Thank you once again for all the kind comments, you guys! And for not pelting me with rocks for the lack of explanations ;). This chapter is less action, more sitting around in a mine talking. Which is mostly my favourite genre of talking. Hope you enjoy!

One note – there are specific spoilers in here for Jake 2.0 1x13 and 1x14.

Retrieval

Chapter Four

Annie jumped forward, grabbing Auggie under the arms as he slumped, the movement sending a spike of pain through her injured hand. Auggie's head lolled onto her shoulder, and Annie found herself in an awkward hug, Auggie's unconscious weight falling forward onto her, making her stumble backwards a couple steps. It really would've helped if he hadn't been so tall. Or if she'd still had the three-inch heels she'd been wearing in Helsinki. Man, she was going to miss those shoes.

"Let me help you." Duarte was suddenly there, taking some of Auggie's weight and lowering him to the ground. Annie pressed her fingers to the side of his neck. His skin was a little too warm and slick with sweat, his pulse slightly fast, but he was breathing, and that was something.

"Damn," she said.

"What's wrong with him?" Duarte asked, crouching beside her.

"He's sick." Annie remembered Jim's voice down the phone. "He's supposed to be off sick."

"He's supposed to be dead," Duarte muttered, reaching out a hand to touch Auggie's forehead, and Annie felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, batting his hand away before he could touch Auggie and turning the flashlight on his face.

"Hey." Duarte rose to his feet, shielding his eyes. "Point that thing somewhere else, would you?"

Annie rose too, keeping the light trained on Duarte's face. "Hey, you know what, Duarte? Auggie may trust you, but he didn't hear you talking to Dumont." She took a step forward and Duarte stepped back. "I don't know what your game is here, but I swear to God, if you touch him, I will end you."

"Jesus." Duarte shook his head, edging backward again as Annie moved forward until she was between him and Auggie. "Come on, Annie, I have no idea what you think you heard, but there is no way I would hurt Jake."

"His name is Auggie." Annie had the irrational urge to punch Duarte in the face. Or, well, maybe it wasn't so irrational.

"Whatever his name is, he's my friend," Duarte said. "With Dumont out there, you're really gonna try and paint me as the bad guy?"

"You just said he ought to be dead," Annie pointed out, wondering how quickly she could get to the knife that she knew was in Auggie's pocket.

"Oh, come-" Duarte seemed to run out of words, and his mouth moved silently for a moment before he started speaking again. "Christ, he is dead. Jake – I mean, Jake Foley's been dead for almost five years. I went to his funeral, for God's sake."

Annie swallowed. Oh. OK, well, just because she'd misconstrued what Duarte said didn't mean he wasn't an untrustworthy son of a bitch. And – hey, wait a minute. "Wait," she said, memories connecting to each other in her brain. "Jake, as in – what, the Jake you and Dumont were talking about earlier? The one who killed himself?"

Duarte's face twitched. "Yeah, that Jake." He looked away, like he was trying to hide something.

Annie shook her head. "Auggie would never do that."

"Really." Duarte raised his eyebrows. "Well, I think if we've learned anything today, it's that you don't know Auggie" – he made air quotes around the name, and Annie bristled – "as well as you think you do."

"Hey, sure, he only faked suicide to get away from you and the NSA," Annie said. "Sounds like you were the best of friends."

Duarte's head snapped up, eyes furious in the glow of the flashlight. "You have no idea what you're talking about," he said, and Annie felt like she might scream.

"Well, maybe that's because no-one will tell me," she said – OK, so maybe it was more like a yell – and if she didn't hurl the flashlight at the wall in frustration, it was only because she the only thing she wanted less right now than to be stuck in a mine with Duarte was to be stuck in a mine with Duarte in the dark.

Duarte sucked in a breath, then let it out again, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. "OK," he said. "OK, what do you want to know?"

Annie blinked. Now that someone was offering to give her answers, she found that all the coherent questions had cleared out of her mind, leaving nothing but a giant, hovering what the fuck? over everything she'd experienced in the last twenty-four hours. She swallowed. Pull it together, Agent Walker. OK. First thing was first.

