Faces part 8 of 9
Title: Faces (part 8 of 9)
Author: Tamoline and Louisa
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: X-Men/Criminal Minds
Pairing: Emma Frost/Emily Prentiss
Disclaimer: Not my characters. Not my pairing.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
The squat, seen from sideways on the horizontal, blurry and out of focus. A tacky sensation beneath my head. The stench of vomit.
"Are you all right?" asked a voice distantly, as though through water. The pavement tilted vertiginously beneath me. Acrid taste in my mouth again.
Bright lights hurt my eyes as I was wheeled past them. Someone in the background was speaking, saying: "Emily. Emily."
"Emma, Emma." A familiar voice repeated softly. "I'm here, now. You're safe. You can go to sleep." A pause. "I'll watch over you."
I woke up with a extremely sore head and a really bad mood. Sadly, as an X-woman, I was somewhat accustomed to this experience, though thankfully less so in recent years. My secondary mutation was good for cutting down on that kind of thing. The awareness that something bad had happened was skirting the edge of my consciousness like a spider waiting to pounce, but I ignored it for the moment. I wasn't going to deal with anything yet. Apart from maybe seeing where I was. Cracking my eyes open slightly, the first piece of good news was that my eyes didn't hurt too badly from the electric lighting. They merely felt like someone was stabbing them with toothpicks, as opposed to, say, jackhammers. The second, even better news was that I appeared to be in a normal hospital room. There were no restraints, I didn't appear to have been sedated and the door was open. There was someone sitting in a chair near the bed, though. I squinted for a moment, and then blinked in surprise.
"Emily?" I said, not quite believing it.
She focussed on me instantly, getting to her feet. "You're awake. How do you feel?"
"Unfortunately like a hard object impacted my head at some velocity." I tilted my head slowly to one side and then the other. The room swayed a little, but not too much. There was a slight throbbing at the back of my head and some soreness in my neck, but nothing major. All in all, it could have been much worse. "It doesn't feel like there's much else wrong with me though."
She raised an eyebrow. "You can tell that?"
"I've had experience with suffering a variety of injuries, much to my regret." Emily started to open her mouth, obviously with a question, so I continued blithely onwards. "I have led what could be termed an interesting life. And don't think that you can take advantage of an injured woman to quiz me about it." I smiled weakly as I added the last part.
She didn't return the smile. "I won't if you don't want me here."
My memory threw up our argument. Oh. My smile faded. Right. The silence hung awkwardly in the air. I almost wanted to apologise for snapping at her earlier, but that was just ridiculous. Emma Frost did not say that she was sorry. Not ever.
I decided to change the subject. "If you don't mind me asking, how come you are? Here, that is."
"Apparently you kept on asking for an 'Emily' when they wheeled you in. Luckily, you happened to have the number of an Emily stored in your mobile phone."
"How absolutely fortuitous." I paused a second, then mumbled: "Thank you for coming."
"When I heard that you'd been attacked and hospitalised? Of course I came." She did smile, now, if only slightly. "We are friends, you know."
I couldn't help smiling back at her. "If I tore you away from that job of yours, you must have been concerned," I said a little wryly.
She winced. "There are going to be questions about that tomorrow."
"So, what's your story going to be?"
"Well, they already know the basics. Unfortunately." She made a face. "There will definitely be curiosity. I don't suppose that you know any out-of-work actors I might be able to hire for a day?"
"Sadly not." Well, none that I'd want to entrust with my current location, anyway.
She shrugged. "I guess it's not that important. I'm sure that I'll manage to deal with them *somehow*." She hesitated for a moment. "If you don't mind me asking: what happened?"
The blow to the head.
Vicky.
Jim.
A yawning abyss flickering with fire, smelling of burnt flesh. My own personal hell, where I so richly deserved to be.
I closed my eyes and shuddered.
I would not crack. I would not flinch. I would calmly open my eyes and lie, tell her that I couldn't remember a thing.
That was what Emma Frost would do. That was all Emma Frost *could* do. Emma Frost was a diamond, after all.
