Between Us

Author note: Kate Corrigan has long been one of my favourite comicverse characters; there is, sadly, a lack of good fanfiction featuring her. I've always wanted to explore her friendship with Abe, and this is my humble attempt. This story is set between the B.P.R.D. issues "Plague of Frogs" and "The Dead" while Abe is still recovering from his wound, and contains spoilers for both stories. With many gracious thanks to Mike Mignola for letting me borrow his characters.

I absolutely welcome feedback and commentary. Thank you all for much for reading!

To say that the last few days had been a sore trial would quite the understatement, mused Kate Corrigan.

With a sigh, she transferred the cloth from her hand to the basin of cold water, letting it soak there for a few moments. A glance at her wristwatch told her she had been sitting in the infirmary for just over two hours now; she was tired, and her mind was going a mile a minute with the dreadful happenings of the past week, but the last thing she wanted was to leave. It had taken enough effort to convince Liz to take a break and go take a nap.

Kate couldn't blame her; she didn't want to leave either, and knew that Liz's worry was as great as her own.

She was sitting next to a hospital bed, where Abe Sapien laid, still pale, still unconscious, the ghastly spear wound in his shoulder now stitched and bandaged. He was lying on a waterproof sheet, his body bare but for a pair of wetsuit shorts; lines of IVs were running into his arms, delivering fluids, antibiotics, and pain-relieving medication.

It shouldn't have been such a troubling sight; in her years with the Bureau, Kate had seen too many agents, 'enhanced' and otherwise, return home with bumps and bruises and wounds and broken bones. She'd visited pretty much everyone's hospital bedside at some point or another, including Abe on more than one occasion, but there was something about the sight of him there today that struck a primal cord in her.

Four days ago, she and Liz had found him, in the burning forest by the damned church in Crab Point, Michigan, speared through and through and seemingly gone for good. He'd nearly given them all a damn heart attack by suddenly waking up again as they were wheeling him out of there. Kate had been certain he was dead; she'd never been happier to be wrong.

The cloth was cold in her hand as she lifted it from the basin, ignoring the droplets that splashed onto the floor as she held out the cloth over Abe's chest and gently wrung it, letting the cool water sluice over his chest, mindful of the thick bandage on his shoulder.

It had taken no small amount of persuasion and pressure on her part to convince the Rockland hospital to release him back into the care of the Bureau's doctors. She trusted her own people more than any, and wanted more than anything to have Abe back home, safe.

The Bureau doctors had patched him up, checked him through and through, and assured Kate that despite the near-death experience, Abe would be fine, that he would wake up when he had strength enough to do so.

Kate sighed. He was stable, though he had started running a fever on his second day in the Bureau infirmary. The medics there had been rather understaffed, especially considering the influx of injured that had come in following the harrowing missions to round up the frog monsters, so Kate and Liz had volunteered to take turns watching over him, keeping his skin moist and cool to help fight off the fever.

Though he sighed and shifted slightly as she dripped the water over him, he showed no sign of awaking, still ensconced under layers of febrile imaginings.

Watching him in the throes of the fever-dreams, though, was heartbreaking for Kate. She had no idea what he was seeing or hearing, but every so often he would toss around, confused and distressed. Other times, he would stir and mumble things, names that Kate didn't recognize, and questions that she couldn't properly hear, let alone answer.

She wondered at what was happening inside his mind, since she herself couldn't shake the memory of the weak, half-aware question he had asked upon awakening briefly, as they loaded him into the helicopter.

"What am I?"

Kate had at first assumed it was delirium—after all, he had just woken up from being officially declared dead, weak with pain and blood loss to boot. But she knew better; something had happened to him during his deathly unconscious state, something that had obviously shaken him to the core, whether it was nightmare or something more.

She shook her head, dipping the cloth in water once more. She would have some interesting questions for him, once he was ready to wake up. She felt a great swell of hatred for whoever had wounded him, triggering his entire descent into these confused, fevered questions.

No one, none of the members of their odd little patchwork family deserved to go through something like this, and certainly not the one who needed answers more than any.

She wrung the cloth over his stomach and felt him stir in response; she had chalked it up to another unconscious reaction, but when she looked up into his face, she nearly dropped the cloth in surprise.

