Henry groaned when he hung up the phone and rubbed his hands down his face hard. His stubble was a bit more grown in than he'd prefer, and his eyes burned from lack of sleep. He wondered what was wrong with Everly, but the concern evaporated as the weight of everything else smashed into him like it did every few minutes.

Laid out on the table in front of him was a lot of paperwork. Psychiatric reports, transfer request forms, official medical recommendations… It was a lot, and he didn't know the first thing about it all. The doctors said that the drug use could've had something to do with it, or maybe other environmental factors, or maybe it was just genetics. He really hoped it wasn't the latter, considering that genetics seemed to be a gamble he wasn't ready to buy in on. Not when it came to Everly. His father hadn't had much to say about it, either. All the man was good for was family medical history and the doctors had all of that documented ages ago.

Henry sighed and wondered what the hell was going on. They still didn't have an official diagnosis, since his aunt was in and out of lucidity when she wasn't asleep or tranquilized. The doctors recommended that the family decide on an official medical proxy since she clearly was not in a state to make decisions for herself. Henry didn't want the job, but Everly was fragile and always worried them. Not fragile like easily broken, because in that sense, she was tough as nails; she was fragile along fault lines that had been shaking all her life. This was one of those, and the tectonic rumble that would follow the news might send a part of her drifting out to sea. She was fragile like a volcano, or like a bomb. They worried for her at every quake like that might be the one signaling the end.

Regardless, Henry was stressed out. He dropped his head to his hands and pressed the butts of his palms into his eyes until he saw stars.

—-

Everly didn't say anything as they took her back to Tool's place and set her down in a squeaky tattoo chair to rest. She was tired, but she wasn't sure how to let her guard down. She had never been inside of Tool's tattoo shop, though she had seen it in passing and she was pretty sure that the work Henry had done when he turned twenty-one had been by Tool. She felt empty. Hollow. Every noise made her flinch but she tried to suppress it so she wouldn't draw over more attention than she already had. If that guy was watching like she figured he was, then he would've seen her leave with all those men. She had a sick feeling that he wouldn't like it.

Barney crossed his arms and looked down at her. She didn't notice him standing beside her. Her eyes were glazed over and bloodshot, her skin pale and sickly. She looked downright unwell.

"Hey," he said, and she snapped back to life and curled in on herself, looking up at him. "Wanna tell us about this guy you're so afraid of?"

She swallowed. She really didn't want to talk about it.

"It's nothin'," she said hoarsely.

"No, it isn't," Barney said. "Let's make a deal. If you're honest with me, I'll be honest with you."

"I just-" she started, dropping her head to her hands. "I don't want to."

Barney sighed. She needed to sleep if they were gonna get anything coherent out of her.

"Alright," he said, turning away from her and back towards Tool and Lee. Gunner was already rooting through the fridge for something to drink.

"What's the verdict?" Lee asked, leaning back against the table with his arms crossed.

"Take her upstairs, Lee," Barney said, tossing his thumb over his shoulder. "If we're gonna get anywhere with this, she needs to not be out of her mind with exhaustion."

Lee frowned but pushed himself up regardless. The rooms in Tool's place were either filled with random junk or stripped clean except for the guest room Lee was currently inhabiting. He figured he could sleep on the couch or something.

Everly tensed when she felt Lee get near her. He looked down at her, all stress and tension, and sighed. She looked vulnerable. He had the urge to protect her, keep her safe. He leaned down and gave her shoulder a shove.

"Hey," he said gently, tugging her legs up. "I'm gonna bring you to a bed."

Everly blinked, absently tossing her arms over his shoulders. She felt a warmth zap through her chest and she flushed, leaving her head down and out of his line of vision.

He nodded towards Tool and Barney as he headed for the stairs, her body folded comfortably in his arms. She was small, hardly weighing him down as he trudged up the stairs. She twitched and shuddered against him, the call of sleep and exhaustion, and he held on just a little bit tighter. He had no idea what the story was for Everly, but he knew that nobody deserved to be so afraid in the place they called home.

He shouldered open the door to his room and was glad it was mostly clean. The bedding was strewn about and he rested her down on his sheets, her head flopping onto his pillow. She held onto him, his shirt balled in her fists, and shook her head.

"What is it?" He asked, taking both of her wrists and gently tugging them away. He sat beside her on the bed and pulled up his blanket, draping it over her.

"I'm so scared," she said, and she sounded broken.

"It's alright, nothing bad will happen here, trust me," he said. He hesitated as she looked up at him, uneasy, and then settled his hand on her arm. He nodded, trying to offer her some type of reassurance that could break through the veil of her fear and exhaustion.

