City on the River
Title: City on the River 16/?
Author: Alsike
Fandom: Criminal Minds/X-Men
Pairing: Emily Prentiss... eventually Emma Frost
Rating: PG-15
Summary: When one person travels into an alternate universe a thousand others are created. What if Didi showed up without a time slip on Emily's doorstep, in a world without mutants? What would a twenty-five year old Emily do?
Apologies: I'm so so so sorry that this took so long to write. AND it's not even totally finished yet. This is Chapter 15 part 1 (about 4000 words), which is really only the set up for part 2. I wanted to wait and post them together, and I'm really planning on working on it this weekend (particularly because I have a sh*tload of homework, yay for procrastination.) But I've edited this one about six times, and if I don't post it now I will just keep editing it and never get on to Part 2 (which is supposed to be the funny part, while this one is more angsty.) So, um... I hope you like it okay.
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Emma sighed. She had dirt under her fingernails again. At least when she was a stripper she had been able to take some pride in her appearance. This mom stuff was just dirt, dirt, dirt, sand, clay, blood, tears, and dirt again.
She glanced over at Emily, trying to balance a mug of tea, a dictionary and a pencil in one hand, and fending an attacking Didi off with the other. (The child had decided to be a dog today and had been joyously wallowing in one of the spring mud puddles, and was now happily nosing her way into people’s legs and knocking over furniture, streaking everything with a fine coating of mud.) She was oblivious, as always, and Emma couldn’t help the burst of annoyance she felt every time she saw her. It had only gotten worse since the incident with the secretary. Emily made her so angry. “How dare you?” she wanted to snap. “How dare you say you’ll never leave me, never let me fall, when my own family couldn’t say that!” How dare she, when she was nothing to Emma.
Emma stomped over to her and took the tea out of her hand before she spilt it all over the floor. “You’re such a klutz.”
Emily, who actually hadn’t dropped or spilt anything yet, eyed her in bemusement.
Emma ignored her. She was busy. Catching Didi by the collar she hauled her, yipping with protest, up the stairs and into the bath.
* * *
“What are you doing for Easter?” Jane (as Mrs. K had requested Emma call her enough times that she thought it was probably rude not to) inquired, nosily.
Emma flinched and pulled her coat tighter around her. Was it almost Easter already? It was still fucking freezing here, and the forecast was threatening a return of snow flurries for the whole coming week. “I hadn’t thought about it really.”
Jane was insufferably nice, which was irritating, but Emma couldn’t ascribe any ulterior motives to her friendly interest except a lack of close friends so it wasn’t dreadful spending time with her. She was trying to teach her how to insult random passers-by, and Jane was a dutiful if uninspired student.
“You’re not visiting family?” Emma didn’t know what her face looked like, but Jane flinched.
Emma recovered, and tried not to direct her feelings at Jane, since she wasn’t the cause of them. “I don’t speak to my family anymore, and I think Emily’s mother is in the Philippines.”
“Oh,” Jane seemed to be considering whether or not she should express sympathy, then, thankfully, thought better of it, and plunged onward. “Well, my family is in Idaho, and Jim just has his aunt, but I grew up around a lot of extended family, and I would hate it if Jillian had to grow up without those raucous sorts of holidays, so-”
Emma frowned slightly and tried not to think too much about the stiff formality of her own family holidays. At least when her parents had had guests the spotlight was taken off of the children, but usually celebratory dinners were more like an exam then a treat. Finally forced to notice them on days that didn’t include the delivery of a report card, her father would put each of his issue through a series of questions meant to make sure they weren’t doing anything to shame the family. All you could do was wait and hope you would survive the inquisition. She had never had much of an appetite.
“Jim and I like to host a party every year. It would be lovely if you and Didi and Emily could come. There will be egg-dying, and egg hunts, and ham!”
Emma grimaced. Jane was a little too excited by the prospect of ham. “I don’t eat pork.”
“Really?” Jane looked curious. “There will be other things. You really should come. Jillian would love having Didi there.”
Emma unsuccessfully sought some defense against her eager expression. “I’ll talk to Emily.”