If you never exposed your weaknesses, no one could ever take advantage of them.
I felt a gentle touch on my arm and my eyes flickered open by instinct.
She was still there, just looking at me, eyes filled with concern.
"Emma?" she asked gently.
"I... I don't remember a thing," I said, then was immediately furious with myself for the stammer, the slip.
She sat there, looking at me for a second, before nodding. "Okay. I'll tell the police that." She didn't move, though, just rested her gaze on me. Thoughtfully. Compassionately. Knowingly.
I closed my eyes once more, feeling raw and wide open, naked before her brown eyes. She knew that I was lying -- her thoughts radiated it -- and she didn't care. She was just there for me.
I knew what Emma Frost would do. She'd smile politely, thank Emily and dismiss her, telling her that she needed to get some sleep.
The hell of it was that here was someone who didn't need me to be strong, cold, as hard as diamond. The hell of it was that here was someone that I felt I could fall apart around. The hell of it was that here was someone who made me almost want to fall apart, so that she could put me back together again, to make me whole and perfect the way I never could remake myself. To expose my scars and fractures, so she could give me some salve for my wounds.
Damn her.
Whether I was cursing Emily Prentiss or Emma Frost I was no longer sure.
I didn't have the strength for this any more. I really didn't.
I laughed bitterly within the confines of my own mind. If Emma Frost could never do this, could never let down her guard around someone else, then maybe Emily Winthrop could.
Damn her anyway. And this time I was sure that it was Emma Frost I was cursing.
I opened my eyes, unsurprised to find them filled with tears. "Please..." I sobbed, looking at Emily with something akin to (but never actually, not even now) desperation.
"Yes," she said, simply. She understood, somehow, quietly folding me in her arms; holding me until I was out of tears and out of energy. Numb. My last memory before I slipped into unconsciousness was of her gently stroking my hair.
I woke up rather suddenly to the unsalubrious sight of a hospital room. A remnant of a dull ache reminded me of why I was here. I remembered all of it. From the light coming in from the window, it was now morning. Probably early morning -- far too early for me to be awake, really. I glanced around. The room was empty. Not that I had expected anything else, of course. Why Emily, or indeed anyone, would still be here was a little beyond me.
Especially after yesterday.
I closed my eyes again, briefly, my hands tightening involuntarily into fists before I made them release their death grip on the covers. I couldn't believe that I had done that, opened myself so thoroughly, in front of someone. An asinine part of me huddled in on itself, stung that she wasn't here, but the rest of me, the better part, the sensible part, told it that *of course* she wasn't here. Why would she be? She had her job, her own life, and so did I.
It was time to check myself out of this place anyway.
I swung my feet out of bed and on to the cold ground. Gingerly, I rose to the vertical, but there was almost no dizziness. Good. Looking in the wardrobe, I sighed. My clothes were there, but they did look rather like I had been rolling around in the dirt and then bled copiously on them. I sighed. Say what you liked about the X Men garb, and I frequently did, it was almost preternaturally resistant to this kind of thing. Still, there was nothing for it. I'd just have to get to the apartment as quickly as I could and change.
I was only half-dressed when the door opened. I turned my best withering gaze in its direction, ready to make whichever unfortunate nurse had just entered my (temporary) domain leave somewhat more quickly than they'd come in. The sight that greeted me rather took the wind out of my sails.
I blinked. "Emily?" I found a completely inappropriate smile coming to my lips as suddenly the world seemed a much cheerier place. I point blank refused to analyze why that might be the case.
She smiled back at me. "I just stepped out to phone work and let them know that I wouldn't be in today either. Sorry if I woke you when I left."
Touched, I couldn't help broadening my smile a little. I really hadn't expected her to take even more time off just for me. "Putting off the no doubt extensive questioning until tomorrow, I see."
"Something like that." She paused for second. "Are you sure you're up to getting out of bed?" She asked the question carefully, as if aware that she was stepping into a potential minefield.
I let it go, not letting any implied questioning of my competence mar my mood. "Utterly certain, darling. I told you: I've had enough experience with head injuries to know my way around them."
