Thesis defended, and I need to write 6 more chapters until the first draft is complete so I can start posting every day. I'm glad you like the idea for this story, and I hope you're going to like the rest of it too; there's a lot of angst, but later there's also a lot of fluff, so I hope it all balances out. Thank you for reading, reviewing and following, and enjoy.


Emma gets to the hospital and the nurse behind the desk tells her that Killian was attacked and left for dead in some back alley, but he had managed to call for help before he lost consciousness.

"Why is he in surgery?" Emma asks, gripping the edge of the desk because her head is suddenly spinning and the last thing she wants to do is fall flat on her face.

"Whoever attacked him beat him up pretty bad; he's got a few broken ribs and he's going to need quite a few stitches, but the worst of his injuries almost made him bleed out", the nurse says and Emma sways on her feet. She can't quite wrap her head around the fact that Killian could've died tonight while she was crying over Neal like some stupid teenager. "You should sit down."

"I don't want to sit down", Emma snaps, taking a few deep breaths and unconsciously rubbing her stomach. "I just need to know what happened to him."

"They cut off his hand", the nurse says bluntly and Emma just looks at her, completely sure that she either heard wrong or all this is just a bad dream. "I'm sorry. Is he your boyfriend?"

"He's my best friend", Emma says faintly, still unable to believe that this is really happening. She remembers the way Killian had smiled before class yesterday, how he brushed off her warnings about Gold because he was on top of the world and he had believed Gold could never hurt him.

Obviously he could, and even if he wasn't there personally, he made sure to do the worst thing imaginable to Killian.

"He's a pianist", Emma tells the nurse and her expression softens with compassion, but Emma doesn't have time to stick around because her stomach lurches and she runs to the bathroom, throwing up and sliding down against the door until she's sitting on the floor.

She wants to wake up, or go back in time and do yesterday completely different, save Killian and save her heart from breaking, but since she can't do either she hugs her knees to her chest and rests her temple on the cool tiles, her face crumpling because while her future is uncertain, Killian is never going to perform again.

It's so unfair that everything can be taken from you in a blink of an eye, and you can't do anything about it because you never even saw it coming.


As soon as she comes out from the bathroom two policemen corner her and ask her a lot of questions she doesn't have the answers to. They seem to think that Killian had gotten tangled with some bad people and that they cut off his hand as a warning, and Emma just stares at them, wishing they would leave her alone.

Yes, Killian got tangled with a bad person, but she can't tell them that without talking to him first, because she knows him, knows that he's going to try to shield Milah from any kind of blowback despite the fact that his affair with her had cost him his hand.

There's no doubt in Emma's mind that Gold is the one responsible for what had happened to Killian tonight, but she's also fairly certain that proving it is probably going to be impossible.

And so she tells the police that the last time she had seen Killian was before the show, and that she hadn't spoken to him since then, despite calling his cell phone a dozen times after midnight.

"And why were you calling him?" The shorter cop asks her and Emma raises her eyebrows in confusion.

"How is that relevant?"

"If you want us to find whoever did this to your friend…" The taller one trails off and Emma sighs, telling them that she found out she was pregnant a few hours before her boyfriend told her that he's leaving, and Killian was the only person she can always count on.

She's crying again and the nurse behind the desk comes to her rescue, sends the cops away and leads her to the waiting room next to the OR.

"You should eat something", the nurse says and points to a vending machine and Emma nods unenthusiastically because the very thought of eating anything is making her sick again.

"How long until I can see him?" She asks the nurse, finding a handkerchief in her purse and wiping off her runny mascara. Her eyes are puffy and red from all the crying and her hair is a mess, but she doesn't care about anything except seeing Killian and making sure that he's not going to die on her and leave her all alone.

"It shouldn't be too long. I'll come get you as soon as the doctor comes out", the nurse tells her and Emma nods, hunting in her purse for spare change. She doesn't want to eat, but there's a baby growing inside her and she knows she has to.

It's only when she bites into an incredibly unhealthy chocolate bar that it finally hits her what's going to happen soon; she's going to get fat, and she won't be able to dance for months.

Emma's face crumples again but she eats the bar, telling herself that she is not the first ballerina to get pregnant, and that a lot of them come back to ballet, sometimes even after less than six months after having their baby.

But you're not them, a nasty voice at the back of her mind tells her, you're not some prima ballerina assoluta, you're just a principal is a ballet company that's no different from dozens of other companies in the United States, that doesn't stand out in any way.

You don't stand out in any way.

Emma is having the worst day of her life, but it's enough for her to look around and realize that Killian's day is worse and that no matter how much she needs him, he needs her more. She forces herself to take a few deep breaths and somehow stops panicking about her future, but that only makes her panic about his.

The day he strolled into class and sat behind the piano is still so clear in Emma's mind, how all the other ballerinas were doing their best to impress him, to jump higher and turn with more grace, to do more fouettes than ever before, but every time Emma glanced at Killian, his eyes were only on her. She was already dating Neal back then, but that day she had danced only for Killian, and when he came to introduce himself after class she even flirted with him.

Until Neal had noticed and came to stand behind her, wrapping his arm around her waist possessively and basically telling Killian to leave her alone.

"I think Emma can speak for herself", Killian had told him, winking at her and leaving her to talk Neal's ear off for behaving like a jealous caveman.

Killian had never tried to make a real pass at her and soon after he joined the orchestra they've become friends because they just understood each other well, and not even Neal's huffing could make her stop hanging out with him. When she looks back now she realizes that Killian had always been there for her, even after he had started to sneak around with Milah, and he's the only person in her life who had never let her down.

