Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Todd wakes, his world is cold and dark and the air is still and dusty. It takes him a moment to notice the rapidly growing headache throbbing in his temples and a second longer to realise that he’s lying on something that’s hard and rough and clearly not his bed. It’s after that that he realises he isn’t entirely sure where he is.

Waking up with a headache in an unfamiliar location isn’t exactly a new situation to find himself in and it reminds him of his youth and the crawl back to consciousness after a night out drinking with the band. He knows it isn’t a night’s partying that has left him wherever he is this time though, his band was disbanded many years ago, and instead he is now a member of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective agency, solving cases with arguable efficiency. But whether are on a case or not is something he can’t quite remember.

There’s a shuffling noise beside him, and then suddenly the world is very bright behind his eyelids. The light hurts and he wants to roll away but he can’t seem to find the strength or the coordination to do so and all he manages is a weak turning of his head towards the stony floor. There’s a gasp and a clatter and the light behind his eyelids dims, and then someone is calling his name, their voice sounding panicked and almost desperate. It takes him a second to realise it’s Dirk’s voice. He should reply, but his head is muddled and aching and he can’t quite remember how.

“Is he awake?” a second voice, fainter and more echoey than Dirk’s, calls from somewhere above him. It takes him longer to place the voice, it’s distorted by the echo, but eventually he realises it’s Farah. She sounds worried too, although her tone is calmer than Dirk’s, playing the voice of reason as she always does. Farah is good for Dirk, she brings calmness and thought to his manic energy despite her being prone to panic when anything she does goes wrong. She helps him to pause before he gallivants off on a whim of the universe and think about the consequences of what he is about to do and she bandages him up when a hunch is too strong and he runs off alone, solving the case but ending up hurt in the process.

He shakes the irrelevant thoughts from his wandering mind and tries to think back, to remember where they, and it takes a few dizzying seconds for his foggy mind to clear, but slowly, the day comes back into focus and he remembers the case they had been paid to solve three days beforehand, and that they’re currently investigating a possible sighting of bigfoot in a cave a short way out of Seattle. Or they had been investigating a possible sighting of bigfoot, certainly, but then there had been a bang and a rumble and a flash of pain and what had happened after that was a bit of a mystery. He would imagine he’s still in the cave, which would explain the uncomfortable surface he’s lying on, but after a year of cases, he has come to expect the unexpected and he wouldn’t be entirely surprised if he wasn’t.

“I don’t know!” Dirk’s voice calls loudly, startling him from his thoughts. He sounds distressed and upset, and Todd frowns at what he has said because it doesn’t really make any sense to him. It takes him another moment to realise that Dirk isn’t talking to him, he’s replying to Farah’s question about whether he is awake or not. Farah says something in reply, and he can’t quite make out the words but he can hear the softness in her tone. Dirk makes a distressed sounding noise in reply, a groan or a whine maybe, and Todd realises he really ought to at least try and convey his consciousness to his very nearly panicking friend.

“‘m awake,” he mutters around his heavy tongue, and the words come out slightly quieter than he had expected, and much more slurred, but at least they come. Dirk inhales sharply at the sound of his voice, and calls to him again, and Todd finally finds the effort to force his leaden eyelids open.

His vision is slow to focus, the task only made harder by the bluish glow coming from somewhere beside him that makes his eyes squint and his aching head pound harder, but when it does, he’s relieved to find he is still in the cave, now laying on the floor with Dirk kneeling beside him, his eyes wide with worry and his expression tight.

“Todd?” he asks, his tone caught somewhere between concern and excitement. “Are you okay?”

Todd grunts and nods and then pushes himself upright so he is sitting propped up on his arms. He regrets the decision almost instantly as his head throbs in protest and what little he can see spins slightly. It takes him a second to realise he is feeling really quite nauseous. He groans again involuntarily and raises a hand to rub his aching head. The hand hits a sore spot on his scalp, and when he flinches it away, the fingers are darkened and sticky. He hadn’t realised he was bleeding.

“Are you alright?”

Todd looks up from his bloodied hand to see Dirk’s eyebrows have furrowed and his eyes have somehow widened further and he’s biting at his lip. He looks almost panicked. For all the messes Dirk has gets himself into, he can’t seem to cope when it’s someone other than him that ends up hurt.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he says, and then frowns because although Dirk’s face is shadowy in the dim light and his vision is still a little spinny, Todd can just about make out a bleeding cut on his friend’s right cheek, the blood smeared towards his ear as if he’s been rubbing at it. It takes him to realise it might not just be himself that had been hurt. “Are you?”

Dirk blinks, looking caught out by the question, and then nods jerkily. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, I…” He trials off, looking distressed. A trickle of blood leaks from his wounded cheek and he rubs it away with his shaking fist. “I’m so sorry, Todd.”

Todd shakes his head dismissively. “It isn’t your fault.” Then he frowns. “Where’s Farah? Is she okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m up here,” she calls from somewhere above him. Todd looks up, trying to locate the voice, but is met by only the dim blueish glow of her flashlight surrounded by darkness.

“Where are you?”

“I’m still in the cave.”

Todd frowns, because if Farah is still in the cave, then where have he and Dirk ended up?

“Where are we? What happened?” he asks, glancing back from the glowing ceiling to look at Dirk. Dirk’s eyebrows knit together at the question.

“You don’t remember?” he asks, his tone heightened. He leans forwards and before Todd can understand what is happening, Dirk has thrust a hand towards his face, his fingers inches from his nose. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

Todd flinches and bats the hand away. “I’m not concussed,” he protests, frowning, although between the headache and the spinning of his vision and the feeling of nausea building in his stomach, he realises that may not be entirely true.

“But you don’t remember what happened,” Dirk rambles worriedly, almost stuttering over the words. “And in my admittedly slightly worryingly thorough experience of concussions, not being able to remember the event prior to the injury was a key sympt-”

“Dirk!”

Dirk stops, his mouth still open. It takes him a second to close it again.

“Stop panicking, okay?”

“What’s going on down there?”

Todd looks up into the light above him in the general direction of Farah’s echoing voice.

“Just…” he glances at Dirk again. He still looks troubled and his teeth are nibbling at his lip, but his posture has relaxed a little and his eyes have lost their widened ‘deer in the headlamps’ appearance. Todd sighs. “Nothing, we’re fine. What happened?”

“There was an explosion, the cave floor fell through. What’s down there?”

Todd frowns, and then looks to Dirk for answers. Dirk shrugs tightly in response. Sighing, Todd picks up Dirk’s phone from the floor where it has fallen and aims the glowing LED on the back of it into the darkness. As his eyes adjust to the light, Todd realises the cave they have landed in is very narrow, maybe only ten meters wide.

“Another cave. Or, hang on…” He gets to his feet, his right knee protesting at the movement, and Dirk rises too, putting out a hand to steady him when he sways. Their eyes catch briefly, worried blue holding Todd’s slightly more unfocused gaze, before Todd looks away and shakes the hand from his arm. He limps towards one of the ends of the cave realising a few metres later that the cave they have landed in is much longer than it is wide, with neither end being visible from where he stands.

The cave is very tall too, with Farah’s torch shining down from what looks to be a good twenty meters away. The dusty floor is littered with rocks and rubble, and it takes Todd a moment to realise that to have both survived such a fall relatively uninjured and avoided being crushed by falling boulders, they have been incredibly lucky. Dirk seems to have reached the same conclusion.

“I’m not sure if we should thank the universe for not crushing us to death,” he says, tensely, “or berate it for leaving us to starve at the bottom of a pit?”

Todd rolls his eyes and regrets it instantly as his head protests. “Thanks for the positivity, drama queen.” He walks another few metres and then turns back and walks the other way. Dirk stands still, watching him cautiously. It doesn’t take him long to realise that the cave they have landed in might not actually be a cave at all.

“Farah, I think it’s a tunnel,” he shouts towards the light.

“Can you see the end?” Farah calls back, her tone hopeful. Todd walks further down the tunnel and then stops and frowns.

“No.”

“Oh,” she sounds disappointed and there’s a pause before she speaks again. “Do you think you can climb back up?”

Todd looks at the smooth rocky walls of the tunnel and almost laughs. “No chance.”

There another pause. “You’ll have to just wait there whilst I go and get help, if you try and find the way out from down there you’re more likely to end up lost,” Farah reasons. “Does Dirk have his flashlight?”

Todd glances at Dirk. He doesn’t appear to be listening to the conversation, his gaze instead focused on the right hand side of the tunnel.

“Dirk?” The detective looks over and hums tightly in question. “Where’s your flashlight?”

Dirk frowns at the question, looking as though he hasn’t considered the missing light before and Todd realises he probably hasn’t. “Oh, I don’t know,” he replies, and then turns on the spot, gazing around the cave in search of it.