"I want to know what happened," she said. "What happened to him?"

Duarte nodded. "We'd better sit down," he said.

"The coroner said the angle suggested the bullet was self-inflicted." Duarte's voice was calm and even, coming from somewhere in the darkness beside her – Annie had reluctantly flipped off the flashlight to conserve the batteries – and Annie tried not to imagine Auggie's skull caved in by a bullet, self-inflicted, God. She groped for Auggie's arm on her other side, feeling the warmth through his sleeve, most definitely alive.

"Didn't you see the body?" she asked.

"There wasn't a whole lot – left of it," Duarte said. "There was a fire – arson. The official report judged that Jake had set the fire, then shot himself. I didn't want to believe it – I didn't believe it, I thought – someone had done it to him. But I couldn't convince anyone else at the NSA to open an investigation."

"Seriously?" Annie leaned forward, hugging her knees. "An NSA agent offs himself and no-one raises an eyebrow?"

"It's not that simple." Duarte shifted, clothes rustling. "There was – Jake was testing some experimental technology, and there was an incident."

"Incident?" Annie knew what incident meant in spy language. It meant royal fuck up.

"Something went wrong, and Jake lost his sight." Duarte sighed. "We all thought it would come back, but-"

"Wait," Annie said, "wait. You're saying Auggie went blind when he was – when he was still Jake?" She blinked, trying to assimilate that information. She still didn't understand how Auggie could be Jake, but it hit her now that if it was true, everything she knew about Auggie's past before five years ago was – was –

"That's what I'm saying," said Duarte, and Annie forced herself to stop thinking and listen. "After that he was withdrawn, angry. And then three weeks later, he was dead." There was a pause. "Except apparently not. Jesus. I don't know whether I want to hug him or punch him."

"Before you make that decision," came Auggie's voice from Annie's other side, "I'd like to remind you that punching the disabled is definitely a no-no in the hero's handbook. I believe it's listed in the do not do this section, right under kicking kittens."

"Auggie," Annie said, turning and flipping the flashlight back on, reaching for Auggie's forehead. "Are you OK?"

"Hey, nice to see you, too," Auggie said, pushing her hand away. "And yeah, I'm fine. Although if whoever set up this jackhammer in my skull doesn't get fired at the next general meeting of the Auggie Anderson buildings and services committee, I'll be writing a strongly-worded letter to the management."

Annie subsided. Auggie was joking; Auggie was OK. "Good," she said. "Because Duarte may be a hero, but I am totally not above punching disabled people, especially when they're being an asshole." She smacked him in the arm – and not lightly, either. He deserved the full force of her wrath, but right now, she would settle for a punch in the arm.

"Ow," Auggie said. "What was that for?"

"Lying to me," Annie said. "Passing out on me. Scaring me. Take your pick."

Auggie was quiet for a moment, face turned toward her. "Well," he said finally. "I guess I'm sorry for some of those things."

"Some?" Annie wasn't sure she wanted to hear which ones.

Auggie shrugged. "Not every day I get to pass out on a beautiful woman. You've got to take your opportunities where you find them."

Annie rolled her eyes, and on her other side, Duarte made a frustrated noise.

"Jake," he started, but Auggie interrupted him.

"It's Auggie," he said.

There was a startled silence, during which Annie certainly didn't smirk in triumph, and then Duarte spoke again. "What the hell kind of a name is Auggie, anyway?" he said.

"Short for August." Annie could hear Auggie's sarcastic smile. "The last thing I read before it all went dark was a calendar page. I can't figure out if that's so tragic it's banal or so banal it's tragic."

Duarte's face twitched a little – yeah, Annie couldn't figure out how to respond to that one, either – and then he forged ahead. "We need to talk," he said.

"So talk." Auggie drew his knees up and folded his hands over them.

