AN: Once again, thanks to Faye Dartmouth for beta-ing!


Casey didn't want to wake.

Waking hurt. Waking meant the return of sensation. And where it had left him gently, the numbness of cold settling in with a minimal amount of dull aching, it returned now with a vengeance, his bloodstream filling with fire. He vaguely remembered crying out at the burning, stabbing pain in his arms, his legs, his hands and feet. And then he slipped under…

…only to resurface again. At first there was a humming in his ears, a tinny noise that expanded in scope and volume until there was a seeming cacophony around him, deafening him with a mix of beeps and thumps and overlapping voices. He still felt the cold deep in his chest, but his abdomen, conversely, felt strangely warm. Opening his eyes and blinking, he looked down.

Well. That was unexpected. And mildly disturbing.

Tubes were running through his stomach, sliding in through incisions on his left and emerging somewhere beneath his ribcage on the right. Clear liquid pumped by some manner of machine traveled through the piping, and it took Casey a second to realize they were pumping warm water through him; it was like some bizarre inverse of a car's cooling system, he reflected idly.

Aside from the tubes through his insides, there were electrodes hooked up to his chest which were in turn hooked up to an EKG, and an IV hanging from a bag of clear liquid he guessed was probably saline solution. Blankets covered him from the waist down, and warm, rolled-up towels cushioned his torso and neck. An oxygen mask pressed against the skin of his face, the edges of the rubber digging into his cheeks and chin, rather uncomfortably.

And beside him, looking more or less asleep and rather worse for wear, was Martinez.

Casey tried to turn his head, but his body resisted the movement, his muscles stiffening. As his consciousness fully reasserted itself, so did the deep and pervasive aching throughout his body. He tried and failed to stifle a grunt of pain, and Martinez jerked awake at the sound, panic settling on his youthful features for the few seconds it took him to recognize that Casey was awake.

"Hey," Casey managed to utter, hoarsely, voice muffled by the oxygen mask.

"Hey," Martinez replied with a shaky smile.

Casey, in turn, frowned. He'd woken up in enough hospitals to recognize one – the beeping of heart monitors tended to be a dead giveaway – and the bandage wrapped around Martinez' head suggested he'd sustained some manner of injury. But when he tried to think back on the events that led to him being here, it was like there was nothing but static. "Where…" he coughed. "You appear to be injured, Martinez. What happened?"

Rick's eyes widened in faint surprise. "You… don't remember?"

"I'd imagine my request to know what happened would have made that implicit."

Rick swallowed. "I, er, got grazed with a bullet, but it's very shallow. Just needed some stitches. I'm more worried about you, to be honest."

Casey frowned again. "I reiterate my previous question: what happened?"

He almost felt pity for Rick, the way the younger operative was squirming. "You were locked in a freezer for nearly five hours. When we got to you, you were severely hypothermic. Doc said your core body temperature was around 79.9º Fahrenheit. You were, ah, also showing signs of carbon-dioxide poisoning." He pressed his lips into a thin line, and Casey noticed that his hands were trembling. "You went into de-fib in the ambulance. We thought… we thought we lost you for a minute there. They said it was re-warming shock." Shaking his head, Rick looked down, apparently struggling to keep his composure.

"Well that explains why I feel like death warmed over," Casey replied, hoping to lighten the mood. But Rick's expression remained fraught. Awkward silence lingered for a few moments and Casey reached up to try to pull the stupid mask away from his face. Moving his arm sent pins and needles searing through the appendage, however, and when he looked at his hand – "Well that's unfortunate," he mumbled.

"Oh, I, er, I asked the doctor about that. He said it's actually better than it looks."

Rick's reassurances were a small comfort. Casey grimaced at the sight of the blisters that covered his reddening fingers.

"Apparently ice crystals formed between your cells when the tissue froze," the younger operative explained, brow furrowed in concentration as he not only recalled the doctor's words, but translated them for Casey's benefit. "He said the damage is mostly superficial. The blisters will break in a week, maybe two. There shouldn't be much lasting damage to the tissue. Though it'll be good to keep an eye on it. He said the bags wrapped around your hands and feet probably kept in enough heat to save you from needing any amputation. You actually haven't been out for too long; they said you're bouncing back faster than they'd expected–"

Casey had begun to tune Rick out. Bags. On his hands and feet. That had been Billy's idea. Billy... Casey blinked. "Where are Michael and Billy?"

