A/N: The concept that the content of Emma's shirt being fundamentally different from the others wouldn't leave me alone. Originially I was going to work this into Order with a Prefix but I couldn't make it work. I needed something inspirational today.
The letters seemed to bore a hole straight through her creeping into her world with their bold-faced truth stripping away the denial she had held so firmly in her grasp, the whispered lie that if she wanted to she could take her life back.
When Will had initially approached her with the idea of creating shirts immortalizing the things they couldn't change about who they were she had thought it a fantastic idea if not a bit odd. Emma wished she had never had made the shirt that now lay wrinkle-free across her desk. All it was doing was mocking her.
As soon as the music had stopped her care-free moment with Will and the kids in the auditorium had fled spurred on by the jarring sound of her Mary Jane's colliding with an empty hallway. Her only thought as she had raced towards her office had been about ripping the fabric from her body, the shirt that revealed something far more personal then the ironed-on physical oddities that had surrounded her on stage.
"Emma," Will's voice registered first in her mind slowly trickling into her reality when his body blocked the faint glow of the lamp in the corner of her office uncertainty and caution blended expertly into one word.
"You're shirt only underscored what people can already see." Emma didn't bother to look up at him still transfixed by the three simple letters that had dominated her life for over twenty years. "Mine directed a spotlight onto something that sometimes, if I'm lucky, I can hide."
Will didn't move, his eyes locked on the item between them, the weighted topic that had danced its way in and out of their relationship for a year never truly leaving them alone.
"If yours would have said something about an ex-wife faking a pregnancy," Emma continued past the pain in his eyes, "that might be comparable to a shirt proclaiming to a world that refuses to understand that you are mentally ill."
"I was only trying to help." Will began, his words like butter in the tense air. "To help you to accept who you are right now."
"This," Emma grabbed blindly for the shirt shaking it in her fist, "is not who I am Will! I wasn't born this way!"
"I know." He whispered calmly, soothingly. "But right now that is who you are. Right now, it controls you Em."
With a huff she flung the shirt to the ground determined to show that it didn't control her. So what if she couldn't eat unwashed fruit or spent thirty minutes sanitizing her desk before she sat down every morning. She was not a victim. She was not helpless.
"I saw you the other day Em, in the teachers' lounge." Carefully Will stepped through the doorway calmly sitting down his eyes never leaving hers. "You couldn't even make tea. I've watched you make tea every morning Emma but not that one. It stopped you."
She felt her eyes grow wide at his soft confession. She had been certain no one had seen what had happened. How she had become so paralyzed with fear that she had fled from the room. It had all started off well enough, she had grabbed the packet of peppermint tea from the bottom left-hand drawer just like every other morning but when she had accidently ripped the package sending powder flying everywhere she had panicked. Her first instinct had been to freeze, and she had for a good two minutes until another urge to clean up the mess she had created had taken over. She had been trapped between two distinct mindsets; one telling her to fix what she had done while the other told her to leave it all behind, to get away from the germs.
She hadn't known anyone had been watching.
"It was a stressful day." Emma covered growing uneasy under his gaze.
"I watched you walk through the door with a smile on your face. You weren't stressed. You need to get help. Let me help you find someone." He openly pleaded with her his eyes begging for her to give in.
"It's not that bad." She wove lies around the images forming in her mind of hours of endless scrubbing, sanitizing, washing.
"What happened to your hands." He inquired softly.
Emma hadn't realized that Will could see her hands until he motioned to them. She jerked her arm away from his scrutiny embarrassed, caught. After the rehearsal yesterday she had scrubbed her kitchen counter for hours her skin left raw from the cleaning product she hadn't bothered to wear gloves for. She had felt too dirty, too exposed.
She wanted to crawl into a hole. Anything to get away from the interrogation that was starting to hit on things she didn't want to discuss, things she would rather pretend didn't exist. Nervously she smoothed out her already straight skirt not meeting his eyes.
"I was just cleaning." She stammered not believing what could never be true.
Cleaning had ceased to be something that could be classified as a normal domestic chore over two decades ago. Even if she concentrated she couldn't remember what it was like to do dishes without using half a bottle of soap or to leave the house without returning multiple times to make sure the door was locked. Some mornings it took her ten minutes just to get past the door. She didn't remember what it was like to sleep in either, always needing extra time in case a compulsion manifested.
"Without gloves?" He pressed when she didn't elaborate.
"I-," Emma felt her world closing in, the confrontation she had spent so long trying to avoid knocking at her disillusioned peace. "I just wanted to be clean." She whispered brokenly a single tear sliding down her cheek.
Will stood up maneuvering around her desk so that he could come up behind her placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. "I know you don't want to live this way anymore Emma." He whispered kneeling down beside her, wiping at her tears with his thumb. "This doesn't have to be you. You can get your life back."
"This is my life!" She defended not trying to contain the sob threatening to break free.
"No," Will turned her chair so that she was facing him."This has just been your life for so long that you don't remember the old one."
Emma gazed up at him through her tears. Maybe he was right. Maybe everything she had come to know about her current existence hinged on her playing prisoner to her disorder. She wanted to know what it was like to live in a world where she wasn't preoccupied with germs and keeping clean. She wanted to get dirty, to laugh with Will when chalk dust accidently transferred to her body instead of becoming rooted to the spot. She wanted a normal life.
"I don't even know where to start." Emma admitted embarrassed that she had thrown away the business card he had once given her.
"A phone call is always a good place." Will smiled producing the card she had once abandoned in the trash convinced she didn't need the therapy he had suggested.
Emma smiled taking the card her eyes focusing on the crumpled t-shirt that rest behind it on the floor, the letters that had started the whole conversation barely visible. Maybe if she worked hard enough they would be that way in real life too, delegated to the sidelines.
With a trembling hand she picked up the phone determined at least until her mind tried to convince her that she couldn't live without what had been her constant companion for so much of her life that she would no longer let three letters define everything she was.
A/N: Thoughts?