First of all, I wanted to apologizing for taking so long updating this chapter. I had it half written, then had friends/ family visit, then 'paradise lost' aired and ever since I've had a hard time finishing this. Anyway, I tried my best, and even though I'm not entirely happy with how this chapter turned out (I'd probably never be satisfied with it), I wanted to get it posted. I hope you still enjoy it.

Jason and Trent rushed back into the room where they found Clay, who had himself basically cowered into the corner, not wanting anyone to come near him.

"What happened?" Trent asked, slowly trying to approach Clay.

"I don't know, he was doing ok and then he just snapped. Keeps saying we're not really here, that Sonny's gonna leave him, that he deserves to be left, he's making no sense." Ray answered. "Sonny tried to prove to him that we are really here and that we would never leave him behind, but he won't let us near him."

"Alright." Trent said gently, knowing they weren't going to like what he said next. "I hate to do this, but I need you all to empty the room."

"What?"

"Why?"

"No way!" They all protested.

"Listen, he's gone through almost two full days of sensory deprivation, except for maybe a few unfriendly encounters. It might not sound like a terrible thing, but from what I heard, it only takes a few short hours to start going crazy. My guess, right now, he's overwhelmed and confused."

"About what?" Sonny interrupted while not taking his eyes off of Clay.

"Basically, my guess, sensory overload. The light, the sound, touch, sight, all of it. He can't tell what's real and what's not. To him, Sonny was here and said he was going to leave him. Now, we're all here saying we're taking him home. He can't process in his mind which one is real and which one is not…"

"What do you mean he can't process it? How long will that last? Is it permanent?" Ray asked becoming concerned.

"Look guys. I don't have all the answers right now, but he's clearly overwhelmed. Just give a couple minutes alone with him to try and calm him down and get through to him." Trent began to get annoyed. Normally when he stepped into medic mode, they didn't ask questions. He understood why they were today, but he still didn't like it.

Reluctantly, they all agreed and exited the room, standing right outside the door.

Trent slowly approached Clay, who was still hugging his knees in the corner. "Hey bud." Trent said softly as he sat next to Clay.

Clay looked up at him cautiously, with tears in his eyes. "Trent?"

"Yeah buddy, it's me." Trent answered.

"I don't know what's wrong with me." Clay sobbed while looking away from Trent, embarrassed that he was crying in front of him.

"I know kid. It's ok. We're here. We're ALL here, and we aren't leaving without you. That I can promise you." Trent replied.

Clay nodded his head as the tears began to fall a little harder.

"Clay look at me. What ever you're going through, we're gonna get through it together. Ok?"

Clay once again nodded his head.

"Can you tell me what on your body hurts?" Trent asked, curious if he missed anything.

"Everything." Clay responded.

"I believe that." Trent said honestly. Based on the amount of bruising and cuts, he had to be hurting all over. "But what hurts the most?"

"My hand, my ankle, my head and my sides."

"Yeah, I bet." Trent wasn't happy about the amount of painful areas, but he was relieved that it seemed like there wasn't a more serious injury hiding out somewhere, although the possibility wasn't completely out of question. "I'm gonna give you something for the pain, okay?"

Clay was a bit hesitant, afraid it would only confuse him even more.

Trent could sense the hesitation in Clay, but before he could respond, Jason popped his head in. Trent held up a finger and mouthed "one minute."

Jason rolled his eyes and then disappeared from view.

"Listen Clay, we need to start getting ready to head out to exfil. We can take the vehicles here and travel on the path they made, but its gonna be very bumpy and painful. Let me give you something. I promise it'll be ok."

After taking a minute to decide, Clay finally accepted to take the pain meds.

"Alright. Good. I'm gonna call Jason in. He has some of the meds I want to give you. Is that ok?"

"That's fine." Clay whispered.

Trent called Jason and he immediately appeared, followed by the rest of the team. "Just Jason." Trent commented.

"What's up? He gonna be ok?" Jason asked.

"He want's pain meds for the way to exfil." Trent winked at Jason.

Jason was confused for a second. They all carried a small dosage of pain meds in their gear so why did Trent need his. Then it dawned on him that Trent wanted to double the dosage to knock the kid out. "Yeah, no problem, hear you go."

"Thanks." Trent smiled and then administered the drugs.

It wasn't long until the drugs kicked in, forcing Clay into a nice deep sleep.

Once they were sure Clay was out Jason started firing off the questions. "You think he'll be ok? Why'd you double dose him? "Is he that bad?"