Rick's face fell. "I… I'm not sure."

"What do you mean you're not sure?" Unease – he wouldn't admit to it being fear – sharpened Casey's voice.

"They… we split up when we got to the hospital. I stayed with you and Michael went with Billy. I haven't… I haven't seen either of them since then." Rick looked down at his hands and then grasped the arm-rests of the chair he sat in, gripping the edges with white knuckles. He wouldn't look at Casey, which told the older operative that he was hiding something. Rick had a terrible poker face.

Even with the warm water being pumped through him, Casey felt the pit of his stomach go cold… cold as it had been in the freezer, where his flesh had been numb and coated in frost…

"Martinez. What is operative Collins' condition?" The formality of the request, and the way he barked it seemed to get through to Rick, making him sit up ramrod straight, his mouth falling open as he mouthed something soundlessly before finding his voice.

"I – he– " He paused, then his shoulders slumped. "When we found you, Billy wasn't breathing. We couldn't find a pulse."

And with that, the bottom of Casey's stomach was gone. And horrible bits of memory began to creep insidiously back into his mind. Being trapped in the freezer. Wrapping themselves in the stupid plastic curtains. Huddling for warmth. Realizing they would run out of air. Shivering, violently. And the briefest, fuzziest memory of his rescue – of looking over and seeing Billy cold and motionless –

"He's dead then," he finally heard himself say, the words thick in his mouth.

Rick chewed his lip, "Er, I'm not sure… not necessarily."

Casey glared at him. "No breathing and no pulse, Martinez – you might want to review the medical definition of dead!"

"You didn't have a pulse for a while there, either," Rick snapped back. "There was something the paramedic, said, ok? Look, I'm not sure I translated it right, my Portuguese isn't as good as my Spanish and sometimes I mix up the words, but, well, he basically said that with hypothermia, 'you're not dead until you're warm and dead.'"

Casey gave him a level stare. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Rick slumped back into his chair. "I don't know. But if Michael's still with him instead of being in here… I'm not giving up."

Silence fell, punctuated only by the bleeping of the heart monitor and the whirring of the machine hooked up to the tubes. Casey grimaced at the throbbing ache that pervaded his entire being, and reflected on what Rick had said. "You said my temperature was just shy of eighty degrees, right?"

"Yeah."

He bit his lip. "Billy was in there for the same length of time as I was, and I came out of it ok. He shouldn't have been any colder."

Rick coughed and looked down again, prompting Casey to narrow his eyes.

"What, Martinez?"

"Er, when we finally found you, Billy wasn't, um. He'd taken his jacket off. You were wrapped up in his blazer and all this heavy plastic sheeting. The doctor said it might be something called paradoxical-undressing–"

"No."

"Er, they say it's actually a pretty common phenomenon in hypothermia victims–"

"No. This was Billy. We both know damn well why he wasn't wearing a jacket." The vaguest, haziest memory, degraded by lack of air and a frozen, sluggish brain: a memory of someone wrapping something around him and offering an apology… Casey clenched his jaw until his teeth hurt.

They both looked down. "Yeah," Rick finally agreed, voice strained and small.

"I… I'm sorry," Rick murmured, after a few minutes had passed and Casey had sunk back into the hospital bed, exhausted.

"For what?" Casey asked, a bit more bitterness in his voice than he'd intended.

"We should have got there sooner. Michael and I – he was relying on me to be the smooth one since I spoke the language and–"

"Stop. Just stop. We're not going to play the 'whose-fault-is-it' game here, so knock it off right now. Hell, go make yourself useful and find Michael."

"But, he told me to stay here with you–"

"I'm fine. Or will be, at any rate. Now go and find Dorset and figure out–"

"Figure out what?" A new and yet familiar voice interjected, and Casey strained to turn his head toward the door.

Michael looked a bit haggard; his shirt was stained with sweat and his left side was covered in dried mud, but he appeared intact. There was a tiredness around his eyes, however, that Casey knew all too well.

