rayemma oneshots & other

(4) The Frostbitten Hands

• Short fic

Spoiler warning for chapter #52 and onward - mentioned characters, mentioned location

Ray can only figure, since he's never seen something like it in his life and never will, but he does figure that this is what it's like; to see an angel or a strong deity fall. Like something or someone you never thought could ever fail, something you never thought would break apart or have their mask peeled back to reveal a weakness underneath – a weakness you thought never existed, something you thought was too strong to ever be subdued, and yet it was. Right here. Raw, all of its vulnerability highlighted. That was Emma in her bed right now. Ray realized he was so used to seeing her bounce back and recover so quickly, seeing her like this was off-putting. It almost didn't seem real.

The image of her right in front of him was a black hole and the rest of the world was just being sucked into it. He couldn't stop looking at her, no matter how many times he did it again. And it was a painful image, too. He didn't even want to look. But he was just too stunned to stop.

Her chest heaved for shallow breaths only, as if she could never breathe enough to fill her lungs. Her face blazed scarlet from her forehead to her collarbone. He could see where her clothes stuck to her in sheets of sweat – he'd only noticed now how thin she was, and now he was remembering how she wasn't eating as much recently. His fault. He had a lot to apologize for when she woke up.

When she woke up. When would that be? The way she looked like she was narrowly clinging to life made that seem impossible. She was just – and Ray dearly struggled to admit this – she was just so frail right now. Ray had never noticed that before. Had she always looked so small? Like anything could kill her as she was now? No, Emma had always been resilient, and when he followed her from behind, her back had always looked like reliable steel that he trusted to lead him. It did when she’d led him through the snow on their death mission.

On this bed, she looked nothing more than defeated.

Ray grit his teeth so hard that he could swear he chipped them, and his knuckles clenched to snow white in his lap.

"Come on, come on Emma," he muttered. "Stop scaring me."

He leaned over to the nightstand by Emma's bedside, and perpetuated the cycle he'd been driving for an hour now. Take the washcloth, dip it into the bowl of cool water he'd fetched, and then lean back to dab Emma's face with it. Gently, starting with her forehead, then to her nose and cheeks and finally her neck. He'd kept her away from a °103, but that was all he'd done. She was still sweating and fighting for air, and she hadn't woken since earlier.

That was it, that was it, the truly terrifying part of all this that was making him panic. Emma had not woken up in two hours. There were a lot of things that triggered terrible memories laying dormant in Ray’s brain, and this was one of them. And he hadn’t told her – he hadn’t told her a lot, just like she didn’t tell him a lot of things, as if it was in their nature to keep the things that truly hurt buried as deep as a grave, despite all the promises to never do exactly that.

How funny. All their oaths. All their promises. The I swear I'll never shut them out again. The I'm home, everyone. Despite despite despite. No matter how many words they used to swear that things like this will never happen again. Ray figured now that no matter what they say, they’ll always lie to each other just a little. It’s something that’ll never change.

Beside all that, it was because Emma looked the same way now as she did when she was in a coma. Limp, only alive enough to breathe, limbs that had always been in motion now rendered stationary. It was disturbing. Like seeing your loved one propped up on puppet strings and pulled around in unnatural ways, except with Emma, the unnatural way is her not being able to move at all, and being so sick that she can’t do anything. And what a coincidence, this time again, Emma is so hurt she can’t wake up, and i̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶f̶a̶u̶l̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶l̶e̶t̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶h̶a̶p̶p̶e̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