A/N: *TRIGGER WARNING* for this chapter - there is a suicide attempt at the end, proceed with caution if you are triggered by such things

February 1994

Olivia's phone is ringing off the hook as soon as she steps in her office. She doesn't answer it at first, instead she sets her briefcase on the desk and sits down, preparing herself for the day. After less than a minute of silence passed the phone rings again, and she begrudgingly answers it.

"Hello?"

"We have a situation with 003."

She recognizes the voice on the other end as that of Mr. Zhao. He sounds both concerned and frustrated at the same time.

"A situation? Isn't he supposed to be in Penang?"

"Yes, he was there, with 005. Just as you sent them. There was an incident, though – he's in critical condition."

"Critical condition? What happened?"

Suddenly her heart is pounding in her chest, but she tries to keep her voice even.

"The whole mission went straight to hell, apparently. Some mercenaries had managed to corner 005 and I'm told that 003 tried to intervene. He was beaten badly. Very badly."

"What are you saying?" she asks him.

There was a pause on the other end, "Luckily 005 was able to get him out of there, but we lost the hostage. As for 003, well, he hasn't regained consciousness since the incident."

"But you have him?"

"Yes, we have him, ma'am. We have him in a medically induced coma at the moment. The medics aren't sure –" he pauses for a long moment on the other end, "They aren't sure what his faculties will be like when he wakes up. If he wakes up."

Olivia feels her blood run cold. She'd sent both Tiago and Lau out to Penang, since there were reports of a British man living there who was smuggling heroin in and out; some of it reaching Britain, some of it reaching the rest of the world. They'd been called in by MI5 to help, since it was both a domestic and international issue. It turned out their target had armed guards, tons of mercenaries he paid an arm and a leg to so he could stay safe in his little compound outside of Teluk Bahang. It seemed like the typical megalomaniac agenda they often encountered. She knew it would be dangerous for them, but they could handle it. They were double-0's after all.

"If? If he wakes up?" Once again, she was trying to hide the alarm in her voice.

"He has a lot of brain swelling right now, and a brain bleed too but it seems like it's minor-"

Olivia stopped hearing what Zhao said after that. She imagined Tiago in a hospital bed with tubes coming out of every orifice, half dead. Maybe more than half dead. Maybe just only slightly alive.

"Ma'am?" she hears Zhao say over the phone.

"I'm sorry, what was that?"

"I asked if you wanted to come and monitor the situation? I know that 003 is... I know he's quite important to you."

It wasn't a secret that she favored Tiago, just a secret that they'd been carrying on sexually behind everyone's back all these years. She always gave Tiago the highest pay raise possible every year and she personally called him after every mission he went on, which was something she hadn't afforded every agent, not even every double-0. Not to mention that she'd upgraded his computer every year, a privilege that was definitely unheard of for any other employee. She wanted him to stay on top of any new software trends, and for that he needed the newest hardware.

"I –" she thought for a moment. There wasn't a trip to Hong Kong in the works for another many months, but her heart was screaming at her to go as soon as she could. "Will you tell me when he's taken out of the coma? I'll come then. There's no point in me coming just to sit at his bedside." she told Zhao. Even though she wanted nothing more than to be there by his hospital bed, holding his hand and staring at him as he laid there.

"I will, ma'am. I'll keep you posted about the details. Hopefully the situation will improve."

"Yes, Mr. Zhao, I certainly hope so."

There was no way she could concentrate on anything work related that day.

That night, as she laid next to Matthew who slept as soundly as ever, she prayed to a God she didn't believe in. She silently asked for Tiago to be spared, for him to be alright, that maybe he would wake up as the same man he was before Penang.

She thought of the face of the Holy Mother slaying the Hydra, and how Tiago's eyes had lit up as they walked around the Ruins of St. Paul's. She wanted the power to heal him. She wanted to strike down the men who had done this to him. Instead, she was ten thousand kilometers away and completely powerless to help with anything.

