Disclaimer: There is no one in the world better at not owning iCarly than moi.

White knuckles that, for the past ten minutes, were glued a fatigued bathroom sink… that was all she felt. Her dark eyes scoured the pool of blood, soap and water congealing in the sink. Like they were looking deep within this… scene, for the proverbial pinch to wake her up from this fucking nightmare. Even then, all was quiet on the front.

Blood. Always red. Always called red. But what about black or brown? Against a white t-shirt, blood was not scarlet like the sin of adultery. It was no longer the graceful, if nauseating, indicator of suffering. It wasn't a fine wine. It was a copper shit-smear. There was nothing whatsoever dignified about it. Wiping it away was as good as ensuring that one's fingers would stay filthy. The fingers would be ridden beyond recognition with these unkempt, unwashed, little cells. They made little homes in the little inroads of your fingerprints, free-loading, awaiting the inevitable flood of soap bubbles.

The magic words. "Oh my God, Carly!" The magic words that yanked her into cruel, delirious fatigue. They came tightly wound together with the voice of someone so familiar. Someone to think about. But not now. The back of her head had an appointment with a set of dirty tiles. C'est la vie…

()()()

5 days later…

"Hey, do you want to get anything to eat on the way back?"

The taxi steadily- apathetically- wheeled across town to the Shays' apartment building.

"No. I'm okay."

Herself and Ms. Benson had gotten out of the hospital only a few hours apart from each other. The day was beautiful, and Carly understood why. Because it actually wasn't, compared to the best days of weather she had seen in Seattle. But it wasn't a hospital room. It didn't have walls painted blinding white, it didn't have that dread feeling of mortality and displacement. The long, rain touched patch of grass between the curb and the sidewalk greeted Carly's feet upon her exit from the back of the yellow car. She breathed in. Home!

"You better go in. Lewb's been missing you."

Carly let out a small chuckle. She'd forgotten all about old Lewbert. "I think I'm even going to be glad to see-"

"YEEEAAAARRRRRRGGHHH!"

"…Maybe not."

She stood there dimly observing that, yes, there was a door that lead to the lobby of her apartment building. Not being sure what the big deal was with small details lately, she snapped to reality when Spencer brushed past.

"Spencer, what's-"

A classic Lewbert eruption as soon as Spencer pulled the door open. "I DON'T KNOW!"

Spencer entered the scene, with Carly close behind. Ms. Benson, whose head was decorated with a white gauze helmet, had Lewbert in a wart-hold and was interrogating him. "Freddie is nowhere in this building! A good door-man would have seen him leave!"

Lewbert flinched. Freddie's mom had punctuated "good" with a slightly harder grip on the wart. "Who said anything about me being a good door-man?"

"No one!" Ms. Benson let go and turned to leave. "No one I've ever talked to!"

Lewbert cupped a hand over the sore side of his face. "GEEZ!"

Carly stepped up to the front desk. "Were you telling the truth…?"

"OF COURSE I WAS!" Lewbert roared. "WHY WOULD I NOT BE?"

"He has a point…" Spencer said from behind her.

Carly shook her head. "That was so crazy. I've never seen Ms. Benson flip out like that!"

"I HAVE!" Lewbert pointed at his wart. "SEE?"

"We know, we know…" Spencer stepped in front of his sister, as if to take control of the situation. "Look, was Ms. Benson like that when she first came in?"

"GET ME SOME GLUE FOR MY FACE AND I MIGHT LET YOU KNOW!"

"You're over-reacting…" Spencer said quietly, then in a whisper. "Also, I used up all my glue making Carly a surprise sculpture to welcome her home with."

"I was just in a WART-LOCK!" Lewbert turned to walk into the back room. "I don't want to answer your stupid questions right now."

()()()

"SAM!"

"Whoa!"

Sam had been lying on the Shays' couch waiting for Carly to arrive, when Ms. Benson burst through the door. Ms. Benson strode urgently to Sam's side, kneeling down.

