Chapter 4

The next thing Carlton Lassiter was aware of was distant voices, of hands touching him. He was going to die, possibly in an even more horrible fashion than Shawn. Probably for the first time since Shawn had been thrown down in the basement with him, Lassiter feared for his life - feared the pain that was to come - feared the death that was to come.

Self-preservation awakened.

Agitated and panicking, Lassiter went rigid in his bonds, heart racing in his sore throat. He flailed desperately, hitting and scratching anything that his hands and feet met. He didn't want to die, he didn't want to die, he didn't want to die, he didn't want to die -

"Carlton!"

The voice was familiar, one he knew, and the hand gripping his own tightly was grounding, comforting. When she said his name again, Lassiter finally recognized Juliet and stopped fighting.

It was only when he forced his eyes open that he realized he was no longer restrained in the chair and was no longer gagged, and that he was being strapped onto a gurney by calm medical professionals. His frantic gaze passed blindly over a stricken Chief Vick and shell-shocked Officer McNab to land on O'Hara, his trusted partner.

He tried to say her name, but no sound but raspy air came out of his mouth.

She nodded, eyes shining with unshed tears, and held tightly to his hand. He squeezed back a little uncertainly, then with all his limited strength as a paramedic suddenly placed an oxygen mask over his face.

"It's okay, Carlton," Juliet said quickly, softly. "You're safe now. You're safe. Don't fight. They're helping you, Carlton."

His fixed his dazed expression on her again, hanging on to her every word. He needed it, needed her to tell him he was all right, sweet justice - he needed it like he needed air. The gurney began to move, and his hand clenched desperately around hers. She kept up, still reassuring him, promising that everything was going to be fine.

Briefly Lassiter wondered whether what he was experiencing was a dream.

But then reality crashed down on him as he remembered Shawn again. He had to tell Juliet. It was only fair that she heard it from him.

"O'Ha-ra," Lassiter croaked out with difficulty. She responded with his own name. That wasn't what he wanted. He needed to tell her how sorry he was, that he had failed, that Shawn was dead - had died a terrible death because Lassiter had failed.

When he opened his mouth to relay all of this, nothing came out. He was enveloped by the darkness once more.

When the heart monitor woke him, Lassiter knew that he was supposed to be feeling something. Not physically - the morphine that was being pumped via the saline drip in the crook of his elbow would remedy that. No, he was supposed to be feeling something emotionally, wasn't he?

Anger.

Sadness.

Happiness?

But he didn't feel any of that. Just...nothing.

When his eyes finally fluttered open, they were drawn to the movement on the other side of the room. In front of the blinded windows stood Juliet and Marlowe, both speaking in hushed tones, both repeatedly wiping tears from their flushed cheeks.

For a long moment, Lassiter wondered what they were talking about, but he didn't get a chance to make out what they were saying because Marlowe glanced over at him. She stopped mid-sentence, tears running anew, and she hurried over to his bedside. Her face lit up in such a happy, relieved smile that at last Lassiter felt something: love. Lassiter returned her smile, raising a hand to stroke her hair.

He noticed the stark white bandages that were wrapped around his wrists, and the feeling ebbed, taking his smile with it.

Marlowe and Juliet both saw and quickly reassured him that there wouldn't be any scarring. But that wasn't what Lassiter cared about. Even so, he just nodded tiredly in response.

"How are you feeling?" Marlowe asked, eyes searching his face. "Are you thirsty? Hungry? Do you want to sit up? Watch TV? I brought your electric razor, if you want to shave. I'll help you!"

Lassiter blinked slowly at her, mind racing as he tried to keep up.

Juliet finally intervened. "How are you feeling, Carlton?"

He mulled the question over for a long moment before finding a response that suited him. "Numb."

"Good, good," Juliet said, nodding. "How are you holding up?"

He gave her a quizzical look and repeated, "Numb - numb...ly?"

Marlowe gasped as though she had been shot, carefully caressing Lassiter's bruised face. "What have they done to you?"

Lassiter tried to find a response for that, and was saved by a knock at the door. Gus appeared, cautiously poking his head inside. Seeing that Lassiter was awake, he nodded by way of greeting, looking thoroughly uncomfortable.

"Juliet," he said, turning to her, "Shawn's awake."

