This story includes a couple of OCs from my previous fic Fear in a Handful of Dust, but you don't have to have read that to understand this. Warning for implied/mentioned long-term torture and its aftermath; nothing at all graphic.

This is a one-shot. At present, I don't plan to continue it.

Title from Can You Help Me by Vertical Horizon.

Clay can hear everything, but he knows better than to open his eyes.

He's learned a lot since the day he lost everything. He has learned that playing possum sometimes buys him a little time - not always, but often enough to be worth a shot.

(He has learned, too, that fighting back just makes it worse - but in the end he usually tries anyway.)

It takes him a few minutes to place the language his new captors are speaking. It's one he knows, but for so long he has heard it only in the remembered voices of the dead.

English. They're speaking English.

It's Clay's native language, but hearing it again feels like getting knifed in the heart. Every time he thinks they've run out of new and inventive ways to hurt him, they prove him wrong.

He shifts, feels the softness of a real mattress beneath him, and realizes this is even worse than just the language.

Clay has been wondering how long it would take them to try this. How long until his captors realized he'd grown accustomed to the constant pain, the casual cruelty, the relentless cold and hunger and abuse, and decided to take a new approach.

Apparently they finally have, and the smooth texture of sheets beneath his fingertips, the comforting weight of a warm blanket tucked around his body, makes him want to curl up in a ball and sob until he can't breathe.

It's a particularly vicious sort of cruelty: giving him a taste of comfort and safety, just so it can be ripped away again.

Clay tells himself he won't let it affect him, that he'll block out this facsimile of kindness just like he blocked out the endless brutality that came before it, but already tears burn beneath his closed eyelids.

It just feels so nice to be warm.

Warm, and clean, and not hurting. The floaty, fuzzy-edged numbness tells him he's been dosed with heavy-duty painkillers that are masking the pain from all the injuries he knows he still has.

God, he can't do this. He can't.

After everything, after he survived all the weeks or months or years of suffering, this is what's finally going to break him: a soft bed. A blanket. Medicine. Small comforts that tempt him to feel like he's allowed to be a person again, and that's dangerous. He can't let himself think that way.

Too late, Clay realizes the conversation across the room has stopped and been replaced by the distinct quiet of a room occupied by people who aren't talking. Not true silence, but breaths, the faint rustle of shifting clothes.

"I think he's awake," one of the men says quietly.

Fuck.

It's not a voice he recognizes. Of course it isn't. Clay knows better than to hope for that.

He can't go back to that filthy hole they dumped him in. Can't. It has to end here. One way or the other.

He keeps his eyes shut, his breathing even. Listens as they move slowly across the room to stand beside the bed. When they're close enough, he makes his move, exploding upward out of the bed, barely feeling the sharp bite of the IV as it rips free of his arm.

Clay makes it to his feet... and falls without so much as throwing a punch.

He's been starved and beaten for God only knows how long, and the fact that he can barely feel the pain of his shattered feet doesn't prevent them from folding beneath him. Even adrenaline can only go so far. His body just has nothing left.

The two men reflexively jumped back to avoid Clay's pathetic attempt at an attack, but one of them quickly reverses course and makes it back just in time to prevent Clay from face-planting right into the floor. "Shit, Spenser," he says gruffly. "Take it easy."

The sound of his own name sets Clay's heart racing even harder. He doesn't know these people. He isn't safe.

Shoving the man's hands away, he scrambles back, his shoulder slamming into the bedframe with a dulled jolt of pain. Somehow he manages to navigate around the edge of the bed and wedge himself into the back corner of the room, where he leans his back against the wall and wraps his arms protectively around his chest.

He's absolutely exhausted. Despite the fear, the bitter taste of failure, the unbearable knowledge that he just lost his only chance of escaping hell, his eyes are already trying to dip closed again. Maybe that's partly from the drugs they gave him.

When the tears finally escape and start running down his face, Clay tells himself that's just the drugs too.

The man who kept Clay from falling comes around the bed slowly, one careful step at a time. keeping his hands visible. He's got a solemn, nondescript face. Neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper hair and beard. For all that he's obviously trying to look nonthreatening, he moves like a warrior.

Dangerous, Clay's instincts warn, but it's not like the information helps him any. He has no way to fight back.

"Hey, kid." The man lowers himself to sit with his back against the bed, keeping some distance between the two of them. "Might want to put some pressure on that arm."

Clay glances down, blinking against the tears that still blur his vision, finally feeling the warm trickle of blood from the inside of his elbow where the torn-out IV was. He uses the corner of his hospital gown to weakly press down on the small wound.

"Good," the man says, tone soft. "Do you remember me, Clay?"

Clay stiffens, his gaze darting straight back up. Relaxes a tiny bit when he sees that the man hasn't made any attempt to come closer. He's still sitting in the same pose, arms resting casually across his knees.

