AN: Although I have lyrics below as usual, the real song that inspired this cornerstone scene is "Variation 15" by Benjamin Wallfisch, and if you can read the chapter while listening to it, I highly recommend doing so! It's the emexact/em emotional tone I was trying to capture.
'You taught me the courage of stars before you left.
How light carries on endlessly, even after death.
With shortness of breath, you explained the infinite.
How rare and beautiful it is to even exist.'
"Saturn" ~ Sleeping At Last
To say that he is introverted is not quite true. He loves people, very much, loves helping them and watching them grow and seeing what they're capable of. But until this latest hellscape of an experience, this abduction and concussion, he never realized what a luxury alone time is.
Being unconscious does not count.
Ed is still vibrating with rage, fury, vengeance, even now, four hours after he was unceremoniously dragged off the plane and shoved into a sterile recovery room in the secret underground base of this hangar. He can still feel their rough hands, the barks in Arabic and a bruising grip along the nape of his neck. Ed's throat still hurts from shrieking Spike's name.
It should feel disorienting. He should be scared at having woken up on what is clearly not even his home continent. He should feel brimming with ire—and he is—at the plane containing Spike flying away.
They took him away. Ed thinks of Spike's devastated face and his stomach curdles. The very thought of never seeing him again brings more tears to his eyes.
Right now, however, his most dominant emotion is relief. He's been left alone, mostly thanks to a strange, urgent call in French over the PA system. Ed, though he's back on a brand new gurney, is only restrained by a leather cuff around his right wrist, the left having been kept free this time for two IV lines.
And he's alone.
He has to admit, the painkillers and anti-inflammatories in the drip are doing their job just nicely. Perhaps a little too well, in fact, for the world is soft and fuzzy and not at all helpful if he's going to escape.
Best of all?
Ed can feel the apple peeling knife still down his right side boot. They stripped him of everything, from his belt to the backpack, but they didn't think to check his feet.
It takes some clever acrobatics, for the leather cuff has virtually zero leash room, but Ed balls himself up tight enough for his left hand to reach underneath his knees and down the side of his combat boot.
At first he panics—is he imagining the dull knife? Is it gone?—and then something cold and metal skims his fingertips.
Ah ha!
Ed yanks it out by the blade, not caring that it's slicing his palm a little. Just a few beads of blood. Heart rate ticking upwards in speed, Ed doesn't waste a second in sliding the knife underneath the leather restraint.
Flipping the handle into his hand, Ed saws back and forth, eyes on the closed door for any unwanted visitors. He knows he has precious few minutes before his alone time is cut short.
Come on, come on…
It's not working as fast as he wants, the edge only halfway through the thickness of the cuff.
Footsteps are growing closer.
Ed's heart leaps. Those are loud footfalls, intentional, intimidating, and in control. They scream power and it only fuels Ed's frantic motions. He forces himself not to fumble or spasm, even though he isn't left handed, to keep each hacking cut calm and measured.
At last, a sudden, cool sensation hits the flattened hairs on Ed's arm. He realizes he's been sweating against the leather all day and now it's airing out.
The doorknob turns…
Ed doesn't even wait for the blade to finish, heaving his arm to the side and snapping what's left of the restraint. It's a yanked movement, probably something he wouldn't be able to do normally if he wasn't panting with adrenaline.
A tall, suited man, in a bulletproof vest and carrying a Glock, enters at the exact same moment Ed jumps off the gurney.
Ed has built up this moment in his mind from the moment they took Spike away from him. He has rehearsed the steps and knows precisely what countermeasures he needs to neutralize the person in front of him.
The instant his feet hit the floor, however, his body has other plans.
Ed stumbles to one knee, legs shaking and head spinning. Everything is high pitched, like he's hearing the world through a giant metal tube, so unstable he has to brace a hand on the gurney. The IVs have ripped out of his wrist and he bleeds onto the linoleum.
The man sucks in a startled breath. "Officer Lane—"
Ed hears his name and it's the last straw. He's tired of games. He's tired of being yanked around by taunts and punches and dark allusions about just what they'll do to him and Spike.
He surges up from his feet and lunges at the man before he finishes taking a full breath. The man ducks the oncoming knife, only for Ed to feint and switch it to his right hand—
Before driving it straight into the man's shoulder. The vest is reinforced along the top, unlike theirs back home, and it doesn't go in all the way.
Enraged, Ed snarls. "Let me go or I'll try that again somewhere less pleasant."
