Characters: Marnie and Emma (played by orie)
Content Warnings: Emetophobia, cannibalism
Location: A Café
During a holiday party, Marnie got kidnapped by a group of magicians aiming to experiment on humans. When Emma and a group rescued her, they discovered her being force-fed human remains in an attempt to undergo some sort of "transformation". Afterward, she was taken to the usual café to recover from the event.
Emma attempts to comfort Marnie and fails miserably, but Marnie gets to take out all her pent up rage on someone who is incapable of reacting the way she wants.
Emma is here. At the cafe. Again.
Gojo had officially given her an extra day off of rest, Astrid said he was handling training V, and she’d sent emails to her professors saying she’d be out of school for a week or two due to an emergency. So for all intents and purposes, Emma Miller was resting.
But here she was. And she was so tired.
Her head still had residual fuzziness from the previous days events, thoughts took a bit more time to formulate, and overall she just. Didn’t know what to do.
Emma doesn’t like going home. Nothing is wrong with it, well, everything is wrong with it, but it’s nothing she can really afford to complain about.
Yes she was at the cafe, but she hadn’t actually worked that day. She mainly stayed in the back room and took to the main dining area once normal customers had left.
She was sitting with herself, staring down towards the center of the table, again making sure to avoid the walls where the missing persons posters were. A mug of still steaming coffee was in her hands. She doesn’t really feel like taking a sip.
The second the group of Magis helped Marnie get all the blood and muck off her clothes and hair, she found her way to her little office and collapsed, curled up on the floor.
She wakes up twenty hours later, feeling only slightly more rested. Everything feels like too much of a haze for her to make up. Her mind swirls with thoughts that go a million miles per hour–the only thing she can do is try and force her body to sit up.
When she does, she notices the note scrawled on her palm with a permanent marker.
MEDS.
they tell her she evidently doesn’t need the meds as she was right all along and they won’t work anyway so why even try and they laugh so hard marnie just shakes her head again and again and–
Maybe she needs some fresh air. She gets up. Forces a smile on her tired face, and opens the door with the resolution of a woman on a mission.
Her eyes immediately land on her. It’s dark out.
“–oh…”
Though the main reason she was here was obvious. More straightforward than the smaller multitudes of home lives and workaholic tendencies.
Emma feels the way her grip on her mug tightens as she hears Marnie’s voice, even if it’s quiet.
She was estatic that she was awake. She was terrified of what might happen next. Emma terms around to look at her. In all honesty she’d rather not look her in the eye right now but it would be rude if she didn’t.
“…Hi, how are you… feeling?”
This is a stupid question to ask, she thinks. Nothing else comes to mind though. The hostess in her wants to offer a drink, but decides against it.
Marnie is still.
She’s unsure what to make of Emma, still. Part of her is embarrassed that someone she looked down on saw her in such a weak state. Another is angry–Emma was the one person there with her before she got taken. Emma…could’ve prevented…everything.
None of that gets through. Instead, Marnie only gives Emma a tired, polite smile.
“I think I have a stomach bug.” A laugh. A weak one, at that.
Unwilling to linger on it, Marnie holds up her hand, showing the big black letters to Emma.
“You know what this might be about?”
There’s nothing in the world Emma could say right now that would make up for what she’d done. Or, what she didn’t do.
She gives a matching, weak and tired smile, but she doesn’t laugh. The sleep deprivation would normally get her to join in on the half hearted joke, but there just wasn’t enough space in her brain for that.
Emma takes a second to read the letters on Marnie’s hand. She doesn’t remember them being there when they first got her, and the few times she had checked in on her, she had really been paying attention to her hands. She shakes her head slowly.
“…No, I don’t. Sorry…”
A small part of her brain remembers the psychologist note she saw on Marnie’s phone. Maybe she was medicated for something now? Oh, actually that reminds her.
She quickly goes into her backpack and pulls out a familiar liquid glitter phone and charms. Emma stands up to hand it to her.
“… Here’s your phone, it… dropped.” Dropped when she was taken she means. She doesn’t really wanna say it if she doesn’t have to.
Ah, right. Her phone. Christ, her mom must’ve been worried sick.
