Disclaimer: I do not own Olivia, Ricky, Rose, or anybody from Cainsville...and although I wish I owned Gabriel, I can not take credit for that either. All belong to the great Kelley Armstrong, at whose feet, I worship. I'm just playing with these characters and I promise to put them back where I found them.

Summary: Someone wants to ruin Gabriel Walsh. Fortunately, they haven't figured out the best way to accomplish that...yet.

Rated: T

Spoilers: This takes place after the latest Cainsville book, Visions, and will probably be completely nullified when Ms. Armstrong releases the next book, so spoilers to Visions.

Author's Note: I have no idea what I am doing here. I was supposed to have sworn off fanfiction in favor of my real world writing pursuits YEARS ago. So what is this?! I don't know. This guy's voice wouldn't leave my head.

POV: Gabriel Walsh

Title: Buried

Author: Every me Every you

Chapter 1: The Game Is Afoot

I am suffocating. I swear it.

I glance around the empty stretch of land. I am a pawn, sent here because I was supposed to be, and I have no idea what that can mean but, for perhaps the first time, my lack of questions has nothing to do with the compulsion of the Elders, and everything to do with the one thing I am looking for but can not see.

I do not have time for questions. I need to find her.

When my phone rings, I nearly fumble it. The last few days have done nothing but fray my nerves as, I suppose, they were designed to do, to leave me dancing on the edge, with no idea of who I am or what I believe.

I glance at the screen and the sense of relief is all-encompassing. A more dramatic man would fall to their knees. I just breathe a sigh and answer. "Olivia? Where are you?"

There is a muffled sound on the other end of the line. A crackle. She is trying to say something, but the connection keeps cutting in and out and her voice is vague and garbled.

"Olivia, I can't hear you. I need you to tell me - I was told I could find you by the gargoyle the town made for me. Are you here? Dial any button - once for yes, twice for no."

One beep.

"I don't see you. Are you hiding? Is it too dangerous to speak? Are you injured?" I hear the panic rising in my voice. I wince. This is exactly what he wants. I'm giving him exactly what he wants and…

...I don't care.

The connection goes dead. I look down at the phone just as a text message arrives. It's Olivia.

"Look down."

I do. And that's when it clicks.

Somewhere in this large expanse of land, buried under the rain drenched soil, is Olivia. And I have no idea how I will find her in time.

Another text message.

"I'm sorry."

I am suffocating. And if I can't get to her soon, so is she.

Three Days Earlier

I wake to the muffled sound of argument. My head feels padded in cotton. I want to call attention to the fact that I am awake, but my body will not cooperate. The sounds of heated conversation spin around me and only one voice breaks through the thick mist.

"I want a full investigation." Olivia.

My eyes blink open. Once. They stick when they close again. Twice. White. White is all I see.

"I want to nail the bastard that did this to him to the wall." Olivia again. And she is angry.

"What I want to understand is how this made it to the media at all." Another voice, a man. The voice is familiar, but...not. "Nobody in the room believed that crime scene set up for a single second. So how did that headline end up in the Post?"

Detective Fuentes?

I launch myself up into a seated position, suddenly very, very awake. A pinch in my hand calls my attention to the IV in my arm. A hospital. What the hell happened?

"Gabriel." Olivia slides right into my line of sight. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," I rasp, impatiently. And then my head rebels and it feels like everything inside of me rushes there and though I wince, and I do not look fine, that I know for sure, I manage not to grip my head and fall over which is very much what I would like to do.

"Yep. You look great." I pinch an eye open to look at her. Her lips are curved in a teasing smile. Her eyes tell a different story.

"What happened?" Not asking. Demanding.

"I'll explain in a minute." She pats my hand, gently, but her eyes go stern. There is a silent communication there. Don't speak, Gabriel. Don't say a word. Usually, I'm the one leading her.

I'm still wondering why she's talking to me. Why she's here. The last thing I remember…

"I said YOU could stay here. I never said you could bring HIM -"

"I didn't bring him. He showed up. I wasn't going to invite him in. You never even gave me a chance to handle -"

"Go handle it, Olivia."

"I will. I just want to make sure...I know this is an invasion of privacy, and I didn't ask for Ricky to show up."

"This whole thing is an invasion of privacy. I never should have asked you to stay-"

And then she was packing her things. Because I made a mistake. Again.

I just wanted to see her look at the view and forget, for just a moment, that she had someone else she would rather see it with.

She is still talking to Agent Fuentes. I suppose I should be listening.

"I'll investigate the leak as well," Agent Fuentes says. "Whoever staged him this way wanted him in the papers. So one can assume…"

"Trace the leak, find the attempted murderer."

Fuentes makes a noise low in his throat. "You know, Ms. Jones, when we last met, you seemed nervous in Gabriel's presence. Now you're working for him?"

Right. The last time we saw Fuentes, Olivia was playing the role of the frightened client who was even more frightened of her necessary evil attorney. I will Olivia to think on her feet. To come up with an acceptable lie.

Instead, her face hardens. "Things change."

Fuentes eyes her for a moment before turning to leave. "Get well soon, Gabriel. I'll be in touch."