"In private," Duarte said, and suddenly all of Annie's attention was on him as she realised just how much she still didn't know. OK, so the crazy thing about Auggie not being Auggie – or not always having been Auggie, if that was even the right verb tense, Jesus – that she was still getting used to, but at least she knew. But Auggie reprogramming computers without touching them? Auggie tracking her through that maze of corridors? Hell, Auggie driving through backwoods Russia in the first place? No, that was still one hell of a question mark, and She was pretty sure Duarte wanted it to stay that way.

She heard Auggie take a breath, but no way she was letting them exclude her, not any more. "Oh, hell no," she said. "After all the crap I've been through in the last two days, anything you have to say, you can say in front of me." She glared at Duarte, but he avoided her eyes, shooting Auggie a meaningful look. Yeah, right, Agent Asshole, Annie thought. Meaningful looks are really gonna get you a long way.

Beside her she felt Auggie shift. "She's right," he said. "She needs to know."

"It's classified," said Duarte, and Auggie snorted.

"Kyle, all due respect, but you are no longer the boss of me," he said, and cocked his head on one side. "Huh. that actually felt pretty good."

"OK, fine." Duarte sounded annoyed. "But I do have a giant stack of non-disclosure forms in a filing cabinet back at the NSA that all have your signature on them."

"Really?" Auggie's mouth twitched up at the corners. "I think you'll find that those forms were signed by one Jake Foley, who, by the way, is dead." He held out his hand in Duarte's direction. "August Anderson." He said. "Pleased to make your acquaintance."

Duarte stared. "I'd forgotten how much of a smartass you were," he said.

"Oh, believe me," Auggie said, "I am way more of a smartass now than I ever was before."

"I'm serious," Duarte said. "This is not an intel-sharing situation."

"Oh my God, would you just listen to yourself?" Auggie practically threw his hands up in the air, and Annie stared, surprised by the uncharacteristic emotional outburst. "Intel-sharing situation? Listen, Kyle, we are so way beyond protocol here. If we don't tell Annie what's going on, she's going to try and find out, and she's a great field agent, but she's not going to be able to fool the NSA's computer techs. They'll figure out that she's snooping around the program, they'll pick her up, and you know what'll happen next."

"Hey," Annie said. "I'm not going to tell anyone anything."

"Right," said Duarte. "And the best way to ensure that is to make sure you don't know anything."

"No," Auggie retorted, "the best way to ensure it is to make sure that they never find out that she might know anything. And the best way to do that is to make sure she knows as much as possible."

Annie shook her head. "Wait," she said. "So does that mean I know everything, or nothing?"

"It means I'm going to tell you what you want to know, to the best of my ability," said Auggie, "whether Kyle likes it or not."

Annie glanced over at Duarte, but he was too busy glaring at Auggie to notice. "Well, I guess I can't stop you," he said, words bitten off.

"Great, your disapproval is noted," Auggie replied, hardly less tense.

"Um," Annie said, "you guys are really kinda freaking me out, here."

Auggie nodded, closing his eyes and breathing out. "Sorry," he said. "OK. So, you remember when I told you earlier that I had tons of tiny robots inside me?"

Annie stared at him. "Not... really?" she said.

"They're called nanites," said Auggie. "They're – they were – an experimental technology the NSA was working on to try and build super soldiers. They work with my biological systems to allow me to do some pretty weird things."

Annie frowned. "Like reprogram the GPS into a tracker without even touching it?" she said.

"Right," Auggie nodded. "Plus some other stuff. Run faster than a speeding bullet, leap tall buildings in a single bound, see from here to Vladivostok – oh, no, wait, guess we passed the expiry date on that one."

"No." Annie shook her head, glancing from Auggie to Duarte. Deadpan, both of them. She might have beleieved Auggie was messing with her, but Duarte? "Come on, that's just – it's just ridiculous."

"Huh. I think you just summed up the entire NSA research strategy in a single sentence," Auggie said. "Give the woman a prize."

"So, wait," Annie said. "What, you're telling me you're like, like Superman?"

