AN: Fair warning - Emma does purposefully hurt herself in this fic, though not so much and so graphically. I just wanted to warn anyone in case it might be triggering. Stay safe, guys!

There's a banging on the door that startles him to wakefulness and has him grabbing the baseball bat he keeps underneath his bed for situations such as this.

It's only as he trips over his sheets trying to get off his bed that he realizes three things: 1) the banging is coming from his bedroom door, not the front, 2) he recognizes the voice hollering frantically through the wood and 3) there's only one other person who has accesss to the keys of this apartment.

"Emma?" He calls out unnecessarily from his place behind the closed door.

"Open the damn door, Killian!" His roommate (for two years now) and best friend (for a decade, since college), replies.

He does so at the urgency in her voice and nearly stumbles when she barges in and throws open his wardrobe.

"Emma?" He says so again and with caution, concern coursing through him when he realizes that it is nearly 3AM and that she wasn't even supposed to be home till two days from now, only just left to visit Walsh on an early morning flight to Boston yesterday.

"Where are the blankets?"

She'd begun tossing the boxes of seasonal clothes he keeps on the top shelf before she gives him a chance to answer.

"Whoa, Emma, wait–"

She doesn't seem to hear him, instead, moving on to the drawers of his dresser and tearing into its contents like a woman possessed.

He hasn't left his spot by the door, feels frozen to the ground upon which he stands on because in the ten years that they've known each other he's never seen her act like this – frenzied, unhinged, panicked and... And it scares him.

Because he's seen many facets of Emma Swan – her anger, her caution, her mistrust – the aspects that she often allows the outside world to see. But he's also been privileged enough to see the softer side of her, has borne witness to her sadness, her honesty, her vulnerability and – on the best days – her affections, no matter how small they are (after all, he'd do anything for that laugh or her smile).

He's even seen her panicked but not like this, never like this. She's always been the better of the two of them when it comes to putting on a face for the world (they both decided long ago that life was hard so they had to be harder, she's just better at remembering than him, too quick to put it all on the line, he is). He's used to her reticence cause even when she's being open with him, there's still a certain wariness to her eyes, like she's waiting for him to up and leave in the middle of every conversation, even after all these years.

(The thought of him wanting to leave her makes him scoff – nothing short of her telling him to go will ever make him desert her and even then he'd go kicking and screaming)

("A man unwilling to fight for what he wants," his late brother always used to tell him, "deserves what he gets.")

"Where are the fucking. blankets. Killian?" She's shouting now but even with the meager moonlight filtering through the lone window in his room, he can see her hands shake and that, more than anything, gets him into motion. He abandons his post by the door and in three long strides he's holding her by the shoulder and getting her to turn and face him.

"Emma, what's wrong?" he cups her cheek but immediately withdraws when he feels her skin is ice cold. "Fuck, you're freezing, love!"

She shrugs the hand that was still on her shoulder and side steps him so she can walk out of his bedroom and into the bathroom they share, directly across his space.

"I know! Don't you think I know that?" She wrenches open the doors on the cabinet directly next to the bathroom though with little effort, as it seems she'd already done so before going to him. But it doesn't stop her from ransacking the towels and the linens from the shelves in the same manner she'd treated his possessions.

"I'm cold, that's the problem isn't it?" She yells as she grabs several towels and throws it down the length of the hallway they're on. "I'm cold, I'm always so cold."

She reaches for a flat sheet next and tries to tear at it but when she's unable to, she drops it and starts tugging at the ends of her hair.

"I need the blankets, Killian," she nearly growls as she continues to angrily tear at her hair, "cause I'm-I'm... I'm tired and freezing and I just want the blankets so I can cry and rest and, and-"

She lets out a half-shout, half-groan and she's scratching painfully at her scalp and he's scared, god help him but he's terrified and he has a feeling she means more than just temperature when she referred to herself as cold.

She's still scratching at her scalp, the sound, accompanied with her labored breathing, seems amplified in their too quiet apartment so he shakes the fear from his bones and captures her hands with his own.

Her reaction is instantaneous though and she thrashes away from him but he's having none of it.

"Emma," he pants, stumbling when she pushes extra hard at his chest, "Emma, stop."

"Don't touch me!" She screams. He's got his arms around her now and she's hitting his chest in earnest and it hurts, yeah, Emma's a bail bondsperson after all, she takes people - men - down twice her size on a daily basis. But he'll endure this physical hurt if it meant absorbing all of Emma's hurt.

"Let me go, let me go!" But she seems to realize that he has no intention of doing so and has gone limp in his arms, curling into herself as she slumps to the ground. And because he's wrapped himself around her, he has no choice but to follow her down.

"Everyone I touch... Everyone I care about..." She's moved on from shredding her scalp to balling her hands into fists and hitting her head.

"Emma!" He cries and fuck he's so scared. Tears unbidden spring to his eyes because for once in his life, he doesn't know what to do. Often, Emma has teased him for being the guy with contingency plan after contingency plan.

("You're so anal," she'd mock.

"You say that now," he returns, "but we'll see who's laughing when you go looking for fleece blankets in the dead, cold winter but find none because someone likes to use all her blankets at the same time."

She says nothing, only throws whatever snack she's eating at him because she knows he won't be able to resist cleaning it up.

Also taking advantage of the fact that he'll take note of that same snack and go out to restock on it just cause he doesn't like when the pantry has gaps where the food should be.)

(He wishes for even just half the levity of that moment then, to give him strength now.)

Nothing could have prepared him for the sight of Emma hurting herself, though.

He holds her back, aware that he has her wrists in a vice grip, strong enough to leave marks, but only because she's fighting him so hard.

