Author's Note: It's late. I should have more of a note than just 'I needed to post this before I screamed at it and set fire to the computer' but...it sums up my writing lately pretty well. As always, much thanks to blazeofobscurity and gaelicspirit for their feedback and unending patience with me as I screamed into the void about this chapter. Hypthermia treatment and recovery is largely bullshitted because I refused to delete things when it took me so long to get it on to paper in the first place.

"Bar garded!" one of them snarled, hefting the muzzle of his rifle at the cage bars.

"Get back," Nuzo translated.

Rick's kneejerk reaction was to do the opposite, but Nuzo gave a quick, subtle shake of his head, signaling him to back off.

There wasn't a lot of room for them to move away from the door, shuffling on their knees since the ceiling was too low to stand, but the three of them shuffled back as far as they could go, hands held up in front of them to prove they weren't going to try anything.

Even if all Rick really wanted to do was rush the door, slam it into the guy's face and beat him to death before his body had a chance to hit the ground.

The guard scowled at TC, the rifle pointed directly at the big man's chest. "Shomä rä akhtär mey-deham," he snarled, flicking the safety to semi-auto.

"Pretty sure that was a warning just for you," Nuzo muttered. "Guess you got yourself a reputation."

TC hitched his hands a little higher.

The guard fumbled with the lock, taking agonizing seconds to do it one handed and Rick bit his lip to keep from offering to help because every second he wasted was another second Thomas didn't have.

He refused to believe it was too late. Because it couldn't be.

Not for Thomas.

Not for them.

You bleed, I bleed.

This would be a fucking hemorrhage.

They threw a still and unmoving Magnum into the cage, his body collapsing in a boneless heap even as they slammed the door shut behind him, locking it back in place.

"Kafir," the guard cursed, spitting at the floor before turning and leaving with his friend. The outer cell door slammed shut with a final clang, and before the echo faded, they were scrambling for Thomas.

"Is he breathing?" Rick demanded, rolling Thomas onto his back and putting an ear to his chest. "Got a pulse – slow, but it's there. Nuz?"

The chief held his hand over Thomas's mouth and nose for a brief second. "We got a live one."

"He's freezing," Rick commented, trying to remember what the first aid was for hypothermia. "What the hell did they do, dunk him in ice water?"

TC shook his head. "Nah, man, he's still shivering, it's just…really low. This is stage two hypothermia – prolonged exposure to the cold and wet. We can do this."

"So?" Rick prompted. Now what?

"Gotta get him warm and dry," TC said. "Get him out of his clothes."

"And replace them with what," Rick snarled. "Good thoughts? We don't have anything to spare, they took the rest of our uniforms, and this ain't exactly the Hilton where you can just request more blankets!"

TC ignored him, glancing around the small cage. "No. But we got neighbors."

In the weeks they'd been stuck in their tiny cells, they'd managed to at least learn a little about their fellow prisoners. Most were foreign aid workers caught helping the victims of the Taliban. Some were journalists that the Taliban captured for ransom money, or to denounce their home country's involvement with the Middle East.

Nobody else was a soldier, American or otherwise.

They didn't share the same spoken language, but they could generally get a point across from one to another, and while they weren't friends, it was hard not to bond over shared suffering. The language barrier had a little overlap – most European prisoners had English as a second language or could guess with the similarities between romance languages. If one didn't know what the other was saying, someone else generally did and passed the message along. Many of them held hope that now, with American soldiers here, they would be found and taken home. Americans always came for their own.

It was a dull and faded hope, but not quite dead yet.

Rick looked back at the other cages, filled with more human misery. "Anything you have to spare, give it here!"

One of the journalists, a Frenchman who never gave his name that Rick was aware of pulled off his outer shirt, shoving it through the bars to the man in the cage next to him, urging him to pass it along. Another man on the other side of the fire pit pulled off his trousers, revealing long johns underneath. He wadded the pants up into a ball and tossed it as far as he could across the open floor where TC could just reach it if he stretched.

"Here," Nuzo said, trying to wrestle Thomas's dead weight upright enough to pull his shirt up over his head. "Keep him upright. TC, give me the shirt."

The pilot handed it over without question, helping Nuzo fish Magnum's arms through the sleeves while Rick tried to keep him sitting up. The pants were slightly more difficult, but that was because they were too big, catching on everything and anything.

