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The Sisters and Mothers don’t get it. They have built their lives upon top the blood and bones of their loved ones—Norman tries really hard not to judge this matter. (He would be a hypocrite if he did, when he knows without Emma in his life he would’ve done the same.) To the Sisters and Mothers, Emma’s sacrifice was just another skeleton to bury in the pit, bones to grind to strengthen the foundation and blood to drink for survival. Phantom limbs to comfort on nights with new moons and hugs to give to the ones that remain. Peace and time, to move on.
Privately, Norman thinks they just have not met Emma.
Norman has spent the past two years compartmentalizing: Norman, the boy, under lock and key; Minerva, the savoir, in the cloak; Emma and Ray, his family, buried like Hook’s treasure. Then, he reunited with Emma, and felt the resounding crack of his walls through his whole entire soul.
Blown apart, he thinks, oh. Oh, you’re everything.
And then immediately Emma confessed she’d intended to stake her life on a pipe dream, and Norman’s core, cracked open, flooded with pure, child-like fear. What better motivator than fear, to lock his soul all back up?
At that moment, Norman had only understood one thing: without Emma, what was this all for?
He let that drive him to war, to the Demon Queen’s deathbed, to the gates of Hell. His body was nothing but a husk repurposed as a shield. Then again, again, Emma had cradled him in her arms and filled him inside-out with love and determination and hope. He had glorious, glorious hope—until the final line, she was gone, leaving Norman and his broken love-filled core, with nothing but smoke and mirrors.
In the human world. She left them in the human world, where Norman and the Sisters and Mothers and cattle children were handed peace on a platter.
It’s a hollow victory, because without Emma, Norman can’t seem to remember what he was defending anymore.
The Sisters and Mothers still don’t get it. That’s fine. Norman doesn’t need the Sisters and Mothers to get it; Norman just needs the Sisters and Mothers to take care of his siblings while he searches for Emma.
Mike Ratri lures them into staying with resources. Norman boxes up the urge to stab him with a quill, having no lost love for adult Ratris. They are snakes but Norman is an owl. He will eat the snake, the moment it has outlived its use and not a second longer. For now, he bites his tongue hard enough to draw blood and stays his hand because tactically, passing on Mike’s network out of spite is a step backwards from finding Emma.
And find Emma he will—Norman is one boy with the force of an army behind him and the brains of a thousand men, all devoted to finding a singular girl. He’s no longer Minerva, but he refuses to let his emotions blind him. His mistake as Minerva had been locking Emma and Ray away—now, Emma is first and foremost; his north star to the lonely wanderer; his reason for existence and his desire to fall to flames at once.
Norman is tired of living with the ghosts of his best friend. She’s real. She’s out there.
All Norman’s roads of devotions lead to Emma and he’s hit the ground running.
Ray backs him up with an implicit understanding. Norman throws his soul to the wind looking for Emma but Ray is there to catch him, to dump out day-old coffee so he doesn't poison his weak stomach, to remind Norman to take his daily meds.
So Norman plans; plots. Commandeers census data, combs refugee files and makes contacts in under-the-table deals. He lays out the world in spreadsheets and found footage, and watches for a sign—a flash of auburn hair; a smile, like sunlight; a running figure in the glass. Ray is right there with him, tabulating his data, organizing the search groups, exponentiating Norman’s thoughts.
Ray lets his fingers linger when he passes Norman a tablet and Norman smiles a thank you. Ray meets it simultaneously, small but scintillating in genuinity, then they’re both back to their respective tasks.
Every day at 8PM, Ray corrals their siblings upstairs to start their bedtime routine, and at 10PM he returns to continue the search with Norman. Usually, he’ll bring dinner, knowing Norman has forgotten it again. If cajoled properly, Norman has a 5% chance of getting Ray to sneak him more coffee too. Around midnight, Ray’ll head upstairs to make sure all the kids are actually asleep. Sometimes, their siblings sneak back downstairs looking to help, and Ray is the one who escorts them right back to bed, reminding them that Emma would not want them working themselves to the bones to find her.
Ray wisely doesn’t bother reprimanding Norman. He understands Norman has already given Emma his whole, entire soul, because Ray has done the very same.
Ray’s relationship with Emma and Norman is built on the same unshakable foundations Norman’s relationship with Emma and Ray is. They’re his two best friends—always and forever. There’s not a thing he wouldn’t do for them, and he knows Ray feels the same because he once tried to set a boy and a home on fire for Emma. They’re two sides of the same coin in Emma’s giving palm.
