Chapter Text
Shipment.
The word is still so foreign in her mind, and repeating it over and over hasn’t helped ingrain it into her head at all. She cannot believe it. She doesn’t want to believe it.
Had shipment been any other word – adoption, maybe, like it used to be – then perhaps she can grasp its meaning. Because ‘adoption’ just means he’s going to find a nice, welcoming family. ‘Adoption’ means that he can still keep in touch with her via letters.
‘Adoption’ means that she can see him off with a smile.
Reality is cruel, however, and she is so acutely aware of the fact that he is only going to be welcomed by death. He will never speak to her again. He will be dead.
“Congratulations,” Mama had said, as if his death is something to celebrate. “Your shipment date has been set.”
It’s too close. Too close. She’s not ready for it. She doesn’t want Norman to die.
But it seems he has other plans.
In the darkness of the infirmary, it’s hard to make out his features, but she knows what he must look like then and there. She doesn’t need a light source to know that there is that stubborn resolution in his expression, that his jaw is set in the way that tells her he’s already considered the matter closed. He will go through with his shipment, and there is nothing she can do to change his mind.
She knows him, after all. During the time that they’d spent together, she’d subconsciously memorized the kindness in his eyes, the crinkle in his laughter. She’d engraved in her heart the varying degrees of softness in his smile, the lilt of his voice when he’s happy, or sad, or angry.
She has known him for a long seventeen years, and yet it feels an eternity too short.
“You’re not sorry,” she tells him. The fingers that are caressing her palm come to a pause, and she hears him shift closer to her remorsefully.
“I’m not,” he says, “And it’s that I’m sorry for.”
She blinks, and somehow she can make out the outline of his broad shoulders, the wrinkles in his clothes dipping and reflecting the moonlight filtering in through the window. His eyes aren’t lit up by the moon, his expression even more so. His face is cast in shadows, as if she’s already losing him.
“I wish you weren’t...” she trails off. I wish you weren’t you.
His fingers grip her own, tighter than she ever thought possible. “The world is not so kind that you can get everything you wish for.”
Her breath hitches. She wonders if he truly means that – if he truly means for it to hurt her so deeply. She has always seen the world for what it can be, and her idealism has only strengthened with time. Norman has always been an avid supporter of her vision. He has always been the one she can rely on to make her wishes come true.
But now...
She pushes herself up, taking hold of his clothes as a sort of leverage, and the fist that’s curled into his cardigan tugs him closer. The moonlight falls on his face then, just barely, and she sees his lips quirk down disapprovingly. He tenses when her breath mingles with his own. “Stay,” she whispers, and there’s a desperation in her voice that she knows inflicts scars across his beaten heart.
But if he’s not sorry, then neither is she.
He gently tries to pry her fingers from his cardigan. “I can’t,” he says. “You know that.”
She inhales sharply, her features twisting into a distraught expression. There are hollow shadows on Norman’s face, just like there had been hollow shadows on Conny’s, and the gravity of it all hits her then – all at once.
A wretched sob escapes her lips, and she falls into his waiting arms.
Shipment.
She will have to let him go.
Even if she doesn’t want to.
“Smile for me,” he says, his voice strained, as though the words are being forced from his throat. “Please.”
She shakes her head. “Norman –”
Emma pulls him into an embrace. “Stay.”
She hopes that the weight of her words dawn on him. She hopes that he realizes that she means much more than just remain by her bedside. She hopelessly yearns that he will grant her wish, just like all the times before, but she knows that this is the one time that he will have to deny her what she wants.
Her ideals – everyone, everyone, everyone – cannot be fulfilled by him anymore.
“I can’t stay,” he murmurs, and she exhales shakily into his shoulder. More tears stain the cloth. He pulls back to wipe her tears away, and even in the indigo of the twilight, she can make out the beginnings of his smile.
She knows that expression. He’s smiling because she’s crying. He’s smiling because he wants to give her reassurance. He wants to give her hope.