He moves to retrieve the knife, where it's sticking out of a foam layer surrounding the Kevlar, when the man holsters his gun and puts up both hands.
"I'm not here to hurt you, officer."
Dazed, Ed doesn't relax his defensive stance. "Nice try. Heard that one before."
"You're safe now, I assure you. I'm not playing mind games." The man pulls a badge out of his pocket and flips it open. "I'm Interpol agent Colby Adams, here to follow up on a, by now, rather infamous phone call."
None of this makes any sense to Ed, except for the fact that the man's hands are empty. He hasn't tried to attack Ed. And the badge looks as real as his British accent sounds.
Ed straightens a bit, lowers his ready fists. "Phone call?"
"It's a long story." Adams chuckles, breathing hard now that he sees Ed isn't about to stab him in the neck. "Your friend called Greg Parker from an absolutely ancient cellphone here in France and we traced it to your location."
The tube is ringing, clanked on by insistent hands. Everything is blank for a second, a shock wave so intense that Ed's whole body resonates.
Then he goes boneless with a pure, unaltered kind of euphoria. It's not a smile and it's not a laugh, but it is catharsis, and Ed huffs even as he falls. "Of course he did."
When Spike wakes fully, it's cooler. Sunrise is close, scaring off a strange, fox-like creature Spike's eye catches darting away into a hole.
They've parked at a secret compound, half set into the earth and roofs painted the exact same shade as the desert sand.
Undetectable from the air.
More rough hands haul him out and onto the sand. It's almost laughable, that he, poisoned and so drunkenly swaying on his feet that he's nauseous, is being guarded by four men. That there's even a suggestion that he can pull a fast one on them with the state he's in.
Like the earth is baked clay, it crunches under Spike's bandaged feet. He doesn't wince so much, wavering even at a stand still. Two burly men on either side of him pin his shoulders to keep him upright.
"Would you like some water? You'll need your strength." Saul holds out a bottle and Spike wrestles his lips away. "Come now, officer. No poison in this one."
Spike licks his flaking lips. His chest stutters with intentional, heavy breaths. "I'll take my chances."
Saul laughs, a horrible sound. "Suit yourself. Welcome to your home for the foreseeable future. Now, I'm sure a smart man like yourself has heard of a sensory deprivation chamber, how we'll plug the ears and eyes. It creates a womb-like sensation. A few hours of that, several sessions a day, and your mind will collapse in on itself."
Saul eyes go dead, flat. "They always do."
They've been steadily prodding Spike forward, around a mess hall type of building and fire pit piled high with the ashes of old shirts and badges and wallet photos…
Spike knows he's going to die or worse, that he has no cards left to play, no hope or people on his side left to his name. No pride to defend himself with.
At the death knell, those blasphemous words, and the sight of what remnants are left of once intelligent men, something inside of Spike still snaps. Reality slams into him harder than the jet.
He's just been bought by someone. Sold and about to be packaged like a prime cut. The thought is unfathomable, an offense to the soul.
He's never writhed so hard in his life. His feet are everywhere, clipping knees and stomachs and groins. Kicking for all he's worth.
For Spike knows that even worse than bodily harm and death is losing his mind. Losing that bright spark inside his head that makes each day better and more exciting than the next, the thrill of learning and helping people with the heart he's only just learning how to use.
"Get him in," Saul yells. "Quick!"
"I've got a sedative in the truck!"
"Hurry—"
"Blasted—"
Spike is a menace with the rush of hysterical strength. He even manages to club one mercenary right across the nose with his shackled hands. Blood spurts onto both of them.
The episode doesn't reach full capacity, however, and Spike can already feel his poisoned body running out of juice, betraying him, slowing down…
Gasping and wriggling, Spike is no match for six men, even if one has a sling from his own bullet. They subdue him after a minute of fierce combat and though Spike's pride is too great to plead, he shakes and grips the arms around his neck.
One of the men, huge and teeth rotted, has had quite enough of this pesky officer and his refusal to give up.
He swears, points the rifle straight at Spike's knee cap, and cocks the hammer—
BAM!
The thunder crack is deafening, a bombastic, Levitical crash upon the world. Much louder even than Jules' rifle at the airport, something so high powered and long range that it's a detonation.
Spike's head spins and he wonders dumbly for a moment whether he'll have hearing damage to go along with the busted knee. After a moment of no pain, he realizes that his assailant's gun never went off at all.
