy breathing? A broken voice, maybe? 

She tries as hard as she can to stay impartial, to not hear only what she wants to hear. There's a repetitive sound, cutted up but constant. Familiar, almost, like she's heard it before. Birds, maybe?

She keeps the recording on a loop, has to wipe her eyes with the stained paper towel still clutched in her hand to see the data on the screen. Date of recording: 10102023, at 6:17 pm. Around sunset. Five days ago. 

Her heart has sped up, up there in her throat. The recording keeps playing in her ears. She presses the headset hard against them with both hands, desperate to understand what she's hearing. That droning sound, broken up by the recording and still so familiar. The sound of sunset and warm air. 

Cicadas. 

In her peripheral, Josh is right there. Hovering, worrying. She turns to him sharply, watches his face fall. She's sweating. Her tears keep flowing. 

Cicadas. Heavy breathing, she's sure of it. It's familiar. It's all familiar. 

She grips Josh's sleeve so hard the fabric and her nails must tear. 

"It's him," she says, and she doesn't recognise her own voice. 

Chapter Text

Maddie's eyes are wide and her tears are long since dried. The skin on her cheeks feels tight. Her heart is beating very, very fast.  

"I don't know, Maddie," Josh keeps saying, over and over, "it could be anything, are you sure—"

"Yes." She doesn't know how she knows. But she knows. She's sure, and she can't explain it. Call it instinct, a sixth sense. She might be catastrophically wrong, but she's absolutely sure that call was made by Evan.

Five days ago, on the tenth. Six now, soon. It's just past midnight. Day sixteen.

"Even if, if it is him," Josh keeps saying, "that barely narrows it down–"

Howard's here. He's listening to the recording, eyes fixed on her and as wide as hers feel. But the set of his jaw and the tilt of his brows tell her he's not hearing what she heard. Broken sounds. Cicadas. Heavy breathing. 

"I don't know, Maddie," he keeps saying, like Josh, eyes fixed and wide. "Athena said they still had him. Video proof, and—"

She's sure. 

Her eyes drift back down to her watch. Past midnight. Day sixteen. The world fades away. Sixteen days. What she heard is from day ten. 

They still have him. So, how? How did Evan make that call? Did he escape? Couldn't he talk? Were his captors aware? Was he captured again? Did they punish him? Did he ever even escape? Was the call made on purpose? To toy with them? Is this another game? 

Is he even alive? Is he even alive, now, five days later, almost six? When did Athena get that proof of life? Is he alive now?

"Maddie."

Athena's here. Maddie can't keep dissociating like that, not when the stakes are as high as they are now. 

"Athena," she grips her hands, holds on firmly, meets her eyes. "I'm sure."

Athena's face is drawn tight, like it's been since this all started. Her lips are bloodless. Maddie feels bloodless, too. 

Is he alive?

"Athena, you have proof of life?"

Maddie knows about the videos the precinct has gotten its hands on. A few were sent on purpose, early on, as a taunt; most were discovered by a team of undercover detectives who managed to sneak their way online into a very elite club of sadists. 

Athena hasn't volunteered to show those videos to Maddie. Maddie hasn't asked. She doesn't need to see her brother's pain to love and want him. She never has.

She only asked for a text whenever Athena got proof of life, the last of which she got less than two days ago. An eternity.

Athena slowly nods.

"When? How often? Wait–" she rephrases herself, needs to be understood, "what was the last time you saw him? The date?"

"The fourteenth."

Two days ago. 

Bloodless. She feels it, her blood leaving her face. Two days ago already. Is he alive now?

She struggles to get back to her train of thought. 

"And, how often did he show up? Was he there on the tenth?"

"Yes."

"Okay," she takes a hard breath; it's strangled, her throat is all closed up. Her heart is beating a mile a minute. Her hands are clammy. "Was he there the next day? The eleventh? The twelfth? The–"

"There was a live feed that ran all the way from the eleventh to early on the fourteenth." 

