Chapter Text
Emma spent time thinking about the seaside when she was away from it, which could sometimes be months on-and-off, but that didn't mean anything. The children were only allowed out to visit the sea and go swimming infrequently, when Miss Peregrine could be certain that there would be no slip-ups. Emma was grateful that Miss Peregrine had chosen a location for the loop where they could not only hear, but smell the salt from the ocean, the early September rainfall in the distant mountains, and the smoke from the chimneys in town. However, it made no comparison for Cornwall, where Emma had grown up, before everything happened. She tried to make connections between the two places whenever she was feeling alone. It helped her to cope, to think that perhaps it wasn't so different after all, and that she still belonged to herself just as she did before Miss Peregrine had re-homed her.
Her memories of before were blurred and irregular. She'd been a child then, and Emma was no child now. She was almost eighty-years-old out of the loop, and to think of her life before she'd been in the home seemed useless to her now. Admittedly, it was awfully hard to refrain from emotion when a memory resurfaced in her mind.
"Emma, won't you play with us?"
Emma turned around, perched at her windowsill where she was busy overlooking the moss-covered cobblestone wall which safe-guarded the house to the flash of shimmering blue darkness. Sometimes Fiona would allow for the ivy on the stone to grow too tall, and it would block Emma's sacred ocean-view, taunting her as it flitted in the late evening wind. She'd once had an awfully hard time convincing Fiona that it was a more pressing matter to trim the ivy right at this moment than to start on the vegetable patch for dinner, but with bribery she'd gotten there in the end, and in turn had kept her view pristine.
It was Bronwyn in her doorway, with an out-of-breath-looking Claire behind her. Emma had been half-watching them in the garden below. They were playing some sort of chasing game, which never really interested Emma. Her weighted boots put her at a disadvantage, anyway.
Emma shook her head. "No thanks, Bronwyn." Claire shot down the hall behind her, but Bronwyn stayed.
She was learning not to snap at the younger children when they came upstairs, unannounced, and asked her for things, prodded at her clothes, or nagged about things Emma didn't care to explain. She was learning not to see that as them bothering her, but instead as them trying to include her, for as Miss Peregrine had put it directly to her and Olive once over tea-time, "They're curious about you two. The little girls, in particular, as they will not grow up themselves either, and they want to have a part of you that will allow them to know what it's like; to age. They look up to you."
"Are you sure?" asked the brunette, biting her bottom lip. She looked for a moment at Emma's window, and then back to her face, into her big eyes. "We're playing whole-home chasey. It means you can go anywhere in the house, not just in the yard. Peculiarities definitely not allowed, but Hugh is a bit of a cheater. Don't let that throw you off, though—it really is good fun!" she continued, hopefully. "I promise."
"Maybe another time," said Emma, listening to the frantic calls from Claire down the hall, asking Bronwyn to follow after her—"Millard's nearly caught up! Come on!" And Emma quietly looked down at her fingertips, folding them down and interlocking them between her hands. She looked up hesitantly at Bronwyn, saying, "Well, why don't you go and ask Olive? She might want to play with you all."
Olive was good at playing with the younger children. Better than Emma and Enoch were, anyway. Olive didn't even have to join in on their games for them to play with her. She could entertain them with her ideas, thoughts, or with a way of speaking that Emma just didn't have. Olive wasn't boring, nor would she accept to play a game she thought was a waste of time, so she would just invent a new one. And Enoch could play, thought Emma, but he chose not to. The kids liked him, even when he was distant. The boys thought his meanness was admirable, and maybe the little girls found him charming, or father-like in some strange way. And Olive was like a mother, now that Emma thought of it. What did that make her? Dismissive, cold, removed. She wasn't sure that she even qualified to be a member of their weird little family. Sometimes the thought that she'd traded in a life of emancipation for one which had stripped her away of her freedom to leave completely haunted her, even when she knew it wasn't true. Her parents had scorned her, felt she was a reincarnation of evil, locked her up. It was her little sister who had released her. She'd never have gotten away if it wasn't for her, but still she reminisced on what it was like to live.
There was nothing like that feeling of escape. When she knew that she'd finally made it out of that dreadful house alive, in one-piece. She didn't want this place to turn into that, though; something she needed to be freed of. So, something had to change.