Todd takes his phone from his pocket, turning the LED on the back on and passing Dirk’s back to its owner. “It isn’t just going to jump out at you, you know,” he grumbles, and limps back to where he had first woken up in search of the missing light.

***

Dirk quite literally stumbles across his flashlight a few minutes into their hunt, falling to the rocky ground with a clatter and a yelp and a dull thud. Todd turns to see Dirk sprawled inelegantly on the floor slightly to the right of him just as Farah yells from above, asking if he’s okay. There’s a groan and a wince as Dirk rights himself and Todd can just about see that he is biting his lip again, his expression pained, before his face brightens and he reaches over to grab the clattering item he had tripped over.

“Success!” he exclaims happily, ignoring Farah’s question, and then there’s a faint click as he flicks the switch on the side followed by a low whine when the bulb doesn’t light. “It’s broken,” whispers an upset sounding Dirk.

Todd frowns at the tone because Dirk isn’t normally materialistic, he gains and loses cars as most people do pennies and he’s broken three phones in the short while Todd has known him. But the flashlight had been a present, an off-hand gift Todd had picked up in a hardware store after Dirk had tripped over his own feet in the dark yet again, resulting in their third outing to the ER in as many months, and Todd suddenly understands it isn’t the light itself that is special.

“Maybe it’s fixable,” he suggests, forcing a smile. “I’ll have a look later, I used to fix Amanda’s things all the time.”

Dirk looks up, smiling lightly and says, “Thanks, Todd,” before his expression drops and his eyes flicker distractedly towards the right end of the tunnel.

***

Farah leaves them after that, taking her flashlight with her and plunging their cave into near darkness. Todd settles down on the floor to wait, his back against the rough rock, because he’s a little dizzy and the headache is beginning to make him feel really quite sick. Dirk stays standing, at first looking lost and silent and nervous, and then starting to pace, walking up and down the tunnel in a restless, antsy sort of manner. Todd watches, his head moving back and forth as though a spectator at an incredible slow game of tennis.

The detective talks as he paces, at first trying to find a reason for their exploding cave and then, when he could find no solution, moving on to chatter about previous cases, solved and unsolved, exciting and dull. His speech is overly animated and upbeat as he pretends to have forgotten what was unsettling him before. Todd pretends not to hear the tension poorly buried in his tone.

One of the case Dirk talks about had involved a cave too, and he prattles on about how pretty the glistening walls had been and the impressive scale of the stalactites and a mysterious little pond that seemed to light the whole cave with its glow. Their current cave isn’t nearly so interesting; it just contains dusty cold rocks and darkness.

Time is hard to keep track of in the cave, Todd finds. Part of it has to do with the darkness and the isolation from the outside world, and part of it is to do with the pounding and slight spinning of his head. His phone would tell him the time if he looked but its battery isn’t unlimited and he’s loath to keep waking it just to find out how many minutes have passed since his last check. He’s already turned the light on the back of it off, plunging the tunnel closer towards blackness.

Besides, it isn’t as if checking the time will mean they get out of the cave any quicker.

Dirk seems not to know what to do with himself and spends the time alternately sitting restlessly on the sandy floor of the cave, his fingers drumming a relentless rhythm on his thighs and pacing back and forth along the tunnel, sneaking glances to the right side of the tunnel when he thinks Todd isn’t looking. He seems antsy, as though he has something on his mind.

“You’re acting odd.” Todd sighs eventually, half irritated and half worried by his friend’s strange behaviour.

Dirk looks over and rolls his eyes. “I’m always odd,” he points out lightly, but the smile he gives looks hollow.

~~~

Time passes; Todd’s headaches abates a little, he thinks he might have napped, and Dirk fiddles with his phone. The screen of it is cracked, again, Todd notices, and realises it must have broken when they fell into the cave. Dirk doesn’t seem bothered by having broken yet another phone. He has little care for items like phones and cars, treating them almost as though they are disposable. Todd realises in a way, to him, they are; he always seems to find another if he needs one, and therefore the ones he has are unlikely to be his to begin with.

~~~

“Who do you think would win in a fight?” Dirk asks tensely some time later, startling Todd from his thoughts. Todd frowns, eyes closed.

“A fight?”

“A hypothetical one, obviously.”

“Why are we having this conversation now?” he asks, and finally opens his eyes. Dirk is still sitting beside him, his expression tight and his fingers tapping out an agitated tune on his thighs. His gaze flickers to the right side of the tunnel before returning. It doesn’t take Todd long to realise they’re having this conversation because Dirk could really use the distraction. “Who’s fighting?”

“Hmmm, Pepe and the kitten-shark?” Todd can’t help the smile that forms on his lips.

“Are two souls even capable of fighting?”

Dirk seems to consider this. “Probably not.” He purses his lips thoughtfully. “What about the Suzie Boreton and the kitten-shark?”

Todd raises his eyebrows at the question.

“The kitten-shark, definitely.”

Dirk nods at the response, and then his gaze flicks to the right of the tunnel again. His restless hands fiddle with the phone, turning it over and over and over with much more force than is necessary, making the tunnel flash bright and dark as the light rotates. Todd winces as the light catches him in the eye and Dirk, seeming to finally realise what he’s doing, stills the phone and turns the light off with a flick of his thumb.

The tunnel is plunged into darkness. Todd frowns, and takes out his phone again. He turns the light on just in time to see Dirk’s gaze return from the right side of the tunnel again.

“What do you keep looking at?” he asks, curiosity mixing with irritation in his tone.

Dirk shakes his head at the question. “Nothing, it’s just… no, it’s nothing.”

“‘Nothing’ is making you jittery?” Todd raises an eyebrow, but Dirk seems not to notice as his gaze has wandered off again.

“I’m not jittery,” he protests distractedly, and then seems to force his eyes back from the tunnel. “What about me and you?”

“You and me what?” Todd asks, frowning for a second before realising what Dirk had meant. “Oh, fighting?” Dirk nods in response. “Me, every time.”

Dirk looks slightly disappointed.

“What about me and Amanda?”

Todd laughs despite himself. “Amanda would win a fight against both of us. Probably at the same time!”

Dirk’s mouth twitches into a forced smile and then he hums thoughtfully. “What about me and Tina?”

Todd actually considers this one. “Probably Tina.”

Dirk, apparently unimpressed with his answer, sighs dramatically and then winces. “But she’s tiny? And would probably have been eating weed gummies!”

“Yeah, but you have the fighting skills of a new-born giraffe on roller skates.” Todd says, shrugging. He doesn’t mention that Tina is taller than he is, although Dirk does have a point when it comes to the gummies.

Dirk pouts. “My fighting skills are fabulous,” he mutters with mock offence, and runs his hand through the rocky sand they are sitting on.

***

It’s on Dirk’s ninth round of pacing that Todd realises he’s holding himself oddly, his right arm held stiff against his ribs and he frowns, his headache momentarily forgotten. He can’t remember Dirk standing unusually earlier, but between the darkness and his probable concussion, he isn’t sure he would have noticed if he was.

“Is your shoulder okay?” he asks, curiosity mixing with worry in his tone.

Dirk’s wandering slows for a second before he picks up the pace again.

“My shoulder is fine,” he replies, stiffly, his gaze carefully averted. Todd’s frown deepens because, although the shoulder is always a sore point, in both senses of the phrase, something is clearly not right with it now. Or more not right anyway, because it hasn’t been right since they returned from Bergsberg, probably since the harpoon incident in the Spring Mansion, but Dirk refuses to acknowledge anything is wrong and neither he nor Farah have been able to work out why. Not that that matters now, Todd realises.

“Are you okay?”

There’s a beat and then Dirk stops his pacing and looks round. His expression is mostly a shadow in the darkness of the cave, but what Todd assumes is meant to be a reassuring smile just about visible.

“I’m fine, totally tip-top, in fact!” he says brightly, his tone animated beyond normal. “Well, actually, maybe not tip-top, being stuck in a cave and all, but Farah will be here soon, so that’s all fine, it’s all fine, everything’s fine!” The broad smile he gives at the end of his speech doesn’t reach his tightened eyes.

Todd wants to protest, he really does, he knows he should, because something is very clearly not fine, but his head is really beginning to pound, and doesn’t really want to start an argument. There’s a pause, Todd’s aching head fighting his worried heart, but in that moment, his head wins and he relents.

“Sure, whatever you say,” he concedes and rests his head back against the rocks.

***

It isn’t many minutes later that Dirk wanders over to where he is sitting. He’d spent the time pacing around to the right hand side of the tunnel, looking tense and worried and Todd still can’t work out why. It isn’t pleasant being stuck in their darkened cave, he understands that, but Farah is coming so it isn’t as if they’re going to be stuck down there forever.