Her throat is all closed up. She doesn't–she doesn't need to know what four days of live feed could have entailed. 

God, what state is he in? 

Is he alive? Is he alive?

Four days of live feed, though, that's proof that—

"So he–he didn't–"

Of course, Athena understands exactly what Maddie's driving at. "He didn't move."

A harsh exhale punches out of maddie. He didn't move. They didn't move him. They didn't relocate. Of course, they could me moving him now. Two days without proof of life. Anything could have happened. God, they could have killed him since. 

This is isn't helping. She forces her breath into resisting lungs, focuses. 

They didn't move him right away. That means something. Either his captors are unaware he made a phone call, or this is all part of a wider plan. 

Or it isn't Buck at all that she heard on the recording, and she's leading them all on a wild goose chase and wasting everyone's time and pulling valuable resources away from—

No. No. No. She's sure. 

"So," she says, and her voice is firm, "unless this is another game, they don't know he called 911."

She sees hesitation in Athena's eyes. She listened to the recording, but she didn't hear what Maddie heard. Like Howard. Like Josh. 

"Athena. I'm sure." She presses her hand against her heart, needs Athena to understand, mother to mother. "I know. It's him."

Athena covers her hand with hers. They're cold, but the touch warms her heart anyway. 

"And I believe you."

Maddie nods, relief punching out of her. There are new years in her eyes. 

"But Josh is right," she says, anxiety creeping back in, "that barely narrows it down. That call was pinged within a 200 miles radius."

Athena's hand squeezed hers. "And that's two hundred miles closer we are to finding him."

Maddie nods again. Hope and despair are cutting up her insides in their fight for dominance. 

He's close. Or he was, when he made that call. He's not on the other side of the world. He's close. 

But the more she thinks about it, the more 200 hundred miles seem vertiginous. 

If it even is him. If she didn't convince her fracturing mind of the impossible. If she's not lying to herself, and to everyone else. 

No. She's sure. Doubt is trying to sway her resolve. She pushes it away, desperately grasps back onto that first feeling. The penetrating cold she felt when she first heard the recording, every instinct screaming at her to pay attention. The absolute certainty she felt. 

It's him. 

But there's nothing more she can do about it. She still can't get to him. She can't follow him, not this time. She can't take him in her arms, and promise him she hears him. 

—

Eddie opens his eyes, and rain immediately gets into them.

He blinks, blinded. His head hurts, his eyes, his sinuses, his temples—there's a burning radiating from his hands. His eyes burn, too, even as the rain drowns them. 

A pervasive feeling fills him with dread, like rain fills a cavity. 

They're too late. And if they're not too late yet, they will be. Buck is dead. And if he's not dead yet, he will be. 

He drowned. The rain. This rain drowned him, or it will drown him, just like it's drowning Eddie now, forcing its way into his eyes, his nose, his mouth—his sinuses, his windpipe, his lungs

But that's not right. 

It was a wave, wasn't it? The wave, the same wave that took—

That's not right. Buck saved Christopher, and he saved himself. 

Something is wrong, though. Eddie looks up, and even though he's blinded, he can see Buck. There Buck is. He's right there, he's right there! 

Suspended from a safety line, limbs hanging, three stories off the ground. Lightning strikes, over, and over, and over. 

God, he needs to get up that ladder, needs to get to Buck. He can't feel the metal under his palm, can only feel its taste under his tongue. Tastes like blood. He needs to get up that ladder, to Buck.

He climbs, but it's not a ladder he's climbing. There are walls of mud all around him, caking under his fingernails. The walls are closing in on him, and he climbs this vertical tunnel with no end in sight. Beyond him is just blackness. 

God, he doesn't have time for this! 

He blinks rain and mud out of his eyes, and finds his hands locked onto Buck's chest. 

He presses down with pure instinctive muscle memory.

"No pulse!" Hen screams close to him, even though he can't see her. The rain drones on, a single, monotonous tone. 