"Hmmm." She regarded me thoughtfully, her thoughts loud and sceptical. I raised an eyebrow in her direction, and she conceded defeat with a small shrug. "We'll talk about... things... later?" Her voice made it very clear that this was a question and she wasn't pushing.
Inexplicably, I found myself tearing up again as yesterday washed over me once more. Damn her, how did she do this to me? I almost felt like collapsing back down onto the bed and waiting for the arms that I just knew she'd put around me. The alien walls of the hospital gave me strength. Not here. There was no way I could let go here, among strangers. "Later," I said. Somehow it sounded far more like a promise than I had intended. Damn her.
"Let's get you out of here, then. Would you like me to leave while you finish getting dressed?"
I shot her a look. I went for amused, but I was uncomfortably aware that she might be able to read more gratitude into it than I'd really like. "It seems a little late to worry about you getting a look at my naked body now." I took a breath. "Besides, this way I get the aid of a free dressing assistant, darling." Much though I was loath to admit it, an assistant might be helpful (okay, necessary) for getting my clothes over some of the bandages. "I'm all about the pampering."
"Now we get to the truth of it," she murmured, but came over and helped me anyway.
"If you didn't know that already, I do rather despair of you," I replied, considering and then discarding the tights as a lost cause.
"My role in our friendship had possibly come to my attention," she said, helping me pull my blouse over where someone had rather enthusiastically bandaged my arm.
"There," I said after a few more minutes' work. "Now let's go and check me out of this place."
The austere, though much better colour coordinated walls of my apartment greeted me upon my return. I shivered a little. All of a sudden, this didn't seem to be a place where I so much lived as existed. I wasn't sure that was going to be enough.
"Are you going to enter, or were you planning on standing in the doorway all day?" Emily asked from behind me.
I turned back towards her. Something of what I was feeling must have shown on my face, because she slid an arm around my waist and held me, not saying a thing.
"Thank you," I whispered. For not saying anything. I didn't add the second part, not aloud, but she understood, anyway. "Would you mind if we went to your place, instead?" I knew I was asking a lot, but this place wasn't mine, not really, not in the way that her apartment was hers. Emily. infused into the very walls.
It was disturbingly comforting to think of being surrounded by Emily at the moment. But maybe comfort was what I needed right now.
I hated feeling vulnerable. Even though I knew I could trust her. Maybe even especially because I could trust her.
"Of course not," she said, as though she knew exactly what was going through my head. I could have confirmed that, one way or the other. I didn't because I wasn't sure which option I wanted to be true. And which option would be worse.
I left the circle of her arms and felt obscurely bereft for a second. I quickly shook that off though. "Then I imagine that I'll need a few essential supplies. Clothes and such," I said as breezily as I could manage right at that moment.
Emily gave me a suspicious glance. "How much is 'a few'?"
I gave her an innocent look. "Not many. Just enough for a few days." Why was it that she didn't seem convinced?
Emily sat down heavily next to me on her sofa. "If that's your idea of travelling lightly, I dread to see what happens when you don't." She was perspiring a little, the rosy glow on her cheeks for once not due to a blush.
To be fair, I have travelled much more lightly. It has, to my ever lasting regret, often been necessary when needs must. But it was a thing that I definitely only ever did by necessity. Never when I had to avoid it. A girl had to have her comforts, after all.
I stroked her arm lightly and smiled. "Well, if you will insist on carrying all the heavy items yourself..."
She gave me a sour look. "Trust me, if it hadn't been for your head injury, you'd have been on your own."
I curled up on her side, wrapping one arm around her stomach. "My hero."
She put her own arm around my shoulders and we just stayed there a while. It was almost comfortable in its own odd way, and that was the thing that finally broke me. Tears started flooding uncontrollably down my face, my breath hitching and juddering in my chest. Emily just sat quietly, a rock in my existence, holding me whilst I fell. Not pushing. Not pulling. Just there.
