A/N: Happy weekend early! I might not be around Saturday or Sunday, and this is finished, so here it is. Thanks in advance to reviewers!

Warning & Disclaimer: See Chapter 1.


"When I almost died." The four words, Aaron's voice, have been ricocheting inside her head for the last hour. Her mouth has been a desert for the last three, since he jogged alongside her one minute and stumbled into her the next, heat radiating from his arm through both their shirts. She tries to swallow. Again. She splashes tepid tap water on her face and stares at herself in the mirror, sallow in this lighting or maybe just in this … panic. Yes, that's the name for it. Her heart rate won't settle. Her knees won't unlock, which is for the best at this point.

She did this to him. She injected the weakness, the fever, and whatever else he's feeling into his blood. And he thanked her.

Marta finds a clean towel from the drawer to the left of the sink and scrubs her face. He was dozing when she slipped into the bathroom, but if she's gone too long, he'll likely haul himself upright and come after her. His instruction to take the money and leave him behind was the last fully lucid thing he said. He's called her June a few times, mostly stared at her without recognition, but he also jolted to his feet once and hollered "Marta!" until she was able to convince him that she's at his side, unharmed. When the reassurance settled into his mind, he collapsed.

"When I almost died."

Was he alone that first time? She's never wondered before. They injected him and tossed him back into the field, and she pored over the medical reports later. Observe, record, analyze. Now her fatigued mind can't dredge up which of the data was gleaned from Aaron. From Five.

Is that the kind of person I am, ultimately? Peter would say yes. That she is a composition of numbers and equations, formula and method, buttoned into a white coat she never strips off. Ever.

In the next room, rusted bedsprings squeak.

"For crying out loud, Aaron." Marta flips the towel over a rusted chrome rack, which wobbles under the weight of terry cloth, and exits the bathroom. The first whisper of dawn slants in the window across from her, a promise that time truly is passing and every hour he doesn't die increases the odds that he won't. She steps around the corner and—

Stops. Breath. Motion. Thought. All. Stops.

Aaron looks up at her but keeps the gun barrel pressed to his forehead.

Somehow, her voice isn't frozen. "Aaron."

He doesn't move.

"That's not … that's not loaded, is it?"

A corner of his mouth tips in a smirk. "Be kind of pointless if it wasn't."

"Okay, this—this is not—" He's not suicidal. He's fought too hard, and not only to protect her … right? "Please put that down."

"I would."

"Aaron, put it down, please." Her voice is pitching like a sea. What will convince him? Does he even know who she is? She gasps in a deep breath and holds it and thinks. To talk him down, she has to know his reason.

"You'll be okay, I told you."

Does he know her? That could be a reference to their last conversation. Which means he knows where he is, knows their situation. Whatever this is, it's not Kenneth. It's Aaron. "You want to die?"

He sighs.

"Look at me," she whispers.

A drop of sweat drips down his chin and falls to the grimy carpet. He stares at his bare feet. Finally, he lifts his head again, and the gun doesn't lower or slip. He presses it harder between his eyes.

"Don't you dare pull that trigger until you explain why you're pulling it."

"It might not work," he whispers.

The gun? Their plan? Escape? … Oh. The virus. "It's inside your body working, right now. If it wasn't, you wouldn't be delirious."

Again, the twitch in the corner of his mouth, but this one is mirthless. "I'm not delirious, Marta."

"So put down the gun."

"I'm not going back."

"To Outcome?"

"Ever, I'm not ever going back." Fever dulls his voice.

"You don't have to, you don't have to do anything you don't—"

"They'll catch up with him. They'll take him and he won't even fight. He'll follow any order they give him, and they'll know that, because he'll tell them. And Outcome—that's the best case scenario. What if someone else gets to him? A mission goes sideways, a mark—"

"That's not going to happen, the virus is working."

"I was nothing but a freaking dog after a cookie, do you understand that? Train me any way you wanted and I'd never think to question my training because I couldn't."

