Chapter 10

He's been shot.

That's exactly what his detective, Locksley, had said when ten o'clock rolled around. Jones was two hours late for their date and Emma had broken her standard operating procedure of never chasing a man. She called Killian ready to eviscerate him with a speech she had been rehearsing since eight-thirty but a vaguely familiar voice answered instead.

"Sheriff Swan? It's Robin Locksley."

"Oh. Hello, detective." Emma had cursed herself, hoping she sounded less awkward than she felt and significantly more professional. All of the piss, vinegar and scathing retort was put on hold, replaced by no small amount of embarrassment at being caught calling a colleague (of sorts) after hours. "I was hoping to speak with Captain Jones."

"He's…Emma, he's been shot." Robin was giving her a rundown over the phone as she grabbed her bag and slipped on the pair of fuck me pumps she'd bought for a night out with a skip years before. They went well with the skintight red dress she'd also bought for the same occasion and hadn't considered wearing again until she decided she wanted nothing more than to watch Killian Jones' jaw drop when she opened her front door for their first date. In another time and place, she'd be giving herself a little pat on the back for having the ability to break into a dead run out to her car wearing both. ."…taking fire and he was hit trying to move an injured officer outside the perimeter for medical attention."

Her head swam.

There was more. Something about a nicked carotid artery, surgery, still unconscious. When she'd hung up the phone, it had been Emma's turn to break every speed limit between Storybrooke and Bangor. No slick, racy motorcycle or new(er) truck for her; just a Volkswagen Bug whose steering column had one hell of a shimmy over fifty-five miles per hour, a lead foot, and desperate a need to see Killian for herself.

Never one to use her badge for personal gain – not for cutting in line at Starbucks or even getting out of paying a hefty fine for her parking snafu the other week – she'd flashed it to gain access to Killian's room. The pretty, young nurse gave her outfit a judgy once-over, but Emma didn't stop to flash the woman her patented resting bitchface treatment. If she had a back-up superpower to the lying thing, it would definitely be shutting down petty women, pushy men and evasive suspects during interviews with a single blistering glare. Emma rushed into the room, stopping short at the sight of him in the narrow hospital bed. An involuntary gasp came out of her mouth, and she clapped her hands over it, doing her best to hold back tears as Robin stood. He crossed the room, warm hands on her chilled upper arms. In her rush, Emma hadn't bothered slipping on a coat.

"Thank you for coming."

"I…he…we…" The tears fell over and Robin nodded sympathetically, handing her the tissue he had wadded in his hand.

"I know. Will and I tricked it out of him, so don't go punishing him for kissing and telling when he wakes up."

WHEN. The word held both promise and hope, and Emma clung to it.

Once Robin was gone, she stood by Killian's bedside. He looked fucking awful; a mess of electrode pads, tubes, and IVs. The neat, white bandage on his neck was the most innocuous part of his current state if she ignored the fact it was there because he'd been shot. She was afraid to touch him, to hold his hand with the IV tubes taped to it. She'd settled for brushing his hair back and leaning over, careful to not disturb anything as she pressed her mouth to his. Tears fell from her face onto his before she stood watching. The fleeting hope they were living in a fairy tale and her kiss would magically wake him was silly, but she waited a moment anyway.

Pulling the chair Robin had abandoned even closer to the bed, Emma waited, eventually drifting off after the third time a nurse came in to check his vitals.

"Hello, beautiful."

The voice was gravelly and strained, somehow both pinched with pain and soothed by morphine. Emma startled in the hard visitor's chair and blinked the remnants of a fitful sleep stacked on top of hours of ugly crying from her eyes. Just speaking made Killian cough and she reached for a hospital-issue plastic cup. She had been filling it with ice every hour, determined to have some on hand if (no, when) he woke. Thanks to her nap, all Emma could offer him now was a sip of room temperature water, holding the straw as he took a sip and licked chapped lips.

"I believe I'll have to postpone our date." She chortled. Killian moved his fingers, motioning Emma to sit and when she did, he brushed the backs of them against the red fabric covering her backside. "It's a damn shame, too. This is quite fetching. Did you wear it for me?"

"Hell, no. I wore it for someone who isn't out there angling to win Dead Guy of the Year. But you should see the shoes. I'm sure the next man who asks me out AND bothers to show up instead of going to all this," she gestured to the situation as a whole, "To get out of it will appreciate them as much as you would have.

His chuckle was almost completely devoid of humor– a feat for someone who she'd come to know as someone who found damn near everything funny – and winced.

"Damn, that hurts."

