The confusion persisted even after Jamie awoke again, who knew how long after the first awakening. Once more he thought he had woken in his own flat until he realized he could not move his legs, and the moment he tried to lift his hand to find his glasses, he discovered that although he could move it sideways, lifting it was impossible.

His head ached in a strange manner, and it was not the usual feeling one had after a long day or during a migraine. It was different, stranger, more deafening. It halted all his thoughts halfway, before they could fully take shape.

“Jamie?”

The voice was as familiar to him as it was unknown, as though it were the first time he had heard it, yet at the same time he felt he had heard it in his dream the night before, though he did not remember what he had dreamt about.

Was he drugged?

“I will bring—” He did not focus on the rest of the sentence, for he was trying to concentrate on stirring his body into motion. His legs still refused to move from their place, and so he decided to begin small and move his fingers. It was difficult, yet after a while, when his thumb wiggled, the hero took it as a small success.

“Here you go.” Suddenly the voice sounded much closer to him, and Jamie would have flinched had he been able.

He opened his mouth, but before he could utter a single word, a cooling sensation settled upon his lips and a refreshing liquid poured into his mouth.

Jamie felt a grip upon his jaw, which meant that someone was holding his head in place. He did not like this discovery, yet he could not resist. His body would not allow it, and he had no chance for verbal protest.

“Now, the medicine.”

The glass at his lips vanished for a second, and something landed upon his tongue. Before Jamie could attempt to spit it out, the glass was back, and the tablets, as he presumed, disappeared with the help of the water in his throat.

The hero did not know whether he had ever felt so helpless.

Yet now was not the time for self pity or despair. He needed only a plan. That was it. But first, he needed his glasses.

As though someone had heard his wish, Jamie once again felt a touch upon his face and vaguely saw someone lean over him, something suddenly drawing close to him. That something, as it turned out, was his glasses.

“Do you remember yesterday?” the unknown man asked him.

Jamie continued to stare at him, studying his dark hair and dark eyes, which told him nothing, though he felt as though he had seen them somewhere before.

“I am Creed,” the stranger informed him. Evidently, he read the answer to his question in Jamie’s expression.

The young man was still leaning in such a way that the hero had a direct view of him, and so he examined him closely, striving to remember every detail. Thus he noticed that his eyelids were slightly swollen, the beginnings of circles lay beneath his eyes, and the skin around his nose was faintly reddened. Jamie was no expert, yet he could recognize the signs of weariness.

“—in a coma. I explained it to you yesterday.”

Jamie had not realized that the stranger was speaking to him, and so he caught only the latter part of his sentence.

In a coma?

Was he speaking of him?

That was not possible.

Jamie tried to focus upon the stranger’s face, to read more from it and this time to notice when he began to speak, yet the dark haired man shifted in such a way that bright light from the lamp above now streamed around his hair, forcing the hero to close his eyes as it blinded him.

He did not even realize it, and once he had closed his eyes, his body took control and he fell into sleep.

The following days appeared much the same. Jamie would awaken, not knowing where he was, seeing nothing without his glasses, and the only thing he remembered was the feeling of medicine upon his tongue and water washing it down his throat. Again and again.

He had no notion of how much time had passed. He did not know how to measure it, for he could not tell when day gave way to night. He knew only that he was not alone most of the time and, after considerable effort, he finally remembered the name of the man who cared for him: Creed.

Jamie still did not trust him, yet he had to admit that feeling was gradually returning to him. First he managed to move his toes, then he lifted his hand before him for a brief moment, before it fell at once back upon the bed as though it were not his own and he held no command over it. Even so, Jamie took it as progress.

Later, the hero realized that Creed was not giving him only medicine and water. Though he struggled to distinguish the taste, Jamie was aware that at times something thicker settled upon his tongue, and the greatest difference from water he felt was that during the first days the thick liquid made him nauseous. A heaviness settled in his stomach, and he felt as though it might soon burst, as if he were full, though the hero could scarcely remember when he had last eaten.

Everything was set against him, and he had no strength to resist.

It continued like this for days. He would open his eyes, the stranger would give him water, medicine, and the strange thick liquid, then place his glasses upon him and attempt to speak with him. Each time Jamie saw his face before him, he noticed that he looked somewhat worse.

Creed’s complexion—he had to repeat the man’s name within his mind lest he forget it again—was dry, flaking in places, and reddened. The circles beneath his eyes were deepening. The faint lines upon his young face grew more distinct with each passing day. As time went on, his whole countenance seemed heavier and more rigid.

He looked almost as ill as Jamie felt.

“They will come for us. We must get you on your feet as soon as possible,” Creed rambled again, while striving to remain near the hero’s bed so that he would not have to search long for him with his gaze. Each day it was his routine, and each day he said something unsettling. At times the hero remembered it, at others he did not.

One thing the stranger told him every day was that Jamie had been in a coma and that he had saved him from someone who had held him captive. Jamie remembered nothing of the sort, yet he had no means of verifying it, and so he took it as a possibility, albeit an unlikely one.

What the hero also noticed, and it was likely a daily occurrence as well, was that Creed always disappeared somewhere. The sound of a door opening and closing suggested as much, for the young man never told him where he was going.

More days passed.

Jamie felt somewhat better. Though his concentration and speech were still far from their best and he could not even think of walking, he had managed to raise himself higher and lean against the wall, thus keeping himself in something between sitting and lying.