That night she dreamed of Tiago. She was walking up a small hill in a vibrant garden, lush and humid, full of flowers and trees she had never seen in real life. Tiago was sitting on the grass at the top of the hill, with a small figure sitting right next to him. She came up behind them, and as she stepped in front of them she saw the other figure was a little girl, maybe about seven years old. She had dark hair and dark eyes, but otherwise she reminded Olivia a lot of her daughters at the same age. Tiago and the little girl smiled at her.

"We've been waiting." Tiago said to her, "Where have you been?"

"I – I've been in England." she tells him, as she looks them over. The colors of the garden are so vivid that they almost hurt her eyes. There are oranges and purples and blues bending in and out of focus in her peripheral vision. She has to concentrate hard to see Tiago and the little girl, though she feels like she wants to shut her eyes and block all the light out. It's as if the sun is overpowering everything.

The little girl speaks then, and she scrunches up her face in confusion; she looks so much like Tiago in that moment, "What's so special about England, anyway?"

Olivia answers without thinking, "Nothing."

Then she wakes up suddenly. It's twenty minutes before her alarm clock is due to go off, so she just gets out of bed.

She hopes that the day won't bring more bad news.

Tiago lumbered down the hallway carrying two heavy bags of groceries. It was perhaps a week's worth of food, but mostly he'd bought things like microwaveable junk, fizzy drinks and beer. He was in no mood to cook anything decent for a while and couldn't bear to go out in public again anytime soon. A child had looked upon his face and broke into tears, and he could feel the stares and hear the whispers around him.

He had a huge shiner centered around his left eye that extended up into his forehead and down into his cheek, plus a taped up broken nose and a still healing split lip. He also had a broken orbital and collapsed sinus, making breathing quite difficult. Luckily the swelling had gone down and he looked mostly human now, but he clearly was far from healed.

Fumbling with his keys he opened the door to his flat and let the bags fall to the floor with a thud. He'd only been home for a day, having been released after a long stint in the intensive care unit. They told him they'd even had to put him in a medically induced coma, and when he awoke they threw around horrifying terms like brain damage, traumatic brain injury and chronic traumatic encephalopathy right in front of him. Everyone was overjoyed that not only was his memory intact, but he could still speak and even walk. It seemed there were no lasting effects from his injuries that anyone could see.

It didn't mean he didn't feel like shit, because he did. He went and grabbed his bottle of Vicodin off the kitchen counter and swallowed two pills without water, feeling them slowly make their way down his throat. He just wanted to collapse on his sofa and sleep for another week, but these groceries needed to be put away.

He sighed, but nearly jumped when a voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Need help with that?" a feminine voice echoed from his living room.

"Olivia?" he asked, knowing that voice anywhere, "How did you get in here?"

She scoffed, "We keep the keys to every agent's home in case of emergency. This flat is property of MI6 after all."

Tiago nodded, "Understood. And yes, if you don't mind, I'm not supposed to be bending over very much."

She gets up off the sofa to help him, "Go sit down, Tiago, you look like death warmed over."

She doesn't need to tell him twice as he staggered over to his sofa, navigating around all his computers in his living room, and just collapsed. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, noticing that she was dressed in jeans and a loose button-up shirt rather than anything formal.

"When did you fly in?" he asks.

"Yesterday. I came as soon as they told me you were being discharged. That was quite a beating you took, Mr. Rodriguez. When 005 finally got to you he thought you were dead."

"So I'm told."

"We have a debriefing about the Penang mission tomorrow, as I'm sure you're aware." she says as she puts his food away in his cabinets, "They told you we lost the hostage I assume?"

Tiago groans, "No. Nobody told me anything."

Olivia sighs and finishes up, coming back to sit next to him, much closer to him than a boss and employee should be.

"I just want you to know that whatever gets brought up tomorrow, I'm proud of you for protecting 005."

Tiago winces as he turns towards her, "You came all this way and broke into my home to tell me that?"

"Oh please, Tiago," she frowns, "I just want you to hear that from me before anyone admonishes you for being reckless. Even though you were reckless." she pauses, "I'm going to take this moment to remind you that you need to prioritize the mission first, yourself second and your colleagues third in this career. You understand what I'm getting at?"