"Where is Fredward?"

"Uh…"

"Where is my son?"

Sam sat up. "I haven't seen him."

Ms. Benson wouldn't be gotten rid of so easily, much to the chagrin of her interrogatee. "Since when?"

"Uh… about two days ago, when he got kicked out of the hospital." Sam paused. "You realize he's going crazy, right?"

Ms. Benson jolted up with startling speed and, screaming, slapped Sam across the face. Sam's mind went blank with disbelief and she gazed dumbly at the older woman.

"I don't believe you!" Ms. Benson railed. "Boys don't just go around trying to kill each other! Ever since you and that... girlfriend of his started hanging around him, he hasn't acted right!"

Sam, whose teeth were clenched harder than her eyes could burn, stood up and backed Ms. Benson toward the door. "We didn't do anything to him… you did!"

Ms. Benson's voice broke with fear and outrage. "Did what? Raise him right, which your mother didn't do with you?"

Sam backed off, if only because there was still a remaining vestige of reason left in her brain. This was not the time to explain to Ms. Benson exactly what she meant when she said what she said. But she still leveled a squinting, angry expression toward the older woman. "Look- I really don't know where Freddie is. I wish I did. Now go somewhere else to look."

The stand-off went on briefly, tensely and wordlessly before Ms. Benson broke it off, storming away to scour elsewhere. Sam stood still long after Ms. Benson left. After the shock and anger began to clear, curiosity took their place. Where WAS Freddie? It was, after all, the day his mom was getting out of the hospital. He knew it was. Wouldn't he be at home waiting for her, especially if he was as neurotic as she was…?

"Probably just at the Groovy Smoothie or something…" Sam scoffed, slipping on her still-tied tennis shoes. "I'll go look for him there…"

()()()

30 minutes later…

Carly and Spencer stood in the doorway of a small, shabby room. It was the room where Freddie lived for a few days the first time he ran away from his mom. A crummy-looking little den-like area that would embarrass a family of hillbillies caught calling it a home. That was before Lewbert decided to make it a storage room for the odd things he found in vacated apartments.

And there Freddie was. Sitting in the middle of the dirty floor with his laptop balanced poorly on his folded legs.

"I'm staying in here again… for a little while."

Spencer sat down on the floor next to Freddie. Carly stood off to the side, staring at Freddie's laptop. To her relief, it had nothing horrible on it, just some Wikipedia article for someone named… Albert Fish?

"Why don't you want to go back home?" Spencer asked, not even noticing Freddie's computer's current display. "Your mom hasn't seen you in a couple of days since…"

"The incident." Freddie nodded, briefly glancing toward Spencer with his distant eyes. "You don't need to worry. I don't want to talk…"

"Come on, maaan! Go see your mom for a little while, then we can go fencing or something."

He was silent.

"Well, if you don't go to her, we'll bring her to you." Spencer said slowly, taking in the kid's shift in personality the best he could, though with a lot of difficulty. "She's been looking all over for you. She's really freaking out."

Carly smiled. "She even put Lewbert in a wart-lock when he didn't know where you were."

Freddie gave a faint chuckle, but didn't turn his head away from his laptop screen. Spencer and Carly leaned in to look at it, seeing that it was now displaying his browser history. Carly assumed he didn't want to look like some kind of whacko. What he didn't realize is that he already did.

"Are you doing some cleaning?" Carly asked her friend jokingly. "Getting rid of a few things you don't want us to see?"

Spencer looked up. "Yeah, you kinda need to… I saw what was on there."

Carly and Freddie both turned to look at Spencer, eyes wide. In the first place, Carly had almost forgotten the atrocious things she saw that night… but now her brother went and looked at it? Spencer couldn't watch a Friday the 13th movie without leaving lights on the same night, never mind… the Offended page.

"Wh… when did you look at my laptop?" Freddie asked tensely.

