Jason listened to Rachel pacing the length of the container, as if she could wear a hole in it for them to escape through. The train had long since started moving beneath them, clacking down the tracks to who knows where.

Jason dragged his good hand down his eyes; he felt like he hadn't slept at all, but crust had still gathered at the corners. "We were going to ride a train anyway, Rach. This isn't airtight. We've got supplies. We're fine. Just—chill out."

"I am chill." Her feet thunked harder against the metal box.

"Right." He dragged himself to a sitting position. The familiar wave of pain crashed through his shoulder, sending ripples across the whole left side of his body. In the darkness, he couldn't see the world spin, but that almost made it worse—his brain had no frame of reference, nothing to convince it everything was still again. Nothing was still anyway; the metal wall rattled behind his head, and the train shook over the tracks. He drew in a shallow breath and blew it out slowly. He did it again until the sick feeling went away.

Then carefully, he dug in his pocket for the phone. It lit up the small, bare room.

"Why would they even ship an empty container?" Rachel hit the wall.

"Maybe someone needed it to ship something in, and that something... was wherever we're headed now." The words made sense in his head but felt like salad in his mouth. He pulled the backpack of supplies to his side and pulled out some scissors. "Look, you think you can cut your own hair?"

She gaped at him. "I asked for hair ties, not a hair cut."

"Are you a criminal mastermind or aren't you?"

"I'm not cutting my hair."

"They know what we look like, Rach."

She just scowled at him. "Did you get those bandages?"

He dug through the packaged food to the small first aid kit. When he looked back up, she was crouched in front of him, holding out a pill.

"Take this," she said.

His eyes narrowed. "Where did you get it?"

"You're not going to ask what it is?"

Pain medicine, he assumed, unless she was trying to drug him. And she'd have a lot easier ways to do that than handing him suspicious substances that appeared out of nowhere. The headache crashed around in his brain, pounding in time with the drumbeat in his arm.

He hesitated. There was a barrage of questions he should ask her—but he wasn't sure he wanted the answer to them either. His fingers itched. "Is it going to keep me from thinking straight?"

"Does it matter if it does?" She waved it beneath his nose, and he smacked her hand away. The sudden movement shot daggers through him, even using his good arm, and he swallowed a moan.

As he forced himself to straighten, cheeks warm, breaths almost even, Rachel eyed him steadily. He felt like a dog in a shelter as the vet analyzed whether he was worth keeping or better off dead. "I'm fine," he bit out.

"You're two threads shy of coming unraveled, is what you are," she grumbled.

"I've managed this far."

"If you'd take the stupid pill," she said, "it won't hurt as much when I start poking and prodding you."

His good hand flicked dismissively. "What do you know about any of this anyway?"

She blew a curl of hair out of her face. "A lot more than you."

His arm keened, like hot air across metal. The weak part of him whined with it, and his fingers curled against his knee. But he already relied on Rachel too much, and his mind anymore was about as hazy as he could take. So he swallowed air and dragged the bag into his lap like a shield.

"I'm good. Here." He tossed her some beef jerky, a bottle of water, and a new blouse. "Keep it clean. That was all the clothes I could fit."

The bag looked like a half-deflated balloon now. It had been hard to fit enough supplies for both of them and for what emergencies he could foresee all in one backpack. There hadn't been enough space, enough time, enough money. The shirt for Rachel, and a pack of hair ties. Dye and scissors. A new first aid kit. The bolt cutter. Enough food and water for four or five days. That was it.

The train curved, and another wave of vertigo swept him. His eyes squeezed shut. "We might as well sleep."

"Good idea."

He heard a scheme in her words, but his eyes were too heavy to pull back open. He thought of lying back down and told himself he would in a moment. For now, he just leaned his head against the metal wall. The train rocked him toward sleep.

🧬 🧬 🧬

When he came to again, he was on the floor, though he didn't remember moving. His brow was hot. Someone was hovering over him. He stiffened, but Rachel shushed him. Her gentle fingers brushed over his skin as she unwound the gauze. Thoughts floated in and out of his mind, hazed by pain and sleep, too misty to grab onto. She smelled like sweat and cheap shampoo and rubbing alcohol.

"Go back to sleep," she whispered.

"Rachel," he murmured. Fear rumbled through him. Fire teased his arm.

"Hush." She finished unwinding the gauze. "Are you sure you won't take that pill?"

"Rach," he said, cheek against the metal floor.

"Mm-hmm." Plastic clicked beside her. Jason couldn't see what it was. He didn't bother craning his head to look.

"How come—" His throat was dry, and he swallowed to wet it. The words cracked like an old tree, like an old log in the hearth, set ablaze by sudden fear, catching light and spreading hot. "How come it hurts worse?" She didn't respond for a moment, and more words tumbled out of him, as if rambling would help either of them make sense of it. "It's not getting better. It keeps getting worse, Rach."