The man beside him falls in a fouette spiral of red spray along his forehead from a high velocity round, shot with such precision it's dizzying. The bullet hole in his face is so big that his features are almost unrecognizable.
Spike whirls around and so do his captors, trying to find the source of the enemy fire. One rests the barrel of a semi-automatic right at Spike's temple, just in case.
"Go!" Saul roars at his men. "Get inside!"
They turn the corner of the building and—
BAM!
Spike jumps.
The man aiming at him crumples too, which isn't procedure no matter how many ways you dice it. His finger, mercifully, doesn't twitch and the gun doesn't go off.
Spike's had enough of people dying in the last five days, right at his bare toes, so his thready heart rate palpitates through several revolutions of the hop skip cycle before he calms enough to look around.
And there, in a half circle before the desensitization chamber, along with multiple agents in bullet proof vests, stand a dozen US and Canadian troops in beige fatigues. Helmets, rifles, boots, and all.
Every last weapon is up and zeroed in on an astonished Saul O'Leary.
Well, almost every weapon.
The lead man, also in fatigues, has his arms resting in a lazy stance on his own rifle stock. Like they're out for a Sunday walk, no helmet—
Sniper rifle barrel smoking at his feet where it was perched on a few sandbags for stability. It's too powerful for such close range, and that fact alone speaks to its use for vengeance and not function.
The man is standing now, stance squared but at ease, eyes sharper than a razor blade.
"I thought I'd drop in to visit some old friends and look at what we stumble across." His cheeky, easy going voice doesn't even remotely match the horror film tone of all this death. "Did you know that army planes can get you from the east coast to Riyadh in half the time a private jet can?"
The shock bubble breaks at exactly the same time Spike does.
Soldiers close in with barked orders to surrender but absolutely none of it computes. There could be a full production of a Bizet opera being performed in technicolour right now, close and personal, and it wouldn't filter in any better. There is no sound, no piercing thought process.
At last, finally—finally—Spike cries.
All at once, no build up of any kind.
He falls to his knees in the sand and is weeping before his next breath.
He leans back on the sticky, torn flesh of his feet and puts his face to the sky for one excruciating moment of released heartbreak so strong, he wonders if they can hear it on seismographs.
There probably isn't water for miles upon miles in this wasteland but in this moment Spike feels he can drench it all to soaking for how much his chest bucks with uncontrollable sobs and his wet face drips.
Spike covers it with his bound hands, curling over himself.
There's a flash of gold through the blur and then Sam is on his knees too.
He pushes close in Spike's face with compassionate aggression, clasping the shuddering skin of his friend's neck, and gathers Spike in for the harshest, most gorgeous embrace Spike's ever been on the receiving end of.
It's too crushing and uncomfortable and Spike never wants it to end.
Sam's rigid 'soldier, on the alert' lines melt against Spike, and the tech's ribs knock against Sam in their gunfire panting. He's crying so hard it's giving him another nose bleed, staining Sam's vest. He coughs and coughs.
Another soldier, special forces, gently snips away the zip ties and inserts an IV in Spike's wrist. He wails some more.
Sam grips him harder in response to the sound. So hard it hurts. Tears race along the cigar burn where Sam buries his face.
Spike doesn't hug back, his whole body limp against Sam. His knuckles drag in the sand, nose mushed against the army canvas that smells of aftershave and sweat and Sam.
His friend, voice thick, murmurs things into Spike's neck that he doesn't understand. He's shut down except for the arm around the top of his shoulders and the one holding him secure in the center of his back, hand ending along his ribs.
Sam seems to realize this shock level responsiveness, or lack thereof, after a moment. He pulls back a little and Spike moans in distress—no, he thinks. Please. He wants to grab at Sam's sleeve but his limbs won't cooperate.
Then Sam cards lovingly, more tender than a mother, through Spike's dusty hair. The hand stays there.
And he tips their foreheads together.
Spike exhales a mess of a breath, the quiet ping of Sam's pulse loyal and unfailing against his forehead. He closes his eyes. Their breaths mingle in the bare centimeters between them.
This time the words puncture Spike's world of relief and catharsis:
"We don't leave our people behind. Not ever. I refuse to go home without you, Spike—because it's not home without you."
Everything gets cotton balled and fuzzy once he's airlifted away from the Empty Quarter desert to a military base.
Saudi Arabia…Spike hears where he is and though it makes sense, he can't wrap his head around the geographical jump.