“Find anything interesting?” he asks conversationally, as Dirk gingerly lowers himself to the floor beside him.

Dirk shakes his head, distractedly, his eyes still fixed to the right. “Not a peanut,” he sighs. His voice is breathy, as though he’s been running. Todd frowns.

“You okay?” he asks, because now he’s thinking about it, he realises that Dirk’s breaths are short and shallow and slightly more controlled than would be considered normal.

“Of course,” he replies, his cheerful tone artificial.

Todd raises his eyebrows. “You’re an awful liar,” he scoffs, and Dirk has the gall to look offended. His breathing seems to be slowly evening into a more normal sounding rhythm though, and Todd, tired and aching and really quite fed up, lets the issue drop again.

***

Todd doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he is abruptly woken some time later, by Dirk shaking him by the shoulders. He opens his eyes to find Dirk kneeling in front of him, his eyes wide and his expression troubled. There’s a smear of blood on his lower lip as if he has bitten into the soft skin hard enough to break it.

“Do you trust me?” he demands, his tone urgent. Todd frowns, confused and alarmed, and pushes himself up a little straighter against the wall.

“Of course.”

Dirk nods jerkily, and then pushes himself to his feet. He sways lightly when he stands and reaches out to steady himself against the wall. His eyes are unfocused and he blinks purposefully as though trying to clear his vision.

He looks dizzy. Todd wonders why.

“Have you hit your head?” he asks, frowning slightly. It’s a reasonable assumption; Dirk’s head seems to be a magnet for hard objects, and Todd has seen him knocked unconscious more times than can possibly be healthy in the short while they’ve known each other. A head injury might explain his increasingly manic behaviour too.

Dirk glances down, his balance apparently regained. He looks startled by the question, but then does seem to think about it. It takes a second for his expression to morph into one of mild surprise. “No, I haven’t, actually.”

Todd is surprised by that too. “Maybe the universe realised there’s only so many concussions it can give you before you lose what little ability you have to keep yourself alive?” He smirks tiredly at his own joke.

Dirk rolls his eyes. “Hilarious, Todd,” he replies sarcastically and then his gaze flickers back to the far end of the tunnel. His expression is suddenly serious. “You said you trust me, yes?”

Todd nods, frowning cautiously.

“Well, we need to go that way.” Dirk points towards the right hand side of the tunnel, the end he has been glancing towards for the past however long they have been there. “Or, I need to go that way, certainly, but you could stay…” he trails off and then shakes his head. “No, no, we need to go.”

“Is this a hunch?”

Dirk nods and then steals a glance down the tunnel again. Todd realises he must have been having the hunch to leave since they fell into the cave and suddenly, Dirk’s tense behaviour and obvious distress and his frequent glances down the tunnel make a lot more sense. It’s a testament to Dirk’s trust in Farah and fear his own instinct that he has tried to ignore it for so long. But, the importance of the hunch seems obvious, and as Todd had said, he trusts Dirk, probably an awful lot more than Dirk trusts himself, and his decision is made in in instant.

“What does it mean?” Todd questions as he stands. His right knee and aching head protest at the movement and what little he can see of the tunnel spins slightly. He blinks heavily, trying to clear his vision. Between the nausea and the dizziness and the pounding in his head, he decides he might actually be concussed after all.

“I don’t know?” Dirk whispers, sounding distressed and then bites at his lip again. His eyes are wide and his expression is tight and his hands are wringing jerkily in front of his stomach. He looks terrified. Todd smiles in what he hopes is a reassuring manner, types a quick text to Farah explaining they are moving, and then pushes himself away from the wall.

“Come on then,” he says determinedly, and starts in the direction of the tunnel Dirk has pointed him down. “I have a good feeling about this.”

***

Dirk seems to calm a little once they are moving, but after a few minutes he starts prattling about old cases again, his tone still nervous. Todd wonders if the relentless chattering is to hold up appearances for his sake of if it’s simply Dirk trying to make himself feel better. Todd doesn’t complain but doesn’t really listen either. He isn’t feeling overly well; his head is pounding and he’s feeling both sick and a little dizzy. His injured knee isn’t exactly impressed with the walking either.

The tunnel they are heading down had narrowed shortly after they enter it, and the ceiling had dropped to just above head height. Todd isn’t claustrophobic, but he can’t say he’s entirely comfortable in the tight space either. The floor they are walking on is smooth beneath the sand, and Todd wonders if the tunnel is natural and formed by a river, or if someone has purposefully made it, and for what reason if they had. It is clear someone has been down here recently though; there are footprints in the sand. It isn’t as though explosives tend to set themselves, either.

Dirk eyes the footsteps with interest, his prattling about a case involving a secret bookshelf portal/door trailing off.

“I think someone one might have been down here,” he says, pouting thoughtfully.

Todd, despite his headache, rolls his eyes at the comment. “Really?”

“Well, yes, the footprints are a bit of a giveaway.” Dirk says, the sarcasm lost on him. “Thinking about it, Todd, I might have to demote you back to assistant after missing such an obvious-” Dirk trials off and his eyes widen, his mouth hanging open comically. “Oh, stupid Dirk, how on earth did I not realise before!”

“Realise what?”

“It couldn’t have been bigfoot people have been seeing in the cave!” he explains, his eyes wide with excitement and his earlier edgy mood evaporated.

Todd frowns, realising he must be missing something. “Because bigfoot isn’t real?”

Dirk tuts and casts him a scathing look. “Don’t be daft, Todd, bigfoot is as real as Nessie is, but also just as shy, he’d never allow himself to be seen by so many people, he hates attention!”

“You’ve met bigfoot?” Todd asks, intrigued, but feeling he should be more surprised than he is.

“Oh, no.” Dirk flaps a hand dismissively. “He tends to avoid England, the weather is a little too grey for him, apparently. Thor used to visit on occasion though, they were quite pally at one time.” He stops and shakes his head a little, seeming to realise he’s become side-tracked. “But you’re missing the point, Todd, it couldn’t have been bigfoot people have been seeing, so what was it? Or more importantly, who was it?”

Todd hums thoughtfully at the question. “You think it was a person they were seeing, like, someone dressing up as bigfoot?”

Dirk nods aggressively. “Yes, probably so!

Todd snorts. “Isn’t that a little Scooby-Doo?”

Dirk gives a little lop-sided shrug. “It’s definitely more likely than Bigfoot being seen by so many people.”

“Why would someone do that though? To keep people away from the cave? Oh, wait, do you think they are the same people who set the explosives?”

Dirk glances over, eyebrows raised and positively beaming. “I think that is certainly a possibility.”

“But why?”

“Why have people been dressing up as bigfoot to frighten people away from the caves and setting explosives to stop those who are brave enough to enter?” Dirk pauses dramatically and for a second Todd thinks he might actually know the answer but then his beaming expression drops a little. “I honestly have no idea, but maybe we’ll find out soon.”

***

They keep walking and the ground changes from smooth and sandy to rocky and uneven. Todd can’t decide if he likes the change or not, because although the harder ground is easier to walk on than the sand from before, the uneven quality to it isn’t exactly helping his aching knee or slightly dizzy sense of balance and he keeps his eyes fixed to the rough floor, determined not to trip.

Dirk gaze keeps drifting up from the uneven rocks as he walks, his eyes flicking to Todd as if to check he’s still okay. They round a corner so tight it’s almost a U-turn and Dirk stops sharply enough that Todd very nearly walks into his back in the dark. It takes him a moment to realise why they have stopped.

“Oh, that’s not ideal,” he comments, looking forlornly at the three way fork in the tunnel just ahead. Dirk appears not to hear him, preoccupied with frowning down each of the three tunnels in turn.

“This way, I think,” he says, carefully, before shaking his head slightly. “Actually, maybe we should go back and wait for Farah? She’ll be there soon, that seems a safer option, one less likely to result in us starving to death in a tunnel maze, certainly.” He lets out a nervous, humourless laugh and then turns, glancing back the way they had come. Todd reaches out, taking hold of his wrist and pulling Dirk round to face him again.

“Is this the way the universe is telling you to go?” he asks, pointing down the tunnel Dirk had indicated moments before. Their eyes catch, and then Dirk nods once. He’s biting at his lip again. “Then this is the way we should go.”

Dirk looks uncomfortable with his decision. “What if I get us lost?”

“You won’t,” Todd replies with perhaps more confidence than is sensible, and limps into the entrance of their new tunnel.

The second tunnel is almost indistinguishable from the first, the only difference being the slight downhill slope of the floor. Todd knows little about caves, but when he thinks about it, he realises heading downwards is probably not ideal as they had walked down a slope to get to their original cave and then fallen from that, but the downwards sloping tunnel was the direction Dirk had picked, and therefore Todd trusts that the downwards sloping tunnel is the one to take.