She gripped his wrist, spindly fingers wrapping around bone and pressing into his pulse. She focused on the calming beat of his blood through his skin. He waited patiently, and a little awkwardly, for her to continue.

"I don't know him," she said, her voice weak and frail. "I don't know what he wants from me."

Lee let out a breath, a bit more confused and a lot more concerned. He rubbed a circle along her skin with his thumb.

"It's alright," he said. "We got you. He won't get through us. You need to sleep."

She swallowed. She was terrified to let herself rest, but Lee was pulling away from her and tucked the blanket up to her chin. He offered her a kind smile, the slightest bit lackluster, and turned away. The door didn't click all the way closed, and it rattled against the frame and creaked open a few inches. She looked up a the ceiling and realized she was breathing in the smell of Lee. This was his bed. His room.

She could only keep her eyes closed for about a minute at a time before she would freak out and jerk back awake.

—-

Lee collapsed into a chair and shook his head. He felt like they were walking into some big mess that they should've stayed out of. There was that, and then there was the feeling he got when he was looking at Everly, vulnerable and tired and afraid. It made him angry. He didn't want to feel anything anymore. He wished he could just be stone cold, soulless, broken; the way Tool talked about being, though he hid well behind his misery. Lee figured being numb had to be better than being heartbroken. Being empty had to be better than being so full that you were bursting at the seams with pain.

"Get anything else out of her?" Barney asked, dropping himself in the chair across from Lee.

"Just that she doesn't know who he is," he said.

"That's helpful," Barney said, settling back in his chair and drumming his fingers against its top. "I gave the boys a ring. Figured we can get this sorted faster with more brain power."

"I don't know," Lee said, unconvinced. "I don't know if we should be involved."

Barney scoffed and rolled his eyes. Gunner dropped himself beside him and looked between the both of them, an absent look on his face.

"You don't mean that," Barney said.

"Sure I do."

"You're just cranky," Barney said. "You got your panties in a twist because you caught your girlfriend-"

"Hey," Lee said, teeth bared and face brightening with anger. "You don't get to talk about it."

"Bullshit, Lee," Barney spat, holding out his hands incredulously. "Of course I get to talk about it. I told you from the beginning, she wasn't your type-"

"Oh, piss off with that, Barn," Lee said, waving him off and rolling his eyes. "I don't give a flying fuck about any I-told-you-so shit."

"Well, you should, because we were right," Barney said, urging Lee to meet his eyes. "She was no good for you, Lee."

"She was gonna be my fuckin' wife," Lee snapped, leaning over the table with a bang and pointing his finger at Barney's chest. "What the hell do you know about that?"

"Nothin'," Barney said, "but I know a thing or two about getting cheated on, and I know a thing or two about feelings, believe it or not."

"So what do you want me to do, turn it off?" Lee asked, brows knotted in the center of his forehead. "Walk away, forget that she's still living in my goddamn house, probably fucking that good-for-nothing degenerate while the ring that I gave her wastes away in some drawer? That is, if she hasn't already sold it-"

"No, Lee, work the hell through it," Barney said, not moving from his seat despite Lee's posturing. "Did you ever really love her?"

"Oh, here we go again," Lee almost laughed, pushing himself away from the table. "Love ain't this high and mighty shit you make it out to be. It's just two people deciding to stick together. That's all it is."

"Well fine then," Barney said. "She decided not to stick with you."

"That was not a mutual decision," Lee said.

"Then just accept that you're better off without her."

"We were gonna be married! Have kids, for Christ's sake," Lee yelped, his face red and boiling. Gunner looked between the both of them and at Tool, who as walking back into the room with his hands shoved in his pockets and his brows up to his hairline.

"Real American dream, there," Barney teased.

"And she threw it all away! And I walk in there, into my bedroom, and some asshole's got his head buried between her legs and she stumbles out after me wrapped in my sheets begging me to wait, to listen-"

The guys were quiet. This was more than they'd gotten since Lee had started crashing upstairs.

"And I'm tired of listening! All I wanted was the bare minimum, something good to come home to. And she was the best I deserved."

"That's not true, brother," Tool said solemnly. "Ain't nobody deserves to be treated that way."

"Look at what we do," Lee said, running his hands over his head and down his cheeks, over his stubble. "You really wanna stand there and tell me we deserve to be treated any better than that? After Vilena, how many people did we kill there, Barney? And what about Billy the Kid and his poor girlfriend-"

"Don't," Barney said heavily, finally tearing his eyes away from Lee.

