Author's Note: So, this idea just came to me, and I had to write it down. For those of you who follow my other stories; I know this isn't Recovering or the sequel to Twice Cursed. I will get to those eventually, but I've had this one written for a while and I decided I might as well post it. I hope you enjoy.

Ruby closed up the diner, and started on her way to the new apartment she'd gotten. She had wanted to become more independent, and the first natural step had been to live under a different roof than Granny. Although, on days like today, when the snow was falling fast and the wind cut through her several layers of clothing, she wished she hadn't moved out.

She almost missed it, and the thought of what would have happened if she had would often trouble her in the future. She saw a muted red through the sea of white, which she would have ignored if it wasn't the exact shade of red as his hair. It only took her about a few seconds to realize that it was his hair, and the rest of him with it. Archie was lying in the snow, missing his winter coat, his tweed jacket, and his sweater vest. His dress shirt was all he was wearing to protect his torso from the cold, and it was soaked with melted snow, and … blood.

Ruby felt a sense of Deja vu as she ran up to him, kneeling down and feeling for a pulse. Unlike the time when Cora had pretended to kill him, she could feel a pulse, but it was faint and fluttering. She immediately pulled off her coat and rapped it around him, before picking him up. Since it was just after full moon, she had no problem supporting his weight as she still had some of the wolf's strenght. She carried him toward her apartment, which was closer than his house, the diner, or the hospital.

It seemed to take forever, but soon they'd entered her abode. She lay him down on the couch, threw a blanket over him, and called Whale. She could really use a medical professional's help on this one.

"Hello, this is Dr. Whale. How can I …"

"Victor! You have to hurry, Archie's hurt! We're at my apartment, and I think it's pretty bad."

He was silent for a second before responding. "I'm sorry Ruby, but I don't think I can get to you before the blizzard hits. I can talk you through helping him, though."

"Blizzard?" Truthfully, she remembered hearing something about the snowstorm on the news, but she hadn't really paid much attention to it. Maybe she should have.

"Yeah, so what happened?" Victor asked, obviously wanting to start treating Archie as soon as possible.

"So I found …" Beep! Darn phone, cutting her off! She glared at it, but that didn't change the fact that it still had 56% of its battery. The storm, not her phone, was what was cutting her off from talking to Whale. "Darn it!" she yelled, resisting the urge to throw her phone across the room.

"Ruby?" If she didn't have the hearing of a wolf, she wouldn't have heard Archie. He was so quiet, and while he normally spoke softly, this was closer to silence than to noise.

"Archie!" She rushed over to him, and then had absolutely no idea what to do. He looked terribly pale, and weak, and Ruby wished she was hunting down those who hurt him instead of trying to nurse him back to health, because she'd be so much better at that. "You cold? Wait, that's a stupid question, you're shivering." She left and came back almost instantly with about ten blankets from her closet.

"Ruby, they shot me." She froze as she was about to lay the fifth one on top of him. Sure, it was obvious someone had done this on purpose, since he was missing several layers of clothing and his shirt was bloodstained. But still, she hadn't been ready for this. To hear that someone had purposely shot him in the chest and left him out in the cold to die. "You need to … look at it." He couldn't even finish a sentence without wheezing in the middle of it. Surely that was a bad sign. Then again, she wasn't expecting a good signs any time soon.

"Archie, I'm a waitress, not a doctor. I have no idea …" she trailed off as he chuckled weakly, for no apparent reason. "I can't heal you," she finished, deciding to ask him why he'd laughed if they made it through this.

"Whale …"

"Can't get to us because of a blizzard." She watched his face fall with the realization that they were alone. He was dying from an injury with no doctor to help him. She couldn't save him, and he was going to die. She denied her tears the right to flow down her face, she needed to be strong right now, for him.

"I'll talk you through."

"Wait, you're going to talk me through treating a bullet wound? This isn't the best time for medical school, Archie."

"Everyone has to … start somewhere." He squinted up at her, he must have lost his glasses at some point, and Ruby could almost see the light slowly fleeing his eyes.