Dirk doesn’t talk quite as much as they walk down the second tunnel and he keeps glancing nervously back towards the fork. Todd almost wants to ask him if he’s sure this was the right way, but he had been panicky enough about picking their path without him throwing any extra doubt into his mind.

They turn a corner and the ceiling heightens a little, much to Todd’s relief, but the tunnel narrows further, resulting in them walking almost shoulder to shoulder to avoid tripping on the rocky boulders that line the stone walls. The gradient of the downwards slope increases too, to the extent that not breaking into a run almost becomes a challenge.

Between the steepening slope and his increasingly frequent sideways glances, it isn’t long before Dirk’s foot catches on a rock and he trips, dropping his phone with a clatter and yelping quietly in surprise as he falls. He puts his hand out to catch himself on a conveniently placed boulder, scuffing his knees on the rocky floor as he lands but keeping himself otherwise upright. He inhales sharply at the landing, the noise pained, and then slumps back, ending up sitting on his feet, and draws his arm to his chest with a quiet moan.

Todd halts beside him, shining the light of his phone towards him. Dirk looks pasty in the blueish glow and his face is tight, his forehead wrinkled and his lips pressed thinly together. His arm is held to his side again, resting supportively against his chest. Todd frowns, concern and confusion bubbling in his gut.

“You okay?”

Dirk’s eyes flash up at the question, his expression a strange mix of startled and pained and Todd isn’t quite sure if their dampness is a trick of the light or not. A moment passes before Dirk averts his gaze, glancing down to the floor instead. He shakes his head slightly and then pushes himself to his feet. His face crumples at the movement.

“I think I may have a broken rib, or two,” he confesses quietly, sounding slightly winded, and Todd realises that the arm isn’t held to his chest to keep the shoulder still, but instead to support his apparently painful ribs. Dirk’s earlier breathlessness and dizziness makes sense too; Todd has heard
how unpleasant taking a satisfactorily deep breath with a broken rib can be.

“So, earlier, when you said you were fine…” he says grimly, trailing off and looking towards Dirk with his eyebrows raised.

“Strategic non-truthing?” A forced smile grows on Dirk’s pale lips and Todd realises he’s aiming for humour but his tone is heavy with pain and the joke falls flat. Todd, head pounding and knee throbbing, isn’t really in the mood for joking either.

“You’re and idiot,” he snaps, irritated. Dirk has the decency to look embarrassed and suddenly appears very interested in his feet. He looks almost nervous, backed against the wall with the look of a child being scolded by their school teacher. Guilt stirs in Todd’s stomach and he sighs gently. “How’s breathing?”

Dirk looks up again at the question, appearing surprised by his sudden concern.

“Fine,” he replies, too quickly and with a too bright smile. Todd gives him a scathing look and Dirk, uncharacteristically, relents. “Painful,” he admits, his tone suddenly small, “and it feels kind of tight.”

Todd nods, frowning slightly, because ‘painful and kind of tight’ is unlikely to be a good way for Dirk’s breathing to feel, but there is little to be done about it inside the tunnels. “Just… keep breathing,” he says, his eyes resigned.

“I wasn’t planning on stopping.” Dirk smiles weakly, and then pushes himself off the wall. He bends down to retrieve his phone from the rocks below, groaning quietly as he does so, before shoving it in his pocket and starting down the tunnel once again. “Come on, Todd,” he says in a flimsy attempt at his normal buoyant tone, “I want to be out of here in time to get a milkshake on the way home.”

Todd doesn’t have the heart to tell him they’re more likely going to the hospital than the milkshake parlour after they find the exit to the tunnel maze.

***

They’ve been walking along the second tunnel for what feels like hours to Todd’s tired legs when there’s a deep rumbling from somewhere far behind them startling Dirk from his nonsensical rambling about the pros and cons of using jam jars to hold stationary. The noise is loud and echoey, and sounds as though it has come from the direction of the tunnel they had fallen into so long before. Todd stops and turns to look but sees nothing other than blackness.

“Was that a rockfall?” he asks, despite already knowing the answer, his eyes widening in alarm. He can just about see Dirk slowly nodding in conformation in the darkness, his expression appears shocked, but there’s a hint of almost disbelief too. Todd suddenly realises why Dirk was so determined for them to leave their original tunnel. “Did you know what was going to happen?”

Dirk swallows, looking uncomfortable. “Something like that, yes.”

Todd raises his eyebrows. “You should stop doubting your hunches,” he chuckles humourlessly.

Dirk hums distractedly in response and then turns back in the direction they had been walking. “We should keep going,” he says, and starts uncertainly down the tunnel once again. Todd takes one last glance behind him and then follows.

***

It isn’t long before they reach a second fork in the tunnel. Dirk stops, looking between the two, and then points towards the one on the left.

“This way,” he says, cautiously, and then his gaze flickers to Todd. “Unless you want to go back, that is.”

“Back to where?” Todd asks, frowning. “The tunnel fell in, remember.”

Dirk looks meek and gives an awkward one-sided shrug and then, together, they start down the left-hand tunnel he had indicated seconds before.

***

“Shit, what about Farah,” Todd asks minutes later, halting in the middle of the tunnel. Dirk turns to look at him but doesn’t stop, beckoning him to keep walking instead. He looks anxious again, as he had done when they were sitting in the tunnel what feels like hours ago, and his expression is pained and the arm which he had held to his chest after his fall has returned to its supportive position.

“She’s okay, I think,” he says, and his tone is confident beneath his unease. He sounds sure, as though he knows that Farah is okay, and Todd realise he probably is sure, even if he doesn’t quite know why. The universe’s hints can be useful, sometimes, he decides, even if more often than not they’re vague and confusing and lead Dirk into situations more dangerous and threatening than he is capable of handling.

***

They’ve been walking down their third tunnel in relative silence for some time when Todd notices Dirk’s breaths seems to have taken on more of a short and shallow quality the further they had walked. It takes him a moment to realise that Dirk has stopped talking too. Todd glances over, frowning, and Dirk seems to sense his gaze because his head comes up from where he had been looking at the floor.

“Are you okay, Todd?” he asks, and his voice sounds a little breathless too.

“Am I okay?” Todd raises his eyebrows.

Dirk counters by raising one of his. “I thought that was a pretty valid question actually, Todd, seeing as you do currently have a concussion.”

Todd still isn’t entirely sure he is concussed, but arguing Dirk’s diagnosis isn’t going to help in any way, shape or form and so he relents. “I’m okay, I’m really looking forwards to some painkillers though.” There’s a pause. “How are your ribs?”

“They’re-” Dirk shifts his supporting arm a little and grimaces, “-certainly existing.”

Todd rolls his eyes a little at the response. “Useful update, Dirk.”

“You’re welcome, Todd,” he says, and returns his eyes to the tunnel.

***

They walk for another few minutes before they come to another fork in the tunnel. Dirk doesn’t stop this time.

“This way,” he says, his tone slightly more confident than when he had picked their route last, and points to the right side of the two way fork.

“You once said the universe never helps you,” Todd questions lightly, as he follows Dirk into the tunnel.

Dirk looks up, frowning. “It doesn’t?”

“But this is a pretty helpful thing for it to be doing.”

“Yes, I guess so,” Dirk agrees with a wheezy sigh, “but there’s a slight difference between the universe actually helping me and it not leaving me to die in a hole.”

Todd’s eyebrows raise at the bluntness of the comment. “Still seems helpful to me?”

Dirk grimaces. “It isn’t doing this for me, Todd, I’m just a tool to it,” he says, his tone bitter beneath its usual buoyancy. “It’s like if you dropped a screwdriver down a drain, you wouldn’t feel sorry for it, but you might try and get it out because it’s less effort than buying another one.”

“That’s… I don’t…” Todd breaks off, not knowing what to say and then sighs, “Please stop calling yourself a tool, Dirk, you are much more important than any screwdriver.”

Dirk glances up, looking both confused and more than a little touched.

***

“This is like some sort of prison maze,” Todd complains about ten minutes and three forks in the tunnel later. “We’re lucky you work as some sort of holistic compass.”

“A holistic compass, Todd,” Dirk scoffs breathlessly. “You must be concussed to come out with that sort of nonsense!”

“Very funny, Dirk,” Todd sighs, and glances sideways at his friend. Dirk doesn’t notice him looking, and is instead thoughtfully examining the walls by the dim glow of Todd’s phone.

“I think prison might be an improvement over this actually; at least prison had lights. And toilets,” he adds pointedly. Todd ignores the comment on toilets, dwelling on them won’t help his own increasingly uncomfortable bladder, and focuses on Dirk’s use of the word ‘had’ instead. He’s entirely unsurprised that Dirk has had experience inside a prison.

