Title: [I'll Follow You] Into the Dark
Author: Lena7142
Warnings: Violence, Character Death (Sort of), general dark weirdness
A/N: I totally blame Faye. And my weird dreams. But mostly Faye. Who also generously provided a beta.
-o-
Casey tries to stop the blood.
Tries, being the operative word. There's so much of it. It's pouring forth, soaking everything in shades of red and black in the low lighting of the back of the van, filling Casey's senses with a tangy odor that nearly makes him gag.
"Who brings... a machete... to a gun fight?" Billy gasps from beneath Casey's ministrations, chuckling desperately. "And... wins?"
"Quit talking," Casey instructs, feeling his insides roil at the way even the slight movements of Billy's diaphragm brought on by speech aggravate the ghastly wound in his abdomen. "He didn't win, we took him down."
"Oh... good..." Billy's eyes are glassy, and he chokes a bit, turning his head to spit out a mixture of blood and bile.
Casey grimaces and looks meaningfully up at Michael, meeting his gaze in the rear-view mirror.
"We're only three miles out," Michael says.
It's still too far. In traffic in Bangkok, three miles is worlds away, and Billy hasn't got time. Casey is crouching in a growing pool of his teammate's blood in the back of the van, trying to hold Billy's organs in, watching as the spark fades from his eyes.
Billy's dying.
And Casey tries to stop it, but he can't.
"Just hang in there," he growls, applying greater pressure that makes Billy squirm, eliciting a whimper. "You're gonna be fine."
"Must be... bad if you're... bein' nice t' me," Billy gasps, eyes wide and unfocused. "Damn."
"I mean it."
"You're... terrible... liar," Billy murmurs, voice dropping to just over a whisper.
And Casey has nothing to say to that, so he just holds Billy and tries not to acknowledge the sinking feeling in his gut.
"Casey, you know that I..." Billy winces, his features contorting as he gasps and is left panting.
"Hush," Casey coaxes, doing his best, against all his natural tendencies to be gentle.
Billy trembles a little. "I... I don't..." he blinks, then draws in a wheezing breath, his body shuddering. "I... oh." His eyes widen, then the breath leaves his body with a sigh and Billy goes limp, gaze fixed vacantly on the ceiling.
Casey watches, waiting for Billy to take another breath that never comes, then swallows.
-o-
"Turn back to the safehouse."
"We're only a mile out from the hospital now-" Michael begins to argue.
"Michael."
Michael looks back over his shoulder, then hits the brakes. There's a cacophony of horns and shouts around them, but he doesn't seem to notice. He curses softly beneath his breath, then, after a moment, turns the wheel and puts his foot back on the gas.
Casey doesn't let go of the body the whole way back.
-o-
Casey stays in the van while Michael goes up to check the safehouse. He comes back with Martinez, who's almost as white as the sheet he's carrying. When they open the back of the van, the kid doubles over, trying not to vomit. Casey and Michael roll Billy's body up in the sheet, trying to ignore the crimson splotches that rapidly soak through and stain the fabric, while Rick plays lookout. Somehow, they managed to get Billy up to the safehouse without incident, locking up behind them.
Rick clears off a stainless steel table, where they lay Billy down. His eyes are still open, and Casey reaches out to lightly close them, unable to stand that empty stare. He doesn't let himself dwell on the way his fingers shake.
"What...?" Rick's voice breaks on the word. Michael puts an arm around him and leads him away from the body to fill him in on the catastrophic failure of an operation.
Leaving Casey with Billy.
-o-
Casey hates it when people describe the dead as being "at rest" or "peaceful" or "like they're sleeping." Casey's seen a lot of dead bodies in his line of work, many of them of his own making, and the dead don't look like they're just taking a nap.
They look dead.
The contorted lines of pain may have eased out of Billy's slack face, and his eyes may be closed now, but his skin is colorless and there's no subtle rise and fall of his chest; there's no Billy left in there any more.
And it's Casey's fault.