"Okay." She peeled back the layers of warmth she'd just covered him with, just taking a second to turn up the thermostat. 90 degrees was probably a bit high, but she didn't care; not when he was still shivering. She needed to warm him up, not matter the cost. When she got to his shirt, she tried not to blush as she unbuttoned it. Luckily, that thought was only in her head for a second, until she could clearly see the wound. Then, she was red from anger and not embarrassment.

"Okay, the bullet's still in," he informed her.

"Great," she commented sarcastically. Extracting a bullet couldn't be that hard, right? At least, not if it was anything like getting an arrow out of a wound, because she'd actually seen someone do that before, although she knew it was probably nothing like that.

"Actually, yeah. It stopped … the blood flow."

"Okay, so if the bullet's helping you, why don't we just leave it in your chest?" Before he could answer, his teeth started to chatter. She was going to have to do this as quickly as possible, so the cold didn't get to him.

"Le-leave it in. We don't need ttto get itt out." Alright, so that was something good, at least. "I need pres-pressure on it."

"Okay, so, I'm going to start with a first aid kit, and try to bandage it up. Sound good?" He nodded, so she ran off and got it. Soon, she was dabbing some of the blood away with gauze, and trying not to think about how likely it was for him to survive. Then, he talked her through bandaging him so there would be enough pressure on the wound to stem the blood flow. Finally, they were done.

"Now, the co-cold," he stammered. "You have t-to get me out o-of these wet clo-clothes." He had to be kidding her, but the look on his face said otherwise. "I need help. Ca-can't move. It hu-hurts too much."

Ruby pulled off the blankets that were still covering his legs, and attempted to take off his clothes without looking at his body, a very difficult feat. She knew they were soaked, and not helping him recover from the cold, and that she was stripping him for purely medical purposes, but she was still struggling not to blush as she did it. At least if he noticed, she could blame it on the heat. She was sweating from the increasing temperature, but he was still shivering like crazy.

As soon as the clothes were off, she dried both him and the couch off, before covering him in blankets. She piled them on until he stopped shivering, and then slumped into her recliner. Worry was still eating away at her, despite the fact that she'd done everything she could for him. Well, that wasn't quite true.

Ruby went into the kitchen, getting a glass of water and Tylenol, the strongest pain killer she had in the apartment. Of course, it wouldn't do much to relieve the pain he'd received from the bullet, but perhaps it could help a little.

By the time she got back to the kitchen, he'd fallen asleep. At almost every breath, Archie's face would twitch due to the pain in his chest. Just staying alive caused him pain. Ruby set, or more like slammed, the glass of water onto the table. How could someone do this to him?

"Ruby?" he whispered weakly. Darn it, she'd woken him up.

"Hey, Archie, I've got some Tylenol." She didn't need to mention that she'd caused the noise because she was furious. At least, not until he had some medicine in him.

"Great, give me four pills," he recommended. She helped him sit up enough to take the medicine, trying to ignore that her arm was touching his bare back. She laid him back down as soon as he was done. "Thank you." His voice was starting to sound stronger as the blankets and hot temperature of the room fought off the cold.

"You're welcome," she said out of habit, before realizing that he really shouldn't be thanking her. Any decent person would have saved his life. Speaking of, she really needed to figure out what had happened to him. "Archie, you need to tell me who did this." His face became instantly hard, and she saw an expression that he didn't normally show; anger.

"You'd think I was crazy."

"Seriously Archie? After everything I've seen, I doubt I'll find anything you say crazy."

He sighed deeply, but it turned into a groan of pain as he agitated the wound. "It was Blue." Ruby resisted the urge to check him for a fever, but it was hard. After just telling him that she wouldn't think he was crazy, he told her that the Blue Fairy, the purest magician anyone had ever met, had shot him with a gun and left him to freeze to death or bleed out on the street. Well, he'd been right, because she was starting to think the blood loss had made him hallucinate.

"So, the Blue Fairy shot you with a gun?"

"No. She told two guys I didn't recognize to shoot me with a gun."

