Three for three. Damn that feels good.
After recently seeing a couple ships on the scale Taylor is thinking about (USS Missouri and Bowfin, Iowa-class battleship and Balao-class sub) I have an entirely new respect for how terrifying the Fog have to be. Because now I understand how seeing three or four Iowa-scale ships rise out of the water with laser-guns pointing at you would be enough to make anybody's day go from good to "oh fuck no".
Diatonic 1.x.4
Emma Barnes
"Wow, Emma."
Two words. Two words, spoken, and it felt like something had changed. That something was different. The rhythm that had been merely off-beat was now torn to shreds.
Flat. Cold. Unaffected.
Taylor had stopped reacting, since January. Nothing fazed her. Disrupted her. Moved her. And it grated on Emma.
What right did Taylor have to look at her like that? To look disappointed in her.
She'd changed. Wasn't wearing the same dark clothes she had been before the locker. Stood straighter. Tied her hair back. Wore contacts, not glasses. Met people's eyes when she spoke.
Taylor had moved on.
It made her angry, frustrated, because this wasn't how it was supposed to be.
Taylor still didn't fight back. But she didn't wince and shrink anymore. She didn't retaliate. But she didn't look away.
It didn't match, and that was wrong.
Emma had spent days thinking of exactly what to say. Exactly the words to provoke the right reaction, to strip Taylor down, to reveal what was going on in her head. To restore the rhythm.
She hit the points: Mrs. Annette's death, Taylor's inability to cope, tearing her down over how pathetic it had been, and comparing it to the current situation.
For a second, she'd thought it had worked. Except it hadn't been the heartbreak or despair she'd expected. Taylor had looked furious. And Emma had suddenly been reminded of just how tall Taylor was. How imposing Mr. Hebert had been when he was in a bad mood.
But then the fury had disappeared, leaving nothing except blank emptiness. Cold apathy. Utter calmness. Just like every other time before now.
How did she do that? How did she just… stop? It wasn't that she stopped caring, it was more like she just stopped feeling. Like they weren't even worth having any emotion over any more. She just put it away, boxed it up in a corner, and then burnt the box to ash.
Emma had thought that escalating would fix it. That something big enough would break through whatever Taylor thought she was doing and provoke a reaction.
It had provoked a reaction, alright. Taylor was speaking to them for the first time in months. But if anything, this was even worse, because hearing that calm voice, when she should have been broken, should have been running away, upset everything.
She was looking at them in a way that made it feel like she could see everything, there was nothing to hide. "Well, at least you can't get much worse than that. So I guess that means you've got absolutely nothing now, huh? I don't know what the hell happened to you at the end of that summer, but to make you this much of a bitch it must have seriously fucked you up."
What.
No. No. She… She couldn't. Because… because… (it would change everything)
No, Taylor was just grasping for straws.
Sophia made a sound and Taylor turned away from Emma to look at her. Without those eyes on her, it felt like she could breathe a little easier.
"Oh, you had something to do with it too?" Taylor questioned. "No wonder Emma latched onto you. She always was the easily-influenced type."
Emma's mind ground to a halt.
"She always was weak," Taylor was saying. "Always was the victim."
No, Emma's mind whispered as cold clamminess descended on her.
She wasn't! She wasn't weak! And she'd proven it. Taylor had been the one who was weak.
…had been.
"You know, in middle school, I actually got her to believe she'd always loved strawberry ice cream, when four years earlier she absolutely hated it? It's been her favorite flavor ever since," Taylor continued.
What? But… but…
It always had been, hadn't it? They had the same favorite, it was something they'd loved, because it meant they could split a whole pint when they had movie nights.
She couldn't…
Taylor had to be lying. There was no way. Was there?
Emma couldn't remember.
"Shut UP!" she yelled, trying to stop it. Trying to stop her. Trying to regain control.
But Taylor didn't stop.
"–did to my best friend, but I will find out what happened. This wasn't who Emma was, and I know that she wouldn't be like this unless something really horrible happened to her."
The snick of a stiletto knife opening. The feel of cold steel against her nose, her lips, her eye.
"Maybe I'll take both."
"STOP!!"
Something in Taylor had died when Mrs. Annette had. Taylor had had something removed from her, something that couldn't be put back or fixed. She'd lost part of herself. And it was that, that thought, that had scared Emma so much. The thought of being like Taylor. Of being the same.
Because unlike Taylor, Emma wouldn't have been strong enough to come back from it.
Because Emma had been weak.
And that… that wasn't okay.
She couldn't be the weak Emma. She had to be the new Emma. The strong Emma. Taylor had been part of the weak Emma. And she'd proven it. Taylor had been exactly the victim she'd expected. And Emma had known that she'd made the right choice, getting rid of someone weak like that.
The moments where Taylor had reacted, had hurt, those moments had made sense. They were the reassurance that Emma was right. She was just a victim.
But now… ever since January, since the locker, she didn't. Didn't react. Didn't even say anything. Just looked at them. Nothing did anything. Nothing.
Not even this, the one thing Emma had been sure about.
IT WAS WRONG.
Why did she do this? How could she do this?