Because of this, he doesn’t expect to come to blows with Ray.
“Where is everybody?” Norman asks the quiet study. Typically, the room—one of Ratri’s labs they staked claim of early on—is full to bursting at 8AM, with children conducting research, prepping for patrol, and so on. Thoma and Lani’s report on the 36th sector is missing from his pile. So was Jemima and Alicia’s report on the 37th—actually, he’s missing today’s entire sweep and there’s no children present to explain why.
There’s only Ray, typing away at his laptop on Norman’s couch. The blanket that Norman had found draped over him when he woke up on the couch earlier that morning is neatly folded and draped over his lap. Ray’s nursing a comically oversized coffee mug: it’s larger than Norman’s, which is offensive.
Ray takes a long sip before responding. “School.”
“What?” Norman blurts out before he can contain himself. He’s flabbergasted. “School?”
“Yeah. Ratri’s people handled the paperwork. It’s like the tests we did every day, but less intense and more directed.” Ray is being deliberately obtuse, Norman thinks petulantly.
“Ray, I know what school is. Why are they at school? We don’t have time for school, we’re—”
“Searching for Emma, I know.” Ray cuts him off. He hits a button on the keyboard with vigour and snaps his laptop shut, standing and walking to Norman’s desk. “You and me are. The rest of our family need to go to school, like regular children.”
Norman starts to protest (there are so many things wrong with that statement: since when were they ever regular children; Ray knows their schedule that time is of the essence; why would they even need school, his siblings are overachieving geniuses), but is interrupted by the beep of his email. At the top of his inbox sits an email from [email protected], no subject line. There are 13 attachments—12 are the reports he’s expecting for today. Perfect, Norman can start the next set of analysis now. Ray can get started on the next set of reports by himself, and with luck they’ll be ahead of schedule enough to squeeze in another two days in the Southern territories.
The thirteenth turns out to be a legal memo. Under Section A-12 of the United Education Act, all minors are required to attend schooling.
“I thought about attaching a children’s psychology paper on why routine education and socializing was necessary for developing adults as well,” Ray drawls, “but you’d already know everything it could say, wouldn’t you?”
Which—
Fine. His siblings legally and psychologically for-their-well-being need to go to school? That’s fine. It’s important to be healthy, Norman knows that better than most. Minerva’s squad members are taking it easy after intense care to stabilize Lambda’s experiments in other safe houses, but there’s no reason Vincent can’t operate a virtual machine in bed. He needs those extra two days in the Southern Territories now that he thinks about it, and he is not willing to give them up when they are completely possible. His hand is already reaching for his phone before Ray catches his wrist in the gentlest death grip.
“Nope,” Ray warns, having read Norman’s mind. “They need to rest, to recover.”
Ray sounds like the Sisters and Mothers. Norman can’t help a betrayed sound. Ray knows just as well as him the importance of this—he meets Ray’s stare and tries to communicate all the reasons with his eyes. It all comes back to Emma, he thinks helplessly, and you know this. You and Emma, Emma and you.
Just over two years ago, Norman sat across an empty chair with a chessboard between them and he looked his brain’s ghost of Ray in the eyes and Ray had understood everything, implicitly, immediately. Capitulated, with a sigh.
The real Ray, whose eyes are softer than anything Norman could’ve hoped for in those two years away in captivity, doesn’t budge. He says, “The kids will be back from school at three.”
Norman looks away first. Only when he nods does Ray let go of his wrist.
They don’t talk until their siblings start filtering into the room, chattering about new friends and cool lunchboxes and unrepeatable slang they’ve learned, at 3:15 on the dot.
Intrinsically, Norman knows Emma would not have gone where they could not follow.
The situation had haunted him, early on, in the small reprieves he finds from the gruelling days and nights. How could Emma do this? How could she leave them? The answer is obvious: she hasn’t. Emma would not sacrifice her life the way Norman and Ray have tried to. She’s alive.
This thought is a meagre comfort but it follows him all the same, an undercurrent of she’s alive she’s alive she’s alive thrumming with the beat of Norman’s heart as he rapidly surveys the day’s datasheets long past Ray and his siblings have gone to bed.
All of a sudden he realizes his throat is dried sticky. The words blur on his tablet; tripling; Area 0 Area 0 Area 0 in additive primaries. It wouldn’t do him any good to mix up numbers for something as simple as dehydration, so Norman gets up from his desk, stumbling a little on uneasy, creaky limbs.
