Whooo boy hello! Hope you all aren’t super mad at me for leaving you with that cliffhanger and not uploading…:/ sorry. had some writer’s block with a future chapter and I had to get past it before uploading this, so thank you for putting up with me. But on the bright side, I updated! And my birthday’s a week from Wednesday eek! But it’s on Ash Wednesday so I’m celebrating it Tuesday lol. but I’ll be 15 ahhh that’s so exciting, I’m so DONE with 14 lol. But yeah, sorry, enough about me, more about this chapter – WHY THE HELL IS CHARLIE ALIVE?! (and why the hell did Word just turn THE back to The? Stupid autocorrect) so yeah on to the story!! Please fan/vote/comment. Wait do we even “fan” anymore, someone explain, I don’t get why we’ve gone all twitter and it’s “following” now, I liked fanning :( it was unique. Whatevs. Bye! Gracias! <3 vb123321

Chapter Thirteen



♥ Astrid ♥



Time spiraled. My mind and body were so exhausted and confused and relieved and overjoyed and furious that I lost all sense of everything else. It was only Charlie – oh my gosh, Charlie – and his white face and the shivers running through his feverish body. Everything else was numbed out, much like it had been after Cloying had shot him all those weeks ago, and yet this time it was different because there were no red flowers, there was no gun, there was nothing but the cold stone floor and the harsh bright lights overhead and he was alive.



Alive.



I still couldn’t accept it, holding him close as Jay tried to get me to move, begged me to come with him before someone came and saw us there. Somehow I thought that if I let him go, he would be gone, just a memory again as he had been for three months. And yet there he was, solid in my arms, his chest moving up and down feebly in fast, shallow breaths as if each one were numbered and he was impatient to get them out.



“Charlie.”



I kept whispering his name, over and over, as if that would make this dream be real, as if it could make this nightmare that had started three months ago end. He stayed unconscious for hours, long after I realized that Jay had finally left. Dimly I remembered him promising he would be back, to just stay put and he would try and help us out, but I had no clear memory of him leaving. It was just Charlie and me, alone in that bright, cold room, like one of my dreams I had had in the hospital.



But was this a dream?



He felt so real, so alive, that my heart longed to accept but my mind was far too practical to believe. I had seen the bullet, seen the blood that came after, and yet here he was with no marks in his chest at all, no sign of a healed injury or recovering wound. There were plenty of other signs – the mess on his face, the dried blood in his hair – but no bullet. So surely it was a dream, then.



But it was a good one, and so I stayed where I was, stroking his dark hair away from his face. He could have been asleep, except for the utter lifelessness of his body, and the time wiled away as I felt my own eyelids closing and forced myself to keep them open, to keep living this dream for as long as I could. I never wanted him to leave my arms.



At some point – I didn’t bother to look at my watch –a noise came from the door and Jay entered again. He looked wearier than I had ever seen him look, his hair a mess and the shadows more pronounced under his eyes, and he stopped in the doorway to look at me, a bitter smile twisting across his mouth.



“You all right?”



I nodded mutely, not trusting my vocal cords, and he came to my side, hunkering down to look at Charlie’s face. I couldn’t read his expression, some emotion fighting another in his eyes as he glanced up at me.



“I’m going to get you out of here. Both of you.”



My brain asked how but I merely nodded again, docilely accepting this, and he looked momentarily perplexed at my lack of reaction before telling me that he was going to bring Charlie to his feet to support him. I nodded for the third time, allowing him to lift Charlie’s limp body, and then scrambled to my feet to use my shoulder as a brace. Jay slung Charlie’s arm around his neck and began to walk slowly but steadily towards the door.



“We’re going to my car,” he said as we walked down the white, empty corridor. His voice sent echoes bouncing off the wall, the words spilling out of his mouth as if he felt the need to fill the silence. “I think Finn’s gone – I hope he has – but if we run into him, there may be trouble. I’m not supposed to be here, Cloying specifically ordered me not to, but I knew you needed him…” He paused, and I felt him glance at me but concentrated on the floor. “If Finn sees us, he’ll tell Cloying and then, well, I’m sure you can imagine.”



“Who’s Finn?” My voice sounded hoarse.