"Relax Jason. I double dosed him more for us than for him. He's not fully there in his mind. The last thing we need is for him to freak out on our way to exfil or on the helicopter."

Jason didn't know how he felt about Trent's decision, but he understood it. Trent never did anything without a good reason behind it, so rather than argue about why he did it, Jason dropped the subject.

They had called the rest of the team into the room to help them carry Clay to one of the vehicles outside. On their way out Sonny asked "What about them?" Looking at the others that they had rescued.

"Blackburn has members of the local military on their way up to help with them. They should be here any minute." Jason answered.

None of the locals, including the military had been willing to step foot onto the mountain until now. It took a little convincing and proof that Yuri was in fact dead, but they eventually agreed.

As soon as they got Clay into the vehicle, the local military showed up.

"Well ain't that perfect timing." Sonny commented as Jason walked over to the leader of the group. After explaining what they found, Jason hopped into the passenger side of the vehicle and they carefully made their way to exfil.

Once they made it to their exfil locations, the on-board medics were there waiting. They carefully helped Bravo transfer Clay from the vehicle to the helicopter and then began their own evaluations of him while listening to Trent's theories.

"How long has he been out?" One of the medics asked Trent.

"Not too long ago, maybe about 45 minutes. I drugged him up just enough to knock him out until we could get him to a hospital. Seems to me like he had some pretty vivid hallucinations and was having a hard time telling the difference between what was real and what wasn't, causing him to freak out and panic. I didn't want him doing any more damage to himself. How's he looking?" Trent answered.

The medic shrugged. "He'll be alright. Basically, everything you said is the same as what we found. X-rays and scans will show anything we missed, but I don't see why he wouldn't make a full recovery."

Trent felt relieved. He had known based on his own observations that Clay would eventually be fine, but hearing it from someone who had even more of a medical background than he did made him feel a lot better. He was still a bit concerned about the psychological aspects of the situation, but he would cross that bridge once they came to it. For now, all he was concerned about were the physical injuries.

As they arrived to the base hospital, Clay was whisked away by even more doctors, leaving the team to wait around in the waiting room.

Jason looked around at his team, and became a bit concerned about both Sonny and Ray. They seemed to be taking this much harder than the rest of them. He walked over to where Ray was sitting alone on the far side of the room. "Talk to me Ray. What's running through your mind?"

Ray sighed, contemplated telling Jason the truth or not and then looked up to him. "I separated him from us Jay. I knew how dangerous that mountain was and I still sent him off alone."

"Ah shit Ray. You had to. Anyone of us would have done the same thing, Clay included. You k-" Jason started saying before Ray interrupted him.

"That's not even the worst part. The worst part was watching them take him and not being able to do a damn thing about it. We were right there, close enough to easily make the shots to take them out and we couldn't do it. Not without ruining the entire mission and putting him in even more danger." Ray was now on the verge of tears with guilt.

"Ray look at me. I would have done the same exact thing. You made all the right calls, it was just a shitty outcome, nothing you can do about it now." Jason paused for a minute. "We got him Ray. We got Yuri. He's dead. That might not have happened if they didn't take Clay."

"And that's supposed to make me feel better?" Ray started getting agitated.

"Yeah. It is supposed to make you feel better. We got Clay back too. He's going to be fine." Jason said.

"Is he Jace? Is he going to be fine? We don't know that for sure yet. I seen him after he fell, before they took him. He didn't have nearly that many cuts and bruises on him. We have no idea what he went through before we found him. I'm sure he'll be fine physically, but what about mentally? That we can't know yet and that's what concerns me."

Jason sat back, realizing the only thing that was going to make Ray feel better was seeing Clay awake and being able to talk to him. "We'll get him there Ray, we'll get him there." Until then he just had to give Ray some space. He stood up and started making his way over to his next concern.

Jason stood next to Sonny, who now stood with his back against the wall, arms crossed and dead focused on the wall in front of him. When Sonny didn't acknowledge Jason next to him, Jason nudged him with his elbow and told him to follow him down the hall.

Jason led Sonny to a small 'kitchen' room that was down the hall from the waiting room. They sat down at the small, round table and when Sonny refused to say anything, Jason decided to speak up.

"What's going on Sonny?" Jason asked.

Sonny shook his head as he tried to find his words. Jason could easily tell he was fighting back tears, something that he hardly seen with Sonny. Sonny was one of the more emotional members of the team, but he hid it well. He never cried. Instead, he turned those emotions into motivation. Seeing how Yuri was killed and the mission was complete, Sonny had nowhere to throw his emotions too. He now had to face them head on.

