A/N: Thank you all so very much for your wonderful reviews - they made me very happy to read!

Um, yeah... I'm not gonna ramble, but this chapter is mostly dialogue, and it's packed with some pretty intense emotions, so, uh...Consider yourself warned, I guess.

After I woke up, Anna got several nurses to come in and check my vitals and everything, and then she glued herself back to my bedside. Her hand didn't leave mine, and she looked, constantly, like she wanted to hug me, but she was holding herself back in respect for the hole in my chest.

"Alright, dear, everything looks to be in order. I must admit, we weren't expecting you to wake up so soon with the sort of damage your body sustained," a nurse said to me as she helped me sit up a little bit. "A doctor will be coming in shortly to explain the extent of your injuries to you, okay?"

I nodded, and she left without another word.

Anna's grip on my hand tightened and she scooted her armchair even closer. "How are you feeling?" she asked.

I groaned and closed my eyes. "I hate that question," I muttered.

The truth of the matter was that I felt like shit, quite frankly. I was a bit sluggish, and my chest hurt like hell. It also happened to hurt every time I breathed, and my back felt a little uncomfortable – singed?

Anna smiled sympathetically and ran her thumb over the back of my hand idly. "I know, I'm sorry. How about… Rate how you feel, on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the best and one being the worst. Keep in mind that, if you say ten, I'll know you're lying."

I gave a breathy laugh, and then winced at the pain it caused me. "How will you know?" I questioned teasingly.

"Because you got shot two days ago," she deadpanned.

"Irrelevant," I dismissed with a wave of my hand, grinning at the blank look she gave me. I swear, it sometimes felt like she knew me better than I knew myself. With a sigh, I cast my gaze up towards the ceiling. She wasn't going to take my deflection as a solid answer.

I could say I felt pretty good – maybe an eight or so, just to keep her from worrying more. Or I could tell the truth and tell her that I was at a solid four, maybe four and a half. She'd like it if I told the truth, but then she'd get more worried, and I suspected that she'd worried quite a bit over the past couple of days.

She really didn't look good. It wouldn't be a far stretch, I think, to say that she'd been practically living in that stiff blue armchair since the moment I was released from surgery. There were dark circles under her eyes, which were slightly red from tears that she had shed. Her skin was even a bit paler than normal.

I couldn't make her worry more. I couldn't put more burden on her or make her more upset. It already hurt that she had put herself into so much pain already for me – I couldn't make her wreck herself with even more concern. I just didn't want to lie to her anymore…

A middle ground. I needed a middle ground – somewhere I wasn't lying, but wasn't telling the whole truth, either. Luckily, I was very good at deflecting things I didn't want to face with the power of humor.

"Angelic," I sighed dramatically.

She furrowed her brow in confusion. "Angelic? You feel angelic? Does that mean, like, dead? Or very much alive? Where does that even fall on the one to ten scale?"

I glanced down at my chest, where I could see the edges of a bandage poking out underneath my thin hospital nightgown. I grinned while biting my lip cheekily as I slowly met her gaze again. "I'm hole-y," I explained.

She looked puzzled for a moment, and then the joke registered in her head and she lightly cuffed me over the head. "Alright, George," she teased. I knew she'd get my Harry Potter reference, after all. "It's 'saint-like', not 'angelic', you uncultured person," she added with a joking smirk.

"Maybe I just preferred 'angelic'," I said defensively.

"Whatever," she laughed. "I see you're apparently feeling well enough to subject everyone to your sense of humor."

"Always – drier than the Sahara desert and ten times as persistent," I chuckled, and then cocked my head to the side as a thought occurred to me. "Did you know that 'Sahara' means 'desert'? It's literally called the desert desert."

Anna raised an eyebrow, her lips twitching in amusement. "You're awfully talkative for someone whose heart stopped twice within the last couple of days," she pointed out with a grin.

"Guess I'm just happy to be alive, then," I tried to shrug, but the pain caused me to stop and let out a small hiss. There was immediately concern on Anna's face and I gave her a shaky smile to let her know I was okay.

Restless all of a sudden, I took my hand from hers and braced both underneath me, trying to push myself up into a straighter position in spite of the agony it put my chest through – even using my arms was painful, and maybe that would make sense to a doctor, but it certainly didn't to me.

Anna frowned and quickly placed her hands on my shoulders, trying to carefully push me back down onto the bed. "Are you crazy? You can't get up yet, Elsa. What do you think you're doing?"

I stopped and met her gaze. "I'm gonna walk it off," I said, which only seemed to frustrate her more.