Olivia follows him to the door and pulls it closed behind him. Then she stops and stares at the door for one second too long, and I know she is steeling herself for our discussion.

She wants to leave. She wants to leave me here with no idea what happened to me. Panic rises and I squash it quickly. Being confused does not provide an excuse to go completely off the rails. Olivia simply would not do that to me.

No matter how angry she may be, that would never be a course of action she would pursue.

Finally, she turns, and settles down carefully on the edge of the bed. She looks at me expectantly, like I am a little boy and she knows I stole some cookies, and it unsettles me.

"Well, what's the last thing you remember?" She asks. Very cool. Very calm. Her eyes betray her lie.

I push past the memory of our argument and go further...the drive to the office, far too early for me to actually need to be there. And then...nothing. Which I tell her.

"Someone tried to kill you." She swallows hard, steadying herself. "Lydia found you. She called the police and an ambulance immediately."

Lydia, my secretary.

"If I had found you, I would have…" She trails off.

"You wouldn't have called an ambulance?" I ask, mostly because she is making me...uncomfortable. She looks emotional. It is the hospital. She hates them. I do not know how to handle that on a good day. But my head is thumping and right now...even worse.

"Not without doing a little...creative...crime scene adjustment."

"How did they try to kill me Olivia?"

"They hit you in the head with something very heavy."

Yes, that tracks.

"And then…they...um...staged you." Her eyes shine with unshed tears. My heart clenches. "I was just a few minutes too late. You were already in the ambulance when I got there. I never would have let-"

My hand covers her hand without me willing it to happen. I do not enjoy seeing her upset. Which is like saying a person with an anaphylactic reaction to peanuts does not enjoy eating them. It does not begin to cover the issue.

She looks up from my hand engulfing hers. Tentatively, she reaches out and brushes a hand through the wavy mess of hair on my head. I don't tell her it hurts. I try not to react like I relish it, either. Both are true.

But there is no time for that at present.

"Staged me how?" I have to ask, I must do something besides swallowing past my throat, which just went very dry.

She ignores my words. "Shot in the leg...the car accident…"

I try to joke. "I have had far too many injuries this past few months...ever since meeting you, interestingly enough."

She keeps going. "I never thought you were going to...this time...for a minute there...you were gone…"

"Olivia?"

She nods. Shakes off the emotion. She thinks I'm upset by what she's feeling. That part...I am not. I am much more upset by what I do not know.

She tries to tell me. Opens her mouth. Snaps it shut again. "I can't. I'll show you the newspaper, okay?"

I do not usually curse. I am normally very careful with words. But right now…what my string of profanity lacks in creativity, it makes up for in repetition.

"That exactly." She hands me the newspaper. "Let's just say it's a good thing you're a big guy. They didn't realize they needed an industrial dose to take you down."

I look at the paper and everything in me clenches up like a spasming muscle. I have never wanted to punch something so badly since James Morgan…I swallow the feeling. I peek over the newspaper at her. I carefully measure my words as they leave my mouth, not wanting to add to her anxiety.

"Well...this seems to be...quite...personal." I pause for a moment. "James Morgan?" Because his name is still fresh in my mind.

"God, I hope not. Tristan?"

"Patrick."

"Can't imagine he would...maybe the other Elders?"

"I can't imagine that. Huntsman?"

"Could be. People who are, in some way, negatively affected by the new life of Pamela Larsen's appeal?"

"That fits."

"Other business enemies?"

"It seems like my most vicious business rivals are connected to you." I smile. I can't help it. "We work well together."

"Yes. We already have a suspect list."

"Better than I thought." I am trying to hold on to the way I feel when I talk to her. The pleasant sense of peace. Because what I really want to do is look down at that newspaper again.

The newspaper article discusses my brush with death. Followed by a full history of my childhood with my mother. It seems that would be a below the belt punch. But it is relevant. Because I was found unconscious and nearly dead on the other end of an empty heroin needle. Exactly how my mother died.

I wish I could turn myself inside out and shower my insides to get that garbage out of my system. I fight back a deep shudder.

And then it hits me. She is in mid-sentence. I do not even know what she is saying. The words blurt out before I can stop them. "Olivia, thank you."

She shakes her head sadly. "For not getting there in time because I was pissed at you and boycotting the office?"

"Since I woke up, you've used the term 'staged' often...thank you for never once believing I would-"

She scoffs. "I know you better than that." She leans toward me, and my heart skips, then slams back into full speed, and I am completely unsure if that was a fear response or something else. She stops abruptly. "I'm going to do something. Don't react all crazy." She finishes her journey, pressing a gentle kiss to my forehead.

I mentally scream a reminder that she does not mean anything more than friendship by the gesture, that if I act I will be damning myself to a life without her. I really want to act. So I do the only thing I can. I do not jump at her touch, and I do not try to get her to go away. And she notices. She stares back at me, wide-eyed. I squeeze her hand, just a little squeeze. "Get me whatever information you can from Fuentes' case file. I want to be involved in the investigation."

She smiles and nods. "Get better fast, Gabriel. We have a killer to catch."

I wish that we could just have more than a few days at a time where nobody is trying to kill us. I learned long ago that wishes have no purpose.