The Ratri’s industrial kitchen is pitch-black this late and Norman doesn’t bother flipping on the lights. In the darkness he fills a metal cup with water from the filtration system over the sink.
Ray says Emma was not lying when she promised him all the cattle children were crossing over; Norman trusts Ray—trusts Emma. She loves them too much to accept a sacrifice that kept them away from her, forever. She is here, in the human world, waiting for her to find them. Memory loss, Ray hypothesized, early on over the whiteboard where he’s written down every word Emma has ever said about the Promise, every clue or action or hint that she’d left them. It may as well be smoke for all the substance it has. She’d never lie to us—not like this. That’s the only thing that would make sense.
Water pours over his hand.
Emma would never lie to them—she simply didn’t operate that way. Not the way lies slide off Norman’s tongue easier than truth; not the way Ray once cloaked every action in deceit; not the way Mama spun their childhood from falsehoods like a spider laying its trap. Emma had learned to act; learned to bend the truth, but still: her bull-headed conviction prevented pure falsities from her lips. Emma had said she was coming to the human world; therefore, she is in the human world.
A niggling thought tells him that it has been two years since he’s been with her, really been with her. Reunited, just for a fleeting moment, then Minerva had rode off to war so they could have a proper reunion in a kinder world. So much for that.
How long has it been since Norman’s really had Emma with him?
(Too long. A second of her warmth, cradling him in her arms in the Demon Queen’s Throne room—no more than a blip in the past three years.)
But Ray has. Ray knows her, Ray says it’s true.
That means it’s up to Norman to find her. It doesn’t matter she has not left any clues: Norman is not a genius for nothing.
He can’t mourn. He simply searches.
The tap is still running.
Norman’s the cup. He’s a husk. The water is Emma’s love. It’s overflowing. It’s drowning him.
She keeps slipping through his fingers, like smoke in the mirror.
Norman is simultaneously close to a breakthrough and as far from it as possible. There are five point four ninety-eight six five billion people in this world and Emma isn’t any of them.
It’s been nine months since they all crossed over into the human world instantaneously due to Emma’s Promise—enough time for all of them to be processed and documented in the cities due to the Ratri’s involvement with having all the cattle children fast-tracked. Even if Emma didn’t remember she was a cattle child, she should’ve fit the vague guidelines Norman (via the Ratri’s) had set up for processing.
If Norman can crack this database tonight he will be able to narrow down the search pool to the last million people. Ray’s assistance would expedite the process—having spent 2 years dissecting Minerva’s Pen, Ray was much more experienced with this world’s technology—but Ray is putting the fussy babies to sleep. When a bleary-eyed Phil knocks on the study door, saying Norman’d looked extra stressed today, is he okay and does he maybe want some help, Norman leaps at the offer without thinking twice.
He sets Phil up at Ray’s usual workstation and the two tag-team the hacking. Phil’s always been more of Emma’s shadow, but Norman would have to be blind to miss his genius all the same. He’s a huge help now, easily adapting to Norman’s workflow the way Ray would.
Phil’s droopy eyelids give way twice, but the kid admirably powers through. He can see it in Phil’s eyes: here’s another one completely devoted to Emma. Oh Emma, Norman thinks fondly, your love is a magical, magical thing. Norman’s never been the only one running his roads of devotion—he’s leading a glorious crusade, it’s not stopping for—
“What. Are. You. Doing,” comes from the doorway. Ray stands there, in pyjamas and house slippers, silhouetted by the light of the hallway. Norman doesn’t bother giving him more than a cursory glance, but Phil looks up. Whatever he sees makes him flinch.
“Give us ten more minutes, Ray, we almost got it. Maybe thirty. Seventy, tops.” Norman murmurs distractedly, focused on the jumble of code on his monitor.
Ray punches him, hard enough to knock him off of his chair.
Phil gasps.
“I’ll ask again,” Ray says, flipping Norman’s workstation shut. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Norman is livid; he spits, “What do you think you’re doing Ray? What if I hadn’t just saved that file, do you know how much work Phil and I have been putting in—”
“That’s exactly the issue, it’s fucking 2AM and you’re dragging Phil into this—”
“He volunteered—”
“—and he has school tomorrow!” Ray says, throwing up his hands.
Norman erupts: “Then he doesn’t need to go to school! Tell me, Ray, why the fuck is Phil at school in the first place, when he can hack into a government database better than whatever else first-graders do.”
