He could hear Joey and Lance speaking quietly ahead of him, their hands clasped and their heads together, and he knew they were as together, as whole as they were when he’d disappeared. He could hear Justin ahead, chattering at Pink, and he knew Justin would be okay. JC looked angry- angry and sad and almost defeated- and he knew JC needed time but he didn’t yet know if JC would be okay.

He wasn’t psychic, that wasn’t his gift. He could move things with his mind, could test and feel their shape and weight and strength, but he wasn’t supposed to be able to feel people or thoughts.

He’d forgotten then, what it was like.

He survived being taken only because he was alone. He knew it didn’t make sense, not really. When he was growing up, people told him to find strength in his family and his friends, because that’s where people are supposed to find their strength: in others, not themselves. But not him.

They silenced him, or he silenced himself. Either way, until they activated Dave he had no way of sharing his pain, his healing. They didn’t know, couldn’t know what he’d been through, so no one weakened him with sympathy or pity and he’d needed that.

Now they were back and even though he wasn’t psychic, shouldn’t be able to hear them, he could and did. He felt them near him, surrounding him, felt the happy buzz of them-their lives- in his head, and because he did he felt complete again. Whole.

He felt JC’s eyes on him and almost resented the fact that he’d have to share, have to tell them what had happened. Have to tear them apart again with pain and sympathy only to try to build them back up so they could continue living. Almost resented, but couldn’t bring himself to.

He survived before because he was alone, but this… this, he would survive because they were with him.

“What happened to Chris?” he heard Justin ask and wished he could answer for himself, with his voice and his words and his understanding.

“When we get back,” Pink said, somehow making the fragment a sentence, stalling further questions.

Their hive didn’t impress him anymore. It had when they first started, when they’d first begun setting it up with all its tunnels and rooms and pipes and underground passage ways that had felt more like a movie set and less like his life, but it didn’t anymore and he was tired of living underground.

They hadn’t stopped staring at him, the others they’d freed along the way. They knew who he was, what he did, what he’d done, and they still held him in awe, as a sort of savior when he knew he wasn’t. Was anything but.

Dex came out to meet them and Pink sent him to find Dave before she turned to the others.

“Dave is a telepath. We don’t know what level because we don’t have their methods of measuring. All we know is that he has to be touching the person for his power to be affective. He can channel Chris’s thoughts and words through himself, so it’s almost like Chris will be talking to you.”

“Why can’t Chris talk to us?” Justin asked.

“He’ll tell you,” Pink said, and then Dave came.

He was little, small for his age because of malnutrition and stress. He smiled at Justin and the others and went to stand next to Chris.

"He can do this?" Justin asked.

Dave nodded. “I won’t remember anything,” he promised them. “It passes right through and whatever he shows me or tells me I won’t remember at all.” He looked up at Chris. “Ready?” he asked, holding out his hand.

Chris nodded and Dave pressed his small hand to Chris’s temple.