“Thanks.” With a flick of her wrist, she takes it, pocketing it in the apron she borrowed from Emma’s set of uniforms. She would rather not see the amount of things she has to deal with right now.
Before she can say anything else, though…Marnie stops. Her eyes flicker to Emma in that familiar way where she’s caught her in yet another thing that annoys Marnie to no end.
Sorry, Emma. She doesn’t mean to take it out on you. Not really.
“What, when I got kidnapped, Emma? Is that it?”
A part of Emma is relieved that Marnie chooses to pocket the phone for now. Emma definitely could’ve done and deleted all the things she sent, but she a) didn’t want to leave any traces of having snooped, and b) something about doing it made her feel uneasy. Wrong. She’d deal with the consequences eventually, she was just glad it more than likely wouldn’t be tonight.
The hand that had kept it’s position since the phone was removed tenses. A flinch.
“Y-”
She hates the way her throat closes up on her again. This was feeling extremely vulnerable but the least her brain and body could do was let her get her words out first try.
She lets her arm fall with gravity as she looks away from Marnie’s gaze.
“…Yeah.”
Though her shoulders are still tense, Marnie’s eyes soften. The aggressive stance she’d briefly taken on tapers into something more reluctant. A little afraid, even.
“…sorry. I’m taking it out on you. I’m just…”
Her wrist, lacking its usual charm bracelets, flicks in the general direction of the cafe.
“…you get it, right?” She doesn’t. There’s no way Emma can understand the experience Marnie just went through. But Marnie herself–
“…I know you don’t.” She pauses, finally breaking the piercing stare laid upon Emma. “But you could try. You can always try, you just–” A sound painfully catches in Marnie’s throat.
She retches. Coughs dryly into her mouth, shrinking into herself like a dying animal. A dying version of her former self, maybe.
“You never try, and it pisses the hell out of me–”
Emma feels herself finally breathe out as Marnie apologizes. That’s understandable, she thinks. She almost gets a response out at Marnie’s question, but stops as Marnie answers it herself.
She looks away.
“I–”
What could she say? Oh, ‘I am trying you have to believe me but everytime I do something stops me or I have to do this on purpose because if you knew what the actual reason was it’d ruin both our lives’? That’s not gonna help her here. That’s, that’s not fix this. Was this even something to be fixed?
She’s sorry, of course she’s sorry, but she had said it so many times that she was pretty sure those words lacked any actual menacing anymore, coming from her.
There had been so many times , but every. single. time something within herself stops her. The rare moments she manages to push through and actually do and act and say what she means leave her dazed and lightheaded for hours afterward.
But at the same time, she knows what she looks like from the outside. Some awkward girl who make no attempts to bond and understand other people. A girl who just, exists.
Emma Miller, you have to say something.
“…I know.”
Pathetic.
I know. That’s it?
Marnie curls into herself some more, coughing into her elbow. The feeling of carnage slipping down her throat resurfaces all over. Emma’s voice becomes one enveloped by millions, all swirling around her head.
it’s all her fault and now she won’t ever see her again and this girl in front of her is a weak reflection of what is she a weak reflection of what are you saying what are you thinking the girl in front of you is nothing more than a sad depressing living corpse–
She crumbles to her knees, covering her mouth with her hands. Her previously manicured nails are chipped now, grime clinging onto the back of them. Another grotesque retch escapes her lips. Marnie’s eyes go back to that distant place, looking at something beyond Emma.
“–shut up…shut up….shut up!”
Emma eyes widen again as she instinctively reaches a hand out towards Marnie as she starts coughing, and another instinct pulls it back.
She doesn’t know what to do.
Emma quickly gets on her knees to be level with her. She figures the sight of someone looking down at you isn’t exactly going to help here.
She sits there a a moment, eyes frantic and hesitant. She grips the fabric of her pants. Would talking make it worse? If it was auditory, would her saying anything just add fuel to the fire?
She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t know if just sitting there in silence would be the best idea either. Her head pounds a bit. Meet in the middle she thinks. Softly and gently, she tries talking.
“Mar-,” Fuck. “Marnie, can you hear me?”
She shouldn’t have been the person here for this, so many other magis could be doing a better job of this. Emma bits her lip slightly. Her grip on fabric tightens.