Finally I broke the silence. "I was one of the head teachers at a school," I whispered. My voice was quiet at first, but grew louder, rawer, as I continued. "A special school, with special troubles. We got threats. Serious threats. But the kids didn't have anywhere else to go. Some months ago, that situation changed, at least for some of them. So we got the ones we could out of there. There were various reasons, but mainly we just thought it would be for the best. I told myself that they'd be safer that way, that they'd be able to live lives free from fear." I took a breath, but it came out more as a sob. "I was wrong. The bus came under attack, missile attack. Forty two died in the impact, or in the flames afterwards."
"God," Emily whispered, holding me, my shattered remains, tightly.
"I couldn't even be there for them. I was elsewhere. At the school. Even when I heard..." I shook myself jerkily, trying to keep the memories at bay. "I couldn't stop. Everyone else was still in danger and there was so much that needed to be done. There was always so much that needed to be done. I had to help counsel the pupils, even some of the staff. And there was always another crisis, something else to bury myself in. Someone had to be strong. I had to be strong. So I didn't stop. I couldn't stop. Until I couldn't go on any longer."
"You helped counsel other people. Was anyone there for you?" Emily's eyes were glittering with tears, her voice raw with reflected pain.
I felt like I should say a name, someone. I couldn't. "I had to be strong," I repeated. "A diamond." My voice broke, the hitch turning into a stutter and then a full blown sob. "I w... I was... n-needed. I h-had to..." And then I couldn't speak any more.
"Oh, Emma," said Emily, her voice rich with compassion. And she held me tightly whilst I cried myself to sleep, again.
When I had recovered from the lingering remnants of the concussion, I went back to the alleyway where I'd first met Vicky. She wasn't there, of course. I searched for her, both telepathically and the old-fashioned way, but there was no trace of her to be found. My best guess was that she'd just upped sticks and moved somewhere else. Somewhere the scary lady couldn't find her. There were other things I could have tried, but that would have meant involving people I just wasn't ready to even think about just yet. So, in the end, I decided to respect her wishes. Maybe our paths would cross again some day, but most likely they wouldn't. Either way, it was out of my hands.
As for Emily, well, against all reason she didn't actually run for the hills. Quite the opposite, in fact. And while she didn't push, not exactly, she certainly didn't let me off the hook. Which is how I came to be in my current predicament. I glowered at the door in front of me. I had faced down almost unthinkable threats, been sarcastic in the face of almost unimaginable danger and generally enacted far more than my fair share of brave deeds. I rather felt like that should count for something in the face of what was really just an ordinary wooden door with a mere normal human woman behind it. Much to my disgust, it didn't.
"I do hope you realise that I'm only doing this for you," I told Emily.
She was having none of it. "You're doing this for you," she said placidly, having been through this particular discussion more than once.
I shot her an evil look. She was right, but that didn't mean I had to be happy about it. I knew better than anyone that I had to be here because *I* wanted this, not because anyone was bullying me into it.
My stomach was still trying to convince me that leaving right now was a far better plan of action.
"Just don't think I'm going to let *you* off the hook," I muttered, jabbing a finger at her for emphasis.
"I don't think this is really the time." Her voice was calmly reasonable; obnoxiously so, if you asked me. Fortunately for her, I didn't get the opportunity to deliver a suitably scathing reply. Saved by the receptionist.
"Emma Winthrop," the woman called, looking up with a professional smile fixed to her face. "Dr Chandra will see you now."
I looked down at my hand, still tightly gripping Emily's with absolutely no intention of letting go.
"Thank you," I muttered.
"What was that? I hoping that it was 'I'm going to get up now and go through that door,'" Emily said with an arch look.
"Thank you for taking yet another day off work and coming with me to the first session," I said a little more loudly.
Her face softened, her eyes melting just a little. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."
"Emma Winthrop," the receptionist called again, with perhaps just the tiniest hint of impatience. I took a deep breath and got to my feet, still clinging to Emily's hand.
Emma Winthrop got to her feet and knocked on the door to the therapist's office. When the voice told her to enter, she did so, ready and willing to face what lay before her. And Emily Prentiss was with her every step of the way.
It was bloody certain that Emma Frost would never -- *could* never -- have done this. So Emma Winthrop simply had to do it for her.
