For Eli, because she created my website - Thanks sweetie

Chapter 1

Hutch lay back on his bed panting, after an exhausting morning with his personal torturer. He'd lifted weights, bench pressed 125lbs and run on the treadmill for 45 minutes at a steady rate. Sweat had trickled down his face and into the towel wrapped around his neck, and his right leg still felt heavy and slow, but he felt generally good and glad to be back in the land of the living. His "torturer" was 5'9" tall with long blond hair, piercing blue eyes, which matched his partner's and a disarming and playful smile. She also had an iron will and steely resolve and went. And she went by the name Anna. Perfect for a physiotherapist.

It was two days since he'd woken from what others called a two-week coma and he called another few days at the business end. While the doctors and nurses had looked after his body as it lay on the hospital bed hooked up to tubes, wires and monitors, he'd been flying on a whole different plane of existence as he battled to save the lives of his partner, Starsky and his friend, Thomas (Traff) Trafford.

He hadn't yet had the courage to speak to anyone about his experiences with the purple eyed, white haired "conductor" who'd called himself Amaram. He wasn't quite sure that he fully understood what had gone on and he didn't want others thinking he was crazy. He'd been shot in the head with a .22 calibre bullet, yet was up and around walking and talking. That in itself was enough of a miracle to have the whole medical fraternity prodding, poking and questioning him. If he was to add that a dead "conductor" had zoomed him around in a maelstrom of colour from one spot to another, he knew he'd be destined for Cabrillo State before he could mutter "Dobey". So he kept the snippet quiet and answered the medics' questions in as non-committal way as possible.

The whole thing had started with an undercover operation with a group called the Northern Stars. He'd infiltrated the group as a new member, but one of the other members had discovered he was a cop. When it went sour, he'd been bound and made to face his "punishment". He'd caught the assassination bullet, but his partner had crashed into the old factory the group used as their headquarters, arresting one of the group and getting the paramedics to him. As Hutch was taken to the hospital, the remaining group members had captured Starsky and Traff, who'd just happened to be in the wrong place and the wrong time with the intention of making them tell where their group member was being held. The forms of "encouragement" they'd used on both men had resulted in both the brunette and the soldier now occupying the other two beds in Hutch's room.

Hutch had remembered nothing else of the incident until he arrived in a pink-fogged world with the tall conductor. After only 500 or so years on the job, Amaram was still a bit of a rookie and in order to avoid working overtime, he'd 'reaped' Hutch before he was strictly dead. Hutch had pleaded his case successfully before the high council and had been given another chance at life if he could save both Starsky and Traff.

After he'd "visited" Huggy and told him to tell Dobey to have men standing by at the Pits to arrest Quinn and Ryan, the two men who'd captured his partner and his friend, he'd gone back to the disused church. Desperate to make sure Starsky would survive, he'd tried his best to look after the two injured men there, although being unable to touch or speak with them was a big hindrance.

His only method of communication had been when his partner was close to death. Only then had he been able to reach into the brunette's mind and join him in his freakish nightmares, offering just a little protection and support, although the maltreatment had taken its toll on the brunette's body and his mind. Hutch wondered just how well he would recover.

Once Dobey and the paramedics had arrived at the church, he'd felt an odd pulling sensation and he'd known that he fulfilled the councils desire to save Starsky and Traff. He was allowed to go back to his own body and had woken up in the hospital bed, amazing the staff with his powers of recuperation.

Oh sure, he'd had the mother and father of all headaches and his speech had been, and still was a little slurred. He'd lost some strength down the right side of his body, but his doctor, Mark, had said that that was to be expected and hence the physiotherapy. This morning he had managed to walk all the way down to the physiotherapy suite on his own and had spent most of the morning there, anxious to get back to normal as quickly as possible.

He looked over at the still, pale forms on the other two beds. Both Traff and Starsky had been unconscious since their admittance, almost two days ago. Traff was in slightly better shape that the curly haired cop. He'd had almost two weeks without food. Their captors had ensured there was just enough water for both men to survive, although it was brackish and warm. Towards the end, as Starsky's health had deteriorated, Traff had used most of his own ration to bathe his friend's injures and force some of the fluid down the brunette's throat. Hence he was both malnourished and dehydrated. He'd had three broken ribs, caused by a vicious kicking he'd received on his last day of captivity, and the breaks had caused a pneumohaemothorax.

As the soldier lay quietly in bed he had drips going into the back of each hand. One with Ringers Lactate used because he required a large-volume fluid replacement, another with a concentrated antibiotic to counteract the infection of the surgery he'd undergone to reinflate his left lung and to evacuate the blood in his chest cavity. A tube drain exited his chest, draining the blood into a sealed bottle hanging from the side of his bed. Alongside it was a bag to collect the products from the catheter. A blood pressure cuff around his right arm completed his ensemble and the nurses came every two hours to check on his progress. So far, the doctors were happy with his condition and thought it only a matter of time until he awoke.

