Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The summer before Emily starts 6th grade, her parents surprise her by clearing out the spare room upstairs and transforming it into a bedroom. 

They’ve made a day of it, spending all afternoon moving her things either upstairs or into the garage to be donated. Lillian can’t carry anything heavy, but she’s helping by sorting Emily’s clothes. There’s a few items she’s half tempted to steal, but she knows Emily will throw a fit if she catches Lillian wearing something of hers. Emily never shares anything anymore. 

“Why are you hanging up T-shirts?”

Lillian looks up. Emily is standing at the doorway with a box, eyebrows pinched together. There’s annoyance laced through the words, but Lillian can’t figure out what she’s doing wrong. She’s helping. 

Emily sets the box down and grabs a hanger out of Lillian’s hands. “Jackets and dresses go in the closet. Shirts obviously go in the dresser.”

“How was I supposed to know that?” 

“Because it’s obvious!” Emily huffs, taking down the clothes Lillian had just hung up. “Whatever. I’ll do it myself.” 

“I want to help!” Lillian reaches over to pull the hanger back, and the plastic snaps. Crud. 

Emily’s shoulders rise. “You’re just breaking stuff, Lillian! Get out of my room!”

And there’s nothing Lillian can say to that, really, because it's Emily's room.

Lillian stares at the indent in the carpet where Emily’s bed used to be and lets the anger in her chest burn. It’s like Emily is a whole entire new person now—a new person for a new room for a new school. And her parents keep telling her to be patient, because Emily is going through a lot, even though everything is perfect for Emily all of the time. 

Ugh. 

She picks at the carpet and notices how weird their room looks now. One half of it is cluttered and bright, and the other looks hauntingly empty. Lillian’s all alone now.

Lillian sits up with the excitement of this realization. Lillian has this room all to herself. She doesn’t know how she didn’t realize this earlier. It feels very grown up—if also somewhat daunting. She'll have to clean up on her own, and she'll have no one to talk to when she can't sleep. 

Emily, of course, will have to do the same thing. Lillian can't help but feel some satisfaction about that: Emily's older, but Lillian's just as mature. Lillian has her own room, too, and she’s only nine. 

Such an event requires a complete reworking of the floorplan, obviously.

Lillain gets to work immediately, dragging her bookshelf to the other side of the room. It’s too heavy all together, so she piles the books onto the ground first. Lillian puts all her books back before she realizes that it blocks the door from opening, so she moves it to the adjacent wall, and after she does that, she decides that really, her bed should be along the wall with the window, and maybe then she could shove her desk to be next to the shelf…

By the time she’s done, it looks almost like a brand new room, as new as Emily’s. Lillian also feels like she’s just moved mountains. 

She flops backward onto her bed, catapulting one of her stuffed animals to the floor with the movement. “Oops,” she says. “Sorry, Gerald.” She places her favorite blue elephant in his place of honor next to her pillow, then goes back to staring at the ceiling fan.

She’s not too sure what to do now. She could go upstairs and ask Emily to play, but Emily hasn’t wanted to do that in ages. Emily’s dolls are all in a box under Emily’s brand new bed, and Lillian isn’t allowed to touch them, even though Emily doesn’t play with them anymore. 

Maybe part of being grown up means being boring, Lillian figures. Emily is plenty boring, after all. 

So Lillian spends the rest of the day being grown up. She drinks water at dinner, uses mint toothpaste (which sort of stings, so she spits it out and goes back to bubblegum), and informs her mom that she doesn’t need a bedtime story, actually, and also she can turn off the lights by herself. 

The satisfaction of a day responsibly spent only lasts a few seconds before the stillness of the room makes itself known. 

The room is disturbingly quiet. She can't hear the rustle of bedsheets, or the soft sound of Emily's breathing. The closet door is a little open. Lillian should’ve closed it. What if there’s something in there?

There's a noise outside—a tree branch scraping against the wall, or an animal, but Lillian can’t see outside from this vantage point. She shouldn't be scared of that, right? She's grown up now. Do grown ups still get scared of the dark? Does Emily? The looming shadows cast across the walls never bothered her when Emily was around.

“I don’t think I can do this alone,” She whispers to Gerald. The elephant stares back with wise and knowing eyes.

It's decided, then. Lillian tucks him under her arm and makes the journey upstairs, careful to stay close to the walls so her parents won’t hear her from where they’re talking in the kitchen. Emily’s room is the furthest one from the top of the landing, past the bathroom and her parents’ room. A sliver of light creeps out from under the door.

She slips into Emily's room as softly as she can manage, only to find that Emily's already awake. She's sitting in her brand new queen bed, a book in her hands, illuminated by her bedside lamp.

Emily squints. “Lillian?” 

“Sorry,” Lillian whispers, carefully shutting the door behind her. “I couldn't sleep.” 

Her sister smiles. “Me neither. I guess I'm not used to all this space.” 

Lillian stands at the side of the bed, not quite sure how to ask. Is Emily still mad? What if Emily's too old for sharing a room? Her stuffed animals are on a shelf, now, instead of the bed. Lillian holds Gerald close and hopes being grown up doesn't mean keeping your stuffed animals on shelves.

Emily rolls her eyes, lifting up the blanket wordlessly in response to the unasked question, and Lillian happily clambers in, struggling slightly to get onto the tall bed frame. Turns out, there is a stuffed animal hidden under the duvet, a small rabbit with a bow around its neck. Lillian gives it a gentle pat on the head while Emily sets her book on her nightstand and turns the lamp off. Emily’s new room is warmer than the one downstairs, and Lillian snuggles into the comforter, almost satisfied. There's still something nagging at her, though.

“Emily?” She whispers. As her eyes adjust, she can see long shadows stretching across the room.

“Yeah?”