"I wasn't lying, Emma. Mom called us sisters. I believed it, and I know you did too. And family… family doesn't give up on each other, ever. Especially not when you're some of the last I have left," Taylor said, and Emma almost missed it.
How? Whywhywhywhywhy?
"I hope you feel better, Ems."
She didn't understand.
She hated it.
She'd tried again, the next day, to get a reaction from Taylor. The brunette hadn't even looked at her until Emma had gotten so frustrated, so angry, that she'd slapped Taylor.
Even then, Taylor had just stared at her with uninterested eyes and said nothing other than "Fuck off".
She hadn't gotten a chance to try again that day, though Sophia said she'd be doing something after school. Emma had offered to help, but Sophia had said it would be easier alone.
When Emma had texted her, two hours after school had gotten out, asking about what had happened, Sophia had just said that things were different now. She didn't understand. Of course they were different, that's what this was all supposed to fix.
But then the next day, when she'd been ready to use what she'd come up with the day before and refined overnight, Sophia had stopped her, scratch marks and cuts on her cheeks and forehead, bruises on her arm. She said not to mess with Taylor anymore, that it wasn't worth it, that "the status quo had changed" and Taylor wasn't just a spineless worm anymore.
It didn't make sense. Because Taylor was. That's what she had to be. She couldn't be anything else.
But Sophia didn't say anything else, and Emma could only accept Sophia's words and stare at Taylor. Sophia would change her mind sooner rather than later, and then they could go back, they could fix the pattern.
At least, that's what she'd thought. That's what she'd thought until Taylor had broken another of the rules, had shown up at her house, talking to her mom.
And then… and then it had all gone wrong.
Because Taylor knew.
Taylor. Knew.
She wasn't even angry, she just looked sad. Emma would have gotten mad, because Taylor had no right to look at her with those eyes that seemed to weigh tons, that judged her and found her lacking. Except for what Taylor had said after that.
"It's just… ironic, that you've ended up becoming the same sort of person that hurt you."
For a moment, everything had stilled. The world had frozen as Taylor's words echoed over and over in her ears.
The same. The same. The same.
Fear. Terror. Panic.
"–you choose one of the above, and she goes to town on the part in question, proves her worth."
Fear, terror, panic so strong it had whited out her thoughts. All because they'd just wanted to.
But Emma wasn't the same. She couldn't be. She was strong, and those people… those people couldn't be. But if they weren't, and she'd done the same thing to Taylor… (she had)
There wasn't… they'd been wrong. What she and Sophia had done to Taylor hadn't been the same. Couldn't have been the same. She wasn't the same as them.
She wasn't.
(But it was. She was.)
"It's funny. The Emma I knew? Before all of this? The one who reached out and talked about things, who relied on other people and asked for help? She was strong."
Taylor was calling her weak.
She tried to deny it, because she wasn't, but her voice was stuck in her throat, gagging her like swallowed gum, and she couldn't say anything against it.
"If you want to stay like that, just keep away from me. It'll be better for both of us. Otherwise, you know where I am."
Taylor had just left after that, left Emma standing there, unthinking, frozen, her mind spiraling in circles of impossibilities and wrongness.
She'd understood what Sophia had been saying, earlier that day. Taylor wasn't weak anymore.
She'd heard Taylor and her mom talking, indistinct voices before the front door opened and closed, but Emma couldn't do anything more than sit on her bed, her eyes unfocused on the wall across from her, the wall that still had faded outlines from the posters she'd torn off after that day.
Her dad came home. Her mom talked to him. Emma's stomach grumbled in hunger, but she still couldn't bring herself to move, Taylor's words circling in an endless repeat.
"The one who reached out and talked about things, who relied on other people and asked for help? She was strong."
It made no sense. How could that make someone strong? Those things just meant you were weak, that you couldn't do it yourself because you weren't strong enough.
…Right?
Footsteps came up the stairs, moving towards her door and halting. A pause, a second before there was a knock. Her father's voice came through it clearly.
"Emma, your mom and I need to talk with you."
A/N:
Thus concludes the Emma subplot for awhile. I'm sure some people will be very happy (because they don't like Emma being redeemed), others will be mildly disappointed (for the opposite reason), but hopefully it's at least acceptable for everybody. That's not to say I'm trying to make everybody happy (because fuck that, you should know I don't pull that shit with my stories), but it's a step forward for Taylor in some way.
The Emma subplot isn't over because I don't want to deal with it anymore, but because changes for something like this take a long, long time. The type of trauma and negative reinforced mental patterns Emma has to deal with aren't dealt with in days or weeks, but months and years.
I dislike it when Taylor tries to become friends with Emma, and Emma suddenly reverses her thinking and gets better in days. No. I dislike it even more when there's a canon start and people make it out so that Emma was just trying to make Taylor "stronger like her". Fuck no. By the juice-bathroom incident, canon Emma made Taylor suffer because she enjoyed it, and was perfectly fine with the fact that she'd become that sort of person.
She's seriously fucked in the head, and would never have accepted Taylor even if she got "stronger", because Taylor was the way she made herself feel strong, and without that she would have likely collapsed and imploded, as we saw when she locked herself in her room and committed suicide through inaction.
But yeah. This is Emma. Hopefully people can at least be satisfied with it.
