A/N: I 100% thought I had posted this chapter but...I guess not! This one takes place in some sort of idealized season where Sonny and Lisa are still together and doing just fine but nobody else knows. It's my story, I can make whatever fantasy I want!

"Totally flat," Eric said from where he crouched, inspecting the truck tire. "D'you find the spare?"

"I found it, but you're not going to be happy," Lisa called from the back of the vehicle, holding up the donut which was also sporting a big hole.

"Well that's not great," he said.

Lisa smiled. Eric Blackburn had to be the most level-headed, calm person she'd ever known. If it were any one of the other guys out here with her they'd be swearing up a storm, kicking the dirt, and vowing vengeance on whatever maintenance guy had left them alone in the desert with not just one, but two flat tires.

Instead, Eric just got to his feet and reached for his radio. "I'll call it in and have them send somebody out."

It had been a simple errand, a quick supply run through the safe zone and back in time for a briefing in the evening. They'd both needed some time away from the base so when Eric volunteered to make the trip Lisa had jumped at the chance to go with him. "Havoc this is Blackburn, how copy?" Eric asked.

Static. Eric frowned. "Havoc Base this is Lieutenant Commander Eric Blackburn, do you copy?"

Again nothing but static. "Are you serious?" Lisa asked incredulously. A flat tire was one thing, a broken radio on top of it was verging on unbelievable.

Eric turned the radio off and back on again with the same result. "Try yours?" he asked.

She handed it over and he tried again with the same results. "Either we're out of range or something's interfering," he finally said. He put his hands on his hips and thought for a second. "Well okay then." He grabbed his pack from the truck and handed Lisa hers. "I guess we're going on a little walk."

"I cannot believe this is happening," Lisa said falling in step beside him.

"Sometimes on the battlefield you have to deal with the unexpected," Eric said.

She spared a second to narrow her eyes at him. "We're not on the battlefield. We're running an errand. A simple, easy errand."

"And sometimes when you run errands, things don't go according to plan." Eric clearly wasn't going to let the fact that they were walking alone through the desert in the heat of the day get to him. "They'll send somebody out when we don't check in on time." He looked at his watch. "Probably meet 'em about halfway back."

Halfway back. So a good, two hour walk through the blazing hot desert, and that was if they walked at a brisk pace. Delightful.

They spent the first hour chatting companionably, as much as their quick pace would allow. Both of them were sweating, the heat and uneven terrain requiring a lot of their attention. "We're making good time. Should meet up with whoever they send out in about an hour or two, depending on when they leave," Eric said encouragingly.

"And how long if they don't send somebody?" She was panting a little bit, trying her best not to stumble and fall on her face in the sand.

"They'll send somebody," Eric assured her. "Come on Davis, we've been through worse than this."

"Yeah but usually there's air conditioning on our end of things," she said with a smile, pulling at the neck of her uniform.

Her body felt too warm, her throat dry, her eyes gritty with sand. "Drink," Eric said, pulling out his own canteen.

She did. It was only half full and the water inside was tepid, but she took a couple sips. "They guys are never going to let us forget this," she said, working hard to put one foot in front of the other.

"Oh don't I know it," Eric said. "Sonny's going to be all over this. I think I'll take a vacation until he does something stupid that I can hold over his head."

Lisa let out a snort of laughter. Sonny would certainly be the most likely to remind them of this incident every chance he got. Clay a close second. Those two thought they were one half of the Marx brothers sometimes.

"I feel like I understand him a little better now," she said. "He's right, the desert does kind of suck."

Eric shrugged. "Depends on your point of view."

"My point of view is that we're dragging our butts through a pile of sand at noon because of a series of crazy unfortunate events."

"Well in that case I can see your point."

Their conversation came to an end as they continued to trudge onward. It was too hot to talk, or even think. Lisa found her mind drifting and then sort of going empty, all her energy going to putting one foot in front of the next.

"Don't forget to drink," Eric reminded her again and she opened her canteen for another sip only to find it was nearly gone. There were maybe two swallows of lukewarm liquid left inside. "I'm getting low," she said.

"Me too," he said a little grimly, checking his watch again.