“Because he’s a kid, Norman!” Ray pauses, taking a deep breath. He looks down at Norman, who hasn’t gotten up during this whole argument, still nursing what he’s sure is a reddening bruise on his cheek. Daring, exasperated, a shade of pitying, Ray adds: “and so are you.”
Now, Norman should stay down. He always does, in this situation: it’s the tactical move for someone of his constitution when knocked down.
But tonight, something—the now-calm look in Ray’s eyes underneath his frustrated tone, the blooming pain in his cheek, the crippling helplessness of this entire search that’s drowning Norman whole—something propels him off the Ratri’s ugly Persian carpet and into a football tackle at Ray. Ray has to dodge left—Phil’s spectating warily at his right, after all—which puts his shin exactly where Norman’s foot is kicking out as he rolls.
“Are you even trying anymore?” Norman yells, but it comes out hoarse.
Ray catches Norman’s kick easy, even when he’s caught off-guard. He stumbles once, eyes wide with hurt, but the hand around Norman’s ankle is firm—though not retaliatory. Norman plants his hands behind him and uses his other foot to kick at the grip, flipping to twist out of Ray’s grip. Ray has to switch hands to avoid him, and clips his hand on the table when jerking it back. The impact of his knuckles against wood echoes loudly through the room.
“Jesus,” Ray mutters under his breath, dropping Norman’s ankle and shaking out the pain.
It breaks the moment—just like that, the fight drips out of Norman.
They’re back to where they were before Norman decided to vent his anger against his best friend, Ray standing above him and Norman, curled up into a ball, taking deep, shuddering breaths clutching the carpet.
Because in the end, Norman is just weak, brittle bird-bones that can’t even fly. Forget a crusade: he’s there again, a child in a vast empty world of rubble. Helpless. Hurt. Scared.
He doesn’t want to meet Ray’s eyes, knowing that Ray can see right through him. “Norman,” Ray chokes, probably in pity at Norman’s weakness. Then softer: “Oh, Norman. Why? Why are you doing this to yourself?”
“Emma,” Norman confesses. He doesn’t say anything else, trusts that’s enough of an explanation.
To Ray, it is. Ray’s face softens, a tinge. He shakes out the blanket—oh, Ray had been bringing him a blanket, oh Ray—and drapes it over Norman’s shoulder.
“Stay here,” he orders, and carries Phil out of the study.
In the aftermath, Norman feels sick.
Ray has never been his enemy, not even when he was passing notes to Mama. It’s an irrefutable truth written into the universe itself, just like how Emma loves her family: Ray will always be by their side.
How villainous of Norman, to forget that even for the eighty-seven seconds their fight lasted.
When Ray returns to the study some time later, two mugs in hand, Norman feels some invisible weight on his shoulders lift. He’s had so many walls up, so many locks and codes and bars to his emotions, but all it’d taken was a glance from Ray and they’d all been cracked in a messy, messy outpour.
“Is your hand alright?” Norman asks first, remembering the unpleasant sound of bone-and-skin against hard wood.
Ray waves off his concern, setting down the drinks to reveal a cold compress wrapped around his knuckles. He pulls that off, pressing it to Norman’s cheek. “I’m fine. I got this for your cheek actually.” He holds the mug out next. “And for you.”
Norman has to take the compress because Ray just lets it go, but he shakes his head at the mug. “Oh, Ray, you don’t have to. I—I deserved it. I’m the one who needs to apologize,” he starts.
Ray shrugs, pushing the mug of herbal tea at him more insistently. “I threw the first punch,” he argues, which Norman finds he cannot refute because Mama has always scolded the one who escalated a situation, even if they were in the right. Ray’s taking responsibility for a different thing here, while Norman has much more to apologize for.
As a child, Norman’d apologized a lot. For all the good behaviour he was inclined towards, he’s always been the do-first, apologize-later type of character, mostly spurred on by his desire to please Emma, occasionally Emma-and-Ray. But rarely has he ever had to apologize so seriously—rarely has he ever wanted to apologize so genuinely, so wholly.
But this is Ray. Ray doesn’t deserve anything less. Norman doesn’t want to ask for Ray’s forgiveness, but he needs Ray to know Norman is sorry.
He meets Ray’s eyes, trying to convey his sincerity with everything he can. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that: I know everyone wants to find Emma. I know you; I know you do. The search is just—it’s frustrating, not making progress. Regardless, it was inappropriate for me to allow Phil to push himself like that.”