"Elsa, you just had a bullet tear through your heart. Like, your actual, beating heart. This is not something you can just 'walk off'. This is the type of thing that's gonna keep you recovering for months."

"Months!?" I yelled indignantly, staring at her with my jaw dropped. "But I have a performance in just four weeks! I'm not gonna give this up, Anna."

"You can't perform like this," Anna argued.

"I won't – I'll have four weeks to recover first, don't worry. This is my dream role; I'm not gonna let a little piece of metal stop me from performing it."

She sighed and pushed me back down onto the bed. She took my hand again and began to once again rub the back of it with her thumb. "I know, Elsa, I know. The main thing I need you to focus on right now, though, is healing and getting better."

Our conversation was interrupted as the door to the hospital room opened and a man with a white coat on and a clipboard in his hand entered. He smiled warmly upon seeing me awake and functional.

"Hello, Miss Voll," he greeted me pleasantly. "My name is Dr. Cadbury. I have to admit, I was surprised when my nurse said you'd woken up so soon. May I ask how you're feeling?"

"You may not. I don't like that question," I answered defiantly. I didn't particularly like people in white coats who thought they knew everything when they didn't.

Anna blushed and tightened her grip on my hand. "Elsa! You can't say that sort of stuff!" she chastised.

"Why not?"

Dr. Cadbury, for his part, merely laughed at my rudeness. "That's quite alright. I imagine it's a question you get asked a lot nowadays, isn't it?"

"You have no idea," I rolled my eyes.

"She's feeling well enough to be her normal, sarcastic self if that's what you're asking," Anna explained to the doctor.

"I'm alive. I don't really know what more you want me to say. That's about as good as one can hope for after being shot through the heart, right?"

Dr. Cadbury nodded sympathetically and began flipping through his clipboard. "There are a few concerns we had. The bullet shattered your sternum, which is the long, flat bone that connects your ribs in the center of your chest, and then it ripped through your aorta. A person whose aorta is severed can die of blood loss within two minutes of the aorta being severed. The fact that you survived a full ten minutes before we were able to clamp it shut and staunch the blood flow is… Astounding. In my twenty years as a heart surgeon, I've only seen two other people survive a severed aorta, and in their cases, someone actually reached into their chest cavity and clamped it shut with their fingers, which your sister here said she did not do."

My head was swimming with all of the new information. I shook it, trying to comprehend everything he'd just said. "So, I shouldn't be alive?" I clarified.

"By all accounts, no. However, we did find something peculiar during the surgery…" He reached into the pocket of his coat and took out a small, clear container. Inside of it was two parts of a broken ring. "This was around the artery, holding it together. It seems to be made out of ice, but how it got there, and why it hasn't melted still, two days later, is beyond us."

I felt my breath quicken slightly and I sent a panicked glance at Anna, who looked unsettled by the information, as well. I'd had many irrational nightmares about top secret organizations wanting to exploit my magic. I mean, I'd seen enough media.

"Your body temperature was very low on top of that, and when we put you on a heating pad, your skin reacted badly, as if it had given you a minor sunburn. Your heart was also much colder than it should have been."

I met his gaze evenly, trying to control my breathing. "Okay," I forced out.

"Is this… Well, is this expected?"

"Yes."

Dr. Cadbury nodded and he looked confused still, but he didn't press with any further questions. "I… I assumed so. When your sister started screaming at us like a lunatic to remove the heating pad, it made a bit of sense – or, as much as it could, I suppose. I wanted you to know that I've stricken those particular details from the records."

I sighed in relief, closing my eyes and letting my head fall back against the pillow. I felt Anna readjust her grip on my hand in reassurance. "Thank you," I murmured. "I don't really… I don't want that getting out."

"I understand. Now, back to the matter of your injuries. It hurts to breathe, doesn't it?"

"…Yes."

Anna cast me a worried look. "You didn't tell me that," she stated in an almost accusatory tone.

I chewed on my lip anxiously, staring at Dr. Cadbury rather than meet Anna's gaze. Dr. Cadbury continued on. "That's because of your shattered sternum. Now, unfortunately, since the sternum is such a central part of your torso, it might hurt for you to move your arms, too."

"When can I leave?"

He looked taken aback by my question. "Although I wouldn't suggest you leave for at least a week or two so that your body can rest and heal, you're not technically a prisoner. You should be fully healed within three to six months, more if you strain yourself. Speaking of, your left ankle is sprained, and it doesn't look too recent."

"…Two weeks ago, right?" I sighed.

"That sounds about right, yes. How'd you sprain it?"

I avoided Anna's watchful, concerned gaze. "Moving my couch. I slipped or something, I don't know."