Tiago rolls his eyes, "So you wanted me to just let them kill Lau, is that what you're saying?"

"No. Not at all. I'm just saying that maybe you got caught up in the heat of the moment and forgot that the mission was your top priority. Agent Lau is more than capable of taking care of himself."

"With a gun pointed at his head?" Tiago asks, "The situation seemed pretty dire to me."

Tiago exhales sharply. It wasn't the first mission he'd been on with Lau but it was certainly the most intense one, even from the beginning. He was always on edge when they were partnered together, not because they didn't work well together – they were a great team, actually – but because it made everything much more personal. The sad fact of the matter was that their friendship had already been strained for almost a year before the mission as it was, and though they cooperated there was still a tense feeling in the air as they got to work in Penang.

In the years prior they would go out to clubs and act as wingmen for one another. Secretly Tiago had wondered if he could get Zixin in bed himself, but it was painfully obvious that he didn't swing that way – not to mention the promise he'd made to Olivia that he wouldn't seduce any more colleagues. Otherwise, it was all fun and games of course. Tiago rarely saw any of those girls from the club again, and he usually had no desire to. One night he and Zixin were eyeing up the same girl. She was beautiful; small boned and thin, with porcelain skin and a tall nose. The kind of woman men fell all over themselves trying to woo. Tiago had tried his luck first, but she had only stared at him with a disgusted look on her face when he offered to buy her a drink. When Zixin did the same, she was all smiles. Her name was Weilin, and it was Zixin who got to take her home that night.

They never went out on one of those club nights ever again, because Zixin and Weilin became an item. Eventually they got engaged, and suddenly Zixin was far too busy to meet up with Tiago at the gym or hang out with him outside of work.

Though he tried to hide it, Tiago was brimming with jealousy when he saw them together. They were both so good looking that it made him sick to his stomach, and every time they were in public many heads would turn to stare at them. Tiago could only roll his eyes. Not to mention that Weilin never liked him to begin with, and would give him an icy glare whenever he tried to speak to her.

Despite all that, Tiago had been invited to their wedding. He started drinking heavily early on and chatted up the other guests, but one particular woman couldn't stop hitting on him. She wasn't particularly attractive or interesting, but she seemed pleasant enough. In his drunken stupor it seemed like a good idea to whisk her away to the lavatory and fuck her against the wall. He felt filthy afterwards and tried to ignore her for the rest of the evening. Instead, he spent the rest of the night burning with envy as he watched the happy couple laughing and dancing.

Their happiness was something he would never experience, since he knew he would never marry or have a family of his own. The only woman he was interested in marrying was already married, and far too old to bear him any children anyway. He would never even get to experience dancing with the woman he loved since she flat out refused to dance with him!

He ended up leaving the wedding early, and when he got home he just stood under the scalding water of his shower and stared at the wall, wondering what exactly he was doing with his life. He was nearly thirty and was already feeling the physical effects of his job. His back hurt constantly and his skin was riddled with scars. What exactly was his future? With MI6 or otherwise? He couldn't run back to his own private island, the one his grandmother raised him on, even though that was the one place he wanted to go. In some other life he could have stayed there, just him in his own little kingdom, so oblivious to the drama and power struggles of the world.

The next morning when he was still very hungover, he got a phone call from Zixin who was immediately shouting at him. Weilin was demanding to know why Tiago had fucked her sister in the toilets and made a fool of all of them. She was furious, and Tiago could hear her screaming in Cantonese in the background of the call. After that Tiago was no longer invited to their home, and Zixin was no longer interested in going out for an occasional Friday night drink at the bar.

Tiago found out through the grapevine that Weilin was expecting a baby not long after the wedding, and Zixin never even bothered to tell him himself. Instead of being happy for them, Tiago just felt like that was the nail in the coffin for their friendship. They were obviously going in different directions in life.

None of that mattered though when shit hit the fan in Penang. When he saw that gun pointed at Lau's head there was just no other option than to attack the gunman with his own bare hands. It hadn't ended well of course, and now he was thoroughly battered and humiliated. More than that, now Olivia was telling him the hostage they were trying to save had died too. It seemed Penang was a total failure, and Tiago wanted to kick himself for losing the plot.

