'Footprints in the sand
Remind us that we can
Just wash away.
Light, it turns to dust,
Leaves because it must evaporate.'

"Heartbeats" ~ Aron Wright

Ed comes awake from his doze when the engines restart. He's still tied up, chowder now on a table at his side. The medic is gone and Saul is peering out the side window. A sling is wrapped around his arm and shoulder, bandages already starting to stain red.

"What happened?" he asks.

The Caucasian pilot runs up the steps. "It's a set up! They're feds!"

"Go!" Saul shoves him into the co-pilot's chair. He yells at both pilots. "Hurry! Go!"

Out the windows, Ed watches in confusion as a man he doesn't recognize, in a silver suit, stands there gaping at the plane. Was this to be Ed's new buyer? He's a little too CEO for whatever villain Ed expected.

There's a sudden flurry of cries and expletives from the cockpit.

Because the door has been left open and Ed's bed is facing it, he has a perfect view through the front windshield. A man runs right in front of its path, sending everyone's hearts into their throats, about to be run over.

What is he thinking? It's a death sentence!

Men run towards him with guns drawn. Something about the kamikaze sight is familiar, even at this distance, the black zip up with white embroidered lettering...the man is wearing an SRU sweat. A too-big SRU sweater.

Ed shoots upright to sitting faster than a blink. "Spike!"

It's like someone hits the fast forward button. Everything happens over top of itself in a blur of split hair decisions and knee jerk actions:

CRACK!

The plane lists dangerously to the side. Ed hits the bed rail near his head and his hands, loosened for the previous eating time, flail. Saul is thrown against the bed, rasping a pained sound when his sling hits the rail.

Ed sees his chance. A gallon of adrenaline splashes over him with such tidal wave force that his heart misses two beats before starting again at double speed.

He grabs the thermos of hot chowder and uncaps it in one go. Still swaying from the crazed motion of the clipped plane, Ed uses it to his advantage and throws it into Saul's face where it looms over him.

The man shrieks, thrown back, so loud Ed winces. Steaming chowder bubbles against his skin and Ed's hands.

The co-pilot comes running out to check and that's when Ed realizes. He can't believe he hasn't thought of it yet.

They never tied my feet.

Now, head clear of pain killers and sedatives, Ed feels like he can run a marathon. That one sight of Spike was enough to light a fuse burrowed somewhere deep inside Ed's chest.

When the co-pilot comes closer, Ed stops thinking and acts, letting years of training take over.

He levers his legs off the gurney and clamps both knees around the man's neck. It's not enough to choke him out, but all Ed needs is one good twist of his pelvis and the man's forehead slams the wall.

He crumples.

Ed has about four seconds to feel triumphant about that victory before he notices Saul's absence, nowhere in sight, and that the plane has stopped. Smoke is everywhere out the windows, grass on fire in a mounting blaze. It keeps a growing crowd away from the plane, coughing and shouting for fire trucks. Gunshots echo suddenly, quiet compared to the crash from seconds earlier. The crowd flattens to the ground.

Ed, all at once, realizes why he can see this fantasia.

The door is open.

Freedom looms so close—he could just walk off! But he can't wriggle free of the leather restraints. Ed doesn't have time to be upset about this.

In fact, when Saul walks Spike up the stairs at gunpoint, Glock in his bad hand, the tech's feet and bloody fresco face bandaged, grey and shaking, charred from a chorus of sparks and put out fires on his chest…Ed has no strategy at all.

For once in his life, planning fails him.

This doesn't stop him from heaving himself off the bed, far as he can, and reaching—reaching, stretching, tearing apart—for Spike.

The restraints bite into his skin, an instant bleed. Ed doesn't even feel it. Nothing matters except getting to their boy, bloody, assaulted ten ways to Sunday, bright eyed, but alive.

Spike sees him and jumps into motion, looking nothing so much like a kid lost at the mall who's suddenly spotted a familiar face after hours of wandering. "Ed! I'm so sorry!"

Sorry? That's the last thing Ed expects to hear and it makes his breath catch. He just wants contact right now, the self reassurance that Spike didn't die like they'd told him.

"Hey!" Saul yanks the tech back with a harsh tug to the back of his sweater. Spike clutches at his red neck where the zipper bit into it. "That's enough!"

Ed ignores Saul. He's so close… "Spike, you're alive!"

The co-pilot, in a horrible fit of timing, rises from the floor in a groggy spill and pins Ed's feet so he can't lever all the way up or kick himself free.

Ed fights him anyway, furious at this whole scenario and so relieved, overjoyed, that he's weeping again. His fingers strain just a little further…further…

Spike struggles against the arms around him, Saul's joined by the medic where he appears from a storage room at the back, and the pilot.

It's something of a wonder to behold, the fact that it takes three people to subdue Spike and a fourth on Ed to keep them apart. They're rough with the tech, treating him like a sack of potatoes or an animal and it makes Ed feverish with anger. If he wasn't tied down, he knows his second priorityafter hugging Spike and hiding him away from the world for the next twenty yearswould be killing these men using just his bare hands. One cuffs Spike across the mouth, sending him to his knees, and it cracks his already split lip.

Ed goes postal in a blistering cry of rage. "Please! Just let him go!"

"Nice try," Saul yells, skin bubbled and peeling. His bullet wound has reopened. "Get us out of here, captain!"

The second pilot rushes back and closes the stairs door before disappearing into the cockpit. The plane begins to move again, accelerating with more efficiency than it normally would or should, a jumbled take off borne of necessity and panic.

CRACK!

One of the other tires is shot out and they stabilize at the jilted angle.

Spike is wheezing, still writhing an arm free to try and grab at Ed's hand. The other two men drag him past Ed's gurney and towards the storage compartment, a fight that neither Spike nor Ed is going to win.