“Okay,” Ray nods easily. This time, when he pushes the drink over, Norman capitulates. Holding the tea, Norman realizes he hadn’t needed to ask for Ray’s forgiveness; Ray had already given it anyways—in the blanket, the compress, and now this warm drink. He takes a sip, and it tastes like the type Mama used to make, on rainy days. It takes him back.
Ray waits for Norman to take another sip, savouring it, then asks:
“When we find Emma, what’s the first thing you want to say to her?”
From anyone else it would’ve been a weird segue, but Norman knows Ray well enough to guess there’s an intention. He’s sleep-deprived and emotionally-weary when he tries his best to follow Ray’s train of thought, leap and predict the conversation.
He can’t. But…he trusts Ray. He stops thinking about subtext and diversions and he lets himself answer honestly. This, he finds, surprised, is not difficult. It’s about Emma, after all, to Ray. His best friends have always been the most simple things for him, for all the beautiful complexities they contain.
“….I’d say: ‘I’m glad you’re doing well,’” Norman answers confidently. “I’d want to tell her: ‘We’re doing well too,’ so she doesn’t get worried about us. Knowing Emma, that’d be her first question.”
Ray nods approvingly. He agrees, like Norman knew he would. “Do you think Emma would be mad we started living without her?”
“No!” Of course not! “That idea’s ludicrous.”
Ray gives Norman’s a wry smile. “Exactly. And you won’t be mad if she’s started living too. You want her to be doing well, even without all of us.”
This makes sense.
Emma wasn’t like Norman—there’s two people in existence Norman needed around him to live well, but Emma’s happiness wasn’t selfish like that. Emma would be able to be happy, in whoever’s space she’s graced with occupying, and he wanted that reality dearly for her.
Ray puts down his cup and pulls back the compress to check the bruise on Norman’s cheek. His hand is still warm from the heated ceramic; it feels like summer on Norman’s skin. “Would she really be happy to know you’re living like this, running yourself ragged for her?”
I don’t know, she’s not here! is Norman’s impulse answer. But he only has to look forward at Ray’s face, that same concern of Emma’s mirrored in his violet eyes, to know: Emma wouldn’t. Damnit, Norman thinks. I can’t even make Ray smile, how could I wish for Emma’s?
“Emma,” Ray continues, slowly, softly, in the tone Isabella used when she was calming a sibling from a playtime scrape, “wanted us all to come to the human world to live, Norman.”
I just don’t how I could be, Norman wants to admit. I don’t know how to stop running, will the horses just trample me? I’m drowning without her; I’m blind. I’m nothing and what is living when after everything, you still lost what you were defending? What was it all for, Ray; what can’t we get back? What do we have, without her?
There’s an answer for him here, in and of this moment itself. Norman’s so tired. He trusts Ray, though: trusts that Ray can lead him to the right answer. Surrendering, he calls out: “How?”
“Well,” Ray answers, “Start sleeping in an actual bed for one. Drink eight glasses of water a day, take your medication, and definitely don’t pulling our genius siblings into illicit, over-night activities.
“And take a break for once, dummy. If you get sick again, Emma’s going to give you hell when she comes back to us.” Ray mutters, “Then she’ll give me hell, for not taking better care of you, you stubborn, self-sacrificial fool.”
There’s a million things he could say to this. Instead he tries to imagine it: Emma here between them, again—but everything about his fantasy falls short. Emma isn’t here; Emma doesn’t have two ears anymore; Emma is a surprisingly bad cook. Emma’s smile just wasn’t something that his mind could replicate; any construction paled in comparison to the real thing. I love her, he thinks. I love you, he has a sudden urge to say, into this space between him and Ray.
Their drinks lose steam. Ray drums three fingers on the table in a jaunty staccato, a habit he developed to signal to Norman that he’s leaving when Norman is nose-deep in paperwork. This time, though, Ray hovers. Norman looks up, meets his eyes, a questioning noise on the tip of his tongue.
“Hey. Join us for dinner tomorrow,” Ray suggests.
“Okay,” Norman allows.
He shows up for family dinner the next day, and the next, and the one after that.
Norman and Ray share a bedroom in the Ratri’s facilities. It’s getting more use these days: often enough, Norman can be cajoled into heading upstairs after a late dinner with his siblings. Other days, like before, he remains on his couch in the study, but lately it has felt cold and empty. Norman supposes that’s a sign winter is approaching rapidly.
In Norman’s initial absence, Ray has pushed their two assigned twin beds together, creating a larger mattress. “The littler kids asked to sleep over a lot when they had trouble adjusting to their new rooms,” Ray explained to a question Norman never asked. Since Norman has started sharing the bed, he has not come across a single stray sibling and is glad they’ve since settled in.