As the heart monitor suddenly spiked, everyone turned their startled attentions to Lassiter, who was gaping at Gus.

"Carlton?" Marlowe asked, concerned.

"Sh-Shawn?" Lassiter repeated, shocked. "Alive?"

Gus looked confused, nodding at him. "Yes, Shawn's alive, Lassie. He's going to be fine."

Then Juliet finally brought her hand down from her mouth, wide eyes locked on Lassiter. "I'm so sorry!" she cried in a hushed tone. Lassiter turned to her, both utterly relieved and confused. "I didn't think! I was just so worried about you and Shawn that I forgot - Or I hadn't realized that you thought - I mean..."

"O'Hara," Lassiter said sternly, suddenly resembling the man he was five days ago, much to everyone's solace. "How?"

"Shawn hid his phone under the mat in the backseat of their car," she answered immediately. "When we realized that he was missing and he wasn't answering our calls, we tracked the GPS on his cell phone and found it in the Ynez mountains. It took us a couple of hours to get everything organized, to get prepared...

"When we arrived the cabin where Shawn's phone was, we came across three men carrying Shawn in a - a tarp, to go dump him. We don't know where they were planning, yet. While some officers arrested them and another man inside, we found Shawn in the tarp, and Henry managed to resuscitate him just in time. Henry insisted on coming, you know how he is.

"Once Shawn was breathing, he noticed the burns on his chest and smelled the ammonia. There was a water basin by the door of the cabin. We used that to wash away the burns while we waited for the paramedics to catch up. The busses had to go a lot slower because of the curves in the road.

"We found you inside, strapped to that chair. We thought you were dead, too, but you were just unconscious. You didn't wake no matter how hard Chief Vick and I tried. You did when the EMTs arrived and got you prepped for the ride."

Juliet gave Lassiter a watery smile as he absorbed this information. Then he nodded and jerked his head toward the door, telling her to go see him.

"I'll come back later, okay?"

Lassiter waved her off tiredly, then wrapped his arms tenderly around Marlowe. Only once he was sure he was alone with her did he begin to cry. She held him tightly as he did, stroking his hair lovingly and crying silently herself.

The next day, Lassiter was released with specific doctoral instructions to take at least a week off from work. He grudgingly agreed when the Chief seconded the doctor's opinion and then threatened to double it should Lassiter show his face at the station before that time.

Before he left, Lassiter visited Shawn in the ICU.

Henry was snoring loudly in a chair at Shawn's bedside. Guster was not there, but he simply guessed that he was at work or picking up some things for the Spencers' stay. Shawn himself was sleeping as well, lying flat on his back with his bandaged arms laid out and away from his sides.

While Marlowe stayed respectfully behind, Lassiter stepped forward, shoving his hands into his pockets as he assessed the damage.

Shawn's face was as bruised as his, though the swelling had gone down considerably, and someone had shaved away the stubble on his cheeks to make way for the breathing tube that was taped into place. Deep purple handprints were clearly visible on the soft flesh of Shawn's neck, and the slices on his ribs had been stitched closed.

His chest was open to the air because there simply was no way to bandage the dead, blackened flesh. To keep the skin from drying out as it healed, ointment had been smeared across the afflicted areas, which constituted of practically his entire front half. Lassiter swallowed thickly before he could get sick and wake both the Spencers.

He'd never live that one down.

Lassiter nodded slowly for no particular reason, fingering the bent, rusty nail he had kept. Suddenly he didn't want it anymore: It burned to the touch.

The detective pulled it out of his pocket and quickly dropped it into the garbage can at Shawn's beside. Then he turned and left, wrapping an arm around Marlowe's waist and assuring her that he was fine.

Shawn opened his eyes despite his exhaustion and watched as Lassiter and Marlowe went, then moved his curious gaze to the wastebasket.

For the next week, Lassiter relied on Juliet's updates on Shawn's health. He steadfastly refused to return to the hospital to visit him, no matter his improvements, and spent most of his time wrapped in Marlowe's embrace.

Then he picked himself up and went to work.

Unfortunately for him, he was assigned desk duty until further notice. It was almost as bad as doing nothing, in Lassiter's opinion. Still, he sucked it up and went to work, sipping on his coffee as he pored over case files and reviewed witness statements. Occasionally Juliet stopped by his desk and engaged him in conversation, but he was usually (and understandably) irritable.

