Archive of Our Own ^beta

“It’s not your fault,” her mom said, her voice choked up.

It was a lovely day. The sky was clear and bright, with barely a cloud to be seen around. The weather still had wisps of the February cold, but it was pleasant enough that Emma didn’t need anything more than her black turtleneck and thick socks under her dress pants in order to not feel it. Birds of all sorts of species flew around the gathering, singing and chirping to a tune she couldn’t see.

“You co– you couldn’t have– it wasn’t–,” she coughed, and pulled Emma tighter into her chest with a whispered wail.

Emma nodded. She felt something dropping onto the top of her head. Her dad walked and kneeled in front of her. He was dressed in his good good suit– ‘Always dressed to impress!’– but his hair was messy, he had bags under his eyes, and his face was covered by a scraggly beard. He opened his mouth and said something to her. Emma nodded, and that seemed to satisfy him.

She watched the people who had shown up. Most wore black clothes of some sort– the look almost jarring enough to keep her attention. Together, they looked like they were participating in a weird cult of some kind, either celebrating or summoning death. Emma wrinkled her nose at the direction her thoughts took, and returned to watching. There was nothing supernatural or occult about the way they looked, or what they were doing. Just a group of tired people, with tired faces and tired eyes, pretending to know what they were supposed to do. Emma only wished they were as calm as she was, despite not knowing most of them.

Her dad stood up, and walked to her left, pulling both her and her mom into a hug. Her mom started shaking almost immediately. Emma watched as the man in front of the hole said something. Uncle Danny walked close to the man. He wore an old, worn tweed suit. Emma blinked, but the motion felt slow, awkward– like the air resisted her eyelids. It was the same suit Uncle Danny wore to her Auntie’s funeral.

Uncle Danny looked at the hole. Emma thought she could understand what he felt. Compared to her parents, or even to Anne, who stood behind them supported by one of her college friends as she sobbed almost uncontrollably, only her and her uncle were okay. Uncle Danny didn’t shake, or cry, or try to tell her it wasn’t her fault. He gently lowered a bouquet of violets and lavenders into the grave, and then he took up a shovel, and started filling the hole. She watched for what seemed like hours as Uncle Danny filled the hole by himself, with no pauses.

The man by his side spoke some more words, and closed his black book. If there was anything that probably was part of some weird death cult, it was whatever the man had been doing. His spell finished, he slowly turned, giving a tired smile to everyone gathered, and spoke some more. He just spoke, and spoke, and spoke. Emma wished he would shut up soon. His words were meaningless.

Uncle Danny turned toward them, his suit dirty, and his hair dishevelled. Emma gave him a small nod, and he gave her a nod in return, making his way toward them. He was stopped several times, the people in the gathering rushing to catch him, sharing hugs, and touches, and more words with him before they, too, left to go somewhere. The man with the book seemed to sag under the weight of his chanting.

Her father said something to her left, but Uncle Danny shook his head the moment he found himself close enough to them. He kneeled in front of Emma, and held out both of his hands. Emma looked down, and then placed both of her hands on top of her Uncle’s. His hands were cold, dry, and rough. She thought his hands were like what the day should have been– it should have been a rough day.

“Hey, kiddo,” Uncle Danny said. His voice was raw, and quieter than usual. “How’re you doing?”

“I’m dry.” Her eyebrows furrowed, like the words confused her. Emma wondered if she wasn’t supposed to be dry– if she was supposed to be wet.

Danny’s mouth widened into a not smile. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess you are.”

They nodded at each other again. Emma looked down at their hands, her fingers tracing old sea scars. Her parents spoke to Uncle Danny, and he spoke to them in return. Emma traced the scars. Taylor used to think all scars were just signs of a good story. Her breast felt too tight, like she had a corset inside her lungs. The air fought her eyelids, and she couldn’t blink.

Emma was dry.

“Hey.” Uncle Danny whispered, bringing her attention and her gaze back up at him. He smiled another not-smile at her again. “Alan is going to bring you back home now. Okay?”

“Okay,” Emma answered. She looked back at their hands. “Are you coming, too?”

Her mother shook, and Uncle Danny squeezed her hands. “Soon. I… I have some things to– yeah. Have to talk to…”

“Okay.” Emma squeezed his hands back. “Uncle?”

“What’s–” He stopped, drawing in a loud breath. “What’s up, firefly?”

“Why am I dry?” Emma asked, her voice dry, and lost, like winter’s kiss.

“You won’t be for long,” Uncle Danny said, his voice dropping a register. “No one will.”

“Uncle?” Emma tried to take a step back into her mother, but her parents were rocks behind her back. She looked down and saw her hands starting to go purple from Uncle Danny’s grip. “You’re hurting me.”

“It’s okay, my little firefly.” Uncle Danny spoke. Emma realised that there was no other sound around them beyond the faint crashing of the waves. Brackish water leaked down swollen eyes like pus. “She is coming.”

Emma blinked.

Uncle Danny gave her right cheek a gentle pat as he stood up, saying something to her parents. Emma glanced at his face, and found that his eyes were red, but his face was otherwise dry. She brought her right hand to touch the spot. Her parents started moving her back to their car, their voices intermingling with those of the other attendees as well as the lively birds who made the graveyard their home.

Her hand was wet.

“Please!” Emma cried, gasping and heaving up as she shook herself from sleep.

Her chest felt heavy, and she felt hot sweat clinging to her neck, her back, her armpits, and underneath her breasts. She drew in a lungful of air, the sound shaky and almost wheezing to her ears, and slowly let it out, her lips wavering from the effort.

It smelled like sea water and raspberries.

“Em?” Someone asked next to her, the concern on her familiar gaze barely lessened by the sleep she was blinking from it. “You… okay?”

Emma looked to her right, a small frown on her face. Anne was buried under her covers, face showing the same amount of sweat she felt herself. She could see the dried tracks her tears made on her makeup, or the way her light pink lipstick had smudged all around her lips. Anne’s eyes were sunken, and tired– like she’d been awake for so long that she’d forgotten what it was like to feel rested.

She allowed her eyes to roam what little she could see in the darkness. Her ceiling still had a smattering of the shining stars they’d placed there so many years ago. Despite telling her parents many times that she’d outgrown them, Emma herself never tried to remove them. She was caught in what looked to be some of the posters she had put up on her walls. The edges of some were curling up– mostly the ones about Alexandria, or Narwhal, or even the odd Mouse Protector one she was given by Anne as a joke. The others, featuring featureless models with bodies she’d only dreamed she could one day have, seemed to taunt her from the shadows. Mere mannequins, brought to a facsimile of life for others’ entertainment, now drawing strength from her.

“Just… a dream,” she finally answered, lowering herself back down on her pillow and trying to ignore the way it squelched beneath her. “I forgot you were here.”

Soft arms moved underneath and above her, and she was pulled into an even softer embrace. Anne was not just as sweaty as she was– she was much sweatier. The hug felt confining and sweltering, like her sister had trapped her in a cage made of blankets, and her arms were her jailers.

“I heard you,” Anne whispered into her hair, her lips placing little kisses where her words landed, “you were calling her.”

Emma hummed, closing her eyes. She felt much too dry, despite everything. “I see her hair when I close my eyes.”

Anne hiccupped, pulling her tighter. “Oh.”

Emma waited to see if Anne would say anything else, but after several moments, she sighed, settling into the hug as best she could. She doubted she would get any more sleep that night– sleep had been errant for the past three days. She had been finding it difficult to tell the passage of time. Emma felt displaced, somehow– like she was afloat the stream, separated from the events happening around her. She was disconnected. Her body sank through Cocytus while her mind was kept adrift in the Acheron.

“Taylor would have liked that,” she whispered, the tips of her nails digging into Anne’s arms.

“What?” Anne sniffled, her voice so thick it sounded muffled.

Emma shook her head. “Sorry. Just a thought; Greek Mythology.”

“Oh,” Anne hummed, the surprise in her voice audible. She sniffled again, and then shook, sending waves of sweaty softness against Emma. “Remember– remember when she got that, that… that box of old VHS tapes and how– how mad she was at the flying ladies in that old show?”

Emma did. She remembered every moment she spent with Taylor, down to the minutiae; relived them often enough that she’d spent more time with Taylor in her thoughts than she did in reality. Sometimes, Emma wished she didn’t.

“It was ‘Xena’. She was mad at the harpies.” Emma felt a not-smile stretching her lips. “‘There’s no way they’d just be in Tartarus like that, throwing fire, of all things. And why are they so slow?’”

“Wow,” Anne breathed against her hair, bathing her in the smell of still-water. Her voice was lower pitched– almost a contralto to her usual soprano. “I didn’t think you’d remember that, Ems.”

“Annie?” Emma asked, softly.

She heard the sound of the waves crashing, and was pulled further into wetness. Her chest felt heavy, like it was being pulled under by anchors and sinking. Her heart beat to a slow and painful tempo against her chest, almost rocking her with every thrum. Emma shivered, her breath frosty and visible as it puffed away from her. Her room was silent, with gentle light flickering against the wall like reflections from the water.

She looked down. Anne’s arms were pale, with dark, bluish veins bulging against her bloated skin. They looked slick, as if the water that clung to her skin was heavy, congealed. She could see clumps of wet, dark hair circling her wrists, pulling– down, like they wanted her to sink, to be dragged into her mattress.

“Don’t worry,” Anne shuffled, her frigid lips pressing wetly just under her left earlobe. “It’s not bad down here.”

Her entire body shuddered, her spine tingling almost painfully. Her beating heart felt like cannons battering her ribs. “Annie?” she whispered, almost afraid to make a louder sound.

The tiniest kiss pressed against her ear, dripping still-water flowing in and muffling her canal. Emma whimpered. “Annie…?”

“Sorry,” Anne yawned as her ear popped, “I think– I think I’m… I dozed off…”

“It’s fine,” Emma lied, out of breath. “Good night.”

“Good… n’n…” Anne slurred, her body feeling warm and heavy in their embrace.

Emma shut her eyes tight, trying to ignore the smell of fading brine, or the image of intensely familiar dark, waterlogged strands of hair. Trembling, she brought her left hand up to her ears, having to repeat the motion because she smacked herself twice. She sucked in a deep, shaky breath, trying to curl into herself but she couldn’t, confined as she still was by Anne’s arms.

Her ear was wet.

“–ey–” A finger snapped in front of Emma’s face, and she blinked, sound and vision rushing in to fill in the void left by her sinking. “You good?”

She nodded, still trying to fully realise where and when she was. Her eyes caught small, insignificant details, such as the way Sophia’s fingernails were all bitten short and unmanicured, and the way her skin was filled with micro abrasions and scars. Emma breathed out, feeling faint for no reason.