When Bronwyn had finally turned the corner, Emma stood and left the room, closing the door behind her. She came downstairs in her blue sundress, hands stroking the walls. It hadn't been so long ago, before the loop, that four-year-old Claire had painted these walls in splashes of pink and yellow, claiming to her defense that she was painting the setting sun. She recalled the hours she spent with Olive, Enoch, and Miss Peregrine, wiping at the walls as Claire wept on the staircase. Claire couldn't take any sort of reprimand, and it wasn't possible to have the four-year-old repaint the walls, so as punishment Miss Peregrine had sat her down on the stairs, asking her to watch as she and the children labored away at the walls she'd painted. Emma reached the end of the stairs and turned left into the kitchen.
Miss Peregrine was busy at the kitchen sink as always. Scrubbing, cutlery clattering. Abe had written her a letter once, talking about the invention of something called a washing machine. Emma had sent a letter in response replying that they already had a perfectly good one. Miss Peregrine turned to look at her.
"Emma," she said, with a tone of surprise, and took off her rubber gloves half-way. Like clockwork, she asked, "Would you like something to eat? I haven't seen you all morning."
Emma shook her head, lingering in the doorway, her bare calf stroking the wooden door-frame as she looked at her. She hadn't known what she wanted from downstairs. Maybe she'd go out into the yard and read. Olive had read everything in the house, and everything in the library in town as of last year——She was a terrible bookworm, always re-reading something. Emma had never took to looking at words on pages, or any other except Abe's for that matter, but perhaps as she was getting older, these things were growing on her. Maybe she'd learn to knit.
"Why don't you go play with the other children, Emma?" asked Miss Peregrine, with a sixth sense, her back turned away from the blonde. She was scrubbing dishes incessantly, her pocket-watch near, on the kitchen counter, ticking away distractedly. It vibrated ever-so slightly, almost undetectably, against the marble countertop, but Emma noticed it. There was no noise inside the house. They never played records. It was only the sound of that damn, awful pocket-watch, which never meant anything anyway; it was only counting down the seconds until they had to count down the very same seconds again, and then again, into the infinite loop of time.
Without considering, Emma straightened her posture. "Because," she began with poise, "I'm not a child," said Emma, indignantly. Emma couldn't help herself sometimes. She blamed her restlessness on her incessant need for a reaction.
Miss Peregrine turned towards her, an eyebrow raised as a plate clattered into the sink. She acted tough, but Emma knew her mind was ticking like the stop-watch, busy thinking of something to say. Emma puzzled her in a way which the other children didn't. Emma could phase her, and that was dangerous. The younger peculiars came to Alma with a cut from the thorns and she'd put a band-aid on it. Enoch would come to breakfast with a frown and Alma would make sure to give him more attention that day. It was all formulaic, pattern-recognition. But not with Emma. The teenager could be so remarkably different day-to-day. Miss Peregrine turned away again, scrubbing at a plate until clean. She left it there, turned the hot water off, and then pulled her rubber gloves all the way off with her teeth. Emma watched until she gawked at her, as if she were completely beyond words or treatment. Sometimes Emma couldn't tell if Miss Peregrine was rage-bated by her into a transcendental anger, or completely and undoubtedly calm for all of the time, and just simply a little bit bizarre. Sometimes it took Emma snooping around the house to feel as if she knew anything about what Miss Peregrine's reality was like; checking her study for post-its or small notes, watching the children's bedrooms at night, looking up at the sky and picking the birds with the loudest songs. Then she felt she could understand, maybe. Possibly. Otherwise, she was stuck. Emma lived not only in the loop, but in an endless cycle of not knowing.
"We are past this, Miss Bloom," said Alma, calculated. Good, she thought to herself, direct and authoritative.
"We are past you calling me that."
Miss Peregrine furrowed her brows at the girl, her posture straight and deadly as she walked steadily towards Emma, her heels clicking on the tiles of the kitchen floor. She breathed in deeply through her nostrils, opening her eyes to say, "If there's something bothering you, Emma, fire away. Otherwise, you can go to your chambers."
