Balling his hands into tight fists, Hutch stalked the hospital foyer.

The administration staff watched him nervously; their careful gazes covertly followed his body from one end of the small room to the other, as though they were waiting for him to suddenly explode. He couldn't fault their curiosity—or apprehension. His arrival with Starsky was spontaneous—as incoming hospital traffic often was—but dramatic.

Hutch had been terrified, a deep, fervent emotion his furious demeanor had disguised, and body hidden beneath his tattered, black robe, Starsky had been a strange sight. Taciturn and despondent, he had looked at their surroundings like he was being guided into a carefully, concocted trap he would eventually be required to flee. They had both scared the staff—Hutch by barking fierce demands and Starsky by what he had done after they were ushered into the secluded space beyond the doors of the emergency room.

And, now, with lingering adrenaline rushing through his veins, Hutch's energy was indomitable. He was teetering somewhere between exhaustion and madness and would welcome an argument, something to take his mind off of the convoluted events of the last two days and the uncertainty of Starsky's mental condition.

A phone rang behind the check-in desk and a petite woman answered it. Hutch couldn't hear what she was saying, but, lips moving, her eyes didn't leave him. For a moment, he wondered if she was talking to security, if his manic motion was prompting more than curious fear and would result in more complications than scuffs from his dirty dress-shoes on the shiny linoleum flooring. Then he wondered if he cared. His ceaseless pacing was frightening them. He knew that each time he reached the one end of the room, turned, and continued to march in the other direction, the hospital staff were becoming increasingly uncomfortable. They weren't used to people pacing like this—at least not in this area of the building—but he couldn't stop himself. He needed the movement; it was keeping him from screaming in frustration or breaking down into exhausted tears. Starsky had been missing for two days, forty-eight intense hours that had seemed endless. Hutch hadn't slept since waking up the morning of Simon Marcus's sentencing and he couldn't remember the last time he had been truly relaxed.

Let them try to kick me out of the building, he thought, obstinately holding the receptionist's gaze. His frantic search for Starsky had gone on too long and ended without the satisfaction of a fight. Let them just fucking try.

Hospital security had already asserted their authority once. Hutch had been with Starsky and now he wasn't. Though, being removed from the room where Starsky was being assessed had little to do with anything Hutch had actually done. It was what he had failed to do, rather; he had been unable to keep his traumatized partner calm.

Clenching his fists tightly, he ignored the unsolicited scrutiny. His knuckles were sore, scratched and swollen and the repetitive action only served to highlight his physical discomfort, awakening the memory of the contrite actions that had led to his injuries. Taking a deep breath, he ignored them. He didn't want to dwell on that now; there would be plenty of time to reflect upon it later, alone and in a meeting with his superior, inevitable penance for failing to keep his fury contained. Unable to force himself to consider his past mistakes, he focused his attention on his ebbing tolerance of something else.

He was so tired of hospitals.

He had lost count of how many times he and Starsky had ended up in the ER over the course of their seven-year partnership. While most injuries had been minor—cuts or grazes demanding stitches, concussions or sprains and the very occasional broken bone—lately, it seemed as though the afflictions leading them to this place were becoming increasingly worse, at least where Starsky was concerned. Last year it had been poison administered by Vic Bellamy, this year a cult, and Hutch couldn't help wondering what the next year would bring.

What terrible circumstances would leave them separated by the wooden, windowless doors standing tall beneath the blue Emergency Treatment sign?

Reaching the wall once again, Hutch rested his weight on one foot, pivoted his body in an over-exaggerated manner, turned and nearly toppled over in shock as he found himself face-to-face with his frowning superior.

"Hutchinson," Dobey grunted, looking him up and down through veiled eyes.

Regaining his balance, Hutch frowned, feeling a surge of restless anger over Dobey's lackluster greeting—and his glaring absence at the alarming scene he had rescued Starsky from only hours before. "Where the hell were you?" he demanded tersely.

"What do you mean where was I? Where were you?" Dobey asked, unimpressed and unwilling to absorb Hutch's agitated discontent so easily. "I had a crime scene to attend to, a certain bloody exhibit in a decrepit zoo. You and Starsky had abandoned the scene by the time the rest of us arrived."