She was in the classroom. She glanced around, trying to find a wall clock until she remembered the fact that there were no clocks anywhere at Winslow, considering how fast they were stolen. She tried to get her eyes to focus on the details of the classroom, and the people still in it: Greg and Sparky were talking off in a corner. Julia was sitting by the front, sleeping. The walls were covered in poorly painted over graffiti, and the teacher… Emma sighed, at least glad that she skipped the entire period they shared in Algebra.

“Yeah. Yeah, I just–” she swallowed drily, ignoring the taste of seawater in her mouth. “Just… distracted.”

Sophia eyed her with probably the largest amount of concern on her face that she could manage. Emma tried to smile at her friend, to tell her she was alright, but what came out must have been awful, judging by Sophia’s grimace.

“Yeah. Yeah, no.” Sophia shook her head, and Emma’s eyes were caught by dark blue beads almost hidden by thick dreads. “Fuck you are. It’s been two weeks, and you’re just getting worse.”

She felt soft arms circling her neck, and almost began to relax until she realised that they were dry. Emma tensed. Madison’s unfamiliarly quiet voice staggered her back into the present. “Please talk to us. We– I don’t… I don’t know what you’re going through, but… we’re… we’re really worried, Ems.”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, her face whirling to look at a shocked Madison. “Don’t fucking call me that!”

Madison stumbled back, looking at Emma with wide, baby blue eyes. She looked around, noticing that the rest of the students had already filtered out, and that Mr. Quinlan hesitated for a second by the door, giving her a look of pity that burned her on its way down, before leaving the three of them alone for recess. Emma glared down at her desk, grunting at the marks she could see against the grain of the table. She brought her hands up to her face, and cursed at the small beads of blood pooling underneath her nails, and the small splinters she could see piercing them.

She cursed at the fact that it didn’t hurt– that her body refused to even pretend it was working properly. Blindly, she felt at her face, fingertips pressing under her eyes, around her ears, below her neck.

“Still fucking dry,” she slumped against the desk, suddenly exhausted.

“Bitch, what does that mean?” Sophia pulled a chair, the metal legs shrieking against the linoleum floor. She sat down heavily, and leaned forward, her hands squeezing Emma’s forearms. “You just keep saying cryptic shit like it’s supposed to mean anything.”

“What don’t you get?” Emma groaned, her forehead thumping against one of Sophia’s hands.

“You…you’re at the school. You’re not– there. You’re fine.” She heard Madison taking tentative steps towards her and she struggled not to snort at the absurdity of her friends treating her like a live explosive. “You’re okay.”

“It doesn’t feel like it,” Emma whispered, turning so that her cheeks were pressed against Sophia’s fingers instead. “I know you couldn’t give two shits about– about–!”

Emma took in a deep breath, shutting her eyes again. “I know. But I hear her walking around the corners. I see her hair when I turn too fast. At night, I swear I feel her hugging me, like she used to, but…”

“But what?” Sophia asked, seemingly curious despite the morbidity of her words.

“Her skin. It’s like when– like when they– when I found her.” Emma murmured. “Have you seen corpses in the water?”

“...yeah,” Sophia said, her voice just as heavy as Emma’s heartbeat. “Too many, probably.”

“Once,” Madison said, slumping down to a chair next to Emma. “At the Boardwalk. It was just… there, hitting the breakwater. No one seemed to care.”

“Yeah,” Emma trailed off. “Some days I think she’s – like she’s still there, trying to talk to me. Most days, I think maybe I was the one who died, and this is just some fucked up afterlife.”

Sophia grunted, but didn’t say anything. Madison shifted and shuffled in that way that told Emma that she wanted to say something, but didn’t know what. Emma sighed. She understood why everyone was weirded out by her, but she wished they were at least decent at pretending they weren’t.

“Doesn’t matter, I guess,” Emma mumbled, shaking her forearms until Sophia took her fingers off her, “might as well get out. I need the bathroom, anyway.”

She saw Madison giving Sophia another one of those secret looks they shared so often, and shook her head, the once familiar sting of envy not even strong enough to simmer in her belly. Emma just felt tired– like her outburst had used the last of her strength. She wanted the day to be over.

“I’m gonna go grab us a good table,” Madison offered. Emma looked at her and saw her grunting with the weight of her bag as she left the classroom with tiny steps.

She felt Sophia’s hand on her right shoulder before she heard her. “Hey. I… look. There’s some weird shit going on in the Bay. Didn’t want to say nothing because it could get your hopes up, or whatever, but… turn the TV on when you get home. Local news– or ask Alan, or Zoe. They probably know, too.”

Emma nodded, the words lodging themselves somewhere deep in her head and almost instantly forgotten. “Sure. I’m going to the bathroom, you coming?”

Sophia wrinkled her nose, a look of familiar distaste crossing her face. “No way. I’ll be annoying the small while you do that.”

The hand on her shoulder squeezed tighter. “Hang in there, Survivor.”

Emma drew in a shaky breath as explosive, frozen fury gnawed inside her. Sophia seemed satisfied by whatever she saw, took her hand away from her shoulder and left, leaving Emma to deal with the fact that just the smallest mention of surviving brought her to near apoplectic rage.

“Shove my damn fist up her ass,” Emma muttered angrily, throwing her backpack around her and getting up. “All the way up. No lube, either. See how she likes that.”

She started walking, leaving the classroom and entering the mostly deserted hallway. She ignored the way some of the people in there would wave at her with fake smiles, or open their mouths so more fucking words would come out, or pretend they even knew who the fuck she was. Emma was done.

She sped through the hall, pausing only to open her locker and toss in her backpack on the way. She slammed the door with satisfying force, momentarily bringing silence to the usually loud hallway, and finished locking it before she threw herself into the first bathroom she could find.

‘Just my luck,’ Emma thought as she realised she was in one of the druggies’ bathrooms, the lingering smell of weed burning her nostrils.

She ignored the smell, just like she ignored some of the fresh graffiti on the walls, or the many phone numbers marked across the stalls, or the fact that underneath one she could see two pairs of shoes, one facing the other closely and the soft, barely distinguishable noises that they made.

She opened one of the sink faucets. Water came out of it in aggressive spurts at the beginning, the colour a murky brown, but soon it was a solid, clear stream. Emma grimaced at the idea that she was using clearly contaminated water to clean herself, but found that she didn’t care beyond finding it disgusting. She stuck her hands under the stream, and started extracting the splinters out of her nails. Behind and to her left, the door opened, and closed.

“Holy shit,” Julia breathed out, the first time Emma had heard her voice ever since– “doesn’t that hurt?”

“Not really,” Emma shrugged, bringing one particularly sharp piece close to her eyes so she could examine it. It was almost half an inch long, and she wondered how it’d gotten in her index finger so deeply before she noticed. “Doesn’t feel like anything.”

“Oh, god,” Julia breathed out, and the faucet next to hers sputtered to life.

There was blessed silence after that. Julia was doing whatever it was that she came to do, and Emma was almost finished. She removed the very last splinter, and sighed in disgruntled relief. She leaned over the sink, using it to support her upper torso as she sighed into it, suddenly tired. Her fingers bled freely on its edges.

A small, hesitant hand touched her back. Emma flinched, almost jumping up before she forced herself to relax. She knew it was just Julia, she had no reason to be so surprised, no reason to be so afraid. It was just Julia.

“You really loved her, huh?” Julia’s soft voice broke through her confused thoughts. “Taylor.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emma gritted out even as her body betrayed her and relaxed against the tiny circles being rubbed on her back.

Julia hummed. She felt nails lightly scratching her through her sweater, and the goosebumps that followed. “I thought you hated her. The way you messed with her, how you targeted her. Every day I saw that girl coming here smaller, sadder.”

“Shut up,” Emma forced her eyes closed, drawing in a forceful breath, like the air refused to go inside her.

“I kinda liked her, you know? She’d talk to me in the library sometimes. She helped me with homework, once. I thought to myself, ‘she’s a little weird, but Julia, who isn’t?’. She mentioned you a lot.” Julia sniffled, her voice growing that cursed thickness that Emma had grown so used to.

“Shut… up,” she bit out. Her forehead felt way too tight, and it was starting to hurt, and she just wanted Julia to get out of her hair so she could go back to pretending to be normal.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met someone so in love with someone else,” Julia breathed out, and Emma felt the movement displacing some of the hair that had fallen over her left shoulder. “I thought it was so sad.”

Emma whimpered. “Shut up, please.”

“Then you sicced that bitch on me.” The nails against her back pressed sharper, and Emma hated the way she liked it. “Do you even know what she did?”

Emma bit her lower lip with both of her canines and shook her head. She had specifically asked for Sophia to not go too far, but to leave no traces, either. She thought Sophia had understood the assignment, the way her eyes sparkled, but Emma knew her friend could get carried away in the heat of the moment. She knew that better than anyone.

“She found out I used to cut. I have no idea how, but she did. And she found out that my mom was super Catholic. She threatened to tell her about it.” Julia’s nails felt like knives on Emma’s back, and she wished they’d go deeper. “She said that I had to do whatever you wanted, and then she’d forget about it.”

“She did,” Emma breathed out shakily, sweat pooling and dripping from her forehead. “Sophia doesn’t– she doesn’t remember this kind of stuff. It goes away.”

“Good for her,” Julia commented, her usually sweet voice almost void of emotion. “Like I give a shit what your thug thinks. What you made me do to Taylor? That was sick, Emma. Sick.”

“I know,” she half sobbed, half coughed. “I fucking know that, you– you– ugh.”

“And then she goes and dies,” Julia whispered, her hands frozen against Emma’s back. “She went, and drowned, and I thought, ‘She’s in a better–’”

Julia sniffled louder, one hand moving away from Emma’s back. She heard the girl blowing on her nose, and then felt the hand returning almost exactly to where it left. Emma started shaking.

“‘She’s in a better place, Julia. Pray for her,’ I thought. And then it came out that she died saving you. She drowned for you. After a whole year of your shit, she chose to save the one person she loved–”

Emma fell over the sink, the sound tearing out of her throat too animalistic to be anything resembling human. Julia continued on. “And– and I thought, at least you’d be fucking happy. But you’re just– you’re– just this zombie. It made no sense.”

Julia fell silent, and so did the two girls by the stall that were pretending they weren’t listening in to the juiciest gossip around. The only sounds Emma could hear were the breaths that clawed their way in and out of her lungs, and the unsteady beating of her heart against her ribcage. Her hair stuck to her forehead, and static sang in the background.

Julia sighed, the scent of brine washing over the bathroom, overpowering the faint musk of mold, the old, rancid garbage can or the smells she refused to acknowledge coming from the stall. Emma froze, her blood freezing in her veins even as her heart started beating faster, and faster. Fingers started rubbing idle patterns on her back, the nails conspicuously missing.

“Don’t mind her,” Julia rasped, her voice deeper and richer, filled with all sorts of sounds Emma couldn’t recognise. “She doesn’t know you like I do, Ems.”