Beside him, Chimney tries to get his paws onto Buck's chest. Eddie pushes him away, but Chim's bigger than he is, stronger.

"Move!" he yells, refusing to let go of Buck, as Chim turns his snout to him. "I got it!"  

"Get the life pack ready!" The bear standing in front of him shouts. 

Chim. It's Chimney, Chimney's his friend. But something is wrong about the way he looks. Eddie needs him away. 

"Where's the ambulance?" he shouts over the flat sound of the rain. 

"We left it at the station!" Chimney shouts back. 

This is insane, Eddie thinks. Why did they leave it at the station? They're on a call. "Go get it! We need it now!"

Chimney falls away, and Eddie goes back to pumping Buck's chest. God, he forgot to keep pumping. Every second matters, and he's just standing uselessly there by the gurney holding Buck's body. 

He can't find Buck's chest through the mud. He tries to wipe it away, but more keeps piling onto him. The flat line keeps droning on. 

"No," he denies, "come on," he pleads, "come on." 

They need to get him inside, get him dry. 

He looks up, but he can't find Hen, or Chim, or anyone else. They all went to get the ambulance, he has to remind himself. 

The flat line keeps droning on. They didn't get buck onto the electrocardiogram, couldn't get the leads in him through all this mud, but he knows with every fiber of his being that the flat line is Buck's stopped heart. 

God, they need to get it beating again!

He looks around, sees Bobby a few ways away, staring into the fire. Right, a building's on fire. That's why they're here. 

The rain will take care of the fire. Buck needs more help. 

"Cap!" he shouts over the barrage of rain. "Cap! Help!" 

His captain doesn't move. 

"Bobby!" he calls desperately, "come on!"

Bobby just walks into the flames. 

"No!" 

God, he'll walk to the hospital if he has to! He tries to push the gurney holding Buck, but one of the wheels is stubbornly stuck in the mud, and he can't get it to move. And he can't carry Buck and do CPR at the same time, and he can't stop CPR, but he needs to get Buck to the hospital now! 

He needs help. 

He looks around again, sees no-one and nothing but a wall of mud and water. 

He suddenly realises, again, that he hasn't been doing CPR. He's just standing there, neither moving towards help nor keeping Buck's heart beating for him. 

He tries to push the gurney, again, but it won't move, again. He tries to unstrap Buck from it, but the straps are all tangled, and the buckle's resisting his nerveless fingers. They keep slipping through the mud caking everything. His feet are stuck in it, too. 

Come on, he needs to be doing compressions! 

He puts his hands back onto Buck's chest. There's no sensation on his hands. He can't feel whether Buck is warm or cold, can't tell how long he's been dead. 

The flat line drones on. 

He's dead. He's dead. 

No. He presses down, over and over, over and over, over and over. "Come on Buck, come on. Stay with me."

He's breathless. His hands keeps slipping into Buck's chest. 

"Don't go." 

The sound of the flat line is driving him insane. 

Where are the others with the ambulance? How long can it take to get to the station and back? 

Eddie hasn't got anything with him. He hasn't got the life pack. He needs that to knock Buck's heart back into rhythm once he gets a pulse. He hasn't got epinephrine, which he needs! He needs an EKG, and he needs a bag valve mask, but he's only got his hands, and he needs more hands, and his hands keep slipping into Buck's chest! 

Hands deep inside Buck's chest cavity, Eddie looks up, searching for his face. He finds it, but his eyes aren't closed like he thought they were. They're wide open, glassy, pupils fixed and dilated, irises eaten away, tear tracks on either side of his face. He's white as death. 

"Don't go," Eddie keeps begging, "don't go, stay, don't go–"

He keeps digging into Buck's chest. He just needs to find his heart, squeeze it into rhythm. He can do it. He can save him. 

It's too late. He's been dead too long. 

No. No. 

Mud is everywhere, sucking and pulling his hands deeper inside Buck's body. He moves organs out of the way, desperately looking for the heart, but everything is made of mud and he can't see! He can't see what he's doing! 