Auggie shrugged. "These days I prefer to think of myself as Daredevil," he said.

Annie shook her head, trying to take it all in. Dana Scully wasn't even close. "So..." she said, working her way through the implications, "is that how you're so... good at everything? Like, how you always know it's me?"

Auggie grinned. "Nope, that's just my natural brilliance," he said. "I don't use the nanites if I can help it."

"Why not?" Duarte asked, and Auggie turned towards him.

"Because it hurts, and I think it might be doing something irreversible to my brain," he said, like he was talking about the weather. "And because I really don't want to lose any more of my senses."

"Wait, what?" Duarte said. "They're hurting you?"

Auggie put a hand up to his face, scrubbing at the dried blood under his nose. "What did you think this was, corn syrup?"

Annie looked over at Duarte. He was shaking his head, eyebrows drawn down. Worried, not angry. "Since when?" he asked.

"Oh, right about the time the nanites overloaded and fried my optic nerves," Auggie said. "Wow, that was a real fiesta of a week."

"But-" Duarte was looking more and more confused. "Diane never told us anything-"

"She didn't know. I didn't know. We both thought I was getting headaches because of the blindness. I didn't figure it out until-" Auggie closed his eyes for a second "-until I'd already decided I had to leave."

"Leave," Duarte said. "That's one way of describing what you did, I suppose." The worry was hardening into anger now.

"Kyle." Auggie scrubbed a hand over his face. "I couldn't tell you. I couldn't tell anyone, I couldn't risk it."

"So no-one knows?" Annie broke in, hoping she might be able to head off what looked like it might be a nasty argument. "I mean, about you being alive."

Auggie shook his head. "Just you two, now. And Dumont, I guess."

"Dumont?" Duarte's exclamation was sharp in Annie's ear. "Dumont knows?"

Now it was Auggie's turn to look confused. "He – Doesn't he? I mean, I thought-"

Duarte was shaking his head. "I talked to him. He thought you were dead. That you'd killed yourself."

"Then why would he lure you here?" Auggie was completely alert, now, leaning forward, frowning. "I mean, you, maybe, but why Annie?"

"Wait a second, lure?" This was getting ridiculously cryptic, Annie decided. "Nobody lured me here."

"Yeah, Annie, they did," Auggie said. "That briefcase never had any intel in it – it was probably just a tracking device. Dumont wanted you here, but I can't figure out why."

"Jake," Duarte said. "He thinks she's part of the program."

"What?" Auggie sat back, mouth open.

"The nanite program?" Bits and pieces of information started to come together in Annie's mind. The electromagnet. Dumont's taunting. The room with the door that could only be opened by a keypad, like someone was trying to see if she could get through. "Why – why would he think that? I hadn't even heard of nanites until five minutes ago."

Auggie was shaking his head, dragging the back of his hand across his lips. "It's my fault. Shit, this is all my fault."

"How?" Duarte leaned across Annie, putting a hand on Auggie's shoulder. "Come on, Jake, how could this be your fault."

"Dumont knows how the nanites interact with computer systems better than anyone, probably even better than me," Auggie said. "He can recognise their traces, he's the only one who can."

"I thought they didn't leave traces," Duarte said.

"Exactly." Auggie was climbing to his feet now, pacing, hand trailing along the wall. "Their activity is completely smooth. Anyone else – even the best hackers – wouldn't even notice. But Dumont, he's looking for that, for something too smooth to be real code."

"That doesn't explain what all this has to do with me," Annie said, getting up, too, and putting a hand on Auggie's chest to stop him.

"It's-" Auggie closed his eyes. "I read your file," he said finally, words tumbling over each other like he thought if he spoke fast enough, she wouldn't hear him.

"I know." Annie frowned. "I read yours, too."

"No, I mean," Auggie's hands found her shoulders and slid down to grasp her wrists. "I used the nanites to look at your real file. The one they don't let you see."

Annie shook her head. "What?"