Emma felt weightless. Desperation bubbled inside her, like foam on the crest of waves. She moved her head to the right, a distressed sound fleeing her lips, before she felt a hand gently pressing against her cheek. She could see pale flesh, and bluish veins on the corner of her eyes.

“Don’t look,” Not Julia whispered, the end of her voice popping like bubbles. “Just breathe for me.”

Emma nodded shakily against the hand holding her cheek. It was cold, and wet, and it was the most comforting thing that she felt for weeks. She breathed in as the fingers dug up against her back. The smell of salt on water that had haunted her so for the past two weeks now settled deep inside her like the heaviest comforter. She breathed out as the fingers eased their way down her back, and around her spine.

One of the stalls opened, and soft footsteps echoed in the bathroom as they came closer, and closer to her. Emma felt, with a jolt, another three hands joining the one on her back, moving in differing patterns. A hand pressed against her other cheek, just as soft and comforting. Wet, dark hair fell around her neck, spilling onto her front. She felt how cold they were through her sweater, but none of the moisture seeped into the fabric. Emma was dry.

“Ta–” Emma stopped, having to swallow sand to wet her parched throat, “Taylor?”

“Hey,” Taylor answered, her voice ending in a croak. She felt a pair of lips, and then two, and then three pressing against her hair. “I’m here. I’m always here.”

She felt a sob trying to burst its way out of her throat, but it was too large for her. She retched, her entire body seeming to convulse under the strain of trying to expel the sadness that clogged her insides. With a burst of pain followed by immense relief, Emma felt something gross, slimy and very much alive slithering out of her throat, pooling around her teeth like a mouthful of seawater. She spat it into the sink, cold tears leaking from her burning eyes. It looked like a dark hairball.

“Oh, god,” Emma coughed into the sink, momentarily soothed by the many kisses being laid on her head. “What’s– what’s happening to me?”

“Guilt,” Taylor whispered against the back of her neck, and twice more to her sides. “It’s eating you alive. You have so much. Guilt, and pain, cutting into your face like knives. I try to help, but I’m–”

The voice broke, shattered in a low pitch croak so deep it rumbled the sink and the mirror. Emma’s eyes flew up, almost unwittingly, to the reflection, and her heart froze, mended pieces loosening like the gold that kept her together started to melt again.

Julia was pressed against her back, one of her hands almost unnaturally bent so she could hold Emma’s right cheek, her light brown hair carefully tied in a bun. Almost competing in space with her was a smaller girl that seemed to be of Asian descent, her face hiding a smattering of freckles and acne. She had lipstick marks on her cheek while she pressed wet lips against her hair. Some of her body was visible to Emma’s left. She could see that her shirt was tossed aside, crumpled on the floor by the stall they were in, and her black, simple bra was ridden up just enough to reveal a dark, puffy nipple proudly presented against the frigid air of the bathroom.

To her left was one of the girls that liked to hang out with the Empire sympathisers. Dirty blonde hair spiked up from the left side of her face, the right side almost completely shaven. She had thick, smudged red lipstick around her lips that matched the marks on the Asian girl’s face.

Their eyes were dark, like the sea on the bay at night. Their gazes were cold, and brackish water leaked out of them.

She sucked in a breath, her eyes shakily moving down.

Almost hidden from her view, she finally found her. A mass of dark, tangled and wet hair clung to her pale, near lifeless body. A hand rose up almost hesitantly, waving at her with blackened fingernails. Emma thought that her arms had a bit more colour to them, but she couldn’t tell if it was a mere trick of the reflection.

“I’m sorry you had to see this,” Taylor whispered, the voice coming from her image and echoed by the mouths of the girls around her.

Emma felt her spine tingling dangerously, like she was in the presence of something alien and her everything screamed at her to disappear. Taylor’s smile was sad. Her heart fragments spilled over themselves. She felt hands caressing her neck, and lips leaving goosebumps against her ears and her cheek. She felt daring fingers dipping across her sides, pressing against the fabric that covered her stomach, and others that went much lower, leaving a trail of soft taps against the back of her jeans. She sucked in her lips, afraid to even make a sound.

“I have to go, Ems,” Taylor whispered, the voice this time coming only from her own voice. “I used too much. It’s okay.”

Taylor took a step back, and her body seemed to fuse to the wall behind her, leaving darkened veins and old, stale mold behind where it touched. “I’m here.”

Emma blinked, bringing a hand to furiously wipe at her eyes. Julia staggered away from her, her hazel eyes blinking around confusedly. Around her, the girls also stepped away from her, looking almost as if they were coming out of a haze.

“Shit,” the Asian girl squeaked, and she almost jumped to the floor to fish her shirt with her right hand, her left hand trying and failing to fix her bra.

The Empire sympathiser cursed, her eyes wide as she stared at the scene. “Oh, fuck. This ain’t– it ain’t what it looks like–”

Her partner started to furiously nod even as she struggled to put her shirt back in. Julia took one look at the two and shook her head. “We saw nothing. Right, Emma?”

Emma stared at the three through the mirror, the words going through her like water. She felt someone shaking her shoulders. “Wha–?”

“I was just telling the empty bathroom that we saw nothing, right?” Julia’s voice was soft and slightly rough, like she’d just screamed a lot.

Emma dumbly nodded her head. “Cute nipple.”

That seemed like the wrong thing to say, as the Asian girl’s face started blooming almost immediately. She let out a sound that could have been called a squeak by a more generous person before bolting straight out of the bathroom. Her partner shot her a dirty look.

“Niki! Hey– Niki, wait!” She ran out of the bathroom as well, presumably to look for her.

“‘Cute nipple’?” Julia quoted back at her, incredulously. Emma felt her own face heating up.

“Sorry? My… I’m not– well,” Emma confessed, her eyes running down the mirror, and onto the fading black stain starkly visible against the white porcelain of the sink. “I think I’m going crazy.”

Her shoulder was squeezed again. “Listen. I… I don’t like you. I really don’t think you deserve it, but… I can see there’s more to it than what I thought. If… if you feel like– If you ever need… look, you have my number. I’m… there.”

Emma nodded, not trusting herself to look back in the mirror. She was afraid that Taylor wouldn’t be there again. “Yeah. Thanks, Julia. And… same to you.”

Julia snorted, her hands moving away from Emma. “Sure. See you.”

She tracked the movement with her ears, and only relaxed once she felt the door closing. She drew in a fortifying breath, and looked down at her sweater. It was dry. She looked at her hands, and touched the back of her hair, and the sides of her face, growing more and more frustrated the more she didn’t feel a single touch of moisture.

“Why am I dry?” Emma asked, her voice sounding much higher pitched in her ears than usual. “Dry, dry. Fucking dry. I was wet– why am I dry?”

Taylor didn’t answer her back. Emma snarled, and took one step back only to freeze. A strangled squeak left her lips and her eyes opened wide, almost disbelievingly. She shifted again, and felt the same intrusive feeling between her legs. Hysterical giggles spilled out of her mouth like bubbles underwater.

She was wet.

Emma didn’t realise when she’d gotten home. Her mind was a blur of half formed ideas and thoughts going into places she hadn’t explored in a long, long time. She was distantly aware of getting on the bus and finishing the walk home. She thought she said something to Sophia and Madison, excused herself, or at least let them know, but she couldn’t remember. Her head was too full, and so, so empty– just like the ocean.

She sighed, slumping over on her favourite couch– the L design and very, very soft cushions meant that she was always comfortable, and often would have someone to use as a foot or leg rest. Her head collided with something that was far too bony and smelly to be the armrest. She grunted, lifting her head and trying to get a more comfortable position on her unlikely pillow, letting out another sigh as it seemed to jump up from the contact.

“Want me to get a pillow for you, princess?” Her father asked above her, a hand coming over to run through her messy hair. “I didn’t know you had PE today.”

“I didn’t,” she said, refusing to elaborate. “And no, it’s fine. ‘M just tired.”

He let out a deep sigh, the sensation somehow travelling all the way down to his legs. “Yeah.”

“Mmh,” Emma agreed, and they fell into an uneasy silence.

Emma fell into an equally uneasy rest. She’d become very familiar with the kind of half-asleep, half-awake state she was in, where her mind forced her body to rest, but couldn’t quite get there itself. Through a dreamlike fog, she heard the door opening and closing twice, and felt more people sitting by the couch. Someone pulled her legs up and placed them on something soft– her mother, or maybe Anne. They talked for what seemed like only a few minutes before the sound of the TV being turned on pierced through the mist in her mind.

“Oh,” she started before swallowing thickly, the conversation dying around her. “Dad, Sophia told me to ask you about something.”

“Ask what, princess?” Her pillow questioned.

Emma leaned her head up so she could see who was at the couch, and she had to blink twice to check if she was seeing correctly. Her mom had her legs on her lap, her left hand resting above her left knee while she leaned against Uncle Danny, her right hand idly playing with his severely messed up tie. Uncle Danny himself seemed to be out, if the soft snores coming out of his mouth were any indication. Emma decided to catalogue that information and promptly ignore it. The television continued to show a documentary on what seemed to be either birds in general, or specifically about swans. The channel was muted, and all Emma could discern from the brief glance was that swan babies looked like ducks.

“Oh. Uh… I don’t know.” Emma furrowed her brows, trying to force her brain to actually come up with something useful that didn’t involve a hundred different plans to try and see Taylor again. “Something weird, I guess.”

Her dad was silent for a couple more moments, both his hands moving to her shoulders to give them a couple of squeezes. “Honey, you know something?”

Her mom hummed, her fingers tapping Emma’s knee as she thought. “Danny told me something. A new cape or a group of them have been… getting rid of those drug dealers by Archer’s Bridge. There have been a lot of people thinking they’re seeing ghosts, too.”

Emma’s heart skipped a couple of beats, or more. “Ghosts? Like… what kind?”

Her mom shrugged, her hand moving up from Emma’s knee to toy with the large hoop earring she had on her left ear. “I don’t know, honey. This is the Bay, though. People think something awful is happening every week.”

“Remember that time they thought the rats in the sewer were intelligent?” Her dad whispered, shaking like he was holding in laughter.

“Or– or the… what was it? That church nut who thought the woman who does the puppet shows for the stores was trying to seduce other women into sin?” With that, both of her parents were shaking, though only her mom looked like she was getting red.

“Parian?” Emma asked, confused.

“Is that what she calls herself?” Her mom shrugged again, a small smile on her face. “I think the lady was more than a bit repressed, if she went around saying things like that.”

Her dad laughed, short ‘shish-shish’ sounds that seemed to be much quieter than normal. “Stop it, I don’t wanna wake him up. We just got him to sleep.”

“Sorry,” her mom’s smile dipped down, concern on her face. “Sorry, I’ll stop. But… are you okay, honey? You look tired.”

