For extra angst, accompany this one with Eve 6's "Here's to the Night," one of the first Break/Liam songs I ever chose. Ugh.

The corridor isn't very wide, but it's certainly big enough for an attack, and Liam is nervous as all hell. He has his gun out for once, carrying it openly, wanting to avoid the time it will take to retrieve it from its hidden holster in his coat; but the figure who appears there at the end of the hallway is that of the girl and ah! The gun will not do any good. She has that crazed look, blood trickling down her young features, and Liam bolts, tearing across the stones as fast as his long legs will carry him.

If she laughs, he doesn't hear it; there's nothing but the sound of his own breathing, harsh panting that occasionally comes out a desperate whimper, and the echoes of the steps he leaves behind him. There's no way the girl will catch him. He's twice her size and good at sprinting. It's that dog he's worried about, that horrid black thing that interacts with the girl as though it were some sort of hellhound puppy, that thing with its teeth and its eyes and its breath smelling of old blood. But as he turns the corner it's the girl he sees again, smiling brightly, and he skids to a halt, sliding a bit on the loose gravel — it's a cave now, where in the world has he run to?

He turns to run back the other way, but the hallway is gone, and in the shadows he sees the ruffle of a familiar violet dress and it's drenched in blood. A black coat in tatters, someone's mangled hand, and beyond that, the dog emerges, and it's carrying someone with white hair. Its teeth are clamped down across that place where the shoulder meets the neck. The head dangles lifelessly and the rest of the body is dragged along between its legs as it prances, tail held high and proud; but when the dog sees Liam, it drops Xerxes to the ground and bares its blood-covered teeth and —

Liam shot into a sitting position with a short scream, panting as hard as he had when he was running. His wounds were healed enough by then that they didn't cause him any proper pain at the movement, but he was still hideously aware of their presence. Then there were hands grabbing at him, gently, and a voice calling his name. He turned to ward them off, but no, there was the white hair, visible in the dark only because it was so pale — there was Xerxes, with him in his bed, alive and reaching for him and exactly where he was supposed to be.

"It was a dream, Liam," he was saying; "Liam, it was a dream, you're alright, we're both here —" and Liam reached out and snatched him as close as he could, given that his bad shoulder had left his arm still weak, and let his weight tumble them both back down onto the pillows. He could feel Break's heart racing; he'd probably scared the poor man out of his mind, waking him up with a scream like that. With a shuddering sigh, Liam buried his face against Break's neck, pressing his lips against the unbroken skin there, over and over, trying to squeeze as many kisses as he could into however many seconds he'd be allowed to do this.

"Liam, what in the world," Break said, even as he tilted his head to allow him access. "What sort of dream were you having?"

He paused for a moment at that. Then he lifted his head and nuzzled his cheek against Break's, asking, "You know what you should do? You should retire."

"Pardon?"

"You heard me. At least take time off. Rest and get better, and neither of us will have to do your paperwork, and no going out in the field where anything can attack you —"

"Liam." Xerxes shifted in his arms until he could bring his hands up to Liam's face, fingers sliding gently against him. "What happened to me in your dream?"

"The Bandersnatch happened," Liam muttered grudgingly.

"The Bandersnatch," Break mused. "The dog. It attacked me from behind, while I was fighting the two Baskervilles." Liam's breath hitched at that — he hadn't known — but Break continued, "Do you know what I did? I kicked it, and it flew twenty feet and crashed into the Baskervilles. It didn't attack me again."

It was Break's way of trying to comfort him, giving him this image and all its implications — that even grieving, even blind, he could still ward off whatever was coming at him with as much strength and precision as he'd ever had. But as nice as it was to think of Break kicking that horrible dog, it didn't really help. Liam had seen for himself — Xerxes coughing up blood right in front of a gun that was pointing straight at him.

"You should still retire," he grumbled stubbornly, rolling away from his lover and onto his stomach, groping towards the nightstand. "Stay here with me. You can teach the others to fight better if you really feel you need something to do."

"I should teach you to fight better," Break told him. "Then you can kick the Bandersnatch, too."