Today is one of the days Norman follows Ray upstairs after dinner and dishes. Ray makes his rounds with The Little Prince this time; Norman takes a shower then dips downstairs to check some emails. He doesn’t linger long though, doesn’t even consider the couch as he normally would; as if on autopilot Norman finds himself returning to their room.
When he opens the door he finds Ray still up, curled on his side of the bed reading a novel. His socks are still on and his slippers are askew by the door. The warmth thrumming in Norman’s heart—a quiet buzzing that had bothered him all day, through the Goldy Pond kids’ visit, Violet’s successful pilot certification, Barbara’s new pixie cut that she sent a picture of to their group chat, Sherry’s surprise birthday celebration—now crescendos into an almost unbearable heat.
Ray looks up from his novel and smiles, soft, at Norman. “Hey. Was just about to go get you.” He shuffles over on the bed, like he didn’t always leave space for two by his side, an ingrained habit. “How was your day?”
And this—this routine of theirs heals something in Norman. It makes him honest, so he confesses the buzzing inside of him: “I was really happy today.”
Ray’s smile grows impossibly at that, and it’s so warm, this weakness, it just comes pouring out of Norman.
“I’m happy a lot of these days, actually,” Norman continues quickly, lowly, feeling himself shake. The ‘how could I be, without her’ goes unsaid, but echoes in him in the trembles.
Because—living is one thing. This happiness is another.
Ray is silent for a bit as he processes Norman’s words, while Norman worries his lips and takes deep, measured breaths. Norman can feel Ray staring at him but he takes the coward’s way out and avoids his eyes.
Taking an audible breath, Ray states, “Emma and I really thought you were dead.”
Norman flinches.
“I don’t have to tell you how much it hurt,” and Norman nods seriously at that, touches his heart. He knows this, he’s felt the same way twice over, ever since his treacherous brain had him hallucinate Ray and had Ray ask, what if I were dead and this was my ghost haunting you for your failed plan—“but I would be lying if I were to say neither Emma nor I were never happy for two years.”
Two years. Twice over. This realization strikes something deep in Norman, something he’s been on the verge of ever since the fall. Without Emma, what do we have? he had asked so stupidly. He jolts up in epiphany and meets Ray’s eyes. They’re fond with worry—with love.
The answer’s been right in front of him this whole time.
Norman mutters, “I’m an idiot.”
That surprises Ray. They both have healthy egos, and that’s not something Ray hears often, even rarer than a genuine apology from Norman.
He comes and sits next to Ray on the bed, in the spot Ray had left for him. Norman doesn’t fill it all of course—he’s always been a slight boy, even with the growth spurt, and between the two of them there always existed space for one other. He realizes what’s in this space Emma once inhabited now though—realizes that even without her here, the space isn’t empty—and he’s giddy as he reaches for Ray.
“You’re here. You’re here,” Norman breathes, repeats because he can’t figure out which syllable was more miraculous. Ray, for his part, forgets how to breathe, especially when Norman leans in and cradles his cheek in one hand. The warmth of his palm is a palpable thing, skinship settling on Ray’s skin like a comfortable blanket.
They’re so close it would be easy to just lean in, lose the few centimetres separating their faces. Ray watches Norman with wide eyes blown full with trust, Norman is suddenly so sure of himself. Of them. It’s a comfort so rare these days for any decision he makes to feel so right—for any direction he could go from here to not have to be calculated to the percentile. His eyelids flutter close as this relief lets down his walls, a small chuckle escaping his lips.
Ray’s hand comes up to cover his, a silent prompt. Ray’s hands on him are a gesture so familiar.
He continues, “All I thought, for those two years. You know what I kept repeating to myself? What kept me going? I said to myself: I’m going to see Emma and Ray again. Ray and Emma. My family.”
Norman opens his eyes to meet Ray’s again. Ray’s expression is carefully reserved, patient as he waits for Norman to get to his point.
“Emma might not be here,”—“yet”, they both interrupt to say—“but Ray, you’re right here in front of me and I’m ignoring you.”
To that, Ray makes an incredulous noise in his throat. “You’re not ignoring me, Norman, you’ve just been focused on finding Emma, and then getting better, and that’s okay because—”
Norman cuts him off, shaking his head.
“You know I love you too.”
For a second Ray’s stunned silent, and Norman takes the moment to brush a thumb against his cheek. The gesture seems to settle something in Ray—makes him melt into Norman’s touch like natural. And like this—he doesn’t look surprised by this turn of events. If Norman had to give a name for the emotion Ray seems to be feeling right now, he would say: relief.