"Wait." Duarte was standing now, too. "You broke into the CIA's secure information centre?"

Auggie nodded. "And I left a trail pointing right at Annie," he said.

"Why would you do that?" It was too much information, too fast.

"I wanted to see why you'd been promoted so quickly," Auggie said, arms loose at his sides now, shoulders slumped.

Annie stepped back, twisting her wrists out of Auggie's grip and then immediately missing the warmth. "You don't trust me," she said. "What, you think I'm a sleeper agent? A plant?"

"No, no." Auggie reached out for her again, but Annie ducked away and Auggie was left groping in empty air. "I just didn't want to get too close to someone I didn't understand everything about."

Annie nodded. "Well, I guess we're lucky I didn't feel the same way, huh?" she said, her throat choked with a tangle of rage and hurt and something that felt suspiciously like tears. "That's the deal, right? You get to hide your entire life from me, but if you think anything about me is even slightly off, you go sifting through information that even I don't know about?"

Auggie didn't reply, and Annie lifted her chin. "So, what did you find? Why did I get promoted so quickly, since it obviously wasn't for my talents?"

A muscle in Auggie's jaw twitched. "You're just – very good at what you do," he said, and Annie felt a tension inside her dissolve, a tension she hadn't even known was there. Of course, there were plenty of other tensions to take its place. Annie's stomach was like the tension equivalent of an all-night rave right now. And one with really shitty music, at that.

"OK," she said. "Well, now we've all figured out where we stand, I think we need to get further away from the entrance. Let's go." She turned sharply away from Auggie and led the way down the passage, not looking back to see if the other two were following. She wished again she was still wearing her heels. Storming off was so much easier in heels.

As it turned out, the abandoned mine had a lot in common with the abandoned factory. OK, so there were no ugly green doors, but there were more passageways than really seemed necessary, unless the whole place had been created by some kind of giant, rock-boring rabbits. Hm. OK, moving on from that thought. Maybe there was a school of maze design in Petrozavodsk. That would explain a lot. Or, or maybe-

"Annie." Auggie's voice came from a little behind her, where Duarte was guiding him. "If you don't stop thinking so loud, the bad guys are going to hear us."

Annie shook her head. She wasn't ready to make up with Auggie, not yet. Ever since she'd started at the CIA, her life had been like trying to go down an up escalator – constantly losing her footing, never quite sure if there was a point, afraid to stop moving in case she lost all the gains she'd made. And Auggie – he'd been the one thing that had made sense, the one thing she felt like she could trust.

Yeah, right.

"Hey," came Auggie's voice again, and there was the sound of shifting pebbles. Annie looked back to see Duarte stumbling and Auggie barely catching him. "You should rest," Auggie said. "When was the last time you got any sleep?"

"I'm fine," Duarte said. "It's just dark in here, is all."

"OK, I'm sure you could walk another hundred miles, big guy," Auggie said, "but I need to rest. And it'll be easier for me to look for the other tracker if you're sleeping. Less electrical activity from your brain to confuse the signal."

"Wait," Duarte said. "You can sense the electrical activity in my brain?"

"Well." Auggie looked like he was considering. "Maybe not your brain-"

"Ha ha." Duarte sighed. "Fine. Let's find somewhere to hole up."

A few hundred yards further on, they found what they were looking for: the passageway spread into a broad rocky platform, smooth and mostly free of boulders. Rails ran through the middle of the space, a cart full of rock rusting away in one entry way. Lots of escape routes.

Duarte sighed and sank to the ground, eyes drooping. Annie wasn't exactly feeling like doing a riverdance herself, but she was still too angry to relax. The tangle of emotions in her stomach felt like she'd swallowed a rock.

Auggie lowered himself to sit next to Duarte. Annie sat down a little further off, letting her thoughts swirl round her. There was no sound except Duarte's gradually deepening breathing, and the thoughts in Annie's head got louder and louder, roaring through her inner ears until she was ready to scream just to hear something else. Maybe she would have, if Auggie's voice hadn't broken in.