So many others could be doing a better job of this, but it’s Emma Miller kneeling beside Marnie Song now–Marnie, whose entire life has been turned on its head–Marnie, who never signed a contract, never uttered the words, forced to bear the same suffering a Magi would with none of the benefits.
Marnie’s hands are shaking so much that the attempts to cover her mouth are useless. Her back is pressed against the wall, and though her eyes are still fixed in that distant spot away from Emma, she flinches at her voice.
“…I can’t do this…” comes her whisper.
Even though she’s not all that familiar with Emma, she feels like the one physical tether Marnie has right now beyond the screaming in her mind. Abruptly, she wraps her arms around her, pulling Emma’s stiff body close to her own, shaking all the while.
“…I can’t…I miss her so much…..all of this is my fault….I killed her…I killed everything. I–I was so jealous of her and I was so mad because I thought she’d never understand how I felt and she was just so distant and instead of trying I just pushed her away even more, and…and they won’t let me forget that I killed her, I killed her, I–”
Emma is surprised by the embrace. A part of her is grateful for the chance to hug her again. She returns it nonetheless.
She feels the way her eyes become tender and her throat closes as tears start running down her face. She doesn’t utter a sound as they do, quiet crying had been one of the few skills she had been able to develop over the past couple months. She purses her lips together and does her very hardest to steady her breathing.
…She didn’t deserve to be hearing all of this. It, it was invasive, deceitful and, and she… She…
…Did Marnie really think all of that? Did she think she had killed her?
A million a one thoughts swarm in her head, most of them regrets.
… She’d been distant. Of course she’d been distant, she never told her anything about what she was really thinking.
She was the one who didn’t try, not Marnie. If she had just been more honest, if she had just been more open, if she had just been more vulnerable more willing more present less tight lipped less independent less apathetic less afraid less stupid–
…If she had asked for help.
How could… how could she have let this happen?
The weight of what she had done starts to push against her. More tears fall as she blinks a few time to keep from breaking.
She takes a deep breath, and speaks in the steadiest voice she can. It mostly works. Something in the back of her mind churns. She grits her teeth for a second before continuing.
“You… You didn’t kill her Marnie…” Too sure of herself, add something. “If… If she was friends with you then I’m sure she’s strong like you are too.” A Lie.
“…She’s out there somewhere, I’m sure of it. You didn’t kill anyone Marnie, it’s not your fault.”
A million voices all encompassing, weaving together a thread of a voice so plain it stands out to her regardless. Emma’s words, as always, confuse Marnie. Simple, generic, never too personal, yet Marnie’s always been good at sniffing out hidden feelings from a mile away and she can always sense something hiding behind Emma’s voice and it infuriates her to no end–
They say it’s her fault. It’s Emma that did something. It’s Emma that orchestrated all this, Emma that killed her. She ignores them, because she knows others don’t take too kindly to her replying to them right away and she doesn’t want to believe them right now–
“..what if she was taken like I was and I never noticed because I was too wrapped up in my own bullshit…?” she mutters. Her voice is shaky–a hesitant admission.
Marnie’s grip on Emma softens, though only because her arms shift to lie limp instead.
"..I was ignoring her…she never noticed, ’cuz I hated doing it for long, and she was always so busy…but I was pissed for some reason or another, so when she didn’t text me…I thought she was just busy…I never checked in on her, I could’ve reported it sooner, I could’ve—shit–"
Thank God Marnie couldn’t see her face right now. She realizes she had been holding her a bit tighter than she meant to as she loosens her own grip.
“Mar-” Fuck. “…Marnie, it…”
She wants to reassure that her being taken wasn’t a possibility. She knows it’s not true, but her saying as much would cause suspicion. Emma opts to respond to the more recent comment instead.
“…It’s okay, people can just… forget to respond for a while even if everything’s fine. …You couldn’t have known that it was something else.”
She purses her lips together to think of what to say next.
“…You’ve been looking for her non-stop since you realized something was wrong, right?” Emma forces herself to look at the missing posters plastered on the walls. She looks back down.
“…You’re doing everything you can, no one can blame you for that.”
Tears well up in Marnie’s eyes. Even those some of the things Emma is saying are undoubtedly true, they don’t feel true.