On the other bed, Starsky's body lay swathed in bandages and backlit by a soothing blue neon light. He'd been burned badly down the right hand side of his body when Quinn had repeatedly used the Dry Taser on him and the doctors had had to debride and deal with the blisters on his skin. Now they were covered with gel dressings which glinted in the defuse light over the bed as the cop's chest was artificially inflated by the respirator. Starsky too had a battery of drips. The doctors had inserted a central line into his superior vena cava at the top of his chest, in order to try to get as large a volume of fluid into him as his damaged body could tolerate and bag after bag of Ringers Lactate flowed down the clear plastic tube into the fuzz covered chest.

He'd had an emergency operation to deal with a ruptured spleen and the stitches on the wound stood out in a prickly row across the swollen, bruised abdomen. He had another drip of antibiotics flowing into his left arm to counteract the infection from his abdominal injury and also from the pneumonia that had set in when he'd been forced to take in a lungful of filthy water as part of his torture. Because of the damage to his lungs, the doctors had him on a respirator and the steady hiss and whoosh of the machine both soothed and irritated the flaxen haired cop as he kept his vigil at his partner's bedside.

Hutch desperately wanted the brunette to wake, if only to check that his partner was still with him on a fundamental level. He'd had to watch helpless as Quinn had tied Starsky down time after time to ask him where Ade Ryan was. The murderous hit man had added to the physical pain the curly haired cop had had to endure by a little psychological torture. Over and over, Quinn would force Starsky to look at the three lights hanging from the ceiling above him, asking how many there were. Each time the bound detective had answered "three" the evil man had punished him either with a beating or with the Taser, telling him there were four. Hutch had managed to get into his partner's dreams, but far from comforting his friend, he'd seen a glimpse of a mind on the edge of madness, driven there by the incessant questions and the pain. He'd tried urgently to help the hurting detective, trying to assure him that everything would be alright and that he'd get them out of there, but Starsky had last seen Hutch n the hospital and saw Hutch's presence as an indication that he too was dying. As Hutch looked down now at his partner's damaged body, he worried too about the state of mind Starsky would be in when he finally awoke. He knew the dark haired hellion was tough, but some things could be too much even for Starsky to endure.

Some time during the afternoon of that day, Hutch was roused from his nap by a noise from the bed on the far side of the room. He eased his sore legs over the side of the bed and padded over to Traff's bedside, seeing the confused unfocussed green eyes opening for the first time. He smiled down at the soldier.

'Welcome back' he said softly as Traff gazed up at him.

He saw the confusion in the bright green eyes and wondered how the hell he could explain what had happened. Deciding to leave that for another time, he pulled up a chair and sat by the bedside.

Traff was blinking and Hutch saw him swallow painfully. 'How long?' the soldier rasped.

'Two days' Hutch said. 'You're in Memorial. Starsky's over there' he pointed at the other occupied bed.

'Thought you were dead' Traff looked warily at the big blond. The last time he'd seen Hutch, the flaxen haired cop had been on life support and at death's door. That was the reason he had been in Bay City with Starsky – to be a support to his friend as he waited for news of his partner. Now it would seem, the tables had been turned.

'It's a long story' Hutch muttered, hoping the man in the bed wouldn't press the issue. It was too early for Hutch to talk about his experiences and Traff to hear it. Instead he reached out and patted on of the soldier's hands gently. 'Thanks' he said.

Traff looked confused. 'What for?'

'Looking after Starsky'.

Traff turned his head on the pillow and looked at the lifeless form. He snorted. 'Didn't do much of a job, did I?' he asked, clutching at his side as pain flashed through his broken ribs.

'Hey, without you, he wouldn't have gotten this far' Hutch insisted. 'I know you were there for him. You gave him your water when you needed it yourself. I couldn't bear the thought of him having to go through all that shit on his own'

Traff rested his curly head back against the pillow, then a look of confusion appeared in his eyes. 'How did you know that? That I gave him my water ration? How could you have known that?' he asked, staring fixedly at the blond.

Hutch looked away. Yes, how indeed. He decided that a change of subject was in order.

'You need any pain meds, pal?' he asked, seeing the look in the green eyes. He reached for the call button and pushed it, moving to one side as the nurse came bustling in.

'Well look whose awake' she said, putting her hand on the warm brow and inserting the thermometer under his tongue. Traff smiled back as much as he could with a mouth full of glass instrument and the nurse melted under the gaze of the green eyes. Hutch went back to his bed for a while, glad that at least one of his friends was back in the land of the living.