If he'd been quicker; if he'd paid better attention; if his instincts had been sharper... He recounts every moment that led up to this, carefully assessing everything he could have done differently. Everything that might have led to a different outcome.
But he didn't do any of it and now Billy's dead. And Billy and Michael might talk their way out of things, creating plans and inventing lies, but Casey's on the team because he destroys things, not because he creates them. Casey can wreck anything they throw him at, but when it comes to fixing things...
Casey slams a fist into the metal table in frustration, his chest tightening. He sucks in a deep breath, then looks at Billy.
"I'm going to fix this," he states, voice strained. "I'm going to fix it, okay?"
And when Michael and Rick come out of the other room, Casey is nowhere to be found.
-o-
Casey makes calls.
Casey knows people.
Casey's spent 12 years in the CIA, but he's been out in the dark crevices of the world, uncovering secrets long before then. His normally calm and unflappable demeanor is largely in part due to the fact that with the things he's seen, very little surprises him anymore. He's seen things, done things, known things.
And he knows that what he's aware of is just the tip of the iceberg.
So Casey digs up names and numbers from another life; from out of bad dreams and fragmented memories.
When someone picks up, it's a jolt, and for a moment, silence hangs over the line as he tries to find his tongue.
"I..." He trails off, then swallows hard, steeling himself. For Billy. "It's me. I need to cash in that favor."
-o-
He takes the van. It still stinks of blood and gunpowder, but his options aren't exactly plentiful. And besides...
He might need what's in the van.
Kasem, it turns out, still lives in Bangkok. Casey spent a lot of time in East Asia over the years, during his CIA career, and... before. Kasem is an old... well, 'friend' might not be the world.
Acquaintance. And sometimes, as is now hopefully the case, ally.
So Casey drives the van through the city toward the slums on the outskirts, trying to find his way by memory with landmarks fifteen years old. It takes a while, but he eventually gets there.
Casey is hardly ever afraid of anything, but he still shudders slightly, an electric shiver running up his spine, as he goes and knocks on the door of the familiar, run-down shack.
-o-
Casey's fist barely makes contact with the wood of the door before it swings open with a low and arduous creak.
"Come in," a voice says in nearly-perfect English.
Casey scowls and enters, and only his diminutive height spares him from having to duck through the low threshold. It takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom, lit only by a few candles and the glowing ends of incense sticks.
A woman he doesn't recognize, wearing a dress that wraps over one shoulder, approaches him with a small bow. "He is expecting you."
"No shit," Casey grumbles, "I just called the bastard."
She doesn't address the comment, and instead leads him through a set of beaded curtains to a back room, where Kasem is sitting in lotus-pose on the floor. The air is heavy with incense.
At Casey's cough, Kasem opens his eyes just a slit, and nods to the girl, dismissing her in Thai. She leaves, and Casey raises his brows. "What's with the whole mystical show?"
"For the tourists," Kasem answers with a wide and wolfish grin. "Charlatanism pays better and more often than legitimate work."
Casey snorts. "Well, you still owe me from that Phi Tai Hong incident."
"And you've come to collect," Kasem muses, sitting back, stroking his chin. His eyes flicker to the blood staining Casey's hands and knees. "What exactly is it that you require my assistance with?"
And Casey tells him.
-o-
Kasem sits for several moments afterward, appearing deep in thought. Casey's patience is wearing thin, but he avoid saying anything to antagonize the other man. He is, after all, Casey's best hope.
Finally, Kasem speaks. "What you are asking me to do is..."
"- Don't say impossible," Casey interjects, his tone somewhere between annoyance and panic.
"Not impossible," Kasem resumes. "... Theoretically."
"Can you do it?" Casey asks.
"I can try," the other man answers, frowning. "We will need certain elements, however."
Casey reaches into his pocket. "How about these?" He procures a button from Billy's shirt, a handkerchief soaked in the now-browning blood from the back of the van, and the wrapper of a candy bar he and Billy split right before everything went south.