His finger trembles and slides into the trigger well. Marta lurches forward, though it's the last sane thing to do when a man is holding a gun to his own head. She drops to her knees in front of him.

"Aaron, are you—" Her throat closes around the words. She swallows. She must keep talking, must keep him talking. She slides her hands under her knees. "Are you having trouble forming thoughts? Is your sensory perception degrading?"

"I can't wait for that."

"All right, listen to me. You aren't thinking straight. You have a fever. You need to—"

"What if I start to—fall? And it happens too fast? Kenneth won't know to do it."

"If I promise to—" She forces herself not to choke. "If the virus doesn't work, to do it for you. Will you put the gun down?"

"Not if you don't mean it."

Maybe the bluff is obvious and she's not thinking straight herself. Or maybe his stormy eyes see straight through her. Nothing new there. His intensity burns her until she has to look away.

"I have to do this, Marta. Now." His finger absently strokes the trigger. That stupid freaking gun is going to go off, and Aaron …

Tears surge. She tries to blot them, bury them, breathe through the sob, but it ruptures from her chest, and she rises up on her knees and wraps her hands around his wrist.

"Aaron, please, Aaron, please, Aaron, please."

He shudders at her touch. "You—you have everything you need. The money, and there's—"

"You think I want you to live so I'm not alone out here? So I can use your skills to survive? So I can study you? For science?"

Through the fever and determination, sluggish confusion furrows his brow, just below the gun barrel. Marta's hands release his wrist and curl around the butt of the gun, her fingers lacing between his. She tries to tug at it, but even ill unto death, his grip is iron.

"I want you to live because I don't want you to die," she says.

Aaron's lips part slowly. He stares at her as if deciphering the words. The gun wobbles.

Oh, God. It might or might not be an actual prayer to a God Marta doesn't actually believe in. But she's pleading with Someone or something.

He lowers the gun. Sets it beside him on the bed. Marta pushes herself up, ignores the tremors in her limbs, and wraps her arms around him not for the first time in this longest of nights, but this isn't the same embrace. She pulls him closer. She cradles the back of his head when the burst of resolute energy pours from his body and he goes limp in her arms. She rocks gently as a whimper leaches from him. Aaron's arms circle her. His fingers press into her back, as if he's afraid she will disappear.

"No more tests," he whispers.

"No." She rests her chin in his sweaty hair.

"I don't want … I want …"

"Shhh."

"Falling."

She waits for him to drift away again into that agitated, moaning place, but when his arms slacken, it isn't like before. His fever is spiking, and even normal human strength drains from his body. So fast. She sits at his side, their fingers twined together, for over an hour. As far as she can tell, the fever keeps rising. His rolling and shifting on the bed give way to exhausted stillness, and the quiet moans give way to silence. He's only breathing now. And the fever doesn't break.

He would snap at her for considering this, much less doing it. The risk truly is too much. But he could wake again and choose death the next time. Or he could wake not at all. Leaving him seems dangerous, but her hovering presence isn't helping any more than the cool cloth on his forehead, warm again before she withdraws her hand. Superior physiology or not, he needs something to help fight the fever.

She tries to conceal the gun under her zip hoodie, tucked in her pants at the center of her back, a move Aaron makes look so easy. She checks the gun's visibility in the bathroom mirror, and she might as well have a protruding tumor back there. But she can't leave it with Aaron. She stashes it under the stack of towels in the cabinet and hopes he isn't able to sniff out gunpowder. She'd unload it if she knew how and take the clip with her, but she's never touched a gun before today. A shiver traces her spine.

Marta scribbles a note in blue pen—"Went for medicine." Then, as if this will emphasize her subtext—I'll be fine, be back shortly; see, obtuse male, this is how you communicate when you leave temporarily—she draws an arrow pointing at the words. He doesn't stir as she slips out of the apartment.