“That Portuguese bastard.” His held that black fury again. “He was with Charlie at the manor, too, you never saw him. Head of that guerilla unit I joined – you know – before I met Cloying and all. Never really got over that I hold more authority in G7 than he does, hates my guts for it.”



I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, as my thoughts were still chock-full with disbelief and I had to keep glancing at Charlie’s white face to make sure he was still there next to me. My feet only continued moving because Jay was leading, down the hallway and slowly back up the stairs in silence. At the top, he pushed open the door and drew his gun with his free hand, his eyes darting around the musty-smelling room.



“Looks okay,” he said tensely after a moment. “Come on.”



Together we moved through the room, my nerves jumping at every shadow. Jay’s head was swiveling constantly, his gun at firing height always as we reached the back door. He kicked open the door and ushered me through, awkwardly moving Charlie’s flaccid body through as well and then slamming it shut. Exhaling loudly, he shook golden hair out of his eyes, avoiding mine, and then he gestured with his gun towards his car.



“There.”



Distantly I registered that it had grown dark outside, Jay’s face hard to make out in the shadows, as there were no streetlights. I twisted my head to look at my watch at last and saw with a fair amount of surprise that it was eleven at night. Immediately I thought guiltily of Josh and Joel, waiting for me back at the safe house since five o’clock that afternoon, and wondered how time had flown that quickly.



Jay unlocked the backseat of his car and said, “We have to lay him on the seat. I don’t know where else to put him, and then no one will see him at the stops.” He looked strained. “I have to be somewhere very soon, Astrid; this is a huge risk and I don’t want you to be caught up in it. I’ll leave you somewhere in the city and Josh can come pick you up. Okay?”



“Anything,” I replied indistinctly, not moving my eyes away from Charlie’s face, and Jay sighed. Together we maneuvered Charlie into the backseat, laying his head gently on one end of the seat. I brushed his hair out of his face and looked at him for a long moment before getting into shotgun as Jay twisted the key in the ignition.



“Listen,” he said tensely as the car pulled out of the parking lot behind the building and bumped into the street. “When Josh comes to get you, don’t tell him I got you out of there. Say you escaped, say you killed ten men in the process, whatever, but don’t say I had a part in it.”



Momentarily distracted, I stared at him. “Why not?”



His blue eyes flickered to my face, shrouded by some emotion I couldn’t read, and he shrugged. “Personal reasons. I don’t want to ruin my rep, do I?” His mouth curled into that familiar bitter smile.



“I can never tell him what you’ve done for me?” My voice was soft, a lump rising in my throat as I realized just what he was saying and what he had done. “But this will show Josh that he was wrong–”



“But he wasn’t, damn it!” Jay clenched the steering wheel tightly, his jaw tightly locked and his eyes facing resolutely forward. “I’m still messed up in all this, Astrid – you don’t owe me anything. I got you and Charlie into this in the first place, I owed you. We’re still not square, but there’s not much more I can do.”



I swallowed. “Jay–”



“Just don’t. Please.”



“All right,” I agreed in a small voice, and he exhaled with a frustrated noise, sweeping one hand through his hair before concentrating on the road again. I tried not to look at the backseat too often, even though I wanted so desperately to see if Charlie was still there or whether he had disappeared. But I knew that there were people watching, something that Jay clarified for me by his tense blue eyes.



Streetlights were few and far between on those streets, barely lighting the road as Jay maneuvered his way through, sweat gleaming on his forehead. The sentries along the way most likely couldn’t see us that well in the dark, as the only light came from the dim headlights of the car, which Jay had switched on reluctantly, saying that they would probably shoot first and ask questions later if it came to that.



“Look casual,” he ordered after about ten minutes of painful silence. “Laugh a little, like I’m saying something funny. We’re coming up to the checkpoints.”



I pasted a smile on my face, clutching at his arm and letting out a trill of laughter as he looked down at me in apparent distraction, a dazzling smile on his face. He said something lightly, something meaningless that I replied to with another ditzy laugh as he placed one foot on the brake and leaned across to cup one hand behind my head. And then his lips were on mine, pressed upon them with a desperate urgency, begging me to respond, and because I knew why he was, I did, tangling my fingers in his hair.