"I called you and told you we were here."

"Dispatch called me."

"And I called them. I had to get Starsky away from there. The second I showed up, he was begging me to take him home."

Not quite a lie and not quite the truth, Hutch cringed as his statement only awakened the memory of Starsky's previous plea: Let me go. While Starsky had waited for someone to unbind ankles from the rope fastening him to the center the cage, his arms had been unrestrained. Why hadn't he untied his legs? Why had he chosen to remain in an open cage surrounded by dead bodies instead of freeing himself?

"Then, I'm surprised you brought him here. I probably should be grateful the two of you didn't turn this into a private party, but I am surprised." Looking at Hutch intently, Dobey's dark eyes demanded the answer to a question he hadn't asked: What aren't you telling me?

"I couldn't take him home," Hutch admitted. He had wanted to but couldn't. If Starsky's off-putting behavior hadn't necessitated a trip to the hospital, then his haunting appearance had.

Sitting in the middle of the cage, Starsky had appeared dirty, beat-up, traumatized and mostly unharmed. But a severe injury had been lurking, hidden beneath the tattered sleeve of his black robe. The inside of his left forearm had been purposely slashed; an upside-down cross had been deeply carved into the skin under his elbow, then grotesquely stitched up with brightly colored thread. Obviously infected, the surrounding skin was swollen, angry and puckered beneath dark tracks of dried blood and fresh, oozing lines of yellow discharge.

"How bad is it?" Dobey asked.

Lips forming a straight line, Hutch shrugged wearily. He wasn't sure he knew the difference between good or bad—or anything in-between. "He didn't know who I was," he whispered as though the simple statement explained everything he wasn't certain he understood himself. The admission only added to his unease, but at least Starsky had been speaking—a glaring difference between his partner and other people who had survived The Marcus Family's abuse.

"Well…" Exhaling heartily, Dobey's face fell with concern. Forehead puckering, he swiped his index finger over his lips and forced a smile. "He'll be fine," he added, his voice soft and resolute.

Hutch wished he could share Dobey's certainty—no matter how contrived it seemed. "You saw the scene; I'm sure you counted the bodies. From the looks of it, that was every single member of The Marcus Family we have an arrest warrant for. Would you be okay after being held hostage in scene like that? Jesus, Captain, he was tied to the floor."

"Starsky'll be fine," Dobey repeated. "He isn't you, Hutch. He'll bounce back…"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"… He always does. After all, those bastards had only had him for two days. What could they have possibly done to him in two days?"

Those bastards. Hutch frowned; while Dobey's epithet was apt, there a litany of other derogatory terms he would have preferred to describe Starsky's captors.

Spearheaded by self-proclaimed leader and suspected psychopath, Simon Marcus, The Marcus Family was a frightening group, comprised of people with penchants for extreme violence and the occasional mentally defunct. Vicious and vile, they preyed on people. Abducting and indoctrinating a few, torturing and savagely killing most. Hutch could have written a text-book containing all the things Bay City PD didn't know—and still couldn't reason—about Simon Marcus or The Marcus Family. And with all the things they didn't know there were two certainties they did: The members of The Marcus Family were always marked with a universal scar, an upside-down cross carved prominently in their foreheads; and, above all, Simon Marcus enjoyed playing games.

Everything Marcus did—every word he spoke and step he took—was a strategic move in the game he was carefully constructing for his own amusement. He loved subterfuge and bludgeoning people to death as Starsky and Hutch theorized over the course of their investigation when body after body was discovered, their bones shattered, skulls crushed and facial features compressed into an indecipherable mass. It was haunting and grotesque to suddenly find themselves unwilling players in an unwinnable guessing game as they couldn't positively identify any of Marcus's apparent victims post mortem; their bodies were too damaged to allow such a thing. It was gut-wrenching information to be required to live with, a horrible thing to have to endure, knowing that someone—somewhere—was frantically searching for each person whose body they recovered but that they would never be able to provide closure. They would never be able to reunite any of the deceased victims with their families or friends—in life or death.