Casey swallowed, feeling his throat tighten. "Michael."

"Good to see you back with us, Casey."

"Billy?" He had no intention of tolerating idle chit-chat. If Michael had left Billy that meant one of two things. Either Billy was pulling through, or… Or the other option that Casey did not want to think about, but already dreaded. Because in his mind, he could see the way Billy had looked with frost forming on his eyelashes and his skin waxy and blue.

Michael's expression was strained, but the forced smile that pulled at his lips gave Casey hope. "They say it's going to be touch and go, but… they think he may pull through."

Casey sank back, not even realizing until that moment that he'd been straining forward, holding his breath. "Thank God," he sighed, letting his eyes drift closed. He heard Rick whisper something in Spanish that sounded suspiciously like a prayer. Michael began to launch into some details about extracorporeal rewarming, but Casey was no longer listening. Relief and exhaustion both overwhelmed him, and he let his eyes drift shut.


When Casey woke, he was surprised to find how little time had passed. His perception of time had slowed to a crawl during those hours in the freezer (five hours of that cold might as well have been five years) and he was still struggling with it. Minutes. Hours. Days. Whatever part of his brain was responsible for processing these terms apparently froze solid and had yet to thaw.

Michael had taken up position in the chair that Rick had previously occupied. He offered a tired smiling by way of greeting. "Hey."

Casey tried to reply, stopped, coughed, and tried again. "Hey." His voice was more gravelly than usual. "I take it Martinez is with Billy?"

Michael nodded. "The doctors started asking a whole lot of questions, and I don't speak good enough Portuguese to answer them. There was an English-speaking nurse earlier, but apparently her shift ended about half an hour ago."

Casey grunted. "How is he?"

"He's pretty freaked out. Considering he was just about shot in the head by drug dealers and nearly lost two of his teammates, he's keeping it together reasonably well."

"I wasn't asking about Rick."

"I know."

There was a long pause.

"Well?"

Michael sighed. "Last I saw… the docs were taking aggressive measure to warm him up."

"Your descriptiveness is underwhelming. What do you mean, 'aggressive?'"

"Well, Casey, have you noticed how you have plumbing sticking out of your body?"

Casey inadvertently glanced down at the rubber tubing that was being used to irrigate his abdominal cavity. He'd pulled the sheets up partially to obscure them, finding the sight rather unnerving. As a rule, Casey generally did not care to have foreign objects sticking out of his body. "Yeah. Your point?"

"More aggressive than that."

"What? Did they stick an entire radiator inside him?"

"They have him hooked up to a heart-and-lung machine. They're pumping his blood out, warming it, and pumping back in. They're having to warm him slowly so he doesn't crash, but…" Michael shook his head, and Casey noted that the worry lines in his team leader's face were deepening. "The good news is that he probably won't have any brain damage. Something about metabolic rates in the cold, I wasn't really listening–"

"When that's the good news, Michael, I think we need to be concerned about where exactly we're setting the bar for 'good.'"

"Well, Malick, I don't know what else to tell you," Michael replied curtly. He hadn't quite snapped, but his tone had been abrupt.

Casey shut up. Michael usually humored his grumpy attitude and dour remarks, but from the look of things, Michael wasn't in the mood, and this was one of those rare instances where a little sensitivity was called for.

A nurse came in, checked on Casey's vitals, took his temperature, and smiled before departing.

The silence grew.

It was Michael who finally broke it: "You and I aren't so great at this optimism thing."

"I like to think of myself as a realist," Casey responded out of habit. It was a line he always resorted to when accused of pessimism. And Casey was frequently accused of pessimism.

Michael's voice was flat, almost hollow. "You know, when we finally tracked down one of Olivera's men and got him to tell us where you guys were… I didn't want to open the door. We got there, and Martinez went for the door handle, and I stood there half-wishing he wouldn't, because honestly, I thought we were too late."

The words 'you nearly were' sprang to mind, but Casey stifled them before he managed to speak them out loud: a rare act of tactful self-censorship.