For one short moment, it was as if nothing had happened. Everything disappeared, the street, the car, everything, but then he released me, still smiling as he stepped on the gas again, and I laughed and clung to his arm as we rolled past the checkpoint. Once past, I fell back in my seat, breathing heavily and wishing I wasn’t, still dizzy from his kiss. He looked over at me, and I was taken aback at the tenderness on his face until he said in a low voice,



“They’re still watching.”



“Right.”



I smiled over at him, forcing myself not to look instinctively to the backseat and trying to act like the rapid beating of my heart was from apprehension. His eyes were snapping with tension even as he reached casually over to put a hand on my shoulder. I laid my head on it, closing my eyes for a moment as if I could escape all this, but sudden fear gripped me and I couldn’t help risking a tiny glance at the backseat.



“He’s fine,” snapped Jay, the pressure getting to him. “Please, Astrid, you don’t understand this risk–”



“I do, I really do.” I looked at him anxiously. “I’m sorry, Jay.”



He shrugged, offering a glimpse of that crooked smile again as we slipped back into our casual roles. “Just keep it up; hopefully they’ll think I’m just taking some girl out. Normal enough, I would think.”



Frowning, I bit my lip and tried not to feel jealous. Sensing the mood shift, he glanced down at my face and then started laughing so loudly that I elbowed him in irritation and admonishment, looking around the streets circumspectly. I supposed that a laughing Jay was easier to believe than an apprehensive one, but I didn’t appreciate it all the same. He got under control at last, a crinkle of amusement still between his eyes that was definitely preferable to the darkness of earlier.



“It’s not like that, I promise. I’m just saying that’s what they would think.”



“Not that I care, anyway,” I muttered, pushing away from him as at last we began to leave those dark, twisted seats. Now I leaned over to peer worriedly at the backseat, my heart still skipping a beat every time I saw his face. I could feel Jay’s eyes on me in the rearview mirror but ignored him, touching Charlie’s face gently and then starting in surprise.



“He’s burning up,” I exclaimed, grabbing Jay’s arm again, and he jumped, the car swerving slightly. Swearing and then looking apologetic, he shook me off, straightening the wheel and glancing down at me with a torn expression.



“I’m sorry, I can’t do anymore – if I do I’ll end up killing you two as well.”



“As well?” I echoed with a lurch of my stomach.



That smile full of acrimony again. “Well, I’m practically killing myself, aren’t I? Don’t worry about me,” he said as he saw the look on my face. “I owed this to you, at least. And now,” as we at last pulled out of the slums, “I have to find somewhere safe to leave you. I think I know a good place…”



It took a further ten minutes to reach the destination he had in mind, an empty-looking warehouse with a large window in the front facing the street. Here the car pulled to a halt, Jay giving the building a long, unhappy look before sliding out of the car and walking around to open my door. Stepping out, I looked at him for a long moment, wondering what exactly what was going on in my mind and then what could possibly be going on in his.



We lifted Charlie out of the car again – still unconscious – and Jay opened the door of the warehouse. It was mostly empty inside with just a few leftover sacks, crates, and boxes that formed a little den-like area around one corner of the room. Jay led me over to that space and together we lowered Charlie’s limp body onto some sacks. I arranged his limbs into a more natural-looking, comfortable position, sat down next to him with a box at my back, and lifted his head into my lap, brushing that dark hair out of his still face for the umpteenth time. My chest hurt, that lump rising again, and I wondered why it had never occurred to me that he might have been alive, why I had never tried to make sure.



I became aware suddenly that he was shivering violently, his lips blue and his teeth chattering even in his lifeless state. His forehead still burned with what felt like a fever but I knew the cold was affecting him too, and so even though I was feeling the chill of the warehouse as well, I carefully shrugged out of my jacket and spread it across his chest, tucking it around his body in order to trap as much heat as I possibly could. The cold seemed to settle through my thin t-shirt and I began to shiver in spite of myself, defiantly ignoring it.



Jay stood in front of us, watching me for a long moment, and then he sighed again and lifted his arms above his head. I looked at him in confusion as he wriggled out of the navy sweatshirt he was wearing and stooped next to me, pushing it over my head. Trying to protest, I opened my mouth to find his eyes a few inches from my own. He placed a finger against my lips firmly.