"Please, love," he pleads brokenly, "please, you need to stop hurting yourself."

It's like she doesn't hear him. Just mutters, "It's my fault. It's me. It's always me."

He lets go of her arms then, instead cups her face in his hands, protects her head from her own assaults – protects her from herself.

"Emma darling, look at me. Whatever happened, I can assure you," and here his voice cracks with the strain of trying to hold back just how fearful he is right now, "it wasn't your fault."

And he's doing a poor job of hiding his worry but for once he's glad. For the first time that night, she looks him in the eye and he nearly staggers at the pain he sees there – raw and open and pouring out of her in droves, manifesting itself in the way her eyes glisten with tears she refuses to shed in front of anyone.

Then, she stills.

"You need to go."

"No." If anything, her statement makes him hold on to her tighter.

"It's me," she repeats. "Everyone I've ever been with..."

And she doesn't need to finish cause he knows how it ends.

How everyone leaves.

And again, it hurts that this is how she sees herself – and that it seems to have reached this extent that she's willing to... to hurt herself.

She seems to think it's her fault when he feels the blame should be put on him and to every person before him who allowed Emma Swan to build walls so high even she couldn't climb out of them if she wanted to.

"I just want my blankets."

And the sudden reroute in conversation throws him, but then she's completely calm now. If it wasn't for the way she digs her nails into the skin of his arms, he could forget that mere moments ago she had barged into his room in the middle of the night and ransacked the space they both live in.

"I took them to the cleaners to be washed, love. I'm sorry."

Her nails dig in harder, leaving their crescent-shaped marks, and he tenses – afraid that she will revert to her self-harming ways so he says, "Take mine."

He doesn't even wait for her reply, just gets up and grabs the first fleece blanket of his that he sees from their wrecked towel/linen cabinet before kneeling before Emma once more and wrapping it around her.

She eyes the blanket in question and the silence makes the tears come in earnest now and he's crying because he's just so fucking scared and he has no clue what to do, can't read Emma when he can normally read her so well. He gathers something has happened with Walsh but he doesn't know what and so he doesn't know the proper response, doesn't know how Emma will respond next.

He's Killian Jones - the man with the plan as Emma calls him.

Right now he's just Killian Jones - terrified for his best friend and so, so lost.

"I'll hurt you," she whispers as she regards him slowly.

You're already hurting me, he wants to say, every time you get hurt.

Instead, he simply says, "Not possible." Then gives her a watery smile and cups her cheek because there's no way he can convince her of that further more, not in the state that they're both in - him with red-rimmed eyes and wet cheeks, her a pale and shaking mess in near tears.

"I'm so tired."

He also gathers she means more than just needing sleep when she says so, which is why it's easy for him to say, "So let me take you to bed."

And without waiting for her answer, he scoops her into his arms, grateful when she doesn't resist but rather, sinks into him as she grips the fabric of his shirt like she needs something to ground herself.

As he deposits her onto her bed, she releases her hold on him like he's burned her when it feels like the other way around when she does that. She curls into a ball and buries her face into the blanket and when her shoulders begin to shake, he gathers that she's finally allowed those tears to fall.

It makes him cry harder – not in heaving sobs but the tears course silently down his cheeks in streams anyway because he knows Emma, knows how careful she is about who she shows her emotions to. This is the woman he's never known to cry in front of an audience even if it is just him. So to see her now, as vulnerable as she's ever been in the ten years he's known her – he's valued every time Emma has revealed a piece of herself to him but this is a side to her that he wishes never came about because it never should have reached this level in the first place.

"You need to leave," she starts in between sobs, "I've lost everyone I've ever cared about because of me, always, always me.

"I can't lose you too,"

she reveals and judging by the way the volume of her sobs increase, it pains her to do so.

And he wants to ask why she'd ever think that but perhaps he's been silent too long cause then she cries harder and her hands begin to quiver, begin to make its way along the length of her arm where she pinches the skin hard andthen he's shaking and it's clear–

"I want to stay. Here," he begs as he stops her hands from their path, "let me stay."

She doesn't reply and his pulse jumps into frightening heights when she pulls away from him but then she rolls to the other side of the bed –

– leaves a space on her bed for him.

And slowly, he climbs in.

First, he leaves a respectable distance between them because after all, her back is still to him and her shoulders are hunched away from him.

But the trembles that wrack her body travel through the little space between them and straight into his bones and suddenly, distance is no longer an option.

He wraps himself around her. It doesn't calm her like he wishes it would – makes her body go even more rigid but still, he holds her.

As she remains unyielding.

As she bawls.

As she gradually softens.

As her tears lessen.

As her breathing evens.

He holds her through it all and between them, they could have filled a river with their tears.

And still, it wouldn't have stopped him from holding her, from gathering the pain in her heart and the ache in her bones to be transferred to him if it was possible.

But it's not and so he tries to match his heartbeat to hers instead.

He succeeds and with only the night to hear his shattered supplication, he reveals a part of himself too.

"You won't lose me, Swan," he sighs against her ear, upsetting the tendrils that lovingly curl itself around there. "You'll never lose me," and before sleep claims him, he breathes one final avow:

"Because I am in love with you, and I hope to protect your heart as you've saved mine."

And if it weren't for the fatigue that had wrapped itself around his person, he would have noticed how the wisps of hair around Emma's ears flow with the movement of her head.

How her hands move from their original place beneath her head, to wrap around his hand at her stomach.

How their fingers intertwine.

AN: Been suffering from the most horrendous writer's block so, this is me trying to overcome it. By starting an angsty multichap.

Yup.

Hope you stick around!