Emma closed her eyes, her dad feeling more comfortable as a pillow by the second. “Not really.”

Her parents were silent, probably exchanging a conversation in one look like they usually did. “You need us to call your friends? Or Annie? You know she’d love to drop by.”

“It’s… fine,” Emma shook her head, her chest growing heavy. “I just miss her.”

She felt hands rubbing her knees, and her dad squeezing her shoulders. “Oh, honey. We miss her, too.”

Emma sniffled, and shook her head, her brain growing foggy once more.

They didn’t miss Taylor like she did. No one could possibly miss her the same. But at least Emma knew that she’d see Taylor again, at the corner of her eyes, or when she fell asleep, or in her dreams. She just needed to figure out how to call her.

Taylor would answer, she was sure of it.

Emma closed the door behind her, her tired face barely containing the almost manic smile she knew she had on her face. It had been four days since she had seen Taylor in the school bathroom. Four days of excruciating loneliness, unwarranted anticipation and unending questions by those around her. Four days of dodging Sophia’s suspicious stare, Madison’s pitying glances, or Julia’s brief bouts of confused concern. Four days of smiling emptily at her mom, and making sure to tell her dad at least twice that she was okay, and not being able to look at Uncle Danny in the eyes whenever she caught him sitting by the kitchen table or the couch, one or both her parents supporting him in ways that seemed very intimate to her addled brain.

Four days without Taylor. Emma was going insane.

She knew exactly what she had to do. Emma sneaked around the house, expertly moving around noisy furniture and sticking to the comfortable quiet of the carpets. She made sure that she was alone at the house before she rushed upstairs, a giggle bouncing in her chest with each step. She made a quick detour to throw her backpack at her king sized bed and peel off the soft yellow turtleneck sweater she’d worn to school before she rushed to the bathroom, her heart beating so painfully in her throat that she almost thought she was choking in it.

Anticipation burned inside of her like an out of control wildfire, setting a fire deep in her stomach. Emma felt like she was breaking all of the laws as she tore out her clothes and quickly jumped into the bathtub, her feet almost immediately sliding across the slippery surface. She fell hard on her butt, little breathless, pained giggles bubbling out of her even as she got on her knees, ignoring the sensation. After all, Auntie Annette had taught her that pain was momentary, and she didn’t have a moment to spare feeling sorry for herself. She crawled towards the faucet and, after only a moment of hesitation, turned on the warm water.

“Gah!” She spluttered, spitting out the nearly frozen water that blasted out of the shower head and seemingly directly into her mouth.

Emma had not been prepared.

She sighed, her thighs rubbing against each other as she impatiently waited for the bathtub to fill. The water was only barely pooling around her, but Emma was ready. She had been ready for hours– maybe even days.

She glanced down at her breasts, and the way small rivulets of water ran down around them. She knew a lot of people liked her breasts– Taylor, most of all. She could remember the many times that dark, brown eyes lingered on them, and she wondered what Taylor would do to them first.

Her right hand moved up, gently cupping her left breast while she closed her eyes, a pleased little sigh leaving her lips. She imagined the fingers were longer– paler, and far more dexterous than hers would ever be. She imagined natural nails running little circles around her areolas, gently catching on each little raised bump. She slid further down the bathtub, her head resting against the edge as water gently fell on her stomach.

She imagined Taylor would probably focus a lot on her nipples. She wondered if she would be a gentle and patient lover, slowly stroking and kneading and teasing Emma until she came, or if Taylor would be impatient, dragging Emma into orgasm after orgasm without pause. She shuddered, her breath coming out ragged.

“Are– can you s… see me?” She asked the empty bathroom, her index and middle finger gently squeezing and tweaking her left nipple. “T–ay?”

Taylor didn’t answer her. That was fine with Emma. It meant she’d have more time to get warmed up. She let out a muffled, squeaked groan as the scalding water finally reached the point where it burned pleasantly against her pussy. She giggled at her own surprise, the sound cut halfway into a drawn moan from her accidentally tugging on her nipple.

“Can you come out?” She breathed out, her body feeling warmer by the second. “Please? I want– mmh– I want to feel you. Touch you, taste you– talk… anything, please. I need you.”

Emma opened her legs as wide as she could, imagining that Taylor was sitting by the other side of the bathtub, watching her. She felt almost feverish, like there was a fire burning inside her skin, like she was an active volcano. Emma was so ready to start venting.

Her left hand rose up as wall, leaving scorching trails across her right breast. She would run her fingernails under and across her nipples, giving in to the almost too intense sensation before she started kneading them, gently, slowly, and with a different rhythm for each breast. The water lapped just above her belly button, and it felt cold against her feverish skin, like she was burning up not only figuratively, but literally.

A sharp, breathless cry left her lips as she ran her left thumb harshly across her right nipple, the pleasure almost bordering on pain, but she just gasped, bit her lips and did it again, and again, and again. She was trembling and shaking, the heat between her legs almost unbearable, but she wouldn’t touch it– that wasn’t hers to touch, not then.

“H…ey. Tay? Can you f–eel how wet I am? How… mmh, how wet I am, just for you? Please, come? Please?” Her voice trembled at the end and Emma hated how much it sounded like she was whining, but she also hated that she would do it again– over, and over, until she wasn’t alone anymore.

Her right hand left her left breast full of hesitation, instead journeying across her left side, trailing up each of her ribs, and tracing her collarbone. She massaged her neck, and her shoulder, her breath coming in sharp, quick bursts while her left hand continued teasing her– edging her. She panted, frustration growing just as quickly inside of her as her arousal. She was so close…

“Please, please, please, please, please, p–mmah! Please, please, please,” she started chanting almost unconsciously, like her body was and wasn’t under her control.

Her pacing grew frantic. Her right hand started moving faster, fingernails leaving fiery marks against her skin, squeezes growing rougher, deeper. Her left hand abandoned any notion of gentleness, twisting and pulling at her nipples to increasingly painful explosions of pleasure, trying to squeeze all of her breast in one hand, and only growing more agitated when she couldn’t.

“Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please!” She chanted, her voice growing jagged, her breaths growing fainter.

Water softly spilled outside of the tub, each of her movements jostling it away. Emma didn’t– couldn’t care, not when she was so close, not when she was so lonely, not when Taylor still wasn’t there. She went faster, and harder, her legs opening and squeezing together, desperate to inflict any measure of friction, uselessly moving up and down, trying to collide with Taylor, but she couldn’t, she wouldn’t, there was no Taylor, she was gone, she was dead, she wouldn’t ever–

She strangled a cry by sinking her head under water, her eyes still tightly shut even as her movements just grew more and more frantic. Almost as if coming from outside of her own mind, she worried that she was ruining herself for Taylor before she even got there, that she was spoiling the dessert of herself. She felt her mouth widening into a not-smile, breathless giggles drowning in the water, floating to the surface with the rest of her air.

Emma gasped, a sharp current of pleasurable pain spasming her system even as cold, frozen water invaded her mouth, her throat. She tried to cough, tried to force the invasion out, but she felt so weak, and she was so, so close. If she could only squeeze harder, tug farther, rub faster, she could, she would–

Soft, pliant lips touched hers, and she felt the water leaving her throat in a rush. It surged around her, exploding outwards in a violent eruption. Wind buffeted at her face, and sent her hair flying away, but she didn’t care one bit as she circled her arms around a soft, slick body and pulled it closer, moaning into a kiss that she knew would come. Taylor must have been surprised by her actions, because she made a soft noise against her before she, too, pressed forward, their lips moving together to such a deliciously slow tempo that Emma almost wanted to cry.

She opened her eyes, ignoring how the water stung and groaned again into the kiss. Taylor had her eyes closed, her face barely visible by the clumps of slick dark hair that fell around them like a curtain. Her skin was pale, but not as pale as she remembered– with bulging veins of regular blue, instead of their previously lifeless colour. She watched, almost entranced, as Taylor’s long eyelashes would flutter every time Emma pushed into her kiss, and how her forehead would crease every time she pulled back.

She had no words in her mind for the sensation she felt. Emma didn’t think a dictionary in the entire universe could describe the sheer sense of complete happiness that burst inside her, that unravelled her and made her anew. She felt Taylor’s hands insistently tugging at her wrists and she let go immediately, Taylor bringing her hands out of the water and above her hair even as she sunk, her body a delicious weight against Emma’s. She tried to open her mouth to speak, to tell Taylor how much she missed her, how much she was sorry, how much she loved her, but Taylor’s leg pressed against her aching pussy and started rubbing up and down, and her mind ignited.

Emma shook, her thoughts erased by wave after wave of searing hot pleasure, her voice spilling out of her as uncontrollably as her breath. She felt Taylor’s mouth on hers, her lips leaving little kisses on her nose, and on her cheek whenever she lost the ability to kiss her back. Taylor’s hands squeezed and caressed her wrists, and her leg kept moving up and down, making Emma’s body contort almost painfully under the onslaught of her orgasm.

She didn’t know how long it took for the beast that momentarily possessed her body to leave, but when it did, Emma felt completely exhausted. Her thighs, her abs, her arse and even her neck hurt like she’d just done a full day of exercises at the gym, and she weakly tried to move away from Taylor’s leg, the sweet sensation of her love pressing wetly against her almost too much for her.

“Please,” she cried out, her fingers trying desperately to touch any part of Taylor but unable to move under their hold. “Please, I need– I need to touch, please, Taylor– god, please, let me–”

Taylor let her arms go, and they flopped down painfully against the borders of the bathtub. She wasted no time in shakingly raising her arms, her eyes still trying to blink back multicoloured stars. She felt incomplete until her fingertips touched Taylor’s cheeks, and then she sobbed, euphoria gushing out of her like saltwater.

“You’re real,” she cried, her hands going around Taylor’s neck and pulling her closer, trying desperately to smash them together. Taylor made protesting noises, but Emma was too far gone to care. “You’re real, you’re real, you’re real, you’re real, oh, god, Taylor, you’re real.”

Taylor’s arms moved around her waist and she was pulled into Taylor in return, the strength of the movement surprising her as she was lifted off her butt. Taylor rubbed their cheeks together, but she hadn’t said anything. Panic started bubbling inside Emma.

“Please, say something. Please, I’m so, so sorry, I didn’t mean for– please, talk to me? I need to hear your voice, just anything. Please, please, talk to me, I can’t....” Emma shook against Taylor’s neck, doing her best to speak instead of just sinking her teeth on soft flesh, licking her way until Taylor’s chin, or any of the thousand other things running through her mind because Taylor hadn’t said anything, she didn’t, she wouldn’t–

“Don’t ever do that again,” Taylor said, and she sounded less like a human and more like a raging wave, the sound crashing against the waterbreaker of Emma’s brain. “I said I was here, didn’t I?”