“How many times have you been arrested?” he asks, half curious and half resigned.

Dirk hums thoughtfully at the question. “I can’t actually remember. The first time might have been when I was maybe eight and I found those bodies, but they didn’t actually think it was me responsible so I’m not entirely sure that counts? Then there was the time I sold all those exam papers at uni, although that wasn’t entirely my fault. Then there was that time I-”

“Hang on,” Todd interrupts, and Dirk pauses mid word, mouth hanging open. “You went to university?”

“I just mentioned finding bodies as a child and you’re more interested in my education?”

“Dirk, the first day I met you, three men were killed by the soul of a hammerhead shark which had been swapped into the body of a kitten. Bodies in your life are in no way unexpected.” Dirk opens his mouth, looking as though he is about to protest, and then, frowns and closes it again, seeming to find no valid argument. Todd raises his eyebrows, as though to prove his point. “On the other hand, I can’t imagine you at college.”

Dirk pulls an expression of mock offence. “I’m greatly offended, Todd!”

Todd rolls his eyes, “You know what I meant!” Then he frowns thoughtfully, “When did you even have time to go?”

“After the mass Blacking breakout but before the Patrick Spring case, it’s kind of obvious, really.”

Todd rolls his eyes. “Yeah, that was clearly the answer I was looking for.”

Dirk chuckles breathily, and then hums. “I started uni the third autumn after Blackwing, and I was rubbish at it,” he explains, his tone light. “I didn’t really pick to go, you see. It just sort of happened.” He pauses, looking pensive. “Thinking about it, I’m not sure how I even got a place, I just turned up one day and they showed me to a room. I’ve always assumed it was the universe?”

“What did you study?” Todd asks, curiously.

“Philosophy. At St. Cedd’s college in Cambridge. I think the word ‘study’ might be a little misleading, though.”

“It can’t be any worse than my take on studying at college,” Todd says, pointedly and then sighs. “You do realise saying you went to Cambridge would sound a lot more impressive if you don’t tell people how you got in.”

Dirk chuckles again and then seems to regret it as he grimaces and tightens the arm protectively around his ribs. Their eyes catch and Todd gives him a worried look. Dirk pretends not to notice. It’s a few seconds before Todd speaks again. “I never pictured you having a degree.”

Dirk smiles. “Oh, I don’t, I was expelled during my second year, just after I was arrested.”

Todd thinks back to what Dirk had been saying before. “For… something to do with exams?”

“Selling exam papers.”

Todd’s eyebrows raise at the thought of such uncharacteristic dishonesty from his friend “You sold stolen exam papers?”

Dirk smirks and raises an eyebrow. “Who said anything about stolen?”

Todd frowns, confused, and then shakes his head. “Explain?”

“I used to sleep talk, about exam papers, and turns out sometimes they were a pretty good match to the real papers.”

“So, you sold them?”

Dirk gives a crooked smile. “It wasn’t my idea, but I needed the money. Anyway, the lecturers found out eventually, and they couldn’t work out how I’d seen the papers but wouldn’t believe me when I said I hadn’t and then the police got involved, and I ended up spending a couple of nights in prison before the charges were dropped.”

Todd gives him a sympathetic look. “That sucks.”

“I’ve had worse,” Dirk says buoyantly, and gives a lopsided shrug as if his spell in prison were nothing. It takes Todd a moment to realise that after having spent most of his teenage years being experimented on inside Blackwing, a few days in prison probably had felt like nothing. He sighs, and decides to move the conversation on. “Did you enjoy it?”

Dirk’s brow furrows. “Prison?”

“No, university?”

Dirk seems to consider this. “Hmmm, I guess so. There was good food, and I had a bed. I thought I had a friend for a little while, too.”

“Thought?”

“Hmmm. Turns out he wasn’t actually a very nice person.” Dirk smiles, but it looks more than a little forced and Todd can’t help but feel sorry for him.

“You’re got friends now,” he says gently, and puts on what he hopes is a comforting smile.

“I know,” Dirk says, his voice small, and Todd would say more, but the detective’s expression is distant, and for some reason, it feels best to leave him to his thoughts.

***

The next tunnel (Todd has lost count of them by now) has a slight upwards slope to it and they haven’t walked far along it before Dirk’s breathing progresses from shallow and controlled to audibly wheezy. He’s started coughing too, little dry ones as though he is trying to clear his throat.

“Is this normal?” asks Todd, concerned, after Dirk coughs for the third time in as many minutes.

Dirk frowns. “Is what normal, Todd?” he asks, breathlessly. The words are followed by another cough. Todd looks at him pointedly. “Oh, that? I wouldn’t know.”

“You’ve never broken a rib before?” Todd asks, his eyes widening in disbelief.

“Should I have?”

“I mean, during the first two cases I spent with you, you got shot at by a holistic assassin, harpooned twice, thrown through a doghouse, attacked with a scissor sword, shot in the thigh, broke your hand, almost knocked yourself out on-”

“Yes, Todd, point proven” Dirk interrupts, trying to sound cross and failing. “Although, you do know my hand wasn’t actually broken. And that was the first time I have ever punched anyone like that. Believe it or not, I don’t actually have a habit of starting fights.”

“Yeah, I know,” Todd agrees, “You just have a habit of provoking people until they start one with you.”

Dirk chuckles breathlessly beside him and then coughs harshly, his expression crumpling into a grimace as his arms wrap tightly around his chest in an attempt to stabilise his ribs. “You make it sound… as though I provoke people… on purpose,” he wheezes, his sentence fragmented by his gasping breaths. Todd has to fight not to comment.

“I do wonder about that sometimes,” he says instead, raising an eyebrow, and Dirk turns to give him a look of mock offence.

***

“Is it time for a break?” Todd asks hopefully, legs aching from the uphill slope and injured knee throbbing, as Dirk directs them right down the next fork. Dirk turns to look at him, wheezing heavily and frowning a little. His skin looks pale in the blue glow of the LED and his eyes have at some point tightened with pain but he shakes his head in answer to Todd’s question.

“We need to keep going,” he says breathily, and then turns back towards the path. “I can’t leave you stuck in here.”

“What are you talking about?” Todd asks, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion, as he follows his unanswering friend into the tunnel.

***

Todd is startled from his thoughts sometime later by his phone vibrating in his hand. He checks the screen, hoping for contact from Farah, but it turns out to be a notification telling him the battery has reached 10%. He frowns at the screen.

“Dirk, how much battery has your phone got left?”

Dirk doesn’t respond, and when Todd shines the light of the phone towards him, he realises Dirk doesn’t appear to have heard him. His eyes are staring and wide and fixed on his feet as though he is concentrating solely on putting on in front of the other. He looks tired, exhausted even, and in pain and his breathing is strained and wheezy.

“Dirk?” Todd says again, and elbows his friend gently to get his attention. It’s his left are he elbowed, and it was barely a nudge, but Dirk startles at his touch and inhales sharply all the same. The inhale is followed by a cough and then another and then a noise that sounds worryingly close to a whimper. Todd’s heart clenches in his chest.

There’s a beat, and somehow, it’s Dirk that recovers first.

“Did you want something, Todd?” he asks, his voice panting and tight but curious. Todd blinks.

“Oh, erm, how much battery does your phone have left?”

“That is an excellent question,” Dirk says breathlessly, and then contorts in a way that looks painful considering his broken ribs in an effort to remove his phone from the front right pocket of his jeans using his left hand. He grimaces at the effort but, after a second, produces the phone from his pocket. He unlocks it left handed and then squints at the sudden brightness of the screen.

“72 percent,” he reports, sounding pleased.

Todd nods and they continue down the tunnel.

***

“Dirk, please stop,” Todd begs some ten minutes later when Dirk stumbles dizzily and catches himself on the side of the tunnel. Dirk shakes his head but says silent, his eyes focused determinedly on the tunnel ahead. Todd can’t decide whether his silence is because he has nothing to say on the matter or no breath left to say anything with. He coughs and then stumbles again and this time Todd has to put out an arm to catch him.

“Will you sit down before you fall down!” he exclaims, his tone tight with worry and alarm.

Dirk stops at that, hovering unsteadily for a moment, his expression conflicted, before he turns to the side and leans back against the rocky wall. He closes his eyes, wheezing loudly, and holding his arms tightly round his chest in a vain attempt to brace his ribs. His skin is pasty, and Todd is horrified to realise that his friend’s lips have taken on a blue tint. He swears under his breath and Dirk chuckles weakly.

“I’m okay, I just need to catch my breath,” he says, the sentence fragmented by his raged breathing. He coughs dryly, grimacing, and then wipes at his mouth with his sleeve.