She's dreading the future, and she feels like somebody is punching her in her gut when she tries to imagine him waking up and realizing that his hand is gone and that the music that he had always loved more than anything else is lost to him.

Emma eats another chocolate bar and tells herself that he's going to be okay eventually because she's not going to let him deal with it alone, hoping that he's going to want to do the same for her.


The dawn is breaking over the city's skyline when Killian finally comes out of surgery and a different nurse comes to get Emma so she can talk to his doctor.

"You're the girlfriend?" The doctor asks, shaking her hand and leading her down the hallway to the recovery room.

"Yes", Emma says because she's not in the mood for clarifying their relationship right now; she's so tired that her eyes keep closing, but since coffee is out of the question she just soldiers on.

"He's young and strong so he's going to be okay. I patched up his ruptured spleen and shaped the stump; he can get a prosthetic in a few weeks. He was a pianist?" The doctor asks offhandedly and Emma winces at the fact that he's already using past tense, then tells herself that he's just calling it how it is; Killian is not a pianist anymore.

They reach his room and she blinks away tears when she sees him, but they just keep coming until her vision is blurry and she can't see anything anymore.

"You can go in, but just for a few minutes", the doctor tells her and gives her an encouraging smile, so Emma wipes her face and sniffs before opening the door and crossing the room to Killian's bed.

There are no chairs in this room and she doesn't want to jostle him so she remains standing, her eyes taking in all the bruises on his face; his right eye is swollen and the stitches beneath it are going to leave a scar. Emma wants to look away but she can't because she doesn't want to see his worst injury, so she catalogues every cut on his face until she can see them all when she closes her eyes, her hand finding his and gently squeezing his fingers.

And then she finally looks past the bandages around his chest and down his left arm to find it ending abruptly a little above the place where his wrist should be. Her thumb is rubbing endless circles on his other hand, on his only hand, her eyes going back to his face as she bites the inside of her mouth because she doesn't want to cry in front of him even if he's still unconscious.

"You're going to be okay", Emma tells him softly, wishing she could shield him from all the pain he's going to feel once he wakes up, wishing that she had done so many things differently, but most of all, wishing he could wake up long enough to tell her that she's going to be okay too because they are going to get through everything together.

"Let's leave him to rest now, shall we", the doctor says and Emma nods, then leans down and presses her lips against the top of Killian's head because his face is too battered.

A tear escapes her and falls on his nose, sliding down his cheek and disappearing into his scruff, and it's the moment Emma's heart breaks all over again, and she realizes that seeing him like this hurts her more than Neal's abandonment.

"When is he going to wake up?" Emma asks the doctor and glances at Killian one last time before exiting his room, wiping her face and telling herself to stop crying already because her tears are not helping anybody.

"Not before lunch. Go home and rest a little, and then you can come back to see him again", the doctor tells her and walks away, whistling to himself and making her want to punch something.

Since there's nothing she can do here, Emma goes back to Killian's apartment and takes a long shower, puts on the first shirt she finds in Killian's closet, eats cereals and collapses on the couch, setting her alarm clock for noon because she needs to be there when Killian wakes up, needs to be there for him even though there's nothing she can say or do that would make him hurt less.


Less than three hours later Neal's ringtone wakes her up, but she just declines his call because he's the last person she wants to talk to. He tries a few more times, then sends her a text in which he asks her when is she going to come pick up her stuff. The phone slips from her fingers and lands on the floor and Emma just sits there, staring at Killian's piano and wishing he were here to tell her that Neal isn't worth it.

It still hurts so much that he doesn't even try to get her back, that he doesn't even attempt to make her forgive him and come with him to Canada, and his only concern is when she's going to collect her things from his apartment. For a moment she wonders if she should tell him about the baby, if maybe that would make him stay, but then she realizes that she doesn't want him to stay because he thinks he has to; she wants him to stay because he wants to, because he needs to be with her.

The way he's behaving is making her start to revaluate their entire relationship and she doesn't like how it looks in hindsight.

Since it's almost noon anyway, Emma gets up and fixes herself a snack, then calls Milah to see if she knows what had happened. They never liked each other much, but Killian cares about her and he's going to need her; she's got a perfect reason to leave Gold for what he'd done to Killian, but Emma doubts she's going to do it.

Milah picks up and when Emma tells her that Killian is in a hospital because her husband had paid somebody to beat the shit out of him, Milah pretends to be surprised, but she is way too calm, which makes Emma realize that Gold had told her already.

"Go to the police. Tell them what you know", Emma says and Milah laughs bitterly, her voice breaking a little when she speaks.

"My husband knows influential people, and even if he didn't, you just saw for yourself what he did to Killian; do you honestly think I'd risk my life for him?"

"He would do it for you", Emma says through gritted teeth, he grip on her phone tightening the way she wishes it could tighten around Milah's unnaturally long neck.

"Then he's a fool. I made it pretty clear that we're just having fun."

Emma sees red and slams her fist on the kitchen counter, her voice rising with every word she spits into the receiver.

"That man just lost his hand because of you, and you're not going to do anything?! You have no soul."

"Tell him I'm sorry", Milah says and hangs up on her, and Emma walks to the couch, takes one of the cushions she made Killian buy last year and screams into it until she's blue in the face.

She doesn't feel any better.

Twenty minutes later she's dressed in the same dress she had worn last night and on her way back to the hospital, back to Killian.

Just like she doesn't have anybody but him, he doesn't have anybody but her, only he doesn't know it yet.


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