Emma shook her head. “You left, you did! You left, you left me, you fucking left me, four days, I couldn’t see you, I didn’t feel you, I didn’t smell you, you left, you left…”

She was pulled up again and she had to wrap her legs around Taylor’s waist to help support herself. She ignored the burning pleasure that started to build again, and how slick she felt against Taylor’s skin, focusing instead on the way Taylor’s fingers applied pressure against her back, one fingertip at the time, or how she her chin gently dug on top of Emma’s head, or how Taylor’s hair smelled softly like algae as it fell around her like a curtain.

“I just needed more,” Taylor whispered above her, her voice growing gentler, like January waves, but no more human for it. “Needed so much, for you. I didn’t… I couldn’t, like this– not how I usually look. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Emma giggled wetly. “No, it’s fine, it’s perfect. You’re here. You’re real. You feel so good…”

“Emma?” Taylor’s voice sounded surprised, and, for the first time that day, sounded like the voice she loved, the voice she was used to.

“I love you,” Emma confessed, her lips curled into a smile, her teeth gently grazing against the pulse points of Taylor’s neck. “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you so much.”

Taylor sighed, and her fingertips danced on her back. “I love you too, you idiot. But…”

Taylor trailed off, and Emma picked up the slack by placing more kisses, dragging more licks and giving her more nibbles. Taylor exhaled sharply, pulling Emma almost painfully against her. A delighted noise left her from deep in her throat as the motion dragged her wetness across Taylor’s waist.

“But what? I needed you so much, but you left, you left. I knew this would get you back. I knew you couldn’t resist.” Emma bit Taylor’s throat, little giggles spilling between her teeth at the groaning sound Taylor made in return. “Did you enjoy it? Could you feel me? How wet I was? Did it feel good?”

“Too good,” Taylor grumbled, but she sounded pleased more than anything. “I couldn’t keep my eyes away. I just needed more. Just a bit, and then I could come. I… didn’t know you liked me like that.”

Incredulous laughter raged out of her mouth before she could stop it, and she shut herself off by sucking on Taylor’s pulse point instead, delighting in the cold softness. After several moments where she shook and shivered, she finally got a hold of herself enough to stop, much to Taylor’s displeased whine. Emma gave a parting lick just under Taylor’s chin.

“I didn’t know I did until you just left me wet in the school bathroom.” Emma gave Taylor’s chin a slow kiss. “It’s been all I could think about for days. Hey. Hey– Taylor? Can I touch you? Please?”

Taylor stilled above and around Emma. “You don’t have to, Ems.”

Emma hated how tiny Taylor sounded– hated how it reminded her of all the times she forced her down, tried to bring Taylor down to the same level she existed, tried to pretend that if she only got her friend to break like she broke, everything would be fine. She tried to pull Taylor into her, as she was pulled, but found that she severely lacked the strength. Taylor seemed to notice it and obliged her, lowering herself– and Emma, by extension– so that she was pressing Emma into the bathtub.

“I want to. I want to, so much, I want to make you feel good. I need to make you feel good. Please, Taylor?” Emma looked up, her eyes immediately locking onto Taylor’s, and noticing how dark Taylor’s cheeks looked.

Taylor, it seemed, no longer blushed red. She blushed a rich mixture of blues and greens, like vibrant corals thrived under her skin. Emma kept eye contact as she started placing tiny little kisses across her jawline, and the colour just intensified.

“Aren’t you– do I not… disgust you?” Taylor furrowed her brows.

Emma shook her head, her wet hair smacking onto Taylor from the speed. “Never. You’re so gorgeous. You were gorgeous before, and you’re still gorgeous now. Just different. Like a mermaid.”

“I prefer naiad,” Taylor commented almost automatically, before allowing her eyes to roam over Emma’s body. “Are you… sure?”

Emma was more sure than anything in her life. “Please.”

She watched as Taylor smiled a small, so fragile smile. Emma leaned up as fast as she could, stealing a kiss, two, and three before that smile was as wide as it could be. She leaned back, satisfied, not minding the odd splash of water against her cheeks or forehead from the drenched ceiling. She made a protesting noise when Taylor took her arms away from her, but watched with undisguised enthusiasm as she made to get up, towering above Emma.

Taylor was beautiful. Emma always knew Taylor was tall, probably taller than some of the basketball players they had at school, but like this, she seemed larger than life. She watched a small bead of crystal clear water run down her slim throat, getting momentarily trapped by her clavicle before it collected more water, escaping its confines. It travelled enticingly slowly down, peaking against a nipple that was a beautiful shade between pink and purple. She licked suddenly dry lips, wishing she run her tongue around it, taste it, tease it, bite it–

The water dropped, landing on top of her soft stomach. Emma knew that Taylor’s form hid wiry and compact muscles, but she always envied how soft and touchable her belly looked– it had always been her fourth favourite part of Taylor’s body, and she used to love to rest her head on top of it, giggling at the crackle-pop she could hear inside. She felt both her hands moving up, her finger squeezing nothing but air as she continued watching the water bead grow larger as it descended, now past her waistline, until it got lost on Taylor’s pubic hair.

Emma never thought she’d be one to appreciate hair down there, but just like any other hair on Taylor’s body it looked soft, and inviting, and she desperately wanted to play with it. Her eyes only didn’t spend more time appreciating and imagining because Taylor took a step forward, and Emma’s eyes drank on the sight of her most private place. It was barely visible– puffy labia, with just the barest hints of a hood visible, flushed an almost dark blue from excitement.

Emma’s heart hammered as she realised that Taylor was that excited over her. It was almost painful to tear her eyes away, but she allowed herself to enjoy the way her long, long legs flexed, her thighs powerfully built. Emma had always been jealous and envious of Taylor’s legs– envious, because it took her a lot of hard work to get hers to not grow huge, while athletic Taylor had naturally athletic ones, and jealous, because, to some extent, Emma always considered them to be hers. Like she was Taylor’s, in return.

“I’d follow your singing whenever you want,” Emma breathed out, her voice almost worshipful. “You’re so beautiful.”

Taylor’s blush extended down to her clavicle now. Emma’s hands moved to Taylor’s ankles and slowly started rubbing up and down her shin, digging her thumb in little drag-up motions. She wasn’t very experienced in giving others comfort or pleasure, but she wanted– needed to show Taylor how much she couldn’t keep her hands out of her body. If Taylor’s pleased little sighs were any indication, her enthusiasm counted for something.

“How do you want me?” Emma panted, her own face probably a red, blushing mess that made the little freckles she had on her face stand up.

“Can… can I sit on you?” Taylor looked away, seemingly embarrassed before Emma’s insistent tapping on her legs brought her attention back. “I always… I always wanted to– but…”

“Oh, my god, yes,” Emma hissed out, just the thought of it making her grow more and more excited. “That sounds so hot.”

“Really?” Emma really wanted Taylor to sound less surprised, and to do more sitting. She squeezed Taylor’s legs, and she watched, entranced, as little rainbow bubbles poured out of her mouth, popping into soft giggles.

“That was adorable, but please, Tay. Please,” Emma begged, and that seemed to do the trick.

Taylor slowly, carefully started to kneel, her knees placed to the sides of Emma’s head. She brought her hands up to Taylor’s thighs, now, feeling strangely comforted and secure where she was, like she belonged there just like Taylor did. Taylor looked down, shared an excited smile with Emma, and shuffled forward, most of her ass covered by her seemingly very sticky hair.

“R– ready?” Taylor asked, seemingly out of breath.

Emma squeezed her thighs once, twice, and then three times, nodding her head as much as she could as she leaned down and made herself comfortable. “Yesterday.”

“Okay,” Taylor sighed, and started lowering herself.

Emma watched, entranced, as Taylor’s labia got closer, and closer, until, with an excited giggle, she felt her nose gently squished against soft, invitingly warm wetness. She inhaled, a surprised noise leaving her lips. She smelled like warm coconut, sweet, tangy, and just a little bit salty, but still delicious. Emma gave Taylor’s thighs another squeeze and shuffled herself forward just a bit, an electric tingle piercing through her at the noise Taylor made just from the barest touch of her nose against her clitoral hood.

“Closer,” Emma breathed, her mouth frustratingly out of reach. “Just a bit, please, just an in–mmh…”

Taylor closed the distance, and Emma was wonderfully squished against Taylor’s vagina. She felt her smile stretching into a smile against Taylor’s labia, and her nose was tickled by the soft pubes above it. They smelled amazing, like a mixture of sea breeze and coconuts, and she couldn’t help but wiggle, feeling strangely elated by how wet Taylor was for her.

She closed her eyes, gave Taylor’s thighs another squeeze, and opened her mouth, inclining her head so her tongue could drag between Taylor’s lips. Emma moaned, and moved her head down, and then up again, lost in the taste of her lover, as well as the exquisite, almost velvet sensation against her tongue. It was so intimate and sensual that just the idea of it left her entire body tingling pleasantly, and based on the soft sighs, the little vocal exhalations, or the way Taylor’s thighs tensed and relaxed under her hands, she wasn’t the only one enjoying it.

Emma’s head felt full of fluff, and yet she had never felt so clear headed before. Taylor reacted to every swipe, drag, and flutter of her tongue. She etched in her brain– in her soul– everything she did, and what reaction it earned her. She smiled, leaning further into Taylor as her tongue ran around the folds between her labia, and inclined her head so she could gently flicker it at the top of her hood, groaning in satisfaction at the way Taylor would jump and tighten her thighs around her, like it surprised her every time. She moved further down, wiggling her head from left to right as she teased at her entrance before gently dipping her tongue in, her mouth almost assaulted by the delicious coconut of Taylor’s wetness.

Before she even realised it, she felt Taylor start to shake, her muscles tensing much more than they relaxed. Fingers combed through her wet hair, nails dragging against her scalp, making her sigh into Taylor in delight. She didn’t need any more help getting comfortable– she had been fighting her own orgasm for a while, having gotten embarrassingly aroused by licking and tasting Taylor.

“Open your eyes,” Taylor almost commanded, her voice growing deeper, contralto mixing with the crashing of waves and making Emma’s entire body shudder. “Let– let me see your eyes, Emma.”

She opened her eyes, and stared up while she gave Taylor’s hood a few soft kisses. Taylor was almost drenched in sweat, her entire body glistening. She heaved, soft and harsh gulps of air, and her flush extended halfway to her breasts. Emma smiled, the tip of her tongue trying to delicately tease Taylor’s clitoris out of the hood, and she felt fulfilled by the way Taylor twisted, how her eyes clouded– the murky, dark brown of a violent sea bed.

“Close,” Taylor managed to speak, swallowing drily. “So– close.”