"…she ruined my life, comes her confession. There’s two wavering seconds of silence, as Marnie mulls over how much she wants to dump on her coworker about her personal life. But she already knows so much, what’s the harm in a little more?
“Do you know how hard it is to try and go out when everyone knows your best friend is missing? Everyone looked at me as if I were some crippled puppy or some shit, and I–”
She coughs again. Dry heaves. Nonexistent contents threaten to spill out of her throat again. Marnie takes a deep breath and keeps going.
“I’m crazy now, I hear shit and I can’t even go to university because I can’t concentrate for one fucking second because she unravelled my head so much and she just vanished without a trace, into thin air, and then all of a sudden I’m hearing shit and now all this is happening and I wouldn’t have lost my mind if she hadn’t fucking vanished like that–”
She presses her lips firmly together to avoid any sound from coming out. Tears well up in her eyes again.
While her arms are only loosely around Marnie now, they tremble. Just a little. Just for a second.
She had ruined it, hadn’t she. That one stupid decision ruined her own life, ruined the life of the person she cares about the most, ruined everything else.
“…I’m sorry this happened to you Marnie.”
Her voice wavers a little as she says it. She is so, so sorry.
Emma goes silent again, getting her breathing under control, trying to keep her voice steady. She is threading a line she shouldn’t be. Her head feels light.
“If… she could’ve prevented it, I’m sure she would’ve stayed.”
But that’s the thing wasn’t it. She could’ve prevented it. And yet.
Marnie notices Emma’s wavering presence. But maybe it’s just the heaviness of the subject at hand. A teenager should never have to go missing like that. It’s too scary of an implication.
“…is it selfish…to wish I could forget everything about her, Emma?” It’s something she’s thought about a lot.
Sure, Marnie would feel some sort of emptiness, but it’s not like she didn’t have any other friends. It’s just that they were the closest. She knew Marnie more than anyone else did. Marnie’s mom loved her.
And yet…
“..I know….even if she didn’t mean to…I can’t get over the fact that she left me…and my mom…and I just wish I could forget about her and all this so that I could just be normal again…”
Emma swallows at the suggestion. It’s something she’s thought a lot about too.
“…Maybe it is, but I understand why you’d want to.”
If she did, it could make this easier on both of them. Marnie wouldn’t feel the pain and scorn of her friend’s absence. Emma would still have to see the face of her biggest regret sure, but she wouldn’t have to spend so much time, so much energy dancing around what she says or does. Marnie could live the rest of her life, with new friends, with better friends. That would be enough for Emma.
“But…”
She breathes.
“…But if you’re offered the chance to make that wish… don’t take it. Please.”
Marnie had already been roped into their Magi lives enough as it is. She didn’t want her to become like them. Like her. Not if she could help it.
Normal. Her mind twitches at the word. A stupid, 6-letter word that caused this whole mess.
“…I’m sorry Marnie. I really am.”
A wish.
The words make her recall something wedged in her memory. Tubes, pipes, a masked person speaking to someone that couldn’t be her.
“…I can’t.”
It’s a lot of things Emma said. She coughs, threatening to start dry heaving again, but stops herself.
“..I can’t make a wish.”
She’s not sure what that means, or whether it means anything at all. But the memory lingers in the back of her mind, and it’s better than any other memories she has of that tent.
Emma is… thinking. She’s been doing a lot of thinking recently, but right now calls for more attention to thought than ever. This is the most volatile, the most vulnerable she’s ever seen Marnie, and its all happening in front of someone like her. Like Emma Miller.
Her thoughts get interrupted again once she hears Marnie say she can’t.
That’s… not what she expected as a response. Her voice, now steadier, contains a hint of confusion.
“You… can’t?”
What does that mean? Why wouldn’t she be able to? Emma feels like she shouldn’t pry…? But at the same time, considering the situation Marnie was wrapped up in, maybe it was important to know.
Marnie nods. She bites her chapped lips, tugging a little piece of skin off of them.
“….overheard..I dunno…while they were setting up the tubes. I don’t remember everything they said.”
She wishes she did, because she remembers them agreeing to explain something to her, but her memory is so muddled already that the only thing that managed to resurface was purely because of her own despair and a single word.