"There it is again. Well, if you insist," smiled Emma, ruefully, turning on her heels mechanically and walking off, feeling the fury she'd left behind follow her up the staircase, calling out after her in such a sharp tone: Emma. Emma Bloom. She'd not intended for this to happen. Emma rarely did. Although, sometimes, she was looking for a reaction. Something to remind her that Miss Peregrine was still indefinitely a human being, albeit a strange one. They were all strange, and so it seemed to matter very little, but it mattered to Emma that her headmistress had a reaction to her. Otherwise, Emma could slip into feeling like a ghost with a strange, sentimental ease. Sometimes it felt too easy to feel like she was drifting through life, and getting a reaction out of Alma always managed to shake her up. But this time, Emma honestly hadn't intended for this to happen. Alma had stirred her with the question. She'd wanted the headmistress to sit her down and make her eat anyway, and instead of asking her questions, to let Emma be the one who asked the questions. But that would never happen. Miss Peregrine was still Miss Peregrine after all.
After Emma arrived in her room again, she attempted to shut the door, but Alma caught it mid-way, entering after her, though not fully. She just stood there in the doorway, watching as Emma took a seat by the bay-window again, the daybed, and folded her arms.
"I mean it," said Miss Peregrine. "If you have something to say, I'd rather you get it off your chest than have you pull a stunt like that at dinner instead of now." Alma didn't like this. She liked to think she was a pretty good teacher, and a fairly respectable figure for the children to look up to. But Emma could make her feel so... wrong. About lots of things. How had she managed to miss so hard with her? Manners, behaviors, general politeness. No other child would have made such an exit and then proceeded to slam a door in her face. Just Emma Bloom. Miss Peregrine stared at her, hard. "Speak, Emma."
"I'm not a bird," she replied.
"Funny," spat Miss Peregrine, who realized she had to regulate before going any further with this conversation. She shut her eyes, took a breath and released her hand from the door-knob, then ran her hands over her scalp, clutching the bridge of her nose for a moment before turning towards Emma, a freshness cast on her face. "I'm serious, you. I've had enough of this. You come downstairs at unlawful hours, claim to not be hungry, run your mouth at me, and then walk away and act as though it's never happened before. To be frank with you, I'm tired of it." This was obviously her last straw. That wasn't just clear to Emma, but to everybody. It felt like walking on egg-shells the last couple of days.
"I don't think it's fair for me to have to explain myself to you," said Emma, clutching the sides of her dress. She was tired of this conversation. Even this felt like a loop, a permanent onslaught of deja-vu, and when would she get a break?
"Then you really are a child," said Miss Peregrine, condescending but with a softness. "I'm am ymbryne, not a mind-reader. I need you to help me out here."
Emma winced, "Why don't you just speak to me? I'm sure something will work." Emma didn't want to explain what she was thinking all the time. It was exhausting enough having to listen to it, extrapolate the good stuff, condemn the bad. She didn't want to give it an entry into the real world.
"It's not as simple as a there-there with you," spoke Alma, her voice lowering as she heard the younger children rushing out the door into the garden downstairs, still playing. She sighed, "I cannot figure out what it is that you need from me, Emma. I try to give it to you, the authority that I thought would compute with you, but it seems I am only ever taking away from your happiness. We used to be close, you and I, and now here we are. Here I am, anyway, but you're over there. There's a wall between us, do you see it?" She reached her arm up to clutch her upper-lip, raising her voice some more as she spoke firmly now towards her ward, "You don't make it easy, so you'll have to speak to me. That's the only way this works from now on."
Emma's face turned away from the window now, and she looked at Miss Peregrine with softness in her eyes. "Has it not occurred to you that I might like a there-there for once?" she asked, her voice matching Alma's firmness.
"Oh, but, Emma——" Miss Peregrine stopped herself, hoping Emma might turn away from her so that she could have her much-needed time to think before she said anything, but that wasn't the case. Emma was reading her, calculating too. It seemed Alma had forgotten who she was speaking to. She sighed and lowered her gaze, continuing, "It was just a few minutes ago, if you remember, that you told me you are past my treating you like a child," spoke Miss Peregrine, her voice harsh but she could feel herself easing as she watched Emma's eyes. So easy to disappear into. They say the eyes are the window to the soul, and Emma's are without curtains. There is nothing to peek through; all of her is there.
Emma twinged softly, her lips parting as she scoffed, "That was different, I was making a point to you." The softness in her eyes had gone and she looked boldly towards Alma, "When you give me freedom, it suffocates me. For example, I am allowed to leave by myself to the village—I see you flying, circling around above my head, watching—and when I return you ask me to tell you every detail of what happened, as if you weren't there too, making sure I'm not getting into trouble, or lying to you. What I need? You to trust me. I don't play with the children because it bores me. There's nothing wrong with me. Just like there is nothing wrong with Olive because she reads when she's in a good mood, and prefers it to speaking with us. I don't judge you."