"And even when he wrestled the door open and we saw you guys –" Michael continued, voice oddly strained, "–I thought, 'they can't be alive.' And Rick just ran right up and started checking your breathing. Hell, I thought both of you had to be dead. Neither of you were moving, you were white as sheets, you both had ice in your hair, and Billy was rigid."

Blurry half-memories of Billy looking like an icy corpse gnawed at the back of Casey's mind. "Well, you found us. That alone is reasonably impressive."

"I guess that's why we need them. Martinez and Collins." As Michael kept talking, Casey realized that his last comment had gone unheard. Michael was somewhere in his own head now, and the exhaustion was beginning to show. Casey found himself wondering just how long Fearless-Leader had been keeping vigil for him and Billy. "I mean, you and I, we're cynical. Bitter. We're jaded bastards. We need guys like them to keep us from getting crusty and just giving up. On all of this crap."

Casey frowned; Michael was starting to ramble, and his usual façade of calm, unruffled stoicism was cracking. Frankly, seeing him like this was getting a bit distressing. "Hey!" he interjected, trying to sit up with limited success. "We don't give up."

"I almost did."

"Yeah, well, you didn't. Now quit being depressing; I find it counter-productive to my recovery." Casey relaxed back on to the pillows with a grimace. Trying to sit up when there were tubes and whatnot sticking out of him had not been his most brilliant impulse. But seeing Michael so… distraught had left him a bit rattled.

Michael snorted quietly. "I'm sorry. I think this mission is starting to get to me."

"Yeah, well. It'll be fine. You'll see."

There was a soft chuckle. "That sound dangerously like optimism coming from you, Malick."

"I told you: I'm a realist." Casey closed his eyes. Because the reality of it was that Billy would have to be fine, because that was the only reality Casey intended to accept.


A few hours later, the doctors deemed Casey's temperature regular enough to remove the abdominal irrigation. One of the nurses had attempted to administer an anesthetic for the procedure, but Casey had protested. After the numbness he'd felt in that freezer, he'd take whatever sensation he could get, good or bad. And even though Casey spoke no Portuguese, he'd made himself understood in no uncertain terms; Casey was fairly good at getting his point across nonverbally. Especially in places where people left scalpels just lying around.

Rick had returned as he and Michael had swapped out once more. He'd conversed with the medical staff and then translated for Casey's benefit. He'd also relayed the news about Billy; that they'd taken him off the heart-and-lung machine, finally, and that his heart was beating on its own. He still hadn't regained consciousness, but having a pulse qualified as a significant improvement.

"I want to see him."

"Er, doctors said you shouldn't be moving. Your heart's in pretty fragile condition still–"

"I didn't ask what the doctors said about my heart, Martinez. I said that I wanted to see Billy."

Rick opened his mouth to protest further but then appeared to recognize the futility of doing so. "I'll go see if I can find a nurse I can talk into it. But I make no promises, ok?"

The young grasshopper did well, and less than an hour later, Casey was being wheeled down the hall toward Billy's room. The nurse into whose charge he'd been committed was a pretty thing – young and buxom and loquacious in the extreme. She rambled on in an endless stream of Portuguese as she pushed Casey's wheelchair through the halls. He hadn't the faintest idea what she was saying, but smiled rather bemusedly at her sheer enthusiasm for whatever it was.

The smile vanished when they entered Billy's room.

Casey had seen his fair share of wounded men. He'd seen the dying and the dead; he'd seen far more corpses than he'd care to think about, and many of them had been the result of his own handiwork. He'd also witnessed allies falling and friends suffering. Over the years, he'd formed a sort of shell to it all; it'd been the only way to keep from going a little crazy.

But sometimes, there were little things that slipped in through the cracks in the shell. A woman whimpering; a child sobbing; a dog whining. Things that wormed their way in and pierced his normally well-guarded heart.

Things like a teammate and friend lying motionless, hooked up to a dozen machines.

Casey swallowed. The nurse ceased her prattling with a small gasp, and then, clucking her tongue like a disappointed mother, moved forward to pull the blankets up a little higher over Billy's chest, partially obscuring the plethora of electrodes that monitored his vitals.