"I understand why you did what you did." Olivia says, pulling him from his thoughts, "But you're a double-0, and you're very hard to replace."

"Yeah, then you would have to find someone even better looking than me to fuck, right?" he said to her with a devilish grin, never missing a moment to rib her about their situation.

"003." she said sternly, "You shouldn't joke about that."

Tiago looked her up and down. She had a troubled look on her face and her eyebrows were furrowed at him. Despite that she just looked so cute, so unlike her usual severe self that she displayed at the office. He was always so delighted to see the real her come out from behind the mask.

"I want to fuck you." He suddenly blurted out, feeling the painkillers he had taken earlier finally kicking in and his brain growing a little foggy.

Olivia laughed then, the tension easing in her features. She put her arms around him then, drawing him close. "Oh 003," she hummed, "always so forward. But you aren't allowed to do any strenuous activity so that's off the table."

"No." he says, "I missed you. I need to fuck you."

He needed whatever scraps she would give him, whatever little sliver was left over for him after she attended to her husband or her job or her duties. He just needed the feel of her soft body against him so she could finally take him away from all this pain. It had been so long since he'd felt her that he nearly forgot what it was like to touch her.

Her smooth lips brushed his cracked ones gently before she placed a kiss on his stubbly cheek. "I think we need to get you to bed, hmm?" she says, before standing and extending her hand for him to take.

He sighs and grabs her hand, allowing her to try and help him off the sofa. "Why did you actually come here?" he asks, "If you didn't come here to sleep with me?"

"I came because I was concerned," she said, "if your favorite agent was gravely injured, you'd check up on them too."

Tiago can't help the smile that forms, "Your favorite, huh?"

She leads him back to his bedroom by the hand, telling him to sit down on the bed. He does as he's told, feeling the room spinning pleasantly as his pain slowly melts away. She begins stripping his clothes off him, first by pulling his shirt over his head.

"What are you doing?"

"Undressing you."

"Why?"

"To get you to bed, 003."

"Hmm."

He eyed her as she began to unbutton his jeans and slide the zipper down. His hips bucked unintentionally, but she slid his jeans down his thighs without touching him and pulled them off at his ankles. He felt his erection was straining against his boxer briefs and he knew she had to see it. He desperately wanted her to reach out and touch him.

"Please," he groaned, "I need you."

"You need me to what, 003?"

He smirked, "To fuck me."

"I told you that's not happening." she says firmly, "Now lay down."

He scoots back and rests his head on his pillow, closing his eyes.

"Kiss me at least?"

"Have you seen your lip, Tiago? It looks like it will start bleeding again at any moment."

Fuck, she wouldn't even kiss him. She never turned his kisses down. Tiago grunted, imagining how terrible he must look right now with his swollen, misshapen face. Of course she wasn't going to shag him when he looked like this. A jolt of self-pity ran through him, poor unfuckable man, he thought.

"Do I disgust you?" he asked as he watched her digging through his dresser drawers, and he remembered when he first asked her that question so many years ago.

"What would ever make you say that?" she said as she pulled out a pair of pajama bottoms, heading back towards the bed. Tiago pointed at his damaged face, but inwardly thought about all his other transgressions through the years. He felt like such a fool, like all he ever did was let her down.

"Oh, I've seen far worse in this line of work." she said, sitting down on the bed and cupping his unbruised cheek in her palm, "You'll be back to normal in no time, I promise."

He reached up and grabbed her hand with his, squeezing it before bringing her palm to his lips and kissing the soft flesh there.

"Olivia – I –" he tried to slur out his words but the Vicodin was making it hard. "I-" he tried to say again, but he just felt too tired to get anything else out. He dropped her hand as his eyes shut closed, but he felt her warmth next to him and that was enough in the moment.

What he had wanted to say in his inebriated state was I love you, but he would be thankful in the morning that he hadn't been so careless with his words.

