'I'm blinded by the silence,
No horizon that I see.
Feel the cold, the friend drops,
Salted by my tears.'

"We Are" ~ Haevn, from Symphonic Tales

For being so tired, sleep is elusive. It doesn't come in the first hour, not the second. Now that the world is still, a windless day with the sun cresting high over a bank of autumn clouds, thoughts are free to accumulate.

Sorrow too, most of all.

Ed lays there and listens to Spike's troubled breathing. Even in sleep it's wet and thick, rasping.

Ed kept talking for a while, just to see—but the younger man is well and truly out. His eyes rove underneath his lids and Ed would pay big money to know what he's dreaming about.

A tear rolls off the end of Ed's nose.

He closes his eyes in Spike's messy, cold hair and grieves. More drops collect on the shoulder of the boy's jacket, a soggy patch. He held them in until Spike fell asleep.

There were so many chances to say it, to air out the truth that he suspects Spike already knows.

Ed has done the math a dozen different ways in his mind, an insane loop of dread and fear. The sum total always comes out the same way:

Spike is dying.

Poisoning, if it's the right kind and even a small dose, tends to cause permanant or fatal damage within the first seventy-two hours. Though he has no idea how long they've been snatched from their team, even if it's only one day, they don't have much time.

Spike doesn't have much time. His body is losing the battle.

"I'm sorry," Ed whispers against Spike's shoulder. "You deserve better. And I need…"

Ed has to stop, his throat thick.

He takes a few breaths that could almost be called sobs. "I need you to know that I'm proud of you. That you kept me at this job so many times I wanted to quit. So many times…"

Ed's trembling lips lift and he strokes Spike's forehead, shiny with diaphoretic sweat. "I was going to retire after Greg's injury. Did I ever tell you that? Probably not, because I made sure nobody knew."

A muscle cramps in Spike's arm, though he doesn't wake. Ed thumbs it a few times. "But then you looked at me with those big eyes, that day in the locker room after the bombs, and asked me, 'the city needs us now more than ever. We're going to give them hope, right?' And I couldn't leave you."

Ed's heavy eyes rival his heart but he refuses to sleep, to abandon Spike even in that small way. He knows he'll have to, eventually. He's a liability, being so exhausted.

But Ed doesn't want to wake up to a dead body. To this boy, this precious kid so full of life and curiosity, with eyes that will never open again.

This time is invaluable, just to feel the warm weight of Spike against him. Ed stills his own breathing so he can savour every single laboured push of Spike's bony spine. Each time it presses into Ed's diaphragm, he counts the seconds until it starts up again.

He refuses to let it stop.

The head wound is worse than he's told Spike, far worse. Ed loses time. He closes his eyes one minute and then, hallucinating his mother's singing with an old piano or playing basketball with kids down the block, opens them to a different time of day. The jump-skip happens several times.

It scares Ed more than he expects. Sometimes he doesn't even have to close his eyes for the hallucinations, as evidenced by the neon pink, technicolour fox that scampered past a few hours ago, probably his mind's answer to an innocuous rustle in the bushes around them.

Ed is just beginning to pray when the sound of an engine roars suddenly up the road. Very close. There are two male voices too, arguing, familiar voices. Ed prays harder.

Spike hears the voices too.

He twitches in his sleep, on pure instinct. His stirring turns defensive and balking, taught in Ed's arms. Ed hardly dares to move, but he rocks them a fraction, hoping it will calm the nightmare. They cannot be discovered now, not after making it so far.

Two consecutive spasms ripple through Spike's leg and he hisses through his teeth. A trail of blood leaks out the corner of his nose.

Ed flat out cannot clamp a hand over Spike's mouth to keep him quiet. He doesn't possess the will power or the ability to harden himself that much, nor does he ever want to break his promise. Spike feels unsafe enough as it is.

He settles for rubbing another circle on Spike's chest.

Spike comes awake instantly at the touch. He goes sheet white, eyes popping open, with a weak flail to fling the grip off.

"Easy, bud." Ed breathes it next to Spike's ear. He grabs hold of Spike's hands easily, crossing them into an 'x' over Spike's chest. "Just me, hey. Spike, it's just me."

Spike goes limp. "E-Ed?"

"There we go. You're alright. Huh? We're alright." Ed keeps up the comforting chatter until the last of Spike's tension ebbs away. "You remember where we are?"

Spike pauses, his breathing reedy and nails on a chalkboard thin. Then he nods.

"Good man," Ed whispers. "Sorry for scaring you. We need to keep silent."

Spike blinks up at sun filtering through the leaves overhead. Not much light, shaded in this little soup bowl crevasse.

He looks worse than he did before, a grey pallor to his skin. He's losing blood inside himself somewhere, of this Ed is totally positive, especially with the hardening of Spike's abdomen under Ed's hands during the last few hours. It feels like putty that's been left out in the snow, too stiff and caving.

The van actually parks this time. Ed watches the tachycardia at an artery in Spike's neck and feels the same amped up anxiety.

Keep on driving. Don't stop.

Boots crunch along the dirt.

Spike stops breathing altogether and Ed clenches the hand still in his. Spike doesn't squeeze back, his eyes closed.

Ed is alarmed for a whole new reason. He doesn't speak, doesn't give in to the instinct to yell Spike's name. He watches that artery until his eyes sting. It doesn't stop.

Spike suddenly takes another breath, still fighting and alive.

"Nothing here, Saul!" comes the blond man's voice. "We need to try farther up the road or we're dead!"

Mercifully, the two men take up that suggestion. The van engine putters away.

