A/N: Thanks for the reviews! You guys are the best :)

Taking a deep breath, I stumbled forward—under the chain, out of the warehouse, into the open air. It was dark outside, and I took two limping, disoriented steps forward, trying to figure out which way Fiat Man had run. I didn't see him anywhere, and I couldn't hear his footsteps or breathing at all.

My stupid ears were still ringing, and for some reason, I was still shaking. It didn't even occur to me that his car wasn't exactly where he'd left it. It didn't even occur to me that he would be more interested in getting even than running away. I should've known better.

Should've but didn't. Story of my life.

In the end, it was his rust-heap car that saved me. The ringing in my ears was enough to cover the sound of his engine, but when it backfired, I heard it.

It came from my left, and I froze in shock as his car came barreling at me. If I hadn't seen it coming, I would have been dead. As it was, the backfires alerted me, and I was able to jump out of the way. Not quickly enough, though.

Something clipped my hip, and suddenly I was flying through the air. A split second later, I landed like a ragdoll, flopping and flailing and feeling my left arm snap underneath me. I came to a rolling stop, limbs all tangled, and I couldn't breathe. I couldn't scream. I couldn't do anything but lay there in agony.

The tires screeched loudly, and the car came to a stop only a foot from me. As I stared, badlyy dazed, up at the silver fender, the driver side door opened, and a pair of legs appeared in front of me. I couldn't move my head enough to look up, but I didn't have to. I knew who it was.

"You thought you could stop me, but you were weak. The weak ones always lose. They need to be culled out before they can bring the rest of us down with them." Fiat Man's words drifted down to me, and I tried to focus on them in an attempt to pull my brain away from the pain that was pounding and rushing through my body. Fiat Man leaned down, enough that his face was only a few feet above mine. "We're going to have so much fun together," he said, and his hand came out of nowhere to brush down my cheek.

White hot rage burst alive in my chest, making me feel like I was going to explode. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to fight him, to hit him, anything. "Kill you," I spat, spewing both blood and words out of my mouth at the same time.

He leaned away with a laugh before very deliberately tapping my injured arm with a toe. Even that single touch was enough to send agony ripping through it. "You? Kill me? Not likely." He grabbed me, then, hoisting me over his shoulder as he made his way back to the car.

He was going to kill me—take me somewhere and kill me. And since I did not want to be killed, I objected. Loudly.

And by loudly, I meant screaming as if there were a sledgehammer smashing my arm into tiny bone fragments with every beat of my heart. Because, really, that was kind of what it felt like.

When he tossed me in the trunk, I lost the ability to produce sound. I crash landed on my left side, and for a second, I think I passed out. The pain—I'd never felt anything so endless and agonizing in my life—turned my entire brain into a puddle of mindless goo. As the back hatch slammed down, and my world convalesced into a stuffy haze, I let myself go.

I drifted for bit, unable to really put coherent thoughts together, and then it all changed. There were three loud noises, like a backfire, but harsher. Gunshots, I realized, filtering back into reality. They were gunshots. Silence filled the air, blessed silence, and I pondered why there would be gunshots. When the car engine shut off, I pondered that too. My brain was too fried to come up with a valid reason, though, so I just kept loosely pondering things. It wasn't until there was a scratching noise against the back hatch, and it lifted to reveal Finn, that I understood.

Gunshots? Finn. Car rescue? Finn.

He was mess. His suit jacket was gone, there was blood on his shirt, and it was like he'd been rolled in a dirt burrito, but he still looked like Christmas morning. I don't think I'd ever been so glad to see someone in my entire life.

"Finn," I said quietly, devoting all my meager brain power into forming that one word.

He swore violently as he looked down at me, and there was rage on his face. Who knew I could illicit such emotions on my behalf? Certainly not I. I mean sure, Neal had beat the crap out of Seth Gunderson after the guy had slapped my butt in the cafeteria, but Finn's anger was on a whole other level.

