Work Text:
Fifteen minutes before dawn, Emma sits up in bed and heaves a deep breath. The room is dark, the shadowy figures of the other children fast asleep; even Ray, who has always seemed as adverse to sleep as he is to putting down his book, is unmoving on the mattress next to hers. She sighs, releases the tension in her body, loosens her clutch on her bedsheets, and eventually her chest settles and her arms stop trembling. There she sits, staring out into the dark, before coming to terms with the fact she won't be getting back to sleep. It isn't worth it, anyway, considering the lights will be turning on within the hour.
So, she slips out of bed as silently as a phantom (a skill she had learnt at a young age, sharing her room with so many others in Grace Field) and pads weightlessly down to the kitchen. She isn't planning to get a snack--if the younger kids are on treat rations, so is she--and instead just wants a place to clear her head and prepare for the day. What she isn't expecting is to share the room with someone else, and pauses for a second when she sees a figure inside. She relaxes when she identifies Yuugo, who is an even worse insomniac than all the kids in the bunker combined.
Yuugo doesn't notice Emma at first, and not due to her sneaking; normally he's impossible to sneak up on even if he were blindfolded, deafened, and drugged. That is, when he's in the right headspace. As it is, now prone to the sort of quiet vulnerabilities only the dark and hush of the early morning can bring, Yuugo seems in a completely different world, eyelids downturned, tightly holding a long-repaired ceramic cup, as still as a marble statue, aside from the ever-so-slight rise and fall of his broad chest. It feels intrusive, but Emma can't help standing there for longer than is reasonably polite. Though his back is leaning against the wall, the posture looks less relaxed and more like he's using it for support; his body is tense and wound up like an old spring.
Emma finds her voice, which she had briefly lost in the dark, and says, "Good morning."
There's a start, but only for a second, and then Yuugo sighs deeply and slides over his eyes to her as if she hadn't taken him by surprise. Perhaps she hadn't after all; it's hard to tell sometimes. His dark, deep-set eyes scan over her. "Morning."
"You can't sleep, either," Emma says. Which is a statement, not a question.
"Right," Yuugo needlessly confirms. He places that ceramic teacup on the countertop and pushes himself off the wall as though it takes a great deal of effort. His body swivels to face hers, and she examines his expression; mostly exhausted, slightly bored, and just a bit anxious. Despite her best efforts, Emma wouldn't be surprised if hers is much of the same.
They stand there mirroring each other, and she says, "Do you want to start getting ready for the day--", just as Yuugo starts, "Did you want to talk about--"
They both fall silent, Yuugo gritting his teeth, and Emma shakes her head with a tiny smile on her face, "I don't mind talking. About what?"
"…You sure?"
"I am."
Yuugo frowns as if he were contemplating a challenging puzzle before offering, "Do you want to go up to the surface?"
"The surface? Why?" she asks.
"I used to do it, sometimes. When I woke up around dawn. The sunrise and the fresh air is a good way to clear your head, you know, especially when you start thinking about… certain things. A lot of stress and emotions and baggage tend to accumulate down here; especially when you're sharing the bunker with sixty other people. And also when you're alone. It's, uh, the worst at the extreme ends of the spectrum," Yuugo finishes lamely, entirely aware he's overexplained things.
But Emma just gives him a nod and says, "Sure."
If she were going with another single person or by herself, Emma wouldn't leave the bunker, especially at an hour like this. However, she's come to trust and rely on Yuugo more than any adult; almost as much as she does the Grace Field kids. Of course, it does help that Yuugo is strong, dependable, and has been killing demons for longer than she's been alive. They stop by the armoury, where Yuugo slings a hunting rifle over his shoulder and Emma grabs a pistol, just as a precaution, and then advance to exit the bunker.
On the surface, the air is fresh, but also chilled, and the sky is dark. It's lightening by the minute, but there’s a while to go until the sun breaks over the horizon. Yuugo heads over to a nearby rock and sits down on it with the utmost comfort and familiarity you could grant a rock. Emma sits down less gracefully next to him, and for a few minutes there they simply watch light slowly advance over the dark.
She would've broken the silence immediately, if not for the respect she has for Yuugo and the fact he has a topic in mind. He doesn't often ask to talk--their more substantial conversations are mostly initiated by her--and so she expects he has something important to discuss. Whatever fugue Yuugo had been stuck in earlier is slowly melting away, and he stares out at the sky with a new clarity in his dark eyes. However, the light also highlights the deep bags under them.
"You're going in a few days. So I reckon we should talk about it," he eventually says. His voice indicates a deeper significance to his words; mountains of subtext not easy to see from an untrained eye in every dip in tone and waver of his lilt. The subtleties of his voice are mirrored equally in the tense set of his shoulders. This is always the case with Yuugo. Emma thinks she knows enough about him to read the most important parts, if not every detail.
"Right," she says, and ventures a guess in her reply. "We're all prepared for it. We have been for days."