Billy was off the heart-and-lung machine, but they still had him hooked up to a respirator, pumping warm air into his lungs. Heating pads and blankets surrounded him, and under all the fabric and all the machinery, the Scot looked uncharacteristically small. For a second, Casey found himself looking at the lifeless, frozen body in the walk-in, blue and patterned in frost…

No. No, that Billy wasn't breathing. This Billy was, even if it was with the help of a machine. This Billy had a beating heart, and while his skin was still pale and waxy, there were spots of pink on his cheeks and nose and ears. And this Billy was going to damn well pull through.

The chatty nurse had decided to busy herself by fighting with the blinds over the window, offering Casey some semblance of privacy. He set his mouth in a grim line and rolled over to Billy's bedside.

"Hey," he grumbled, looking down at Billy.

Billy just laid there.

"You're a moron. Now quit being stupid and wake up."

Nothing.

Casey sighed. "I'll indulge you for now, Collins, but I won't put up with much more of this slacking, ok?"

For a second he hoped for a witty rejoinder or a clever comeback. He half expected Billy to open one eye, grin fiendishly, and make some stupid joke, revealing that he'd simply been faking unconsciousness all this time.

But there was just more silence, punctuated by the heart monitor's slow and sterile beep.


Casey was back in his room, leafing through an outdated travel guide – the only English book Michael had been able to scrounge up – when Rick burst in with the news that Billy was awake.

This time, they didn't even bother to find the nurse. Casey threw the blankets off and Michael ran to get the wheelchair, and within moments they were speeding down the hall, nearly knocking over an unsuspecting orderly in their rush to get to their teammate.

"He was a little confused at first, but he was pretty with it by the time I ran to go get you guys," Rick explained as they got to the door, holding it open for Michael to wheel Casey in.

Casey nodded, not really listening. Because as they walked in, Billy was propped up on pillows, smiling and flirting with the nurse and just generally being Billy. In that moment it seemed almost impossible to think of how close they'd come to losing that. How close Billy had come to being an engraved star on a wall.

"Afternoon, lads," Billy said, voice a bit hoarse. He grinned impishly and nodded at the nurse, who blushed before making her departure.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," Michael replied with the first genuine smile Casey had seen on his face since the mission began.

"Yes, well, I hear I have you to thank for that." Billy pulled the blankets up a bit more, a small shiver running through him. "I have to say, I don't reckon I'll ever be able to look at a popsicle the same way again. As a matter of fact, I –"

–And that was when Casey hauled off and hit him in the face.

Rick gasped and Michael shouted out Casey's name in surprise and Billy rocked back, blinking in stunned surprise even as Casey pulled his hand back, wincing at the pain from the blisters he'd managed to forget about. He'd stood up from the wheelchair abruptly and his legs still felt rubbery, but he managed to stay upright from sheer force of will.

"How dare you!" Casey snarled from between clenched teeth, massaging his blistered hand even as it balled back into a fist. "You stupid, selfish son of a bitch!"

"Jesus Christ, Malick, what the hell?" Michael hollered, grabbing Casey by the back of his hospital gown and hauling him back into the chair. Anger and confusion and concern fought for control in Dorset's expression. Rick's face, by comparison, was a picture of pure shock; his mouth hung open and his eyes kept flitting from Casey to the door. Billy… Billy just lay there, a welt slowly forming on his cheek as he stared at the wall.

The muscles in Casey's jaw worked as he gritted his teeth together. Casey bottled up his feelings. Or he channeled them into rage. And sometimes, the two processes got combined, and all the fear and guilt and pain got pressure-cooked into simmering, concentrated fury, which, sooner or later, boiled over. Violently.

But Casey also went to great lengths to master self-control. And as fast as that anger had broken free, he was able to clamp it back down again, swallowing and closing his eyes as he took a breath before turning and looking Michael squarely in the eye. "I believe that Operative Collins and I need a few moments alone to have a discussion," he announced, his voice as even as he could force it to be.

Rick was still looking at him like he was a madman. "I don't think that's–"

"Shut up, Martinez," Michael interrupted. He gave Casey a long look, then glanced over at Billy.

Billy finally turned his head back, looked at Casey and Michael in turn, then nodded.

Casey saw Michael's stance relax, and instantly some of the tension went out of the room. "Come on, Martinez. Let's go raid the cafeteria."