Olivia decided to stay with him that night. She'd put his pajamas on him and cleaned up a bit around his flat while he slept. His living room was a perpetual mess, with all the computer hardware just sitting out everywhere, but she tried not to touch anything for fear of disturbing whatever process he was in the middle of.

How ridiculous it was that she was doing domestic chores for one of her agents, a double-0 at that. It was not a privilege she would afford anyone else at MI6, yet here she was, just like the doting mother Tiago always accused her of being.

It was hard to look at him. No, it wasn't the worst injuries she had seen in her career, but his wounds were pretty damn horrible. Not to mention apparently most of the trauma occurred in his brain and not on his face, so she shuddered when she thought of how much force must have been behind those punches. He seemed alright though, in pain and dejected, but alright - far from the slobbering vegetable that the medical team was sure he would be.

Olivia treated herself to one of Tiago's beers, figuring he wouldn't mind, and stood in front of his balcony door while looking over the city. She could remember that night they'd rutted against this very door a few years ago, and how embarrassed and flustered she'd been at the time. Now those seemed like such simpler times. The lights of the city flickered and glimmered in the night sky, and the echoes of traffic noise drifted up to where she stood. She could hear his loud snoring coming from the bedroom, and that reminded her of that first night they shared a bed together, in which she'd heard his drunken labored breathing all night. It felt like a whole lifetime had passed since that first night.

When she finally felt tired enough, she stripped off all her clothes and climbed in bed with him, running her fingers through his long hair that splayed out across his pillow. He stirred a bit at her touch, and a smile formed on his lips.

"Mamãe?" he said, "Você está aqui?"

She looked him over but he was fast asleep, his eyes twitching underneath his eyelids.

"Isso dói, por que você me deixou?"

Olivia has no idea what he's saying, just that it sounds like Portuguese. She'd heard him mutter things in his sleep before, but it was always in either Spanish or English. This was a new development.

"Tiago?" she whispered to him, and he moved a little, grunting as his raw lips made contact with his pillowcase, "It's Olivia. I'm here now."

He smiled again, reaching his arm out and throwing it around her middle. Soon he was snoring again, and Olivia watched him in the glow of the streetlights that filtered in through the window. In this light his bruise wasn't so obvious and the bump on the bridge of his nose looked minimal. Maybe things were going to be alright after all.

The debriefing about Penang went about as well as she could expect. Lau sat in silence the whole time with his eyes cast down. Mr. Zhao did the most speaking, talking about their all goals and targets and financial losses from this fiasco. Olivia watched Tiago out of the corner of her eye the whole time, and he pretty much just sat there staring into space for the whole meeting. His bruise was turning green at the edges but his eyelid was still a deep violet color. He looked so awful. Like a ghoul.

At the end of the meeting both agents were asked to give their final statements before the case notes were classified and stored away. Lau sat up straight and ran his hands along his thighs nervously, speaking of how he wished the mission had ended differently but that he was grateful Agent Rodriguez had intervened in the situation and saved his life.

When it was Tiago's turn to speak all he could say was, "I'm sorry." and he quickly stood and left the office without being excused.

Olivia didn't reprimand him for it, there was no need.

When they concluded their meeting she stopped Lau on the way out the door, "Mr. Lau, I heard you welcomed a new baby, is that correct?"

"Yes! A girl, we're very blessed. She's healthy and very big, 4.5 kilos when she was born!" he paused and smiled sadly, "I'm glad I'll get to see her grow up. That was almost taken away from me."

They both cast a sideways glance at Tiago, who was sitting at his desk with his head in his hands.

"I'm very glad you're still with us, 005." Olivia told him, and she meant it, "Give your wife my regards."

She went over and tapped Tiago on the shoulder, "Take the rest of the day off. Actually, take the rest of the week. You shouldn't be in the office so soon."

He nodded and let her lead him out of the office. They went back to his flat where he took two Vicodin tablets and passed out on the sofa.

Olivia left two days later. She made sure his apartment was spotless and his cupboards full of food before she left, but had a feeling there was no way he could maintain that sort of order in his state.

August 1994

Olivia keeps receiving faxes from Station H, and she doesn't like a single thing they say.