"I'm okay," I managed to choke out, trying to calm the fury burning in his eyes and face. A muscle in his jaw twitched, but then he seemed to let some of it go. Let it go, let it go, I sang quietly to myself as my brain slowly slogged into gear.

"You need a doctor," he said harshly, but his hands were infinitely gentle as they skimmed over my body in search of the extent of my injuries. His fingers lingered over my arm, feather light, but still eliciting nauseating pain. No gracias, I wanted to tell him. Mi arm-o es broken-o. Which I supposed, in the realm of obvious statements to make, was pretty far up there.

My arm was hideous—very obviously broken and not cleanly. I fixed my eyes on the stars over his shoulder, trying not to look at the hard angles of bone that were jutting upwards and pressing tightly against the skin.

His thumb came up and wiped blood across my eyebrow, stopping it from dribbling into my eye. I would have done it ages ago had I not discovered that not moving was actually the closest I could get to any type of pain relief. Technically that included not breathing as well, but not breathing kind of negated the whole staying alive thing, so I just fought through the pain and chocked it up to the price of living.

And everyone knew that the price of living was ridiculously high in big cities. Hah! I'd just made a joke while trying not to curl up and die from pain. Dean would be proud of me. He'd always made jokes and references at inappropriate times, even if I hadn't understood them.

"Eh," I said with all false bravado I could muster in response to Finn's doctor comment. I was going to have a sarcastic comeback, but truth be told, I kind of felt like I was dying, and I couldn't come up with anything other than "eh." My entire left shoulder had gone numb, and I was in so much pain in so many places that it was just sort of mindless now.

Finn slipped an arm under my knees and another behind my shoulders, and suddenly I was being lifted out of the car. My eyes rolled back of their own accord as the hot, fresh agony blanked out my vision, but I didn't let go of my tenuous hold on consciousness. "Did you get 'em?" I murmured, feeling like a typical Hollywood actress as my forehead lolled into the crook of his neck.

"I got him," Finn confirmed, voice rumbling in his throat against my forehead.

"I couldn't," I said thickly, unable to form any more words past those two. More blood came out of my mouth, dribbling his shirt. Finn didn't complain, though. He just kept walking, and I struggled through the basics of the English language in order to build a sentence. "I had a chance, but I couldn't do it," I finally got out, my voice breaking pathetically as I said it.

I wanted to say something, wanted to explain, but I was too tired.

The fact of the matter was I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill a human. Fiat Man had been a terrible, evil person, but I still hadn't been able to look him in the eyes and pull the trigger. I wasn't sure if I'd ever be able to do it. Part of me knew that being unable to kill a person was potentially bad for my survival—case in point. But the other part of me didn't care.

"I know," Finn said quietly, and I think he understood. Or at least I hoped he did.

"I'm sorry," I murmured into his dirty, blood splattered shirt.

"Don't apologize," he said. "Not for that."

A car door opened, and suddenly I was lying across the backseat. Finn's warmth left me, and I almost wanted to cry. Pathetic.

Finn got in the driver seat, but instead of turning the car on, he twisted in his seat to look at me. It was dark, but I could still see his profile as he gazed at me. "Never for that," he said softly. Then he turned back around, starting the car, and blackness drifted over me like a blanket.

I woke up feeling strangely light. Light-ish. Fuzzy, I decided with vague dismissal. My tongue felt really thick and my body dull, but I felt like I was on top of the world.

Getting hit by a car flashed to the front of my mind, and it was a reminder I could have done without. Ugh, I had been hit by a car, and it had not been pleasant. But then Finn had taken me away. To a hospital, I would have thought. But I didn't feel like I was in a hospital.

"Finn?" I queried, opening my eyes and looking around.

I was in a room. That much I understood. In whose room or where, I hadn't the faintest clue.