Rick was still gaping in bewilderment, still trying to piece together what had just happened even as Michael bodily hauled him out of the room, closing the door and leaving Casey and Billy alone.

"Well. I'm glad that your ability to land a punch hasn't suffered from our little misadventure," Billy remarked, cautiously.

"You took your jacket off."

"Beg pardon?"

"In the walk-in. Rick said when they found us you'd taken your jacket off."

"Well, to be honest the whole experience has gone a little fuzzy in my mind. Can't say as I quite recall what my cold-addled mind drove me to do, as my wits were rather–"

"I call bullshit. You damn well remember. And it was stupid." Casey was fuming. His hands ached, even as he gripped the armrests of the wheelchair until his knuckles turned white. "I'm smaller than you; I have less surface area from which to lose body heat and shorter extremities. I'm also conditioned to have a higher tolerance for extreme environments. My odds of survival were always better, and after seven years of working together you knew that. So my question to you, is what the hell were you thinking?"

"You stopped shivering."

"I – what?"

Billy's blue eyes were inscrutable. "When you were shivering and I said something about it, you told me to start worrying when you stopped shivering. And then you stopped shivering."

Casey found himself unsure of how to respond. He floundered for a moment, chewing on his lip. "Still stupid," he finally mumbled. "I would have been fine."

"You don't know that." Billy had gotten that sad, faraway look on his face. It was the look Casey often spotted when Billy didn't think anyone was looking, or when he talked about Scotland: a sort of distant, quiet sorrow. For a moment, Casey wondered if they were about to descend into one of those long and semi-awkward silences, but then Billy spoke again: "Remember when I told you about walking out on Rannoch Moor?"

"You mean how you spent your youth hiking in the desolate highlands in the dead of winter? Yes, I remember." Casey still felt an inexplicable sense of bitterness, and it didn't help that he couldn't piece together where this conversational tangent was going. "You lived to go freeze to death another day. What about it?"

Billy stared out the window. The nurse from earlier – the chatty one – had removed the blinds, affording them a view of the sprawling city and a sky so blue, it looked like a badly photoshopped postcard. "I lived. But my mate – Malcolm, the one I'd gone hiking with – he'd taken a tumble earlier that day into one of the streams. Everything had been floodin' on account of the rains, see, and with all the mud, it was right slippery. They said it was the wet more 'n the cold what probably did him in. His heart just stopped in the middle of the night."

His gaze dropped from the window to the blanket across his lap. "I dinnae even know when it happened. I was fast asleep. One minute we were hunkering down in the hillside, and the next, a rescue team was shaking me awake an' giving Malcolm CPR…" he trailed off. "I suppose there's just so many people you can let down in your life, aye?"

Casey waited a moment, his expression an impassive mask. "So, you blame yourself for your buddy dying, and as a result, were willing to sacrifice yourself to keep history from repeating?"

Billy shrugged. "That's a mite more blunt than I'd have put it, but…"

"So what then? You just pass off your survivor's guilt like some sort of screwed-up torch?" Casey snapped, the mask crumbling. "Did you stop for a second to think that you'd just be handing all the guilt over to me?"

Billy was clearly taken aback. His mouth fell open, his blue eyes going wide. "I…"

"What was it you said about only being able to let so many people down in your life?"

"That's… that's not fair."

"Isn't it?" He seethed. His annoyance and, yes, maybe a little of fear, had combined to overwhelm any sympathy he might have felt. "You have a martyr complex. And it needs to stop. Your friend died, you lived – now get over it. Live with it. And keep living."

Casey let the words hang there. Billy's expression shifted subtly from surprise, to anger, to resignation.

"Guilt is a useless emotion," Casey ultimately added, a bit more gently.

Billy had a sullen look on his face. "Aye, well, next time we're both freezing to death, I'll be sure to keep any extra clothing to myself and leave you to your own devices."

"Good. You're learning." The corner of Casey's mouth twitched in a ghost of a smile.

For a moment Billy fixed Casey with a puzzled, conflicted look. He appeared to struggle with some silent inner decision – and then shook his head and chuckled. "You know, Malick, you're coming dangerously close to seeming like you care."