Emma’s sight glares a bit at the mention of the tubes. She can’t believe she let that happen to Marnie. But… they must have known something their group didn’t if she heard it during that… process.
“…Okay.”
Emma wouldn’t push. No real need to. At face value, if that was true then that would be good news. Probably. She’s not really sure what not being able to make a wish implies.
One thing at a time. Emma tries to think of what to say.
“I… know it won’t mean much coming from me but… I’m sorry, Marnie.”
She doesn’t say anything else. She had said that so many times by now. And she means it every time she does, even if she’s apologizing for more than Marnie realizes.
Her arms are loose so Marnie can pull away if she needs to. She doesn’t want to come off as trying coax her to say anything else if she doesn’t want to.
“….”
She knows Emma must mean it, because there’s no genuine reason why she wouldn’t. But she apologises, and something in Marnie’s blood runs cold as it always does.
She pulls away. Takes a deep breath and rubs her eyes. One of her lash extensions is falling off, resulting in her awkward tugging of her eyelid.
“…don’t–”
Another deep breath. Her voice becomes a little more stable now. A little less shaky.
“I don’t want your pity, Emma.”
It’s not pity she’s giving Marnie. Not really. Or, no, none of it is.
But she knows what she must look like, so she rests her hands on her lap looking away and attempting to use her stupid mid length brown hair to cover her probably tear-stained face with gravity.
“…Okay.”
She takes a breath. Back to more of the same she supposed. She’d bear it if need be. Well, need did be, but she’d endure. She has to. For her sake.
The tears finally clear some. She gets the eyelash off. Her eyes drift back up to meet Emma’s, and she frowns.
“You…are you crying?”
She’s crying? Emma’s crying? She’s so apathetic, yet somehow so emotional, and Marnie bites the insides of her cheeks, grimacing in an attempt to not take out every feeling surging through her once again on Emma Miller.
Emma visibly flinches at the acknowledgement. Her arms automatically go to wipe at her eyes.
“I- no I mean- I’m- I just-”
Emma quickly (and somewhat frantically) rises to her feet and turns away from Marnie, hands covering her face, and her head lowered.
“…I’m sorry…!”
She says again, in a small voice muffled by her hands. It’s all that comes to mind. There’s nothing reasonable she can really say to explain herself her outside of flat out lying.
Marnie takes another deep breath. Breathe in. Breathe out. Bite your cheek as hard as you can but not hard enough to draw blood because if you ever taste blood again you might throw up.
Emma always does nothing but apologise.
Marnie gets up as well. Her hands are shaking, wrists trembling under some force unknown to her.
She steps forward. Yanks Emma’s shoulder and harshly turns her to face Marnie, to face the pink-haired girl looking down at her with nothing but spite. Breathe in. Breathe out.
“You’re unbelievable.”
Her arms are curled in on herself as her hands leave her face from the sudden shock of being turned around. Emma’s eyes can’t not because she wants to, but because she’s afraid she’ll make this worse if she doesn’t.
Emma Miller is tired, first and foremost. She hadn’t slept since rescuing Marnie, the things she said, the things Marnie said to her that day continuous to bounce around her mind despite her best wishes.
But right now, Emma Miller is terrified.
Not of Marnie but… of the situation they’d found themselves in. Right now. Of the fact that Marnie was looking at her with such hatred and spite.
And that she deserved it.
She opens her mouth but can’t manage to make any words come out. It’s not like words were coming to her anyways. Emma closes her mouth.
She doesn’t say anything. She stares. Breathe in, breathe out.
She doesn’t say anything. Of course she doesn’t say anything. Because why would Emma Miller ever say anything worthwhile?
Marnie’s clear eyes are locked onto Emma’s dull ones. She can see the tears drying at the corners of Emma’s eyes, and she stares back until they do, until the sheen is just a little bit duller.
She’s never been too angry of a person. She gets pissed easily, yes, but she doesn’t really act on it unless something is really wrong. But wouldn’t this be one of those cases, where something is really, really wrong?
…
Marnie's wrist flickers gracefully, the way it always does when she's motioning toward something. Her bare wrists are still red from the chair's leather shackles pressing tightly against her skin. Her hand, against Emma's cheek, is warm and clammy.
