Beta/Edited by PeaceHeather

My apologies to Blackadder for the blatant borrowing. (Not that I think he'd mind...)

Also, please bear in mind that I got my medical knowledge entirely from TV and a curse. Which makes me as qualified to practice medicine as Dr. Whale.

Chapter 6

Emma showers, dresses, does the world's fastest blow dry on her hair, and then checks in on Hook before going downstairs to see what Mary Margaret had meant by breakfast. Emma sometimes wishes that Storybrooke hadn't been stuck in time so long that they'd actually missed out on Starbucks. She should have figured something was up with the town when there wasn't even a glimpse of McDonald's golden arches. Still, Granny makes some killer coffee, and the bag full of doughnuts and cinnamon buns smell good enough that she almost drools.

There's a note on the counter from Snow promising to call when she's on her way with Whale. In the meantime, there's little to do but wait, so Emma takes the sheets out of the tub and puts them in the wash with some bleach. Then she makes some toast, pours another glass of orange juice, and takes it back upstairs.

Hook isn't in the bed. For a moment she just stares, blankly, at the place where he should be, then she dashes around to the other side to make sure he hasn't fallen out. He's not on the floor, either.

When she hears swearing coming from the bathroom Emma has to put the plate and glass down on the nightstand because her hands are shaking. She flexes her fingers a couple of times, then stalks over to the bathroom door. "You okay in there?"

Silence descends. After a moment the door swings open enough for her to see Hook leaning heavily against the wall. He's found the sweatpants she'd brought up the night before and managed to get into them, she notices, but his color is awful and he's sweating.

"Some assistance, at the moment, would be greatly appreciated," he says, his adam's apple bobbing heavily in his throat. He doesn't look at her.

"You could have said something before," she says. He gives a grunt that she interprets as no-I-couldn't. Emma slides an arm around his waist, guides his left arm over her shoulder, and then accepts most of his weight. Together they make their way slowly and painfully across the bedroom, though it takes some careful maneuvering to get him into bed again. When he lays back, Hook is pale and panting, though outwardly Emma can find no reason for it.

"There's something wrong," she says, checking his bandages for what seems like the twentieth time. "It doesn't look infected, but I don't think you should be this weak."

"No," he agrees quietly. "No, I should not."

Emma hesitates. "Last night, when Gold was here, he said something. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but ... He said 'turnabout is fair play.' Do you think ..."

"That he poisoned me? The thought had crossed my mind." Hook sneers. "Let's just say I wouldn't put it past him."

Emma's phone chooses that moment to ring; she snatches it up with only a glance at the screen. "Are you on your way?"

"Charming's watching Gold. He'll call me first if it looks like Gold is going to leave his shop. I've got Whale and some supplies. We'll be there in five minutes."

"Hurry," Emma says, the uneasy feeling churning in her stomach. She takes a deep breath. "I think ... I think he may be poisoned."

"We'll be there in three," Snow says, and hangs up.

Hook is watching her through bruised lids.

"Such concern," he says, wryly. "What could I have possibly done to merit the heroes all riding to my rescue?"

Emma doesn't have a good answer for that. He's done plenty that should have left him on her See-No-Evil list. But Regina and Gold are both guilty of far worse, and their motivations are, for the most part, inexcusable. But she's tried to give both of them the benefit of the doubt. Hook's motivations, by comparison, are nobler by virtue of being simpler. He wants revenge for the woman he loved. He's traveled across worlds to achieve it. There is something almost admirable about that, even if his methods leave a lot to be desired.

The hole in Hook's heart is as deep and dark as the wishing well—but what he's lost can't ever be returned. And despite the fact that she knowsthat he would fill that hole with Rumpelstiltskin's blood, if he could, Emma can't help but worry for him. She shouldn't; she should be doing everything in her power to stop him, to protect the innocent people who might get caught in the crossfire. Instead, Emma cares, because he can never have anything but a hollow victory. Maybe he doesn't know that yet, but she does.