Kasem's brows rise up toward his nonexistent hairline. "Those will do." Slowly, he gets to his feet, then pulls aside the rug he was sitting on to reveal a trap door. Opening it, he begins to descend a ladder, jerking his head to indicate to Casey to follow.
-o-
The lab beneath the hovel is unexpectedly tidy and well-architectured. There are no mystical props scattered about with veils and swirls of smoke; the tools of Kasem's trade are instead neatly shelved and catalogued, and while the pungent odor of incense remains, it is only to cover something more potent and rancid underneath.
Kasem warns him that he has never done this before. That it might go badly.
That it might go very badly.
Casey grinds his jaw and for a moment, thinks about Michael and Rick, back in the safehouse. Wonders if he's doing them a disservice, if this doesn't work.
But then he thinks about Billy, trembling in his arms before his lips part in a small "oh" and his eyes glaze over as the life goes out of him - Billy, dead in the back of a crummy van in Bangkok - Billy, lying on a metal table half-wrapped in an old bedsheet - and he knows exactly what he has to do.
Casey has to fix it. Whatever the cost.
"After this, we'll be even," he tells Kasem.
Kasem snorts. "After this, we will be more than even," he points out, getting the necessary supplies out. "Assuming," he adds, "that you survive."
-o-
When they're finally ready, Casey has to actively concentrate to keep his heart from thrumming in his chest. His discipline in wearing thin, but remains more or less intact.
Kasem can't tell him much about what to expect.
Casey doubts it would have helped if he could; no amount of warning ever seems to be sufficient with this area. But Casey won't lose his head. Not with this much on the line.
"Just tell me what I need to to get back once I find him," Casey says.
"You come back the same way you came," Kasem answers. "Are you ready?"
He's as ready as he'll ever be, and he says as much. Kasem nods grimly, then begins.
He takes an old metal bowl and in it, places a number of herbs and sundry ingredients, along with the button, the handkerchief, and the wrapper. He pours a kind of rice wine on to it, then lights a match and drops it, placing the whole conflagration on the floor in front of Casey.
"Breathe."
Casey does. The smoke stings his eyes and his sinuses, burns his throat, and he chokes, but makes himself inhale. He breathes, deeply, and tries to control his reflexes, focusing entirely on the task at hand. He can hear Kasem chanting, and his voice sounds... odd. Like multitudes speaking all at once. The world around him begins to swirl and dance like a candle flame and Casey wonders just what the hell Kasem put in that damn bowl...
The chanting rises, and Casey draws in another breath of the smoke-
Then something clamps down over Casey's nose and mouth, trapping in the breath.
He stiffens, then automatically begins to struggle, though the effects of whatever drug he's breathed in have made him sluggish, ungainly. His reeling mind remembers Kasem's instructions from moments before, however - "don't struggle" - and he does his best to resist the impulse. The chanting roars in his ear, matched only by the pounding rush of blood in Casey's temples as his body involuntarily bucks and fights for air...
Breathe
Don't struggle...
And Casey is beginning to wonder if he's made a horrible mistake, as the word tunnels around him and then finally surges into darkness.
-o-
The rush of blood in Casey's ears becomes a raging chorus of noise, deafening him, stripping him away as he plummets face-first into the void.
Then he's not falling. But he's not landing. He's moving through the rush and the sound, and the darkness begins to pale around him, like a fog, transitioning gradually. Casey has no idea how he went from falling to walking, but suddenly he realizes that he has, the world around him obeying all the logic of a dream.
Then, Casey's standing on a rugged plain, the ground uneven and lumpy, bits of grayish scrubby grass clinging to the rocky soil. Everything is damp and slick and Casey ought to struggle to find his footing, but oddly enough doesn't seem to have trouble. He can hear a distant howling roar still, as if of the elements, but no wind tears at him. Everything is paradoxically still, except for him.
"Billy?" he calls out, and his voice is muffled and swallowed by the fog. "Collins, are you out here?"
