There is a thump next to him and Mike whips his head around only to see that Chuck had passed out. Mike rolls his eyes. Great.

He could see nothing visibly wrong with him other than a few cuts and scratches that he shared from their rapid descent into Motorcity. Mike sighed, as he lifted the oddly light boy onto his back and began walking. After about a mile of abandoned roads and trash, he came upon an abandoned house.

Mike sets Chuck down none too gently next behind him. It doesn't even faze the runaway. One broken window later, they are in, and have a safe haven for the night and possibly the next few days.

"Woah, wait wait, hold up," Dutch interrupts this time as he uses his knife to carefully cut a piece of metal, " That doesn't sound like you, being all fed up with Chuck."

Texas and Julie don't even bother nodding in agreement, they just look to Mike for an answer.

"Well," the word was long and drawn out and a small bit embarrassed, "I'd only just met the guy, and back then he seemed like a weirdly cowardly kid with some skills who was using me to run away from home."

He rolls his eyes and grins (as much as he can because Chuck is still missing and in trouble, and he knows his team is working as fast as they can but still-) at the horrified expressions they have on their faces. He can't blame them, for anyone to think of Chuck negatively, well they'd have to be insane, "Take that look of your faces, I warm up to him," Julie fails to smother a suggestive giggle, "soon enough," he finishes with a halfhearted glare in Julie's direction.

"So anyway, we stay in this warehouse for a few hours, Chuck hasn't moved once since he passed out and I start to get worried…"
Mike's hands are shaking as he checks Chuck over for sickness, and his body for wounds from when the obviously insane Trenton was shooting at them.

"What the heck is wrong with you Charles," he murmurs as he sits with his arms wrapped around his knees across from him on the tattered couch. The room is full of dust and all kinds of furnishings are scattered about. It looks like they aren't the first squatters to enter, but are obviously the first to break a window in order to do so.

Come to think of it, Mike hadn't even checked the door before he broke the window. He was so used to locked doors and all the order and the way things usually are up in Deluxe that he—

"Right. No more Deluxe for me," His head is resting on his knees as he lifts his eyes towards Chuck who other than not waking up seems to be alright and comfortably sleeping on the other end of the sofa, "I guess not for you either Charles…" He wonders if his companion realizes he's been sleeping for almost five hours now. And that's through being dragged through the edges of Motorcity and through a broken window. None too gently at that.

Mike closes his eyes as he wonders, what the hell has he done. He ran away, he's betrayed Abe, he's done everything wrong. He's terrible, he's a traitor just like everyone else. Every. Single. Person. Every one of them that Abraham Kane has spoken of with spite, he is now one of them.

Mike takes a notcalmingatall breath and shakily releases it as he tightens his grip around his knees and tries to make himself as small as possible.

He remembers why he decided to leave and he knows, oh god, he knows that he was right and that Kane was the one who betrayed him by lying and actually being horrible and almost evil (but he can't be evil, because he took care of Mike right?) and he brainwashed people and controlled them like robots and put things in them that shouldn't be there and—

Chuck's eyes fly open and he screams.

Loudly.

Which makes Mike whirl in his limited space and let out a rather embarrassing sort of scream.

Little known fact, but the leader of the Burner's has a scream to rival Chuck's when it slips out. Unfortunately, there is not enough space on the couch for that movement and Mike falls right off with a painful sounding thump.

Once they both stop screaming and remember the other person is not an enemy there is a very heavy and awkward silence firmly in place. After a few seconds that feel like hours, Chuck leans over the edge peering down worriedly (why is he worried about Mike he's going to get hurt again), "A-are you okay?"

Mike looks up from where he lays sprawled on the floor, tears still running down his face, and breathing heavily.

"Yeah," Mike wants to say but what comes out is a broken sound because he has nothing now, absolutely nothing and he's all alone and what the fuck is he going to do.

He sniffs in the silence and looks anything but okay as he looks up he sees tears at the edge of Chuck's eyes, threatening to spill over and he realizes that this person he just met has the exact same look in his eyes as him.

Betrayed, hurt, doesn't know how to handle what's coming next, absolutely desperate.

"You?" Mike asks quietly as he climbs back atop the couch, perching tensely at the edge of the seat.

He looks surprised to be asked the question and takes a long time to answer with a quiet and obviously untrue affirmative answer.

"So I…," Mike pauses in his storytelling, opening his eyes to look at his team, "Uh…what. I mean, what?"

They're all working efficiently but they all look like they're going to start bawling any second.

"What's wrong—" Mike begins,

"Keep going, " Julie says forcefully, because she can't explain but she knows Dutch and Texas feel it too. The idea that Chuck and Mike had been so lost and hurt and alone and they weren't there for them. It hurt. It hurt really badly.

"Uh, right, well, I'd gotten my miserable self back up on that old couch and…"

The two boys were seated comfortably but the air was thick as they stared at each other. They each saw pain reflected in the other's eyes, but somehow between riding through an air vent and screaming wordlessly at one another they found a spark of trust and determination.

Surprisingly, Chuck is the first to break the silence, "Well, M-michael, what are you going to do now that you're here?"

Mike can't help but feel a thrill of wonder and fear at that because wow, Motorcity.

"Two things," he says in the loud way only a kid can, "I'm going to do something good and I'm going to help someone and I'm not going to run ever again."

And now Chuck is looking at him, really looking at him, and there's a look of wonder and fear on his face.

"And you're not going to call me Michael. Call me what you called me before?"

"Before?"

"You called me Mikey, remember? When we were heading out the vent?"

"…" Chuck seems to be holding his breath as if he lets any air in he will release something he regrets.

"Ringing any bells Charles?"

"I was screaming. That was a scream. Screams aren't nicknames."

Mike continues as if he hadn't said anything, "Hmmm. And we'll need a nickname for you too. How about…um, Charlie?"

"No!"

"Yeah…too fancy. You need something cooler…"

The room grows silent as the two boys get distracted from the conversation by the thoughts in their head. Twenty minutes later, Mike suddenly stands declaring something about going to go see if there's anything to eat in the abandoned home. All that mattered to Chuck was that Mike was leaving the room leaving him alone so soon, and he didn't want to be alone, not right after he just got free.

"Cha-aaughk-"

So he doesn't think before grabbing his arm rather forcefully as Mike passes in front of him to leave the room.

They both groan in pain after hitting the floor, and were lucky not to have knocked themselves unconscious with all the tables in the place.

Mike is unable to move and Chuck had fell on top of him, his head now resting on Mike's chest. He looks up at Mike and says with a nervous laugh, "I guess you can call me Chuck."

The other boy merely blinks back, almost not processing the words before bursting out laughing and crying all at once and it's only a few baffled seconds because Chuck can't help but join him because god what a way to make a friend even if one is confused and his world has dropped out from beneath him and the other is finding hope again and is just so tired and fed up they've both found hope.

"Okay, I can't do this anymore, we have to bust our way out of that door and get Chuck now."

Texas is absolutely correct and it is time, but Mike shushes them because the gun they've built is perfect because they built it and they need the door to open before they can do anything.

He just desperately hopes Chuck is hanging in there for him.