Emma nodded, and picked up her pace. She gave Taylor’s thighs and arse as many squeezes as she could, trying to pull Taylor toward her even as her hips started bucking. Emma felt her eyes fluttering and fought to keep them open, almost deliriously on edge as she was. She wanted– needed to come together with Taylor. She wrapped her lips around that delightful little button that she had finally managed to tease out of the hood and gently sucked, the tip of her tongue swirling around it.

She thought she heard knocking against the bathroom door, but she was too far gone to even begin to give a fuck about that. Taylor’s fingers moved to around the base of her skull and she pulled Emma’s head, gently smushing her against Taylor’s vulva. Emma accidentally grazed Taylor’s clitoris with one of her teeth, and that was enough for Taylor to open her mouth in a silent scream, her eyes leaking murky water even as she kept them open, kept eye contact with Emma. She didn’t know why she thought it looked hot, but Taylor’s thighs clamped down around her head, and it was too much– so much–

Emma came, her vision whitening, her body trashing and rocking on the bathtub, her tongue still pulsing on Taylor’s clit. Something fell on her eyes, and she finally closed them, the stinging sensation too much to keep track over how her body fought its way out of the biggest orgasm she’d ever had in her life.

It was so intense that she even felt pounding in her head. Her mouth was full of Taylor’s pleasure, and she gulped it down in almost confused greed, her addled thoughts already missing it. She tried to extend her tongue out, moved her head to get more even as wave after wave of pleasure continued to rock her body, but she didn’t touch anything. Emma cried, her hands squeezing around nothing, her hips rocking into nothing.

The moment she felt the waves passing she opened her eyes, ignoring the sharp sting of something, and she really started crying. Her bathroom was inundated with water, and the pounding on her head revealed itself to be frantic pounding on her door, with multiple voices calling her. Taylor was nowhere to be found, only a mound of already fading seafoam left in her wake. She tried to scoop the seafoam with shaky, disobedient hands, but they leaked between her fingers, coating her skin as they disappeared.

Emma wailed.

The door to her bathroom burst in as Uncle Danny rushed in, followed by her dad and her mom. She barely heard anything they said as she cradled the remaining seafoam, trying to save what was left of Taylor, to never let her go.

“–too… much. ‘M… here, –ma.” A voice whispered against her ears, almost inside her mind.

“Don’t leave me!” She hiccupped, half a dozen arms and hands pulling her all sorts of ways, words cascading over her like a waterfall. “Taylor!”

“Never,” Taylor promised, and she felt the ghost of a hug.

Her parents screamed, Emma distinctly hearing a ‘What the fuck’ from one of them, but she just cried, and giggled, holding the remaining seafoam.

She wished she was wetter.

Awkward.

Emma used to think she understood what the word meant. She used to think that she’d experienced her fair share of awkward, from very minor to ‘my life is over’. Distinctly, her mind was cast to that one time she and Taylor were caught giggling underneath the porch as they recited terrible poetry at each other to see who would crack first. Emma fought off a smile at that memory before her mind went elsewhere, to the time she brought one of Auntie Annette’s Rain and Thunder issues to middle school by mistake– that had been an awkward conversation. She also remembered with some vague measure of pride the time her mom caught her trying to forge her signature on a contract she’d written explaining to her dad that she should be allowed six popsicles a day if she wanted.

She sat, uncomfortably rubbing at both her jaw and her neck while being dissected by the gaze of her two– potentially three– parents. Objectively, she could maybe understand their awkwardness around her. For one, they had apparently been knocking several times on the door because Emma had been making enough noise to wake up the dead, let alone when she came– Uncle Danny thought there were kittens dying inside. When they finally managed to force the door open, they stared at a Taylor who apparently exploded into seafoam, and an insensate version of herself who was apparently trying her best to use her tongue to pleasure the fucking bathroom tile. And then–

And then she’d started crying, trying to shove fucking seafoam in her mouth, or, in the words of her mom, rubbing herself with it. Emma knew, then, in that late Friday afternoon, that she’d ascended. She’d left her mortal coil, projected her consciousness into the Akashic Records, and found herself a new ethereal plane of awkwardness, inhabited by her and her alone. Her poor, abused body was left to wither at the physical dimension, forced to withstand the torture of being over-analysed by three concerned adults with the sorrowful ghost of Sigmund Freud somewhere in the distance shaking his head at her.

“Honey, it’s not as bad as it seems,” her mom finally said, her voice full of hesitation and not a small amount of cruel amusement.

Emma knew, then, from whom she had inherited the bitchiness. Her mom must have made a cocktail especially for her, because Anne was so much of a cinnamon roll that it sometimes hurt Emma to watch her sister interact with the world. Emma smiled like she wasn’t empty inside.

Her dad said something, but the words meant nothing to her– or to him, as he stopped midway to start coughing. Uncle Danny remained silent. Emma tried to shoot a sneaky look his way, and their eyes met. Uncle Danny looked… he looked like Auntie Annette did whenever she was trying to understand something.

Some of the awkwardness that filled her inside was forgotten as she was lost in watching her uncle nod to nothing, his hands squeezing and relaxing over his knees. Every now and then he would furrow his eyebrows, twitch the corner of his mouth, or raise one of his hands to scratch at his thinning hair before sighing. They stared at each other for what felt like days.

“That was my baby,” he whispered, finally.

Her mom opened her mouth to start saying something and stopped after the first syllable. Her dad had that expression on his face like he didn’t want to break a bad piece of news to someone, but Uncle Danny’s eyes remained on hers. Emma nodded, feeling strangely meek.

“Taylor,” he continued, as if he had to explain which baby he was talking about. “That was Taylor. In… the bathtub.”

Emma nodded again, her eyes moving to stare at the floor. “It was.”

“Taylor,” Uncle Danny repeated. “Taylor, who turned into… into foam.”

Emma closed her eyes, and tried to not think about why her tongue was sore. “Seafoam, yeah.”

“Danny,” Zoe said, something in her voice sounding different to Emma.

She heard the rustling of clothes and people changing positions, and when she opened her eyes again, her parents were almost piled on top of her uncle. She would have made adorable sounds at the three, threatened to take pictures or actually have taken them, but the situation was already awkward enough without her pouring oil into the fire. Emma did have some self-restraint, despite rarely using it.

“She’s alive.” Uncle Danny said, his voice growing rougher even as a strange, wet chuckle left his lips. “She’s alive. My baby’s alive.”

“Danny… We don’t know that,” Zoe said, probably trying to curb his enthusiasm. “It could have been–”

“She is,” Emma lunged forward, having to support her hands on her knees, ignoring the still wet bathrobe that she’d worn. “She’s just… like that, now.”

Uncle Danny nodded, even as her parents shot her calculating looks. He went back to thinking, almost unthinkingly pulling her parents close to him. Her dad seemed to have expected it somehow, his head naturally changing its path to rest against Uncle Danny’s left shoulder, but her mom was much less prepared. She let a quiet shriek as she fell, face first, on her uncle’s lap. Everyone froze.

“We’re such disasters,” Emma groaned, her eyes avoiding their little cuddle pile. “Mom, get your face off there.”

“Emma!” Her mom shrieked again. “I’ll have you know this is actually quite nice.”

“Focus, people,” her dad said, but the amusement in his voice was unmistakable. “Princess… how long?”

“Did I know?” Emma asked, wanting to make sure she’d gotten the right question in her head.

She looked back at their pile, and saw her dad nodding while her mom and her uncle’s stares went back to dissecting her. Emma thought on how to answer that. “That’s… kinda hard to say. I’ve been… seeing her. Here, and there. Her hair around the corner of my eyes, or… her voice, sometimes. Or people would just get weird. Deep voice, water coming out of their eyes.”

Emma hummed, bringing her knees up and hugging her arms around them. “I thought I was going crazy, or something. When Anne was sleeping with me, her arms changed. They looked– They… Anyway. And she spoke to me– Taylor.”

“Emma… that was almost three weeks ago,” her mom reminded her gently.

She nodded, that familiar, turbulent sea of emotions starting to grow and roll inside of her. “I know. Anyway… she didn’t speak to me again until Monday. I think she’s… she has to…”

Emma frowned, trying to put to words the scraps of information Taylor had fed them throughout the weeks. “I think she has to… feed on something. To… show herself. Or change things. She said she was trying to help with my guilt, and… and that she just needed more.”

“More what?” Her dad asked, curious concern in his voice.

She shrugged, feeling as confused as he seemingly was. “I don’t know. It seems super long to me, but… we weren’t together for even ten minutes, I don’t think.”

Uncle Danny made a sound that she didn’t know how to interpret. “Is she… okay? Actually– Taylor? Honey– if you… if you can hear me, or show us you’re here, or something– please?”

Nothing happened. Her uncle tried a couple more times, and Emma thought that maybe the room got slightly more humid on the third try, but, still, nothing actionable. Her uncle slumped back, defeated.

As for his question to her, Emma didn’t know how to answer that. Her first instinct was to snap at him for asking such an obvious question– of course she wasn’t okay, she was dead. But Emma, truthfully, didn’t know. Taylor had said something about it not being too bad wherever she was, and she didn’t seem bad whenever she’d been able to see her, but Emma also knew, intimately, how much Taylor would bear and smile in order to make someone else happy.

In the end, she just shrugged, and that seemed to be enough of an answer for her uncle. “I think I’ve seen her, too. The first days. I tossed a bottle away because I thought there was hair inside.”

Emma grunted. “Yeah, she… I don’t think she realises how creepy the hair thing is.”

“Huh”, Uncle Danny said, and it sounded almost like a little laugh. “Knowing her, she’s doing it on purpose. You… you never caught it, but Taylor’s got a mean streak on her, and sometimes her jokes aren’t funny to anyone that’s not her.”

“What?” Emma looked up, surprised. “No way. Mother Theresa wished she was as good as my Tay.”

Her parents shared a look with her uncle, and they all seemingly came to the same conclusion with shaking heads. Uncle Danny continued, “Like I said. You never caught it.”

“I don’t believe you,” Emma announced haughtily. “And, anyway, doesn’t matter– today was the first day she showed up without having to possess some–”

“Excuse me?” Her dad incredulously asked, moving up from his previous position using her uncle’s shoulder as a pillow.

“She what?” Her mom, similarly, sprung up from her uncle’s lap to look at her.

Her uncle, meanwhile, stared at her for a longer moment and then nodded. “Makes sense.”

‘What?’ Emma asked, her brain getting caught up in whatever logic jump her uncle had to take in order to reach that conclusion. Her parents seemed seemingly flabbergasted.

“How in the world does any of what she just said make sense to you?” Her mom asked, an expression of concern growing on her.

She suddenly looked suspicious– the same way she would whenever her extra-parental intuition betrayed them when they wanted cookies– and leaned up, indiscreetly sniffing under her uncle’s chin. Uncle Danny leaned away from her, a mixture of confusion and indignation on his face while her dad groaned and let his head fall backwards onto the couch.