There's no response. The bleakness of the place wears at him, the gray air smothering voice and energy alike.
Casey suppresses the instinct to shiver. He doesn't like this empty, desolate place. And while Casey is not a particularly religious man any more, he has always maintained a modicum of spirituality, and he knows how the afterlife thing is supposed to work in principle, according to many faiths. He knows he was raised to believe that the good and just and noble - the heroes - get their just reward. And the villains and the killers are punished.
Billy's a hero, Casey knows. Impish and impossible, but goddamn heroic nonetheless. For all his obnoxious failings, Collins definitely, when weighed and measured, comes out on the 'good' end of the scale.
So there's no reason for him to be anywhere like this.
Casey, on the other hand...
He swallows, horror sinking in. Casey might be on the side of the angels these days, but he's got more blood on his hands than anyone knows. And it occurs to him that while Billy may have died and gone off to the clichéd 'better place', Casey...
Casey may have just gotten himself a one-way ticket to the other place.
-o-
Theoretically, the smoke and the items in the bowl and Kasem's chanting were supposed to send him to Billy's personal afterlife, rather than his own. But the total desolation of the landscape Casey finds himself walking through makes him feel he might be here alone. He shouts out Billy's name from time to time, but there's no response. He walks in one direction for a while, then, remembering Kasem's words - come back the same way you came - he does a 180 back in the original direction.
He simply keeps walking. There's no rush, no roar, no basement in Thailand.
There's just fog and mist and barren rocky landscape, stretching on, as far as Casey knows, forever.
And forever has abruptly taken on a far more disconcerting meaning. Because if Casey is stuck...
He growls and keeps walking. He's not going to panic. And he's not going to think about killing Kasem for screwing him over, mostly because he's in no position to indulge those thoughts.
He's not going to panic.
He's just going to keep walking until he comes up with something better...
-o-
Eventually, the fog thins a bit, and Casey can see more than just the soil in front of him. Dark and craggy peaks loom to his left, jagged and black against the gray sky. Larger boulders scatter the landscape closer to him, and the ground grows boggy in places; in others it's covered with a low, scrubby plant that grows in clumps and clings to Casey's pantlegs.
Bleak. He keeps coming back to that word. And he can still hear a distant rushing noise, despite the agonizing stillness of it all.
He's not sure how much time has passed; if it's been minutes or hours or days. He lacks orientation here. Wherever here is. And he's slowly coming to lack patience as well. He needs to find Billy. And if Billy isn't here, well, Casey's damn well going to find a way out so he can figure out where he is.
He's coming back with Billy, one way or another.
Casey is so wrapped up in this determination, that he almost doesn't hear the humming.
To be fair, the roaring sound, which now comes in a sort of rhythmic crescendo and decrescendo, has so far been the only sound, and nearly drowns out the soft melody, which seems to be carried on the air, almost directionless. Casey staggers forward, peering through the mist, and it takes several moments before he sees it - a figure, human-shaped, standing up ahead.
Casey is cautious in his approach, but the closer he gets, the more familiar the figure becomes - tall, lean, dressed in a three-piece suit, with short dark hair. The tune is annoyingly familiar but unplaceable; he's heard it before.
And Casey's heart lifts.
"Collins!"
-o-
Billy doesn't move, but continues to hum, his back toward Casey.
Casey breaks into a run, but then slips, crashing to his knees in the boggy peat. The world around him is... more solid, somehow. The rough ground he walked over with no effort before now causes him to stagger; the mist that previously merely blocked his vision now settles wetly in his hair and clothes, clammy and cool against his skin. The smell of mud and salt fill his sinuses, and everything grows increasingly clear. Billy stands at the edge of a precipitous drop, and beyond him lies an expanse of open water.
The rushing sound makes sense now, in the way it rises and abates; it's the sound of the sea, surf crashing against the rocks. The gray expanse has crystallized into a real, tangible landscape as Casey approached, with Billy as its epicenter.
