Ema S. 🧪

it's not my choice, i promise. i could care less, but not even i'm allowed in the lab after hours without direct permission. blah blah liability blah blah paperwork

are you busy? i... can come back another time if now isn't good for you.

[ema smiles when lana opens the door, not taking much notice of the fact she looks disheveled. she looks a bit of a mess herself, still wearing her stained lab coat.]

sorry- i didn't think about it. [she came on a whim- selfishly, admittedly.]

+

After some time Ema seemed to relax, her eyes still red as she finally looked in Klavier's direction. She found his voice calming despite her usual complaints about hearing him talk.

Ema laughed weakly, sniffling a little in between. "You get your very first 'grown-up' paycheck and you immediately splurge. I've been there. I bought my first car. I couldn't afford anything super nice, but it was better than the taxi fares I wracked up before."

+

“As if… I’d ever let you touch my car in the first place.” Her voice was still strained but she was speaking at least.

There was more quiet sniffling from Ema, her stubbornness keeping her from looking Klavier’s direction. As much as she wanted to crying to stop her tears still fell. What a mess- it had to be just as uncomfortable for him.

Shakily, Ema wiped her eyes with her free hand.

—

Something to get her mind off the thunder and hopefully draw both their attention away from her tears.

Exhausted and frustrated, Ema wasn’t sure what she wanted but silence definitely wasn’t it. She squeezed his hand, sniffling with her face still turned away from him.
“No… Just… Talk. About something. Anything.” What she needed was a distraction.

—

you would hurt yourself and only worry about your tour…

maybe see a doctor?

now i’m hot AND hungry. this is a nightmare. do you have any magic tricks that can make it autumn already? or fix my stove

She doesn’t speak, her discomfort evident through the silence. She doesn’t look at Klavier either- or rather she can’t. Honestly, she just wanted to cry.

Ema doesn’t respond; her concentration placed solely on regulating her breathing instead of the humiliation she felt. She could address that later, probably with her therapist.

It took some time but eventually Ema’s breathing slowed, although her chest heaved as if even that took great effort.

—

uuuugh! everything in my apartment keeps breaking. first it’s the ac, now it’s the stove

“Usually… I’m not so…” Ema tried her best to string together a sentence. Her voice and hands trembled, the ache in her chest making it hard to breathe or think properly. “I’m… I’m sorry…”

The hand holding Ema’s jolted her but she didn’t pull away, squeezing it tightly instead. Breathing deeply she tried her best to ground herself. Moments like these were frustrating. In addition to the embarrassment of having it be witnessed, it always felt like regression of her progress.

—

Looking at her now you couldn’t tell she’d ever been afraid. She adored driving and her car. “I worked through all that far easier.”

Ema tensed up again, her eyes shut as she took a needed deep breath. The storm wasn’t letting up and all of it was becoming a bit too much for her.

“It took many years with great therapists. Lana was /really/ insistent about that when she took up care for me. We did grief counseling, but I also had some anxiety around cars. She said I had become ‘restless’ during car rides.”Ema tilted her head back against the seat, chuckling at the thought.

—

It wasn’t often that she talked openly about her parents. She really didn’t remember much about them. It was a sore subject. “I’d started growing out of it until SL-9, which feels far more rational- like it makes more sense? I don’t know… it’s when the panic attacks become frequent.”

She laughed uneasily, trailing off before recentering. “Well, uhm, there’s my parents… I wasn’t really old enough to understand what happened. I knew it had been storming that night. That wasn’t the only cause of course, but can you blame me? I was like six and that just made sense.”

—

For a few moments Ema sat in silence as she thought about the question. She’d rationalized it enough over the years that answer felt obvious, but she always struggled when piecing the words together.

“Yeah. I mean- it feels really obvious now in retrospect, after years of therapy,”

—

Usually she would use information like that to antagonize him, but for now it made her feel a little less alone. “I was the same way for a long time. Deathly afraid of lightning, thunder- even rain on particularly bad days. I couldn’t even begin to explain why, not back then.”

Ema looked to him, caught off guard by his reciprocal confession. She could tell it was a fact he held close to his chest. Hell, she couldn’t recall a time she’d seen him so reserved before. Klavier didn’t have to do that- just to make her feel better no less.

—

Part of her was regretting her spontaneous vulnerability.

Ema laughed weakly. “I would if I could, I promise.” She sighed, quiet as she pulled the jacket tighter around her body. “It took a long time for me to tolerate storms without panic attacks. I haven’t had one in years, but the thunder still… sucks.” She sank further into her seat after speaking.

—

The storm had begun to grown in intensity outside as the strikes became more and more frequent. Despite her best efforts Ema couldn’t help flinching every time the thunder roared. She could pretend it didn’t bother her, yet her reflexes would always betray her.

“I can hardly imagine you in a fight, let alone winning one. No offense… mostly.” Ema laughed. She seemed to be in a far better spirit already. “I’m by no means a combat expert, but as a detective I had some self-defense training. It comes in handy, I guess.”

—

Ema scrunched her nose. “But, yeah. I was totally prepared if it came to it, don’t you worry. Besides, I assumed I would be the one protecting you- you don’t really scream ‘good in a physical altercation’ in my opinion.”

She watched the car’s taillights quickly disappear into the distance. Shamelessly, Ema peered over to see what Klavier was doing. “Smart. I didn’t even think of that.” Praise? From her? Absolutely unheard of.

“Ezra. That’s your, uhm, Ex-Rockband Bounty Hunter friend? Ack, that’s a mouthful.”

—

After a bit of silence she let Klavier’s hand go. “He’s lucky you were here. He was in for some real trouble. I keep a bat under the seat and I had the best swing on my softball team.” A halfhearted laugh followed. It was an attempt to lighten the mood.