"And they told you she ordered it," she said, feeling a bit relieved. He hadn't been hallucinating, he'd just trusted his murderers a bit too much. Thank goodness he wasn't …

"No. I walked in on her talking about casting a curse with them, and when she saw me, she told them to kill me." Okay, so much for that.

"Alright." She had to at least consider the possibility that Blue had done this, because it would be foolish not to, and she didn't want to upset him. "So, why would Blue want to cast a curse?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "She didn't say." The room lapsed into silence as Ruby thought, which was difficult for her to do in the heat.

Finally, unable to come up with a reason the Blue Fairy would want to curse everyone, and fed up with the heat, she stood. "Mind if I turn the air down a little?" He didn't respond, and Ruby realized he'd fallen back asleep. She sighed, turning the thermostat back to a more reasonable temperature and compensating by throwing two more blankets onto Archie. And then, she couldn't help herself. She gently reached her hand out to feel his forehead. Just because she should consider that he might be right didn't mean she shouldn't also consider the possibility that he was wrong. Sure enough, the second she touched his head, she could tell he was burning up. Now, on top of battling the cold and a bullet wound, he was going to have to contend with an illness. She really wished she had the people who'd done this to him right in front of her, so she could tear them limb from limb. Of course, that would be impossible, because she didn't even know for sure who'd hurt him so badly.

…

Victor sat at his desk, wondering why he hadn't fled the hospital when he could. But he knew why, and he would have done the same thing every time. His patients needed him, and no matter how much he wanted to be at home, snuggled under blankets and watching a movie, he was a responsible man. Or, at least, he tried to be.

"Dr. Whale?" He looked up, hoping it was the nurse he'd put in charge of finding beds for everyone who was stuck in the hospital, but not an actual patient. He was really ready to get some shut eye.

"Mother Superior? How can I help you?" he asked. Honestly, he'd never really talked with the fairy before, and had no idea she was in the hospital with them. Then again, she could teleport, so perhaps she'd just come to check up on everyone.

"I was looking for Dr. Hopper. I can't seem to find him anywhere." Ah, Dr. Hopper. He'd known the fairy and psychiatrist new each other. Before he could inform her that Archie was at Ruby's apartment, she continued. "He'd not at his house, or any of his friends. I'm afraid he was caught out in the blizzard. It would be absolutely terrible if he was."

Whale froze. She sounded worried and completely sincere, but there was a look in her eyes he didn't trust. It was almost as if she wanted Archie to be stuck out in a blizzard. "Yes, let's hope he's somewhere safe."

"So he'd not here, then?" Victor shook his head, and she sighed. "There's no way for me to find him in this blizzard. There's nothing we can do."

"Yes, hopefully he managed to make it indoors."

"Yes, indeed." She looked at him a bit strangely before walking out of his office. Almost like she was trying to see if he knew something.

"Dr. Whale." This time it was a nurse, and she was looking a bit uncomfortable.

"Yes?"

"Mother Superior just searched the whole hospital, before she came in to talk to you. Do you know what's going on?" She'd looked for Archie before asking him about it. Something was certainly wrong.

"I don't know, but I need someone to monitor the cell service, and tell me the second it's back up. I want to be ready for when I get flooded with calls."

"Yes, Doctor." Then, she left, and he sat back in his chair, mind whirling. There was something suspicious going on between Blue and Archie, and he needed to warn Ruby as soon as cell service was back up. Blue would have told him if Archie was up to something evil, which could only mean she was the villain in this. Blue, a villain. Who would believe that?

No one, was the answer to his rhetorical question. No one would believe it, so he'd have to figure out a way to thwart her on his own. The best way would be to make her think Archie was dead, but …

A small smile spread across his face. He'd been wanting to make a fake corpse for a while now, like they did sometimes in books he read. Now, he'd get a chance to, and hopefully save Dr. Hopper's life. If Ruby could just keep him alive until the blizzard was over and Victor could get there, they'd be well on their way to stopping whatever the fairy was up to. Finally, he was getting a chance to combat evil, and it felt glorious.