Author: Tamoline and Louisa
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: X-Men/Criminal Minds
Pairing: Emma Frost/Emily Prentiss
Disclaimer: Not my characters. Not my pairing.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
The squat, seen from sideways on the horizontal, blurry and out of focus. A tacky sensation beneath my head. The stench of vomit.
"Are you all right?" asked a voice distantly, as though through water. The pavement tilted vertiginously beneath me. Acrid taste in my mouth again.
Bright lights hurt my eyes as I was wheeled past them. Someone in the background was speaking, saying: "Emily. Emily."
"Emma, Emma." A familiar voice repeated softly. "I'm here, now. You're safe. You can go to sleep." A pause. "I'll watch over you."
I woke up with a extremely sore head and a really bad mood. Sadly, as an X-woman, I was somewhat accustomed to this experience, though thankfully less so in recent years. My secondary mutation was good for cutting down on that kind of thing. The awareness that something bad had happened was skirting the edge of my consciousness like a spider waiting to pounce, but I ignored it for the moment. I wasn't going to deal with anything yet. Apart from maybe seeing where I was. Cracking my eyes open slightly, the first piece of good news was that my eyes didn't hurt too badly from the electric lighting. They merely felt like someone was stabbing them with toothpicks, as opposed to, say, jackhammers. The second, even better news was that I appeared to be in a normal hospital room. There were no restraints, I didn't appear to have been sedated and the door was open. There was someone sitting in a chair near the bed, though. I squinted for a moment, and then blinked in surprise.
"Emily?" I said, not quite believing it.
She focussed on me instantly, getting to her feet. "You're awake. How do you feel?"
"Unfortunately like a hard object impacted my head at some velocity." I tilted my head slowly to one side and then the other. The room swayed a little, but not too much. There was a slight throbbing at the back of my head and some soreness in my neck, but nothing major. All in all, it could have been much worse. "It doesn't feel like there's much else wrong with me though."
She raised an eyebrow. "You can tell that?"
"I've had experience with suffering a variety of injuries, much to my regret." Emily started to open her mouth, obviously with a question, so I continued blithely onwards. "I have led what could be termed an interesting life. And don't think that you can take advantage of an injured woman to quiz me about it." I smiled weakly as I added the last part.
She didn't return the smile. "I won't if you don't want me here."
My memory threw up our argument. Oh. My smile faded. Right. The silence hung awkwardly in the air. I almost wanted to apologise for snapping at her earlier, but that was just ridiculous. Emma Frost did not say that she was sorry. Not ever.
I decided to change the subject. "If you don't mind me asking, how come you are? Here, that is."
"Apparently you kept on asking for an 'Emily' when they wheeled you in. Luckily, you happened to have the number of an Emily stored in your mobile phone."
"How absolutely fortuitous." I paused a second, then mumbled: "Thank you for coming."
"When I heard that you'd been attacked and hospitalised? Of course I came." She did smile, now, if only slightly. "We are friends, you know."
I couldn't help smiling back at her. "If I tore you away from that job of yours, you must have been concerned," I said a little wryly.
She winced. "There are going to be questions about that tomorrow."
"So, what's your story going to be?"
"Well, they already know the basics. Unfortunately." She made a face. "There will definitely be curiosity. I don't suppose that you know any out-of-work actors I might be able to hire for a day?"
"Sadly not." Well, none that I'd want to entrust with my current location, anyway.
She shrugged. "I guess it's not that important. I'm sure that I'll manage to deal with them *somehow*." She hesitated for a moment. "If you don't mind me asking: what happened?"
The blow to the head.
Vicky.
Jim.
A yawning abyss flickering with fire, smelling of burnt flesh. My own personal hell, where I so richly deserved to be.
I closed my eyes and shuddered.
I would not crack. I would not flinch. I would calmly open my eyes and lie, tell her that I couldn't remember a thing.
That was what Emma Frost would do. That was all Emma Frost *could* do. Emma Frost was a diamond, after all.
If you never exposed your weaknesses, no one could ever take advantage of them.