"We should have met someone by now right?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

"Yep."

She knew they were both trying not to think about what that meant. Arrivals and departures at the base were carefully monitored. For them to still be on their own meant something had to have gone wrong either at the base or with the search party. "Maybe I estimated wrong," Eric said, but he didn't sound convinced.

They lapsed into silence once more. Lisa found she was no longer sweating and her throat felt thick and dry. Walking seemed like a huge chore and she was struggling to focus. She was just so damn hot.

Without even thinking she slowed to a stop. Her legs no longer seemed capable of moving. "Lisa?" Eric realized she wasn't alongside him anymore and turned back. "You all right?"

Her head was swimming and she leaned over to vomit up watery bile. She wiped a shaky hand across her mouth and felt Eric come alongside her, sliding an arm under her shoulder for support. "Come on Davis. We gotta keep going."

"Ain't like either of 'em to be late," Sonny said, looking at the door for the hundredth time in the last twenty minutes.

"Maybe they're still dealing with the outage," Ray said, arms crossed across his chest.

A massive power outage had taken down half the base for several hours and left everyone scrambling for back-up generators and supplies. The power had only been restored thirty minutes prior and the room was still stuffy from the air conditioning's little break. Sonny checked his watch. The whole team was assembled for a briefing on a new target package but Lisa and Eric still hadn't shown.

"Anybody seen them today?" Clay asked.

"They were going outside the wire last I knew," Trent said. "That was earlier this morning though."

"Does anybody know if they came back?" Jason demanded.

There was silence in the room. Jason reached for his radio and within minutes it became clear that trouble was brewing. "Gate crew has no record of them coming back," Jason said when he rang off.
"Is it possible they slipped in while the power was out and no one recorded it?" Ray asked.

But they all knew that if that was the case, their teammates would be in the room with them right now.

Sonny was rising out of his seat, the rest of the group doing the same. Hours. They had been missing for hours and no one had known. "Ray get transpo alerted that we're coming. We're out of here in five," Jason ordered.

It took less than that for them to arrive at the vehicle pool and they were loading into the trucks when there was a shout from the gate. Sonny paused as they opened and two lone figures stumbled inside. His heart lurched and he immediately broke into a run, the rest of the guys right behind him.

Sonny reached them first. "Take her," Blackburn said hoarsely.

Sonny grabbed Lisa, whose body was almost completely limp, and lowered her to the ground. "Lisa, Lisa, hey wake up," he urged.

She moaned, her eyelids fluttering up and down.

"Hey sit down," Jason told Eric.

"It was a flat tire," Eric said, his voice raspy. "The spare was bad too. And something happened with the radio."

"Okay, we've got you," Trent said, coming to Sonny's side. "I need ice packs, wet towels, whatever we've got. They both need to be cooled off now."

Clay and Brock tore away from the group at a dead run. "Sonny," Lisa muttered, her hands fluttering aimlessly.

He caught one, his fear jolting through him when he touched her heated skin. He hadn't known people could feel this hot. Trent began to loosen her clothing and ordered Blackburn to do the same, Jason taking over when Eric's fingers fumbled fruitlessly with his buttons. Within thirty seconds they were both stripped down to their undergarments.

Clay and Brock returned in an impressively short time, handing over a dozen ice packs that Trent immediately began packing into Lisa's armpits and groin, adding another to her forehead before jumping to Eric and laying him out to do the same, despite his protests.

Base medical arrived with stretchers and other supplies, forcing the guys to pull back as their teammates were bundled off to the infirmary. "Shit," Jason muttered, shaking his head and running a hand over his face. "God damn it. I want to know how this happened. Now!"

"I'm on it," Ray said tersely, stalking away toward the gate.

This had been a huge fuck up and Sonny felt sick thinking about what could have happened to their teammates alone outside the wire. The reality was bad enough, but his imagination was doing so much worse. "Hey," Clay clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Come on."

He followed the boys to the infirmary. Lisa had been taken back behind a curtain but Eric sat on a bed near the entrance, two IV's stuck in his arm, his face sunburnt and exhausted. "How you doing?" Jason asked, all of them a little solemn.

"I've been better," he admitted. "What the hell guys?"