Norman loves Emma—but it’s not been just Emma, not for a long time now. He thinks he’s known since he’s traded his own life for the two the first time; since he buried his heart as Minerva for the second and locked both Emma and Ray up. In hindsight—it’s probably been true since they were children playing tag in trees, too young to know anything except each other.
He loves Ray, he knows that—how could he forget?
Finding Emma had swallowed him whole. You would’ve done the same if it were me lost, the Ray in his head points out, but like it physically pains him to admit.
The real Ray in front of him, in his hands, is thankfully oblivious to Norman’s inner monologue. Ducking his head, he pulls Norman into a tight hug that knocks the breath out of him. Lips pressed to his earshell, his Ray whispers, “Yeah. Yeah, and I do too.”
I’m not alone, Norman realizes, his phantoms aside.
He’s never been.
Ray pinches Norman’s sensitive side: “Took you long enough,” he mutters into Norman’s shoulder. “Emma’d known, way before.”
Norman doesn’t even try to pinch Ray back—he just laughs shortly. Of course she did, he thinks lovingly. At least that’s one thing his phantoms’d gotten right, he laments, drifting off, and not for the first time wonders exactly how he’d gotten so far off track when that was the one thing driving him forward.
Ray pinches him again, and Norman blinks to find deep violet eyes staring at him in concern. “Hey. Earth to Norman, you with me?”
“I’m here now,” Norman answers, threading his fingers with Ray’s, both to prevent any more pinching and to feel his presence.
“As am I,” Ray vows solemnly, squeezing back.
Ah. The full force of Ray’s loyalty is just as immense as Emma’s love.
“Always by my side?” Norman can’t help but tease, feeling insanely giddy and weak in its face. Ray rolls his eyes, good-naturedly at that, then takes advantage of their joined hands to roll them both over on the bed, sending Norman’s bird bones into a supine sprawl beside him.
“Always,” Ray answers, “now go to sleep, you lovesick fool.”
“Lovesick for you,” Norman points out.
“And Emma too,” Ray deflects, now embarrassed, hitting the lights.
Ray buries into his sheets, obviously expecting the conversation to be over, like Norman and Emma didn’t live to surprise him—something great, every day, so Ray never has an excuse to not have anything to live for. Norman has forgotten to do this, lately, but Ray has already found other things to live for: the delighted laugh when Alicia pulls off trick a on her new skateboard, the way he patiently taste-tests all of Yvette’s creations, his long phone calls with Zach, the routine of two warm cups of coffee waiting for Norman on his desk in the mornings. The Ray Norman spent two years dreaming up is no more than the figment of Emma with two ears—a cheap facsimile of the real wonder in front of him.
Always, Ray had said, but Norman hears it as: All this time. Patiently waiting for Norman to open his eyes to what was right in front of him.
Norman gets distracted watching Ray’s profile, breathing softly in his sleep mere inches away, feeling inexplicably warm to his core.
“Ray?” he speaks finally, bordering on the haze of sleep.
Ray grunts, half-asleep.
“I love you.”
A beat, and into a space no longer empty, returns:
“…I love you too.”
His epiphany with Ray has Norman fragile again. In a way, this terrifies him; on the other side, he feels secure in Ray’s arms, knowing that for every crack his walls accumulated Ray would fill with love.
He has his next breakdown—the worse so far—in the sanctity of their shared bedroom, collapsing into a ball just past the threshold, feeling his strings cut with the close of the door. Ray is beside him immediately—a hand combing back his hair, murmurs of Norman, hey, hey, what’s wrong. Norman can’t hear properly past the buzzing in his ear. He feels like he’s underwater, drowned in a doubt that’s trickling out of his very bones.
“What if—what if we c-can’t find her,” Norman chokes out, and Ray scoops him up in one hug and carries him onto their bed.
Ray cuts Norman off, a kindness. “Nope. We will.”
“But what if we don’t,” Norman insists. His mind has run the numbers over and over; this hope—it’s optimistic at best. Foolish would be more appropriate.
Ray shakes his head, coaxing Norman down onto his lap. One hand draws calming circles over his back; the other brushes the hair out of his face. “You said it yourself: if it were Emma in our shoes, she would never give up. She’d search for us all over this world and the demon world, if she had to.”
Norman reaches a hand up to catch Ray’s, gripping tight. Whispers a nagging fear: “and if she’s not there either?”