I felt a gentle touch on my arm and my eyes flickered open by instinct.
She was still there, just looking at me, eyes filled with concern.
"Emma?" she asked gently.
"I... I don't remember a thing," I said, then was immediately furious with myself for the stammer, the slip.
She sat there, looking at me for a second, before nodding. "Okay. I'll tell the police that." She didn't move, though, just rested her gaze on me. Thoughtfully. Compassionately. Knowingly.
I closed my eyes once more, feeling raw and wide open, naked before her brown eyes. She knew that I was lying -- her thoughts radiated it -- and she didn't care. She was just there for me.
I knew what Emma Frost would do. She'd smile politely, thank Emily and dismiss her, telling her that she needed to get some sleep.
The hell of it was that here was someone who didn't need me to be strong, cold, as hard as diamond. The hell of it was that here was someone that I felt I could fall apart around. The hell of it was that here was someone who made me almost want to fall apart, so that she could put me back together again, to make me whole and perfect the way I never could remake myself. To expose my scars and fractures, so she could give me some salve for my wounds.
Damn her.
Whether I was cursing Emily Prentiss or Emma Frost I was no longer sure.
I didn't have the strength for this any more. I really didn't.
I laughed bitterly within the confines of my own mind. If Emma Frost could never do this, could never let down her guard around someone else, then maybe Emily Winthrop could.
Damn her anyway. And this time I was sure that it was Emma Frost I was cursing.
I opened my eyes, unsurprised to find them filled with tears. "Please..." I sobbed, looking at Emily with something akin to (but never actually, not even now) desperation.
"Yes," she said, simply. She understood, somehow, quietly folding me in her arms; holding me until I was out of tears and out of energy. Numb. My last memory before I slipped into unconsciousness was of her gently stroking my hair.
I woke up rather suddenly to the unsalubrious sight of a hospital room. A remnant of a dull ache reminded me of why I was here. I remembered all of it. From the light coming in from the window, it was now morning. Probably early morning -- far too early for me to be awake, really. I glanced around. The room was empty. Not that I had expected anything else, of course. Why Emily, or indeed anyone, would still be here was a little beyond me.
Especially after yesterday.
I closed my eyes again, briefly, my hands tightening involuntarily into fists before I made them release their death grip on the covers. I couldn't believe that I had done that, opened myself so thoroughly, in front of someone. An asinine part of me huddled in on itself, stung that she wasn't here, but the rest of me, the better part, the sensible part, told it that *of course* she wasn't here. Why would she be? She had her job, her own life, and so did I.
It was time to check myself out of this place anyway.
I swung my feet out of bed and on to the cold ground. Gingerly, I rose to the vertical, but there was almost no dizziness. Good. Looking in the wardrobe, I sighed. My clothes were there, but they did look rather like I had been rolling around in the dirt and then bled copiously on them. I sighed. Say what you liked about the X Men garb, and I frequently did, it was almost preternaturally resistant to this kind of thing. Still, there was nothing for it. I'd just have to get to the apartment as quickly as I could and change.
I was only half-dressed when the door opened. I turned my best withering gaze in its direction, ready to make whichever unfortunate nurse had just entered my (temporary) domain leave somewhat more quickly than they'd come in. The sight that greeted me rather took the wind out of my sails.
I blinked. "Emily?" I found a completely inappropriate smile coming to my lips as suddenly the world seemed a much cheerier place. I point blank refused to analyze why that might be the case.
She smiled back at me. "I just stepped out to phone work and let them know that I wouldn't be in today either. Sorry if I woke you when I left."
Touched, I couldn't help broadening my smile a little. I really hadn't expected her to take even more time off just for me. "Putting off the no doubt extensive questioning until tomorrow, I see."
"Something like that." She paused for second. "Are you sure you're up to getting out of bed?" She asked the question carefully, as if aware that she was stepping into a potential minefield.
I let it go, not letting any implied questioning of my competence mar my mood. "Utterly certain, darling. I told you: I've had enough experience with head injuries to know my way around them."