"What." The grouchy, muffled utterance came from below me, and it wasn't a question, his tone made that clear. I raised my head, pleased to find the ringing in my ears gone. I was on a bed. A nice bed. A really, really nice bed. And just over the edge, Finn was lying on the floor. He had a pillow, and a thin blanket, but the carpet didn't look as comfortable as my bed. Too bad for him, he was totally missing out.

"Where am I?" was the first thing to come flying out of my mouth. I looked around and answered my own question. I was in motel—in a really comfortable bed, but definitely in a motel. "Never mind," I said quietly. "How'd I get here?"

Finn didn't answer, and I rolled onto my right side so I could look at him. My body ached vaguely at the movement, but I wasn't too bothered. I wanted answers more than comfort.

Finn was lying on his stomach, arms disappearing under the pillow while his face was buried in it. I tried not to focus on how his t-shirt stretched over the curve of his back, or how his hair looked like it was going in every direction possible.

"Finn?" I prompted uneasily, taking in the bright pink cast on my left arm. There was also a bandage on my other hand and a bottle of pills on the nightstand. Oh, those were probably responsible for the happy, pain-free cloud I was floating on. "Finn," I repeated, louder this time.

"What?" he groaned, shifting around a bit but not getting up.

"What the hell is going on?" I hissed, starting to freak out a little. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know how I had somehow gotten fixed up after getting hit by a car, and I didn't know what day or time it was. Basically, I knew nothing, and it was starting to scare me.

"Took you to a free clinic," Finn moaned into the pillow. He lifted his head blearily, glaring in a vaguely upward direction. "Said it was a hit-and-run. They fixed you up, and we split before they could ask questions. That was early yesterday morning. You've been asleep the whole time, and I have not. Now can you just take a pain pill and shut up, please?" His head thumped back down onto the pillow, ending his exposition, and I rolled onto my back.

Holy crap. I had been hit by a car and broken my arm, and Finn had shot the serial killer who'd done it. What the heck kind of day was that supposed to be? I fingered the hard shell of my cast, distracted by how clean and bright it was. Then I sat up abruptly. Holy crap, what was I going to tell Libby? I had one more day before I had to pick her up. Even worse, what was I going to tell my family? More lies, I supposed.

The happy feeling faded, and I submerged into dreary melancholy. I was tired of lying, tired of balancing two lives. Them's the waters, I told myself harshly, canceling my little pity party. What are you going to do, cry about it?

Actually yes, I kind of wanted to cry. But that might have just been the pain meds wearing off. I rolled onto my side again, struggling one handed with the bottle of pills. At one point it went flying out of my hand and landed on Finn's back. He didn't move, and I stared down at my bottle with disgust. "Huh," I grunted to myself. My arm ached a little more insistently, and I kicked myself into action.

Hanging off the bed, I swiped my good hand at the bottle, missing the first time but snagging it the second. "Hah!" But then I wheeled my arm around wildly, trying to get myself back onto the bed so I wouldn't come crashing down on Finn. It was really hard, and it took a long time, seriously depleting my energy even though it was only one simple task.

I lay back, gasping, and then I used my left hand to pin the bottle down and my right to twist the cap off. Rooting around with a finger, I slid one pill up the side of the bottle and into my hand. I didn't even look at it as I tossed it into my mouth and swallowed. Thoughtfully enough, Finn had left a glass of water on the nightstand, and I chased the pill down with a good swallow or two of water. The medicine took a while to kick in, but once it did, I felt good enough to do something other than lay there.

Easing myself off the end of the bed, I went to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror. From the neck up, I looked fine. But any further down and fine was pushing the truth a little. My original shirt was gone, which was awkward. I was wearing a thin hospital-type shirt—thin, white, not very high quality. It was a pretty stark contrast to the cast, which covered from just under my fingers and knuckles all the way up until past my elbow. It was giant and pink, and I was glad. It nicely detracted from the bruising I could see leading up under my sleeve. I pulled my sleeve up further, gagging at the gross pattern of purples and browns and yellows.