“Let me.”



When at last I nodded, he helped me get my arms into the sleeves, the thing draping over my slimmer shoulders like some sort of poncho. He sat back on his heels to look at me again, and I tried to convey my gratefulness to him with my expression. I thought he must have understood, because he smiled slightly, a smile that seemed to be forced out, and his blue eyes burned miserably as he touched my face lightly with one hand.



“I have to go now. You have your phone?” I nodded wordlessly. “Then call Josh, okay? He’ll find you. You’re at this address,” and he rattled off something that I barely caught. He had to tell me it twice more before I was able to repeat it back to him, which wasn’t normal for me and he clearly thought so. “You’ll be all right,” he said, but it sounded as though he was convincing himself.



“Yes.” I tried to sound confident, my breath coming out in a frosty puff that hung in the air before dissipating. Jay looked at it, his eyebrows furrowing, and then he began to straighten, some hesitation flitting across his face. And then he leaned down again, taking my face gently in one hand, and tried to kiss me again.



Something stopped me from responding; my head turned away in an automatic reaction so that his lips landed on my cheek instead. When I finally raised my eyes to look at him, I saw a flash of genuine pain in his eyes before he straightened up and walked back towards the door.



“Stay safe,” he threw over his shoulder as I sat there feeling wretched, and then he was gone. I watched him through the fogged window as he yanked open the car door and slipped inside. A moment later came the sound of a revving engine, his lights flicked on, and he pulled out into the road, the car sliding on a patch of ice before disappearing down the street.



And even with Charlie resting on my lap, I felt more alone than I had in my entire life.



It took me several minutes to regain enough brain power to remember the phone in my pocket. Though it was shut-out of the wind, the air in the warehouse was cold, that type of cold that creeps into your bones, settling there and making you feel like you’ll never be warm again. I was only in Jay’s sweatshirt, wishing I had thought to bring something more, but I was more worried about Charlie, who was still shaking with the cold and fever. My own fingers trembled as I carefully pulled my phone out of the jacket pocket.



After dialing, I pressed it to my ear, leaning back against the box and looking down at Charlie’s motionless face, that wondrous disbelief rising all over again. When Josh’s scared and relieved voice issued through the speaker, I almost forgot to answer him.



“Astrid! Where are you? I’ve called maybe ten times, Joel’s going crazy, he thinks something’s happened to you…where are you?”



I breathed out, long and shaky, my mind still whirling and wondering what to say, and then those few words spilled out of me: “Josh…Charlie’s alive.”







He didn’t believe me; of course he didn’t, I wouldn’t have believed myself. His voice was dubious, questions spilling out of his mouth until I broke down in tears all at once, the tension and fear and relief of the past few hours crashing out of me in a mad rush. I was babbling incoherently into the phone about how Charlie was sick and wasn’t moving and it was cold and I wanted to go home, one hand gripping the plastic backing tightly and the other covering my eyes as if it would make the warehouse go away.



After several minutes of him calming down as best he could, speaking soothingly and promising to be there as soon as he could, he told me to sit tight and stay warm, that he was leaving the house as he spoke. He had typed the address into his phone and said it would be at least an hour if it didn’t start snowing again, which the skies were threatening to do. I clutched at this spark of practicality, anything to keep me from completely going over the edge. Josh asked me over and over if I understood, his voice calm and powerful, and wouldn’t stop until I got control of my tear ducts, swallowed hard, and answered clearly that I did, that I had my gun and knife and the phone, and that I would be just fine waiting for him.



Once he hung up, I slumped against the crate in back of me again, running my hands over my face and trying to stop crying, because even though those terrible, wracking sobs had stopped, tears were still sliding down my face, salt tingling on my lips. My chest ached as if someone had kicked me hard, and every third breath was huge and shuddering, going through my entire body.



“Astrid?”



Jolting violently, I uncovered my eyes in shock to see grey eyes looking up at me in a white face, wide and confused and clouded. Immediately the tears were falling again, pouring down my face and accompanied by that choking noise that came when I tried to stop them, which I was trying to do but failing. Charlie looked concerned, one hand rising slowly to touch my face, and I clutched it in both hands, leaning over and holding it to my mouth. My arms shook, my vision blurred from tears.