He can feel it, the mud, sliding its way into his own throat. It's suffocating. The air is suffocating, thick with humidity, and he can't breathe through it. 

He keeps rummaging through Buck's chest, gasping as he does, but he can't find Buck's heart. It's gone. It's just gone! There's nothing but mud where it should be. His lungs are filled with mud, his windpipe, 

"No, don't go," he begs, "don't go, don't go,"

His heart is gone, but its flat line keeps screaming at Eddie. Accusing him, shaming him, and it's right! Eddie failed! He failed, he failed, he failed,

He registers pain on his wrist. He looks down, expects Buck's hand to be gripping him, desperate to be saved, to be brought back, to be held. 

But there's nothing but mud around Eddie's wrist.  He finds Buck's hand, limp on the gurney, fingers deformed into claws by rigor mortis. 

Eddie can't breathe. He needs to follow Buck, grab him by the throat and bring him back!

But he can't. He can't do that. He's suffocating. He can't follow Buck there, he's sorry, he's so sorry, but he can't follow Buck there, he has

   Christopher–

Eddie opens his eyes at the sharp sensation of falling. His sight is blurry, his nose and throat stuffy. He's crying.

He's laying in a bed. 

Beside him, a small whimpering sound. Christopher's body is pressed close to him, both hands gripping Eddie's wrist and forearm tightly, even in sleep. He's dreaming, a humming noise of discomfort escaping his lips continuously. Nightmare. 

Eddie reacts instinctively, pulls him closer, wraps his free hand around him. 

"Shh," he whispers, throat closing up. "Shh, you're ok. You're ok, mijo, I have you." He presses kisses into Christopher's hair, keeps murmuring. "I have you. I have you. Go back to sleep."

Christopher does, without ever waking up. He quietens, breaths deepening, tense muscles relaxing. He burrows deeper into the comfort of Eddie's arms, and Eddie holds him tight.  

He looks around. The sun shines through a crack in the blinds, bright, hot, blinding, scalding. Middle of the day. The room is unfamiliar. Safe house, or so he's told. They arrived late the night before, after another night spent at the precinct. 

He and Christopher are pressed close together on one side of the bed. The other side is cold, unmade, empty, empty, empty. He stares at the patch of sunlight cutting through it. 

They're stuck in this house, the both of them. For Christopher's protection. Eddie wouldn't have it any other way. He doubts he'll ever leave Christopher's side again. Christopher will be full grown, an adult, his dad glued to his side. He'll be sick of him. 

That glancing thought of the future hurts sharply, like a bullet to the heart. It fills him with familiar panic, his hands tingling, skin buzzing. He retreats from it. 

They're stuck in this house, the both of them. Which means there's nothing Eddie can do. He can't work, can't help in the search for Buck. He can't help anyone. He can't help Buck. 

He can help Christopher. Like he did just now. Hold him through their grief, help him sleep better. 

Even if he weren't stuck here, what would he do? Where would he go? What has he been doing, the past sixteen days? He wants nothing more than find his best friend, have him back, safe, but he's been nothing but useless. 

He doesn't know where he'd go. He doesn't know where to go. 

Chapter Text

Buck wakes. 

It's slow, sloppy, slippery, like crawling through mud; his eyes feel caked with it, crusted up, and it's a struggle to get them open. 

His sight is blurry. He doesn't recognize where he is.  

He feels weak, weighted down. Like he's been very sick, for a long time. 

It's dark. His eyes have slipped closed again. He doesn't try to open them again, tries to think instead. 

He's not in his own bed. The mattress he's laying on is thin, and hard, and narrow. He tries to move to feel the edge of it, find a nightstand maybe. 

It's too hard. Moving is too hard. There an ache in him that runs bone deep. Deeper than that. Marrow deep. His nerves are alight. He whimpers, and realised his throat his killing him. 

