Three hours later, Carl was still sitting in the waiting room, his back cramping from the angle of the plastic seats. He knew he should probably be tired, but couldn't seem to manage genuine tiredness, only a stale fatigue.

The nurse had handed him a pair of pale blue scrubs and directed him to a bathroom down the hall. The night was wearing thin, and beyond the ER, the hospital was relatively quiet. Carl slid into the cold bathroom, casting his eyes around habitually to mark how many people were around him, the level of possible threat they posed, where the exits were, what spaces he couldn't see. The tiled bathroom was empty but for himself, however, and he directed his attention to the line of shower stalls against the far wall. He checked his eyes to the right, and moved toward the line of sinks, backed by steel-edged mirrors. His hands were covered in blood - it rubbed off against the steel faucet as he turned on the water, swirled against the white porcelain sink as he washed it from his skin. He looked up - his reflection looking back at him. The left side of his face was blushed in blood from RC's wrist, the right side of his neck dark with it from his friend's shoulder bracing against it. His jacket was likely in a biological hazards waste disposal, and his green shirt was dark with dried blood, his jeans splattered. He was going to have to shower after all, it wasn't a quick one in the sink kind of clean-up. Nevertheless, Carl pulled in a breath and washed his face and hands.

His own state was beginning to catch up with him, and gathering momentum. His skin itched with dried sweat and pulled with dried blood, he must have rolled his ankle by the off-centre feel of it, the muscles of his back and shoulders were still burning from bearing RC's weight, and the skin of his right hand had been rubbed raw on his friend's belt. His arms felt leaden with muscle fatigue he hadn't even registered causing, and his chest ached for reasons he couldn't even identify. He'd been hot in motion, but his muscles were starting to ache now he had stopped. And his head was pounding.

RC … God, RC. Carl's hands slowed. He'd seen RC hurt plenty of times, seen him knocked out cold more than a few, seen him stumbling around concussed and talking nonsense. He'd seen RC bleed. He'd had worries about blood loss for his friend before, one notable occasion being when RC had got himself caught and drained by a nest of vampires. But this - this wasn't any of that. There had been a few hair-raising times when fear shot through him, not knowing if RC was alive, but this had been the first real time he could remember when he feared he might actually lose RC. God, when he had arrived at the hospital he hadn't even felt for a pulse, hadn't even checked RC was still alive. Probably because he didn't think he could take a negative answer right then. RC had almost died. End of story, no more chances, final as a coffin six feet under dead. Right from the beginning of this skewed hunt, RC had been on his mind, and in hindsight, the uneasy foreboding he had felt ever since he had first got the details from Hughes related to RC himself. He'd known something was going to go sideways, but he'd ignored it. Dismissed the idea of calling in other hunters on the job, yahoos or not. And God, looking down at RC's bloody torso in the harsh beam of the little flashlight, seeing literally what his friend was made of, slick and dark solids in the blood. RC's face white against the blood that coated his throat, looking up at Carl with pupils blown in pain and fear.

Carl …

Carl clenched his eyes shut. God damn it, RC, he thought as the image of his friend's starkly pale face in the torchlight came back to him. RC unmasked. For once in his life he'd stopped pretending, dropped the act, stopped covering himself, stopped broadcasting the ever-present Channel RC bullshit that sometimes, could make Carl want to kill him. For once he had dropped the defensiveness and let Carl see him, and for a moment, was who he was without pretences. Carl already knew the reason why - he had seen it in the regret, pleading and apology in his friend's face. RC had known he was done for. Known he would never have the chance to offer Carl anything but the mask he wore. He had looked up at the frightened face of a friend he cared for more than anything, knowing that Carl would only ever remember what he had wanted to be seen, the character he had created, and after ten years, would never know him.

He had known he was dying.

Carl ducked his head, clenched both sides of the cold sink, and for the first time in long years, he cried.