“Are you scared? To go to middle school?”

Emily hums. “Not really.”

“I’m a little scared,” Lillian admits, “Of not going to the same school as you.” 

“Oh, Lily…”

“Like, what if I miss my bus stop? Or, what if you leave too early in the morning, so I never see you before school, and now I can’t see you in the hallway, and then at home you're always upstairs, and then I never see you, at all, for the whole day? ” Lillian takes a deep breath. “What if you forget about me?” 

“That would never happen.” Lillian can't quite make out Emily's expression, but she sounds upset at the idea. “I promise, okay? We'll still hang out.” 

“But we don't hang out,” Lillian says petulantly. “You never have time to do anything anymore.” 

“Well…” Emily thinks for a moment. “How about… whenever you feel like you miss me, you come up here, and we'll have a sleepover. No questions asked.” 

“A sleepover?” Lillian asks skeptically. Sleepovers are supposed to be for going to other people’s houses.

“It’ll be fun,” Emily says quickly, seeming more and more excited by the idea. “I could paint your nails, and we could watch scary movies, and—”

“Not too scary, right?” Lillian interrupts. A few weeks ago, Emily had made Lillian watch Monster House, and Lillian had spent the whole night jumping at shadows and refusing to turn the lights off. 

Emily, seemingly remembering the same incident, concedes. “Okay, yeah, not too scary.”

“Can we have snacks?” 

“If Mom and Dad say it’s okay, yeah. But you have to ask.”

“Will you teach me how to braid my hair?”

“Sure.”

“Can I use the sparkly nail polish that you never let me use?”

Emily groans. “I’ll think about it. Go to sleep.”

Lillian can tell she’s testing Emily’s patience, so she accepts. “Okay. Good plan.”

Emily sighs and settles down, shifting a bit as she gets comfortable. Silence fills the room, until:

“And I can come up whenever I want?”

“Oh my God! Lillian!” Emily shoves her head under a pillow. “Yes! Go to bed!” 

Lillian laughs but obliges, curling up with Gerald tucked close. Her worries have been thoroughly laid to rest, content with knowing that her sister will always be upstairs waiting for her. The warmth in her chest blooms.

“Goodnight, Em,” She whispers.

The response is delayed by a few stubborn seconds and muffled by fabric, but it’s unmistakably fond.  

“Goodnight, Lily.” 

Chapter Text

The summer Emily comes back, Lillian wakes up from another nightmare. She doesn’t know, yet, that this is the summer Emily comes back, but it is.

By now, Lillian is no stranger to waking up with her heart in overdrive, braced for a collision that isn't coming.

She sits up and takes five deep breaths, counting down with her hands. She reminds herself that she is in her room. She reminds herself that she is safe, even with everything that’s been going on over the past week.

She wonders how much longer she's going to spend haunted by memories she doesn't actually have.

The nightmares, consistently, go like this:

Lillian is driving Matt's white sedan. Simultaneously, she's watching the car from the street, a passive observer. The split perspective always makes sense until it doesn’t—dream logic.

Emily is in the passenger seat, singing along to intelligible music, feet propped up on the dashboard. Her hair is wet, like she just got out of the shower, but her clothes are wet, too. Lillian stares at her instead of paying attention to the road. She can never quite focus on Emily's features: they’re smudged like a watercolor painting.

Sometimes, Lillian will realize. She will realize, and try to hit the brakes, but the car refuses to slow down. Emily will keep singing, oblivious. Lillian, from outside the car, will watch them veer too close to the railing.

She always wakes up on impact.

Lillian digs her nails into her palm and forcefully removes the image from her mind. Her phone tells her that it’s 5:58. She tries to find someone who’s online, anything to distract her, but no one is up this early. Fuck. Restlessness builds in her chest, suffocating. The bed is sickly warm and her skin is too tight and she needs to get out of here, she needs to do something.

Her eyes snag on the flowers she got from Sam recently, collected in a vase by her desk.

Well. There is one person she could visit.

The hospital isn’t too busy when she checks in, just a couple doctors on early shifts and patients waiting for care. No one bats an eye at her pajamas, even though she's sure she looks ridiculous. The doctor lets her into David’s room without complaint, thank God. She hadn't checked if visiting hours were open before making the drive over.

David’s still asleep. (Does it count as asleep when he still hasn’t properly woken up? Lillian doesn't know.) The sun is finally coming up, lighting up the room and turning the sky a gentle purple. Lillian sets the flowers down on the bedside table, a small burst of color against the sterile white of the room. There’s nothing else on the table. No balloons, no other flowers, no get well soon! card from a coworker. Lillian thinks about the fact that the hospital called her—someone who, if she was being honest, wouldn’t have considered herself particularly close to David until recently—and it breaks her heart a little.

She sits in the chair by the bed, folding her legs up because she’s never been good at sitting properly. “Hey, David,” she starts, and her voice only cracks a little. “How's it going?”

David doesn’t reply. Obviously. Lillian shuts her eyes and focuses on the warmth of the rising sun, the texture of the chair under her fingertips, the sound of David’s (finally stabilized) breathing against the thrum of machinery. Lillian has always liked noise. The tension in her shoulders melts. “We’ll be okay,” she says firmly, because there isn’t another option. She refuses to accept otherwise. If David isn’t okay, it means she made a bad call, again, and she just—she can’t.

Lillian opens her eyes. There’s nothing else to do, really. There’s no warm bed to climb into, no reassuring conversations to be had. She settles for placing her hand next to David’s. His knuckles are scratched and bruising, and they aren't even his worst injury. Who would do that to him? David, of all people. He wouldn't even kill a spider.

Lillian stares at the ceiling and waits for a sign. An explanation. Anything to tell her what to do, how to fix this.

She spends the whole morning waiting.