“Oh Charlie,” I said again, nearly choking, and he reached up with a grimace of effort and took my wrist. I raised my eyes to look at him, air still shuddering out of my lungs in massive gasps as he tried to smile, the effort coming out painful, almost as if he had forgotten how. The corners of my mouth attempted to return it as I struggled to gain control over my body.



“Don’t cry.” His voice was soft, concern still in his eyes, and I was struck by the considerable irony of it all. He was the one concerned for me, and yet he was the one who had been stuck in that place for three months. I had forgotten, or never truly appreciated, how much he cared about me, and this only made the tears flow faster.



“Astrid?” He sounded almost scared, and I made a huge effort to pull myself together.



“I thought – I thought you’d died,” I gulped, the wrong thing to say entirely, and confusion flitted across his face.



“When? Just now?” The arch of a dark eyebrow was so achingly familiar that I almost lost it again. “I’m not that big a wimp, Astrid. I just passed out.”



“No–” I took a deep breath, still grasping his hand as though it was my life support. “No; back at the manor. When Cloying shot you, I thought you’d died.”



“When Cloying…?” Charlie’s face was blank, eyebrows furrowing slightly as his eyes unfocused just a little before sliding back to my face. “Of course. I’d forgotten.”



“You forgot that you were shot?” I asked shrilly, unable to help myself.



“But I wasn’t.” He was genuinely bewildered. “I mean, I know Cloying fired and everything, but…he shot me?”



I didn’t want to have this conversation, not in some freezing warehouse when he had just woken and I was speaking to him for the first time in three months. I wanted to tell him how much I had missed him, how I had still dreamed about him after all this time; I wanted to just hold him in my arms forever and never let go.



Instead, I found myself saying, “Yes. I watched him. And then – the blood – and you were on the ground and they took me out – and then I got out of the manor, and Delta said they never found you–” Crying again, I forced my mouth shut as a shiver ran over his face, something coming into his eyes that I couldn’t understand. “I’m sorry,” I said miserably. “You don’t want to hear this–”



“No–” He attempted another smile. “I needed to know. I don’t know what happened, then,” he took a deep, quivering breath, “and I’m not sure I care to. What – what day is it?”



Jerking a little in surprise, I replied shakily, “It’s the twenty-first of December,” and then, glancing at my watch, “Oh, I guess the twenty-second. It’s almost twelve-thirty at night. Didn’t you have your…?” I trailed off as Charlie’s face went a little paler, which I hadn’t thought would be possible to do.



“It’s been more than three months?” he whispered, his face so shocked that I wished I hadn’t said anything at all. For a moment, the deep shadows beneath his eyes, the ones that weren’t hid by bruises, seemed to become more prominent. “I thought it was October…”



“Time flies,” I said weakly, and his grey eyes burned into mine, deep as an abyss and three times as dark with pain and something else that I had never seen – a sort of burning hatred.



“Not with him, it doesn’t,” he said in an unnaturally savage voice, and I thought for a moment he was talking about Jay until he closed his eyes tightly and muttered something in that Portuguese dialect that I suspected wasn’t too polite. I was silent, gripping his hand even more firmly as I couldn’t think of what else to do, and after a moment he spoke again.



“The twenty-second of December? Happy birthday.”



My mouth opened but no words escaped; my mind was absolutely blank. I picked up my phone again to make sure: Thursday, December 22, 2011. It was my birthday, and I had completely and utterly forgotten about it, as I hadn’t really had any reason to remember. I stared at him, his eyes closed in the lean white face, dark hair drifting down over them again, so long that it brushed his high cheekbones. How was it that he could be in that place for three long months, in such conditions that I could only imagine, and he was nearly passing out in my lap again, and yet he could remember the simple fact that it was my birthday when even I couldn’t?



“Thanks,” I managed to say at last. “Seventeen at last; now I’m the same age as you. No bossing me around, huh?”



A smile fluttered across his mouth, though his eyes stayed closed. “I’ll always be older than you. Just wait a few months for it to be official.”



I smiled and pressed his icy hand to my cheek again, and abruptly his eyes flickered open with a flash of confusion. Frowning, he reached up with his other hand to take my hands and bring them down next to his face, uncurling my fingers to look at them. The ring I had found in his room all those weeks ago glistened slightly on my finger; I had become so accustomed to it that I had forgotten I was wearing it.