"Collins," he repeats, feeling his breath catch uncomfortably in his throat. Billy's back is still all he can see, and for a moment, he desperately wishes Billy won't turn around. If he does, there's a chance that he'll still be the Billy Casey had seen last; guts torn open, soaked in blood, face pale and ghastly and eyes unseeing as they began to film over.
Billy was dead.
Billy...
Billy turns around, his expression one of surprise, then joy, then confusion. "Casey? What are you doing here?"
-o-
Casey gapes.
Billy's intact. There's no blood staining his clothes. His cheeks are ruddy and chafed from the wind, his hair tousled and his eyes bright, though his brow now furrows in a perplexed expression. Billy's alive.
Well, okay, that's not entirely true. But Billy is just as alive as Casey at the moment, looking right at him and not staring at the ceiling of the van.
It takes every ounce of self-respect Casey has not to hug him.
"I'm here for you," he answers brusquely, attempting to wipe some of the mud off his clothes and simply succeeding in smearing it around.
Billy's face splits in a grin. "I admit, I'm surprised, mate. Didn't think you were one for holidays..." He turns back toward the cliff, looking out over the drop and the water. "You know, when the fog clears, you can see all the way out to the outer Hebrides..."
"It's not a vacation," Casey snaps, frowning. Billy's taking being dead in awfully good stride. "I'm here to take you back."
Billy pauses, then looks back, almost mournful. "Casey, I appreciate it, but... I'm home now. This is where I belong."
Whatever Casey had been expecting, this isn't it. He stares. Billy wouldn't give up so easily. Hell, Billy had been trying to talk to him right up until his last breath. He wouldn't just quit. Not unless-
Casey takes stock of the rugged landscape, a thought formulating. "Collins, where do you think we are?"
Billy's gaze drifts back out over the water. "North, north-eastern shore of the Isle," he answers. A smile alights on his lips. "You know, I used to come up here to Skye on holiday in the summers. Had an aunt who ran a bed and breakfast in the village my mum would send me to stay with for a few weeks. I'd go 'round terrorizing the sheep the minute she turned her back on me-"
"Billy," Casey interrupts. "This isn't the Isle of Skye. You're not in Scotland. None of this is real, okay?"
Billy turns all the way back around. "What the bloody devil's gotten into you? What do you mean, not-"
"It's not real," Casey insists, reaching forward and grabbing Billy's shoulders, shaking him. "Think! How did you get here? What's the last thing you remember?"
Billy's mouth opens in protest, but nothing comes out. He stops, forehead wrinkling in thought, his brows knitting together. "I..." He hesitates. "I don't..."
"Do you remember Bangkok?" Casey asks, low and urgent. "Do you remember Taksin screwing us over?"
Billy's breath catches, and his hand rises to his stomach. "I..." He pauses, then his eyes widen. "Oh."
He blinks a few times, then looks Casey in the eyes. "...Am I dead?"
Casey nods, jaw set firmly forward. "Yeah. And as I previously announced, I'm here to take you back."
-o-
Billy doesn't take being dead in stride.
At least, not right away. "No, no no no, this is, this is completely mad..." he begins to mumble, sinking to the wet earth and sitting in it. "I'm not... I can't..." He grips his stomach tightly where the machete hacked through his flesh, looking queasy. "In the back of the van, did I...?"
"Yeah," Casey answers. "You did."
Billy shakes his head. "No. No, that's not right. I'm alive, I'm just delirious, this is all a hallucination!"
Casey snorts. "Oh? And how exactly do you figure that?"
Billy looks up at him, and his expression is one of panic. "Because you're here," he answers, agonized. "And if I'm dead, then that means..."
Casey's frankly rather startled by how distraught Billy looks. "Yeah, well, wouldn't be the first time I had to do something crazy to save your ass."
"Save...?" Billy looks lost and totally flummoxed.
"I know a guy. Who knows... some other very shady entities," Casey explains cryptically. "Look, I came here to get you. And I need you to trust me so I can get both of us back. Okay?"