Nuzo laughed abruptly, shaking his head even as the other two stared at him like he'd lost his damn mind. "Jesus. It's like trying to wrestle Jake into his pajamas."

"At least Jake is small enough you can just pick him up," TC quipped, forcing levity into the dangerous situation – no medical supplies meant they were severely limited what they could do for hypothermia this severe.

"See if you can wake him," the Australian in the next cell said. "You don't want him to slide into a coma."

"Trying," Rick ground out. "Anyone got anything close to a blanket? Towel? More loose clothing?"

There was chatter amongst the prisoners as Nuzo cradled Thomas's head, probing at one of the nastier gashes on the side of his head. "Good news and bad – I think he's literally out cold from the head injury, not the hypothermia. If he's only just stopped shivering, we might only be in the moderate range instead of severe, which means active external rewarming. Try to get his circulation going. TC – grab him. Hold him close for body heat, 'cause we ain't got nothing else."

Rick tried not to think about how this could be for nothing. Or how Thomas already looked dead and was colder than a corpse had any right to be, but tried to remind himself none of them looked particularly hale or hearty at the moment and they were still alive. Anything was possible while they were still alive.

And so help him, if he had to beat the Grim Reaper with his own goddamn scythe to keep him at bay, he would.

Miracles of miracles, someone had a blanket – rough, filthy and filled with holes. Rag might've been a more accurate description, but it didn't matter. It was dry and most importantly, warm. And all they had.

"First aid was a while ago – aren't we supposed to be trying to rub circulation back?" TC asked.

Nuzo shook his head. "That can stress the heart and lungs. Ideally, we would have things lot hot water bottles and warm, sweet drinks but…" he didn't finish the sentence. "This is what we got, and we've made do with worse. Thomas will be fine."

Thomas, still unconscious and looking like Death warmed over – chilled over? – wrapped in a flimsy blanket, clothes that didn't fit and hugged against TC's broad chest, didn't help convince Rick.

"Now what?" he asked, desperate for something, anything else he could do.

Nuzo sighed, sitting back on his heels and rubbing a tired hand over his face, smearing the grime across his cheeks and nose. "Nothing else for us to do but wait. Thomas's turn now."

Rick lay flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling of the cage. If one didn't know him, he would be the picture of relaxed – his head pillowed on one arm, legs crossed, tossing a rock to himself as he hummed 80's ballads under his breath.

But TC and Nuzo did know him. Could see the tension in his shoulders, the precise, aggressive flick of his wrist as he tossed the rock up in the air only to snatch it with all the grace of a hawk honing in on dinner, the way his free hand clenched in a fist tight enough they could see the tendons standing out against his forearm.

Waiting was usually Rick's strong point. Had to be, as a sniper. Long hours in the heat and the cold, unmoving and just waiting for the moment to act. But he wasn't waiting on one of his best friends to wake up and say something more cohesive than delirious mutterings in a mishmash of languages that no one understood.

Nuzo said it was a good sign he was warming up and eventually would wake up and actually be coherent enough to recognize them, but Rick wasn't sold.

This was almost worse than not knowing where Thomas was, or what was happening to him. Because now they knew, and the result was the same: they could do nothing but sit and wait for him to return.

"You know, if I ever come across my recruiter, I'm kicking him so hard in the balls, his grandchildren are gonna feel it," he grumbled.

"Yeah?" TC said. He was too tall to lay down in the cramped cage – instead he dozed propped against the corner with Nuzo on the other side of the bars and Thomas sandwiched in between them, buried under layers of borrowed and stolen gear to share body heat.

"'Join the Marines', he said," Rick drawled. "'See the world,' he said." He paused with his rock in his fist, cocking his head to the side. "Now here I am, stuck in a dog kennel underground, smelling of death and finding out rickets is apparently still a thing in the modern world, wondering if I still have a tan, or it's just layers of dirt permanently rubbed into my skin."

"Pretty sure this was in the recruiting pamphlet," TC pointed out, not cracking an eye.

"I know it was in the Navy's," Nuzo piped in.

"I should have stayed in organized crime," Rick complained. He tossed the rock up a few more times. "At least I would've been in some place warm. Some place tropical. Lots of scantily clad women."

