'We were born to try,
To see each other through.
To know and love ourselves and others well
Is the most difficult and meaningful
Work we'll ever do.'

"Nine" ~ Sleeping At Last

That first week after the dramatic rescue doesn't feel real.

It happens in technicolour, there to touch, to hold, to hear, to be splattered by, to believe in—but somehow even it is not enough to quell the sensation that started this whole epic in the first place:

The zapping fire inside Greg's belly, birthed by some preternatural instinct, continues to melt him from the inside out.

He can't figure out why, no matter how much he tries.

The Parker house transforms into Union Station. At any given moment, there are at least two people bustling around who don't technically live here. Some days he wakes and Sophie is already there, a chipper good morning offered along with a mug of coffee.

Whether it's Jules and Sam with yet another casserole or Wordy and the girls providing noisy cheer (usually in the form of yet more homemade playdough) or Winnie visiting Spike or Dean curled up next to his brother while reading to him from a dog eared Agatha Christie novel, Greg can always count on a nimbus cloud of voices to warm the air when he gets home from work. They're there when he wakes, chasing him into sleep, always someone present to eat with during meal times.

Greg took a few days off to be there, just to sit with a weak, doped Spike in his shivering on the living room couch and hold him close after so long without being able to do it, but Spike and Ed are handling this much better than he ever expected.

Physically, there's still a long way to go and both are on leave until doctors clear them. Ed can barely keep his eyes open some days, lights dimmed all through the Lane house. Spike still needs that oxygen tank once in a while, if allergens bother his lungs or someone's cooking steams up the kitchen. Neither one can stay on their feet for very long.

Psychologically, they seem fine.

None of the textbook symptoms of emotional stress or co-dependency that Greg is looking for pop up. Both men are tired, with some difficulty falling asleep—too many bad memories about waking up without each other, alone—but otherwise mellow and easy going.

So when Ed shows up for the first time in almost ten days, thick sunglasses protecting his sensitive eyes, Greg just rolls with it. Ed still isn't allowed to drive so Clark trundles in right after him, playing chauffeur.

The team doesn't even knock anymore. They know they're family, to just call a greeting and come in.

Sophie and Clark are over almost every day, and Greg has visited Ed at home, sleeping off the concussion, so he's pleased to see him with more colour, rosy and sharp eyed at the door.

"Eddie." Greg hugs him, because he can and he'll never take it for granted again, before ushering him inside. "Want some chocolate tort? Shelley just took it out of the oven."

"Sounds good."

Greg leans in with a conspiratorial look. "You'd better get some before Dean. He eats more than Marina and I put together lately."

"Actually…" Ed's hands are in his pockets, but the fabric undulates with restless fingers. He takes off the glasses. "Since I've been cleared for light exercise, I wondered if you need help working on all those leaves."

Greg blinks at him, not getting it. "Leaves?"

"In your backyard. They're taking over."

A very eloquent thought blossoms on Greg's tongue, a therapist's answer to the slate cloud looming in Ed's equally grey eyes. But then Ed sighs, a long, distant sound like a buoy's clanging over an empty sea, and Greg just nods.

"Okay," he says. "Let's do it."

For an hour or so, Ed and Greg rake at the leaves while Sadie tumbles around in them. Sam stands off to one side, taking pictures of his daughter while teaching Lilly how to dribble a soccer ball.

"No Spike around today?" Ed asks.

Greg smiles, faint. It grows wider when Sadie flings herself, best she can since she's not walking yet, onto their newly made pile. "Winnie drove him to his latest doctor's appointment. Three hours ago."

Ed smiles too. "Spur of the moment date night?"

"Probably."

Greg has to use his cane to shuffle to one spot, set it down, and then rake the surrounding perimeter. Ed's doing most of the work, so Greg stops and observes for a moment.

"Doing okay, Eddie?"

It's the same question, asked every day since they got home. Ed hasn't tired of it, which is very out of character.