"Hmmm." She regarded me thoughtfully, her thoughts loud and sceptical. I raised an eyebrow in her direction, and she conceded defeat with a small shrug. "We'll talk about... things... later?" Her voice made it very clear that this was a question and she wasn't pushing.
Inexplicably, I found myself tearing up again as yesterday washed over me once more. Damn her, how did she do this to me? I almost felt like collapsing back down onto the bed and waiting for the arms that I just knew she'd put around me. The alien walls of the hospital gave me strength. Not here. There was no way I could let go here, among strangers. "Later," I said. Somehow it sounded far more like a promise than I had intended. Damn her.
"Let's get you out of here, then. Would you like me to leave while you finish getting dressed?"
I shot her a look. I went for amused, but I was uncomfortably aware that she might be able to read more gratitude into it than I'd really like. "It seems a little late to worry about you getting a look at my naked body now." I took a breath. "Besides, this way I get the aid of a free dressing assistant, darling." Much though I was loath to admit it, an assistant might be helpful (okay, necessary) for getting my clothes over some of the bandages. "I'm all about the pampering."
"Now we get to the truth of it," she murmured, but came over and helped me anyway.
"If you didn't know that already, I do rather despair of you," I replied, considering and then discarding the tights as a lost cause.
"My role in our friendship had possibly come to my attention," she said, helping me pull my blouse over where someone had rather enthusiastically bandaged my arm.
"There," I said after a few more minutes' work. "Now let's go and check me out of this place."
The austere, though much better colour coordinated walls of my apartment greeted me upon my return. I shivered a little. All of a sudden, this didn't seem to be a place where I so much lived as existed. I wasn't sure that was going to be enough.
"Are you going to enter, or were you planning on standing in the doorway all day?" Emily asked from behind me.
I turned back towards her. Something of what I was feeling must have shown on my face, because she slid an arm around my waist and held me, not saying a thing.
"Thank you," I whispered. For not saying anything. I didn't add the second part, not aloud, but she understood, anyway. "Would you mind if we went to your place, instead?" I knew I was asking a lot, but this place wasn't mine, not really, not in the way that her apartment was hers. Emily. infused into the very walls.
It was disturbingly comforting to think of being surrounded by Emily at the moment. But maybe comfort was what I needed right now.
I hated feeling vulnerable. Even though I knew I could trust her. Maybe even especially because I could trust her.
"Of course not," she said, as though she knew exactly what was going through my head. I could have confirmed that, one way or the other. I didn't because I wasn't sure which option I wanted to be true. And which option would be worse.
I left the circle of her arms and felt obscurely bereft for a second. I quickly shook that off though. "Then I imagine that I'll need a few essential supplies. Clothes and such," I said as breezily as I could manage right at that moment.
Emily gave me a suspicious glance. "How much is 'a few'?"
I gave her an innocent look. "Not many. Just enough for a few days." Why was it that she didn't seem convinced?
Emily sat down heavily next to me on her sofa. "If that's your idea of travelling lightly, I dread to see what happens when you don't." She was perspiring a little, the rosy glow on her cheeks for once not due to a blush.
To be fair, I have travelled much more lightly. It has, to my ever lasting regret, often been necessary when needs must. But it was a thing that I definitely only ever did by necessity. Never when I had to avoid it. A girl had to have her comforts, after all.
I stroked her arm lightly and smiled. "Well, if you will insist on carrying all the heavy items yourself..."
She gave me a sour look. "Trust me, if it hadn't been for your head injury, you'd have been on your own."
I curled up on her side, wrapping one arm around her stomach. "My hero."
She put her own arm around my shoulders and we just stayed there a while. It was almost comfortable in its own odd way, and that was the thing that finally broke me. Tears started flooding uncontrollably down my face, my breath hitching and juddering in my chest. Emily just sat quietly, a rock in my existence, holding me whilst I fell. Not pushing. Not pulling. Just there.