"Well, you certainly haven't been taking care of it if its current state is any indication. When you do end up being released, with a set of instructions for how to take care of your major injuries, we can also supply you with a set of crutches to keep some of the pressure off of your ankle."

"Er… no," I shook my head, smirking a little. "I'm not going to be using crutches."

"Elsa," Anna hissed, and then smiled to Dr. Cadbury. "She'll take care of it. I'll make sure."

Nodding in satisfaction, Dr. Cadbury excused himself and left the room, leaving me alone with Anna again. For some reason, I didn't feel as secure this time as I did before. It was something in the way that Anna was looking at me that caused me to keep my gaze away.

A wave of exhaustion washed over me and I rested my head against the pillows, closing my eyes. Anna didn't say anything, but I could sense the words brewing in her mind and the tension in the air. She normally didn't hesitate to say what was on her mind unless she was afraid of me, like she was back near when she first came back into my life, and I was unsure of a lot of things, but I was fairly certain that she wasn't afraid of me anymore.

There was still a small voice in my head that insisted that I needed to keep her away from me – I needed to protect her – but I was far too goddamn tired and confused and weak to even think about trying to push her away while I could still hardly even get up. Besides, what I had heard from Mama and Papa in my hallucination… There may have been some truth, some sense to it, more than I was willing to give credit for.

I heard Anna take a breath to speak, but then the door to the room swung open hard enough to hit the wall. My eyes snapped open, taking in the sight of Graham, his expression unreadable, fighting against a couple nurses that were trying to hold him back.

"Else, I came as soon as I heard you were awake," he told me, trying to shove off the nurses.

"Sir, ICU is for family only," a nurse argued.

I waved my hand dismissively. "It's alright, let him in."

The nurses glanced at me uncertainly, and then stepped back and left the room again.

"That was quite the entrance," Anna noted with a touch of humor.

Graham gave a short, breathy laugh as he stepped forward to the side of the bed, glancing at Anna briefly. "I have a flair for the dramatics, I suppose. Anna, you should go get something to eat."

She furrowed her brow in confusion, but it disappeared almost immediately. "I-I don't… I don't want to leave her," she admitted.

"Hello. Right here. Alive and awake still, thank you very much," I cut in with a roll of my eyes. "I'll be fine, Anna. Go get some food – when's the last time you've eaten?"

A blush crawled over her freckled cheeks and she mumbled some sort of excuse. She gave my hand a promising squeeze before getting up and hesitating in the doorway for a moment before shaking her head and leaving.

"So, uh, where's the gunshot wound?" Graham asked me in a weird tone of voice. "Which side, I mean?"

I eyed him curiously. "It's in the center, actually. Neither side."

"Oh, good, good…" he muttered. He ran his fingers over one of the extra pillows on the bed before abruptly taking it and whacking me over the head with it.

"Hey!" I cried out indignantly, feeling a spike of fear that the heart monitor easily picked up on.

"You fucking terrified me, Elsa!" he shouted, the pillow now held in front of him. His knuckles were practically white from how tightly he was holding it. "I thought you were this unstoppable, invincible force, and then you were being dragged through the hospital on this stretcher, and there was so much blood, and you were so fucking pale – like, way paler than normal, and your skin was like ice, and for the first time in the four years I've known you, you actually seemed mortal, and that was so fucking earth-shattering…"

I had my head dipped to avoid meeting his eyes for the entirety of his ranting, and when I finally did look at him, he had tears streaming down his face. I wasn't surprised to find my own cheeks wet as I stared at him shamefully, my shoulders hunched around me in spite of the pain it caused to my injury.

He dropped the pillow, and in a flash, he had rushed forward and wrapped surprisingly strong arms around me.

"Ow, ow, Graham – that's still sore," I argued weakly, and his grip loosened a little, but it didn't disappear completely.

"I thought I was going to lose you," he whispered into my hair. He finally pulled back and met my gaze intensely. "Even with the way you fucking flipped out a couple weeks ago, even with everything you've been doing to everyone, for whatever reason… I realized how much I didn't want to lose you. You're… God, you're the closest thing to a friend I have, Else."

My throat had turned raw and dry, and I swallowed hard to try to get rid of the lump in it. "But you… You have so many friends…" I managed.

"I have people that I know, yes. I wouldn't call a single one of them a friend, though. Not a single one of them knows the things you know about me. Not a single one of them has been there for me in the ways that you have. Even when you don't think you're doing things right, which is most of the time, just being there helps, and that's something you've always been able to provide, no matter what you've been going through. You mean so much more to people than you acknowledge. When your boss called me on your phone, I fucking lost it. I had been about to perform at a concert, but I dropped everything and came to the hospital. I couldn't lose you."

