Chapter Text
Emma’s second brush with death is easier than the first. It really does feel like going to sleep, cliche as it may seem. The control slips, things get lighter, easier to bear. Light and sound fade out.
She’s ready for this to end, but then it just.
Doesn’t.
Not the way she expects it to, at least.
She’s ready to sink into the blackness, but there are voices around her, above her, and she’s being shifted around until her face is pressed against something warm, and there’s something wet touching her lips. There’s a hand on her face, thumb pushing her mouth open, but the skin feels wrong, cool and kind of textured like a lizard’s skin. Her open lips are being pressed against the growing wet patch, and someone asks her if she can swallow. There’s a hand on the back of her head, firm but gentle. Then some of the liquid gets in her mouth and she understands why she’s supposed to drink it.
It’s good , really good, like drinking water in the middle of the night. There’s this strange, chemical taste to the liquid, hot and bitter and acidic, with an electric sensation like licking a battery. There’s enough that she can swallow a couple big mouthfuls, and it occurs distantly that it’s weird not to be drinking it out of a cup. The feeling’s coming back to her extremities, the numb-cold-shaky sensation receding and giving way to something warm and relaxed. Maybe this is part of dying, like the white light everyone talks about? Her side barely hurts anymore, and she has enough energy to hug the person holding her while she drinks. That feels good, too. It’s warm and solid and she can’t remember the last time she held someone like this. It occurs to her that she can open her eyes, so she does, and there’s something fluffy and yellowish-white right in front of her, and oh, that’s hair. Huh.
If she shifts a little, she can see that it’s Raiden holding her up, Emma’s leaning on her shoulder. But the skull suit’s been opened and pulled down so her neck and shoulders are bare, and there’s a small but noticeable cut right where her neck and left shoulder meet. What’s leaking from the cut is whitish and transparent, definitely not normal blood. Emma can feel a strand of her own saliva connecting her to the cut and the strange fluid leaking from it.
Oh.
Oh.
She has the feeling that this would be extremely awkward in most other circumstances, but right now there’s no time or space for any of that. Things start happening too fast for her sluggish brain to follow. It’s hard to piece together what everyone’s doing and why, but she’s being shuffled off Raiden’s lap onto something soft, which she’s not too happy about because it turns out Raiden’s really warm under that suit. She’s also perturbed to see the suit being closed up again. There was some greedy thrill in seeing that there was real skin under all that matte black material.
She’s able to sit next to her sister while she works, which reminds her of being a little kid again, sitting on Hal’s bed and watching her mess around with the computer in her room. She thought she had been real mature and eloquent with what she assumed were going to be her last words, but then she clumsily reaches out for Hal’s hand and asks not to be left alone, and she feels even more like a helpless child. Hal squeezes her hand in response, hard, and Emma can see from the light of the computer screen that she’s crying.
Her memories aren’t super reliable after that point.
At some point Raiden shows up again to collect her, but it takes a hell of a lot of convincing to get her to let go of Hal. They have to weave through a series of service tunnels to get to their destination, and on the way Emma realizes that Raiden has a sword , of all things. She realizes this because she sees it out and in use , the naked blade slashing down in a shimmering arc and connecting with something she doesn’t want to identify in the moment. She can ignore what she sees well enough but she can’t un-hear the sound of a blade slicing through meat. It echoes in her head as she’s rushed along the corridors, along with the strange vibration coming off the sword itself. She can feel it in the air, through her skin, even now that the sword is sheathed. It’s a deeply unsettling sensation, like if someone turned the hum from fluorescent lights up so high you could physically feel it. In her dazed state, it makes the weapon seem like an evil object, with some dark will of its own. It’s an easy leap to make that the sword must be why Raiden seems so different right now. Her expression is drawn and shocked and her lips are bloodless. She’s not talking much, not like she had been before, when she was trying to coax Emma into feeling safe enough to follow her. Now Emma finds herself being pulled along by a companion who won’t even look at her. When they do make eye contact, Raiden looks almost guilty.
Emma wants to warn her about the evil sword, to make her throw it away, but she can’t get the words out. She can’t focus much on doing anything besides moving forward. Her mind is exhausted, but there’s some alien force moving her limbs, giving her a frantic energy that makes her feel giddy and terrified at once. It feels like she’s vibrating, hyper-aware of the blood moving through her veins and her pumping heart. It feels like she’s floating a few feet above her own head and watching herself.
Then they’re suddenly outside, and she’s being bundled into a helicopter with a bunch of other people, some she recognizes vaguely. She feels the distinctive sting of a hypodermic needle in her arm and things really start to fuzz and fade. But, before she falls unconscious, she feels a gloved hand grasping her own, and the brush of dry lips on the back of her hand.
She’s so gentle, like a prince from a fairytale.
It’s the last thought she has before things go blank.
And then she’s slowly coming into consciousness in a little room she doesn’t recognize.
Her body feels strange and heavy and it takes a moment for her to coordinate herself enough to raise her hand and wipe the sleep out of her eyes. She has no sense of how much time has passed, other than that it’s night outside. The only light in the room is bluish computer screen glow. She has to concentrate really hard to get her head to turn in the direction of the glow, but she manages. For a long minute, she just stares.
It’s been so long since they’ve seen each other that at first it feels like looking at a stranger. But as her eyes adjust to the light, she sees features that used to be so familiar, features that had faded in her memory with the passage of time.
After all, all the photos of her sister had been boxed away after she left.
Now, though, it’s all coming back in a rush.
Everything she remembers making Hal look like Hal is still there, just grown into a woman. Her hands are laying limp on the keyboard of her laptop as she sleeps propped up in a chair, the same long fingers and broad palms Emma remembers helping brush her hair and zip up her coat. The proportions of her face have changed, but its defining features are still there, her strong jaw and big nose, and of course her glasses, although the ones she’s wearing now are marginally more stylish. Her mother always lamented over Hal’s “mannish” features, but she’s grown into a striking woman. She’d even look chic, if she wasn’t currently drooling in her sleep. Her hair is the same odd grayish-brownish-blondish color, but significantly shorter. She has a sudden flashback to a pile of limp, dust-colored hair on the bathroom floor of their childhood home, hacked off with dull kitchen scissors, and the sound of her mother throwing a screaming fit while she hid under her blankets clutching her favorite doll for comfort.
The memory makes her want to jump out of bed and hug her sister, but she finds that her body is too weak to follow through on the impulse. Instead, she starts making little noises in her throat, until she can get out a choked hey, and Hal startles awake immediately, almost dropping her laptop.
“Hey, hi, how are you feeling, do you need anything? Are you hurting at all?”
Her voice is so soft, so obviously, deliberately gentle and unworried, that Emma almost cries. It’s the kind of voice people only use when they’re terrified and trying not to let it show. She shakes her head no, trying to find her voice enough to talk, because there’s something else she remembered. It was something she left out of their earlier heart-to-heart, but now it feels important to say.
“Hey Hallie?”
“What is it?”
“D’you remember when you banned me from using your computer ‘cause I kept downloading desktop buddies? …I got so mad about it I told everybody in my grade that your name was short for halitosis.”
There’s a beat of silence as Hal just stares at Emma, and then she starts laughing so hard she has to sit on the floor to recover.