Jane smiled. “I’m glad.” Then she gave Emma an amused sidelong look. “I always enjoy seeing you together.”
Emma gave her an incredulous look and moved away slightly. “You do?” No one would have said that if they had seen them this week. She had been snappish and bitchy and Emily had started out irritatingly placating, and finally devolved into frustrated and annoyed. Didi had taken the opportunity to be a miniature tornado and fill the house with such destruction that they hadn’t had enough time to really rip into each other. They should probably be grateful.
Jane shrugged, still amused and not guilty at all. “No one would think you’ve been together as long as you have. You look at each other like you’re a bit shocked the other’s still there. I wish Jim still looked at me like that.”
Emma cringed. It was astonishing how people could see the lie right in front of them and make up a hundred stories to rationalize it before they suspected the truth. And Jane was far too invested in their fictional relationship. Emma didn’t want to imagine the look of betrayal on her face if she told her that she had known Emily for only a week longer than she had known Jane, just a few months. She paused, counting. It was almost six months. That was… far longer than she had expected this to last. It made her stomach twist. They had come through too many jarring incidents in such a short time. But with the way things were going now, she felt certain that the next one would be the last.
“What can I say?” Emma drawled carefully. “Emily’s a bit of an idiot sometimes. Every time I see her I’m surprised she hasn’t managed to mislay her own head.”
Jane laughed. “You never told me how you two met.”
She was ready for this and the lies she had composed tripped easily off her tongue. “Emily likes to pick up strays. It’s good she doesn’t really like animals or she’d have been a crazy cat lady years ago. But she found me…”
Emma trailed off, thinking of the strange woman with the sleeping child awkwardly clasped in her arms, and how desperate she had looked, and then, when she saw Emma, the way her face had lit up, just for a moment, with hope and relief. Emma had never made anyone’s face light up with relief before. Of course, now she knew it was the same expression Emily had whenever Emma brought her coffee.
“I brought her coffee.”
Jane was looking utterly confused.
Emma shook out the cobwebs. “I had run away from home and I was working at a coffee shop that she happened to like. She was always there, doing Arabic translations, and other nerdy things when I was trying to clean up.” Like she always was at home. “I asked her what she was doing once, and she told me. And then she never shut up about it.”
Jane grinned at this, and Emma thought it was a little too amused at her and not at her story. “She asked you out?”
Emma snorted. “Emily would never-“ and then she caught herself. If she said that Emily hadn’t, then the responsibility fell to her. But it was obvious that Emily was romantically incompetent, and she had already committed to it. She couldn’t deny it now. She made a face. “I was getting kicked out of my apartment,” she said slowly, worried that it was too close to the truth. She might have made rent that month, but the club was cutting her hours, and the next one, or the one after that, she would have been stuck. She would probably have had to take up one of the side offers that were never in short supply, and then what? Do that until those dried up too or she died, from some disease, or letting a murdering asshole get too close, or just not being able to take it anymore, and accepting the offer from Peter in the empty lot to share his score and hoping it killed her. “And she was looking for a roommate. And I knew it was going to be a bad idea, but I didn’t have a better option.” Jane was looking at her with a worried expression, and Emma realized she was sounding way too depressed for this to be a happy story. She forced a smile. “Neither of us has gotten completely fed up yet.”
Jane looked at her for a long time, and then let out an understanding sigh. “I think that’s a better excuse for the way you look at her.”
“What?” Emma tensed and waited for the blow.
“She sort of… saved you, didn’t she? I might find it difficult to say how I felt about someone who I thought I owed so much to. Especially if I thought I didn’t deserve it.”
Emma hated Jane’s ability to read her. “I- Can’t it just be that I’m not a romantic person?”
Jane smiled glancing away towards the opening doors of the school. “Of course, Emma. Everyone knows that. Just like they know how much you hate children and find nice people irritating.”
“It’s true.”
“It’s not that true.”
Emma rolled her eyes. There was no helping some people. Didi ran out of the building in her blindingly pink, purple, and blue snow jacket, undone at the front and billowing out behind her.