His whole head is killing him. It feels heavy, fuzzy, like it's filled with cotton but the cotton is lead. Lead is filling his head, filling every orifice, pushing against the walls of every crevasse, like it's trying to push his own brain out of his ears. It's molten hot too, burning away right behind his eyes. 

He whimpers again, can't help himself. His throat is killing him. His neck, too, he realises as he tries to writhe with discomfort. 

He's suddenly very, very afraid that he suffered a cervical injury. Maybe spinal. He must have hit his head, at least. It's killing him. He might have been screaming, too. His throat is killing him. 

No he was—he was trying to think. He can ignore pain. Pain is fine. 

Cervicals, head, throat. Pain in his bones, down to the marrow. 

He's probably just sick. A very bad bout of flu. Maybe mono? Meningitis? Another episode of post lightning cramps? God, when was the lightning? Is he just waking up from his coma? 

No. That's not right. He wouldn't know about being in a coma if he was just waking up from that very coma, right? Do people instinctively know they've been in a coma upon waking up from them? He feels like he should know that answer. 

Because he's been in a coma himself. That's right. So he should know, but he doesn't, and thinking hurts. But he has a feeling that he already woke up from his coma. He even recovered, didn't he? Didn't he get back to work? He's sure of it. He was annoyed at everyone for coddling him, wasn't he? 

He whishes someone would coddle him right now. Maddie. 

He just got sick again. It happens. He might even be on the mend, right?

He tries to figure what his last memories are. It feels like he's barely been conscious for days. Distressing images come to mind, and he can't tell what is real, what he dreamt, what he hallucinated. 

What's the last thing he remembers? 

Maddie's hand running through his hair. Kissing his forehead. That doesn't feel real. That feels dreamt. 

The thought is upsetting. His breathing picks up, and he realises it's been hard to breathe. His lungs have to work for it, every inhale followed by a rale. 

Drowning. He remembers drowning. The tsunami—

But that's not right. The tsunami was years ago, wasn't it? Long before lightning decided to knock him down. 

He can't make sense of what's in his head. Can't put things in order. He keeps remembering a dream about a bear. When was the last time he and Christopher went to the zoo? Why does the thought of that bear fill him with a weird sense of dread? 

He wants that dread close. His chest hurts, his breath itches, there's a lump in his throat. He feels the urge to cry. His eyes burn, and burn. He doesn't understand, but knows he'd feel safer, calmer, with that presence of dread close to him. Why? He has to be losing his mind. 

What is wrong with him? 

His body tries to whimper again, out of fear, but the sound gets trapped halfway out his windpipe, knocks a cough loose instead. Then another, and another, and another. 

He can't stop coughing, and he can't catch his breath. He feels like he's been running for days, winded, heart rate ratcheted all the way up. 

He coughs, and coughs, and coughs, and passes out. 

—

Buck wakes. 

His head is killing him. His skin feels flayed. He opens his mouth to breathe better; his chest is killing him. He moans, and it's barely a whisper. His throat is killing him. 

He opens his eyes, doesn't recognize the room he's in. 

He's shivering, and drenched in sweat. He's cold. 

He feels like he's been very sick. Like he's had a fever, for a long time. 

Has his brain been cooked? It's so hard to think. Chimney would have a laugh at him, ask him whether he ever finds it easy to think. 

Hmm, he remembers Chimney, that's good. He remembers his real name's Howard, he remembers why everyone calls him Chimney. That's good. That's good for long term memory. His brain hasn't cooked all the way through. 

He remembers Maddie, of course. Eddie. Bobby, and Hen, and Athena. The kids. The nice cashier when he bought that Christmas present for Christopher. Her name was Irene, and she laughed because it was mid-August. Teddy. 

No, he doesn't know a Teddy. He knows Eddie. 

He moans, opens his eyes. He keeps closing them. He still doesn't recognize the room he's in. It's not a hospital room. He's been in enough. There's no window, and he's been sick. He doesn't know the date. Doesn't know the time. Doesn't know how long he's been sick. 

