'I'm tired, I'm worn,
My heart is heavy
From the work it takes
To keep on breathing.'

"Worn" ~ Tenth Avenue North

He doesn't move much anymore.

He can't move anymore.

Spike sprawls, slumped, in the corner. Chest propped enough to take the pressure off his panting lungs. He's not fevered, exactly, but oxygen acquisition takes work. Breathing is a monumental effort that leaves Spike tired beyond belief.

He never knew it was possible to feel this drained.

Hunger pains stopped long ago, just a ball of slime where his stomach should be, and Spike can't tell if he's grateful or concerned about that. It doesn't help that the whole building has a funny, sweet smell, almost like…

You're lucid dreaming, Spike. There's no chocolate here.

However much he wishes that were true. He'd kill for some dark, berry flavoured chocolate, like the kind Winnie drives thirty minutes to the sweet shop just to buy in bulk.

Unopened water bottles litter the floor in a macabre halo.

Spike knows better now.

After the first taunting, when Tattoo came down to check his pulse and mock his inability to move, with invasive shoves to his abdomen and cruel slaps, Spike has been left alone.

He hears their footsteps over his head every few hours. Ponytail and Tattoo converse in hushed voices during the blissful, pained moments of lucidity—

"Cut our losses…"

"No, we can still salvage him."

"…He won't want a man like that."

"Put up more of a fight than the others…"

"…Can't lose our investment now…"

Spike doesn't even have the energy to speak. He swallows convulsively, lips cracked and flaking.

Sometimes, in the quieter moments, when Spike admits to himself that he'll probably never make it out alive, he ponders the last thing he said to everyone.

He can't remember with Wordy or Jules, except maybe that latest team barbecue where they bantered over old Academy stories…but he remembers sitting out on Greg's new porch swing. Fireflies in the grass. Spike said something about promising to visit his classes for a lecture on cyber security.

Greg pulls him under his arm. Laughing. "They'll love you. Not as much as me, though."

Winnie, kissing him in her kitchen, whispering, "you're the best" against his lips.

Dean, sleepy, hugging Spike around the middle and muttering into Spike's sweatshirt about how drills make him tired.

Sam in the locker room, passing Sadie to Spike and remarking on what a natural he was.

Then with Ed…

Spike swallows again, this time to stop the sting of tears his body doesn't have enough water to produce.

He can still feel the force of Ed's screamed name vomiting up his rib cage, tearing at his heart. How primal, how frenzied it had been.

He misses Ed. He misses them all.

I'm sorry.

Spike is about to close his eyes, drifting, when there's a commotion above, footsteps running. Shouts and the click of loaded pistols.

The door to Spike's 'cell' bursts open. Tattoo's wild eyes appear, the whites of his eyes too bright after so much darkness. He scans the room, nodding when he sees Spike is still there, and slams the door.

Perhaps a little too hard.

It bounces open.

Spike squeezes his eyes shut, opens them again, just to be sure he's not hallucinating.

It worked. Spike stares at the layers upon layers of medical tape. Creating a seal so thick, the latch can't meet the hole. It actually worked.

It's still there when he opens his eyes again—an ajar door, sunlight spilling through the gap.

And Spike can't move.

He almost laughs, because it's funny in an absurd way. All that effort and now that he's been dosed, he can't even use his own successful escape plan.

Come on, Spike. Get up. Just crawl for the stairs.

Spike tries to move and ends up sprawled on his side instead. He gasps, breaths uneven with the pressure now on his ribcage and diaphragm.

The stairs might as well be Everest. Scaling them is unfathomable in Spike's mind. He can't possibly drag himself all the way up before they come back.

When has impossible ever stopped you before?

The voice sounds suspiciously like Sam.

It's enough for Spike.

His hand, trembling, latches onto the bottom stair.


Ed knows he has a concussion, probably a bad one. He knows this. All his symptoms fit the checklist inside his head, match the profile every time he wakes to check his own heart rate and rough estimation of blood pressure.

Still, it doesn't stop him from answering every time a blurry image of Greg appears, hands on his hips, with a shrewd look on that weathered face. It's a look he's seen so many times that it's almost apropos for being locked in a deserted office space.

"Are you just going to lay there?" Greg always asks.

"You're not real," Ed always answers, because this Greg doesn't have a cane or a limp.

"So?" Not-Greg shrugs. "Doesn't mean I'm not right."

"You always say you're right."

Greg smiles. "That's because I am." He toes at Ed's prone form with his loafer. "You've had your rest. Spike needs you, come on."

"Uh, Greg. I don't know if you've noticed but I can barely keep liquids down, let alone the stale food they're giving me. Did I also mention the elephant sitting on my skull? Because there's that."

Not-Greg goes quiet for a moment. His image flutters, hazes. Now he's in his uniform instead of plain clothes.

"You're staying awake for longer," he points out.

Ed's lips mush. "True, but—"

"And you don't have any amnesia, no memory loss."

"No…" Ed shifts up onto his elbow. "Greg, they know not to come into the room. They feed me through a cat flap in the door. How am I supposed to get the jump if the door stays locked? And before you ask, it's padlocked from the outside, meaning I can't pick it."

A wicked grin slicks over Greg's face. He sniffs, tone nonchalant. "They want you and Spike alive, right? Probably? It would be a shame if you took a turn for the worse."

Ed, amazed, just stares at the phantom creation of his mind.

"Is Spike okay?" he asks.

Not-Greg looks worried for the first time. "I don't know that, Ed, because you don't."

"Right, right." Ed rubs his aching temples.

He's never experienced cranial pain this bad. Someone is carving his skull with a dull knife like a jack-o-lantern, not just a someone but a child.

Hacking.

Stabbing.

Mushing.