“Then we build a time machine. We find a way to search every dream space. We go back again to the demon world, make a new Promise.” Ray squeezes his back. “That’s what Emma would do for us—has done for us.”
Norman chokes on a sob. Ray pulls the blanket over them as he keeps explaining. Norman melts into Ray’s warmth; he shivers but not from the winter’s cold.
“You and me,” Ray continues, shifting his grip so he’s now rubbing small circles into Norman’s pulse point, “we see a maze and we find the shortest, fastest, smartest way to solve it. Emma looks at what’s stopping her and breaks it—even if it’s the laws of the world or spacetime itself.”
Norman huffs a small laugh at that. “She does the impossible, doesn’t she?”
Ray nods. “But she also shows everyone else it’s not impossible. Escaping Gracefield.. watching everyone around me so determined? It was all her. I thought we were going to die, Norman. Emma taught me I could hope, that day. And again, and again.” He swallows. “Norman...I thought I was going to lose her so many times…she always defied all of our expectations, eventually I started to expect my expectations to be defied.”
Norman hums in understanding, but Ray isn’t done. He flops back with a huff and starts conversationally: “Emma and I turned back time, once.”
Startled, Norman jerks up onto his elbows to meet Ray’s gaze. “What? But that’s—”
“—Impossible!” they finish together, and it startles a laugh from Norman. They stay intertwined for a moment, laughing loose-limbed in familiar synchronicity.
“I know!” Ray exclaims. “I was so mad. Just casually break the Theory of General Relativity, Emma, sure. It was when we went to the Seven Walls, to open the gate. To save the demon race.” To save you, goes unsaid.
Quieting, Norman turns over this new information in his mind. It’s not unfounded optimism, then, he thinks, knowing he’s in the presence of someone else who has defied logic and come out victorious. They’re here, after all. Would the fates really not crumble beneath their combined efforts too?
Emma defies order and destiny casually all the time. Now he learns Ray has done it too. Norman will catch up with his best friends, he swears. Lying back down on Ray’s lap, he whispers: “What did it feel like?”
“Magic,” Ray laughs again—a short puff of breath. “And I thought: is this what Emma feels like all the time? Then I realized the impossibility of what we were doing,” and here Norman nods, interjects matter-of-fact “Newton”, “and God booted me out. He only wanted to see other deities, I guess.”
“We’ll make him see us then,” Norman declares skywards, godwards, feeling uncharacteristically bold, “to give her back.”
Ray raises an eyebrow. “Careful, is that Emma I hear?”
Norman can’t help it: he laughs. He wants the answer to be yes, a thousand times over.
“Yeah,” Ray answers for him, fond. “We’re getting her back.”
They’re dreaming.
The waves are rocking in their dreamscape, an easy lullaby to sing the children of Neverland to sleep.
Norman wades through the knee-deep water, feeling the sand sink uncomfortably between his toes. Ray splashes some distance behind him; further back, he can hear their entire family playing in the water.
In front of the two, all the way at the other side of the shore stands a lone figure reaching into the sunset. They’re too far to call out to—too far to even see properly, just a flash of auburn against the golden wash of twilight.
Ray takes Norman’s hand. The two of them keep walking forwards.
The story runs its course.
There are three truths to the universe, written implicit in starstuff and the essence of their being:
One. Emma loves her family.
Two. Ray will always be by their sides.
And three—Norman would do anything for the two of them.
From there, the ending is only inevitable.
.
.
.
They find Emma. She’s healthy and whole and thriving.
So it goes: start a fire, lose a friend. Ray and Emma set Gracefield House on fire and lost Norman. Norman set the demon world on fire and lost Emma. He looked for the smoke signals, but Emma, a pyre on fire, is a phoenix: already reborn into something new.
She’ll never stop surprising Norman. He’s stunned speechless, for the first moments of their reunion, in the presence of this girl who is ash and smoke transmuted into a destiny-defying miracle. His first love. Then Ray, his second love, steps forward and Norman is jostled back into this precious pocket of timespace, his life—past, present, future, all stretched out in front of him.
“Thank goodness,” Norman breathes. Between them, Ray’s fingers link with his, implicit. “You’ve been well.” Emma looks carefully bewildered at that sentiment, and oh, he has missed her so. He wants to reach out (he will reach out) and grasp her hands and Ray’s, feel their warmth and heartbeats resounding. No longer smoke and mirrors but flesh and blood.
Before that, he has something to tell her:
“We’ve all been well, too.”