"Starsky won't be like the others we found; he's stronger than that," Dobey continued. "Still, you should have left him where he was. You told Dispatch that he was conscious, talking, and walking by his own volition. I know that zoo was a bit hard to look at, but it was a crime scene and your partner was a part of it. You should have waited to move him until the rest of us arrived."

"Why?" Hutch snorted obstinately. "So that everyone else could see him the way I had to? He was crying, Captain."

"I don't care. If he wasn't dying then you shouldn't have moved him. Protocol needs to followed, especially in a case like this. We need to gather as much evidence as we can—"

"To use against who?" Hutch shouted, lifting his arms in frustration. "All Simon Marcus's followers are dead! They're lying on top of each other on the floor of that fucking cage!"

The argument was irrelevant; yelling at each other wasn't going to change anything. It wasn't going to rewind time, magically erasing the events of the last two days. It wasn't going to minimize Hutch's guilt over Starsky's abduction—his sudden disappearance in the courthouse men's room—or erase the panic born from seeing the telling blood spatter on the floor and big, red block letters written on an otherwise impeccably clean mirror.

Where's Starsky?

Frowning, Dobey nodded at a black bench paces away; grasping the sleeve of Hutch's stained dress-shirt he prompted his officer to sit while he remained standing, placing his hands on his hips in a paternal manner. "You don't know that," he said his tone—and approach—softening as he eyed Hutch's swollen knuckles. "And just because we're assuming that Simon Marcus is no longer a threat and we think that all his major players are dead, it isn't reason enough not do our due diligence. We can't let our affinity for one of our own cloud our judgement; we can't let our loyalty and eagerness to protect Starsky get in the way of gathering evidence to use against Marcus or anyone else."

"Starsky'll be lucky if he doesn't lose his damn arm!" Hutch said, his voice low, angry and gritty. "They carved an upside-down cross into him and you have nerve to stand here and lecture me on protocol. You'll get your fucking evidence. The doctor on call will take your pictures for you. You'll have documentation of every scratch and bruise, every cut and streak of blood—"

Blood.

Hutch hung his head. Slicing his arm open, Marcus's followers had written Starsky's name on the bathroom mirror in his own blood. Had they been instructed to carve the cross into his arm or had they thought of that plan all on their own?

"Hutch," Dobey said sympathetically, sitting beside him on the bench. "I understand this is hard for you. The last two days have been something out of a nightmare; it's been difficult for all of us, but, right now, you need to calm down. Starsky is safe; he's conscious and alive, and what's important for you, now, is to keep your temper in check. Don't give anyone ammunition to use against you—"

"Nobody is watching me!"

"Everyone is watching you," Dobey said, his voice low and insistent. "You're a fool if you don't realize that. Hutch, you can't do what you did and expect it not to complicate things. Starsky may have survived his abduction and captivity, but Simon Marcus can still hurt you."

Hutch scowled. Simon Marcus with his ill-timed mind games, nonsensical clues, sinister smile, and endless patience—a quality that was only gifted to someone with nothing left to do but wait for death and very little left to lose.

"You won't hurt me," Marcus had taunted evenly, moments after Hutch shoved him against the cold, prison wall. "You're the White Knight." And he had thought that Hutch wouldn't hit him, that, with guards standing paces away outside the barred visiting area, he wouldn't dare raise a damaging hand.

Marcus had been wrong.

"Simon Marcus is no longer a threat," Hutch said vehemently. "He's a dead man."

"You better hope not," Dobey said seriously. "You better pray he wakes up. As it is, I'm going to have a hell of a time justifying your interrogation tactics to the boys upstairs and the fucking media. I've warned you about this type of behavior before, but I guess you needed something other than words to make you believe what I've been trying to communicate to you for years: Your knee-jerk actions can have very powerful consequences, especially in a case as high-profile as this."

"I don't give a shit about any of that," Hutch said softly. If Dobey thought he'd be threatened by the veiled mention of IA or Chief Ryan, then he was wrong, too.