“You don’t smell like alcohol…” Her mom trailed off. “And I don’t think you’re doing drugs, that was more Rosie’s thing…”

“Excuse you,” her uncle said, flatly.

Her mom ignored him before sadly shaking her head and returning to his lap. “Sometimes, it’s like you Heberts just live on a different planet.”

“How… does it make any sense?” Her dad, the more diplomatic of her parents, asked.

Emma hoped her uncle didn’t take long to answer, because her mom was a master of the art of shoving her foot in her mouth without really realising it– another genetic trait Emma had unfortunately inherited in its entirety, though she’d long since learned how to use it to her advantage. She and her parents watched while her uncle took his sweet time thinking, probably trying to translate his thoughts from Hebert into English.

“Take this with a grain of salt,” Uncle Danny began, already making Emma want to groan, “Annette was the one who was interested in the academics of how capes worked. She could probably bring up some professor’s name from Harvard or something with an actual theory, but it’s just something me and mine noticed over the years. Capes don’t just make shit happen from nothing. They use too much, they get tired, they gotta recover– or they get weaker. Hookwolf loses a lot of metal? He gets slow. Krieg tries to stop a bunch of people, it feels lighter. Lung gets too big? It takes a while for him to beast out again. That sort of thing.”

Emma found herself intrigued despite everything. Not only would it potentially help her understand and help Taylor more, but her uncle legitimately sounded like he knew what he was talking about, as opposed to Mr. Gladly, who couldn’t create an original thought in his head without someone else telling him he was cool first.

“So, I have no clue what she could be. Annette told me the PRT types one day, but fuck me if I remembered them– they all sounded either weird, or just like common damn sense for me to bother. But if she’s… what, forcing herself on–” Her uncle stopped, a visible shudder going through his body, “–... if she’s forcing herself to show up, then she’s gotta be using energy of some kind. It sounds like she’s not really too sure herself what’s going on, either?”

Emma hummed, and eventually nodded. “It did seem like she was getting better the more she showed.”

Uncle Danny nodded, his eyes almost visibly regaining light. “There. So she’s learning. She’s– training. That shit with the Merchants is probably her, too, somehow.”

“You think Taylor is killing drug dealers?” Her mom asked, an almost careful deadness to her tone.

Emma knew that tone. It was the same one she used whenever her, her dad or Annie would say something that her mom thought was immensely stupid, and she wanted to confirm what she heard. Emma hoped her uncle knew how to navigate the maze that was her mother, for both of their sakes.

“I know my little girl,” Uncle Danny defended, gently removing his limbs from her parents in order to move them around with more strength than she’d seen in a long time, “she might not have wanted to do it, or maybe she did it by accident, but she’s not the type to just sit by while other people suffer, especially if she puts it in her head that she has to help, or she has the power to.”

Her uncle sighed, leaning his head back in a mirror to what her dad had done earlier. “Annette and I talked about it, what we’d do if she triggered. It’s the Bay– some days it seems like an eventuality, not a possibility. She thought Taylor would do something stupid her first week, go half-cocked, full of ideals. I didn’t think so. I thought Taylor would sit back, and try to figure herself out. Where she stands. Who she’s standing against. I love her to bits, but Taylor can be thick if you rush her.”

“Don’t we know it,” her mom murmured almost as if her lips were obstacles. “Remember when she put it in her head that she wanted to go to every single one of Emma’s modelling sessions?”

“Huh?” That snapped Emma out of her watching. She turned a suspicious glare at her mom. “What? That didn’t happen. She only went to, like, the two big ones I had with the Spring and Fall collection.”

“We know, princess,” her dad said, his voice soft and careful. “But… honey? Can you–?”

Her mom shot her dad an ugly look. “Coward. We didn’t want to burden Danny financially. We knew his dumb ass wouldn’t accept what he thought of ‘charity money’–”

“Hey,” Uncle Danny said, his face growing redder, “I’m not that bad.”

“–which was exactly what he did when he offered,” her mom continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “so we told Taylor that she… that she could only visit you for big ones. We explained why, and she was so sad, but she understood.”

Emma couldn’t believe what she had just heard. Her mom seemed to notice her growing emotions, and she gave her an awkward smile-grimace. “Sorry, honey…”

“So she– we could have… All that time?” Emma felt her eyes growing wet at the edges, and she sniffled loudly. “We’ll have words about this. Later. Ugh, I’m tired of crying…”

Her mom seemed relieved about her reaction– Emma didn’t know if it was her expressing that she didn’t want to cry anymore, or the perception that she’d let her off the hook. Emma was definitely going to remember this, and she already knew just when to pounce on her parents to get the answers she wanted: their bi-weekly wine date.

She looked at her dad, who seemed to be conspicuously not looking at either of them. “You don’t think that’s her, do you, dad?”

He jolted in place, shooting all three of them a guilty smile. “I’m not saying that. I just think we need more evidence before we support the fact. I know this is not court, but… I’m not a person of faith. And… this seems like faith, to me.”

Hot anger threatened to erupt inside of her like an underwater volcano, but Emma drew in a heavy breath. She knew, logically, his reaction was the more reasonable one. She couldn’t prove to him that what she had seen or experienced– even what they had seen or experienced had been the result of Taylor somehow becoming a Parahuman before death. She couldn’t prove that they weren’t products of mass hysteria, or some deep-seated issues in her head that she just wasn’t aware about. She couldn’t even prove that, if it was parahuman intervention, that it was Taylor who did it, and not someone just abusing her likeness, or something even worse.

Knowing all of that didn’t help her feel less irritated, so she chose to shoot her dad a glare, instead. “Whatever.”

They entered a period of, at least to her, very awkward silence. Her parents kept glancing between her and Uncle Danny, who seemed to be deep in thought himself. Emma started bouncing her right leg, impatience strangling her thoughts like kelp.

“So, are you all just… okay with it?” She suddenly asked, cringing at how loudly she’d projected her voice in her rush.

“What… do you mean, honey?” Her mom asked, though judging by her face, she knew exactly what she was referring to.

“The bathroom. What… you walked into. Are you all just… okay with that?” Emma made sure to keep eye contact with her parents as she asked.

She’d come to learn that people either answered her more truthfully when they thought she was challenging them, or that they capitulated faster. Ordinarily she’d be fine with the second outcome, but for something that important, she needed the truth. She knew her parents were at least okay with the idea of a girl involved with another girl– Anne was currently in a polyamorous relationship with a classmate of her and Laserdream, of all people, and her parents never audibly demonised it, even if they didn’t often speak about Anne or her partners.

They also never had a problem with her being around Auntie Annette, who was the most lesbian bisexual woman Emma had ever known or heard of. Her auntie had taught her and Taylor from a young age about the importance of staying true to themselves, how the different waves of the feminist movement were the reason for the quality of life they enjoyed, and also to understand historical context about some gripes that she wished they wouldn’t be exposed to, but they had been. She had feminist magazines, lesbian feminist magazines, just lesbian magazines, and a ‘special stash of novellas’ that Emma was almost ninety percent sure were just classy gay erotica full of euphemisms like ‘flower’ and ‘lady garden’.

She was, however, worried with the whole ‘having sex in the bathroom while her partner exploded into seafoam’ part. “With… Taylor. Me and Taylor. You know what you saw.”

Uncle Danny cleared his throat, looking confusedly at Emma. “...firefly, I thought you two were dating for years.”

Her mom shrugged, leaning further into her uncle. “So did I, until she stopped coming here.”

“When did that happen?” Uncle Danny asked, a surprised frown on his face. “I know she said… I know she said something about coming here last month.”

Emma felt like being swallowed up by the sea. ‘Oh, my god, they don’t know. Oh, shit. Oh, shit, fuck.’

“We were just meeting in town!” Emma said, hurriedly. She nodded to emphasise her point. “Not– here. Yeah.”

Her parents seemed unconvinced, but her uncle shrugged, almost instantly accepting her botched explanation. “Alright. But you two weren’t…?”

Emma shook her head so hard she felt a painful crack on her neck, forcing her to shake it almost immediately. “Motherf–!”

“Language!” Her mom immediately chided her, probably through extra-parental reflexes. “Are you okay, though?”

She sucked in a breath through her teeth. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, just… I’m fifteen, this shouldn’t be happening until I’m much older, like twenty five, or something.”

“Sure, princess,” her dad answered her with that tone of voice old people use when they don’t want to horrify younger people about the inevitable decay of their bodies.

“So– and just to confirm… You wouldn’t mind if we were… dating?” Emma tried not to sound hopeful, and she tried twice as hard not to sound guilty.

“As long as you clean the bathroom, I have no issues,” her mom commented off-handedly, seemingly more fascinated by her nails than Emma’s outraged face.

“Mom!” Emma grumbled, looking down at her lap. “...I’ll clean it later.”

“Then no problems with me. Honey?” Her mom looked at her dad, who shook his dad, and then at her uncle, who just shrugged.

“Would be good to have you at the house more often, too. All of you, really. It… might feel more like a home again,” Her uncle said in a tone almost too casual for the borderline depressive sentence he just let out.

Her parents piled on top of him, much to his visible embarrassment. “Ugh. You three are way too sweet, it’s making me sick. I’m going to go upstairs.”

Emma got up, making sure to shoot the three awkward elders a smile to show them she was okay with whatever the fuck was going on with them. Emma was not about to get in the way of love, even if it shattered her opinion of her parents being strictly vanilla. She started going up the stairs when she paused, a probably bad idea growing in her head. Her dad wanted proof that Taylor was alive, so maybe she could give some to him.

“Don’t forget the bathroom!” Her mom yelled at her from within the cuddle pile.

“I won’t!” Emma assured her with the same level of sincerity she used whenever she promised she’d clean her room.

She quickly made her way up the stairs, down the corridor and then into her room, locking it behind her. She briefly paused, confused, as she couldn’t find her laptop with a simple look around. The usual places were all suspiciously clean, too– her work desk only had books, four half-filled water bottles and an assortment of pens and pencils; her bedside table had the framed picture she’d taken with Taylor when they were eight at a water park, and her bed seemed to only contain her tangled comforter. Emma sighed, took four steps towards her bed, and flopped down on it.

She immediately found out where her laptop was hidden when she felt it painfully poking her between her ribs. She opened her mouth to make a comment on how painful it was, or what a sneaky little shit it had been, but closed it with a click, feeling silly for having wanted to say something in the first place. She was by herself, and if Taylor was listening, she didn’t want her to think she was stupid by being mad at the way she’d left her laptop in her messy bed.

She fished it out of the comforter with only minimal difficulty and flipped it open. She’d left her laptop in sleep mode, as it immediately brought back her browser, with the tabs on mental health she’d been reading in the off-chance she was going crazy, as well as some of the DIY fashion designer channels she’d found here and there.