"You might as well let me have it," he said.

Annie stiffened. "Have what?"

"You know, all the crap you've got piled up waiting for me. I'm a big boy, I can take it."

Annie looked over at him. He was facing her, wearing his serious look. She'd seen that more times in the last twenty-four hours than in the entire four months she'd known him.

"I should," she said.

"Yeah," said Auggie. "You should."

Annie shook her head. Suddenly, she was just really tired. "Why didn't you tell me?" she said.

Auggie sighed. "Pretty much because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in a cage in the NSA basement, right up until my nice, peaceful death on the dissection table."

Annie felt a dull pain at the words. It wasn't surprise: it was resignation. "You don't trust me."

"Annie," Auggie said, shifting forward a little way, eyes pleading. "I love you. But if there's one thing I've learned from being a spy, it's that you can't trust anyone. Ever."

Annie blinked, swallowing back tears. "But you've told me now," she said.

"Yeah." A pause. "Well, I guess I'm not really that great at this spy stuff."

Annie breathed out, forcing her voice to stay even. "I won't tell anyone. You know I won't."

"You can't." Auggie swallowed. "Annie, this is really important. You can't ever breathe a word. I've already lost too many people I love because of what the NSA did to me."

After all the shit she'd been through in the last few hours, it was now that Annie found herself fighting back tears. Figured. Auggie would hear it in her voice in a second. She cleared her throat. "You don't need to worry about me," she said. "I know how to keep a secret."

Auggie must have heard the wobbling that she couldn't keep out of the words – hell, Duarte could probably hear it, and he was asleep – but he didn't comment, just nodded. "I know," he said. "I know you do."

Annie nodded too, taking a deep breath. The cavern they were in was spacious, extending upwards into shadows, but she felt like everything was pressing down on her. She needed to think about something else, anything else.

"What kind of mine is this?" she asked, shining the beam of the flashlight on the walls.

Auggie snorted a laugh. "It's, uh, it's tin," he said.

"Really." Annie frowned. "I didn't think there were any tin mines in western Russia. That is where we are, right?"

Auggie nodded. "Karelia," he said. "And I might not be right about the tin."

OK, might not be right? "You mean you're lying?"

"Ouch." Auggie scratched the back of his head. "Guess I deserved that."

"So what is it, then?" Annie shone the flashlight at the rusting ore cart, but there were no clues there.

"Um. Uranium."

"What?" Annie shone the flashlight back at Auggie, who at least had the decency to look apologetic. Well, semi-apologetic. And also like he thought her reaction was hilarious. "Uranium?"

"Oh, come on, what's the worst that could happen?" Auggie was openly grinning now. "We get bitten by a radioactive spider, we wake up with superpowers. It's a win-win situation!"

"OK, I don't think some of us need any more superpowers," Annie pointed out.

"Don't tell me you'd turn down the opportunity to swing through the city on giant spiderwebs, even if you already had every other superpower there was," Auggie said. "Anyway, my first and last name begin with the same letter. I'm perfect for this job."

"Yeah, but it doesn't count if you chose your name yourself," Annie said, and then paused as something occurred to her. "Wait a minute." She shone the flashlight in Auggie's face. "Did you choose Anderson so you could have a superhero name?"

Auggie shrugged. "Clark Kent was already taken. Plus, you know. Not very inconspicuous."

"You are such a dork," Annie said, laughing in spite of herself. Damn, it really was tricky staying mad at Auggie.

"Don't tell me you wouldn't have done the same thing." Auggie lay back on the ground, interlacing his fingers behind his head. "I mean, if you could choose any name you wanted."

Annie lay back, too, head pointing towards Auggie's. Any name. She ran through a few possibilities. Mariah DuWinter. Jessamine Illyria. Ariadne Lavrador. They were all awesome names – for certain values of awesome – but trying to imagine being called by any of them left Annie feeling weirdly lonely.

"Any name?" she said.

"Any name."