Emma wasted no time pushing the call button for the nurse. The responder turned out to be the same woman who'd side-eyed Emma's dress and shoes all those hours ago, and she didn't hesitate to oversell her bedside manner, telling Killian how amazing he looked for a gunshot victim and fawning over his heroics as she caressed his chest just a little too intimately as she checked on his TEN patches. For his part, Killian played up his natural state of giant flirt - shooting a teeth-grinding Emma a wink - right up until the nurse put no small spin on her offer to provide him with anything he needs during his stay.

"I'm sure that won't be necessary, lass. My girlfriend here does an excellent job tending to my…needs."

The nurse – her name badge read Tink and Emma could barely hold in the audible scoff - finished her actual job, told Killian she would inform his surgeon he was awake. She huffed out of the room without so much as a glance toward Emma and she sat back down on the minute space the narrow bed allowed.

"Girlfriend, huh?" Elation at the title and all of its possibilities mixed with a good, old-fashioned influx of underarm sweat and her natural scent of eau de forever alone. Emma could barely stand to be inside her own head when her brain pulled this sort of shit. She was about to barf out an answer when Killian sighed.

"Still not a proposal, Swan. Merely an abstract wish made by a man who was nearly shuffled loose this mortal coil to join the Underworld as the right hand of Hades. And a concrete way to piss off the Lady Bell of the cold fingertips and absence of class or manners." His tongue poked out. "Although I wouldn't say no to you dressing up in a nurse's outfit and –" Whatever salacious suggestion he was about to make was interrupted by Will and all of his herky jerky energy walking through the doorway, hitting his shoulder on the jamb.

"Captain, we overheard a nurse saying you'd woken up." He nodded toward Emma and stood, twisting his fingers. "I'm so sorry, man. If I hadn't dropped his feet, you never would have…This is all my fault."

Emma got up and went to Will, putting an arm around his shoulder. She led him to the chair near the bed, guiding him down onto the seat. She couldn't imagine how he felt, and knew that no matter what anyone said, he'd feel responsible. Killian, years in command under his belt, most likely knew the same but didn't let him stop from trying.

"I don't want to hear it. We all go out there every day not knowing what's going to happen. There are far too many variables out there, mate. But he's the asshole, Will. Remember that." Emma saw him swallow hard. "Rogers?"

Will was sitting hunched with his head in his hands, palms wet from crying. He shook it. "Didn't make it." Killian's eyes closed and she could see him fighting back his own tears. "By the time we got you both out, he was in a really bad way. The medics had him and tried to re-inflate his lung but it had already compressed blood vessels and everything else. They pronounced him DOA when he got here."

Emma touched Will's arm and walked around the foot of the bed to take Killian's hand. Nobody in Storybrooke had died from anything other than natural causes or illness during her tenure as Sheriff. She'd done a handful of notifications to family alongside Dr. Hopper, but she had never experienced getting seriously injured in the line of duty or losing one of her officers. Killian was handed a shit sandwich piled high with both at once.

She sat listening as the two men talked about Rogers. He was twenty-three and newly engaged to a girl he had always sworn he'd loved all of his life. A comic book and superhero aficionado, he had joined the Bangor PD "to make a difference and do the right thing by its citizens, sir" as he'd told Killian during his interview. Eager and hardworking, Rogers had taken a fair rash of shit as a rookie, but he'd had a significant amount of potential and ambition, going so far as telling his Killian once that his goal was to wear Captain bars someday.

For two hours, they laughed and cried over their fallen comrade before Will received a text and said he had to go. Emma kissed Killian's forehead and told him to try and rest; that she was going to head down to the vending machines to see if she could score a cup of coffee – fingers crossed it's less shitty than that crap at the motel you loved so much, Jones – and followed Will into the hallway, a twinge of guilt over her half-truth.

"How's the investigation going?" Emma didn't even have to preface her question with any niceties. She knew Will was expecting it.

"Believe me when I say nobody's sleeping until we find who did this. Chief Hunter has every single pair of boots in the department on the front line. He's been calling in favors up and down the state. Robin just sent a text with the latest out of Ballistics." He looked up and down the hallway, still deserted in the post-midnight hours, and pulled her further away from the door to Killian's room. "I'm going to ask you to keep something from him. I know it's unfair as hell and I don't want to screw up this thing you have going, but the Jones is already dealing with a lot of crap and he doesn't need anyone piling on. He's going to have a million questions we don't have answers for yet."

She nodded and switched from concerned maybe sorta girlfriend mode to cop mode. If there's anything at which Emma Swan excelled, it was compartmentalizing and she had a feeling she'd need to draw on all of her training and experience as an objective observer given Will's demeanor.

"We've already determined there was a single shooter. When they ran the ballistics from the bullets, it came back with a hit on an unsolved." Will's face hardened. "The firearm that wounded him yesterday killed his brother five years ago. Killian and Liam were shot with the same fucking gun."