Emma opened another tab, and went straight to PHO. She had a message to send…

“Okay,” Emma breathed in to help settle her nerves, and then breathed out.

Her breath puffed away from her like fog rolling out the sea. She took a quick look around her, just to confirm that no one was around, and looked back forward. The Brockton Bay Cemetery gates were very intimidating at night, with the rusted, almost gothic steel bars and the complete lack of security and internal lighting. She peeked within the bars, the sensation still cold even through her thick, leather gloves, and the only things she could discern inside were the giant trees that were scattered almost randomly throughout the plots.

She put her right hand in the front pocket of her heavy parka, and fished out an even older looking key. Emma wouldn’t be surprised if that was used as a prop for medieval movies or something. She’d have to give Sophia a very good thank you gift later– she’d gotten her the key awfully fast, and despite having told Emma to not ask any questions, she at least hoped she didn’t hurt the old man who took care of the graveyard on the weekends. He was kind, if a bit odd, and Emma could see his entire body snapping under the weight of one of Sophia’s kicks.

“Unless he’s actually a piece of shit in secret,” she mused out loud, shrugging as she tried and failed to insert the key into the keyhole for an embarrassingly long time.

She let out a cheerful curse when it finally slid in, and she twisted it, very carefully starting to open the gate. It creaked, groaned and shrieked, protesting every inch of movement Emma forced on it. She cringed, constantly looking around to see if anyone had been alerted by her absolute idiocy, but it seemed she was still in the clear. Emma slipped inside the small gap she’d made and started closing the gate, the wrung metal somehow making less noise on the way back– still tortuously loud, but not as loud.

She locked the gate behind her, put the key back in the pocket and from it fished her trusty flashlight. Emma turned it on and started making her way towards the big white pine tree that was close to Taylor’s grave. She walked carefully, stumbling almost every third step from the uneven cobblestone pathways as well as the odd, loose pebble or stone on the way. She had her flashlight constantly swinging around her, her heart beating loudly at the idea that, at any moment, some weird druggie could just jump off from behind a gravestone to flash her or worse. Her left hand went into the back pocket of her black jeans where she’d left Sophia’s switch knife. Emma had no clue how to use the thing, but her imaginary foes didn’t need to know that.

She tried to get there as soon as she could, but she found her curiosity getting the best of her. Most gravestones in the plot were fairly boring, but some were elaborate, and others just heartbreaking even for her. She paused, crouching by a slab of unmarked stone with a decaying teddy bear left forgotten by it. The words were faded away to almost nothing, but she could still make out the name. ‘Melissa Gomez. We miss you, baby.’

She took her left hand away from her back pocket and traced the stone. “Hang in there.”

She reached down to fix the Teddy Bear so it was sat right in front of the gravestone, as if protecting it from danger. She nodded, satisfied, and stood up, making her way towards the tree she could now clearly see in the distance. The walk was relaxing in the same sense that a walk through the woods would be.

She knew there could be danger around, she knew she realistically shouldn’t be doing that– Emma was about as threatening as a cat, and her being in a graveyard at night proved she had about the same survival instinct– but something about the way fog gently rolled down each gravestone, or how the area smelled strongly of flowers of all kinds, or just how silent it was was tantalizing to her brain.

She reached the tree in less than five minutes, and then leaned against it, her eyes focused upwards for the slightest mark of movement. She had no idea what she was supposed to be on the lookout for, but she figured she would know the moment she saw it.

Emma waited, and waited, and waited, her feet bouncing up and down, her right hand tapping her still turned on flashlight to her right knee. She made popping sounds with her mouth, tried to count all the graves, and even hummed to pass the time. She turned the flashlight off, and brought it close to her face. She could hardly discern it, but the intrusive thoughts were beating their way in, and they told her to bite the thing. She knew it was a horrible idea, but she was so bored–

“This is taking too long,” she said, her voice almost startling against the stark silence around her.

Emma eyed the shovel she’d acquired. She knew they’d had to dig her grave anyway, so maybe she could just get a head start. She held it with her left hand while she moved her flashlight, making sure it was the correct place to start digging. Her eyes froze at the words in Taylor’s head stone. ‘Taylor Anne Hebert– 1996 - 2010. “She is not truly dead until the ripples she cast out into the world fade away.”'

She didn’t recognise the quote, but it filled her to the brim with emotions nonetheless. She hadn’t had the chance to take a look at it… before. Emma had been too dead to notice– too dead to care, and just the thought of visiting her grave after made her shiver.

She started digging. Emma huffed, feeling tired after only the third swing– digging graves was nothing like what the movies made it seem, and she was severely unprepared for how physically taxing it was. She kept digging. Emma was starting to sweat uncomfortably under all the layers of clothes she wore, her arms were starting to get sore, and the mound of almost frozen dirt slowly grew around her, but she kept digging. She kept digging until–

“What the hell are you doing?,” someone said almost directly above her, and she jumped back, her back colliding painfully against the tree while her flashlight went flying and her shovel fell in front of her. “Hey– look where you’re throwing that thing!”

“Jesus, fuck, you’ve never heard of announcing yourself?” Emma tried to steady her heart back into a less frantic rhythm.

“That’s what she did, genius,” Panacea’s less recognisable voice snarked from the same general direction.

She glanced up, trying not to look surprised by the fact that Victoria Dallon had decided to show up to the graveyard in the most conspicuously inconspicuous pair of black sweatpants and hoodie she’d ever seen, as if her bright blonde hair wasn’t immediately visible inside her cowl. Emma noticed with some approval that she had on the same big, heavy tactical boots that Sophia seemed to rant about so much. In her arms, in a princess carry, was the world’s grumpiest healer, who even in the limited dim light could be seen glaring.

Emma struggled not to make a comment about how cute she looked just to infuriate her further. “Sorry. Just didn’t expect you to just be there, I made it in my head that I’d see you two first.”

Victoria shrugged, floating down so she was hovering just above the ground. She very slowly leaned forward, placing her sister on the ground, and followed it up by floating around her and seeming to delight in patting the dust out of her robes, much to her sister’s apparent embarrassment.

“With your head in that hole, you wouldn’t have seen Lung coming at you,” mumbled Amy, trying to bring her cowl closer to her red face. “What the hell are you doing, anyway? Casual grave robbing while you wait for two literal heroes? And where’s this friend that needs help?”

Emma hesitated. This was part of her plan that she was most unsure about. “No. This… is Taylor. She’s… in there.”

“Ah, sure,” Amy said, nodding. Emma thought that she lucked out until she saw the healer turning to her sister. “Yeah, she’s nuts. If you hurry, we can catch a movie, or something.”

“Hey!” Emma huffed, feeling strangely defensive. “Let me explain!”

“Sure. I’m curious,” Vicky confessed, much to her sister’s displeasure. “For you to go to the lengths you did to get us here, it must be something.”

“What kinda dirt did she even have on you to make you come here?” Amy bit out even as she moved away from Victoria and closer to the grave. “How long you been digging this?”

“Huh– dirt? She just asked me for a favour,” Vicky replied, confused while she floated closer and closer to Amy. “Why, did she try to blackmail you or something?”

“...of course not,” Amy said, very convincingly, earning Emma a suspicious look from Vicky. “Look, don’t worry your pretty, little head about it.”

“My what?” Vicky whispered out, both her hands coming up to hold the sides of her head.

“Ugh, get a room,” Emma sighed. “Taylor… look, she triggered, I think. We thought she was dead, but she’s been… showing up, still.”

“Oh, shit. Like a ghost?” Vicky floated closer to Emma at that, and in the dim light Emma could see her eyes figuratively sparking. “That’s so cool.”

“Yeah, so cool,” snarked Amy, “just ignore the fact that she had to literally die to get there. So… where’s she now? Can she show up, or something, so I know we’re not about to waste our time on some shit?”

Emma hesitated, and then shook her head. “She needs to recover. It takes her a while… I think. It took her almost five days to show up again with me.”

“Right. Say I believe you,” Amy began, sounding very much like she didn’t, “what do you expect me to do? I can’t bring people back from the dead.”

“Just… try? Please? She’s still around, so her body must be okay somehow. I just know it.” Emma felt her body growing heavier again, the weight of the potential future pressing down against her.

She thought she felt the faint sensation of a pair of familiar arms wrapping around her neck, and lips touching her ears. She thought she heard her voice whispered, calling her home, where she belonged. She thought she saw black, wet hair at the corner of her eyes, like a beacon.

“Please?” She tried again, staring Victoria with her best puppy eyes.

“Alright. Alright! Jeez, put those guns away,” Victoria grumbled, finally landing on the ground.

She leaned down to pick up her shovel, moving it around for a couple seconds as if she was trying to get a feel for it. “Alright. Step back.”

“Oh, thank you,” Amy sighed monotonously, stepping back and to Emma’s left side. “My heroine.”

Emma watched as Vicky started to dig in, making much more progress in seconds than she had in however long she’d spent digging. She leaned to the right, almost feeling like her head was resting against one of Taylor’s arms as they pulled her closer– pulled her into her embrace. Emma felt a smile growing on her face and she sighed, watching her breath roll away like seafoam.

“I think I hit the casket.” Vicky’s voice reached her ears through a great distance, sounding surprised and unsure. “You’re… sure about this?”

Emma nodded, her muscles moving through the air like she was underwater. “Yes. She’s so close. Can you open it?”

“Hey. You’re kinda creeping me out,” Amy commented, taking two even steps away from Emma.

She smiled at the healer. She knew she wouldn’t understand. Not like this– when she was so close to Taylor again. Emma felt water pooling and dripping from her eyes, despite not feeling the need to blink. She knew it was fine, could feel Taylor’s touch inside of her, sense her influence. Emma was being pulled into her siren’s embrace, and she couldn’t feel better.

“I’m opening it,” Vicky’s voice bubbled distantly in her ears.

She nodded encouragingly at her, ignoring the bubbles that tracked her movements up and down. The arms around her neck pulled her tighter, and she sighed at the wave of comfort that crashed against her. She always felt safe in Taylor’s arms.

Almost as if from another’s eyes, Emma watched as Vicky floated up, picked Amy and floated back down the hole. She placed tiny kisses across the sensitive seabed of Taylor’s arms, feeling coral nails scratching against her parka. Taylor sighed into her ear, the sound echoing like a tumultuous sea.

She brought a hand up to her face, and then moved it up, giggling softly at the brackish water that continued to run down her gloves and into her sleeves. She heard the two sisters talking, followed by the sound of wood splintering against the berg.

“Ah, fuck,” Amy said as Vicky shakily floated them both back up.

She turned to look at Emma, and there was only shock on her expression. Vicky opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again. Emma had never seen the precious Glory Girl so speechless before. They looked at her like she was fragile, a sculpture made of thin seashells stacked upon one another. Emma smiled at them. She knew it would be okay.

She was wet, after all.