Author's Note: I actually have no idea where this came from. I guess it's just reflecting how much Carly depends on Freddie.

X-X

She's sitting alone, cocooned in a surgery, with an arm in plaster, nurses, doctors and patients rushing around her and trying so hard not to cry. It all happened so quickly: a bad grade, a bad viewership on iCarly, a fight with Sam and she'd torn out of her apartment in tears, into the road, past a car and then –

She closes her eyes.

Carly Shay does not have 'bad days'. She's perfect – everyone knows that: Perfect and pretty, smart and sweet.

Of course everyone 'knows' that, because she never tells anyone about the sessions in front of the mirror, agonizing over tiny pimples. Or the tears wept over school assignments. Or how she hate, hate, hates it when people don't immediately love her.

But now she's here. In the hospital. With a broken arm. Alone.

She's not really listening when a nice man crouches down and looks her in the eye. Distantly she realizes he's handing her a phone and telling her to call.

Call who? She thinks and then realizes she said it aloud.

Father? She smiles. Colonel Shay is far, far away from here, in any place that doesn't have her in it.

Mother? She winces. Mrs Shay buried, dead, below the earth and all Carly's got left is a ratty photograph hidden in a bedside draw.

Guardian? She laughs. Spencer. Why, in a time of crisis, would anyone ever call Spencer?

Friend? She frowns. Sam. But Sam isn't the comforter, the supporter, the rock: she's the explosion and Carly is already so close to shattering right now. Sam isn't what she needs.

Finally, when they nice man's just about given up and gone to find some other, more deserving patient, he turns around to look at her and tells her to phone the person who cares about her the most, who loves her unconditionally, the person who will drop everything to come and just be here.

She calls Freddie.

And he comes, in tears himself and shaking like a leaf but he comes and amidst all the words and 'how's' and questions, he wraps her in his arms and hugs her.

And Carly starts to cry.

Because she doesn't have to be perfect with him.