Casey snorted. "Of course I care, you nitwit. If you die, I have to waste all that energy breaking in yet another rookie."

The tension in the room had abated, and Casey felt himself relaxing a bit. The drawn expression on Billy's face had eased somewhat. Idly, Casey wondered if Michael and Rick were lingering outside the door, listening.

"I'm sorry," Billy finally said. "You're one of my closest mates, Malick. I dinnae want t' lose you… not like Malcolm or Simms." He grimaced, and Casey looked downward. "But I reckon you're right. I may have been a mite selfish."

They were reaching Casey's threshold for open, emotional conversation for the day. "Yeah, well, just don't do it again, ok?" he griped. "Ideally, neither of us will have to deal with survivor's guilt because we'll all just make it out fine. None of this stupid ambush business."

"I don't suppose we got the bloke what decided to put the two of us on ice, literally speaking?"

Casey shook his head. "Michael did a bit of digging. His name is Santos, and it looks like he's gone to ground. But Dorset and Martinez at least did us the favor of disrupting the bastard's supply route. With luck, Higgins will let us come back to take the son of a bitch out sometime soon." It would be a while before they got the appropriate intel to act, but Casey would be counting the days. And vengeance was going to be a dish best served very, very cold.

Billy shrugged. "Well, I can only hope that our next visit to the lovely city of Rio affords a more fortunate sampling of the local climate. Possibly involving beaches and scantily-clad lasses," he added with a mischievous smirk.

And Casey smiled: because Billy was alive, and they were both going to fine, and soon enough they'd be out and on to the next mission.

"One can hope," he replied. "One can hope."


It only took a couple days before the two of them were discharged. Casey's hands were wrapped in gauze on account of the blisters, to his profound annoyance, but the rest of his recovery proved speedy enough. Billy had a lingering cough, which concerned the doctors – Martinez translated something about the possibility of pulmonary edema – but in a rare stroke of luck the Scottish operative didn't take a turn for the worse, and the cough was deemed to be a simple chest cold.

Billy consented to letting the buxom, talkative nurse wheel him out. Casey had balked at the idea of any more damn wheelchairs and had insisted, to the hospital staff's obvious dismay, on walking out on his own two slightly frost-bitten feet. "I'm a perfectly able-bodied man," he grumbled, pulling on his shoes with a wince.

"As am I, but I'm hardly about to turn down a free ride from this lovely creature," Billy replied, offering a winning smile to the nurse, who'd giggled and responded with something in Portuguese.

"Well, be sure she rolls you directly to the entrance without any detours," Michael interjected. "Martinez went to get the rental car, and he's meeting us in five."

Once Billy'd woken up, Michael and Rick had gone and spent a night in an actual hotel; the chance to get a shower and some sleep had done them both a world of good. Michael's stoic bearing had returned, and a brief glance was all that he and Casey needed to agree that their conversation from the other day had never happened.

"I make no promises. I'm purely at the mercy of this dusky angel." Billy leaned his head back to wink at the nurse, prompting Casey to roll his eyes.

Five minutes later, the three of them were in the hospital lobby, having finished a few finals reams of discharge paperwork.

"You know," Billy said as they walked toward the sliding glass doors, "I've been thinking. And you know what we are, Casey?"

"I'm almost afraid to ask. Nothing you preface with 'I've been thinking' ever amounts to anything good."

Billy grinned impishly. "You and I, Casey, and the spies who came out from the cold!"

Michael groaned, then chuckled. Casey just gave Billy a flat look. "Do you want me to hit you again?"

"Oh come on, that was a good one!"

Michael shook his head, smiling. "Le Carré's got nothing on you, Collins."

Outside, Martinez pulled up with the rental SUV, and the three operatives stepped (or in Billy's case, rolled) out the doors into the blinding Brazilian sun. The air was hot on Casey's face, enveloping him with warmth that almost immediately set him to sweating. And for once, he didn't mind. Because warmth meant movement. Warmth meant life.

Warmth meant they'd come out from the cold and lived to tell the tale.

The corner of his mouth twitched wryly upwards. "Let's just go home."

FIN.