"I know. And I know you're more than capable of leading an expedition like this, even at your age," he says, and Emma still isn't sure where he was heading. "Even though it's kind of insane. You're so young…"
Emma frowns down at her clasped hands. Sometimes, she does think about age. Though she's determined to go through with whatever needs to be done in a world so pitted against them so long as she has the capability, there once was a time when she gave little thought to her responsibility aside from that of a big sister. Her becoming an adult had seemed lifetimes away--still seems lifetimes away, if she's being honest--and so that sort of self-reliant responsibility felt intangible as she trusted and relied on Mama.
Upon her first meeting with Yuugo, some part of Emma had been searching for another reliable adult to load all her worries onto; one William Minerva. Instead a gun barrel had been pressed to her head, and though she'll never hold it against him, Emma doesn't think she'll ever be able to trust anyone wholly again--willing to hand over control of every aspect of her life like with Mama--except herself and Ray.
The vast breadth of their gap in age has always mattered little to Emma for this reason, but now when she looks up at his averted expression, the lines in his stretched-out face and the stark, displaced white against the black of his hair seem more defined in the early light.
She knows he's not done, and so she lets him sigh and continue, "You're young, but I trust you and I know you're capable, and I just wanted you to know… Jesus. Sorry, I'm just rambling on. I'm not good at this whole heartfelt speech thing."
"I know. Just keep going," Emma reassures him with a faint smile.
"Okay. Well, Emma, you're going to change the world. Do you know that? You're like this… force of nature. And I know that's how you present yourself to everyone else, too. Some determined little firebrand, not letting anything hold you down."
Her smile grows. "Yeah. I've been told that. By you, as well."
"Exactly. So for just a moment I want to forget all that and talk about the truth."
It falters, slipping from her expression slightly before being frozen in place. "Huh?"
Yuugo grimaces. "I'll never forgive myself for how I treated you when we met. Don't try to reassure me about that, either, it's not what this conversation is about. But I treated you like that because we're the same, just like you said. I know first-hand that being a force of nature takes up everything--every scrap of willpower and belief and optimism you have. It takes a hell of a lot of fuel to keep that fire going. Believing in a better world is magnitudes more difficult than giving up."
Faintly, she recalls a moment of absolute heartbreak. The feeling of one of the most important things in the universe being torn away from her helpless arms, no matter what she resorted to in order to keep him grounded. A young boy holding her as if she were priceless yet proceeding to leave them for good. She'd thought there would be no way to continue, even with how she said she'd keep going. The gaping wound in her chest was only inflamed by the knowledge another impossibly important person would soon leave as well, of his own free will. But then a letter came to her from beyond the grave, and a spark was relit.
"I know," Emma replies, her lips now downturned, pensive. "But I have what it takes. I know I do."
"I know, too. I just want to tell you… there'll probably come a time when that's no longer the case. Your hope may be doused, may die down. But for you, in this situation, I'm more scared of the future where you burn so brightly you go out."
She blinks as her mind grapples with the implications, and she says, "Yuugo--"
He cuts her off with, "Not just that. Like that, but in all sorts of ways. The moment you stood up after that bastard demon stabbed you was like nothing I'd ever seen before, and I think it changed me. More than saving my life, of course. But you came so close to dying then, and you can't just keep changing people's lives and neglecting your own. You instil all of that fire of yours in other people, and leave none for yourself."
"I get it. Sort of," Emma responds. "But if I hadn't saved you, or the kids in Goldy Pond, or my family from Grace Field, I would never forgive myself."
"You and me both. And you said you lost someone, didn't you?"
She bites her lip, looking away from him and down at the stony ground, thinking of the photo waiting for her back in the shelter. "His name was Norman. He sacrificed himself for all of us, and now he's gone. I'll tell you the full story later."
"And it'll never stop hurting," Yuugo states from beside her.
"No."
"What kept you going?"
"He left me a letter. An escape plan he wrote for all of us. It reminded me of a lot of things, but mainly that I still had the rest of my family living and breathing beside me, and I had the power to keep them that way--"
She takes a sharp breath and cuts herself off upon realising what she's saying, whipping her head around to see Yuugo's expression.
His unmoved face breaks when it sees the look on hers. "Hey, kid, no… It's fine. And sometimes you have to live with the sacrifices others make for you, because otherwise they wouldn't matter. That's what kept me going for so long, and even then I almost betrayed them."
She nods firmly, then falters when her heart skips a beat that seems to last forever, the realisation crashing upon her. "You almost…"
"Not now. Wipe that expression off your face already. Look, this is what I was trying to get at, though I've been circling around it like anything. Life is a series of sacrifices, made by yourself and other people, and you have to acknowledge that even if it's not to the same extent, everyone else has that fire inside them. I know your heart can’t bear this Norman's sacrifice for you and your family, but considering the willpower it takes to make that kind of decision I know it would've been the same if you had gone that route, instead."