That helicopter ride, Sam on one side and American medic on the other, doors open and wind whipping through Ed's unzipped sweater, is one Spike never forgets.
Though it's not protocol, they don't strap him down to the backboard, not after what he's been through. Nobody touches him with any kind of restraints.
There are a lot of images he'll dream about in the coming weeks: the sight of Sam's burnished hair lit up by the rising desert sun. The medic getting a little teary eyed when he feels the abscesses in Spike's stomach.
A Canadian flag flapping when they land on the base.
Spike blinks at it for so long that the medic grows concerned, repeating his name, and shines a penlight in his eyes.
Spike is gauzed and re-stitched to high heaven. There's a babble of voices from Sam and his army buddies, about how agents found Ed before he could be flown out, the Arab man is really a wealthy business tycoon who trades with the States and so a huge FBI cover up and bribing scheme was uncovered.
Everything Almasi threatened Spike with, it was all caught on his cellphone call so he'll be charged to the fullest extent the UN can manage…and…and…
His stretcher is walked to the medical tent where he and Sam will be staying until Spike is stable enough to fly, and he watches Sam shake hands with his former colleagues. The solemn looks shared. They keep nodding at Sam with barely-concealed pride, that marrow deep honour Sam looks at the team with sometimes. It's an intense and baby blanket soft expression all at once.
Luckily, being on a military base, they are more than prepared to deal with a patient infected with anthrax. Spike is dosed with a huge round of antibiotics.
While it takes effect, he gives his statement in halting whispers to a Human Rights Tribunal investigator and an FBI agent. Their eyes are appalled, their recorders winking at Spike. He takes measured sips of cold water through a straw and not a bottle, thankfully.
Then Sam's friends all want to meet this crazy, prodigious kid and he gets to chat with an EOD tech. His eyes are wide while Spike swaps stories of land mines, of being blown up inside an office building, an SUV, a garage, the list goes on.
Finally, he drifts off to sleep. The hazy sleep of a land too hot and injuries too fresh. There is no dreaming, only primal emotions scraping with dirty fingernails at the walls of his mind.
It doesn't last long, and when Spike opens his eyes Sam is still there at the foot of his bed, looking out the tent flaps to a dark night.
Spike sits up, best he can. An oxygen mask has been slipped over his head at some point. Sam's head is slightly tilted upwards.
Spike spies it too—an endless bank of stars. He's never, not in all his life, seen so many at one time, like icing sugar spilled by a child's hand. He audibly loses his breath and it fogs the plastic.
Sam turns at the sound. "Hey, hey. You've got more drugs in your system than a Rolling Stone. Take it easy."
Spike reaches out, with desperate fingers that are aching for a taste of home, safety, and Sam can't deny him, reciprocating with warm fingers around Spike's elbow to tug him closer.
Then they sit, side by side, at the foot of Spike's cot. The wind flares, opening the tent even more. They witness the stars in silence, the desert heat, though cooled by the night, still rivaling an Italian summer. Sometimes Spike thinks about the stars, irrationally angry that they resonate and he does not get the privilege of hearing their song. Something so beautiful, so far away and yet so intimately pulsing, a mother's heartbeat.
A white blip sails horizontally across the dusted sky.
Spike points to it. "'S the…International Space Station."
His voice is muffled by the mask.
So is Sam's, more to do with how his eyes shine. The eyelash-thin film over his bright blue irises reflects a flickering array of stars and planets overhead. It takes a few minutes and costly effort from Spike, but eventually their breathing syncs up in perfect harmony.
"Spike."
Spike glances to the side at him. "Sam. Thank you."
"I wasn't about to lose you." Sam doesn't look away but the stars are on his cheeks now too. "Whether it's an ocean or the threshold of a drug house, we'd cross it for each other."
Spike squeezes their hands.
For a few minutes, it is enough. Two friends, brothers, stare up at this slice of the universe with their own planets spinning slowly, painstakingly back in orbit.
AN: ('He falls to his knees in the sand and is weeping before his next breath.' It's a lie. It's me. I'm the one crying while writing this.)
I had this whole subplot development where Spike really emdoes/em get brainwashed and the team has to hunt him down, snapping him back to himself, but I couldn't do it. It didn't feel right, for brainwashing is not the point of this story, not the thing that must be made whole in the end. It's about loyalty, trust, not that nothing will go wrong—but that when it does someone is always coming for you.