He wants to give her anything that he can before he meets his fate.
“What do you want?” he whispers, his long fingers brushing her hair from her face. “Emma, what do you want?”
What does she want? She wants everyone to escape. She wants him to escape with them. She wants to be free of this bird cage, wants to hold his hand on top of that wall on the exact moment that they gain their freedom. She wants Norman to stay alive. She doesn’t want him to be shipped. She wants him to stay.
She wants him in her future.
She wants him in her present.
She closes her eyes, leaning forward. Her hands grasp his shoulders, her lips search for his. She feels him hesitate for a moment, but then the gap between them is filled, and against his mouth she murmurs: “I just want you.”
He looks surprisingly dashing, like a prince, but with her broken leg and her blood-shot eyes, she’s not much of a princess.
Even after everything – even after last night, he still... he still...
She does not want to finish that thought.
Instead, she watches as he says his goodbyes to everyone, falsely promising them that yes, he’ll send them letters. Yes, he’ll think of them.
Yes, he’ll be all right.
After he personally speaks with all their siblings, Norman stands up – tall and regal, as he has always been since they were thirteen – and he calls her name.
There’s something different about her name now. There’s something off with the way he says it. There’s a sort of reluctance, a heavy beat of despair. The syllables roll off his tongue as they always have, but his voice does not sing the melody of her name as he had the night before.
Had she dreamed the entire thing?
Had she somehow created a false memory to replace the impending sense of loss that she had been feeling last night?
Norman’s intentions had been clear since the very start: he will be the sacrificial piece. He will pave the way for their escape through his death. He has left no room for argument, and while she can see his reasoning, she doesn’t want to understand it.
She can’t accept this. She can’t just let him die. Not after everything.
Lost in the maelstrom of her thoughts, she is unable to respond to his call. It is only when she hears him pick up his suitcase – “Goodbye, everyone!” – that she finds the will to move.
Yelling his name, she attempts to pull one more card out of her sleeve.
She crashes into him.
Their hug is not affectionate or stained with loss. It’s instead fueled by a fiery passion, an unquenchable desperation. It’s harsh, it knocks the wind out of both of them, and it’s not meant as a goodbye. Rather, it is driven by her incurable ability to never give up.
On Norman’s end however, a powerful emotion fights back, and before she can disable the tracker on his ear he’s already used his height to his advantage and has pushed her aside, effectively keeping her from doing something reckless.
Before she hits the floor, he pivots on his heel, his nails digging into her hips. Norman’s shoulder grazes the floorboard hard, and he grimaces in pain, but Emma lands on top of him, breathing heavily, and she’s not any more injured than she already is.
“Idiot!” he shouts, hands reaching up to grip her upper arms threateningly. “This is not what you’re supposed to be doing right now!”
“Shut up!” she shouts back, louder, her wild orange hair falling around her face as she glares down at him. “I won’t let you go!”
“Emma!”
Her name. She knows why it’s off now.
There’s an anger to it. There’s a grating roughness, a twinge of defiance. And boundless, overflowing amounts of regret.
“I never should have –” he begins to say, then he cuts himself off. She narrows her eyes at him. What had he been about to say?
I never should have gone through with this?
I never should have lied to you?
Or, I never should have granted your wish?
“Norman,” she croaks, her fingers twisting into the lapel of his new jacket, “Don’t do this. Don’t leave me.”
There’s still another way.
We can still think of something...
He shakes his head. “I’m never going to leave you,” he murmurs brokenly. “And that’s what I’m afraid of. I don’t want that for you. You have to let me go.”
She blinks back her tears. “Norman...”
His fingers run through her hair, his thumb flitting across the lobe of her left ear. “Emma... I just want you to send me off with a smile. Please respect my feelings.”
“No! I can’t! Especially now that I know that you don’t want this!”
Her words are a bomb.
When she looks at him – when she sees her sentiment sink into his expression – she knows he’s thinking of the same thing she is:
His hands caressing her skin, his mouth moaning her name into her ear. “Let me in, Norman,” she had whispered, her body arching into his. “What do you want?”