Charlie looked at it for a long moment, his face darkening, and just as I was beginning to feel uneasy, he said in a deceptively light tone, “Well, it’s good that you got your birthday present, anyway. Where did you find it?”



“In your drawer,” I replied in a small voice, feeling guilty. “I know I shouldn’t have gone through them, but Young said – and I thought since you were – well –”



“Yes.” He was looking at me almost warily. “It’s fine, I understand. Meant to be a joke, you see,” and he tried to smile again, but I could see the immense weariness in his eyes. I kept forgetting that I hadn’t seen him in months and that he’d most likely been through so, so much; when we were talking, I felt like we were back at the manor, maybe, or just on some crazy assignment.



“I called Josh,” I said presently, wanting to change the subject. “He says he’ll come within an hour – I hadn’t realized we were so far away from the city.”



He closed his eyes again, his neck wilting slightly in my lap. I began stroking his hair away from his face again, and at first he stiffened at my touch and then loosened up, his breath coming out in a little cloud as he breathed shallowly.



“Did you guys find a hotel?” he asked, his voice already fading and filled with that sharp edge of pain again. “Why did you come to London?”



“We’re staying in this safe house in London. That’s a long story. You’ve missed out on quite a bit, you know.”



All his muscles were beginning to go limp again, his voice barely a murmur. “Well, sorry about that. Sometimes a guy needs a holiday.”



I smiled in spite of myself, tears prickling my eyelids again as his head lolled back in my lap, hair flopping into his white face. He was shaking again, an involuntary reaction to the cold that was still seeping into the room, and I tried to wrap the jacket more tightly around him. It didn’t seem to help at all, and so, being careful not to disturb him, I pulled Jay’s sweatshirt over my head and placed it on top of the jacket.



Still he looked deathly pale and now I was shivering convulsively too, my ears and nose and fingers numb and my feet feeling as if they weren’t attached to my body. But his need was greater than mine, and so I ignored the cold, rubbing his hands between mine to keep both of our circulations going. Watching his face, I took in the faded bruises and the more recent ones from Finn – how long ago it seemed already, as if he had never been gone – and the sharpness of his cheekbones, much more prominent than usual. He was also much thinner, his shoulders weighing nothing in my lap, and his dark hair was long and lank and unwashed.



Even though he was unconscious, his mind still wasn’t at peace: He kept murmuring words that I couldn’t understand because they were in that Portuguese dialect, his voice fluctuating from anger to fear, a fear that was mirrored on his face briefly as his head twitched from side to side restlessly. When I put my hand gently on his cheek to settle him, his eyes flickered and I thought he would wake, but then he merely turned into it so that his lips were brushing my palm, and I didn’t move it away, my heart heavy.



“Some holiday,” I said, and my voice echoed in the empty warehouse room.







Josh came an hour later. The first I heard of it was the car outside, skidding to a halt, and then the loud slamming of the driver’s side door as he dashed up to the door of the warehouse and fought with it a moment before pushing it open and stumbling inside. My head jerked up to look at him, as I had been fighting off sleep, my arms wrapped tightly around my body as my teeth chattered fiercely.



“Oh my gosh.” Josh’s voice was so hoarse that I thought for one wild moment that he had been here with me all along and was suffering from the cold and the exhaustion, too. He had stopped dead in the doorway, but now he came forward slowly, so slowly, as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying, and I hardly blamed him.



“You weren’t insane,” he whispered, stooping by my side to look down at Charlie’s motionless face. “What – how –?”



“Can we t-talk about this l-later?”



He looked up at me, taking in my shaking torso and most likely blue lips, and immediately he sprang into action. “Of course, sorry, I’m being stupid…but…” He couldn’t tear his eyes away from Charlie. “He’s okay…”



“Yes,” I whispered, breaking into a huge smile in spite of my numb lips, the tears threatening to spill over again. “He’s alive.”



Josh looked at me for a long moment, smiling gently, and as I began to feel slightly defensive, he said quietly, “I’m glad,” and then stood.