I bit my lip, my shoulders silently shaking at the raw emotion he was pouring out to me. Graham never talked about how he felt. Not like this. Not with the way his mother would beat him every time he said anything at all to her when he was little, before CPS took him away from her.

There were times, over the past few years, when he would call me in the middle of the night because he needed a distraction. I never pried, but he usually told me something about why by the time we were done talking. Nothing… Nothing this intense, though… He tried to remain factual. He'd say what happened, but he never opened up. He never let his emotions flow. That's what made the whole scenario so much more terrifying, because I knew that this wasn't something he could fake. This was real.

I couldn't find any words in my throat, so instead, I bore the pain it caused me and leaned forward to hug him. It was gentler than the one he had initiated, but still powerful. I realized that we'd never hugged before today. That seemed like a damn shame. I held him for a few minutes, any fear of accidentally freezing him having fled my mind.

"I'm sorry," I said, because I couldn't think of anything else to say.

He pulled back again, wiping furiously at his eyes. "It's okay," he murmured, and then sniffled. "It's okay. You're still alive. You're still here. Somehow, even though a bullet went through one of your major arteries, you're still alive." He shot me a cheeky sort of grin. "I suppose you really are invincible, aren't you?"

"Oh no, you've discovered my secret," I returned playfully.

We were quiet for a moment, no longer looking at each other. I let my gaze rest on my hands, which were folded neatly in my lap again, and his wandered around the room. He sighed. "I don't really believe it, by the way."

"Hm? Believe what?"

"That you're immortal. Sometimes, I think you're the most human person on this planet."

I gave a small grunt, feeling myself close back up. "You take that back," I demanded, but it lacked any sort of severity. He merely grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze before changing the subject again.

"I've talked to all of your professors and gotten any work from the last couple days. Any online assignments have been extended for you, and I got notes and slides from the lectures you've missed. They were all very understanding about your absence, of course."

"I'd hope I'd have a good enough excuse. What's the saying? 'Unless you're on your deathbed'?" I joked.

He chuckled, looking at me again with a soft smile. "Yeah. Something like that. Of course, it was a little surprising, since in the school of music, our motto is 'walk it off – you've got classes to attend' but hey, let's not look a gift horse in the mouth, right?"

"I tried to tell Anna that I'd just 'walk it off' but she didn't seem to like that."

"It's her first semester. Give her a couple more and she'll get it," he laughed. "I also have your cats still. Not at my apartment, of course – the complex doesn't allow any – but my grandma's been taking care of them. It's good for her, I think, to have them around since Pops has been in the elderly home. I might get her one or two of her own. Considering you haven't been pushing everyone away yet, I'm assuming you're going to want them back?"

I blinked at him once, twice. Then, a smile tugged at my lips and I shook my head. "Why haven't I married you yet?" I asked teasingly.

He grinned at that. "I'm not a one-date kinda guy, Else. You gotta romance me a bit first. In case you were wondering, I like soft candlelit dinners and long walks on the beach. I can become insanely jealous at the drop of a hat, and I love puppies, so that's a good Valentine's Day gift – take notes."

"Oh, that's right. Cause you're an ass."

"A professional ass, thank you very much," he said with a grin. The door opened again, and Anna hesitantly stepped in, holding a tray of undoubtedly subpar food from the hospital cafeteria. "That's my cue, I think. I'll give Double Trouble some privacy now. See you in a bit, Else," he said before leaning over and gently brushing his lips against my forehead.

I closed my eyes, letting myself actually enjoy the feeling, and when I opened them again, Graham had gone, and Anna was sitting in her blue armchair again and picking at her food distastefully with one hand as the other reached for mine.

"It's getting a bit late," I noted as I glanced at the clock on the wall. "Why don't you go back to your dorm and get some rest after you eat?"

She clenched her jaw and shook her head, not meeting my gaze. She looked like she was holding back, and I was a bit afraid of what she'd say if she did open up. "I don't want to leave you," was all she said.

Something occurred to me and I lowered my head a little in shame. "You… You haven't been sleeping in your dorm at all, have you? You've been here since…" She nodded her confirmation. A new kind of pain gripped me and I shut my eyes and pushed my head back against the pillows as it washed over me.

My little sister had been neglecting herself – nay, practically torturing herself – just because of me. Because she didn't want to leave me. I wouldn't have been surprised if this measly tray of food had been one of the first things she'd had to eat since the shooting, and her back had sounded so horrible when she cracked it earlier, and… And it was because I was here, hurt. It was my fault that she was hurting herself like this.