She raises her brows. "You chose to come to me, remember? If you didn't want the heroes to help, I'm pretty sure Regina could have snapped her fingers and fixed you like that. But you chose to come through my window, buddy. Guess you're going to have to let the good guys do what we do best."

Hook's expression goes still and quiet; his eyes meet hers steadily. "Indeed I did."

That nervous feeling claws at her stomach, so Emma distracts herself. "I brought you some orange juice. I think I read somewhere that it's good to stay hydrated when you've lost a lot of blood." She presses the glass into his hand and watches while he sips at it. He manages a few swallows before his hand starts to shake again. His rings and the thimble still capping his finger chime against the glass like little bells. Emma supports it for him and he scowls at her over the rim while he finishes off the rest of the juice.

"Toast?" she asks, setting the glass back down. He makes a face. "Water?"

"Tell me a story," he demands. Despite the beard scruff, and the hair on his bare, muscled chest, Hook still somehow manages to look like a little boy.

Emma rolls her eyes and wracks her brain. "Once upon a time, there was a happy little sausage named Baldrick. The end."

He stares at her deadpan face, then chuckles softly. "That was the worst story I've ever heard, and I've heard most of them."

"Blame Blackadder. I'll have to borrow Henry's book if you want something more detailed. He's the storyteller in the family, not me," Emma says.

"Where is the lad?" Hook asks, peering around the room as if Henry might've been hiding in a corner or under a rug all this time.

"He's ... with Neal. For the weekend," Emma says. Hook's eyes drift to her chest and Emma realizes she's touching the place where her pendant used to lay. She scratches at it, as if that was the problem all along, then drops her hand to her lap.

"Neal, his father? Neal who is the Crocodile's son, Baelfire?" Something flickers in Hook's eyes, there and gone again too fast for her to read.

Emma shrugs. "What are the odds of that, huh? I mean, I met the guy eleven years ago, all the way across the country. I didn't even know any of this ... that Storybrooke even existed. Then ... well, stuff happens, we split. I end up in jail, pregnant, put the kid up for adoption and I don't see either of them for ten years ... then Henry, who somehow ended up in the cursed fairy-tale town I'm supposedly destined to save tracks me down and ... and all this happens, and Neal's tied up in it, too. And not because of me or Henry, but because his father is freaking Rumpelstiltskin."

Hook's gaze softens. "I've been known to gamble on occasion, and I'll tell you, lass: when the odds are stacked that high, we call it fate."

Now it's Emma's turn to make a face. "Really not a big fan of the idea that someone else might be pulling my strings."

"On that, darling, we are in complete agreement."

Downstairs the front door opens. "We're here!" Mary Margaret calls up as they enter. A moment later she appears in the doorway with a harried and hungover-looking Dr. Whale in tow.

Hook tenses up, and it isn't until that moment she realizes that he'd been relaxed. Emma puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes it gently. "Good guys," she reminds him.

"That," he says flatly, "is not a good guy. Trust me, we know our own kind." His eyes fix on Whale and he watches the doctor warily. "I wouldn't trust this guy with a corpse."

Emma snickers. "Funny you should say that—"

"I can leave, you know," Whale says. "I don't normally do housecalls. And I charge extra for assholes."

Emma grabs the doctor by the arm and hauls him away from the bed. "He's in pain, serious pain, okay? Cut him some slack. We think Gold might have poisoned him somehow. You are going to help fix him or I'm going to have David start doing random DUI checks on your route home. Understood?"

"Whatever you say, Sheriff." He picks up his bag and pops it open, pulls out a blood pressure cuff and a stethoscope, and gets to work. Hook endures the indignity of being poked and prodded by glaring steadfastly at Emma, as if it's her fault he's gotten himself into this mess. Finally Whale pulls the bandages back and examines the wound, glancing up at Emma in surprise.

