"Do you know if you were followed?" she asked, standing.

His eyes twitched under their swollen lids and he shook his head. "Don't think so. Would be dead by now, right?"

Max frowned as another thought occurred to her. "How did you get a room, looking like you do?"

"Told him I was a boxer and had just lost my first fight. Paid cash."

She didn't believe him. Would anyone believe that the man before her – cut, swollen, bruised, burned – had just participated in a boxing match? And survived? "He believe you?"

"No, but pay him enough and he doesn't ask questions."

After making sure he'd be comfortable – well, as comfortable as a man who'd endured days of torture could be – Max excused herself to purchase the antiseptic, and new jeans and a shirt for Alec. His old stuff was forever-ruined, thrashed. She also lifted a new bucket and scooped some ice on her way back to the room.

When she returned to the room, he was right where she'd left him, laying flat on the shabby bed. Max picked up the bloody towels and bucket, and went back to the bathroom, this time, not shutting the door completely.

She dumped the bloody water into the bath tub and ran the faucet. She stretched out the balled up towel full of Alec's universal donor blood and let the cold water run over it. The first wring produced the greatest amount of crimson runoff, and Max gritted her teeth as she saw the undertow of the draining water streak with his blood. She let the rag satiate with water and then twisted it, folding one twisted side over the other, and then twisted it again. More rose-colored tints dripped out.

She felt her heart pumping harder, felt her jaw grinding her teeth until they clamped in a snarl, felt her whole body tense with the anxiety that this stupid towel would never be pristine again. She wrung it over and over until her knuckles stung from the towel rubbing against it so fervently. Her vision became blurry with frustrated tears, which only angered her further. She released the ends of the towel and let it sag into the bathwater.

White doesn't deserve my tears, she thought, narrowing her eyes and willing herself to stop crying.

As she imagined all of the things he and the cult had done to Alec, her hands twisted and squeezed the towel tighter and harder, again and again, until when she looked down, she saw the sharp curves of her knuckles had turned white.

She gave up on the towels and made her way back to him. Nearing him meant watching the way the coagulated blood on his lip moved as he mouthed words which she couldn't hear. She stepped closer to him, trying to tell if he was in pain, or hallucinating, or maybe telling her the location of the warehouse, or just plain figure out what he was saying.

It only took her a few seconds to figure out he had been counting.

184, 185, 186…

"Hey," she said gently, sitting on the bed next to him. "I'm here."

His head moved toward her and he stopped counting.

"Sorry I left you for one hundred and eighty six seconds." She ran a thumb across his forehead, clearing a few clumps of hair from it. "I'm back now. We're gonna get you all iced up, and once your wounds close up, you get to put on the fly new clothes I got you."

"'Kay, Maxie," he said barely above a mumble.

As she motioned to retract her hand, he reached out for it again and held it to his chest. His heart beat quasi-normally now, and she could see he was relaxing his limbs one at a time. She wouldn't dare remove her hand. It was the sheer act of touching which seemed to calm him, and he needed to rest to heal.

Max kept her hand against his carved skin, doing her best not to cry and wake him up while she memorized his injuries by touch.