The clicking stilled. The train rocked. Her legs were tucked close to him, almost touching his side. He wondered how she'd gotten so close without him waking up.

"I know," she said finally. "We're going to fix it, okay? Take your pill."

There was something beneath her words, something that should have worried him, but when she pressed the medicine to his mouth, he just swallowed it.

"There we go." She brushed hair off of his forehead, fingers cool as water. "Go back to sleep. Let me fix this."

He nodded. Or he thought he nodded. Maybe he didn't move at all. It wasn't long before he was out again.

Rachel let free a sigh as Jason's fevered body relaxed back to sleep. She wiped her fingers with an alcohol pad again, wishing they had a stronger disinfectant. With his old bandage removed, she squeezed out the excess liquid of a second pad. The droplets ran over red, swollen skin. In the middle of the wound, where her stitches had broken, a yellow tinge was beginning to gather.

More stitches were broken than before. Only the edges were tied together now. She bit her tongue.

Light and steady, she reminded herself as she cleaned away dried blood. His muscles twitched even as he slept. Light and steady. The caked red slowly came up, staining the wipe pink.

The kit had scissors, but no needle and thread. She should have come shopping with him. They should have stayed together, and then she would have thread and he wouldn't have gotten in another fight and she wouldn't have been dragged out from under that truck by her ankles—

She took a deep, stilling breath. What ifs didn't have any place on her operating table. Splitting up had been stupid. Missing her shot had been stupid. Now they had to deal with the consequences, and the consequences were all that mattered.

The antibacterial cream was cool against her skin as she rubbed it into his wound. Her finger skimmed over a mixture of scabbed flecks in a sea of raw flesh. She wiped the excess off on the swollen, hot skin around.

Her lips pressed together. If they weren't stuck in a box, she'd be tempted to take him to the hospital. But even half asleep, he'd fight her on that all the way there.

"We'll do what we can," she muttered, "with what we have." Rafe used to tell her that when she complained that she didn't have the supplies she needed or the knowledge or the skill. He'd said it often enough that eventually it became her own mantra: she could make do. She would have to. No one else was going to.

She cut and folded normal bandaids to make butterfly stitches out of them: bandages that were thinner in the middle, where they went over the wound, to help even out the pressure and keep the skin closed together. A sterile cotton pad—one of only four—went over it. Then gauze around that, not too tight, not too loose, and she was done.

She sat back and examined her work. She'd made do with less before. The oxy should be kicking in soon; he'd get a good night's sleep. And maybe that was all he needed. Rest and a clean bandage and a good night's sleep.

Biting her lip, she looked away. Even with the light of the phone, it felt like the darkness was closing in on her. It made her heart thrum and her thoughts run back to too many memories. It would be worse when she turned off the display, but they couldn't afford to run down the battery.

She left it on for just a little longer though. Unscrewing a bottle cap with jittery fingers, she swallowed down water and made a quick meal of the jerky Jason had offered her earlier. Then she lay down, not close enough to touch, but close enough to feel the heat radiating off his skin. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine it was the dark sky above them instead of the metal container. And then she turned off the light.

Her mind ran loops through the darkness, chasing one nightmare after another. The cop she didn't shoot. Walking down the road afterward, no idea how she got there or why. Jason looking her straight in the eyes and lying to her. People lied all the time; Rafe had lied to her constantly. That wasn't what scared her.

What scared her was that she had believed Jason.

She rubbed her eyes, hands pressed against her face, but it didn't hold back the barrage. Ana's snake of a song. The gun in her mouth. Jason pushing her up against the closet wall like he owned her. The way his eyes roamed her face sometimes, like she meant something to him; the way his eyes wouldn't touch her in the cafe, like she was nothing.

She rolled over, biting her lip. Why am I here again?

Rafe socking her in the mouth. Her face on the television. New York looming over her, leering at her.

Those were terrible reasons. She curled into herself, trying to shut out the darkness, out the memories, out herself. Why in the world did it hurt to think so much? A knife had wedged itself behind her breastbone, like a mugger demanding something she didn't have to give. She didn't know why she was here. She didn't know why she cared about saving this boy's life; another one just like him would die tonight and no one would care.

And if Jason died tonight, no one would care either. Not his dead parents. Not his lunatic sister. Not his flighty 'uncle', and certainly not any of the people he'd floated through the lives of, moving as much as he had. It didn't matter if Jason died, anymore than it mattered if Rachel did. There was no one left to care.

Rachel swore under her breath, tears coursing over her cheeks. "We'll do what we can," she whispered, "with what we have."

And if all she had was the idiot beside her, the world could watch and burn and weep because she didn't care. Whether he liked it or not or whether it was the cowardly thing or weak thing or dumb thing or not, she didn't care.

If they were all they had, it didn't matter what Jason or anyone else did. She was going to do everything she could to keep them together.