Work Text:
“in your shitty car? I’d rather not crash and die thank you”
The words hit Emma in an odd way, but she dismissed it and continued running through the rain hoping to make it to her car somewhat dry. As soon as her hands were on the wheel it hit her, Jane. Within a second, hundreds of thoughts rushed her mind, voices telling her she shouldn’t be there. The bottled-up guilt she had rushed to the front of her mind. Emma knew this was bound to happen, that eventually there would be a crack and it would all come rushing out, but she didn’t care. It was the not caring that led her to the brink of a full-blown panic attack in the Beanie’s parking lot.
She eventually decided to focus on reigning in her thoughts, to figure out what was going on in her head. There was the guilt that had been there since she got the phone call that Jane had died. She’d never expected to outlive her big sister, she always imagined Jane growing old with the family she made with big Hannukah parties and birthdays. She was ready to decline every invitation she got to one of those, she was ready to die by a river or on top of a mountain watching the sunset.
So that’s where the guilt came from
Jane was left out of her longterm plan the second she boarded that plane to Guatemala. There was never a reason good enough to warrant her return, until Jane’s funeral. The day she faced her demons. That day she went head to head with a town that had done nothing but gossip and rumor about her since the day she left. Jane’s funeral was when she met Tim, her own goddamn nephew nine years too late. She felt nothing but guilt and hurt, Jane was the only person on the planet who had given a shit about her and she was gone.
There was a memory that tugged at the back of her mind, and for once she decided to follow it. She found herself watching a moment from the summer before her freshman year of high school, Jane was going to be a senior and insisted on taking Emma shopping for her first day.
“Come on Em, you need new clothes” Jane said pulling on her dirty flannel and looking pointedly at her tattered jeans. Emma was about to fight back when Jane took her hand and whispered “Please.” Emma let out a huff and rolled her eyes with a playful smile before answering with a nod. Jane was bubbling with giggles as she pulled Emma through the crowded mall.
Then suddenly they were back in Emma’s childhood bedroom, Emma with a large suitcase both girls on the verge of tears.
“You don’t have to go you know, you could stay here,” Jane said pleadingly. “You know I can’t Janie, it’ll be better for all of us if I’m gone” Emma responded with a sad smile. Jane pulled the smaller girl as close as possible, “Just promise me you’ll come back.” Emma knew her next words would be a lie, she knew that she never wanted to come back to Hatchetfield. But she couldn’t do that to Jane, so she lied “Yeah, I promise I’ll come back Jane.”
That’s when Emma was slingshotted back into reality, back in her old shitty car in the Beanies parking lot. Her head was screaming for her to go, to run away and never come back, but her body wouldn’t move. Only then did she register the fact that she was crying, each tear felt like a blade reminding her of what she lost. Emma slowly began to pull herself together, picking each piece of herself up and hoping it would stick together. She drove silently through an almost pitch black Hatchetfield that felt almost like she was in limbo. All at once, nothing felt real but she was hyperaware of her every movement, of the fact that she existed. Pulling into the parking lot she felt nothing but dread, all that was waiting for her was a messy apartment that never quite started feeling like home. Still, she kept moving, kept fighting, and kept going, if not for herself than for Jane. Emma wasn’t even sure if she believed in heaven or god or religion but she made sure that if Jane really was watching her, she’d do something that would make her proud.