notes: Twenty different sets of prompts for twenty different characters.
warnings: Huge spoilers, some pairings.
ad·den·dum
o1. Ema Skye
o1, serendipity—
The very first book her sister buys is about science.
When Ema turns thirteen, Lana gives it to her. The cover is blue, heavy and thick and worn-out from years of using, but the pages are very thin and fragile; Ema is very careful while handling it, so that her finger doesn't slip and rip the paper.
She spends the following weeks reading it, with a flashlight beneath the sheets and a smile on her lips as she strolls between sulfur and mercury, eyes pausing over test tubes and bubbly, colorful concoctions. It makes her imagination stretch, and she starts spending her allowance on fingerprint dust and luminol.
Years later, when she is twenty-five and her dream is nothing but a pile of ash beneath her feet, Ema doesn't know whether to hate or adore the manuscript.
o2, romance novels—
When all the girls from her class are busy shoving their noses into books that make their cheeks as pink as their cover, Ema is being swept off her feet by monthly magazines of law and science. The contrast between torrid passion and space physics is a wide one, and the fact that no one wants to sit beside her in Chemistry only underlines it.
"Ema," one of them asks her, one day after class, "You should read some books, sometimes. I'm not saying those science things are bad—" she giggles and Ema feels suddenly annoyed, "—it's just that, you know."
But Ema doesn't. And that's precisely why, one day, after school's over and she is left alone in the patio, that she heads towards a kiosk and buys herself a copy of the pinkest book among the others. Every time Ema reminds herself of the long, luscious words written against the yellow paper, she feels her cheeks heat—she swears never to buy another one again, but Sea of Infatuation is still on her bookshelf, just behind a wide, boring book about cellules.
o3, scientific process—
She almost automatically goes through a scientific process to determine every single unimportant thing.
It's force of habit by now, because even when she's eating her snackoos, feet propped above the table as she waits for the forensics to give her a test she could do with her eyes closed, she's thinking of the way gravity affects Earth. It starts with equations and calculations of radius and diameters, but it suddenly ends with a vivid image of herself, in space, swimming after stars and comets (and snacks).
When Klavier knocks on her door, with his moronic smile on his face, she falls down her chair and the bag lands under her left thigh, with a noisy crunch as a sound effect. As she looks up to him, eyes narrowed and teeth grinding against each other, she's already thinking about the best way to hurt him, and the necessary process for her to follow so that she can succeed.
It's very funny and all, but sometimes she witnesses things as if they're a car crash: slowly and deadly and painfully, with cold precision and cruel logic.
o4, pacifist—
She herself assumes that her easy, quirky disposition is a thing of the past, and that the bitterness that she blatantly affixes to her mood is something that most people find natural already. It's because it's easier for her not to be hurt if she's the one doing all the hurting herself—she's learned this from her sister, so when Wright tells Trucy it's a family tradition, and doesn't explain further, Ema quickly (painfully) understands what he's talking about.
Sometimes, she hears the other detectives through the door to the cafeteria; she hears the way they say it's a pedigree thing, or she hears the tone of pity and scorn when they whisper that it's because she wasn't good enough to pass forensics' test. And while Ema doesn't correct them, it isn't because she doesn't want to or because she's afraid of the repercussions.
It's because she can't: they are absolutely, flippantly correct, and she's learned that the truth is the only way for her to thrive. Because Ema is no pacifist.
It's a family thing.
o5, hugs and kisses—
Ema doesn't tell anyone, but when Lana is under Gant's care, she always arrives home exhausted and in no mood for a child's antics.
So Ema is basically forced to eat alone, sleep alone, live alone. She remembers the cold mornings in which she'd go to school by bus because her sister had long gone to work, she remembers birthdays with empty houses and a quickly scribbled-on happy birthday note on the kitchen table.
When she sees Trucy and Apollo, a spark in their glance, her eyes start to sting and her throat weakens, because Ema never had any complicity with her most close – with her only sibling. That's why, when Trucy asks her, with a big, wide smile on her face, if she'd like a hug to cheer up, Ema feels a tear run down her cheek.
Apollo only stares at her when she blames it onto allergies, because he knows. But he still takes the child by the hand, until all that's left inside her office is the broken shell of a woman and all the fears she still carries on her heart.