His head is killing him. He coughs, and it's like suffocating. His throat is killing him. Moving hurts every bone in his body. All two hundred and six of them. 

See, long term memory is good, he tells himself firmly as he mentally retreats from the pain.

Still, he can't tell if his brain is damaged. Doing a neurological on yourself isn't exactly and easy feat. He's oriented to neither time, place, or person. How could he be? When he doesn't even know where he is, how long he's been out, with nobody even here! Would he know them, if they were? Has he ever been in this room? 

A non-brain-damaged person would know this, his traitorous mind tells him. 

Would they?

Teddy. He knows Teddy, except he doesn't know any Teddy. 

Maybe he's too brain damaged to recognise where and when and who he's been with. 

Teddy's been here. Teddy's a bear. It doesn't make any sense. 

He's been sick, though. He's been hallucinating, most certainly. 

He's been hurt. 

The realisation crawls over him. He's been hurt. Over and over. By someone. Moving hurts, and he gums in distress. He needs to run. He's not safe here, he's been hurt, and he—

He's done something terrible. Dread seizes him. He's done something terrible. He made a big mistake, and he hurt someone.

Didn't he? God, he can't remember. His head is killing him.  

Familiar shame curls inside his gut. 

A door opens. More light floods in, and Buck's heart seems to jump right out of his chest to land on the floor beside his bed. 

He tries to move, muscles and flesh and bones screaming at him, half on his way to bend over the edge of the mattress with the mind to pick his heart back up. The pain in his body stops him before he realises how insane the thought is. 

He's losing his mind. 

There's a figure standing in the doorway. 

Buck squints at it, breaths panting out of him. His heart's in his chest; he can feel it jack-hammering away at his sternum. 

The figure's a wolf. 

Or, it's the body of a man, wearing the head of a wolf. 

There's the bitter taste of fear on Buck's tongue. That's familiar, too. The man isn't. He's never seen him in his life. 

It's not Teddy, instinct tells him, even though he barely remembers who and what Teddy is to him. 

Teddy tricked him before, his mind recalls out of nowhere. Teddy changed faces before. 

Instinct stands firm. This is not Teddy. 

Buck swallows, and there's a lump lodged there, and his throat is killing him. 

The figure moves, and Buck feels dizzy, sweaty. He tries to cower, instinctively, and only now notices an IV trailing from one arm and a cuff binding the other to the bed frame. 

Bile floods his mouth, and he has to swallow back acidic fear not to choke on it. It's killing him, his throat, it's killing him. Grating like sandpaper, like gravel's been shoved all the way down. His stomach feels heavy with it. 

The figure grabs a chair from near the door, drags it with him. It scraaaaaapes along the grey floor as he edges closer to Buck's bed. 

Buck recoils as man-wolf and chair come to a stop inches from him. Lightning fast, the man grabs Buck's left wrist.

"Let's not rip this off, hm?" The man says, tilting his head towards the IV sticking out of Buck's vein. 

The man isn't wearing any gloves. Buck can't tear his gaze away from the point of contact between them. His hand is white, as white as Buck's sickly pallor. He mustn't see much sunlight. His touch is scalding cold. His fingers are soft. Buck's skin crawls. 

He wants to resist, pull his hand away. He can't move. Rarely in his life as he ever felt so utterly strengthless. Only the days following the lightning can compare. But he had his family, then. 

Here, all he's got is this stranger's touch. 

He'd cry, if he had any energy at all. He misses his family. He wishes he could be held by them. 

The man pulls a second cuff from where it's hanging under the bed frame and tightens it around Buck's wrist, just under where their skins are still touching. 

Let go, Buck keeps thinking. Let go. Let go. 

The man doesn't. Instead, his touch softens. His fingers slide over the cuff and settle into the hollow of Buck's wrist. 

The man pauses there, tilts its big head to stare at its own wrist. There's a watch there. 

Buck watches as the man counts his pulse. 