Nothing more and nothing less, what you see is what you get. That’s Emma Miller.
She sits (well stands), she waits, as Marnie just stares back at her.
Her eyes finally break the contest as the flicker towards the side of her face Marnie’s hand is on. She doesn’t have much to dwell on the why before she feels impact.
She recoils from the slap, turning a bit in the direction of the follow through. A beat. Emma rubs the check that was hit. Her hand goes back to her side again.
She nods, and smiles ever so slightly, defeated.
“…Yeah.”
Just more stock phrases for her brain to pull from when she doesn’t know what to say. Or when she can’t say anything.
“…Okay.”
Even if she hates you. Even if she wants you dead. Even if seeing you makes her skin boil.
She’d get through it. Somehow.
Emma smiles. Emma smiles.
Marnie sees nothing but red. Emma doesn’t feel human, in this second, with Marnie’s hand hovering over her cheek again as her shoulders heave up and down. Her reaction might as well have been that of some sort of android.
Hell. At last an android would acknowledge it. If your coworker slapped you, would you just smile and nod? If your coworker, who had just been through hell and back, who you saw being forced to gulp down human remains, slapped you, would you just smile and nod?
Nothing Emma does makes sense, and it makes Marnie see nothing but red.
“What are you? A robot?” Her question comes through as a pained screech. Marnie’s hand, now on the opposite side of her cheek, delivers a backhand slap to Emma’s face.
Maybe there’s a part of her that realizes that with that slap came a point of no return. Marnie hates her, and that’s fine. If she hated her, then all she had to was not say anything about the truth.
If they’d become friends… maybe that would’ve been worse. A reattempt at what she had haphazardly thrown away all those months ago. She’d drive herself insane. Having to careful pick and choose and make sure she wasn’t bringing up information Marnie hadn’t told her yet. Maybe Marnie would’ve hated it deep down too. Familiar, but not too much.
Emma hadn’t been trying to get Marnie to hate her over these past couple weeks, but they had managed to get here anyways. If Marnie hated her, that was fine. She’d bear it. She’d endure.
Emma can’t help but give a single small, airy laugh at the suggestion of being a robot.
God. She wishes she was. Maybe then the past couple of weeks wouldn’t have hurt so much.
Again, Emma recoils at the impact. She doesn’t bother going to rub it.
Her face is less fearful now. Not relaxed or calm by any means but the fear has been mellowed out. She’s not smiling anymore, but her mouth goes to a neutral straight line, only shifting when she winces.
She laughs. Again. A more genuine laugh than anything Marnie has ever heard coming from Emma. It’s awful.
Marnie’s face is twisted into an ugly scowl only made worse by her puffy eyes and chapped, nearly bloody lips. She barely ever gets this angry. The only time she’s ever been this angry was two years ago, when she was going out with her and some random guy said something way too demeaning and way too bold and she had to pull Marnie back to keep her from permanently damaging the guy’s head.
But she’s not here anymore. She’s not here, so she can’t pull back Marnie’s arms as her hand goes to Emma’s throat, pushes her against the wall, thumb pressing harshly against its side.
“Do something! Anything! Do you even care? Does any of this fucking matter to you?”
Emma knows what she looks like right now. Honestly, Emma wouldn’t really be able to explain what she was doing either. She’d never been the most introspective, after all. Her head feels light.
Emma winces and shuts her eyes as Marnie grabs her by the neck and shoves her against the wall. She can’t check, but this wall probably has missing posters on it. For a second she imagines what this must look like from a 3rd person perspective.
It’s funny. She doesn’t laugh about it this time though.
“…Yes…! …All of it… matters…”
All of it matters. Ever since Marnie stepped back into her life, it had mattered the most it ever had. Of course she cares.
But she can’t tell you that Marnie.
Her voice is strained, but that’s only because of the current way Marnie is influencing her windpipe.
Her hands instinctively start to reach towards Marnie’s arm to try and free herself, but stops half way. Emma lets them flop back down.
She can’t even free herself. Emma Miller can’t even bother to try freeing herself against someone choking her.