"You should. You should always care, not about what any other cop thinks about but what you think about yourself. Listen, this is… this is coming out all wrong." Grasping Hutch's kneecap, Dobey squeezed— a reassuring action if Hutch ever felt one. "I don't judge you for what you did to Marcus. You only did what countless other cops wanted to, and I'm not faulting you for wanting to rescue Starsky; that scene was bad. You did what you did, all that shit is in the past, and what we need to do now is gain some control over the future."

"Starsky was crying," Hutch whispered. Despite the seriousness of Dobey's words, it was only thing that seemed to still matter.

If Starsky wasn't a shaker then he certainly wasn't a crier, either. Hutch could count on one hand the occasions he had seen his partner break down over the years, and those emotional fits had been decidedly different—less serious—than the one Hutch had witnessed today. The tears had been easily wiped or laughed away, eased by a comforting shoulder squeeze or a few encouraging words.

Hutch had never seen Starsky cry like he had at the zoo. He had never seen his partner so distraught, so destroyed. And sitting next to Dobey, Hutch knew that it didn't matter how they gotten here—what he had done to find Starsky, or what his actions would cost him in the end—because in the end it wasn't enough. It would never be enough to erase the memories of the time Starsky had spent captive to The Marcus Family; it wouldn't make the upside-down cross carved into his arm disappear; and it wouldn't refute the most brutal truth of all.

"And he doesn't know who I am," Hutch added, his throat tightening.

"Of course, he does," Dobey assured, shaking his head dismissively. "Anything he said to you was just an emotional reaction to trauma, you know that." He nodded at the door across the hall. "They let you see him, yet?"

"Yeah—uh—no. I was with Starsky but he was confused. Scared. He took offense to the nurse tryin' to undress him and he… uh… he hit her." Hutch cringed, helplessly wishing the shameful moment could have been nothing more than a bad dream. Starsky had hit the nurse, so he had been forced to hold his partner down while the doctor secured his arms and legs to the bed. Starsky's screams had been loud, panicked and shrill as he found himself unable to escape the restraints. "They had to sedate him and kicked me out the second he calmed down."

"He passed out," Dobey murmured, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

"Yeah. He passed right out, of course they shot enough shit into him to tranquilize an elephant." Zoo. Hutch closed his eyes, the memory of Starsky tied to the bottom of the cage threatening to overwhelm him. No, don't think of that. It's over, done with. You can't do any more than you did. "I feel like this is all my fault. I should have been better; I should have been smarter.

"What were you supposed to do?" Dobey asked. "Follow Starsky into the courthouse bathroom and supervise him while he used the John?"

"Maybe."

"It wouldn't have changed anything, Hutch."

"It would have changed everything."

"I suppose you're right. Marcus's followers had the numbers; they would have taken you both and then would we be? Not here, I can tell you that."

"I shouldn't have lost my temper," Hutch whispered guiltily. His stomach churned over the admission, but it had to be said. Dobey was right to admonish him for his shameful behavior—to warn him of the potential complications the fall-out of his furious actions could bring. "We had a twenty-four hour timeline. They were going to hold him for twenty-four hours and then kill him if we didn't release Marcus. That was set and then I went and fucked it up, and Starsky he… he had to sit in that damn cage for another day because I—"

"Stop," Dobey said firmly. "Starsky is alive, not dead. This could have gone either way after those first twenty-four hours passed. You could have found his body, instead you found him breathing. You did good."

"I couldn't have done much worse."

"It was enough."

"It wasn't."

"It was."

It wasn't. The haunting statement echoed through Hutch's ears, eliciting another Marcus had said: I dreamed your death, Hutchinson, so you'll die. I dreamed Starsky's death and he's already dying.

Taking a deep breath, Hutch struggled to convince himself that Marcus had been wrong about that, too. He was right, of course, they would both die someday; though, it was neither destined to happen yesterday nor today. While Starsky was traumatized, he was far from dead.

But still, his doubt remained, clenching his heart in a vice grip and awaking unsettling statements from the past. Closing his eyes, Hutch stifled a groan as he was silently assaulted by Starsky's previous words: Dead would be better. He won't ever be the same. He can't be.