He had been awake since 5 a.m., sleep eluding him most of the nights since he had set his feet on American ground again. Not that it had been any different before. It hadn’t been for years. He couldn’t recall a night he had slept through.

He had run two miles to clear his head, then sat there. Angry, confused, alone. Going to be made an example. Insubordinate. Responsible for countless deaths. The drug addict. The unscrupulous killer. The torturer.
Guilty.
Forever guilty.

He was too tired to argue when she came with yet another subpoena.
He was too tired to care.
He wasn't sure if it actually mattered.
Or if anything ever would matter again.

He just longed to be alone.
He stared at the F.B.I. agents with a blank expression.
Another agency. Another office. People he couldn't relate to.

His mind went blank when the first part of the picture had loaded. The room around him disappeared and he felt the familiar claws of panic reach out for him from the middle of nowhere, squeezing together his lungs. He tried to focus on the picture, tried to block out the inevitable thought but in vain. The pain hit him with a full blast when one of his worst memories returned.
Tony's body going limb in his arms, his eyes breaking. His own desperate pleas that he knew where useless. An image that had been etched into his retinas, burned into his mind the day his world shattered into pieces too tiny ever to be reassembled. The day he lost everything he had left.

The beatings had been a relief sometimes, the torture, the lack of sleep. They blurred his mind and shifted his pain towards a level he could detach from, at least partly. Physical pain. He knew how to deal with that. The possibility that he might end up dead if he didn't talk hadn’t really been a concern of his for a long time. It would have been a relief. Sometimes he had wondered if he really was protecting secrets. Whom was he trying to fool? Hadn’t he stopped caring about this country that had once been his ages ago and wasn’t the silence really a way to provoke them, to make them loose control and go further than they intended and shock him into cardiac arrest? It had happened before. There would be panic and pain, of course there would be. But then it would be over. Forever. He liked the sound of that. Over. Forever. Forever over. He’d whisper both words to himself like a mantra, rocking backwards and forwards because it would lessen the pain. Lessen the pain until exhaustion took over and he collapsed into a heap to be woken with a kick against his ribcage or a bucket full of icy water the next morning. Or the dogs.

He had never found a way to deal with it. And wondered if he ever would. The feeling of utter helplessness still hunted him, the feeling of Tony’s body getting heavier in his arms with every second.

He knew he couldn't let her touch that memory or he would decompensate.

After he had come back he had tried to run, tried to preserve the last little amount of sanity that was left. But everything had caught up with him.
He stared at the picture of the man that had meant the world and refused to even consider that it might be him. To let himself be tricked into the thought that he might see him again. That he might...

"Tony Almeida died in my arms" he said harshly, leaving no room for discussion. He held his breath when the pain intensified at these words. He hadn't even been sure if he could actually say them, had never tried before. Tony was dead and nothing could ever bring him back, the only way to survive had been to enclose the pain in a part of his mind where it was safely stowed away. And to learn to live despite of it.

"He would have contacted me." He would have. Of course. He would have. Unless he hadn't fallen for yet another traitor. Nina and Tony.

His mind worked feverishly. He had to find him. He wouldn't be able to continue without knowing.
He wouldn't rest until he had seen with his own eyes, felt with his own hands. He didn't dare to hope.

His world started spinning when the familiar voice filtered into his brain and years of pain suddenly resurfaced. He struggled to stand upright.

When he laid eyes on Tony his body exploded in a storm of pain. He was unable to form a clear thought, wanting to beat the shit out of him for what he had done to him.
"Why are you not dead?" A helpless attempt to express what he was feeling.
Why the hell didn't you call me, why the hell didn't you make that pain go away? When did you stop caring?
"What happened to you?"
Tell me I didn't trust you for no reason. Tell me whatever you have to. But don't tell you betrayed me. Or I will kill you.

He stared through the mirror at Tony. Stared at the face he knew so well. His heart racing in his chest, his stomach a tight knot while he frantically searched for something familiar in the two dark eyes staring straight ahead. Waiting for a sign, probably. Something. Something that would explain.
He needed to go in there. To see for himself. He had to know. He wasn’t able to form a clear thought anymore. He had to know. There wasn’t any other way. He had to know if he had mourned a man that never had existed.

He let go of Tony, trying to control his emotions. He had been on the verge of loosing it, on the verge of believing him. Of killing him.

With trembling hands he called the number he remembered. After years on the run, years in prison. Because he had known it could mean his life. Just like Tony had.

He had problems to believe what the familiar voices from a lifetime ago told him. He would loose too much if he allowed himself to believe now. He knew he would never be able to live through that moment if the situation proved he had hoped in vain.

When he went to get Tony he had a hard time not to break down right there and then. He wanted to touch him, wanted to tell him what it meant to see him alive. That it meant the world.
But all they managed were those few sentences. Not enough. Not nearly enough. But at the time he knew that no words could ever be enough and that the Tony he had known would understand.


The crash blurred his vision and made him nauseous and only the rush of adrenaline left him more or less functional. He heard the sound of a door being pulled shut and the world zoomed off into darkness.

fanfic50