"This is the life we deserve," Lee said, his voice straining in his dried out throat. "'Cuz we're shit people. We kill people for money, it's all we know how to do, all we're good at. I was lying to myself saying I was worth it, worth Lacy marrying me and only me, worth a child or a family. It was all a lie."

Barney sucked in his cheeks and shook his head.

"And you all let me believe it, fine," Lee huffed, hands clenched into tight fists. "Fine. Let me run around talking about 'a good place to raise a family.' The best place to raise a family is a couple hundred miles in either direction away from me. From us. From what we are and what we do."

Gunner cleared his throat and shifted in his seat.

"So, yeah, of course I don't think we should get involved. It ain't our damn business whatever she got up to that earned her a fuckin' stalker. It certainly ain't our damn business to protect her, or kill that guy."

Toll, Caesar, and Doc were wandering in then, the juniors in tow behind them with galgo coming up the rear. They all stopped and hesitated, glancing around the room, the tension hot and palpable.

"It's not our goddamn business what happens to anybody except ourselves. It shouldn't matter to us who's gonna die or not. Least of all some chick," Lee finished.

Doc looked back at Caesar and Toll and they shrugged. Hell of a time to walk in.

Barney stood up, angry at Lee but mostly at himself because he didn't think Lee's point was sorely missed at all. He wanted to believe that Lee was wrong, but his gut wasn't quite there, and that pissed him off. He balled up his hands and felt the leather around his thumb squeak and rub. He turned a glance on Gunner, who was looking up the staircase.

Lee caught him looking and turned his attention up as well.

Everly stood there at the railing, her mouth agape and hands trembling at her chest. She was closed off, protecting herself. He wondered why she wasn't asleep, and then he felt the scratching in his throat and realized that he had been yelling, so if she had finally been sleeping, he surely would have woken her up.

None of the men said anything, and after a second she turned and scrambled back towards Lee's bedroom. He heard the door slam hard and rattle on the hinges. Rickety old thing. He dropped his head and let it hang, his heart rate finally slowing.

"Um, if I may…" Galgo started, squeezing by Doc and Caesar. "Who was that?"

Barney looked over at him, his jaw tight, and then turned away.

Tool nodded to himself and looked up at the staircase, wondering if he was the best choice to go check on her. Probably wouldn't do a whole lot depending on what she heard, and he wasn't even sure he was the guy for the job to begin with. Hell, he didn't have a family for the very reasons Lee just said. He didn't deserve one. Didn't need to bring anybody into this shitty world he lived in. Not for lack of trying, though. It's hard to convince yourself that you deserve something when it's not a thing you ever understood to begin with. The Expendables were family enough, as far as he was concerned. But he didn't think he'd cry at any of their funerals. He'd lost a lot of friends over the years, so death wasn't much more to him than a period at the end of a sentence.

"Did I say something wrong?" Galgo asked, looking back at Toll. He shrugged.

Caesar had a family. They all knew that. He was a good dad and a good husband to boot, and they all knew that he deserved every good thing that came his way. If Lee were in his shoes, they'd be saying the same about him. They agreed that he didn't deserve Lacy. Not because she was too good for him, but because she was not nearly good enough. Lee wore his heart on his sleeve and handed it over to people without question. Lacy couldn't be trusted with anyone's heart, not even her own.

—-

Everly was leaning against the closed door and trying to stop the world from spinning. Dying? Stalker?

Kill that guy?

She shuddered and felt suddenly nauseous. In just a few days everything had stopped making sense. She gripped her stomach and lurched forward, grabbing the edge of the bed to steady herself as the world spun. She started crying because she was so tired, like a child that skipped a nap. She cried for sleep but didn't want to close her eyes.

She wondered if she even really cared about what might happen to her. Was she even afraid of dying, or was she afraid that dying might be painful? Was she afraid of the build up or the outcome? She didn't know or have the brain power to figure it out. She felt her stomach cramp and tense and her knees wobbled, buckling beneath her.

She braced herself against the bed and drew in long, drawn out breaths that caught in her throat with broken sobs. Her hands were trembling furiously. She didn't want to be sick. She didn't want to be afraid. She didn't want to be in this situation. Why couldn't she just go back in time and start over? Redo whatever it was that had put her in this position to begin with?

After a few more seconds the nausea didn't pass. She clamped a hand over her mouth and fumbled for the door, yanking it open and running headfirst right into Toll's chest. He grabbed her by the elbows with a grunt, taken aback.

"Woah, woah," he said. "Where's the fire?"

She yanked herself free of his grasp and tried a few doors before she sunk to the ground in front of a toilet and vomited up what little there was in her stomach. It was mostly acid, so it burned and brought even more tears to her eyes.