"Sonny?" Jason asked again.

"I don't- How could he possibly think I would EVER leave him there Jace?" He questioned as he wiped a tear from his cheek. "I would never and he knows that! He knows it!"

"Sonny, we don't know everything he went through in there. Trent said it was obvious he was hallucinating. A lot of what he said didn't make sense. I'm sure once he see's you again he'll be fine."

"I don't know about that Jace. You didn't see him. He was generally pissed off at me. Wanted nothing to do with me, didn't want to see me. That's what hurt the most, man. And then for him to say that he deserved to be left there? What did they do to him!?" This time Sonny completely broke down, no longer able to fight the tears as he kept replaying that moment over and over again in his head.

Jason had no words. He knew how close Clay and Sonny were. He knew this had to be extremely hard on Sonny. Hell, it was hard on all of them, but it was Sonny that Clay hallucinated about, so it was Sonny who Clay lashed out at.

"What if he doesn't want to see me?" Sonny asked, as he started to calm down.

"Come on Sonny, you know you're gonna be the first person he wants to see. He was confused at the time. You know-"

Before Jason could finish his sentence, there was a knock at the door and Brock popped his head in.

"Doctors here with an update on Clay, figured you guys would want to hear it." Brock said.

Sonny and Jason both jumped up out of their seats and the three of them hurried back to the waiting room.

"Alright Doc, what's the damage?" Jason asked

"We did some x-rays and ran a few other tests. As suspected, he does have a concussion. Grade 3 to be exact. He doesn't have an extensive history with head injuries so with proper rest, he should recover just fine from it. His left shoulder was dislocated so we popped it back into place. There are a few cracked ribs, but none of them broke. They will no doubt be sore for quite a bit. He has what we call a 'boxers' fracture' in his right hand. We casted it from just below his finger tips up to his elbow to keep it completely immobile while it heels. As for his ankle, he does have a bimalleolar equivalent fracture. Basically, the ligaments on both the inside and outside of his ankle are so injured that the entire ankle itself becomes unstable."

"So, what's that mean doc?" Jason asked.

"It means there's good news and bad news."

"Hit us with the good news first." Blackburn replied.

"The good news is, he'll only need surgery on the ankle. The bad news… it's a pretty complicated surgery with no room for error. We have to make sure everything is perfectly aligned. Even the slightest mis-alignment could result in early ankle arthritis which would only get worse with time."

"How early?" Sonny asked. "Immediately, weeks, months, years?"

"Difficult to say. Could be any of those. We're hopeful it won't come to that." The doctor replied.

"When will we know? How long does it take?" Jason asked.

"Well, that's the thing. We won't be doing the surgery here."

"Excuse me, what? Why not?" Jason began getting angry.

"Like I said, it's a complicated surgery, and due to the amount of swelling and bruising, the surgery becomes even more complicated."

"So what? We just wait for the swelling to go down?" Trent ask sarcastically.

"Actually, Yeah. Typically, the swelling goes does within a day or two. Just enough time for you guys to fly home and for someone who specializes in this type of surgery to take a look at it."

Jason ran a hand through his hair. The stress of the situation starting to get the best of him. "Is that ok? Will waiting add any further complications?"

"It won't. We have it heavily wrapped and casted. The only way to make it worse would be if someone physically tried."

"Ok good. That's good. What about his mental state?" That was the question everyone was most worried about.

"Unfortunately, we don't know. He is still under the effects of sedation. He had woken up right before I came to give you guys the update, but he wasn't very alert. He just kind of looked around the room and then went back to sleep."

"Can we see him?" Ray asked.

"You can for a few minutes. He needs to rest and we need to prepare him for the flight."

"Perfect, a few minutes is all we have." Blackburn spoke up sensing the protests that were about to come.

"What do you mean that's all we have?" Jason glared.

"We have a flight to prepare for. If we're all going to be on it with Clay, then we need make sure we're all ready to head out."

They knew Blackburn was right. They still had to do a quick debrief, pack up their stuff and load the plane. They were going to do whatever was necessary to be on the flight with Clay. No way were they going to let him fly home alone.

I just wanted to apologize again for such a long wait with this chapter. All inspiration had left me and each time I sat down to write I came up with nothing. Like I said, I'm still not entirely happy with how this chapter turned out but I wanted to get it posted. I promise the next chapter won't take as long. It's already mostly written. Just need to add a few more things to finish it up. Anyway, sorry again and I hope you enjoy.