They had watched with wary eyes when she had slowly started slipping his name into casual conversation, and even more slowly skipping out of regular dates with them. They knew something was up, and they didn't like it. But she was stubborn, and they knew she wouldn't listen. She would do whatever it was she wanted, and they could only watch with bated breath and hope he didn't destroy her.
They had tried, of course. Of course they tried. There were screaming matches, tears, a few pieces of crockery smashed in rage. She was so stubborn. But they tried, God help them. They tried.
They never stopped fighting for her. They tried to get her to promise to spend more time with them. They arranged coffee dates, sleepovers, study sessions. And they watched, helpless, as she slipped further and further away from him. They loved her; he didn't; she couldn't see. He knew, of course. He knew exactly what he was doing and he knew how much it killed them to watch. He knew she was stubborn. He knew she would never listen. They felt his smug satisfaction whenever she left early, felt it like a knife in the heart.
They watched as she became smaller and smaller, her waist size decreasing as quickly as the wattage of her smile. They watched as she spoke less and less, her eyes dimming and her face darkening.
And they cried, secret, silent tears, because she denied he was hurting her. She denied that he was a poison. She claimed he loved her, and she did not listen when they told her that was a lie.
"Goodbye." It was said with such a complexity of feelings, it was almost flat.
Relief.
He hurt her, there at the end, maybe for the entirety of the relationship. She was never good enough for him, and that made him angry, always. He didn't hit her, usually, but the verbal blows hit just as hard.
Sadness.
She loved him. Stupidly, completely. She had no idea why-maybe because he was the first to tell her she was beautiful. But she didn't really want to think she was that shallow. Maybe she loved him because-well. What did it matter? She just did.
Anger.
They were taking her away from him. They were taking her away. She wasn't a child. She could make her own decisions. She could. But they weren't letting her. They were treating her like a child, smothering her.
Pain.
Pain because when he wasn't mad-which was perhaps eighty or eighty-five percent of the time-he was the best thing that ever happened to her.
Loss.
He was her best friend, and to be without him was a searing loss. A burning, like a flame burning bright, burning her feelings and her heart and leaving her empty.
Desperation.
She didn't want him to be hurt. Even after all that had happened, after all the emotional scars and the tears. He couldn't be hurt. It wasn't allowed, wasn't right.
But she had to be strong now, and face the fact that the black car was pulling away and she was standing on the curb in the rain, under the grey sky and her best friend held a bright red umbrella over her to protect her from the rain.
He had never protected her.
He'd kept her out of the rain, and made her tea, and held her when she was sad, but he didn't protect her from his wrath-he made her the object of it.
He'd bruised her and broken her, made her shed bitter angry tears that she couldn't be good enough, and he just laughed and laughed.
He had treated her like a child. Like she was stupid.
He had hurt her.
She didn't need him.
She looked up at her best friend. "Killian? I need you to take me somewhere."
"Anywhere," Killian replied simply, and that was that.
The rain spattered against the window of the car and soaked the earth in cold damp, covering the once-vibrant autumn with dreary grey.
Inside the car, in the backseat behind the passenger side, Emma savagely slammed the right side of the circle on her iPod to shuffle to a new song. Any song. Any song but that song.
"You sure about this, kiddo?" Killian asked from the front seat, turning around to examine her with his dark sea-blue eyes. He always called her 'kiddo,' never mind that he was a scant three years older than her. "I mean, it's raining, for one."
She merely nodded, clutching the object in her hands tighter.
The box. The stupid, stupid box.
It looked like just an old Converse shoe box, which was true, in a way. But it was more than just an old shoe box. It was the holder of her past.
Killian turned left, and the red-haired passenger sitting to his right looked at the girl in the backseat again.
"I'm fine, Ariel," Emma finally said, getting annoyed.
"No, you're not," Ariel replied, her voice quiet and sad. "But you will be," she added after a long pause. "You will be."
They pulled up by an abandoned house. It was more of a shack, really, with broken windows and probably got all kinds of cited for an extreme lack of safety. Ariel steered carefully clear of it—it looked like it would fall apart any minute.
The girl exited the car, pulling her navy hood up over her blonde hair. She passed the shack with a long look, then went beyond it to a fast-moving creek with a rusty red metal bridge.
Ariel opened her mouth to tell Emma to be careful—the bridge looked like it could fall apart any second—but Killian put a hand on her shoulder. "She'll be fine," he said quietly. "She needs this."
On the bridge, the girl's hand went to her neckline, and she pulled sharply whatever was hanging there.
With a very faint snap, a thin chain broke and a swan pendant—silver and smallish, nothing incredibly special—glinted dully in her hand.
She held it tightly for a moment, then threw it with all her might into the river, her face determined and stern.
Killian could see the heartbreak.
In that moment, Ariel understood what Killian knew from the beginning: they weren't there to help Emma get rid of the pain. They were there to help pick up the pieces, but Emma had to heal herself. That was simply how she was.
Throwing the locket seemed to have broken whatever barriers Emma had, and she began to shred everything in the now-soggy box: letters, pictures, ticket stubs. As she demolished them, slowly, methodically, the wind picked up and carried some of the pieces away.
Others landed in the river and floated away until, waterlogged, they sank to the bottom.
When she was done, Emma put the box on the ground and stomped on it.
Again.
And again.
When it was completely flat, and disintegrating from the rain, she slowly walked away, pale yellow curls plastered to her face.
Without a word, Ariel opened up a giant red umbrella and covered the three under it.
After a while, Emma exhaled and said, "And the world keeps turning."
And somehow, Killian and Ariel knew she would be okay. That she would move past it. That she would bounce back.
They didn't expect it to be easy. They knew dark days were ahead. But there would be—had to be—light somewhere too. There would be good days, happy days, and slowly those would outweigh the bad.
Yes, dark days were coming—days when Emma would scream and kick and cry and hurt. Days where she would hate them for keeping her where she was instead of letting her chase after what they all knew were hopeless dreams.
But Emma was resilient. She might resist healing, for a while, but she wasn't made for sulking. She was vibrant, alive, even if she was currently covered by sorrow. That would lift, because she hated to be sad. She was broken, but she would heal. Eventually.
Somehow, Emma would pull through, stronger than before.