***

True to Dirk’s prediction, he does seem to recover a little during their rest. His breathing doesn’t quite lose its wheeziness and the coughing doesn’t decrease but his colour returns a little, the blue fading from his lips, and his raged inhales stop sounding quite as desperate as they had before. He seems restless the entire time they are stopped though, his fierce hunch likely demanding he continues walking but his injured ribs and straining lungs relishing the rest. Todd leaves him to it, not really knowing what to say to comfort him.

They start walking again as soon as Dirk’s breathing seems to have improved as much as it is going to. He looks to relax a little once they start moving again.

***

Time passes.

Todd loses count of how many forks they pass and how many tunnels they go down.

Dirk coughs and wheezes, his breathing rapidly worsening again.

Todd knows better than to suggest they take another break.

They keep walking.

***

They make it another dozen or so forks before the phone vibrates in Todd’s hand once more. He looks down just in time to see the android logo flash up on the screen as the battery finally dies and it turns off, taking the dim glow of the LED with it and plunging them into complete darkness. Todd swears and stops and hears Dirk come to a halt too.

“Maybe I should have brought the everbulb,” Dirk wheezes from somewhere close behind him. Todd despite their predicament, can’t help the chuckle that escapes his lips. Dirk coughs instead and then groans quietly to himself, sounding miserable.

Todd sobers, his amusement evaporating as quick as it had come, and is about to ask Dirk to light the LED on his own phone when he feels something small and squarish being prodded into his side. He reaches down curiously and accepts the phone Dirk is handing him. Then he grimaces.

“Why is everything you own sticky?” he asks, pocketing his now useless phone. He had meant the question rhetorically, but Dirk doesn’t appear to have realised and hums thoughtfully.

“Ice-cream, usually.”

“Of course,” Todd sighs as he holds his finger to the scanner on the back of Dirk’s phone. Once the screen is on, it takes him barely a second to realise the stickiness of the phone isn’t due to ice-cream at all and his breath catches in his throat, his eyes fixed on the red smears on the cracked screen.

“Are you bleeding?”

There’s a beat before Dirk replies. “Not in the conventional sense,” he says, slowly, and then coughs.

Todd frowns, confused, and then he has a lightbulb moment, both figuratively and literally, as he finds the desired setting and the little LED on the back of the phone lights up just as he realises what Dirk’s comment may have meant.

“You’re not coughing up blood, are you?” He looks round at his friend, his eyes wide. Dirk is looking both pale and guilty and Todd knows he’s hit the nail on the head.

“That is certainly a possibility,” he says, quietly, and he even sounds guilty. He coughs again and then grimaces in both pain and disgust. “It tastes awful.”

Todd’s eyes widen further and is heart hammers in his chest because although he knows very, very little about medicine or human anatomy, there is no way that coughing up blood can be considered a good sign.

“I don’t think the taste is the worst of your problems,” he replies tightly, and his voice catches slightly in his throat.

Dirk smiles weakly, his expression somewhere between worry and vague amusement. “Probably not,” he agrees, and before Todd can say anything further, he’s started down the tunnel once again.

***

They keep walking.

Their pace is slower than it used to be, and Todd, his legs aching and his knee protesting with every step, doesn’t complain. He’s tiring though, and his hunger, thirst, and need to pee are slowly becoming more unbearable and he realises he would really like Dirk to lead them to the exit sooner rather than later.

Dirk seems to be wearing too; he stumbles as he walks, his legs weak and his balance questionable. His breathing has worsened further too, each of his breaths sound audibly laboured and the coughs have increased in frequency. He seems to somehow be coping though, staying upright and leading Todd through the tunnels, picking forks with none of the hesitance he once showed. Todd wonders if he’s simply too tired to fight the hunches.

***

“I need a break,” Todd says, some time later, despite it not really being him that needs the break, and he stops and sinks down against the wall of the tunnel, resting his aching head back against the rock. Dirk, wheezing and weak and woozy, takes a few more steps before he seems to register what has been said and halts too, his gaze flicking between Todd and the blackness waiting for them down the tunnel.

“I don’t think-” he starts, only to be interrupted by a coughing fit that leaves him pale and gasping for breath and visibly dizzy and he relents, stumbling back to where Todd has sat and groaning lowly as he gingerly lowers himself down to the floor beside him, his right arm still wrapped bracingly around his ribs.

“I can’t say… this is… what would be considered... pleasant,” he pants with alarming honesty as he leans his head back against the cave wall and closes his eyes. His expression is tight and Todd’s heart clenches in painful sympathy. He stares for a moment, watching his exhausted best friend’s laboured breathing with worry churning in his gut until he can bare it no longer and he lets his gaze falls from Dirk’s pasty face to the navy, ice-cream cone covered tie knotted around his neck and his frown deepens. “Are you sure the tie is a good idea?”

Dirk’s eyes drift open again, his gaze slowly focusing on Todd. It appears to take him a second to realise what has been said. “Undoubtedly not.”

There’s a beat, Todd waiting expectantly, Dirk gazing back with heavy eyes.

“Are you going to…”

Dirks eyes widen in realisation and then his hands reach for the patterned knot below his chin. It takes Todd barely a second to realise that his hands are shaking slightly and the fingers of his right one are minutely twitching in the way they tend to when he is tired or stressed or ill. It’s something Todd had noticed shortly after they returned from Bergsberg, but whether it was caused by the harpoon incident or not, he doesn’t know. Not that the cause of the twitching, or the shaking really matters, Todd realises.

Seconds pass and Dirk seems to be making little progress with the knot so he reaches over, his intent on helping, but the detective glares and bats away his hands so he waits, feigning patience and trying not to hear the rasping of his friend’s rapid breaths. Eventually, the knot loosens enough for his shaking fingers to slacken the tie and pull it away from his throat, leaving the knot hanging midway down his chest. In the darkness, it takes Todd a second to realise that, for some reason, Dirk had buttoned his shirt collar too.

“Your top button is done up,” he prompts the tired man gently. Dirk casts him a weary look but his hands drift up to his neck again. He struggles for a minute, his shaking and twitching fingers seeming to lack the strength and coordination required to push the tiny button through the hole, before he’s caught by another cough, forcing his hands to abandon the collar and return to brace his ribs instead. He looks exhausted and frightened and pained in a way Todd find hurts his own chest almost unbearably.

“Will you let me help?” he almost begs, and there’s a pause and a cough and then Dirk nods, looking resigned, and leans his head back against the wall. Todd moves to kneel in front of him and Dirk lifts his chin, allowing his hands access to the button. His fingers skim the clammy skin of Dirk’s throat, feeling every gasping breath and pained swallow and he realises the moment could feel intermate under less pressing circumstance.

“People would talk, if they saw,” Dirk jokes weakly under his breath as Todd’s nervous fingers struggle with the little, white button. He hums in question, frowning slightly at the mischievous glint in his friend’s tired eyes. “You, undressing me… in the dark.”

Todd rolls his eyes. “You’re an idiot,” he says with a sigh, but this time his tone is fond.

Dirk chuckles wheezily and then abruptly stops. Todd thinks he’s about to cough again, but then he speaks instead, the humour in his tone replaced by concern. “Todd, your head is bleeding!”

Todd had nearly forgotten about his injured head. The blood had stopped running freely what felt like hours ago, and the persistent headache and dizziness and nausea had faded as Dirk’s condition rapidly deteriorated.

“I think you’ve got your priorities wrong,” he utters, as his fingers finally find success and the small button at Dirk’s throat pops undone. Dirk frowns slightly, his head tilted in question. He appears not to understand what is being said to him. Todd looks up and sighs, exasperated. “Dirk, my head is fine. You, on the other hand, are literally bleeding from your lungs!”

Dirk seems to consider this and then chuckles weakly again. “Touché,” he says, looking amused despite himself, before the conversation is abruptly ended by the arrival of another coughing fit.

***

“We should get going again,” Dirk rasps, minutes later, looking only a little recovered.

Todd frowns at Dirk’s whitish skin and blue tinted lips and the way he’s slumped against the wall. He looks as though he’d struggle to sit unsupported let alone get up and walk. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Dirk shrugs. “It’s not like I’m going to get better… just sitting here, Todd,” he wheezes lightly, seeming to sense the reason for Todd’s reluctance.

Todd swallows. “I guess that’s true,” he agrees, grimly.

Dirk nods, and then abruptly pushes himself up a little straighter against the rocks. His expression tightens at the movement but he continues determinedly, unsteadily pushing himself to his feet. He sways lightly when he stands, looking dizzy, and steadies himself against the wall, blinking purposefully as though to clear his vision. It looks as though he’s winning his fight with gravity by pure determination.