Marnie doesn’t understand much about Magis, but she understands that they are hardier than normal humans are. Marnie understands that, no matter what she does, Emma will bounce back, because she’s not human, not really, and–
“..maybe that explains it all,” she mutters, hands still crushing Emma’s windpipe. “..none of you are human..but you’re the least human of them all.”
All of it matters, is what Emma tells her, and Marnie doesn’t doubt that Emma truly believes that. What she doesn’t understand is–
Her free hand rises to slap Emma’s cheeks again. The hand holding her throat begins shaking.
“Do something, damn it!”
…Yeah. Yeah she was wasn’t. If the only thing constant was change, if humans are known for their adaptability, if they developed ways that they can grow and become better people, then Emma couldn’t be considered one.
She tempted to laugh again, but her diminishing access to her windpipe would make that difficult. Maybe she needs to get some sleep.
Emma Miller would always be Emma Miller. She couldn’t get worse, she couldn’t get better, she could just… be. Constant. Unchanging. The past few days were the most dynamic she had ever felt, and it physically made her feel… off.
Marnie’s been through a lot. Emma knows she doesn’t want her pity, so she won’t give that to her. She can’t comfort her like a friend would, so the least she could do is be a way for Marnie to let off some steam. Get some form of catharsis, she thinks. It’s the least she could do.
Oh, Marnie. You are so much more than just a stranger to Emma. If it were anyone else she would’ve been clawing at her assailant to free herself. But she was Mari. That made all the difference.
Do something, Marnie says. She knows that it’d be easy to just let Marnie knock her out completely, fully cut off circulation to the brain. Her thought processes are taking a hit from the lack of oxygen.
…Emma Miller smiles again. Tiredly, but smiles.
In the next moment, Emma Miller places her hands on the arm Marnie has on her throat, props her leg against the wall, and pushes forward towards Marnie to try and free herself from the wall.
Emma smiles. And then she does something. She finally does something.
A smile reaches Marnie’s eyes, but something about it is off. It’s a little too cruel, a little too despaired. Her eyes are a little too puffy, too distant. But she smiles back, for once, meeting Emma’s eye as if this dance is some sort of secret shared between the two of them.
And she’s stronger than Marnie expected, too. She has to dig her heels into the floor to keep herself from stumbling, but her grip on Emma’s throat does loosen.
“..finally. Fucking finally, Emma.”
She goes in again. Marnie isn’t superhuman, no, but she spent her high school years at a cheer club, and it shows in how she manages to make the way she delivers a kick into the girl’s side graceful, look pretty. It looks like some improvised choreography, one twisting and developing in her head as the seconds go by.
She looks up again. Meets Emma’s eyes. Do something, she seems to plead.
As Marnie’s grip on her neck loosens, her self-preservation skills see to return to her, as she starts coughing the moment her windpipe is even a little bit more free. This of course leaves her vulnerable and distracted for the subsequent kick Marnie delivers to her.
Emma could have her moments of strength sure, but she didn’t do activities or sports or anything that would teach her to harness that power. That would build up and hone those muscles. Not like Marnie did.
The fear that seemed to dissipate earlier was now starting to come back. Even in Emma’s dazed, not quite-all-there, and injured state of mind, she sees the way Marnie is looking at her.
She hesitates. Despite the doubt reentering her heart, Emma looks more serious now than afraid. As if she finally realized the situation she’s in.
Emma has already made one conscious decision though.
“…I don’t…. wanna fight you Marnie…”
“Then do something.”
She’s not even tired, somehow. Marnie doesn’t feel rested, but her violent movements almost feel like a reincarnation of herself. Whatever part of her died in the circus tent is being replaced by something new. Something uglier, maybe, but something new regardless.
Once again, she moves in to back Emma up against the wall, but this time she doesn’t hit her. Instead, she tilts her chin up, forcing Emma to look in her eyes. Her grip on her chin isn’t overly strong, but it’s enough for the secret implication to be there regardless.
Don’t look away, she wants to say. Marnie speaks up with something else instead.
“I looked you up. In my yearbook, you know. We graduated the same year. I bet you’ve known about me for forever, haven’t you?”
She pauses. Looks at that place beyond Emma again, listening to them.
“I’ve been awful to you since the day we met, but you always let me get away with it. Why?”
Emma grunts a little as she feels herself get pushed back into the wall.
