Summary: Ever since Emma was 13, she knew she had the ability to destroy people if she wanted to, and some days, she really wanted to. After being forced to go to Greenwood Academy following a traumatizing event in her childhood that brought to the surface her ability to manipulate fire, she never thought she would be free of the place. So for nearly 10 years, she lived a solitary existence with the exception of her best friends, but that was all about to change. Killian Jones had just been sentenced to attend the university campus at Greenwood Academy after an accident at sea caused him to be dishonorably discharged from Her Majesty's royal Navy and lose his hand. He doesn't know what to think about these newfound powers and what they spell for the rest of his now not-so-normal life. But a chance encounter one day has the ability to change all of that. A story about love and redemption between two people that shows, if you have the right person beside you, you can find a light in the darkness.

Rating: M

Content Warnings: Mentions of Violence/Death, Brief mention of Childhood Abuse/Sexual Assault, Mild Sexual Content

Chapter Notes: For those of you who were wondering exactly what happened to Emma while she was on lock down, here is her side of the story. Thanks as always to my amazing beta daveyjacobsthepotterhead and artist princesse-swan. Enjoy!

Chapter 12

Emma was freezing.

Yes, it was beginning to finally turn towards cooler temperatures in the region that the academy was located, but that didn't necessarily constitute the thick sweater and fleece leggings that she was currently rocking. Rubbing her hands together, her newly minted suppression bracelets clinking into each other with the motion, she tried to get some feeling back into her hands.

When the Headmaster suggested she get put on ice after the attack on the academy, she didn't think he would mean it so literally.

After they roused her in the medical wing of the academy, Killian nowhere to be found, the Headmaster, security team, and training team were arguing about what to do with her.

Graham, ever faithful, was arguing just to contain her to her room until another set of bracelets was fashioned for her. She hadn't injured anyone in the attack, and she had protected a lot of the students on campus while showing more restraint than many people here had thought she had, he argued.

The Headmaster wasn't swayed though. He thought she was a menace, a threat to the safety of everyone on the campus, and that she had to be dealt with immediately and swiftly.

He continued on, talking over the head of the security asking why they were trying to punish her and not Gaston. He suggested they put her on ICE for a few days. Graham visibly blanched when that suggestion came out of the Headmaster's mouth.

After sharing a look with the rest of the security team members, the head of security turned towards Headmaster Riggans, looking as though he was about to argue again.

All the arguments that he was going to plead on her behalf evaporated when Riggans threatened to fire him on the spot if he didn't escort Emma to the ICE block immediately. Riggans turned his back on everyone and walked out of the room.

Shoulders slumped in defeat, Emma let Graham and another security guard carry her towards the ICE block on campus. Despite living on the campus for ten years, she didn't know what the ICE block was or where it was located on campus.

But as they kept descending deeper and deeper into and beneath the maximum security facility on campus, Emma began to think that the reason she had never heard of the ICE block on campus was because the students that they sent there never came back.

Badging swiping through the fourth set of security doors, the head of security finally stopped in front of the third door down on the right. There were another six down the row from what she could see, and all the windows and walls surrounding the doors were covered with an ominously thick layer of ice and frost.

"She is going to freeze down here if we don't take those gloves off her." Graham said, shifting her so she was standing on her feet without much support.

Still staring at the door in front of him, the head of security nodded his head, "I know."

"Well can't you do anything? Riggans took my master key so I can't get her out of these. I don't know about you August, but I don't want to risk putting her in one of those if Riggans didn't say exactly how long he wanted her down here." Graham pressed.

"I am well aware of what you are implying here Hunter." The Head, August, said. Turning to face her, he pulled his set of keys from his pocket.

Fingering slowly through the dozens of keys, he looked directly at her as he slipped one into the slot on her right glove. She was struck by how young he looked.

"You may not know this Ms. Swan, but Mr. Riggans doesn't know that I am gifted like many of the students here. He thinks that he hired someone just like him, normal, to fill his head of security. I know this about him because I can walk through people's minds.

I've known for a very long time what I could do, but I never attended a school like this, because unless I told someone, no one would ever know what I was capable of. I don't know what happened to make Riggans so afraid of you, but you are not someone that I think we need to worry about."

He released the locking mechanism on the gloves, and she felt the warmth of her flames rising up inside of her once again. She looked down quickly at her free hands, flexing her fingers, and back up to him in disbelief.

He pushed a button to the left of the door, and the mechanism slid open with a cracking of ice, "Good luck Ms. Swan."