“Joel, help me get those blankets from the car, will you?” he called, and I moved my eyes to the door to see Joel standing there. His hair was sticking in all directions, as if he had fallen asleep in the car, and he was staring at me in shock. As Josh ushered him out the door, though, he woke right up, complaining the whole way to the car that he wanted to talk to me and see if I was okay.



The smile didn’t leave my face as I rested my neck on the edge of the crate behind me, closing my eyes briefly. Josh was here; he’d get us out like he always did. We were safe.



I stirred again as Josh came back to my side, he and Joel both with blankets thrown over their shoulders. Joel eyed me with a good deal of wariness as I smiled at him wearily. I wondered what would have happened if he had come an hour earlier and seen his brother here. That kind of thinking made my numbed brain throb, and so I looked up compliantly at Josh instead as he told me to stand up, which I did, gently lifting Charlie’s shoulders and lowering them back on the sacks. My legs had long since gone to sleep and I staggered slightly before straightening.



“Put your sweatshirt and coat back on,” Josh directed, nodding towards where they were laid out on Charlie’s chest. “We can put him in the blankets.”



I hesitated, but my body’s violent shaking changed my mind and rapidly I pulled Jay’s navy sweatshirt over my head again, then thrust my arms into the jacket. Warmth sparked, slowly spreading, and I sighed in relief as I rubbed my hands together. Josh was giving orders to Joel, lifting Charlie’s limp body slightly and wrapping a blanket around him. Joel stood uncertainly in front of him, only offering his shoulder when Josh glared at him. Once they had Charlie propped between them, as Jay and I had carried him, Josh glanced at me and jerked his head towards the exit.



“Come on. Let’s get you somewhere warm. This place is a freaking freezer.”



“I’ll second that,” I mumbled, picking up the extra blankets and holding the door for them as they walked out to the car. Joel looked nervous, glancing over at me every so often as if there were a million questions on the tip of his tongue, which I imagined there were, but Josh told him to concentrate. I opened the back doors of the car and carefully we lowered Charlie onto the backseat. Then I slipped inside and lifted his head back into my lap; I felt that I needed to know he was safe, he was really here.



After telling Joel to get in the car, Josh stood for a moment at the open side door, looking down at Charlie’s face. “I can’t believe it,” he said quietly, wonder and confusion in his eyes. “How…?”



“Later,” I said tersely, inclining my head towards Joel, who had just crawled into shotgun side and was slumped there, sulking. Josh glanced at him and frowned, clearly making the connection that I didn’t want to mention. His eyebrows arched but he smiled anyway, closing the door and sliding into the driver’s seat. The car’s engine rumbled reluctantly to a start, Josh twisting the wheel to avoid a large ice patch as we moved out onto the street.



Joel looked back at me, his blue eyes wide and so painfully like his brother’s that I had to look away, down at Charlie’s passive face. A shock of black hair had fallen into his closed eyes, his chest rising and falling too quickly and shallowly. Flipping the hair back, I touched his forehead and bit my lip worriedly; it was still burning, even after the freezing hour in the warehouse. I was just beginning to warm up, my hands and face thawing as Josh blasted the heat.



“Who is he?” Joel burst out, finally unable to control himself. Josh gave him a good glare, but I shrugged.



“It’s fine. He’s another Delta agent,” I explained. “We’ve known him since we started, like, six years ago. A good friend.”



“Or more?” Joel raised an eyebrow; I frowned, a little perplexed by this reaction, but he was already asking another question. “So where did you find him?”



I hesitated, Josh’s eyes flicking to mine in the rearview mirror, and for a moment my mind was filled with the image of Finn’s fist crashing into Charlie’s face, his body slumping to the ground against his bonds. “We thought he was dead,” I said quietly, watching surprise flood into those blue, blue eyes. “Last assignment – which was the beginning of this whole mess – he was shot and I thought he’d died.”



“But he hadn’t.”



“No,” cut in Josh from the front, his eyes fixated on the road. “It’s crazy, really, him showing up alive. Much like you did.”



Joel’s eyes popped; I winced. Constant reminders of the bombing and the fact that he was supposed to be dead weren’t very helpful. “It is weird,” I agreed, and then, as I looked down again at Charlie’s still face, “but not a bad thing at all.”



“No,” echoed Josh softly, “not a bad thing at all.”