Whumptober2022 fic: “(Hold Onto Me) I’m a Little Unsteady”
No. 7 /// Shaking Hands
Okay, so I meant to have this up nearly a week ago, but better late than never, I guess?? It’s my second offering for the @whumptober2022 prompts, though I might have given it up, but I think both @kmomof4 and @jrob64 might have skinned me alive if I left my last Whumptober prompt fill without continuation. This one carries on from where my No. 3 /// Gun to Temple prompt left off, so we’re still in an alternate version of the Underworld arc where Emma and Killian have encountered a vengeful Cruella on their quest for the ambrosia. (Hopefully this will make up for my misguided attempt to be darker and only do the whump and angst without the appeasing ending last time around! ;p)
“(Hold Onto Me) I’m A Little Unsteady”
by: @snowbellewells
For several long, excruciating moments, Emma cannot blink, cannot speak, cannot bring herself to move. She watches, frozen, as her True Love shudders with the bullet’s impact, then folds in on himself, instinctively shielding the injury, a reflex for self-protection coming too late. He falls slowly to his knees, crumpling in slow motion as she stares helpless - watching her whole world fall apart with him.
Suddenly, it doesn’t matter that her adversary has a gun, that her magic hasn’t been working sine they arrived in this scarlet-tinted nightmare, that the ambrosia will do no good now, or what happens to the rest of them next. All she can feel is the wave of rage and devastation that swells inside her until it has to explode outward. Whirling with the raw, heartbroken scream of a banshee, her arm shoots out unbidden, forming a fist as it flies, and connecting with Cruella’s jaw mercilessly. She hasn’t thrown a punch like that since she was fighting for food to eat on the streets of Portland, but it seems the swift right hook she gained there has not been lost. The vicious specter of a grand dame hits the ground hard, out cold with the gun still smoking in her loosened grip, its damage already done.
For a second, dazed, tears streaming silently down her face, Emma can do little more than drag in one ragged breath after another. She wants to howl at the injustice and fall to her knees, seeing how quickly it all could have been over if she had acted sooner.
Heaving one more large breath into her lungs, she turns, eyes seeking Killian where he has slumped over, lying motionless. He is never completely still - eyebrow arching deviously, corners of his mouth twitching upwards in a playful smirk, graceful fingers tapping some internal rhythm only he hears or rubbing unconsciously against each other. Even in sleep, he rolls from side to side, turns to snuggle her closer to himself, eyelids twitching as he dreams. She can’t bear to see him just lying there as she finally stumbles the few steps forward to reach him and collapses at his side.
She watches her own shaking hands resting over his stomach as if they belong to someone else. As if she is seeing a stranger from a distance, she scrambles to roll her pirate from his side where he had fallen over to his back, hoping to find something - anything - she can do for him. He still doesn’t respond, and she notes vaguely that it is not only her hands trembling wildly, but her whole body, cut adrift and wobbling helplessly like a ship unmoored on waves about to swallow her whole. She isn’t sure how so much blood could have pumped from within him to spill down his torso onto her hands, to puddle sickeningly around them, when his heart isn’t beating to drive it, but it has happened all the same. Biting her lip and trying to hold back the sobs that threaten to overwhelm her, Emma cannot afford to fall apart if there is anything she can still do to save Killian.
Putting pressure on the wound, she tries to staunch the flow of blood from him even as she reaches to search for a pulse. Would he have a pulse anyway? Emma has struggled to find hope throughout her adult life, didn’t have any cause to nurture it until Henry, and then Killian, proved to her there was reason to believe, that there was hope in the world. She hadn’t often prayed either, but she’s doing so now, begging over and over again, ‘….please…please…just… don’t take him from me…don’t let him be gone…’
sogoodsogoodsogoodsogood