His eyes were open. Fluttering weakly and bright with fever, but they were open, and he was looking directly at her.

"Kate?" His voice was weak and hoarse.

She wanted to slump over him in relief. He was awake, and he was lucid—well, he recognized her, at least—and she felt like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

"Yeah, it's me," she said with a smile. She stopped herself before asking 'how are you feeling?' She always hated that question, especially when it was asked of someone who was flat on their back on a hospital bed, but at the moment, she understood the protective desire to know if he was in any pain.

And more importantly, how she could take it away.

Instead, she simply said, "We were all pretty worried about you."

He blinked a few times, and she watched him weakly move his head to look around the room, briefly considering the IV lines taped to his arms, the thick gauze on his shoulder.

"Roger... Liz? Everyone okay?" he asked.

"Everyone's fine," Kate said. She pulled her chair up to sit closer to his head. "Everyone's back at the Bureau. In fact, if you'd woken up two hours earlier, you would have seen Liz here instead of me. It would have made her day."

"Hm." Was that a chuckle? She felt like smiling too, so great was her relief, at least until he asked, "Sadu-hem?"

"It's all under control," she said. It wasn't entirely a lie, but there would be time to update him on the frog monsters later. "Don't worry about that now. Just get better, and then we'll talk about what happened."

"What happened..." he repeated. It wasn't a question; his mind was obviously flying back to everything that had happened to him. Kate wondered for a terrible moment if he even remembered everything that had happened.

"I died… didn't I?"

Kate hesitated for a moment. "We're not really sure what happened to you out there, to be honest. Johann said you were gone—he was with you when we found you-- but the important thing is that you're back with us now. Where you belong."

"Kate," he said weakly. His eyes had opened wide, his hand faintly grasped at the air, as though trying to seize something, to grasp some sense. "After I died... I saw myself."

"You mean you saw your body?" Kate asked. It was the only thing that made sense, wasn't it? It happened to plenty of grievously injured people. "You had an out-of-body experience?"

His lips formed the word 'no', but no sound came out. His eyes fluttered close, and Kate wondered if he was falling asleep again, until he spoke up once more.

"I saw myself. Before I became what I am now. I knew it somehow. I saw... I saw him." His mind, fuzzy with exhaustion and medication, was obviously trying to make sense of the things he'd seen.

"Who's... him?" Kate asked. "Who is he?"

"I don't know." He dropped his hand on his stomach, obviously frustrated. "It could have been nothing, the things I saw. Just empty images. Dreams. Nightmares."

"Or maybe not," Kate said, gently. "The things you saw could have been... well, everything. Some answers."

"I saw something underwater," Abe whispered. "In a cavern. It almost looked familiar. It was frightening." Then he caught himself, quickly adding, "Please don't tell Liz I said that. Or Hellboy."

"It stays between us," Kate said, though the confession broke her heart. She couldn't remember Abe ever looking, or sounding, so vulnerable. "Now get some sleep. We'll make sense of this once you're back on your feet."

Abe made a sound that could have been a moan, or an acknowledgement, and his eyes slid shut. Kate couldn't help it; she took the hand that rested limply against his stomach, lacing her fingers around his. The hand was cold; she cupped her other hand against her lips, gently blowing warm air into it, and pressed her palm against his cold fingers. Wishing, with all her might, that she could heal him on the inside just as easily.

Abe stirred again, and those bright blue eyes opened, focused on her immediately. "Kate..." His lips worked a few times before he could speak; though Kate quickly realized he wasn't struggling to speak, but hesitating on the cusp of a question. "I need to ask a favour."

"Of course, Abe. Anything."

"When I'm recovered... I'm going to need some help. Finding some answers. Would you be willing...?"

"Of course," she said. There. She couldn't fight his demons, but this she could do, and she felt honoured he had entrusted her with the request. "Of course I will. We'll do some research, go wherever we need to—we'll find you some answers, I promise. We'll do it together."

Her answer seemed to bring him a measure of calm. He closed his eyes, managing a faint, "Thank you."

Kate held his hand tightly, and watched as he fell asleep once more. "Any time," she whispered.

End