He heard someone cough to his right and craned his neck to peer over at the adjoining cage. The man was trying to cover up a laugh and failing miserably – Rick was pretty sure he was a French journalist currently awaiting ransom from his government.

"Yeah, that's right. Lots of women. A yard of fabric between them. And oh, the beach. God, remember the beach?" Rick let his head fall back. "Warm sand, warm surf, cold beers between friends…I'd even take a hungry shark at this point. Least the sharks have the decency to only bite you once when they realize you taste like garbage."

TC chuckled. "You know damn well black people don't swim."

"Who says swimming needs to be involved? You can actually sit out in daylight for more than eight seconds without burning to a crisp. Sun bathe. Attract all the honeys with that strong, silent shit you got going on. I'd have a club, I could run up my own tab…." Rick stretched his hands out through the bars, the only way he was able to stretch out completely flat. "Oh yeah. Shoulda been a mob boss."

"You weren't really in crime, were you?" Nuzo asked, poking his head around TC's shoulder. "They would've never let you in."

Rick popped back up, grinning broadly. "Hell, yeah, I was. My uncle ran the crime scene over the entirety of the Big Island. Spent every summer with him for like 10 years, and then when mom and pop's got divorced, I went to stay with him for the rest of high school. And we all know military intelligence is an oxymoron. Besides. After they took a look at my range scores, they were tripping over themselves to get me to sign on that dotted line."

"So, how'd you wind up in the Marines, Capone?" Nuzo challenged.

Rick smirked, dropping his head back. "My uncle made me join. Wanna know the hilarious logic behind it? Come on, ask me. You'll laugh. It's great."

TC and Nuzo shared a look.

"What's that?"

"He told me it was to keep me out of trouble."

Nuzo busted out laughing, but TC managed to smother it, only smirking and shaking his head.

"Oh, you think I'm joking? When I get out of here, I'm going to rub this in his smug face." Rick abruptly pitched his voice three octaves lower. "Join the Marines, boy. They'll keep you out of trouble. They'll keep you on the straight and narrow. Structure will do you good, son." And then further in his normal voice, "Oh yeah. I mean, he's technically not wrong – not a whole lot I can manage here. In a cage that's five by eight. No yard time. I don't think I'm going to be able to go to a pet store after this without freeing every goddam cockapoo or shitpoo that's in there."

"What the fuck is a shitpoo?" TC demanded.

"Those yappy little designer mutts that are a cross between a Shih tzu and a poodle," Rick explained, waving his hand dismissively. "Stay out of trouble my ass. When I get out of here –"

"What makes you think you're going to escape?"

Rick shot a dirty look at the reporter. "Spite. Rage and spite. I'm not gonna die here because I'm too pissed off. And even if I do wind up dead, I'm not following some bright light. I'm staying here to fucking haunt their asses. I'd be a regular goddamn poltergeist. We're talking full monty – possession, throwing shit, starting fires, whispering shit in their ears when they try to take a piss…I'd be that asshole that would wait until they were standing next to each other, too. Because that is my level of petty."

The man laughed darkly. "If you were going to escape, why haven't you done it yet?"

Rick turned away again, returning to flip the rock into the air, pointedly ignoring the man. "Maybe we're just waiting for an opportune moment."

Magnum fidgeted under his blanket, twisting suddenly in his sleep, tucking his head until his chin almost touched his chest, his unpinned arm coming up to cover his head as his knees pulled up, caught in the middle of a nightmare.

"No sè nada," he protested, slurred. "No conozco nadie."

"Easy, brother," TC soothed, dropping his large hand onto Magnum's hunched shoulder like he had a dozen times in the last few hours. Instead of stilling beneath the comforting hand, Magnum exploded into motion – launching himself backwards and out from underneath TC's grip with such force he knocked Nuzo into the wall, momentarily stunning the older SEAL as he stumbled to his knees faster than one would've thought possible even for a SEAL, about to lurch to his feet in the too short cell when Rick reach up and grabbed for the hem of his shirt, yanking him back down before he could bash his head on the top bars and knock himself back out.

Magnum hit the dirt, hard and off balance on only one knee, reeling backwards until his back hit the cave wall, one arm out for balance as he grabbed wildly, nail-less fingers tangling in the loose fabric of Rick's shirt as he brought up his other arm, prepared to strike at his perceived attacker.