"You already taught me to kick. I can kick just fine." Liam located his glasses and shoved them onto his face. Then he fumbled around until he found his matches and lit the bedside lamp, careful to keep his hand from shaking.

"Augh, Liam!" Break clapped a hand to his eye. "Warn me before you do that, you —"

"You can't see a thing," Liam snapped, squinting at him.

"I can see enough that it still hurts when a light suddenly comes on!"

Break reached out to swat at him. Liam caught his hand and brought it to his lips, scooting over to lean against Xerxes again. His fingers latched on to Break's other wrist, tugging that hand away from his eye.

"Let me look at you," he said softly.

At that, Break's expression softened, and he reached up to run his hands over Liam's shoulders, his fingers light over the tender one. He touched him that way often; Liam could only assume he had some particular attachment to his shoulders, which Liam was certainly never going to complain about. He, in turn, rested the backs of his fingers against Break's cheek. Liam loved him like this. Well — he loved him all the time, really, but like this, under him in the bed with his hair a disastrous mess, red eye searching for the face it could no longer see, all that skin bared and the scars that traced it here and there — Liam leaned down and kissed him, gently. Break sighed into it, one hand moving up into the younger man's short hair.

When that kiss ended, Liam kissed him again, just for good measure. Then he slid down to rest his head against Break's chest. His heartbeat had slowed back down to its usual steady pace, and Liam felt better for having it directly under his ear.

"It scared you that badly, hmm?" Break murmured, still running his fingers through Liam's hair. "The dream."

"Everything scares me, anymore," Liam admitted. "I'm afraid of someone coming after me. Coming after you, or Sharon. I'm afraid of you leaving and not coming back. I'm afraid that one morning I'll wake up and you'll be dead in the bed next to me."

Break tensed at that, and Liam cringed; it wasn't something he'd ever intended to say aloud, but the notion upset him so much he dreaded going to sleep sometimes, as though not having to wake up in the first place would prevent that particular surprise from ever happening. He opened his mouth to speak, but Break beat him to it.

"When I go I intend to go fighting." There was a hard undertone to his voice, one that Liam knew well. It meant that Xerxes did not want to be having this conversation but was indulging it out of necessity. "I suppose if I do feel like I'm going to go in my sleep, I can crawl off and find a hole somewhere."

Liam lurched up at that. "No! Don't do that! Then you'd be alone! You — it's using the Hatter that keeps making you sicker. If you didn't have to —"

"Liam, it can't be helped. Do you think I want to be putting everyone through this?" The red eye was glowering at him again. Break reached up and yanked him back down, holding him firmly. "You know perfectly well why I can't just stop. You know it, Liam."

Liam did know it, and how difficult it had to be for Xerxes to do everything he still felt he had to — juggling his own affairs, those of Oz and his group, ducking the concern of Sharon and the others — all without knowing how much time he really had, only that it wasn't much. Ordinarily Liam would comfort himself with that awareness as best he could, tell himself he had no right to get upset over Break when the man himself had enough to deal with as it was. Just then, though. Just then it didn't help at all, and after all they'd both been through lately, he couldn't help but indulge in being a little selfish. Stubbornly he wrapped his arms around Break and rolled them over, so that Xerxes was sprawled across him instead, and sulked.

Break sighed impatiently. He could detect a Liam-sulk from a good mile away. But all he said was, "You should put the lamp out and go back to sleep."

"I will," Liam said. Then he didn't. Instead he ran his hands slowly up and down his lover's back, comforting himself with the touch as much as Break. Xerxes, who always seemed to be exhausted of late, dozed off quickly.

There was a time he'd have talked to Liam, joked with him, even harassed him into fetching them tea and snacks in the middle of the night. Nowadays, though, Xerxes couldn't afford to lose the sleep. He left Liam clawing through his own mind, tired and shaken, because there had to be a way to stop this, to keep Xerxes close, to have more time —

But that was how illegal contractors were made, and Break would be the first to tell him so.

Liam stayed awake for hours, doing nothing but listen to him breathe.