“M’ma! M’ma! Up!”
Emma reached down automatically and gave her a little swoop to make her yelp. “Yay!”
Jane laughed, clasping Jillian against her hip. “I can see how much you hate kids.”
“Other people’s kids.” She flashed a last glare over her shoulder as Didi tugged on her hair and encouraged her towards home.
“Think about Easter!” Jane called out. “Ask your darling!”
“Shut up!”
* * *
“Jane wants us to come over for Easter.”
Emily glanced up from her winter melon soup. (The family who ran the Chinese takeaway had gotten worried at seeing Emma and Didi there so often and had taken to adding in some of whatever they were having for dinner, mushrooms and greens and vegetables, until Emma had stopped ordering anything at all and just picked up and paid for the food.) “Okay,” she said.
Emma grimaced. “Really?”
“We’re not doing anything. Do you not want to go?”
“I don’t know.” Emma sighed. “She’s just been nosy lately, asking how we met and…” commenting on the way I look at you, “…stuff like that.”
“Do you want to tell her the truth?”
“What?” Emma sat up straight. “No! Why is that always your first option? You are such-“ She cut herself off, shaking her head fiercely. “She is way too invested in our relationship. It would devastate her to know…” Emma bit her lip and didn’t finish the sentence.
Emily gave her that slight sidelong glance that Emma couldn’t help but interpret as an admission of her own regret at the same circumstance, and nodded, considering. “What did you tell her about how we met? Just so I don’t… screw things up again.”
Emma shrugged, feeling defensive. She didn’t want to share her lies. Sometimes lies were a little too revealing of the truth. “Coffee shop in New Haven.”
“Better than a strip club.”
Emma smiled tightly, pressing her lips together to keep the venom in. She shouldn’t joke about that. She couldn’t understand how it felt.
Then Emily frowned. “You know where I went to college?”
“Why shouldn’t I? I’ve been here for six months.” She didn’t mean to use the time like a weapon, but she couldn’t help it. Six months. What was the limit? Seven? Nine? Did she have a year, or just a few more days?
Emily gaped, sitting back. “Six months?”
“You found me in late October, and it’s April first this week.”
“April,” Emily said, an unreadable expression on her face. “That’s…”
“A fucking long time,” Emma snapped.
Emily glanced around, but Didi had finished eating and in the living room playing obliviously with her cassette tapes, which, were somehow more interesting than the actual set of construction blocks she had been given for Christmas. “Hey! That’s a double swear jar.”
Emma glared, dropped her mostly empty plate in the sink, and flipped her off before walking out.
“God! What is your problem?” Emily shouted after her helplessly.
* * *
“You’ve seemed depressed lately,” Benji said, tugging Emma out of her contemplation of the tropical fish in the restaurant’s tank.
“Mm?” Emma frowned at him. “I’m not depressed.”
“Upset, then.”
“I just… lately I’ve been reminded, repeatedly, of things I didn’t really want to think about.” He looked sensitive and concerned, and Emma looked at him, wondering when this nerdy guy with jug handles for ears had become her closest confidante. She sighed and shook her head. “Three years ago, I wouldn’t have given someone like you the time of day. Back then… I knew what I wanted, what I was supposed to want.” She smiled, a little tight, but not without humor. “When I was ten, I knew that one day I would run a company that would drive my father out of business. Not ‘I wanted,’ ‘I would.’ I wanted to ruin him and make him proud of me, all at once.”
Benji looked curious, and not at all put off. He didn’t understand.
“It makes me sick that I felt like that, that I could hate him and be so desperate for affection and approval all at the same time.” Emma looked down at her hands. “And sometimes I’m afraid that that’s the only way I can feel about anyone. But Emily makes it so difficult. She’s so difficult to hate. Even when I have to watch other people pawing at her and doing…” what she couldn’t do. She couldn’t open herself up to that, not when everything was already so precarious, and she couldn’t trust that Emily would know how to respond without wrecking everything. Emily needed her, but that was all. Sometimes her eyes seemed to say it was more than that, but it wasn’t. Emily was too honest and felt things too strongly, and her need was tangled up with her desperation, and at least a small amount of forcibly repressed lust. (If Emma couldn’t recognize that by now, she had wasted her time as a stripper.) But it was worthless, completely worthless, when Emma’s whole existence was riding on her.