Finally I broke the silence. "I was one of the head teachers at a school," I whispered. My voice was quiet at first, but grew louder, rawer, as I continued. "A special school, with special troubles. We got threats. Serious threats. But the kids didn't have anywhere else to go. Some months ago, that situation changed, at least for some of them. So we got the ones we could out of there. There were various reasons, but mainly we just thought it would be for the best. I told myself that they'd be safer that way, that they'd be able to live lives free from fear." I took a breath, but it came out more as a sob. "I was wrong. The bus came under attack, missile attack. Forty two died in the impact, or in the flames afterwards."
"God," Emily whispered, holding me, my shattered remains, tightly.
"I couldn't even be there for them. I was elsewhere. At the school. Even when I heard..." I shook myself jerkily, trying to keep the memories at bay. "I couldn't stop. Everyone else was still in danger and there was so much that needed to be done. There was always so much that needed to be done. I had to help counsel the pupils, even some of the staff. And there was always another crisis, something else to bury myself in. Someone had to be strong. I had to be strong. So I didn't stop. I couldn't stop. Until I couldn't go on any longer."
"You helped counsel other people. Was anyone there for you?" Emily's eyes were glittering with tears, her voice raw with reflected pain.
I felt like I should say a name, someone. I couldn't. "I had to be strong," I repeated. "A diamond." My voice broke, the hitch turning into a stutter and then a full blown sob. "I w... I was... n-needed. I h-had to..." And then I couldn't speak any more.
"Oh, Emma," said Emily, her voice rich with compassion. And she held me tightly whilst I cried myself to sleep, again.
When I had recovered from the lingering remnants of the concussion, I went back to the alleyway where I'd first met Vicky. She wasn't there, of course. I searched for her, both telepathically and the old-fashioned way, but there was no trace of her to be found. My best guess was that she'd just upped sticks and moved somewhere else. Somewhere the scary lady couldn't find her. There were other things I could have tried, but that would have meant involving people I just wasn't ready to even think about just yet. So, in the end, I decided to respect her wishes. Maybe our paths would cross again some day, but most likely they wouldn't. Either way, it was out of my hands.
As for Emily, well, against all reason she didn't actually run for the hills. Quite the opposite, in fact. And while she didn't push, not exactly, she certainly didn't let me off the hook. Which is how I came to be in my current predicament. I glowered at the door in front of me. I had faced down almost unthinkable threats, been sarcastic in the face of almost unimaginable danger and generally enacted far more than my fair share of brave deeds. I rather felt like that should count for something in the face of what was really just an ordinary wooden door with a mere normal human woman behind it. Much to my disgust, it didn't.
"I do hope you realise that I'm only doing this for you," I told Emily.
She was having none of it. "You're doing this for you," she said placidly, having been through this particular discussion more than once.
I shot her an evil look. She was right, but that didn't mean I had to be happy about it. I knew better than anyone that I had to be here because *I* wanted this, not because anyone was bullying me into it.
My stomach was still trying to convince me that leaving right now was a far better plan of action.
"Just don't think I'm going to let *you* off the hook," I muttered, jabbing a finger at her for emphasis.
"I don't think this is really the time." Her voice was calmly reasonable; obnoxiously so, if you asked me. Fortunately for her, I didn't get the opportunity to deliver a suitably scathing reply. Saved by the receptionist.
"Emma Winthrop," the woman called, looking up with a professional smile fixed to her face. "Dr Chandra will see you now."
I looked down at my hand, still tightly gripping Emily's with absolutely no intention of letting go.
"Thank you," I muttered.
"What was that? I hoping that it was 'I'm going to get up now and go through that door,'" Emily said with an arch look.
"Thank you for taking yet another day off work and coming with me to the first session," I said a little more loudly.
Her face softened, her eyes melting just a little. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."
"Emma Winthrop," the receptionist called again, with perhaps just the tiniest hint of impatience. I took a deep breath and got to my feet, still clinging to Emily's hand.
Emma Winthrop got to her feet and knocked on the door to the therapist's office. When the voice told her to enter, she did so, ready and willing to face what lay before her. And Emily Prentiss was with her every step of the way.
It was bloody certain that Emma Frost would never -- *could* never -- have done this. So Emma Winthrop simply had to do it for her.