Mr. Zhao keeps asking her to call him, that it's urgent, that there's something he needs to speak to her about. He says 003 isn't doing well; he says 003 is barely coming into the office and calling out most days of the week. Mr. Zhao says this is unacceptable, and he needs to speak to her immediately.

Olivia has been putting this call off. She sees the faxes coming in about Tiago, multiple faxes from both their psychology unit and their medical unit.

Subject exhibits symptoms of major depression.

Subject has been placed on antidepressants.

Subject has been placed on mood stabilizers.

Subject has been placed on anti-psychotics.

Subject is showing no improvement. He has cancelled all therapy sessions.

Subject is displaying symptoms of a mixed episode.

Subject is rejecting treatment and has ceased use of medications.

Every new fax was a horrifying new look into Tiago's mental state. Every day she waited on bated breath to see what news the daily fax brought in. Eventually she got the suggestion she knew was coming.

Subject is not approved for field duty given recent developments – immediate suspension suggested.

That was when she phoned Tiago at his desk, dialing his direct number which was one of the few phone numbers she knew by heart. It rang a few times and went to voicemail, so she dialed his home landline instead.

After a few rings he answered, "Hello?"

"Mr. Rodriguez?" she asked, unsure how he was going to respond.

"Olivia? Why are you calling me at home?" he asked, a note of irritation in his voice.

"I'm calling you at home because for some reason you aren't at your desk in the office." she answered him with the same note of irritation, "I'm told you can't be arsed to show up at work. Is this true?"

There's a heavy sigh on the other end. "I'm not feeling well." is all he says.

"I can see that." she retorts, "But we need you to pull yourself together. I'm told that you have stopped taking the medications recommended to you, is that true too?"

"Yes, ma'am. It's true."

"And why is that?"

Another exacerbated sigh, "Because they make me feel like a zombie." he says, now sounding annoyed, "And because they're making me fat and my dick won't stay hard. Is that what you want to hear? Because that's the truth."

"003!" she says angrily, "I've been very patient with you for the last six months. We all have. Your presence is required at the office, and I expect you to stop calling out as often as you are."

There's silence on the other end now.

"I shouldn't be telling you this, but the psychology department is telling me to suspend you from field duty. I'm not going to just yet, but that's what they're telling me. You understand how serious this is?"

"Yes, ma'am." he says solemnly.

"I need you to go in to the office tomorrow, is that understood?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You can call me anytime, Tiago." she tells him, her voice becoming softer, "I know the last six months have been difficult on you. I'll make any accommodation you need, but you need to ask first and not just abandon your duties. Is that understood?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'll call next week." she says, rubbing her forehead, "I'll call your desk and I expect you to be there."

"I will." is all he says before he abruptly hangs up.

It's then that Olivia marches down to their psychology unit with all of Tiago's paperwork in hand – everything from his initial interview down to the most recent faxes she'd received about him. When she gets there she's greeted by one of the new young hires, a girl with thick glasses and an eager smile.

Olivia hands her all the paperwork and asks her to look it over.

"Tell me," she asks, "Can a brain injury trigger a depressive episode?"

"Oh, of course, ma'am." the girl says, "Mood disorders are common after a brain injury, especially one like this." she pointed at a paragraph in his discharge papers, "This said he had multiple seizures. That's not good. Not good at all. We have no idea how extensive the damage to his brain was. He can speak and walk though?"

"Yes, he speaks and walks just fine. They couldn't find anything wrong with him physically."

"Hmm." the young psychologist thinks for a moment, "You want to be very careful with cases like these. Damage to the frontal lobe is irreversible and can cause permanent effects. Damage to other areas causes mood issues. I would suggest he go on medication and be seen by a therapist, has he done those things?"

"Yes, he's done those, but he's ceased treatment."

"Oh." she says flatly, "Not good at all. If I were to be honest with you, I would suggest he retire from service given these findings." she flipped the papers and shrugged, "This is no good."

"I see," Olivia says evenly, but her mind is reeling, "Thank you for the information."