Alma scoffed, walking into the room now, approaching Emma, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, don't act like you don't know," Emma said, "because I know." She looked at the headmistress. "I know that you judge me. Maybe even pity me for having slept with Abe, and for having fallen in love with him. I remember how you warned me, forbid me to see him in that way," as she spoke, she watched Miss Peregrine's eyes, which were pained, "and I know that you— Blamed yourself, when it happened, and we lost him." She turned her head away, looking back now at her ocean view. Her gaze softened again with relief. "Well, I don't. Blame you, I mean. It was bound to happen. Olive has Enoch, and I," she breathed in, "don't." Her lips tightened and she looked back at Alma, who was now furrowing her brows. "It would just be nice to have somebody on my side, is all."
"I'm on your side, Emma. Of course I'm on your side, I'm——" She paused, her breath shortening, stammering as she moved towards the day-bed, sitting down across from the blonde. Alma wasn't sure what to do. She tried to remember the early days. Before the loop. When she'd first rescued Emma from that awful place. Seven years old she'd been. And all of the horror stories she'd been told. Emma was her first ward. They'd come into this home together for the first time, hand-in-hand. Alma's validity as a headmistress had already been questioned by the council and she'd arrived at this place with her only peculiar feeling vindicated, ready. She and Emma had made this place a home. There was no fear in those days. Their closeness remained even when the others arrived. Claire, Hugh, Fiona, one after the other. Emma would have awful nightmares. They stopped after five or so years into the loop. Emma used to sleep in her bed. How had these memories only just started to come back to her? Had it really been this long since she'd looked at her own——?
"You're what?" said Emma, not moving her eyes from the window.
Alma couldn't stop herself. She allowed herself this moment, reaching out to touch Emma's cheek, turning her to look at her. Emma softened into Alma's palm, and that's when she saw it. That sleepless seven-year-old. "I'm here," she said, gently. "That's all. I'm here and I'm listening."
"You're not," said Emma, her body stiffening as she shuffled away from the motion of touch. Though she'd begun to cry, she wiped away the formation of tears in her eyes, and sniffled softly.
"I am," stressed Alma, her hand falling back down to her side. It had been a while since she'd done this. She and Olive spoke regularly enough, but Olive was not like any other teenager. Olive was like a fully-grown adult at eight-and-a-half. When Olive needed advice, Alma could listen to her and understand, connect by way of experience. Sometimes Alma did long for that company, and Olive was there to fill the whole, bridge the gap. Emma and Alma hadn't spoken properly for years, probably. Alma had had moments with her, micro-moments, fragments of conversation, and she'd done the whole 'mothering' bit. Of course, when Emma was sick, like any other ward, it was Alma who looked after her. But Alma had never worn her down like this before. Each other's exhaustion had weighed down on the other. One of them was bound to win soon enough, and Alma was determined it would be her; she'd win Emma's affection and confession, and then finally, she'd understand.
Emma leaned her head back against the wall, staring. "It's silly."
"No," assured Alma, not sure what to do with her hands now, so she put one on Emma's shoe, comfortingly.
Emma turned her head, her face jerking softly as another tear escaped. "I'm so alone."
The words and Emma's tears had struck Alma, but she didn't falter. This wasn't a time for emotional collapse. It was clear that Emma needed somebody to hold her, and here was Alma, with two perfectly capable open arms. "Come here, baby," she murmured, moving towards the blonde. Emma lowered her head against Alma's chest as she seemed to melt into the older woman. From the window, the children played below, not looking up, but both of them looking down. Alma stroked Emma's hair gently. For the first time in a while, Emma was grateful to have no noise in the house. She could hear Alma's breath from behind her, and in their mad dash upstairs, Alma had left the pocket-watch. It was just them here in this room. It had been a long time since the two women had been like this with each other, longer than Emma could remember. Her honesty had clearly appealed to the headmistress, and she remembered what it was like to be held now. It was powerful. An embrace. She and Abe had sat at this window once-upon-a-time, watching the same ocean, the same waves, the same light hitting the water at the same hour. Emma let herself cry, and Alma let herself comfort the girl.