"I think your stitching is neater than mine," he says. Coming from Dr. Frankenstein, Emma can't quite see the compliment. "Why pink, though?"

"All we had," Emma says before Hook can respond.

"Well, it's neat and they're holding well. I don't see any signs of infection. I'll take some blood and run it at the lab to see if I can find any traces of poison. Your blood pressure is a little low. Mary Margaret mentioned you'd lost some blood. I'll set you up with an IV before I go. That's, uh, a way to get more blood and liquids into you. Good thing we had your records from the car crash. Fresh off the boat from fairy-land, you probably have no clue that you even have a blood type, let alone what yours might be ..."

Hook's eyes slide to where his prosthetic weapon lays on the bedside table, then meaningfully back to Whale. Emma can't help but marvel how, weak as a kitten, Hook still manages to exude more menace than ten guys his size.

It really shouldn't look that good on him.

Whale shuts up and gets a needle taped into Hook's good arm. He draws blood quickly, then sets up the IV, draping the bag off of a coatrack that Emma fetches from the corner of the room.

"How long until you can get the blood work done?" she asks.

"It'll be a few hours, probably. I might not know till this evening," Whale says.

"Rush it."

"I do have other patients, you know," he reminds her, looking down his nose like he thinks he's House, for fuck's sake. It's a good excuse, but Emma's not in the mood.

"It's Saturday. The only thing you normally nurse on a Saturday is a hangover and a bottle of JD. Rush it," she tells him.

Whale glares, but there's not much he can say to that, so he doesn't. He packs up his bag, leaves them a list of instructions and his pager number, and heads downstairs. Snow follows him out, already on the phone with Charming, trying to determine Gold's whereabouts before Whale leaves the apartment.

Emma moves to follow them, but Hook says, "Stay, lass."

She hesitates in the doorway. "You should rest."

"Keep me company." It's phrased as an order, as if he expects her to obey; she does, but only because she can hear the note of pleading beneath it, and because she's worried about what Whale will find in Hook's blood. So Emma perches on the edge of the bed, and out of habit now, reaches for his wrist to check his pulse. It's there, beating softly beneath her fingertips, and her own heartbeat speeds up in response.

Her fingers smooth absently over the soft skin of his wrist, then she touches the tattoo that lays along the inside of his forearm: the heart, deeply shaded with black, cut through with a dagger that she recognizes now as Rumplestiltskin's. Vines grow behind it, and it's wrapped in a scrap of parchment bearing the name Milah.

"What was she like?" Emma asks despite herself, certain that he won't answer. In this, Emma thinks, they are kindred spirits; they guard their pain jealously, as fiercely as any dragon. She remembers the look in his eyes, when she'd first asked about the tattoo; the way Hook's smile had shut off as if she'd flicked a switch, and his eyes—Emma has seen those same eyes staring back at her out of countless mirrors for over ten years. While they've crossed so many of their boundaries in the last few hours, this one, she thinks, is insurmountable.

And yet, perhaps it is because they've lowered so many of their defenses, that Killian Jones closes his eyes and speaks in a voice gone hollow with grief and pain: "She was one of the bravest people I have ever known. Intelligent, cunning, determined to live the life she dreamed of rather than the one fate had handed her. She had been miserable, shackled to the village coward, dying slowly day by day of shame and boredom. The Crocodile claims I stole her ... He's wrong. She commandeered me. Stole my heart and hijacked my ship. I would have sailed to the ends of the earth at her whim, stolen the moon from the sky if she had but asked me to. She found me, and she loved me. And then she died for me. Thatmonster reached into her chest, tore out her heart, and crushed it before my eyes because she had dared to make her own choices, to love someone other than him, to be free."

Emma swallows, thickly, her eyes on the mid-afternoon sunlight streaming through the window. Somewhere inside her there is a small voice, barely a whisper in her heart, and it both understands Killian's pain and resents him for it. However briefly, he had known true love. She envies him that.

Then, so quietly that Emma is almost certain she imagined it, he says: "She would loathe what I have become."

