He cringed at the sound of her pain being vocalised, wishing he could do something more about it than simply stand by and wait for the inevitable to unfold. That was an impossible ask, however, and so he merely watched her, numbing himself as best he could (for he intended to touch that painful area didn\'t he, and that wouldn\'t exactly have her singing with joy would it?). He tilted his head when she began to speak, hesitated and then talked about the soap.
Her words were delivered smoothly enough and he didn\'t question them, turning to look where she believed the soap to be. Once he had it in hand, he walked back to the tub and knelt by her, looking seriously into her eyes. "That should be long enough for the tunic to be soaked through, don\'t you think? I\'ll take it from you." It was a statement that didn\'t brook argument - though if, at the first tug, there was resistance to the cloth coming loose from her flesh at all, he would let it sit a while longer and allow her to have the soap to wash the rest of her. He wasn\'t a monster, but he wanted to be sure she wasn\'t going to be getting sick from the wounds, either, so the sooner he could see what he was dealing with, the better he\'d feel.
When the shirt finally was removed, Freddy took the bloody, dripping thing and walked it hastily to the nearby washing tub, then he returned to her side. She was hunched forward, allowing him a clear view of the topmost strap marks, and what he saw caused him to gasp again. He cursed himself with a very subtle, "Shit, sorry," as soon as he did, knowing he wouldn\'t be offering her any sort of decent reassurance by reacting to her cuts like that, but he couldn\'t help it. It was horrific and the thought of a woman inflicting this damage was just... well, it didn\'t bear thinking on, that was for sure.
Clearing his throat with a mixture of embarrassment and awkwardness, he knelt by the tub once more and held out his hand for the soap. Most of his attention was focussed on the cuts, though, for he was trying to figure out just how he\'d be able to clean them properly without touching them. It would take a lots of patient sluicing as far as he could tell, but he had the time and there was still more water on the stove boiling, so that he could top the bath up when it started to go cold.
"It all looks quite red - there\'s some yellow gunk in the middle of a few of the cuts," he murmured, commentating for her benefit while he looked the wounds over. "Hopefully this will wash that away and stop it all from getting worse. I can\'t see everything clearly yet because there\'s some caked blood I\'ll try and get off but... I\'ll be honest, I don\'t want to touch you because it\'ll hurt too bad. I\'ll do my best but... we may just have to settle for lots of soapy water running over it all and another couple of baths tomorrow to get it all clean, okay?"
As he finished speaking, he leaned around to look her in the eye at last, a frown of concern upon his face showing how intimidated he was by this whole process. The thought of her enduring it left him pale. No matter what he did, it was going to hurt, but he would do his best to keep the pain to a minimum. He would try with his hand - and make contact around the lashes - but he anticipated he\'d soon be getting up to retrieve a cup to pour soapy water over her. That would hurt (of course), but it would also dislodge anything nasty more efficiently than him simply splashing at her would.
He really hoped she didn\'t end up hating him after this.