Blinking the memory from her eyes, she sees him smile, and somehow this time, it’s genuine. It’s still sad, but there’s a sincerity in it where there had only been false placation. “You’re so reckless,” he says, like a sort of prayer. “So naïve. And yet... you’re always so pure, always so honest.”
His fingers tug on her head, he pulls her closer, and he continues, “You don’t understand. The fact that you care this much alone makes me feel incredibly grateful for my life. Emma...” His lips brush over hers. “...you are the reason why I can smile right now.”
As I walk to my death.
When he kisses her, she gets a sense of déjà vu. He’s melting into her, surrendering himself. She recognizes the resigned slant of his lips, the firmness of his mouth. There’s the irrefutable intimacy of his touch, the irresistible meaning behind his actions. And it’s only when she closes her eyes and responds that she remembers why this is so familiar.
“What do you want?” she’d asked, sweaty and panting and full of desire, and he’d paused at her question. Heat had flooded her face for a moment – she thought she’d done something wrong, but then his lips are ravaging hers, and then he’s telling her the truth.
“I want to live.”
It’s the same kiss. It’s the same sentiment. And when he pulls away, she can see the heart-wrenching acceptance in his eyes.
The moment is broken when Mama places his hat on his head, but there’s an uncharacteristic unsteadiness in her usually porcelain expression that Emma can’t ignore.
His place setting at the table is gone.
His toothbrush in the cupboard is gone.
Their string-cup telephone is gone.
She has nothing left of him but tainted memories, and this aching bereavement of all things Norman digs a gaping hole into her heart.
She spends the days after his shipment wandering the house, wobbling around on her crutches, pausing every now and then at a random area. Sometimes it’s the boys’ room, where she knows he’d slept. Sometimes it’s the kitchen, where they’d splashed each other with water instead of washed the dishes. Other times, it’s the dining hall, where he’d sat in front of her, smiling.
Most of the time, it’s the infirmary.
It’s not unusual for anyone to see her there, but the room seems so surreal to her now. It remains the same as it has always been – lined with beds, with a medicine cabinet shoved into the corner. Time has done nothing to this room, but it has impacted the lives of the people who have walked in it.
It’s strange to note that her and Norman’s lives can be plotted by events occurring in the infirmary, of all places, but it has always been the place where they can – could – wholeheartedly express their devotion for each other. It is a testament to their bond. When one of them is feeling melancholy, or downtrodden, or lonely... the other is always there to cheer them up – to keep them company. It has always been this way. When they were five, when they were seven, when they were eleven, and when they were seventeen...
But now the despair and the desolation eats away at her spirit, and Norman is no longer there to be by her side.
At some point her emotions overwhelm her so much that she actively avoids the infirmary from then on, sitting instead in the shade of the oak tree outside.
Then one morning, it happens: she vomits.
Gilda is there to soothe her as she pukes into the toilet while Anna rushes off to find Mama. When Isabella comes, Emma feels too weak and too sick to even care that the woman who had sent Norman off to his doom is helping her up and guiding her to the infirmary.
She is also too weak and too sick to notice the suspicious glance in Mama’s eye.
The cycle repeats itself every morning after that, along with a few more concerning developments. She isn’t bleeding. She’s always drowsy. She doesn’t like to eat her favorite foods anymore.
On the eighth day, Emma wonders aloud: “Am I sick?”
Mama finishes tucking Emma into the infirmary bed, and with a sigh, she sits next to the girl. “I didn’t want to believe it at first,” Isabella says, “But after tending to your morning sickness and noticing other... well, symptoms... I suppose I cannot deny it anymore.”
“What’s wrong with me?” Emma asks, and for a moment she briefly contemplates that she will gladly welcome any illness should it lead her to meet Norman in death.
Mama’s next words, however, permanently dispel that thought.
“Emma... you’re pregnant.”