"There was a power outage while you were gone," Trent said. "Nobody realized you hadn't checked in."

Eric let out a humorless laugh. "Well don't that beat all. Who the hell did we piss off upstairs for all this to happen?"

"Sometimes that's just the way it goes," Clay said.

"Well thank god it doesn't happen very often," he said. "Any word on Davis yet?"

Sonny shook his head. "Still waiting."

Blackburn sighed. "I shoulda made her drink more water. It was just so damn hot and she's so tiny. Damn it all to hell."

"Hey," Ray said. "Davis is a tough lady. She'll be all right."

Lisa's head felt fuzzy and her throat hurt so much she was afraid to even try to swallow. She was vaguely aware that she was drifting in and out of full consciousness. She suspected maybe she didn't really want to completely wake up and face reality at all because if she remembered right, she and Eric were stuck in the desert with no hope in sight.

"I told you the fucking desert was going to kill one of us sooner or later."

Except that was Sonny's voice. So unless she was hallucinating, which wasn't unlikely given the situation, maybe they weren't in the desert after all?

She cracked one gritty eye open and recognized the ceiling of the infirmary, relief crashing over her so quickly she felt tears prick her eyes. They'd made it. Or maybe they'd been rescued? She was a little fuzzy on the details.

"She waking up?" That was Clay's voice.

Perfect. Just what she wanted. To wake up with the whole team staring down at her. "Davis?" Sonny's voice was closer now and she could hear worry coloring it.

Reluctantly she opened up both eyes to indeed find the entire team staring at her in clear worry. "Howdy boys. What brings you to this neck of the woods?" she rasped, wincing as the words scraped out of her raw throat.

"Just the fact that you and Blackburn decided to take a walk on the wild side," Jason said.

Lisa pushed herself upright, ignoring her throbbing head and stiff body. "Is Eric all right?"

"Eric's just fine," Blackburn said, as he joined them. He was walking a little stiffly and it was going to take time for that sunburn to fade, but other than that he looked all right. "Rehydrated and officially okay for duty. The question is, how are you?"

"Fine," she said, ignoring the sick feeling in her stomach, the pounding in her head, and the tightness in her sunburnt skin that made it feel like old leather. "Totally good. No need for you all to stick around and watch me sit here."

After a little more chit chat the guys left to continue their briefing with her assurances that she'd join them shortly. But it turned out that she was maybe a little less fine than she'd thought. When she was visited by the doctor he wasn't happy at all. Her blood pressure wasn't where he wanted it and her temperature hadn't come down enough for his liking so it turned out that instead of rejoining the team, she was going to spend the night in the infirmary. Perfect.

But she had to admit, she did feel pretty terrible. The thought of getting off the bed made her head pound harder and her stomach turn.

It was after 10:00, the lights had been turned down low and she stared up at the ceiling, unable to sleep. The curtain was pulled aside and Sonny slipped in. "Hey," she said in surprise. She hadn't expected him to come back. They'd been keeping things extra professional in country, which it had been harder than she'd thought.

"How are you really?" he said, his voice low, eyes serious as he studied her.

"I'm fine."

"Lisa."

She closed her eyes. "I'm hurting. But I'll be okay."

"Why are they keeping you in here?"

"My blood pressure and temp. And I'm still dehydrated."

He nodded, processing the information. "You know you're already a looker. You didn't need to go working on your tan."

She smiled and then winced as her swollen lips split and pulled. "I'll remember that next time."

"Oh there ain't going to be a next time," Sonny said darkly. "You and Blackburn are only allowed outside with babysitters from now on. The team agreed on that."

"That seems fair."

There was the soft noise of a doctor or nurse bustling around nearby. "I should let you get some rest," Sonny said.

She squeezed his hand. "Thanks for coming back."

He leaned over and cupped her cheek, pressing a soft kiss to her hair. "I love you."

"I love you too."

A/N: I am not claiming that any of this is accurate as far as military things go (like with two flat tires, radios, power outages, etc.). But I wanted it, so I wrote it! I've got lots more coming soon for this fic and a new one. Can't wait to share with you all! Leave your love in the reviews!