“No.” It was the first word he finally managed to utter fully and in a way Creed could understand.

“No?” the stranger repeated after him in confusion.

He tried to return Jamie to a lying position, yet he did not want that. However, unable to form a sentence, incapable of stringing words together, he could not express it with more than that single word.

Creed understood him, yet had no notion of what he wanted. Thus he continued in his effort to place the hero’s head back upon the pillow, not expecting Jamie to react instinctively and finally manage not only to lift his hand, but even to clasp the man’s wrist faintly in an attempt to resist.

“You…”

The hero lifted his gaze to him and noticed the widening of his eyes in surprise. Yet he did not seem frightened. Quite the contrary, the progress appeared to please him.

“Soon we shall have you on your feet, I promise.”

Soon, however, did not come as swiftly as the hero would have wished.

In the days that followed, he set himself a challenge to make some progress each day. First he managed to raise his forearm and keep it braced against the bed, then to hold his leg bent at the knee, and then he decided that the day had come when he would finally sit up. It did not come easily, yet with the help of the wall Jamie succeeded for a brief moment before he fell back upon the surface of the bed and struck his head against the pillow.

Fortunately Creed was not there to witness his failure, yet when he returned, he saw its aftermath.

Jamie was trembling and was certain it was not from the cold. His muscles ached as though he had run a marathon, and he had to close his eyes, for his head spun so violently that his stomach turned. He felt almost weaker than a week before, if he possessed any true sense of time at all, and despair began to creep upon him once more.

Yet it was not only he who appeared worse.

The next day, when Jamie awoke once more and went through the routine of medicine and glasses, he noticed that Creed’s appearance had again worsened. His eyes seemed faintly clouded, and he had developed a habit of clenching his jaw, one he had not possessed before. Moreover, Jamie observed that his hands trembled and that he seemed less certain upon his own feet. Yet he remained focused solely upon the hero.

“They conduct experiments.” This was new information, and so the hero, confined to the bed, forced himself to listen. “Believe me, being in this state is better than being in their laboratory.”

He did not know whether this sentence referred to Jamie’s condition or to his own. After all, Creed did not look healthy, and if his words were true and he had indeed saved the hero from some laboratory, he must first have been there himself to find him.

The hero did all he could to keep from forgetting this discovery. His thinking was still far from simple, and during longer conversations he could not maintain his focus. Concentration and multitasking were, in his present state, distant dreams.

One thing, however, had improved: he began to distinguish more clearly between day and night. He knew when the light in the room came from the windows and when it was cast only by the lamp. Thus he knew he had been there at least a week. Likely more.

More days, more medicine, more fragments of explanation…

All the days blurred together for Jamie until one in which his body finally obeyed him and he managed at last to remain seated and let his legs hang over the side of the bed. He did not yet dare to stand, yet even so he counted it a success. It meant that sooner or later he would leave this place.

When Creed returned again from who knew where, the hero was lying back in his usual position and gave no sign that he felt better.

The dark haired man, by contrast, appeared worse once more. His lips were almost constantly pressed into a firm line, and one could see him grinding his teeth as though suppressing pain. More than once Jamie watched sweat run down his temple, and it was impossible to overlook how stiff his neck and shoulders had become, as his body slowly yet surely seemed to curl inward in a self soothing gesture. He was in great pain, yet for some reason he strove to conceal it, though before a trained hero such an effort was futile.

Jamie resolved to focus upon himself and attended to Creed only when he spoke to him. In that way he minimized his own headaches and at the same time supported the stabilization of his memory. At least he hoped so.

“You were a missing person,” Creed revealed to him that day, thus gaining his immediate attention once more. “There were posters everywhere, that is how I learned your name. They are still hanging, though more than a year has passed.”

A year?

That was not possible.

Surely someone would have found him by now, had he been missing for so long.

In Jamie’s mind there surfaced unbidden a memory of Eclipse’s file and the details of his death, which he had studied for his case. The hero buried alive was a stark example that even heroes could not always be saved, especially after they had been abducted.

If Creed’s words were true, Jamie had been in a similar situation, and likely the only reason he was still alive was the dark haired man who cared for him, though he could scarcely care for himself.

“—ase, do not panic.”

He had not even realized when he began to tremble and his breathing quickened. He had reacted to Creed’s words worse than he had thought, and the panic did not unfold solely within him.

“Jamie.”

The stranger seized him by the shoulders and forced him to open his eyes, though he had not known when he had closed them.

The first thing he saw were frightened dark eyes.

Creed was truly panicking, as though he were watching him die.

“F-fine,” Jamie managed, his voice surprisingly louder than he expected. Even that single word was enough to make the other man visibly calm, though his face did not return to neutrality, yet that was likely the result of his own pain.

Jamie believed he had mastered his panic and calmed the stranger as well, yet the opposite proved true. While he continued to progress and trained his movements whenever the dark haired man was not in the room, Creed became more cautious. Not in his actions, but in what he said around Jamie, likely frightened that he might cause the same reaction in him again.

The hero cursed himself inwardly, but he did not allow it to hinder his progress. A few days later he rose to his feet for the first time with the aid of the wall by the bed, and before his legs betrayed him, he remained in that position, half supported against the wall, for a few seconds. Even those were enough for him to know one thing — soon he would return home.