Somehow, the idea of being in a yearbook as herself is funny to her, in the sense that she had forgotten that she existed outside of herself. She doesn’t laugh.
Emma winces as Marnie grabs her chin.
She can tell where this line of questioning is going.
The logic behind it was flawed, she knows. It wouldn’t be a statisfying answer (nothing she said would be, she thinks), but they were drawing so close to something that she had to try and steer them away.
“I just… don’t have a reason… to hate you.” She says between a few breaths.
“You don’t need to hate someone to stand up for yourself.” Marnie has never been a tolerant person. Any rudeness toward her never fared well.
In high school, one of her teachers was snappy at her for her lazy attitude. Marnie cussed them out in front of the entire class after researching them on social media enough to know about their personal life to insult it. She got suspended, but the message always got across.
“I’ll give you one, if you want.”
She lets go of Emma’s chin, to slap her again.
That’s one thing she always admired about Marnie. She was so confident, always willing to speak up and say what’s on her mind without fear of the consequences. Even if she was Emma Miller now, that’s something she’d never been able to do.
Her next set of words come out as a hushed whisper, moreso a general statement than an actual response. She glances down.
“…It won’t change anything.”
Marnie tilts her head. Her eyes practically bore into Emma’s.
“Yeah, Emma?”
She goes to hold her chin again, tilting it up. One of her knees goes to brace itself against the wall to make sure Emma has to properly writhe to get out of her grasp.
“Do you love me then?”
Emma winces again as Marnie tilts her chin up.
Thousands of thoughts swarm in as Marnie speaks.
Love. Did Emma Miller love Marnie Song.
Yes but not in the way you’re implying yes and exactly in the way you’re implying yes but I’m not sure if i do any more yes i always have and still do yes but it’s changed since we first met yes because i miss you yes because this is all my fault yes because you’re the only person who made me feel like someone yes because you saw me as a person yes because–
Because…
She looks away with her eyes but not with her head. Emma bites her lip, holding something back.
Even if she hates you.
In a small voice she squeaks out.
“…Please let me go Marnie.”
“You’re a spineless, soulless coward.” Marnie’s words are full of a vitriol she didn’t know she had in her. It’s nearly snake-like, the way she hisses out every word as if she were seconds away from sinking venom into Emma and not letting go until she was long dead.
With her free hand, she taps Emma’s cheek. Look at me, it implies, and if she doesn’t, Marnie does it again.
“Maybe I’d actually like you if you were different. If you tried. If you had an inch of anything but mediocrity in your body. Maybe then I’d want to be in a room with you without wanting to see you react to anything I do. But you can’t do that, can you, huh?”
Emma feels the tap (and the way it it Feels a bit more because of how raw that skin felt now) and looks at Marnie. Her heart sinks a bit at the insult. But it can’t be helped.
She feels herself start to look away at the question, but quickly course corrects to keep her eyes on Marnie.
“…I can’t.” She self-awarely admits. Emma knows this, she’s known this for all of her life as Emma Miller. By definition, this is who she was, who she is, and who she’ll continue to be.
“I know. And that’s why I hate you so much.”
Finally, Marnie backs away. She lets go of Emma’s chin and hers her knee off the wall. Taking a deep breath, she tilts her head and looks at Emma one last time.
“Can you get me some of your clothes, by the way? I don’t want to go back to my house and explain why I look like shit to my mom. Thanks, babe.”
With that, Marnie Song swerves on her heel and leaves Emma Miller alone once again.
Emma doesn’t respond as Marnie makes the request, simply keeping her eyes on her as she leaves.
A moment passes. Then another.
The next moment has the past few minutes finally come crashing down on her.
Emma coughs, profusely.
Whether it was a combination of having her air cutoff for so long, exhaustion, or the emotional toll of the past few days, Emma no longer finds strength in her legs and slides down the wall she had previously been pinned to.
Tears immediately return to her eye and come down her face, foregoing the silent strategy and just sobbing as hard as she needed to.
Emma curled in on herself and cried, only interrupted by sharp inhales of breath, more coughing, or wincing whenever she accidentally touched her cheeks or neck.
…She’ll get the clothes before magi hour starts.
Even if she hates you.