"The night you guys left it in the filming room." Spencer said back.

To think, he had trusted that no one else besides those three had looked at it. He didn't even suspect anything whenever Carly and Spencer first found him and Spencer volunteered to fetch it for him. He knew right where it was, too… Freddie abruptly closed his laptop, placed it off to the side and stood. "Just… Never mind. I'll clean it out later."

"Clean what out?"

The eyes of Marissa Benson met the eyes of the other three people in the room one at a time. Shocked expressions dominated the wordless conversation 3-1. Pervading was the kind of tension one could make a rope out of and hang their selves with. Freddie was the first to speak.

"H-Hey, mom."

"Fredward!" Ms. Benson's face broke into tears and she grabbed her son's arms. Carly and Spencer flinched, knowing she'd just got out of the hospital. She definitely did not need to be as worked up as she was right now.

"What happened to you?"

Carly and Spencer stood by the doorway, ready to leave but still surveying the moment. "Nothing. Really…"

"I thought I taught you better than to get into fights at school! Never mind that, you went and picked one! Do I need to start home-schooling you again?"

Freddie backed away and shook his head. "No, you don't, mom."

Ms. Benson began to inspect Freddie for any signs of a fight. "You could have been seriously injured!" Pause. "…Were you? You aren't hurt, are you?"

"No-"

The mother's sharp, inhaling gasp trailed her discovery of an inconsequential cut under her son's right arm. "Well, if you aren't hurt, then what is this?"

He was silent. Spencer motioned to his sister that they should leave. But a protest in the form of stillness retaliated from Carly's feet. She stared at Freddie from across the gray floor, doing an inspection of her own. All the familiar signs of irritation, exasperation, minor embarrassment, were as absent as Carly had been from school for the past few days. Freddie just looked at his own mother as if she were some distant, overbearing relative.

"Come on home with me, I'm going to get the first aid kit out and disinfect that-"

Freddie yanked his arm away and backed off a couple of inches.

Is there anybody in there…?

"I don't want to go back home…"

Carly and Spencer leaned in closer, but remained in the doorway, ready to leave. They were treated to a grunt of frustration.

"Not this again! Fredward Benson, you come with me this instant so we can get this wound fixed up!"

Freddie stood his ground, but his face was like an ironing board and his voice sounded like mid-air. It reminded one of his whole Twi-vampire shtick that got him the attention of the ladies. Only, rather than charming, it was creepy. "If you want to fix the cut I got two days ago, go get the first aid kit and bring it down here."

"Freddie!" Carly blurted before she could stop herself. Again, Ms. Benson groaned at not just her son's stubbornness, but his little girlfriend still sticking her nose in.

"Freddie, I was just released from the hospital. Please don't make this difficult on me."

"I don't want to go up there. I want to be alone. Please get out."

Carly was reminded, yet again, of the first time this happened. Freddie was triumphantly insistent upon his independence then, despite his mother's shrieks of contrary. But there he had been holding his head up high, staring his mother down and being in control. He seemed here like a recluse who saw others like a normal person would see cockroaches crawling up their arm.

"Ms. Benson, I'm going to go get the first-aid kit," Spencer said finally. He knew it was ridiculous, doing that for a small cut, but he didn't want to frazzle Ms. Benson now. "You should just take it easy here, okay?"

Ms. Benson thought for a second, turned to Freddie to see if he'd changed his mind, then nodded at Spencer. On cue, he made haste toward the Bensons' apartment. Carly found herself impressed that Spencer had yet to do or say something really stupid in the last few minutes. She supposed that, when the situation called for it, Spencer could be decent at responsibility. Yet, her want of everything to return to normal shadowed her feelings of newfound respect. Carly wanted the old Spencer back- hell, she wanted the old everybody back.

"Freddie," Carly said as she turned around to find that he hadn't moved an inch from where he had been standing, "you know you can't just live down here! Be realistic!"

"Exactly! You can't- wait, what?" Ms. Benson turned to look at Carly. "You… you agree?"