I let go of my sleeve and pulled up the bottom of my shirt a little. Yep, the bruising traced down my left side to my hip. Ugh, gross. I dropped my shirt and decided that I would definitely be wearing a hoodie when I drove to Seattle. If I could even get a hoodie on. I was on pain meds, and my body still kind of ached. I wasn't looking forward to wrestling something over my head and arms.

I blew air out of my lips, causing them to putter and flap. I had almost died. That was weird to think about. I shook my head, not wanting to think about it at all. I wanted food and my stuff. That was what I wanted to think about.

I stepped out of the bathroom, surveying Finn's limp form. "I'm going to run an errand. Is that okay with you?" I didn't really care if it was okay with him or not, but since he'd taken care of me, I felt it was a courtesy to at least ask. He didn't answer, clearly passed out. "Okay, I'll take that as a yes," I said cheerfully. I found a piece of paper and wrote him a note before I left, though. I didn't want him to wake up and freak out. Not that he would anyway. As an afterthought, I wrote my phone number on the paper, just in case he needed to get in touch. But it also meant that I had to find my phone.

I thought back to where it might be. Oh, it was in my Hunting backpack, which was probably still in Finn's car. That was fine though, my motel key was in the pack, too.

Clicking the motel room door shut behind me, I sighed into the fresh air. The sky was once again overcast, and the air was crisp. I loved it. Swinging Finn's borrowed keys around on my finger, I walked to his car and unlocked the passenger side door. Pulling my backpack free, I relocked the door and headed back inside. My pack didn't have any food in it, other than an ancient granola bar, but it did have spare clothes.

I changed quickly, shaking out the wrinkles in the t-shirt shirt and jeans. They'd been in there a while, and they'd been folded tightly to take up the least room. Oh well, at this point I wasn't totally concerned with how I looked. Almost dying seems to cancel out vanity in a girl.

Dropping the pain pills into one of the smaller pockets of the backpack, I replaced Finn's keys where I'd found them. Then I headed out. Once in the parking lot, I oriented myself as best I could and started walking towards my motel.

Fifteen minutes later, my stomach was practically playing some growled version of an eighties rock song, and I changed my mind about the age and edible quality of the granola bar, and I scarfed it down.

Half an hour later, I found myself walking into my motel room. I hadn't unpacked much, so it was easy to get my duffle bag and bag of groceries ready to go out to the car. Gathering them up, I stopped abruptly, realizing I didn't have a car. Oops. It was still at the warehouse, and there was no way I was going to walk that far.

"Hmmm," I intoned, pondering my options. I was probably just going to have to walk back to Finn's, and then he could drop me off at the warehouse in his car. Yeah. That was probably what was going to have to happen.

Slinging the duffle strap over my good shoulder, I put on my backpack and picked up the groceries in my right hand. I left the motel key card on the table and walked out of the room, heading back to Finn's motel.

The walk took a lot longer. For one, I had to stop and take breaks frequently. Who knew getting hit by a car took so much energy to heal from? I also had to take out the pain pills and see when the soonest time I could safely take another was.

I took another pain pill when I got back to Finn's room. I was technically not supposed to, but I didn't care. I was in pain, and I wanted to not be. Finn, for his part, was still out. Though, if he'd stayed up for as long as he'd said, then I didn't blame him.

I ate my salad right out of the bag, ignoring the fact that the leaves were kind of wilted. Then I made myself a Nutella and banana sandwich. It was glorious, and I wondered if I'd ever be able to go back to plain old peanut butter again.

Still reveling in the invention that was chocolate and hazelnut, I camped out on the bed and turned on the TV. There was nothing good on, but I watched it anyways. There was something normalizing about zoning out with daytime TV.

Finn let out a soft snore, and I changed the channel. For a second, it was almost like we were just two normal people. And dang, had I missed that feeling.