Todd hurriedly stands too, getting to his feet just as Dirk starts along the tunnel again. His steps are slower than before, and he trails his hand against the rocky wall as though not quite trusting his sense of balance. He makes it four steps before he coughs harshly again, his hand leaving the wall to wrap around his shattered ribs at the same time as his sense of balance decides to abandon him completely.

Todd catches him before he falls and holds him upright as the rough coughs wrack his battered form, and then, when the coughing stops and Dirk’s strength and balance seems to have returned a little, he changes his grip pulling Dirk’s arm around his shoulders and wrapping his arm around Dirk’s waist, hoping he has kept his grip low enough to avoid the damaged ribs. The hand he is holding is ice cold and sticky with blood.

“Brilliant assisting, Todd,” Dirk wheezes weakly and starts down the tunnel once again.

***

They walk on, Todd’s steps heavy with the added weight of his weakening best friend and Dirk’s stumbling and uncoordinated but a little faster than when he had been unsupported. Dirk says little as they walk, only muttering directions when they meet a fork or protests when Todd suggests they stop. He sounds exhausted, and at some point, his head has ended up resting against Todd’s. Neither of them mention it.

***

Todd, some time later, just after Dirk has directed them down the centre path of a three-way fork, hopefully asks how long until the end of the tunnel. Dirk shrugs distractedly and then chuckles, his head shaking on Todd’s shoulder.

“You sound like a child on a long car journey,” he pants, and Todd smiles sadly at the comment. It’s something he had said to Dirk not too long ago, when they had been on the way to somewhere Todd can’t quite remember. Dirk hadn’t understood the reference though, and Todd had had to guiltily explain, realising that it was unlikely that Dirk, having spent years of his childhood in a government prison for physics, would have any knowledge of what when on on a standard family road trip.

***

The have just taken a right fork when Dirk stumbles, weak and dizzy, and his legs give way altogether. He falls, and Todd goes down too, trying to catch his sinking friend. He cushions Dirk’s landing a little, but the detective still cries out as he hits the floor. They both end up half sitting, half kneeling on the rocky floor on the tunnel, Dirk only upright because of Todd’s arm still wrapped around his waist but with his head hanging limply towards his chest. His expression is crumpled, tightened in pain and shock, and his eyes are closed. Todd’s knees feel grazed and his already injured one throbs in protest, but he can’t bring himself to care.

“Dirk, are you alright?”

There’s no response, and in the quiet of the cave, Todd realises Dirk’s raged breathing has stopped. A moment of panic surges through him, before he grasps that Dirk is no longer breathing because he is purposefully holding his breath.

“Dirk?”

Seconds pass and Todd’s heart hammers in his throat. Dirk’s breath stays held.

“Please, Dirk, I know it hurts, but you need to breathe?” he pleads, and after another few seconds, Dirk slowly, deliberately, shakily, exhales. Todd sighs, relief coursing through him. “That’s it, keep going, in, and out, in, and out.”

Dirk follows, his expression pained and then, after what feels like hours, his blue eyes open. It seems to take a second for them to focus, but eventually they settle. There’s a moment, and Todd’s worried eyes meet Dirk’s raw gaze. “I know…how to breathe, Todd,” he wheezes, his tired eyes crinkling with amusement despite the situation before his expression sobers and swallows. “We need to keep going.”

Todd looks at him, taking in his ashen complexion and rapid, useless breaths and weak, almost boneless posture. It seems almost impossible to even consider him walking any further and he shakes his head, frowning. “You can’t, Dirk. I’ll go, then I’ll come back for you, I’ll bring help, it’ll-”

Dirk shakes his head violently and then groans as the movement jars his fractured ribs. “You’ll never find your way out,” he wheezes, his eyes hard, “I’m your holistic compass, remember.” He smiles tiredly and coughs again and closes his eyes, gasping for breath. Todd swallows, wanting to protest but knowing Dirk is right. He waits, watching Dirk panting in the dim light of the torch, his heart breaking.

When Dirk looks up again, his expression is determined. “Help me up,” he commands, and Todd silently obliges.

***

They make it through another three forks before Dirk falls again. Todd catches him this time, expecting it, and gently lowers him to the ground, propping him up against the wall. Dirk weakly protests, demanding they continue walking even though his own legs are the ones that have stopped. His breathing comes in short, desperate little gasps and in the light of the phone, his skin looks almost translucent, a stark contrast to the speckles of red on his lips.

A cough catches him, rough and violent and wet, and Todd watches, helpless and hurting too, and then Dirk’s hand finds his in the dark. The hand is icy and sticky with blood but he grasps it back tightly as Dirk is caught by another cough. Beneath the blood, Dirk’s nail beds are blue.

Eventually, the coughing subsides a little, leaving Dirk gasping, his expression strained and his eyes closed, and Todd repositions his grip on the hand until his fingers are rested on the inside of Dirk’s wrist as he used to do with Amanda during the worst of her attacks. It doesn’t take him more than a few seconds to realise the pulse is much, much, too fast under his fingertips, the feel of it more of a flutter than a beat. Something is clearly very wrong, and Todd is suddenly, agonisingly, aware that unless they find an exit very soon, this might be how he loses his best friend.

“I died once before,” Dirk wheezes, as if somehow reading his mind. His tone is casual, as though he is merely commenting on the weather. Todd startles from his thoughts and it takes him a second to process what has been said, but when he does, his heart tightens because before implies Dirk has come to the same conclusion.

Suddenly, Dirk’s earlier comment of “I can’t leave you here” and almost animalistic determination to keep walking make sense, because he understands Dirk must know that if he was to stop and not make it to the end, it might not just be him that dies in the tunnels. And so, he had pushed on, walking despite his slowly worsening breathing and the weakness and dizziness it had caused and the agony of his shattered ribs pressing into his lungs, determinedly leading Todd to the exit, and Todd realises, quite heartbreakingly, that his life might be indebted to the dying man before him.

“You’re not dying now,” he says, swallowing hard, but the words don’t sound convincing even to himself.

***

They start walking again a few minutes later. Dirk’s feet seem to barely touch the floor, his shoes scuffing uncoordinatedly against the rock. Todd’s shoulders and arms ached from taking so much of his weight and his injured knee protests but he tries to ignore the pain because it must be nothing compared to what Dirk is going through. Dirk seems barely conscious by the time they have made it to the next branch in the tunnel, his eyes closed and his head resting on Todd’s shoulder and his grip on Todd’s denim jacket weak. Todd has to shake him into acknowledging the fork and Dirk lifts his head and whispers a barely audible ‘left’ before coughing once again.

Todd takes the left, and it isn’t long before Dirk’s head droops again. Todd feels torn between letting him rest and keeping him conscious. It isn’t long before Dirk’s bloodied hand loosens its grip on Todd’s jacket and he slips a little before Todd manages to catch him. He groans as his ribs shift but seems to wake a little, his left hand clinging back to Todd like a lifeline.

“I think I almost preferred last time,” he wheezes, sounding defeated. It takes Todd a second to realise what he is referring to, but when he does he almost cries at the morbidity of the comment.

“What happened, before?” he asks instead, because suddenly, keeping Dirk talking seems the best idea. He finds he curious too, in a way he knows he probably shouldn’t be.

Dirk looks up at the comment, his head raising from Todd’s shoulder. Surprise is evident in his expression. “That’s a little forward, Todd.”

“Yes, well, I’m trying to keep you talking,” Todd admits, and Dirk just looks at him for a moment, before he sighs and coughs and his head returns to Todd’s shoulder. For a minute, there is silence, and he thinks the conversation is over.

“It happened… when I was in Blackwing,” Dirk starts, sounding much more awake than Todd was expecting after his silence. “After they realised… my powers” – he scoffs the word as much as he is able – “worked better if the universe… thought I was in danger.” He pauses, his breaths rasping and weak. “So, they started… shocking me.”

“Like, with electricity?”

Dirk nods. “At first it worked… but then, I don’t know… the universe realised I wasn’t… in danger… maybe.” He shrugs weakly. “So, they’d turn it up… whenever it stopped working…. and then one day…” he trails off, and Todd doesn’t know if he’s run out of breath or just doesn’t want to continue but it doesn’t really matter either way as he can guess what happened next. “Riggins was furious… but the shocks stopped… after that.”

“Were you okay?” Todd asks, horrified. There’s a pause and then Dirk hums.

“Physically or emotionally?” Dirk pauses to cough, but then starts speaking again before Todd has the chance to answer. “Everything... was a bit… tingly, for a while…” he trails off again, grimacing in memory. Todd doesn’t know much about the aftereffects of electrocution, but judging by Dirk’s expression, he realises it’s unlikely to be pleasant.

