Two Months Ago – Mexican Warehouse
The remaining members of Bravo and some of the Mexican marines stormed the warehouse, killing anyone who attempted to stand in their way. They knew their captured teammates were here and they weren't leaving without them.
They had divided into two teams in order to cover more ground in a timely manner. Jason, Trent and Lopez took the first floor, while Ray, and three Mexican marines took the second. Blackburn had also joined in on the mission but he remained outside with a few other marines and a team of medical staff, just in case they were needed.
Ray and his team quickly searched the second floor for any signs of their brothers, killing anyone they came into contact with. It was mostly open space, not too many rooms, so it didn't take long for them to clear the floor and make contact with Jason. "Bravo One, Bravo Two. Second floor is clear, making our way back down to you." Ray said over the radio to Jason.
"Copy Bravo Two. Follow the trail of bodies, you'll find us." Jason reported to Ray.
Right before Ray and his team rejoined Jason and his team, Jason's team came upon a heavily guarded room and immediately fell into a gun battle. Ray and his team heard the gun shots and immediately hurried to assist in returning fire.
Although outnumbered, Bravo and the marines made quick work of the men attempting to defend the room.
They quickly approached the door, not sure what they were going to find inside. A thousand different possibilities of what could be on the other side of the door played through their heads, but they knew this had to be where Sonny, Brock and Clay had to be, hopefully still alive.
Ray was the first to put his hand on the door handle while the rest of the team prepared to enter as soon as Ray opened it.
Jason looked over at him and gave him a slight nod, indicating it was time for him to open the door.
As he quickly scanned the room, the first thing Jason noticed was Brock and Sonny hanging by their wrists from the ceiling and immediately after noticed Lazo and Doza standing by a table, pouring water over a man who was not moving, strapped down to it. He knew it had it be Clay, causing his heart to drop to the floor.
Jason and Trent had each sent bullets flying towards Doza and Lazo before any of them could realize what was going on. Each one hitting their targets in non-life threatening areas. Both Doza and Lazo hit the ground in pain as Jason and Trent made their way over to them to secure them.
Ray and the Mexican marines quickly took down the rest of the cartel members in the room that were standing by Brock and Sonny.
Once all of the cartel members were either dead or secure, Bravo could finally tend to their injured members.
Jason immediately noticed Clay wasn't breathing. He jumped up on the table and straddled Clay at the waist and immediately started CPR, while Trent called Blackburn over the radio and informed him that they needed medical in there right away.
Ray and Lopez quickly went to work at carefully lowering Brock and Sonny. As Sonny was being lowered he regained consciousness and started fighting and thrashing against the hands that were touching him. "Easy Sonny, easy! It's just us. You're okay!" Ray tried to calm him down but Sonny either didn't hear him or just wasn't listening. The only thing that seemed to pull him back to the present time was seeing Jason on top of Clay performing chest compression.
Ray noticed how Sonny froze at the sight in front of him and tried to reassure him everything was alright. "Hey man, focus on me, he's going to be okay. Medical is on their way in right now." Ray said as he tried to guide Sonny's eye contact to him.
Sonny pulled away, not wanting to take his eyes off of Clay. "He's not okay, Ray. He's not okay." Sonny was basically at the verge of tears. Ray didn't know how to respond. He didn't have any idea what the three of them went through, all he knew was that whatever happened wasn't good.
Luckily for Ray, he didn't have to respond. Everyone's attention was brought to Clay as Jason's CPR attempts became successful and Clay coughed up mouthfuls at water, just as Blackburn and the medical team entered the room.
The medics quickly split up to make sure each person was receiving medical attention. All three were extremely dehydrated, bruised and broken.
Sonny tried to deny medical attention, telling them to go take care of Clay instead, but Blackburn insisted he let the medics look at him. They hooked him up to an IV for fluids and evaluated the rest of his condition, all the while he was trying to find out how Brock and Clay were.
Brock remained unconscious and his breathing was a little labored, which concerned the medics. The bruising throughout his torso concerned them and they wanted to get him to a hospital immediately so that they could run more tests and get answers.