As she makes her way back to her office, she's stopped in the hallways by someone from human resources. This girl looks haggard and stressed, her eyes wide as she throws up one hand.

"Ma'am! I'm sorry, but we asked you to help us multiple times and still didn't get an answer. We have some candidates for field agents, can you pick some to come in for an interview?"

Olivia is in no mood for picking out candidates to hire, but she takes the files and thumbs through them.

One file captures her eye, the polaroid picture attached features a young man with the most piercing blue eyes she's ever seen. She stares at it for a moment, oddly enraptured by the image of this young man she's never seen before. She reads over the small blurb about his life. The words orphaned and Scotland catch her eye.

"This one." she says, and hands it to her employee, reading off the name at the top, "Bond. James Bond. Call that one in for an interview."

"Yes, ma'am!" the human resources lady says before she hurries away, leaving Olivia back to her own private thoughts.

In her office she stares at Tiago's personal file for a long time. It still bears that smiling mugshot he took at age 19 on the front. If you were to flip through the pages you would see him through the years, every new injury in the field documented by photograph, every new hairstyle captured in mugshots. The circles under his eyes grew darker every year, that much was undeniable. She looked over the most recent pictures, some of which she'd never seen before. A photo of him in the hospital, his eyes swollen shut and tubes taped to his mouth and nostrils. Then there was a photo where he was in his hospital bed, awake but bruised and broken. It was horrible, and she threw the pictures down in disgust.

She flipped through the earlier years and found a picture of him from 1991, with his shaved head and skin tanned so dark that he was unrecognizable. The eyes were unmistakable though, and in that particular picture he looked so proud of himself. In just three years so much had changed.

That night Olivia booked a flight to Hong Kong.

When she arrived at Station H it appeared that Tiago was nowhere to be found. Mr. Zhao was totally irritated by his absence, and he willingly handed over the key to Tiago's flat to Olivia when she asked for it.

She made her way over to his flat as quickly as she could, but when she opened the door he was still nowhere to be found.

His flat was a wreck. There were somehow more computers there now, a few towers and a few monitors, more and more wires, some of which were connected to nothing and just sat on the floor. His kitchen was littered with empty cans and bottles of beer and fizzy drinks that he hadn't bothered to get rid of. She peeked into his bedroom, which he wasn't in, and his bed was completely unmade with piles and piles of clothing just sitting out. It looked like a bomb had gone off.

When she walked back out to the living room she realized his balcony window was halfway open, and a light breeze drifted in. It was then she realized Tiago was out on the balcony, but he wasn't resting there like someone might normally do. He was sitting atop the railing, one leg swung over the side, and he was looking down at the street below him.

Olivia had never felt her heart pounding so fast as she watched him straddling that ledge.

"Tiago!" she called, "What are you doing?!"

His head snapped around but there was no emotion written on his face, and his eyes just looked so empty and dull.

"Olivia?" he said, "Why are you here?"

"What are you doing?" she asked again, rushing out to the balcony and grabbing him by the arm, "Get down from there! Why are you up there?"

He swung his leg back over the ledge and shifted back down to the concrete floor of his balcony.

"I was just wondering how quickly that drop would kill me." he said flatly.

"What?! No – no, no, come inside this instant!" she said, pulling him desperately inside his flat. "What if I hadn't shown up here!" she yelled at him, sitting him on his sofa, "What then, Tiago? You'd have just flung yourself off the balcony? That's it? You would really do that to me?"

He just stared up at her with red rimmed eyes, "Maybe." is all he said.

Olivia couldn't stop the tears that formed in her eyes, and with her adrenaline kicking in she barely felt like knew where she was. She watched him reach for his Vicodin bottle and pull out four pills, swallowing them quickly.

"Just let me sleep." he said, laying down and tucking his hands under his head, "I just want to sleep."

Tiago was quickly unconscious, and Olivia was left alone and crying her eyes out in his squalid flat. Eventually she ran out of tears, and just sat down on the floor next to his sofa, putting her hand on his chest and feeling his heart beating against her.

She had no idea what to do, and no idea how she could save Tiago from himself.