The stranger exhales, slow and measured. "Gonna take that as a no. My name is Bridger. I'm Romeo One. You ran with us once in Africa, remember that? Came along as our 'terp. Things went off the rails, and I know I didn't really give you much cause to trust me back then, but you're safe now, okay? Swear to God."

Bridger. Romeo One.

Gruff. Salt-and-pepper hair.

Clay's memories are tangled, faces and events often hard to place, but... he thinks he remembers this man now. Remembers him being with DEVGRU, a lifetime ago, in the world before.

Not an enemy. Not a new torture strategy. A brother.

The tiniest hint of hope, sharp and dangerous as broken glass, slides up beneath Clay's breastbone and slices delicately into his heart.

He swallows, tries to remember how to make his voice work... but then the man claiming to be Bridger continues, "'Course we called Bravo to let them know. Thought Hayes might cry." The suggestion of a faint smile flickers briefly across the somber face. "They'll be here soon as they can."

The hope shatters, leaving a new bleeding wound in its place, the pain of it cutting straight through the haze of medication. Clay closes his eyes. His chest heaves with a helpless sob.

Lies. Nothing but lies. His first instinct was correct. They're just fucking with his head again.

Back home, in the real DEVGRU, there must be a new Bravo Team by now, strangers wearing his brothers' patches, but they won't know or care anything about Clay. The men he loved, trusted, fought beside, they're long dead.

He saw the building explode with his team inside. Saw the pictures of their charred bodies afterward. His captors made damn sure of that.

That was what came the closest to truly breaking Clay: the knowledge that he had nothing left to go home to. Eventually he tried to just not think about them at all. Never managed it, though.

"Whoa, kid. It's okay." Fake Bridger sounds surprised, and... worried? "Want to tell me what's going on inside that head of yours?"

Clay doesn't dignify that with a response. Doesn't bother opening his eyes again. The faster they realize he isn't fooled, the sooner this stupid ruse can end.

Across from him, there's a sigh. Then fake Bridger says quietly to the other man in the room, who has yet to say a word, "See if you can get through to them."

"Copy," the man says, and leaves the room.

Just a brief interaction, but it sounds so... right. So much like the way Clay used to respond to orders from his team leader.

Doesn't matter. None of it is true.

"Want to know something funny?" Fake Bridger asks casually. "We didn't even know you were there. Wish I could tell you it was some kind of heroic rescue, but we just thought we were clearing out a nest of upstart terrorists who'd escalated to dealing in chemical weapons. And then Collins found a pit, and you were in it. Think it's the closest I've ever seen him to being rendered honest to God speechless. Best 11 seconds of my life."

That hint of a smile shows up again, in the man's voice this time, like he thinks he's trying to be funny. Clay doesn't have the energy to be mad about it. Even the tears are slowing down; he's too weak and exhausted to cry, and how utterly pathetic is that?

Bridger draws a slow, deep breath. "Spenser," he says evenly. "Listen. I don't know what's going through your head right now, but I do know that you've been through a kind of hell I can't even imagine, and I am truly sorry for that. We tried, kid. For months. You were just gone."

Not were. He still is, because none of this is real.

The sound of the door opening lends Clay just enough strength to flinch, eyes jerking open. The other man steps back inside the room, holding out an iPad at arm's length, his eyes fixed on the screen.

"Yeah," he says. "He's right here. Hang on." Dropping to his heels next to fake Bridger, he turns the tablet so that it's facing Clay.

The face on the screen belongs to a dead man.

Sonny Quinn's expression twists, tears shining in his eyes, and then he smiles bright. The way Clay tried so hard to remember him: smiling, not a shattered, burnt corpse.

"Hey, Poster Boy." Sonny's drawl, uncharacteristically gentle, wobbles at the edges. He clears his throat, wipes his face, and says, "Valdez says you're a little confused, but I figure that's just shock and horror from wakin' up to see his hideous face lurkin' over your bed."

Sonny.

Alive.

The whole world shifts on its axis. Everything Clay thought he knew, everything he believed about what is true and what's a lie... none of it was real.

Behind Sonny on the iPad screen, other faces crowd into view: Jason. Ray. Brock. Trent. The whole team is there. Breathing. Smiling, some of them through tears like Sonny.

Turns out Clay does still have enough strength left to cry at least a little more.

The sob hits him with the force of a punch to the gut. He covers his face with his hands, curling forward, only vaguely registering the alarm in Sonny's now louder voice.

It passes. Clay manages to straighten, lean his back against the wall again. He's shaking with exhaustion and with the pain that's starting to break through the blur of drugs, but he's smiling too. It feels strange on his face, foreign and forgotten.

The worry on Sonny's face eases a bit, and his own grin returns. "There you are," he says. "Look, Clay, we'll be there real soon, okay? And then you won't be able to pry us away with a crowbar. But in the meantime, it's been a real long time since we've seen you, so could we maybe get a closer look?"

Cautiously, Valdez leans forward a bit, holding the iPad out in Clay's direction without moving too much closer to him.

Clay breathes out. He breathes in. Hope crackles through his body like electricity.

He reaches out.