Thank you so much for the continued & encouraging reviews. It means a lot. Just one part this morning.

"I should have told Chris." Ezra clawed at the soupy mud, trying to loosen the stiffness in his fingers. At least the trembling had stopped. It was now replaced by the occasional, all consuming shudder.

He gasped as another convulsion ripped through him. "That can't be good," he murmured through the pain as he tried to make sense of his thoughts. It was so hard to think. He'd been concentrating on something important, hadn't he?

Chris. He should have told the team where he was.

"They don't know. They think I'm with Maude." Huffing, Ezra squinted in the darkness, wishing for any light, any brightness to break the weight of it. Why was darkness heavy? Could it really be heavy? Maybe he was just feeling the weight of the house.

"I've got a god damned house on top of me."

He laughed a little. What was wrong with him?

"What the hell is wrong with me?" he repeated the question, sluggishly.

His thought again of his team. What were they going to say when Travis called them? Would they wonder why he'd lied to them? Other than not wanting to create havoc on Christmas…he hadn't really wanted to admit the truth. It wasn't that he didn't think the guys would be supportive, he knew they would, but there would have been sympathy in their eyes, too. And pity that he didn't want to see. It just wasn't right. What the hell was wrong with him?

"Maude didn't want to come."

"Shit."

Outside, Chris closed his eyes and bowed his head.

"Damn it."

"Chris?"

Larabee opened his eyes to find Josiah standing in front of him, concern written over his face.

"He's hanging in there," Chris reassured.

"What's wrong then?"

Chris felt other eyes on him and turned to include Vin and Buck in the conversation as well. "He's weak," he admitted. "And, he said Maude didn't want to come."

"Meaning?" Buck's eyes continued to follow JD as the young agent slowly swept the wreckage, aiming the parabolic microphone at it. He saw Dunne glance their way.

"He must have asked her to come for Christmas." Josiah rubbed the back of his neck while Vin glanced at the ground.

Chris nodded. "He's wondering what's wrong with him."

The faint sound of the approaching helicopter had them all looking up and squinting into the overcast sky.

"Guys." JD's excited voice pulled their attention back to the wreckage. "I think I've found him."

It had been silent save for his own ramblings for so long that Ezra was certain he must have drifted to sleep. Was he dreaming?

The ground beneath him seemed to tremble in rhythm with the strange, muffled noise. He knew he should know what it was.

"I should know this," he whispered, but he didn't care. What he did know was that the sound meant that someone was out there and they were looking for him.

Then, it seemed, as suddenly as the sound arrived, it faded away again. The ground and the boards around him stopped rumbling.

"No! I'm here."

The silence was deafening now. He could no longer feel his body. The aching cold had faded.

"Tired."

He knew there was something about being tired that he was supposed to remember, but he didn't have it in him to recall it. A sense of hopelessness pressed down on him. A new weight to add to the darkness and the silence and it was too much.

"You here…and you, over there." Chris listened to the fire chief shouting orders to his crew as they cautiously attacked the mountain of debris, propping torn boards and shoring up broken walls.

It was a slow and tedious process. Darkness had fallen now and light fluffy snowflakes floated down, blanketing the site. Crews erected huge lights to aid in the rescue attempt.

Buck, Josiah and Vin helped the firefighters while JD kept the parabolic pointed at the spot where the thermal imaging had confirmed Ezra was located.

Nathan stood with the paramedics while Chris paced back and forth wanting to help with the rescue, but not wanting to give up on the radio. The problem was, Ezra had stopped talking.

The helicopter had arrived just after JD had pinpointed Ezra's location and after only a couple of sweeps over the house, had confirmed it. But the chopper couldn't stay—the vibrations of the blades were too much for the precariously balanced house and the chief had ordered the chopper out of there as soon as it'd gotten a fix on Ezra.

The fire chief had then jumped into the rescue effort, but Chris had been distractedly worried about Ezra. He'd heard Ezra's plaintive "I'm here!" Ezra must have thought that the helicopter leaving meant they had given up on searching for him.

Larabee had heard the hopelessness and pain in Ezra's voice and had no way to reassure his friend that they were there. They were coming for him.

Now, Ezra had stopped talking altogether. There'd been nothing for the last 15 minutes.

Chris knew they'd been fortunate. Even though Ezra had been caught in the destruction, he'd actually been located quite close to the outer edge of the debris. If he'd been any deeper into the building, the fire chief had admitted- it would take hours longer to reach him. As it was—it'd been long enough and Chris could read the deep worry on Nathan's face as Ezra continued to remain silent.

"He's here!"

Chris spun around and was running toward the house. He watched Vin push past two rescuers to get closer to the sudden flurry of activity. Vin knelt and reached down into the debris. Chris watched his lips move and a small worried smile grace his features. Tanner looked up and met Larabee's gaze.

Chris didn't remember getting past the rescue workers, all he knew was that he was suddenly on his knees, reaching down into a dark hole, his hand resting lightly on the side of Standish's neck.

Ezra was alive.