Most of his coworkers welcomed him back in passing, which he shrugged off. McNab brought him a bouquet of daisies, but Lassiter glared at him until he retracted the flowers and offered them to a surprised Juliet instead.

All in all, things were back to normal at the SBPD. Well, as normal as normal got without Shawn lurking or causing mayhem.

A week after coming back to work, Lassiter was granted his first investigation with Juliet. He had to promise not to overwork himself, to which he quickly agreed. He wasn't entirely sure if he were going to keep that promise, though. He would think on it.

As he reviewed the report of the initial confrontation he would be checking into, the sound of a chair dragging across the floor caught his attention. He shook his head as it became louder, not ready to go off on whatever poor idiot was annoying him.

The poor idiot appeared in front of his desk and set the chair in front of it, then took an obnoxiously long and loud sip of his smoothie. With an exaggeratedly satisfied sigh, he sat stiffly in the chair, then relaxed into it, looking expectantly at Lassiter.

Lassiter remained frozen for a long few seconds, then slowly lowered the case file and look steadily back at Shawn Spencer, psychic detective.

"So you're alive," Lassiter said coolly, though his heart was thudding in anticipation. What was Shawn going to say to him? Lassiter, of course, had already given his report on what had happened, and so had Shawn, but the detective hadn't been privy to that information. Nor did he want to see it. But Shawn could easily blame him for everything he'd gone through, and with good reason.

To his surprise, Shawn grinned widely. "Can't get rid of me that easily, Lassie."

Immense relief flooded through Lassiter, for some reason he couldn't fathom. Why did he care so much what the idiot felt? He rolled his eyes. "How do you do it?"

Shawn set his sweating smoothie down on a stack of Lassiter's work, much to his disdain, and then raised that hand to his temple. "I wish I knew," he replied mysteriously.

Lassiter glared at him until he took the cup back off of his desk, then heaved a sigh at the wet ring on his report. He discreetly took notice of Shawn's stiff posture and the way he was dressed. He was wearing a green shirt that was entirely too large for him, and he had to wonder where it had come from. His left arm was encased in a neon yellow cast, already scribbled over with what seemed to be everybody and their mother's signatures. He couldn't even pick out an individual name.

Luckily for him, Lassiter didn't have to force himself to come up with something else to say because at that precise moment, Henry Spencer arrived in all his worried-father glory.

"Shawn!"

"Hey, Dad!" Shawn greeted, raising his useless hand. "How'd you get here?"

"I took a cab, Shawn," Henry growled angrily, pointing a finger at his son's chest, "because you stole my truck!"

Shawn looked offended, while Lassiter watched on in interest. "I did no such thing! Father, you wound me. I borrowed the truck. I was going to bring it back to the hospital."

"You're not even supposed to leave the hospital!"

"I wanted a smoothie."

"I was going to go get you one!"

"You were taking too long in the bathroom, Dad."

"Shawn!"

"And I wanted to see my friends here."

Henry groaned loudly. "Go get in the truck, Shawn. No, give me the keys now, and then go get in the truck. Where the hell did you get that shirt?"

"I found it," Shawn muttered vaguely, setting his smoothie down again to dig around in his pockets, pulling out all manner of odds and ends, including but not limited to: a penny, a ball of lint, a used tissue, a small (and empty) bottle of baby shampoo, a receipt, and a red pen cap - All of which was dumped unceremoniously on Lassiter's desk. "Ah, here's Gus' debit card. Can you give that to him later? And...keys."

Lassiter glared at the utter crap on his desk, while Henry glared at Shawn, who looked between the two older men. "Well, I'm going now. Lassie, consider those yours. A gift from me to you. Goodbye."

Henry followed Shawn out of the police station, ranting his ear off about one thing or another. Lassiter rolled his eyes once they were out of hearing range, then proceeded to swipe Shawn's "gift" off of his desk and into his wastebasket.

He stopped short when he saw something familiar. Lassiter slowly picked it up, shaking his head as a small smile tugged at the corners of his lips.

In his hand was a rusty nail.

END.

A/N: Eh, not my best work, but thanks so much for reading! I really appreciate you guys! ^-^