Infatuation (PLL Emison AU)

Eyes Wide Open

A/N: Thanks for your continued patience. I'm going to be a review whore and beg for them to motivate my final edits of the last several chapters. I still don't have them split, so I still don't know how many more chapters we have to go, but we're getting close. I appreciate all of you more than you'll ever know, from those of you just popping in to say hi and say kind words to those of you who dissect the chapter and break down what you liked (or what character irks you, lol).

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Chapter 36:

Eyes Wide Open

Marco woke up three days into his hospital stay. It was exactly 2 hours after Emily had gotten the all-clear to return to active duty. But before Emily went back to the station she went to spend time with her Chief.

The first time he'd been weaned off the ventilator his oxygen levels had crashed. He'd also developed an infection, despite Spencer's best efforts to pump him full of antibiotics. Upon further inspection in the forensics lab, they learned the bullets had been laced with something toxic. Emily and Toby had to up their antibiotics, but they were doing fine. But Marco's injury was severe, which had complicated his recovery. He'd developed internal swelling where the bullet had struck and it was pressing against a spinal nerve. They were monitoring it closely. His fever had finally broken last night, and they had weaned him off the ventilator.

After Emily had been cleared for duty she'd decided to sit with Marco for a little while and try and put more pieces together on the copycat case. She'd been coming to the hospital to collaborate with Alison on her breaks. They'd sit in her office and research, plotting out exactly what they were going to do to lure the copycat out. When Alison was in surgery, Emily was usually with Marco.

She had been scribbling notes in a notebook for two hours, a manila folder open with what they'd gathered so far. The prints hadn't yielded anything in any databases, so Emily asked Eddie for one more favor. She wanted to see if it was possible to search through the database for similar size and shape patterns. She knew that no one on earth had the same fingerprints, but sometimes family members had resembling qualities. It was a long shot, but it was all they had.

She had also gotten an update from county records about who had owned the house before the bank did. It had been bought by a private photography company. She was doing further research on the company.

Everything was pointing to the NAT Club.

Emily looked at her notebook where she'd struck through several motives. One being that it was someone in the NAT club getting back at Alison for killing off so many people involved in it. She'd scratched the idea when she realized that the person had idolized Alison at first, but then became increasingly more aggressive the further Alison drifted from killing and the more she drifted into Emily's arms. The copycat seemed to want Alison all to themselves, which is why Emily had been run down with a car and shot.

She reached up and brushed the back of her neck with her fingers. The gash there was still sore, but it was healing nicely.

She rubbed her eyes and closed her notebook, needing to distance herself from the case for a little bit. Sometimes when she thought too hard, nothing came to her. But if she cleared her mind, ideas would pop up.

She looked up at the bouquet of fresh roses her mother had brought that morning. Pam came up and changed them out every day when she came to visit.

"So he can see something beautiful when he wakes up," she'd sadly smiled at her daughter as she'd put them next to Marco's bed. "And this way your father can be close to him."