Benji tipped his head, watching her closely. “Jealous?”
“What?” Emma glared.
Benji waved his hand, trying to calm her. “Joking, joking. I just, when she brought you here at first, I was a little worried. It was a pretty quick transition, and it felt… volatile. But things have been getting a lot better in the last few months. Didi’s really happy, and Emily is so much calmer and less miserable. And you… well, you don’t look like you’re trying to jaywalk across a busy highway in the fog anymore.”
“What? What sort of-“
“It’s good now,” Benji interrupted. “That’s all I wanted to say. It just seems like it’s gotten to a place where you can let go, relax a little, trust it.”
“I can’t,” Emma said. “I know I can’t. The moment I trust it is the moment it all falls apart.” She clenched her teeth together and forced herself not to think about the way Benji’s naively understanding expression was so much like her dead brother’s.
“Just try not to hurt her. She needs someone looking after her, and right now, you’re all she’s got.”
* * *
Emily looked weak and pale and exhausted when she got home from work that evening, and curled up in the corner of the couch. Didi was at a play date that included dinner and wouldn’t be back for another hour, and Emma, watching from the door, wished that she were home. Her endless energy was a disaster most of the time, but she would always rush up to Emily when she stepped inside the door, clutching at her legs as if she was a generator and Emily needed recharging. Emily was always a little happier afterwards, looking up at Emma while pulling off her shoes, eyes bright, and making her warm to the feeling of her own importance. But Emma had been so good at being sharp and upset and pushing her away this week that today she didn’t even look up.
Emma moved over to behind the couch and leaned against it. She paused, unsure how she could make things less awful by addressing them, so she didn’t.
“Did you have Easter parties when you were Didi’s age?”
“Hm?” Emily looked up, confused at the sudden question. “Probably?” she temporized. “But all the parties were sort of the same. Formal dress, waiters. I couldn’t have told you what they were for.”
Emma nodded and gave something that wasn’t quite a laugh. It was funny how she and Emily had had such similar childhoods when Emily had had parents who loved her. Apparently the culture of how they had grown up was enough to make it so difficult to tell if they were wanted or not.
“No egg hunts then?”
Emily suddenly looked away. “When my dad was alive,” she said, her voice unnaturally stiff. “We’d do it early, before church.”
“Oh.” Emma watched her face. It was a loss from so long ago, and yet she still felt it that strongly. “Did you have to get a dress for church?” Emma doubted she’d know. She had never really paid much attention to dresses. Emma had harassed her about a few of the things she had found in the boxes, and she had been utterly bewildered.
“I don’t… think so.” Emily seemed uncertain and a little sad.
Emma hadn’t meant to make her sad.
She sank onto the couch next to Emily and leaned her head back against the cushion. “There has been talk about Easter dresses among the barbarians.”
“Oh.” Emily grimaced. “Shopping?”
“I’d make you go alone, if you could be trusted to pick out clothes.” Emma forced herself to flash a grin, and finger the collar of her unfortunately green shirt. “But clearly not. I want a Didi wrangler along though. So you get to come with us.”
Emily smiled. That was enough.
The doorbell rang, signaling the arrival of the pizza, and Emma went to get it. She brought it back to the couch, and they ate with a video in. Emma could deal with that. She settled in, close enough so that when Emily leaned back their arms would brush, and focused on the film. She could make tonight better, a little bit at least, as long as they didn’t succumb to the pitfall of conversation.
* * *
The shopping trip was eventful only in the way that all shopping with Didi was eventful. Didi disapproved of all appropriate dresses and instead became glued to something vilely purple. Emily spent the whole time making giving in sounds, and Emma had to glare at her and put her foot down until Didi finally changed her attention to a dress with excessively loud tropical flowers on a black background. It was slightly more suitable, and Emma gave in.