"Take it easy." Ed switches from fiery to comforting when he sees what's about to happen. It takes effort to keep his voice level, to not give away that he knows this is probably the last time he'll ever get to see Spike. He only has eyes for the tech. "Whatever comes next, Mike, I'm here."

Like the painting by Spike's Italian namesake, their fingertips brush against each other.

It is one of the headiest, most recherché things Ed has ever experienced: Spike's pulse, one beautiful thrum of blood in the boy's veins, pumping against Ed's calloused index finger with enough strength to topple nations.

And then, like Adam, Ed feels them pulled apart.

The final thing Ed ever sees of Spike, before the door closes, is his desperate face and eyes filled with profuse longing. As if they're on a case, bodies pressed in the van. Like when they see each other after a bomb call, when Spike walks out unharmed.

This time there is no hug or hair ruffle. No relieved looks shared or jokes about brushes with death.

Now there is only pain and an ache in Ed's empty arms.

Ed screams Spike's name long after the plane has taken off.


Despite the tornado of motion and barked orders swirling on all sides, Greg doesn't move, after standing, for a long time. Not in the first minute, not in the third, not in the seventh…

Neither does Sam. It's not in character for the young sniper, a man of action and clear steps forward, especially after they've just been shot at and are only alive because of Saul's injured, wild aim.

Both of their eyes are on the grass tarmac.

Sam stares at the blood trail of footprints and Greg stares at Sam. He knows what the man is reliving, what he sees on his bad days. Today is the worst day Greg has known in quite some time.

We had to watch him get taken. Greg leans over on his knees as reality hits without mercy. My son got re-abducted with a gun to his head.

Sam had fired off a few warnings shots but they were useless with that blaze in the way, those inferno flames, and the threat of Saul accidentally shooting Spike while using him as a human shield. They hadn't risked it. Sam even tried to jump through the fire but the door was closed by that time, the plane already in motion.

"We can't track it?"

It is Dean, of all people, who has started taking notes and coordinating with the federal agents in their midst. He's trembling.

"This isn't a commercial airport, Mr. Parker," Lazlo explains. He sounds tired, the kind of tired that isn't physical. "There are no flight plans or control towers."

Greg's gaze shifts to the fires being put out by local fighters who've just pulled up. Their red engines spray water over where Spike was standing minutes earlier. Streams of washed away blood trickle across the grass.

Even without a front or back left wheel, the plane had done a shaky but efficient take off. Greg had watched his family—and their hopes—soar away into the clouds. He's never felt like such a failure in all his life, and his mind immediately second guesses each micro decision, trying to figure out what he could have done differently to prevent this. It all happened so fast: from the time Spike bolted out of the SUV to now took less than three minutes.

Jules, finally packed up and off the hangar rooftop, comes running over with her sniper rifle still strapped at her back. Her eyes are massive. "I thought I'd killed him!"

Sam turns at his wife's voice. His own is quiet by comparison. "You saved his life, Jules, by a five foot margin. That plane would have run him over without a second thought but it swerved when you shot it out."

Jules exhales a tremulous wheeze and paces away to compose herself. "I can't believe he did that."

Greg meets her eye when she loops back around. "I don't think he saw any other way, Jules. Doesn't make it right, but Ed would be long gone by now."

"I'm still going to kill him," she mutters.

"I've been talking to the mechanic—we have him in custody for aiding known human traffickers." Holleran jogs over, panting. "He squealed, says he loaded them up with enough fuel to cross the Atlantic. Wordy's source was right."

Greg's eyes whip to meet Sam's, then Lazlo's. The three of them talk over each other.

"Check major airports—"

"I'll call military airspace control—"

"Interpol owes me a favour," Director Lazlo finishes, already dialing. "We should know more within the hour."

Then, while everyone chatters to their contacts or coordinates with fire fighters, it is just Greg and Sam standing there once again. Sam has his phone out too, some military contact ready to speed dial and a shallow set to his breathing.

But for a minute his eyes glaze…he looks far off into a middle distance Greg would bet he's not even seeing.

They are silent. Greg squeezes the younger man's shoulder.

"You know," says Sam, his tone ringing with some blue, nostalgic note. "When I first met Spike he pointed a gun at me."

Greg blinks. He hasn't expected that to be the memory associated with bloody footprints.

"They all did," Greg finally replies. "The team thought you were a civilian reaching for a weapon in your pocket and reacted accordingly."

Sam doesn't grin, doesn't shine from that poorly hidden humour in his eyes he sometimes gets.

Instead, he looks at Greg with something painfully earnest. Something that almost makes Greg wish he'd glance away, somewhere else, direct that burning pain onto someone who isn't suffering from it too.

"I had no idea then." Sam's voice is a solemn whisper.

Greg matches it. "Idea of what?"

"How much they'd mean to me. How he would end up being my best friend."

For most people, that's a glib term to throw around, a moniker of affection and amusement. Not for Sam. Sam grew up in the Braddock military household, taking fire for fellow soldiers and watching them be gunned down right beside him. Being someone's best friend means being responsible for them, knowing that sacrifice is part of the deal.

That term is a life time promise of loyalty, if the recipient wants it. And Spike has, from the moment Sam offered it.

Greg doesn't use up empty promises like "we'll get them back" or "they'll be okay."

What needs to be said, he can't. He can't even fathom voicing the truth out loud.

Agent Cho runs up at that moment and says it for him. "There's chatter about another bid coming up—if we don't get a lead soon, we'll lose them for good! We're running out of time!"


AN: I've had that scene with Ed and Spike barely touching fingers, like the fresco painting (The Creation of Adam), planned since way back in July. I heard "Heartbeats" by Aron Wright for the first time and the whole thing exploded through my head in slow motion. It's one of the 'cornerstone scenes' that built this story.