"Anna, you're killing me…" I moaned, my eyebrows drawing together over my closed lids.

"How?" she asked, and her voice sounded airy and far-off.

"You're hurting yourself because of me, Anna. You… You're not sleeping well, and I can tell that chair is awful. You definitely haven't been eating well, either. You have bags under your eyes and your braids are a mess. It… It actually, physically pains me to see you like this."

She bit her lip and slowly raised her head to look at me. I opened my eyes and immediately wished I didn't when I saw the intensity in her gaze. "You shouldn't have done it," she mumbled.

"What?"

"You shouldn't have done it!" she repeated, louder this time. She nearly knocked the tray off of her own lap and quickly set it aside on a nearby table so she could stand. "God, Elsa, you… You could have been killed, and there was no reason for it, none! The gun was aimed at me. Me. I was the one at the register. It should have stayed on me. He wasn't going to shoot if we just… If we just gave him the money…"

"You know what, Anna? Maybe you're right," I shot back. "Maybe there was a way that that could have ended without anyone getting hurt, but I wasn't about to take the chance of that bullet going into you. If it were you lying in this hospital bed – or worse, a grave – I don't know what the fuck I'd do. I told you before how completely devoted to you I am, and that hasn't changed, even if I'm constantly afraid that I'm going to hit you in the head or the heart with my powers like I did when we were little. I did exactly what I wanted to do."

"I would have done the same for you," she argued.

I scoffed and looked away, working my jaw for a moment. "That's exactly why I had to," I said, softer now.

"Elsa, don't you know how guilty that makes me feel? I-I mean, what if you'd died? It would have been my fault!"

My gaze sharply returned to her, and I found that she was staring at her hands regretfully. "Look at me, Anna," I insisted, and waited until she did before continuing. "If I had died, it would have been no one's fault but my own. Do you understand that? I made the choice, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat, no pun intended."

There were tears shining in her eyes, and I silently cursed their existence. "…But why didn't you let me take it? Why did you have to?"

"Because I can't bear to live in a world without you," I answered without hesitation. "Whose name will my heart say if you're gone? I would sacrifice myself for you, over and over. I would put myself on a spike and leave myself to eternal damnation if it meant you were safe. I love you more than anything in the world, Anna. I always have… It kills me that you're not taking care of yourself, and I'm too weak right now to do it for you. Please, sleep in an actual bed tonight. For me."

Her shoulders were shaking, and she squeezed my hand and sat back down. "…Okay," she murmured.


Shortly after Anna had left, my exhaustion finally caught up with me and I was out like a light. After all, it had been one hell of a day. Who knew that sustaining a major injury would cause me to be so tired? I mean, I'd been hurt before, yeah, loads of times. Whether it was bruising or broken bones or cigarette burns, there had always been something wrong with me. I don't think my life had ever truly been in danger, though. Well, maybe once, but the scenario had not ended with me nearly bleeding out, so it was different.

It was around one in the morning when I woke up to a soft whining sound beside my bed. I had half a mind to ignore it, but the other half was paranoid, so I cracked open an eye, frowning as I saw Anna, sitting in the same damn chair she had been in before, shifting to find a better position.

"That's not where you're supposed to be," I mumbled as I opened my other eye.

She froze, having been caught, and met my gaze hesitantly. "I… I know… I tried to sleep in my dorm bed, but I just…" she sniffled, and I realized she'd been crying. "I-I had a bad dream, and I had to make sure that you were still… That you were still here…"

I softened instantly. I didn't know what to say to that at first, but then an idea popped into my head and I carefully shifted to the right side of my bed. "…Anna, come here," I instructed.

Her eyes widened as she realized what I meant. "I… But won't that make you uncomfortable?" she asked uncertainly.

"Come here, silly girl," I repeated, and this time she gave in, carefully situating herself on the bed next to me. I guided her head so it was laying against my left shoulder, being careful of the tubes in my left arm. "Can you hear my heart?" I questioned.

"No. Elsa, please, I don't want to hurt you…"

"You won't, I promise," I murmured, and then moved her head closer to the center of my chest in spite of the pain it caused me. "Can you hear my heart?"

"…Yes."

I smiled, stroking the back of her head. "What's it saying?"

She didn't answer, but I felt her lips tug into a smile against me. I carefully moved her back towards my left side as to relieve some of the pressure on my wound, and she didn't hesitate this time before snuggling fully against me. Anna, I could hear my heart sing. Anna. It was always her. It was all for her.

Within minutes, she had fallen back asleep, and I followed shortly after, one arm wrapped around her and holding her close to me, my other hand clasped in hers, and a blissful smile on my face.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Please leave a review below!