The guards shoved her into what she now realized was a cell, and the freezing dark closed in on her.

If it weren't for the kind heartedness of August, letting her remain without any kind of suppression in the ICE block, she probably would have died.

Walking across campus towards David's dorm room, she was hoping he would have some information about what happened with Killian.

She hadn't heard or seen anything about him since she was taken down to the block. And after having nothing to do but worry about keeping herself warm and alive for ten days, she realized how she reacted had been wrong. Killian didn't deserve the way she reacted, but old habits for her seemed to be hard to shake.

And, she really did need to tell him how she ended up attending the academy in the first place, even if he hadn't told her how he traveled here.

He saved her life the other day, she at least owed him that much.

Besides, Killian was her friend. Something more if she was being honest with herself.

As she crossed campus, she noticed how things had changed since the attack.

The barrier still hadn't been repaired, so the clear panes that constructed the dome protecting the campus flickered oddly with electricity while they tried to figure out how to repair the monstrosity. Boulders and singe marks litter the campus buildings as well, remainders of her showdown with Gaston.

Crews were still working to try and remove the boulders and tree branches from the buildings, seeming to enlist the help of military branch members to do some of the heavy lifting that the clean up crews were unable to manage.

There were also more guards in place around the campus, a few had stopped random students as they made there way through campus to make sure they had the proper identification to be there. It seemed as though they didn't want another army smuggled onto the campus.

One such service member stopped her at the doors to Reynolds hall, asking for her ID badge and scanning the back before allowing her into the building. Some of the color had drained from his face when he beheld the name on her badge, he had obviously heard about the battle on the campus and her role in it.

Emma could hear a commotion as soon as she arrived at David's floor. Two or three voices yelling at each other, but one with a distinctly familiar accent jumped out to her right away, Killian.

Thank God he is okay, she thought to herself.

Rounding the corner, she hurried down to where she knew David's room to be, but stopped short as she noticed a tall man in military dress yelling down at Killian.

"First the incident out at sea that got you marshalled and now this! Seriously Killian, I don't know why you are doing all of this! Are you doing it for attention? Is that it?" The man yelled at him.

Killian visibly angered, a hot flush spreading up his neck and ears and his fist clenching.

"Right, because why else would I do anything. That's how everything always was! If I didn't do something right, whether it be during my schooling or during basic training, it's because I wanted attention! Not because I was actually struggling or anything! You just thought it was a parlor trick to get you out of the spotlight and me into it!"

"You never gave me reason to think otherwise Killian." The man yelled back.

"WELL GUESS WHAT LIAM, I DON'T WANT THIS!" Killian yelled, shoving at him-Liam-with his hand and blunted wrist.

Liam looked visibly startled when he noticed Killian's lack of a left hand. He grabbed Killian's wrist.

"What happened to you, brother?" He asked, his tone so much softer than it had been before.

"You have been keeping tabs on me well enough Liam to know where I was and what had happened, but you didn't care enough to notice this in the reports. I guess that shows where your real priorities are."

And with those parting words, Killian shoved past his brother, heading away from Emma towards the stairwell at the back of the building.

As Liam watched Killian go, David took notice of Emma standing there.

"Emma, thank God you are alright. What happened?" He came up to her right away and wrapped her up into a hug. "Jesus, you are freezing."

"Long story, what was going on over here?" She asked, pointedly looking over Liam when she said it.

"Nothing you need to be concerned about ma'm" Liam said, not turning away from where his younger brother had gone.

"Now see, that is where you are wrong. Killian is my friend, so yeah, that makes you berating him like he is nothing more than a child my problem." She said, stepping around David to get closer into Liam's space.

"Really, just being his friend makes it your business now? I'm his brother. You don't have any say in how I treat my family members. Killian will get over his temper in a couple of hours and will inevitably come back to apologize."

"But he shouldn't have to come crawling back to you to apologize when you came here and attacked him! How did you even get in here in the first place, this campus in on lock down after the attacks." She questioned.

Liam gestured to his uniform, "I am a member of her majesty's royal Navy, I know exactly what strings to pull and who to talk to to be able to see my little brother."

"Member of the Navy or not, you shouldn't be here." She said, "Killian doesn't seem to want you here anyway."

Liam flushed angrily, "Well, I haven't seen Killian since his ship deployed from London nearly a year and a half ago. I only just received word of his placement after he got Marshalled and dishonorably discharged from the Navy within the last few weeks."

"And I take it your reunion isn't going as planned?" Emma said, channeling her best impression of Killian's smirk that drove her up the wall.