Does a charting scale exist like the one for earthquakes? Some seismic reading of one's headache that can impart the seriousness of it to a physician?

Hello, sir, my headache is an eight-point-one with additional throbbing—

Greg clears his throat, circles his hand in that signature tic. "I know how you can find out though."

He's right. Or…I'm right, I guess. There's only one way to play this.

Not-Greg doesn't go away when Ed pounds on the door.

He stays for Ed's, "please, somebody! I c-can't br-breathe!"

For Ed's choking sounds and the foamy saliva he lets run down his chin.

For the hand he flails through the cat flap. Ed lets his tense arm slow down by increments until it is limp, unresponsive of the boot that kicks it.

"You alive in there?" someone barks.

Greg gives a jaunty wave. "Told you it would work!"

Nobody likes a bragger.

"Why is everyone so sassy with me?"

Because you're easy to tease.

"Is he dying?" comes a second man's voice. This one Ed doesn't recognize.

The deeper man's voice, the one who usually brings things for Ed and apparently empties the bucket when he's unconscious, sounds more frantic about the situation. "I don't know! You tell me—you're the one who stole the food. What if he's allergic to something?"

The sound of someone scrambling to open the lock is Ed's favourite sound. It's music. It competes with Izzy's laugh for the best thing he's ever heard.

"You ready, Eddie?"

I hate it when you rhyme my name.

"You're just so easy to tease." Greg winks. "Don't forget what's in your pocket."

Way ahead of you. Ed thumbs at the slim shape with his free hand, his left. Two men might be hard to take down, though.

"You've got a better idea, team leader?"

No, now shut up so I can focus.

Greg does, but not before laughing. Ed wonders what about this is humorous. Perhaps the irony of it all, stuck in a dismal place while everyone is out looking for them. Maybe Spike is already out and tracking his whereabouts.

Ed wouldn't put it past the kid's gifted brain.

Ed often feels like he's a step behind Spike, how his eyes get that pure spark and then he's off at light speed, usually with an explanation that leaves Ed's head spinning even more than it is now. He's a modern day Hermes, brain zooming around fast enough to rival Ed's bullets.

The two men push Ed's hand back into the room so the door can swing open. Ed works hard to remain a ragdoll, malleable and unresponsive.

"I think you killed him."

The unfamiliar voice is outside the room, accompanied by a metallic shuffle. Ed knows this sound before the thought can even coalesce:

Rifle. Strap clipped over his shoulder.

That might be a problem.

"Me?" the deeper voice protests. It gets louder, closer, and Ed feels the man check his pulse under his jaw. "I'm not the one who'll be explaining this to your rich buddy."

"Ha! Calling him rich is like calling the Mississippi 'long.' You have no idea what he's capable of."

The higher voice turns away, like he's bored or frustrated.

Back turned. Now's your chance.

Ed has to hand it to Not-Greg. He stays there, even behind Ed's eyelids, until the very end.

Right until the millisecond window Ed has to surge up and wrap the tied, nylon boot laces around the man's neck.

Ed gets the man on his knees, one hand clamped over his mouth. He's blond, tall, hair in a loose bun.

Better yet? He's out of view of the door.

The knot where both laces are tied together makes the man's trip into the land of unconsciousness even faster. His neck bleeds a little where it digs in, but Ed is careful not to garrotte the man to death.

That minimal effort leaves Ed quivering, especially his arms when he silently lowers the unconscious man to the floor.

"Rook? Is he alive or not?"

Ed doesn't waste his opportunity—he launches himself out the door and straight at the rifle man. Brunette, just as tall.

"Hey—!"

Ed wraps the shoelace garrotte around his neck too, knocking the rifle's path away from his own stomach using an oblique kick to the knee. The rifle clatters to the floor, Brunette's hands scratching at Ed.

This man puts up much more of a fight. A better trained one too. He wrenches one way and then the other. The motion is familiar, jogging Ed's memory.

"You!" Ed shivers with fury. He growls. "You're the one who hurt my friend!"

After that, the fight is over. Despite a concussion the size of Lake Eerie, Ed has the element of surprise and the much more volatile advantage of righteous anger.

The second man is out within thirty seconds.

Ed's chest heaves with stress and emotion.

He glances around, seeing he's in a strange looking living room. Grabbing some curtain cord ties off the window sash, he binds both men and locks them inside his room. Neither one has a cellphone on them, which Ed finds odd. He grabs the rifle off Brunette, his own service weapon. Ed traces it like an old friend.

There's also no key, but he doesn't need it, simply latching the padlock on his way out. He takes the time to re-lace his boots, knowing he might need to move in a hurry.

After that, Ed just…stops.

Again, good training badgers at the door of his mind. Insistent, adrenaline screaming for urgency.

But Ed allows himself a moment to stand there and digest it all, quivers coursing through him and leaving him with the grace of a newborn foal.

When he does get going, it only takes him seconds to locate a flight of stairs going downwards. He's forced to lean heavily on the wooden railing.

Out the passing windows, all he sees are trees and a few scraggly fields. There aren't even any power lines, something that he notes after a moment of wondering what looks so wrong.

He makes it to the first, main floor of what looks to be an abandoned shop.

Have I gone back in time?

Not-Greg doesn't re-appear, but Ed thinks he already knows what his friend would say.

"Leave the science fiction to Spike, Eddie."

Only…only he can't be standing in a building from this century. Maybe not even the last.

The cash register on the main floor has a crank handle and huge, typewriter-style buttons. A few empty barrels sit against the far wall, empty with a musty smell.

Like in the upstairs office, there are no electrical outlets or wires of any kind. Not even a landline telephone. No bathrooms or pipes.

The first floor is open concept, all one room except for what looks like a kitchen at the back.

Bingo.