Billy takes a shuddering breath, then nods. "Okay."
Casey straightens. "Okay."
"So, how do we do that?"
"What?"
"Go back?" Billy tilts his head warily. "Is there some shining light we're supposed to walk toward, or...?"
Casey looks around them. On all sides is a bleak and drizzly manifestation of Billy's memorials of his homeland. And not an exit in sight.
"...Crap."
-o-
Casey stares back in the direction that he walked from, and all he can see is more moorland, as far as the eye can see. Rocks and grass and bog, until it all turns into fog and mist.
"You come back the same way you came," Kasem had said.
"I know that look. That's not a good look," Billy comments warily.
Casey grits his teeth together. "I'm not entirely sure."
Billy groans. "So you just jumped in without a lifeline, is that it? This bloke of yours didn't give any bloody instructions on how to get back to the land of the living?"
"He said to come back the way I came!" Casey snaps. "Which is useless, because it all looks exactly the same. And besides, I tried that. Right after I got here, when I thought-" he stops, reaching up and running a hand through his damp hair in frustration. "It doesn't work."
For a few seconds, the only sound is the crash of the surf.
"Casey," Billy finally says softly. "How did we get here?"
Casey blinks. "What do you mean?"
"How. Did. We. Get. Here."
"Don't be stupid, you know that. I went to Kasem and you upped and-"
Casey stops.
"Oh."
-o-
"So, what. We both...?"
"It would appear so," Billy answered measuredly. "Though if we could forgo the evisceration this time around, I'd be greatly appreciative."
Casey grimaces. "Yeah, well, I forgot to pack the machete and toxic smoke, so I think we'll have to improvise."
Billy pauses, then slowly standing and walks over to the cliff's edge, looking meaningfully downward. Casey's stomach drops unpleasantly. "You think...?"
"There's one way to find out," Billy answers.
Casey steps forward, but hesitates. When he'd gone to Kasem for help, he'd been so hellbent, so blinded by loss, that he hadn't even stopped to consider that this meant dying. But now, with Billy here, his survival instincts are back in place. And they're all screaming at him not to jump off of a god damned cliff.
"What? If you're right, we're already dead. What's the worse that could happen?" Billy points out with a shaky smile.
You come back the same way you came.
Casey takes a deep breath, then nods. "Fair enough." He edges over to the brink, then feels his stomach roll at the precipitous drop. The rocks below are black and jagged, in stark relief against the white foam of the crashing waves. It's a very long way down.
He reaches out and grabs hold of Billy, gripping him firmly. "This will only work if we hang on, okay?"
"Understood." Billy is pale. "So, do we count, or-"
And before Billy can finish or Casey can lose his nerve. Casey leaps forward, pulling Billy with him.
-o-
They plummet down.
Casey tightens his hold on Billy with bruising force. He won't let go after coming this far.
They're falling.
The wind rushes past them, and they pick up speed. There's a roaring in Casey's ears, climbing to a peak.
They fall, flying forward, hurtling through space and through the gray mist, and Casey closes his eyes -
-o-
- And opens them, gasping, his lungs burning and his head pounding.
"Easy! Easy, my friend!"
Kasem puts a hand on Casey's forehead to try to get him to lay back, which Casey immediately reaches up and grabs, bending back almost to the point of breaking as a matter of reflex. Kasem curses and Casey lets go, blinking and falling back, trying to recover his breath. "Sorry."
Kasem mutters something in Thai that Casey doesn't bother to try to translate. Instead, he focuses on slowing his pounding heart rate, closing his eyes again for a few moments before opening them once more. "Did it work?" he croaks, looking to his side-
- There's no one there. And Casey's hand, which had been tightly wrapped around Billy's forearm, lies empty at his side.
-o-
"No," Casey murmurs, as soon as his mind manages to process what he's seeing. He bolts upright, scanning the room for any sign, any hint of Billy. "Where is he?" There's a hard, frantic edge to his voice.
