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[neveraskedtwice]

Emma loved the snow. She disliked the island on the whole and she was somewhat livid about the change in her house, which had been one of the few things she did like about the place, but the weather made for a surprisingly pleasant change

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[giftless]

She didn't sound anything like Her, but sometimes when you're trying very hard not to think about something, everything reminds you of it. Edmund had been trying very hard for the past month not to think of another winter, of another chance meeting in the snow and how he had quite nearly lost everything from childish weakness. Charlie's attitude had not helped lift Edmund's spirits; though his boyfriend was getting better, things were not perfect yet and Edmund knew Charlie could not carry him through this winter. Honour had seemed to pick up the slack, making every journey through the snow a light-hearted one. But so close to the Compound now, he had slinked off, leaving his man to make the last of the trip by himself, believing him safe. Instead he had met her

[neveraskedtwice]

Emma hadn't meant to catch him by surprise, but she suspected she had all the same. Ordinarily irritated when this place made her look foolish, she didn't mind it so much when her only real witness was just a boy, no older than her students had been. She shook her head, dusting more snow from her shoulders, though she would have to wait until she went indoors and it melted for some of it to leave her hair.

"I suppose that kind of thing is unavoidable this time of year," she said. It might have been simpler not to say anything at all, but she felt some compulsion, as she often did with teenagers, to put him a little more at ease. "Eleven months of sunshine and this place dumps snow on our heads."

[giftless]

"I suppose," he said, and again the words were dry and rough in a mouth seemingly unused to speech. Foolish, he was being foolish, and he knew that, but it was as if Edmund had been waiting for a reminder, waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under him all month, and now he was pinning memories onto some woman he did not even know.

Edmund shook his head quickly, squeezing shut his eyes to try and shake the resemblance from his notice. He opened them again, looking a little more at ease. "Sorry. You reminded me of someone," he explained, a common enough explanation on this island, he felt. "And I don't like the snow either. Seems like it's only ever there to muck things up."

[neveraskedtwice]

It wasn't a pleasant association, Emma guessed, or else it was one so pleasant as to be painful, someone he couldn't see anymore and hadn't for sometime. She bristled all the same, doing her best to hide it, never pleased to be taken for someone else. That Sadie bitch had been irritating enough. At least it sounded like this one wasn't anywhere near here. "Oh, I like it," she said. "I just prefer not to wear it. You've been here a while, then?"