Title: V is for Vulnerability
Author: stellaluna_
Rating: PG
Pairing: Mac/Don
Summary: For fruitbat00.
Disclaimer: None of these are mine. Characters are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS, and Alliance Atlantis.

***

Mac sits by the side of Flack's hospital bed, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. From time to time, that rise and fall becomes slightly less steady, and there will be a pause of one or two extra breaths before things go back to normal. It's never long enough to set off any of the monitors, or for Mac to raise an alarm. It's just there, almost a moment of hesitation rather than a missed breath, as if Flack isn't yet sure he's ready to rejoin the land of the living. Mac leans back in his chair, unaware that his eyes are growing heavier until they slide shut.

He doesn't doze off right away; he sits there listening to the machines and the occasional whistling rattle when Flack takes a deeper breath, and to the sounds of the hospital around them. At some point he begins to doze and then to dream, and he's never sure, later, when exactly this happened.

The ridge he stands on is made of sand, and he feels hot sun on the back of his neck, but when he looks up, expecting to see the pitiless blue desert sky, there's nothing above his head but black rock and stalactites, and, at his feet, a pitch-colored lake with a rowboat tied at the dock.

"Permission to go aboard, sir." Flack stands next to him, dressed in a desert camo uniform with the shirt missing; his flayed chest is hard to look at. He doesn't look at Mac, doesn't turn his head or blink, and Mac realizes after a moment that Flack is blind now, that the sun has burnt out his pupils and bleached the irises of his eyes to a barely-there, cyanosis blue.

"Aboard to where?" he asks, and the scar on his chest splits open and starts to bleed, spilling red down the front of his jacket.

"Down to the sunless sea. Sir."

Mac opens his mouth to tell Flack that permission is denied, and black beetles spill from his lips.

He wakes up then, back in the hospital room. His shirt is damp with sweat and he's not sure he didn't cry out, but Flack is asleep and still breathing calmly.

Mac takes a deep breath to steady himself, then fixes his gaze on Flack. He opens his eyes wide and thinks of anything but sleep, anything but the desert.

***