"I am sorry," Kasem says, looking at him oddly. "I told you... there were no guarantees it would work."
No guarantees. Except...
He'd gone to the other side. He'd found Billy. Got Billy to agree to come back with him. He'd held Billy tight and he'd jumped. And then he'd woken up, here, safe.
Without Billy.
"I held on to him," he insisted, clambering to his feet. "It should have worked!"
Kasem says nothing, but goes over to the trap door leading to the ground floor and opens it, showing Casey his way out.
It should have worked.
-o-
When Casey gets back out to street level, he slams his fist into a nearby sheet of rusty metal. He'd held on. He could swear he'd held on.
I came here to get you. And I need you to trust me...
Billy trusted him, and Casey yanked him off a cliff and let him go. Now he's lost him all over again.
Assuming, he realizes after a moment, he ever had him back to begin with. Because who's to say the whole thing wasn't a vivid hallucination fabricated by Casey's oxygen-starved mind in the minutes that Kasem was choking him? Maybe it didn't work because it was never going to work. Maybe Casey's a fool for trusting a mystical hack over a favor performed fourteen years ago.
Maybe there's no way for him to fix this.
He slams his fist into the metal a few more times, until his knuckles split and bleed and someone screams for him to quit the racket already. His skin feels hot and feverish, his chest aching and his head pounding. He finally leans his forehead against the cool, abrasive metal and breathes through his nose.
It had felt real. It had felt like Billy.
Which was probably why now, everything feels so much worse.
-o-
It's nearly dawn when Casey returns. Fortunately, in the cold early hours, he sees hardly a soul; or at least, no one who gives him a second look. He still has Billy's blood, now stiff and brown, caked on his clothes, and some of his own now, staining his shirt cuff where his raw knuckles rub against it.
He lingers outside the door for several long seconds, knowing what awaits him inside the safehouse. Rick, a devastated mess. Michael, with his disappointed stare. Billy, cold by now, lying on the table.
He goes inside.
Everything is quiet. The lights are dimmed. On the threadbare couch, Rick is curled up, still in his clothes, fast asleep. Through the next door, he can see the edge of the table where he last left Billy.
"You were out a long time," Michael says from the shadows, and it's sign of how tenuous Casey's control is that he actually flinches, startled.
"I had... I had something I had to try," he explains, keeping his voice quiet so he doesn't wake the kid. He feels a bit lightheaded, the pressure in his chest growing to the point of being painful. He wonders if the smoke is still in his system.
Michael steps forward, looking Casey over critically. Michael doesn't know, of course. As far as he knows, Casey simply bolted.
Casey's half-tempted to bolt now, only he feels like death warmed over.
"You look like hell," Michael says flatly. "You should sleep. And change."
Casey nods, but doesn't make his way to the small bedroom with the rickety bunkbeds they'd shared the night before. Instead, he crosses the small space over to Billy. Just one more time.
-o-
After seeing Billy on the cliff's edge, damp but red-cheeked and alert, the sight of him lifeless on the table is jarring. His face is ashen, and one of the other members of the ODS must've taken a washcloth to it to try to wipe away the flecks of blood. His face is clean, and some effort has been made to wipe off the gore spattering his hands and forearms, but the task of cleaning Billy up must have proved too overwhelming, because his clothes are still soaked in blood, the sheet pulled up to his chest to conceal the worst of the carnage.
Casey's chest clenches agonizingly, and he almost doubles over. He's sweating, and his skin almost feels on fire. He's not sure if it's the after effects of the smoke, or if he's coming down sick or even having a heart attack. And hell, he's not even sure if he cares.
He said he would fix this. He tried to fix this. But Casey's the guy to call when you need something wrecked; when you need people dead.
"I..." he starts, the word dies as a croak in his throat. "I'm sorry," he manages after another moment, swallowing hard.
Billy says nothing. No quip of absolution; no joke about Malick admitting fallibility.