“And emotionally?” he asks, almost unsure whether he should be asking such a question or not. Dirk shrugs into his shoulder in response.

The reach another fork and Dirk directs him left again. His voice sounds distant, and Todd isn’t sure if he’s distracted and thinking or if he’s slowly losing his battle with unconsciousness.

Todd almost startles, lost in worry, when Dirk speaks again.

“It was worse… the second time… though,” he wheezes, drowsily.

Todd frowns, lost. “What was?”

“Blackwing.” He pauses to cough. “Because… the first time… I didn’t really… know… what I was… missing out on.”

“You mean you hadn’t really experience enough of the world to miss it?”

Dirk shakes his head against Todd’s shoulder. “No, friends,” he explains and it takes Todd a moment to figure out what he had meant.

“I missed you too,” he admits quietly and Dirk hums happily against his head.

***

“Eleventh… of March... 1983,” Dirk mutters, a few minutes after the end of the previous conversation. The words come out slurred and it takes Todd a second to realise what he’s said, and even then, the words make little sense to him.

“What do you mean?” he asks, gently.

“When I was born,” comes the uttered reply, and Todd’s heart aches a little at Dirk’s words. ‘When I was born’ rather than ‘my birthday’, he’d said, as though the date is nothing other than a fact to him. Todd realises it probably is, Blackwing doesn’t seem the sort of place where celebrating a child’s birthday would have been a top priority.

“You asked… once,” Dirk continues, in explanation. Todd does remember the day he had asked, shortly after his own birthday trip to a theme park. It had been a good day, and he knew Dirk had enjoyed himself too, his excitement as exaggerated as a child’s at the rides and shows and amount of ice-cream and waffles and cotton candy available. He’d very nearly made himself sick after one too many desserts combined with an inverting and spinning coaster.

Dirk hadn’t replied to his question on when his birthday was at the time though, instead changing the topic back to their newly acquired case. Todd hadn’t questioned it at the time, assuming he was just distracted by a new hunch about the case. He isn’t so sure that was what changed the topic now and it makes Todd wonder why his question had been answered so suddenly.

“I’ll remember that for next year,” he says, feigning positivity and forcing a smile despite his worried gut. Dirk hums in response, and then coughs. Todd holds him, trying to ignore the raged spasming of Dirk’s ribs against his side.

They reach another fork. Dirk mutters ‘right’ this time.

***

“You’re… a good person, Todd,” Dirk declares hoarsely, when the latest bout of coughing subsides. Todd feels a little shiver down his spine at the comment. He wouldn’t agree, but he can’t bring himself to argue so he hums noncommittally instead. “I know… you don’t agree… because of the pararibulitus-” the word stumbles from Dirk’s lips in a slurred mess, but his intent is clear “-thingy, but you tried… to put it right… and that’s more… than some people do. I’ve met… a lot of shitty people… in my shitty life, Todd, and you are not… one of them.

“You tried to help… Amanda… and you came to… rescue me… even after I lied to you… and then got you electrocuted… multiple times… during the few days… you had known me for. You, and Farah, were the only people… who stayed with me, even after all the… crazy disasters… I have led you to. You’ve been… my friend, Todd, my best friend… and you’ve been… the greatest assisfriend… a detective… could ever ask for...”

Dirk coughs harshly, his long speech ending whether he had intended to end it or not, but looking more alert than Todd has seen him in hours. His expression is tight but his eyes are raw with emotion.

Todd feels raw too.

“Dirk, why are you saying all of this?” he asks, demands, although he knows, deep in his aching heart, why Dirk has been telling him such things.

“Because… some things… deserve… to be said,” he wheezes, and his voice is tight, but Todd can see he is smiling despite the pain.

“You’re a pretty good friend yourself,” he says, quietly, and if Dirk notices the breaking of his voice as he speaks, he doesn’t mention it.

“Thank you, Todd,” he says instead, and Todd can’t work out if the pain his tone is tight with is entirely physical either.

***

Todd, his eyelashes salty and his breath stuttering, walks on, stumbling under Dirk’s added weight. Dirk’s eyes are barely open and his head has dropped to Todd’s shoulder once again, his second wind lost as quickly as it had come. His breathing is raspy and laboured in a way that makes Todd doubt he can possibly be getting enough oxygen to stay awake. Todd talks as they walk, alternating between desperate encouragements and nervous prattling, anything to starve away the silence of the tunnels.

***

Minutes pass like hours.

Dirk only speaks to mutter directions.

Todd only stops to hear them.

***

Then, what could have been hours later, they round a corner and Todd nearly cries, his shaking legs going weak with relief, when he spots the dim white glow of the not quite proverbial light at the end of the tunnel in front of them. He stops, almost in awe, and Dirk’s feet stop their relentless march. Dirk mumbles a protest, his eyes still closed. Todd shakes him gently.

“No, Dirk. Look.”

Dirk’s head rises from where it has been hanging, his chin against his chest, and he blinks. It seems to take a second for his vision to focus, but when it does he inhales shakily.

“I did it,” he whispers, disbelief heavy in his tone. His voice is barely more than a wheeze and there is fresh blood on his lips, bright against his pallor. He looks exhausted and dizzy, his head lolling on his shoulders and his legs no longer able to support his weight, but his expression a mix of relief and joy and exhilaration.

Todd would imagine he is wearing a pretty similar expression too.

“I’m going to get help, wait here,” Todd says, as though Dirk is capable of moving, as he lowers his friend to the floor. Dirk nods numbly and slumps back against the wall, his legs outstretched and his bloodied hands landing beside his thighs. His eyes are bleary and he seems barely conscious but he looks thrilled in a way Todd finds almost scary.

“I did it,” he repeats, and Todd nods, eyes wide.

“You did great, just stay awake a little longer, I’ll be back soon, okay?” he says, and then, with one last glance, he turns and runs towards the light.

He runs with a desperation he has never had before, putting one foot in front of the other despite the returning pounding in his head and the angry throbbing of his knee. His lungs ache from the cold air and his thighs burn but he doesn’t stop, because if Dirk has walked for miles and hours with his shattered ribs and battered lungs, then he can run the last few hundred metres in search of help.

He runs for what feels like hours, but then suddenly he has reached the end of the tunnel and the golden light of the setting sun burns his eyes but he finds he doesn’t care. He searches Dirk’s contacts for Farah’s number and then holds the dialling phone to his ear.

Farah answers on the third ring.

“Dirk! I’m so sorry, there was a landslide, we’re-”

“Farah!” Todd interrupts, and the agitated babbling coming through the tinny speakers halts. “We’re out, Dirk did it but he needs an ambulance, urgently. Can you trace the call?”

“Give me a minute,” she says, her voice flustered, and then there’s a strange, dull tapping sound as she taps on the screen on her phone. “Okay, I’ve found you! Oh, you’re about ten minutes from where we are now, how did you get there?” Then she pauses. “Wait, what’s wrong with Dirk?”

“He thinks he’s dying,” Todd says, and it comes out as a half groan, half sob but entirely raw. Then he swallows heavily and tried to steady himself a little because panicking is not going to help. “He said it was just a broken rib but his breathing got worse and worse, he’s been coughing up blood for hours now. I’ve left him in the tunnel, Farah, the entrance isn’t hard to find and there aren’t any forks so you should be able to find us, I don’t want to leave him any longer-”

“Todd, it’s okay, go back to him. Just try and keep him calm. We’ll be with you soon, I promise.”

Todd nods, his racing mind not realising the pointlessness of the action, and ends the call before turning back towards the gaping mouth of the tunnel again. The reverse run seems to take somehow longer than the journey before and Todd finds being unable to see his destination doesn’t help either.

He nearly trips over Dirk when he reaches him, the dim beam of the phone being too narrow to see far ahead and giving the impression of his friend appearing suddenly out of nowhere in his path. He’s still sitting against the wall as he had been what felt like hours before, his back to the rock and his legs spreading across the tunnel. He’s quietened since Todd left though, his wheezing breaths no longer auditable as they had been before, and at first, Todd sags in relief, because maybe the rest has done Dirk some good, but then he stops and calls Dirk’s name, and Dirk doesn’t look up, his head staying down, his chin resting on his chest.

Todd drops to his knees beside his friend and in the bluish glow of the LED on the back of the phone clutched tightly in his right hand, he realises that Dirk’s eyes have drifted closed.

“Dirk?” he calls again, his voice cracking and his heart pounding dreadfully in his throat as he gives the leather clad shoulder a gentle shake. Dirk eyes do not open and when Todd leans down to look, he realises Dirk’s face is slack and limp, his expression is relaxed in a way Todd hasn’t seen for hours, the tension and pain and utter determination that it had held for so long lost when he had finally lost his grip on consciousness.