Yuugo turns to look back out at the sunrise, and she follows him to discover the sun has broken over the horizon. "You and all of us could never stop caring so long as we find meaning, so it all comes down to what we make of it. How we treat each other and ourselves in the circumstances we're in. So keep caring and loving and giving other people hope, but make sure to keep enough for yourself, and mostly important make sure to rely on others."
"Ah…" Emma gives a sheepish smile. "I've been getting better--"
"You act like the weight of the world is on your shoulders, and god knows it is, but at least everyone around you can help share the burden. Me included. You're a little firebrand but you need all the support you can get, and it seems the kids you've grown up with know it, but don't for a second try to discredit Violet and Zack by not letting them help. They both don't know you and from what Lucas has told me Violet definitely idolises you at least a bit."
"You're not the first one to tell me this, either," she laughs.
"Yeah, I thought so," Yuugo quirks a smile as he looks back at her. "But coming from someone who's been in the exact mindset you are in now… When you give and give and give people hope, to the point where it feels like your tanks are empty, just know that the people you give it to are there to help. You still have each other. That’s a gift not everyone is given.”
He averts his eyes and rubs the back of his neck. "And that includes me, you know. I'm here for you, whenever. Or whatever I'm supposed to say."
Emma's vision slightly blurs as another laugh bubbles up in her throat. "Of course. Ah… Can you…"
The question goes unasked as she sees recognition alight in Yuugo's eyes, which then roll in a parody of annoyance. "Oh, fine. Come here, then, kid."
Despite his demeanour, when he hugs her his arms are desperately tight, and with an ache in her heart which pushes the tears to roll down her cheeks, she comes to understand it's the embrace of someone who has lost far more than loved. Mama's hugs had always been warm and comforting, but carefree and almost too gentle. Here she measures the difference between an adult who has disconnected herself from the possibility of hurt, and one who has almost hysterically thrown himself back into caring after thirteen long years of nothing. His hug is a promise, and a question, and though she's so much smaller than him Emma tries to return it with equal strength and love in order to give him an answer.
When Yuugo pulls back, his eyes are also misty, but he shakes his head at the sight of her tears and reaches up to wipe them away. "It's okay, sweetheart."
She laughs again. "I never thought I'd hear you call me something like that. It was hard to even get you to say my name."
He gives her an indignant frown. "Well, I won't, then."
"No! I like it."
Yuugo wipes away the last of her tears and then pulls away from her, huffing. "Well, old habits are returning. I was a pretty awesome big brother."
Emma doesn't think that ache in her chest for Yuugo and Lucas will ever go away, but she smiles at him bright. "Yeah. And I think you're starting to make a pretty great dad."
He glowers at her, though the effect has long been lost. "Don't call me that, brat."
"We'll see."
Yuugo glances over at the now completely lit sky and says, "It's time we head back, before anyone wakes up and thinks we're missing."
He pushes himself off the rock to stand up and she follows his head, grinning up at him. "Right. We've got a full day ahead of us."
"Mm. Better make the most of it."
After that tearful morning, she finds quite a few things have become clearer.
~
Though it's hard to guess what she'll need for her journey to what is essentially another plane of existence, Emma thinks she's all packed. She's got her rifle with extra ammo, of course, and her bow and a stocked quiver of arrows, as well as a few days' rations and a spare set of clothes. A few other miscellaneous survival necessities have been thrown in there for good measure, before she carefully replaced the jar of golden water.
It's growing dark outside and they'll be off soon. Emma stares out at the inky black beyond the windows and wonders where she'll be in a week. Where everyone will be. Ray. Norman…
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath as she once again comes to grapple with the selfishness of her decision. There's a horrid pang in her chest as her willpower wavers for an instant, and she considers just going with Norman's plan.
But Emma knows deep within herself that won't give them a future she could be happy with, and so she needs to go.
"Are you ready?"
She turns to see Ray, pack on and with a harsh set of determination in the line of his jaw. Once again she wonders about that determination, that willpower, that hope. About the night she and Norman gave it back to him to keep, and whether that excuses her taking him down a path of no return.
She opens her mouth to respond, but he just sighs and strides forward before placing a hand on her shoulder. "Wipe that expression off your face. Things will be fine.”
Emma doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry at her unexpected re-acquaintance with that line, but she supposes she shouldn't be surprised considering who it came from. She hadn't kept her promise to Yuugo at first, but there will always be people by her side. There will always be Ray. And she hopes with every inch of herself that Norman will come back to them as soon as possible.
"Yeah, I'm ready," she smiles. "Let's go."
As they go to meet the rest of their family in order to be sent off, Emma spares a moment thinking of a man she changed, and who changed her in return. He's buried further than six feet deep underground, and her heart once again feels full to bursting with the remembrance of an old, sad story she can only hope she made as better as she could.
Whatever the outcome, it seems like soon all of this will come to an end, and so she walks with Ray, the echoes of his words in her mind keeping her safer in return.