Carly gave an awkward look. "Well, yeah. I don't want my friend to live down here any more than you do..."

"Well…" Ms. Benson glanced again over at Freddie before moving towards Carly and proceeding to talk to her quietly, conspiratorially. "Do you have an idea what to do?"

"I can't really force him to come back," Carly said hesitantly, "maybe we should just wait for him to get sick of living down here."

"What?" Freddie's mom snapped in a voice loud enough for Freddie to hear (but not respond). "He could catch a disease living in this wreck!"

Carly sighed. "Unless we drag him, I don't think he'll go, Ms. Benson."

"I can hear, you know…" Freddie dead-panned, appearing to be talking to his shoes. Ms. Benson turned to face her son with intentions of yelling at him. But she could only clench her head the way that a massive headache had suddenly clenched her brain. She stumbled down to her knees.

"Mom!" Freddie gasped. Carly had already run to her side- knelt, really, since she was already inches away- and Freddie did the same.

"What's wrong?" Freddie tilted his mother's head up to face him. Her face was twisted in agony, every muscle tightened around her skull. Incapable of expressing a coherent thought, she let out a wail and tried to stand.

"Don't get up, Ms. Benson!" Carly ordered her. "I'll get some aspirin, okay? Freddie, you stay with her!"

"Okay, hurry!" Freddie said excitedly. The girl had a confused look on her face that the other two couldn't see. Freddie seemed to be acting completely ordinary now, given the situation. But, then again, his mom was having some kind of attack. She would have thought him a complete monster to be anything other than scared and concerned.

She looked again at his face, and noted that it didn't match his words. That stark calmness was unwelcome, that blankness of expression was beginning to define who she almost came to love. All of his cold, all of his violence…

Who was Freddie Benson…?

()()()

"You got it?"

"Yeah. Let's hurry."

Spencer was racing to the Bensons' apartment when he ran into Sam, holding a smoothie and looking stumped. After explaining the situation, Sam agreed to slap some sense back into Freddie. She was unsure why, but nonetheless quite willing to butt in one more time.

"So, his mom slapped you?" Spencer asked in the middle of power-walking down yet another flight of stairs.

Sam followed close behind. "Yeah! She just jumped up and smacked me!"

"That doesn't sound right. Are you sure she didn't just trip or something?"

"No! I swear, she just up and hit me as hard as she could! I think she's out of her fucking head."

Spencer scoffed. "She's worried about her son and she just got out of the hospital. I think anyone would be a little loco in her situation."

The conversation braked upon Carly's entrance onto the staircase, with frantic intensity, tripping over her own feet.

"Carly, what's going on?"

"Sam, it's Ms. Benson, she-"

"Wants to apologize?"

Carly face-faulted. "No… why would she apologize?"

Spencer made a waving-away motion with his un-first aid kit-holding hand. "Don't worry about it, what's wrong with Ms. Benson?"

()()()

The white flag was being sewn and prepared for her. The fist that was to raise it squeezed an achy head dry of anything other than agony. She felt like a tomato turned into gory paste. Everything was getting cold, and her son's hands were more and more like fire each second. Movement transformed from convenience to dread because when she tried, every response was only a shaking along the chosen limb. Was the world black and white? Had it always been? Was it just the tombstone of a room she was in that provided the illusion of hopelessness? Did it matter? The cherry rain that fell from her cloudy head was about to end. Limp.

()()()

Some things people were not meant to see…

When you look at a mirror, do you see the same person your reflection is staring back at? Do you see what you want to see or what you need to see? You know those beautiful things you brag about? Those eyes? Nothing but damp balls that transmit an ugly world into the brain. Your poor brain. It's protected by skull, but the things that can really hurt it are being forced upon it every time you turn your face in the wrong direction. Look again. The next time you reach for your reflection and it reaches back at you, remember this: you're yearning so, so, so, so much more than it is.