Backing this up, Ed just shrugs a little. "At home I was starting to feel a bit…"

"Stir crazy?"

"I was going to say helpless, but sure. That too." When Ed stops, hands on his own rake, he does so to meet Greg right in the eye. Greg's stomach flip flops, knowing that he has to stay calm to not spook Ed and that stripped down expression. "I didn't live through what Spike did. I was unconscious for over half of our kidnapping experience and the only thing I struggle with is not being able to protect him. No magical band aids in my kit to fix poison."

Even a child's giggling is not enough to banish the dark look in Ed's eye.

Greg feels a pain inside his own chest, those gossamer shapes tangled and frayed. His voice is wafer thin. "Helplessness."

Ed gazes off into the gathering dusk, the quiet street. The natural fence of maple trees. The sound of Jules and Wordy's laughter through the kitchen window.

Like the reverse G-forces of a nose diving plane, Greg senses Ed isn't seeing any of it, if only for this one, breathless minute.

Sam feels something in the air too, even turned around. He glances over his shoulder at them with a frown.

"I can't imagine what that felt like," says Greg, in nearly a whisper to spare Lilly standing only ten feet away. "Huddled in the woods, being hunted, with only each other for support. I'm so sorry for what happened, Ed. So sorry."

Ed shakes his head, but it's an absent thing.

With a nod at Greg, Sam picks up Sadie and heads back inside. Lilly trails after him, hand in the man's sleeve. "Come on, Lilly! I bet Jules set aside a piece of that tort for us…"

Both men are quiet while listening to the porch door slide shut. Greg steps closer, hand on Ed's arm. "Are you having nightmares or flashbacks?"

Ed shakes his head again, this time with more intention. "Not at all. My head hurts too much for dreaming. Not to mention the painkillers they have me on—I haven't slept so much at one time in my life."

Instead of elaborating on that, Ed digs out his phone and scrolls through texts. Greg resists the urge to read over his shoulder.

He doesn't have to, as it turns out. Ed flips the screen around once he finds what he wants:

'You okay?'

It's not a text from Ed to anyone, especially since it's time stamped at two am a few days ago.

It's from Spike.

And the subtext in that isn't casual. It isn't an emotional 'okay.' It's an are you still alive and not going to die on me if I turn around 'okay.'

Ed thumbs down, shows another one. 'You awake? Sorry, just wanted to check.'

"His room is silent at night," says Greg in shock. "I assumed he's like you, dead to the world—he needs it if his body is to keep cooperating with the antibiotics. Has he done this every night?"

"Almost." Ed's lips tighten in an anxious expression. "He's a miracle, Greg. We both are, I suppose, when you stack it all up. Statistics say he shouldn't have survived the anthrax poisoning."

That one is a curve ball for a second. Greg replies after a beat. "I know, Ed. I read the UN's final report too. Not to mention the news, which has loved you both for ten days straight. Especially now that they've caught Almasi, when he tried to cross the Saudi border yesterday. He can't hurt you or Spike ever again."

Ed's eyes match his lips now. Hard, fretting, with serrated whorls of something cold. "Yet even more statistics say Sam's hail Mary rescue mission to an uninhabited desert was impossible."

"But it worked," says Greg, trying to banish something of the weighted, wild look on Ed's face. "It worked and you're both okay. Spike is…he's pulling into the driveway with Winnie right now, see? Not dead."

"I know," says Ed this time, soft and muted. "And I'm going to make sure he stays that way."

Greg's heart positively wrings with aching sympathy at Ed's words. The fire inside him reaches a fever pitch, almost rivaling the painful sensation of when he watched Spike being taken again and flown away.

"You sound just like Hartford, Ed, and as such I think you're missing the point."

Ed's eyes hone in surprise.

Some of Greg's own vehemence seeps through when he musters every last inch of the silver thread inside his chest and lets it wrap around his vocal chords—

"We're going to make sure he, and you, stay that way. All of us."