Small back-story to go with the posting of this... So a few weeks back Evil Cosmic Triplets and I exchanged the normal range of courteous messages after a random review on an old story. I'm not sure what the biggest co-incidence was; that the not-common (for me anyway) subject of WIPs came up, or that, as it turned out, we were both in the final throws of writing a story that sounded superficially the same. A small heart attack (on my part anyway!) and a cautious exchange of documents later we discovered that the stories do indeed have big themes in common but are also different enough to make it OK (phew!). We almost posted them together, but went for sequential posting in the end. ECT's fantastic 'A Case of Mistaken Identity', which is a piece of wonderful, twisted, touching poetry IMO, went up first. It's a hard act to follow and I've been waiting nervously in the wings!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: IreneClaire and KomodoQueen had multiple drafts of this inflicted on them at different times and for different reasons (thank you and I'm so, so sorry). KomodoQueen is responsible for every medical accuracy going in this (the inaccuracies are all mine).

And of course thank you to Evil Cosmic Triplets, the most genuinely lovely, accommodating and supportive set of evil triplets I've ever had the pleasure of cyber-communicating with. They also provided helpful advice and comments that were not evil at all.

TAGS/WARNINGS; Bromance, hurt/comfort, alcoholism, dissociative state, amnesia, past torture and assault (not graphic). Copious swearing. AU (canon divergence from start of S6).

DISCLAIMER: not mine.

FIFTEEN

CHAPTER 1- LOST AND FOUND

One, two, three, four, five…

Breathe.

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten…

Breathe.

Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…

Breathe.

He was thirsty. He couldn't think about it. He counted instead, counted the scars on his left thumb, the neat silvery lines, parallel like the rungs of a ladder. The faster he counted the more numb his mind became, the more distance he could insert between himself and reality. He had become a master at this, detaching from his body so the world around him was a distant dream, irrelevant. Time could pass void of meaning and content.

Fifteen scars. Fifteen was his talisman, his protection against pain, his only defence against them.

He always knew when they were coming for him again because they drugged his water. Sometimes he refused to drink or eat for days, hiding from his body's demands behind his magic number. Thirst always got the better of him in the end. Eventually he would pick up the bottle of water that had been thrown unceremoniously through the slot in the metal door of his prison cell. He would stare at it, stomach in knots, before giving in. He would drink fast and voluminously so his gut ached with the shock of it. Then he would sit, back to the wall, arms round his knees, shaking. Waiting to see if it had been tainted.

If it hadn't he would let himself drift, counting quietly in his head.

If it had…if it had the room would begin to swim around him. His arms would become heavy and drop to the floor. He would quake in fear, waiting helplessly for the door to open, for them to come; the men who owned him now and who hurt him when he couldn't fight back.

This had become his whole world. His memories were filled with the abuse he endured, his mind peppered with scars as liberally as his body. He could no longer remember what had come before, why he was here, what he'd done to deserve it. Whatever it was it must have been very, very bad.

Fifteen meant everything to him now. He ran his index finger along the scars as he counted, discrete as he could. If they realized how much he needed those fifteen little scars they would take his thumb.

He gasped in fear at the thought. It was almost his undoing. His concentration broke, his counting slowed. Fragments of reality hammered into his conscious mind. Voices. People moving around him, hands on his skin. They were already here!

He blanked them out, blanked everything out. He counted furiously, lips moving silently as his trembling fingers touched the precious scars, eyes focused intently on the nothing within.

One, two, three, four, five…

Breathe.

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten…

Breathe.

Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…

Then his hair stood on end. He could hear the words, echoing his own internal murmuring. Someone was counting with him. Someone was trying to get into his head, his last sanctuary. He squeezed his eyes shut, counted faster.

….

The echo came and went as time passed unmeasured. It hadn't tried to hurt him. He got used to it.

He began to wonder if it was simply his own mind offering him companionship in the internalized isolation provided by his self-comforting mantra. That was acceptable. If he had stopped to think about it he might have felt lonely. He had long since lost all notion of time and he couldn't remember what it was like to have a friend, if indeed he had ever had a friend.

A ghost of a feeling crossed his mind, a recollection of trust. He started to miss the echo when it wasn't there.

The echo seemed to be learning. It understood the importance of fifteen, of counting. It knew to speed up when other things began to happen. The noises and the movements around him. It helped him blank them out. It also knew it was safe to slow down when everything was quiet. Sometimes it counted for him, low and steady, doing the work so he could rest. He would listen to it, lips still, a foreign feeling of peace in his heart.

In those quiet times the echo came with a strange sensation, the feeling of fingers that weren't his own running across those fifteen scars. His heart had pounded in fear when that had first happened, but the echo had counted rapidly for him until the initial panic had subsided. Then it became okay.

Trust.

A new concept yet at the same time one so achingly familiar it made him wonder what might lie inside the blank, inaccessible space in his mind where his memories must abide.

Today he lay in silence, curled on his side. He listened to the echo and felt the gentle caress on his thumb. He was relaxed, his guards down. Never making the conscious decision, he allowed his senses to expand outwards, just a touch. He realized with some measure of astonishment that nothing hurt. The floor of his cell felt different. Soft. His body was numb. He recognised the sensation of drugs, but it was different. He wasn't dizzy, or sick. He moved his right hand a fraction, testing. His body responded. Nothing bad happened.

He felt a strong urge to look at his thumb, to confirm that the echo and its touch were merely residents in his head. They couldn't be real.

His eyes cracked open.

They were real.

He tensed, heart now in his mouth, as he took in the large, tattooed man perched on the chair beside him. Big, strong and dangerous. The man's lips moved as he counted. He was the echo.

The man himself might have appeared threatening, but his passive demeanor did not. He was slumped forwards, elbows on his knees, head bowed. Tired and sad. Defeated. He was close enough to cause damage yet he wasn't grabbing or punching or slicing or… anything. He simply stroked the scarred thumb tenderly with the fingers of his left hand.

His own lips began to move again, echoing the quiet words coming from the tattooed man's mouth. Fearful in spite of his observations, he counted faster, faster than the man.

The man looked up in concern, met his frightened eyes with utter astonishment. The counting stopped. "Danny?"

TBC

Please let me know what you think! :)