He feels it, how fast his heart beats, light and tiny and struggling inside his gaping chest cavity. He has to be in the low 100's at least. 

His skin is crawling. 

He wants this man to stop touching him. He pulls his hand—the cuff keeps him from pulling far, and the man's fingers calmly follow his movement. 

Let go. Let go. Let go. 

The man hums, and lets go. 

Buck's teeth chatter. He's trembling, damp with cold sweat. 

He wants the man to leave. 

He doesn't. 

Instead, the man pulls a penlight from a pocket—he's wearing dress pants, and a white button-up—Bick hadn't noticed, he only noticed the head, the head— 

The man reaches around Buck's head, takes hold of the nape of Buck' neck. A shiver trickles down Buck's spine. 

With his other hand, his brings the penlight to Buck's left eye, resting his knuckles right against his birthmark, using his middle finger to lift Nick's eyelid wide open. 

"N–" Buck tries to resist, and his breath immediately catches. He coughs, shredding his throat raw. 

"I wouldn't try to speak if I were you," the man says. 

Through watering eyes, Buck watches him swing the light left to right, up and down. Repeats the process with Buck's right eye, seemingly indifferent to Buck's wheezing as he desperately gasps for air. 

The man lets go. His support's gone, Buck's head falls forward, hangs on his neck. 

The man hums again, grabs Buck's jaw. Buck's panting allows him access to shine his light down Buck's throat.

"Say 'ahhh'," the man requests. Buck only coughs, closing his eyes against the nausea. 

The man puts the light away, keeps a hold of Buck's jaw as he palpate his throat with his other hand. The touch is excruciating. 

"L–" he tries again, a mistake. Let go. Let go. 

His throat feels like it's collapsing on itself. 

"Lots of damage here," the man murmurs. 

Buck wheezes, tastes iron. He feels lightheaded. White spots burst behind closed eyelids. He feels clammy with sickness. 

"Leave–" he tries again, stubborn and stupid as always, "leave–"

Leave me alone. Leave me alone. 

The man lets go. 

Buck could cry with relief, if he had any breath to spare. If air didn't feel like gulping down acid. 

He hears the man rummaging. He forces his eyes open to keep the man in his line of sight. His skin's still crawling. He doesn't feel safe. 

The man is holding a black band between his hands. 

Buck's tremors are full blown now, tired muscles cramping in turn. He tries to jerk away, but the man patiently follows. Easily closes the band around Buck's neck.  

"A reminder," he says, buckling it tight enough that Buck feels the threat of it with every shaky breath.

A collar. 

Done, the man rests a hand first on Buck's cheek, then his forehead. 

Buck jerks back, hits his head against the wall, all but snarls at the man. 

"You'll make it," the man says. 

More rummaging, and the man pulls out a scalpel. Buck's blood runs cold. He pulls at his restraints, still weak, adrenaline pumping wildly through his veins anyway. 

"Should I take an eye?" The man threatens, bringing the blade dangerously close. 

Breath still whistling out of him, Buck stares, eyes watery but defiantly open. 

"Hmm," the man murmurs behind his mask. "Maybe later. I'll want more pieces of you "

He brings the scalpel to Buck's heaving chest. Precise and fast, before Buck can comprehend it, he's pulling back with a thin slice of skin between two fingers. 

Buck stares at it. A burning pain starts radiating just above his heart; where that flap of skin used to be, his mind provides. 

Buck stares, and the wolf stares back. He can't see his eyes. They're two black holes. 

The man raises his hand, all the way to its snout. Buck watches as the fingers holding Buck's flesh disappear into the black void between the wolf's front teeth, all the way to the knuckles. Buck watches until the man draws his fingers back. The flesh isn't between them anymore. Buck's hair stands on end, and he hears the wet sound of it as the man starts chewing. 

Convulsively, Buck swallows. Bile keeps rising up his throat, acidic against shredded tissue. The weight of the collar presses down on him. 

The Wolf swallows, too.