Annie nodded. "I'd choose Annie Walker," she said, and turned her head to see an indescribable expression cross Auggie's face, followed by a wry smile.

"I guess that's the one that I couldn't have," he said, and after all of her turbulent feelings about what Auggie's past meant for her, Annie suddenly found herself wondering what it meant for him.

She turned her face back toward the ceiling, way up there somewhere in the shadows. "What's it like?" she asked. "Having to build a new life."

Auggie sighed. "It's like – I don't know." there was a long silence, long enough that Annie thought that was all the answer she was going to get, and then Auggie spoke again.

"Have you ever wondered what it would be like, if no-one knew what you were like?" he asked. "If you had no ties, no responsibilities – if you could be whoever you wanted to be?"

Annie thought about it. No sister, no nieces, no Auggie. She shivered. "I can't imagine it."

"No," Auggie said. "Guess not." He shifted slightly. "I lost my memory once," he said.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. There was this thing with the nanites, and – well, anyway. I had no idea who I was, who I'd been. I didn't know what food I liked, what music. I didn't know if I'd been bullied at school or if I'd had the happiest childhood ever."

Annie shook her head. "Sounds like a nightmare."

"Yeah, it was." Auggie sighed again. "Mostly it was, but – it was also an opportunity. Not that I looked at it that way then, but – OK, you had a love affair that ended badly, right?"

Annie tensed. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"So, next time you're on a date, that's always going to be in the back of your mind. That betrayal of trust, the fact that that one time, the guy didn't turn out to be who you thought he was."

Story of my life, thought Annie. "What's your point?"

"My point is, the things that happened to you in the past affect the way you act in the future. Except if you don't have a past."

Annie tried to fit her head round what Auggie was saying. It was a hell of a lot to cope with, and she realised she had no idea when she'd last slept. "What did you do?" she asked. "When you lost your memory, I mean."

Auggie let out a puff of air. "I joined a cage-fighting ring," he said.

OK, Annie was totally awake again. "Seriously?" She propped herself up on her elbow. "Seriously. You seriously joined a cage-fighting ring."

Auggie shrugged, grinning. "Hey, I was a guy with no social security number who could take Hulk Hogan down with one punch. Seemed like the obvious thing to do at the time."

Annie shook her head, letting herself drop back down to the ground. "I cannot imagine you doing that," she said.

"That was kinda my point," Auggie replied.

Annie closed her eyes. Auggie cage-fighting – no, that was ridiculous. She tried to imagine it – tried to imagine Auggie at the NSA, working with Kyle, Auggie being able to see, Auggie being Jake. God. She rubbed her eyes.

"You can sleep, you know," Auggie said. "We're safe for the time being. I'll wake you if anything happens."

"I'm OK," Annie said, but even as she said it, she could feel herself drifting. She shook her head, trying to rouse herself, opening her eyes wide. "So what's different?" she asked, hoping that conversation would substitute for coffee in this situation. "What was Jake like?"

"Well for one thing, he was majorly awkward around women," Auggie said, and Annie snorted.

"You're kidding."

"Sadly, no. Twenty-five years of being a computer geek'll do that to a guy."

"Wow." Annie tried to fit that into her fuzzy mental picture of who Jake was. Cage-fighting, super-spying awkward loser? This was just getting worse and worse. "Is there anything that's the same?" she asked, feeling her eyelids drift shut, but apparently incapable of doing anything about it. "I mean, anything I know about you that's still true?"

Somewhere in her barely-conscious mind, she was aware that that hadn't maybe been the most sensitive way of phrasing that, but it was too late now. At any rate, Auggie didn't seem offended.

"Let's see," he said. "I still need a haircut. I still hate country music." He brushed a hand lightly over her hair, and Annie felt herself slipping into unconsciousness. From somewhere high, high above her, she heard Auggie's voice.

"I'm still on your side."

As usual, please don't mention anything about unaired episodes in the comments. In particular, if you could not mention anything about 1.07 until a couple of days after it's aired, that would be amazing. *hearts*