“I want waffles,” Didi informed them, and Emily gave her that look that managed to say, ‘why not, and just this once, and I will whine as much as Didi if you say no.’
It was her fucking money. Why couldn’t she just say, ‘yes, we’re going, who the hell cares what the babysitter thinks’? But no. Emily wouldn’t dare to do that. Emily begged her to stay.
“If you don’t…”
“Yes! Fine!” Emma snapped. “You don’t have to ask me.”
Emily looked at Didi strictly. “Why don’t you ask M’ma what she wants?”
Didi looked worried and slightly hurt. She clutched Emily’s leg and looked at Emma pathetically. “No waffles?”
Emma clenched her fists and glared at Emily. “Don’t you dare use her against me!”
“Then say what you fucking want.” Didi looked up intently and Emily paled. “Oh shi-“
The expression on her face was hilarious and Emma dropped her tense shoulders and laughed. “Don’t swear. And waffles are fine. At least we’ve branched out from pancakes.”
* * *
Didi was coloring ferociously on the placemat while they waited for their food, and Emily was watching her again. It was that same pathetic expression that she always had when she wanted something and knew Emma would tell her no. Emma was ignoring her and focusing on the book she had brought.
At least Baudelaire was a complete distraction from the miserable mundanities of her life. Washing dishes, cleaning up after Didi, getting drenched trying to clean Didi when she was far more interested in seeing exactly which extremities of the bathroom she could splash, were the exact opposite from the decadent, maggoty lust for art and flesh that filled his poems.
Serré, fourmillant, comme un million d'helminthes,
Dans nos cerveaux ribote un peuple de Démons,
Et, quand nous respirons, la Mort dans nos poumons
Descend, fleuve invisible, avec de sourdes plaintes.
“Mmm,” Emma stirred her tea, and listened to Emily’s helpless sigh.
“I just want you to believe that I’m on your side,” she muttered into her orange juice.
Emma looked up from her book and glanced across the table. “What?”
Emily looked jolted and decidedly surprised at that fact that she had spoken aloud at all. “Nothing.”
Emma just stared at her, her eyebrows furrowing slightly. Had she actually said what Emma had thought she said? Or had it been a case of hearing what you wanted to hear? She wasn’t sure which was worse. “Okay?”
Emily’s eyes dropped to her book. She recognized it, as it did belong to her, although it didn’t look like she had ever read it, and seemed disturbed. Emma tensed. Did she think she couldn’t read French? Did she think that just because she had let everything fall apart that she was an idiot?
“Are you bored?” she asked suddenly.
Emma stared at her. “What?” She shook her head. Emily never said what she thought she was going to say. “Can’t you be coherent for once?”
“I just… What do you want?”
Emma flinched at the frustration in her tone. She knew she had been pushing it, but Emily wasn’t supposed to snap back. She sounded unnervingly like her mother when Emma had overheard them fighting, not exactly angry, but upset and at the end of her rope. The Ambassador had been nothing but polite to her, and even warm sometimes, which was strange, coming from someone who seemed like the sort of person that her father would invite to his parties.
“Didi’s going to be in kindergarten next year, and that’s full days, and you-“ Emma looked up, wide eyed, a sudden terror lead heavy in her stomach. Emily had begged her to stay. She couldn’t have changed her mind. Had she made herself awful enough that Emily couldn’t take it? She opened her mouth to snap a vicious reply, make Emily have a good reason to throw her out, and keep her from working words around it until she thought it was her own idea, but stopped when Emily cut her off hurriedly.
“Do you want to go back to school?”
Emma stared. “What?” she mouthed, hardly whispering the words. Did she actually…
“Minneapolis isn’t New York, but there are a lot of schools here, and I know the University of Minnesota has a program for returning students, and if you don’t want to go full time-“
Emma couldn’t listen to this anymore. She closed the book on the table with a crack. “No,” she said flatly, and she stood up and walked away.
She felt Emily sink behind her, but could not turn even to look at her. She stood in the bathroom, hands braced against the sink and willed the blinding panic to go away.
* * *
Part 2