Carl shifted in the plastic chair of the emergency waiting room, attempting to ease off the cramp in his back. He felt hollowed out. A grey sort of nothingness had settled over him. He supposed he should be doing something - but he couldn't imagine what. He had no word on RC - which, he told himself, was a good thing. If RC was dead there'd be something to tell him. He had made it clear he would wait and wanted to be informed the moment anything happened. He had all the insurance details, and was the closest thing to family that RC had. That much at least he knew to be true - Carl had stumbled into hunting through and because of RC. Carl had always been a solitary man, but not due to any supernatural reason. The same couldn't have been said for RC, who had had everything in his life taken via supernatural forces nine years ago. Carl had vaguely wondered in the past if RC was the way he was because of that loss - had he ever known RC minus the bullshit factor then, when they were younger before it had all happened? Somehow, he doubted it. He hadn't known RC very long or very well by then. RC had been pushed into hunting not long after, and Carl had felt it only right he follow. Carl had always felt that he should keep an eye on RC, that he should have someone there with him at least, even if it wasn't the people he would have preferred. It seemed horribly ironic for RC go out the same way. But they were hunters now, whatever circumstances had landed them both in the life. And that was how hunters always went. The likelihood of dying in your sleep from a stroke or being hit by a drunk driver seemed significantly less when you spent your time seeking out things that wanted to kill and eat you. Carl just wasn't ready for this. He sincerely doubted he'd ever be ready to lose RC, and somehow, he didn't believe RC would feel any different in his place.

"Mr. Bates?"

Some hunter he was, he hadn't even heard the theatre nurse stop right in front of him.

"Yes?"

The nurse nodded, no doubt making sure he had the right man.

"Your friend is out of surgery, being moved up to ICU."

ICU. That meant he was likely to survive, in Carl's book.

"Is he likely to live?"

The nurse nodded. "He flatlined, but they resuscitated him okay. It was a close one, and he'll have to stay in ICU for a while probably to monitor him for infection and internal bleeding, but yes, his chances of surviving look good."

Carl sucked in a deep breath and swallowed hard, literally and figuratively. He wasn't going to start all that again.

"Can I go see him?" he asked. For now, he needed to verify RC was alive.

"Sure. He'll be unconscious at least a few hours though."

Carl nodded. "Thanks."

The nurse smiled and nodded, before he turned and disappeared again through the doors to the theatre section. Carl shook himself and headed for a sign - hospitals were always labyrinthine and County General was no exception. He had asked two orderlies and a nurse before he found the correct section of the ICU, and even longer before he found RC, but find his friend he did. RC still looked God-awful - he was white, had at least a dozen leads and tubes in him (some of which, Carl thought with a stab of unsteady humour, RC was unlikely to enjoy) and he looked … weirdly average. He was clean, dressed in one of the trademark unflattering hospital gowns, his pale hair tousled against the pillow. He was unconscious as promised, lying still and small against the bed. But he looked relatively safe, and as peaceful as could be expected given the circumstances. A heart monitor ticked beside him, and Carl stared at it a moment, watching with fatigued fascination this visual verification of RC's continued survival. Carl shook his head - he must be tired. He dragged a chair from the far corner over to the bed and sat gratefully, reaching up to pat RC's arm gently with a strange sense of shyness. He chuckled tiredly at himself. They passed the point of shyness years and countless less-than-perfect hunts (not to mention parties of the same calibre) ago. He hadn't felt embarrassed when a chupacabra had literally bitten him in the ass, and RC was stitching miraculously without comment - which may have been due less to compassion and more to the fact he was laughing too hard. For his part, RC certainly hadn't seemed the least bit chagrined the morning after Carl's step-sister's wedding reception, during which he had got rotten drunk and proceeded to critique his new wife's sexual appeal to the groom, then throw up on the events manager when she attempted to intervene.

Carl suspected it was a mixture of the gesture being one of genuine affection, that made him awkward at the best of times, coupled with his own fatigue in every possible way, and the very close call they had both just had with RC's life.

Whatever the reason, he found himself smiling as he sat back in the chair, his eyes resting on the unconscious form of his friend.