Clay was now barely conscious. He had coughed up a good amount of water, but he still struggled to breathe. Between the water that remained in his lungs and his broken ribs, catching a breath was next to impossible, which really worried the medics.
"We need to get him to a hospital immediately if he's going to make it." One of the medics said to Jason, loud enough for everyone to hear.
Sonny desperately wanted to be by Clay's side, to encourage him to keep fighting, but he knew how important it was to stay out of the medic's way. Besides, he was pretty confident Blackburn would have told him to stay put anyway.
The medics quickly loaded them into the trucks and rushed to base hospital.
Clay's apartment – Present time
Clay searched for the words to answer Sonny's question about giving up. He opened his mouth a couple of times to answer, but each time no words would come out.
"Come on man, you know you can talk us." Brock encouraged him.
Clay nodded his head as he fought to keep the tears from falling. "I just, I couldn't handle it anymore." He paused, waiting to see if Brock or Sonny had anything to say to that or if they were waiting for him to continue. When they didn't respond, he decided to continue. "The pain, physically, mentally, emotionally, it all just got to me."
Sonny and Brock were slowly starting to understand that the reason he gave up was from more than just the physical pain. "Stella?" Sonny asked, treading carefully, knowing she was still a sore subject.
Clay nodded as tears slowly began to fall. "Stella, my dad, Jason, you guys. I felt like I had lost everything I ever cared about. Like I had nothing left to fight for."
"You guys? As in Brock and I?" Sonny asked, slightly confused.
"They beat you guys into unconsciousness because of me. That was all my fault. If we would have just been honest with them from the beginning, they wouldn't have punished me by torturing you." Clay confessed.
"Dude. You can't possibly blame yourself for that. We all agreed that we were going to keep that a secret." Brock stated.
"I'm the one that asked you what they said once we were alone. We didn't know they could hear us, so if anyone should feel the blame it should be me." Sonny said.
Clay immediately shook his head, disagreeing with Sonny. "They were going to find out regardless of if you asked me or not, if we would have just told them from..."
"Come on Clay. That's not on you man. You know they were going to beat the shit out of us regardless of if you spoke Spanish or not, but that's still no reason for you to just give up. You're a fighter, one of the strongest guys I know. Watching you give up, knowing there was nothing I could do to help, that killed me inside." Brock cut him off.
"It's not like I wanted to give up." Clay stated as he tried to keep more tears from falling.
"So then why did you!?" Sonny asked.
"I just thought if I was the first to go, that would give you both more time for Jason to find you alive. You both have people who love and care about you, I don't. I have nothing. No one would miss me. Stella's gone, my dad's an ass, I have no family…" Clay sobbed, no longer able to hold any of the tears back before Sonny cut him off.
Sonny immediately pulled Clay in tight for a hug, letting him cry on his shoulder. "Don't you ever think like that, you understand? WE are your family. WE care about you and WE would be devastated if anything ever happen to you. Don't you ever forget that."
Clay just nodded into Sonny's shoulder, unable to control his emotions enough to respond.
All three sat there in silence, each with tears in their eyes until Clay managed to pull himself back together and regain his composure. Once he did he sat up and apologized. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I gave up. I'm sorry I didn't fight."
"We're sorry. We knew you were hurting but we had no idea how bad. We should have been there for you and we weren't." Sonny apologized.
Clay just shrugged it off. In his mind, they had nothing to apologize for, but he knew there was no sense in arguing about it so he just let it go.
Brock looked at the clock and realized it was late afternoon. "It's almost 4:00. What do you say we go get you a decent meal somewhere?" Brock asked Clay, knowing he needed to eat something decent.
Clay wasn't entirely up for going out, but he agreed. He knew he needed to eat something and for the first time since this whole thing started, he was actually a bit hungry.
"The usual place?" Sonny asked.
"The usual place sounds good." Clay smiled, as they headed out the door.
Clay finally felt himself being pulled out of the darkness, but he knew in order to be pulled out of it completely he still had to have two more conversations. Two conversations that he wasn't entirely looking forward to, but he wasn't going to worry about that right now. For now, he was going to take it one step at a time and enjoy the small victory he just made.