Ed is just about to relax when they hear another strange sound—horse hooves. Clopping along a few minutes behind the van at a good clip, with squeaky wheels splashing through dewy puddles. A man is singing an old Appalachian folk song that Ed remembers from his summer camp days.

After a few minutes, it too trails away.

While he doesn't dare crawl out of their hidey hole to look, he knows what he heard. He wants to flag the man down for help, but the van is too close. It might see them on such a straight stretch of road. Too risky.

Spike's eyes dart from side to side. His whisper shakes. "Ed…"

"Just take it easy, okay? We don't know—"

"That was a buggy, Ed."

"…Yes, it was."

Spike's pupils are huge, dilated with infection and shock. "I know where we are."

Ed sighs. "So do I."

"We can't be here! We might as well be stuck on the moon!" Spike's agitation grows, and Ed senses that whatever he was dreaming about doesn't help any. "The team probably thinks we're still in Canada!"

"Spike—"

"We're dead in the water, Ed. Even if we do find civilization, it's not somewhere with phones." Spike's chest is moving so erratically that it dislodges the leaves. "And there's only one road in or out. We're not just far from home, we're hundreds of miles from our own country!"

"Spike, you need to calm down."

"Maybe I can find a…a-a tower."

Ed's heart skips a beat when he recognizes Spike's 'brain speeding around for a solution' tone, a perfect match for the day Lew died. Frantic, fraying at the edges.

Spike coughs up red into his palm. "Hook up some…w-wire and do Morse Code or some…something. Or a flare. Yeah! We could create a chemical reaction that—"

"Hey. Hey!" Ed cinches his arms. Clamped tight, Spike's movements still. Ed feels a brief moment of guilt for frightening him into it before he softens his voice. "We'll figure it out. Okay?"

Spike nods and takes a steadying breath.

Or tries to.

The man's eyes go wider, if possible. His chest moves but no sound comes out.

Ed scrambles into action, leaning forward so Spike is even more upright and he can spit out all the blood and gunk.

This mucus isn't your typical bronchitis green or yellow. Aside from the blood, there's a cloudy pewter tinge all throughout Spike's saliva.

Ed's heart drops into his boots. It's his first taste of genuine devastation since this drama began.

Oh, God, please—

Spike's eyes scream with panic, his hands digging into the soil beside his knees, face at last turning red.

He's suffocating. It all hits at once, the reality of the situation and the warning symptoms that he didn't notice at first. Spike can't breathe...he's asphyxiating.

Ed does something completely unwise and completely from memory, from that time his father had to take care of him during a bout of croup, when his mother was away at a conference. He remembers being just a kid, barely six years old, and his airway completely closing over after a nasty coughing fit. He'd glanced up at his father, shocked at the blatant panic eclipsing his face. It was the first time Ed had ever truly seen his father terrified, with a look Ed imagines in his own eyes right now. And his father had reached out his hand, lightning fast, in a move of sheer desperation—

With a flat palm, Ed whacks Spike right between the shoulder blades.

Spike winces but his ricocheted gasp of air is worth it. It's beautiful, stunning. Ed literally almost passes out at the sound, dizzy. Spike heaves up more bile and blood.

With one hand braced on the ground, Ed pulls Spike close with the other. He thinks maybe he's keening with relief. The sound gets lost under Spike's desperate breathing.

Spike collapses against his chest, coughing, hacking, wheezing.

Ed opens his mouth to apologize for the firm hit—it's not even the recommended course of action, medically—when Spike looks up at him with overwhelmed eyes that take Ed's breath away, panting wildly out of control. His gaze is so sharp Ed feels it burrow under his skin immediately, brown eyes dilated to such a point that they're almost black.

"Th…thank you." Spike pushes his forehead into Ed's sternum, and that's how Ed knows he's well and truly at the end of his tether. "Thank you."

"Spike." Ed runs his hand through the shaggy locks, repeating the name like a prayer. Over and over again.

Spike's breathing is still too fast, too tight. His psychological unease fuels the physical reaction in a vicious cycle, one that Spike, for all his training, can't seem to slow down.

He needs to return to a resting heart rate.

Helpless, weeping, head in so much pain it's causing black spots in his vision, Ed does the only thing he can think of.

His right hand eclipses Spike's ear, cupped over the icy skin of its shell. This trick always worked for Clark as a younger boy, when he couldn't get to sleep or when he woke up from a nightmare.

With a gentle push, Ed presses further, until Spike can't hear the outside world, just Ed's heartbeat wailing away. He feels his own pulse through the sweater, against Spike's left ear where they're melded together.

Spike's shifting quiets, as does his chest. Ed's other arm is wrapped around Spike's torso, and he feels the exact moment Spike calms, ribcage slowing down.

"That's it." Ed doesn't care anymore if Spike sees him crying. "I'm here, Spike. I can't say we're going to be okay, but I'm here."

Spike's eyes slide shut. Ed knows the tech probably can't hear individual words he's saying, but just the buzz of Ed's chest against his face and the sound of his heartbeat seem to work wonders. The lattice work of blood across Spike's skin shoots a chill down Ed's spine, the delicate lace patterns a testament to his steady decline. How much worse can he get before they reach the point of no return? Before he his condition becomes something untreatable? Neither one can move or stand anymore.

Short of being rescued, they have zero options.

They sit that way for a long time, Ed rocking and Spike just breathing, a full time job for him at the moment. Ed gazes up at a bubbling blue sky overhead, sun at the very top of its zenith. Noon, then.

Part of Ed hopes no one ever finds him, because he, viscerally, cannot face Greg and the team with the news that their boy died in his arms.

"I'm with you." His lips drop into Spike's hair. "Until the end."