David touched her arm next to her and murmured her name in warning.

"No, it hasn't, but only because whatever you seem to have done has caused my little brother to turn into a completely different person."

"We haven't done anything to him!" Emma said, beginning to feel defensive. Killian had done nothing but respect her and defend her to others around campus, so it only felt right to do so in return.

She just never expected to have to defend him to the brother he spoke so highly of.

"You may not have been the initial cause of the change, but you are only making him worse. Killian was never someone who ran into danger and fought in battles trying to be some kind of hero." Liam said back, his voice rising harshly, composure breaking.

"He was in the fucking Navy! Of course he was going to become a hero at some point." Emma retorted, her patience becoming thread bare.

"Yeah, well, I never thought my brother would be a killer either, but that happened too!" Liam yelled, getting into her personal space, his face inches from hers.

All the fight drained out of her in an instant. "What?" Her voice barely more than a whisper.

David moved his body slightly between them, trying to defuse the situation further.

Liam let out a sardonic laugh. "Oh, didn't expect that of your friend did you." Liam spat, his voice bitter.

Emma shook her head, not really able to process the thoughts flowing through her head.

"That's right, Killian is a killer. Killed one of his own men in cold blood when his ship came under attack. I don't know what happened, but he isn't my brother any more, and no matter what you all insist, you freaks did this to him." He pressed a finger into her shoulder.

She barely noticed.

"And I am going to get him out of here, one way or another."

"That is up to your government, Liam" David said, trying to play the diplomat. "You will have to take it up with them, the leaders here can't just release him. Especially after what happened last week."

Emma was barely listening to the conversation anymore.

Sure, Killian had mentioned that he was in the Navy before he had come to the academy, and that they had decided to send him to the states, but he had never talked about what had happened.

But she didn't know how to process the information that he had killed someone.

It wasn't like she had a poorer opinion of him now that she knew, but she was finally starting to see him in a different light.

Scenes flashed before her eyes, a looming figure above her in bed when she was 12. Her screaming for someone to come and help her. Roaring flames burning through her room and her house.

A charred body.

Sitting in that courtroom with members of her family staring down at her, some of them crying, some of them angry.

Her first nights here at the academy without anyone to comfort her after being removed from her family.

Family that she hadn't seen for ten years.

Emma couldn't say that she completely understood what had happened to Killian, but she was starting too.

"I have to go." She said in a daze.

Liam and David abandoned the debate they were having when she started to push around the both of them.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" Liam asked, trying to push David out of the way to get to her.

David clamped a hand down on Liam's forearm, hard enough to make him wince. "Watch it buddy. Killian may be your brother, but Emma is my sister, you have no right to talk to her that way."

"The hell I don't. She is one of those freaks-"

Liam cut off as David squeezed his forearm harder, "I would watch how you finish that sentence, because Killian and I are also classified as one of those 'freaks' as you like to call us apparently."

"You're no danger to him, she could easily burn him to ashes with just a thought." He hissed.

That charred body flashed again in front of her eyes.

"Believe me Liam, I am more of a danger to you right now than she is to Killian." David said, looking pointedly down at Emma's wrists, where the metal of her new suppression bracelets winked brightly.

"Those keep her powers down to the point where she is no more powerful than you are. Me, they don't see the need to regulate me that way. So again, think hard about where you want this conversation to go."

Liam glared daggers down at David for a long second before ripping his arm free and walking off in the opposite direction from where Killian went.

"I have to go." Emma said again, after remaining silent for the exchange between Liam and David. She started walking for the doors that she had seen Killian go through when she felt a hand touch lightly on her shoulder.

So much lighter than the force David had just shown Liam. Always gentle with her.

"Emma" David said, moving so he was in front of her again. "Be careful. Things got pretty ugly between the two of them, so take it easy on Killian."

"Don't worry about me David." She said, reaching to hug him quickly. "I'll be okay."

She let him go and rushed out the doors, barrelling down the stairs.

Liam had been arguing with them for a good 10 minutes, so Killian already had a good head start to getting away from them.

Emma thought back on the conversations that they had shared over the last few weeks and thought about all of the places he liked to go when he was in a mood. He wouldn't go to the library, too many people even with the lockdown.

Nor would he go back to his dorm room. That would probably be the last place he went if Emma was honest. He hated being alone there.

Suddenly, the roof of the science building came to mind. Killian loved being up there in the quiet solitude of the planetarium.

With that in mind, she took off at a run for the science building, hoping she wasn't too late.