I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

The truth is that he barely sleeps anymore. And he knows Neil knows it. He pretends, he tries to keep up the show if not the reality - but it's all crumbling.

Another truth is that a significant part of him is embarrassed that when it really comes down to it, it's taking him less than a month to completely lose his mind.

He's played through scenarios. It's what he does when he's not sleeping - he simulates things in his brain. Giving Neil the slip and vanishing into the city - no good, he'd follow. Forcing Neil to leave him somehow - again, no good; he never would. And now either of those plans wouldn't work anyway. His dark self would find Neil. Come for him. Hurt him. Worse. He'll come anyway, but if he's with Neil there might be a fighting chance.

A fighting chance. Isn't that a fucking joke.

Maybe. Maybe if they can just hold on another day. Another two. Another week.

They're curled in one of the shadowy back rooms of the church, a place that provides at least a little privacy and quiet, even if not really any more safety. Neil is breathing against his neck and hogging most of their threadbare blanket. Mike is on his back, staring at the ceiling, the wavering light of a single candle. Shapes in the dimness, moving. A shadowplay.

Son of man, he thinks - maybe he's whispering the words, exhausted beyond being sure. You cannot say or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images where the sun beats and the dead tree gives no shelter.

There's more, a lot more, but it all dies away when he hears a footstep outside the closed door.

There are other people in the church. Somehow he already knows this isn't one of them.

"Neil," he breathes. His knife, his gun. Suddenly he's not sure where either is.