"Hey, hey, same side, Thomas!" Rick protested, holding his free hand up, palm out in a gesture of surrender.

Thomas looked…well, like Not-Thomas. The lieutenant always had the air of someone who was more suited for board shorts and beaches than camouflage and combat zones, smiling even after narrowly avoiding getting killed, literally rolling with punches and managing to laugh good-naturedly in the face of death.

This was not Thomas.

This was something sharp edged with teeth and claws to match, his dark eyes almost black in the dim cave light and hollowed out from dark bruising.

This was something wild and wary.

"Tommy, focus – look at me," Rick ordered, even as Thomas's gaze roved restlessly over the small cage. He snapped his fingers and was rewarded with Thomas's attention. Even if Thomas still didn't seem to recognize him. "Feel this?" he pushed lightly against Thomas's chest, rocking the younger man back slightly. "Yeah? We're real. We're here. How 'bout you?"

Thomas blinked owlishly, and Rick could see the gears start to turn – he wasn't even sure if he could classify Thomas as actually being awake yet, but it was better than the fight or flight from seconds early.

Thomas's grip tightened on Rick's shirt.

"Rick?"

It lacked the confidence of a truly coherent mind, but it was the first time Thomas recognized anyone since being returned.

"Yeah, buddy. Me. Us. All of us." Rick offered a shadow of his normal smirk, even if it felt alien and wrong in this hellhole.

Rick flinched when Thomas yanked him forwards, half expecting to get punched anyway, and instead found himself in a bone crushing hug.

"You're alive," Thomas breathed, even if it sounded more like a croak, and Rick could feel the younger man practically wilt as the tension leached from his shoulders, his bruised and ragged fingers fisting into the fabric of Rick's shirt. "And you're…okay?"

Rick coughed pointedly. "Not if you don't ease up, Tommy. Man's gotta breathe, you know?"

Thomas let up fractionally but didn't let go, and secretly, Rick was kinda glad. He knew what the man meant. Days and weeks with no proof of life on either side and judging from the condition Thomas was returned to them in, he wasn't just left alone to his own devices in another cell in a different part of the cave. Hope was one thing. A dangerous, beautiful thing. But as time went on, it started to flicker and die a little more with every passing mealtime that Thomas was still gone.

It couldn't have been any easier on Thomas's end. The last time they'd seen each other was on the side of the mountain. Rick hadn't even been able to walk, the adrenaline from near death and a miraculous survival of a chopper crash was still coursing high, and the last thing Thomas probably would've heard was the gunshot that killed...

Oh shit.

Rick's grip tightened against Thomas, ignoring the fact that he could feel the unnatural protrusion of his shoulders and spine. Here they were, wondering if Thomas was still alive because they hadn't seen him. At least they had each other and a relatively solid knowledge that Thomas's death wouldn't have been a quiet affair. Meanwhile, Thomas's last memory of them was a gunshot in the mountains, and weeks alone with only his own thoughts – and Rick knew how he would've fared. "We're fine," he promised. "All of us are okay. Just worried about you. Look. You even made the last of Nuzo's hair fall out."

Thomas choked more than laughed. "That was Paulie." It took a moment for Rick to understand the good-natured jab, muffled as it was against his shirt. "It was like that when I met him."

Rick snickered when he caught Nuzo's glare. The older man was rubbing the back of his head where it'd collided with the cave wall but seemed otherwise uninjured. He just looked relieved that Thomas was coherent.

"Rick?"

"Yeah, buddy?"

"Creo que me voy a desmayar ahora."

Rick spoke maybe twelve words in Spanish – seven of which were swears Thomas taught him while they were waiting in medical after a badly executed RECON – but he enough time to process 'I think' and 'now' before Thomas slumped sideways, dead weight in his grip.

Author's Note: This isn't actually where I planned on ending it, buuuut...I am very much a 'thrive on response' writer, and it's been ages since I'm updated this fic despite working on it for months. Blame the new job, and the fact that I decided to write about hypothermia, of which I have only a passing knowledge.

Ahem. Anyways. Read and, if so inclined, leave a review or come find me on Tumblr disappearinginq!