Toll hurried in after her with a grimace and reached down to gingerly pull her hair back and out of her face. She was clinging to the toilet in front of her, the stale lighting bringing out her pasty, bluish skin. Her entire body convulsed from the force and she sunk further down onto the floor. She figured she could just stay there. It was nice and cool. Closed off. Safe.

"Are you okay?" Toll asked, concerned, snapping her back to reality.

She flinched and wiped the back of her hand along her lips, and then she was embarrassed again. She was proper and polite, or at least that was how she was raised to be, and under the scrutinizing gaze of Toll she felt very much lost. He knelt down in front of her and opened the cabinet beside him, yanking out a clean rag and shaking it before reaching over and wiping it along her lips. She pressed a kind smile to her cheeks and took it from him, covering as much of her face as she could.

"You should drink," he said softly. "It'll do you wonders."

She nodded, only half-listening. The rag smelled like dust and something woodsy. Maybe pine.

"And by the way," he said, trying to force his own timid smile, "Lee- I don't know what you heard, but… He doesn't mean anything by it. He's been grumpy lately."

Everly thought back to the ruckus that had scared her out of her room. She'd heard most of it, about how Lee didn't think he deserved a family and about how nothing that was going on with Everly was their business. And maybe he was right about that. She already felt like enough of a burden to begin with.

Another wave of nausea overcame her and she twitched forward again, emptying her stomach into the toilet. Toll frowned. At this rate they'd have to hook her up to IV fluids.

"It's alright," he said, leaning back against the wall and daring to run the tips of his fingers down her back. He remembered it as something his mother would do for him when he wasn't feeling well. She tensed for a moment, but once his touch was no longer foreign, she relaxed with a sigh.

"I don't know what to do," she said, her voice broken.

"Don't worry about it right now. Take care of yourself."

"It's not worth it," she said, dropping herself back and looking down to the floor. She couldn't meet his eyes, but she felt them on her. He had a soft glare, more open than the others- kind. Understanding.

"Taking care of yourself?" He asked.

She didn't answer. Instead, she weakly pulled herself up to her feet and gripped the side of the sink. The mirror was smeared and dusty but it was enough for her to realize that she didn't recognize who she was. She ran the water and palmed it into her mouth to rinse away the vile taste.

Toll stood up behind her and shifted out to give her a bit more room, arms still ready to catch her if she fell. After a second she turned the water off and turned to leave, but her feet stuck to the ground and she lurched forward. He caught her.

"Woah, woah," he said, bending down and lifting her up. "Alright. To bed."

He pulled her out into the hallway and saw Lee looking into his room. He turned and saw Toll, Everly draped in his arms.

"She alright?" Lee asked, clearing his throat.

"Got sick," he said, taking a breath and heading towards Lee's room. He pushed passed him and towards the bed, laying her gently down on the pillow and pulling the covers over her body.

"I, uh," Lee started, motioning to the figure in the bed.

"Right," Toll said, nodding and turning to go. "I'll be downstairs."

Lee grunted his assent and settled himself down on the edge of the bed. Everly stirred. Of course she wasn't asleep.

"I'm sorry you had to hear that," Lee said. "I brought you these if you want them. Sleeping pills. Work wonders for me." They rattled as he placed them on the nightstand.

She swallowed and forced her eyes open slightly. He was blurred by the groggy ebb of her eyelashes at the top of her vision, but she could see that he was watching her.

"I'll be out on the couch if you need anything. Just call out."

He gave her arm a squeeze and she could tell that he felt bad. She figured that if she ever felt well-rested again, she'd deal with it then. If she could even remember it. She was having a hard time putting two and two together into four at the moment, and her vision seemed to be doubled or tripled. She pressed her eyes shut and listened as the door creaked while Lee left.

Part of her wished he wouldn't go. It wasn't necessarily him that she wanted, just the presence of somebody she knew was not the hooded man. Somebody to watch over her that she had put there, that she had asked, that she was in control of.

She nearly laughed at the thought. Her, in control of anything? Life was just short of a giant game and nobody was ever in control. Least of all Everly, who felt like she'd stumbled into humanity by some kind of horrible accident. She never belonged in Georgia, and not in New Orleans where she'd spent most of her time either. She especially did not belong in Florida, which she knew from the only few short trips she had ever taken there. She didn't fit quite right anywhere she had ever been.

But she fit in Lee's bed, she figured. Her head fit onto his pillow pretty comfortably. Her body disappeared under his blankets. She didn't mind the scent of him around her, either. She let out a sigh.

She didn't think she'd get a good nights sleep, but maybe she'd manage an hour or two. Lord knows she needed it.