Author's Notes: Set post movie. Written for hiddencait for fandom_stocking 2014 because she is lovely and deserves all of the fic.

Thanks to Aithine for the reassurance :)

-o-

Time did this funny thing, Abby had found. It skipped and jumped, passing in an instant or dragging its heels, the quickness of its passing an inverse of how much she needed.

A mission went in the blink of an eye, full of frenetic energy, a race against the clock. But waiting for someone to wake up, watching the machines click and beep…

Time stretched forever then.

"Not woken up yet?"

King's voice startled her; she'd been so lost in watching Blade she hadn't even heard him coming, the kind of lack of awareness of her surroundings that was going to get her killed if she wasn't careful.

She hid it as well as she could, schooling her face into stillness, consciously trying to slow her heartbeat. It wasn't the kind of thing King usually missed – she half expected him to be smirking, pleased to have caught her out when she turned around, but his face was drawn with exhaustion instead, too pale except for the red cuts Danica's fists had left.

He was watching Blade, and she took a moment to watch him instead. The view was better. It was a hell of a lot more animated for a start, even if King wasn't up to his usual standards in that respect.

King turned his head to look at her, quirking his eyebrow up quizzically when he caught her staring. The move must have hurt, pulling on his stitches, but if it did, King didn't show it. Less style over substance, she thought, than substance over everything.

"No," she said, realising a little too late that she hadn't answered his question. "Caulder says it might be a while. Or…" She hesitated for a moment, reluctant to commit to the words, but King was still watching her with that same quizzical expression. "He may not wake up at all."

King nodded, scratching absently at his neck as he went back to staring at Blade. The move drew her attention to the dark necklace of bruises that adorned his skin, another gift from Danica Fucking Talos.

"He's tough," King said eventually. "And, frankly, he's a little too mean to die, if you know what I mean?" His small smile faded when he turned to look at her again and found her looking back blankly, and she kicked herself for that.

He hadn't meant to remind her of what they'd lost, and she hadn't meant to make him feel awkward about it. Strange how what they meant actually meant fuck all in reality.

He shifted position awkwardly, his gaze drawn back to Blade's immobile body, looking strangely unsubstantial in the makeshift infirmary that Caulder had knocked up. "I fed Zoë," he offered, the kind of olive branch she didn't need. "Real food, the kind lacking in anything interesting like sugar."

She made a non-committal sound, waiting until he looked back at her before asking, "She okay?"

King shrugged, seeming to find it easier to go back to looking at Blade than to keep on meeting her eyes. "She's… surviving."

As answers went, it was pretty telling. Surviving. Yeah, that pretty much summed up how they were all doing.

And if you looked at it the right way, it could be considered a plus. A paper-thin silver lining in the kind of storm that ripped the world apart.

"She'll be okay." King looked back at her right when she needed him to, something instinctual, maybe, telling him exactly what she needed, reading her effortlessly when everything these days seemed to be an effort, at least on her part. He didn't touch her, but he did lean closer, close enough to be comforting without freaking her the fuck out. "She's tough. Like you."

She didn't feel tough. She felt paper-thin herself, stretched out beyond bearing to the point where a touch might tear her apart.

King was the only thing holding her together, anchoring her when she felt so fucking adrift.

"Hey." King lowered his voice, his tone growing concerned as he moved even closer, now just a hairsbreadth away.

It was still too far.

She bridged the gap, pressing her shoulder into his chest as Blade's bed blurred in her vision. Now King finally touched her, sliding his arm around her shoulders and pulling her the rest of the way. He was so warm, so human when the rest of the world was so cold and remote. It was easy to fall the rest of the way when he rested his chin on the top of her head, making soft, barely there comforting noises, warm nonsense wrapped up in an 'oh, sweetheart,' that settled somewhere inside of her, sure and certain.

It helped. It helped more than he realised, maybe even more than he'd ever know.

She didn't cry, not then, fighting it back until her breathing steadied again. She'd shed enough tears over the last few days, maybe even enough to have kept the Honeycomb Hideout afloat if the pair of them hadn't already scuttled it in the aftermath of Drake's fury.

King had been her anchor then, too.

"Thanks," she said softly, so quietly that King had to shift his head to hear her, squeezing her shoulder and clearing his throat awkwardly. His body shifted and she knew that it meant he was ready to move away.

Knew and couldn't bear it.

It was easy to raise her hand to her shoulder, sliding her fingers through King's and holding him there. As easy as breathing.

Easier.

If he was surprised, he didn't show it, not beyond a momentary tension that soon passed, leaving his body warm and steady where it pressed against hers.

"Are you sure?" he asked and she closed her eyes, finally shutting out the sight of Blade, still dead to the world.

But he wasn't dead, and neither was she. She'd lost a lot, but she hadn't lost King.

"I'm sure," she said.

In the end, that was everything.

The end