When Emma looks up, startled, he has drifted off to sleep.

She sits beside him for a long time, watching the sunlight dance across the floor and over the foot of the bed, one hand touching the place on her chest where her swan pendant used to lay. She thinks about Neal, and tries to remember the first time he kissed her and is shocked to realize—she can't.

xxx

Hook sleeps. Emma paces. She goes downstairs and nibbles at something only because Snow makes her. Her mother watches her with wary eyes, as if she knows something but isn't sharing it just yet.

David comes home and demands to know how long "that pirate" will be staying. Snow drags him off to their room and there follows a whispered conversation and then David's loud exclamation of "You've got to be kidding me! He is not—!" which is quickly cut off by Snow clamping a hand over his mouth and giving him a pointed stare.

Emma mostly ignores all this in favor of glaring at the phone, willing it to ring, or peeking in on Hook.

She's heading back upstairs to check on him when she stumbles, barely catching the rail. Her stomach clenches hard, the uneasy feeling that's been with her all day now a searing pain in her stomach. Emma clutches, white-knuckled, at the rail. Something is very wrong.

"Hook?" she gasps.

The pain lessens, the cramp easing up enough that Emma takes the stairs again two at a time. It is five steps to the bedside, five more to round the bed. He's curled himself into a ball, his right hand pressed to the wound in his side, and his left arm clamped around his middle. "Hook!"

When she shakes his shoulder, he doesn't respond. His breathing is labored, his skin leached of all color. Even his lips have gone gray, and they're peeled back over his teeth in a skull-like grimace of pain. "Hook!"

"What is it?" Mary Margaret bursts through the door and rushes to Emma's side. David is only a pace or two behind.

"I don't know!" Emma tries to shift him to his back, tries to pull his hands away from the wound. "He just—"

Hook screams, and it's like someone has punched her in the gut. It is an awful sound, as though someone has their fist clenched around his heart and for an awful, horrible, terrible moment Emma wonders if that's not the case. Her entire body goes cold, and all she can think of, all she can remember is Graham, collapsing in her arms, his hand pressed to his chest, and the cold linoleum of the station floor while she held his body and wept.

"No," she says, her hand reaching out to twist Hook onto his back. Her palm slams down on his chest, but she knows already—he still has his heart. Gold wouldn't have taken his heart; taking it would have kept Killian from feeling the pain of his loss, and she knows now how deeply that pain runs. Gold wants him to suffer. Whatever is wrong, she doesn't think it's his heart.

No, this is something else.

"Help me hold him," Emma says and David moves to one side of the bed and wrestles Hook's right arm up, while Snow does the same to his left. Hook cries out, trying to curl back in on himself; but he's still weak. Emma straddles his thighs, holding him down even as she tears at the bandages. He arches up under her, trying to buck her off, but Emma clamps her thighs over his in a vice grip and tries to block out the sound of his ragged breathing and growls of pain.

She pulls the gauze away.

Then they all freeze, staring at Hook's wound.

He lays still, finally, moaning.

Emma's cell phone rings.

She fishes it out of her back pocket and, after three tries, manages to hit "answer" even though she can't stop staring at Hook. Her hand shakes as she brings the phone to her ear.

"Hey, it's Whale. So I ran his blood work and good news: we couldn't find any of the standard poisons in his system. Everything came back negative. Weird thing is, we did find something else in his bloodstream. It's pretty faint, and I don't even know what it means, but ... he's got trace amounts of gold in his bl—"

"Yeah." Emma hears herself respond, her voice far away and hollow. "I think we figured that one out. Thanks for your help. I've got to go."

She hangs up and simply stares at Hook's abdomen, where the hot pink sutures, the scab, and the skin around it, have turned to solid gold.

Notes: Hold tight, there are bumpy seas ahead. (Oh, and for the person who wanted Hook stuck in bed a bit longer ... congratulations. You got your wish. :) )