And it physically hurts. Casey normally strives to maintain a stoic facade, keeping control of his emotions and channeling them into more productive sentiments. But here, alone with Billy, he doesn't really see the point. His eyes begin to burn and he reaches out and tentatively, takes Billy's rigor-stiff fingers in hand and gives them a squeeze. "I'm sorry," he repeats.
A shiver runs up his spine and he feels himself shudder and choke, the pressure abruptly alleviating in his chest as he feels his body temperature plummet from feverish to chilled at the mere touch of Billy's ice-cold skin. For a moment, his vision grays out and he almost loses his balance. Dammit, maybe he is having a heart attack... He considers calling out for Michael, but before he can get his mouth to obey orders from his brain, he hears a ragged gasp from below him.
Casey looks down, just as Billy's eyes snap open.
-o-
Billy gasps, and for a few seconds, simply stares at the ceiling, blinking and breathing heavily. Then, he swallows convulsively and his hands - no longer trapped by rigor mortis - fly to his midsection, tearing away the sheet and revealing his blood-drenched clothes. Casey's breath hitches, but when Billy yanks away his soiled shirt, there's nothing but fresh, intact skin underneath the flaking dried blood. Billy is inexplicably whole.
Billy sits up and stares down at himself, confusion etched on his features. "I..." He stops, and looks up at Casey, meeting his gaze for the first time. "I'm alive?"
Casey smiles faintly. "Yeah. You are now."
Billy pauses. "But... I wasn't. I died."
"Also correct, though you may want to downplay that outside of present company."
Billy nods, still looking rather stunned by the entire state of affairs. Though given he'd been a corpse for the duration of the night, Casey's willing to let the Scot's befuddlement slide without too much in the way of mockery. "You..." He speaks haltingly, licks his lips, then drops his voice to just over a whisper. "You... brought me back?"
Casey's mouth twitches upward at the corners. "Let's just say you'll owe me one somewhere down the line and leave it at that."
Billy nods again, then suddenly throws himself at Casey, wrapping his arms around the other man's shoulders. Casey immediately stiffens, and almost shoved Billy off, until he realizes he can feel the other man shaking, violently.
Slowly, Casey allows himself to wrap an arm around Billy, gently patting him on the back. "Please tell me we're not going to let this be a sentimental thing?"
"Shut up, Malick," Billy responds, voice muffled as his face is buried in Casey's shoulder.
"Hmmph." Casey makes a discontented sound, but thankfully, Collins can't see him smiling.
He fixed it.
-o-
It's a little hard to explain. Michael looks like he's about to have a stroke when he walks in and sees Billy using a dishtowel to try to ineffectually clean himself off. Rick crosses himself and nearly faints, though once he gets a grip he almost tackles Billy to the ground in a hug, holding on to him like a limpet.
The miracle is finally accepted for what it is, and Casey is thankful that Michael doesn't press him with questions. Dorset is smart enough to know the answers are beyond what he wants to even wrap his head around just now. As it is, he has enough to deal with trying to smooth over the fallout from Billy being "accidentally" reported dead, making calls, shouting in the other room while Billy uses the shower and Rick stares at the wall like he's shell-shocked.
Casey isn't sure he understands the details of what happened himself, to be honest. The nearest he's able to figure out is that the heat and the pain in his chest were some sort of side effect from carrying Billy along with him back from the other side as some sort of metaphysical hitch-hiker until Casey's touch allowed him back into his body. He doesn't want to dwell on it too much, though; he's left that weird world behind him for the most part now. And now that he's fixed his team, he has no more reason to look back.
Exhausted, he slumps on the couch next to Rick and watches through the small, barred window as the sun comes up over the Chao Phraya River. There will be a hell of a lot of explaining to do - a hell of a lot of covering up and a hell of a lot of lying - but then, they're CIA. This is what they do. He may have to admit a bit more about his past experiences to Michael than he'd planned to, but right now, he can't say he has any regrets, or that he'd do a thing from the past few hours differently.
He has a good thing going here. And Casey's not letting it go.
-o-
Fin.