She betrays him with a kiss.
Perhaps in another life he might have felt something for the cruelty of the act and yet, as he is now…
…as he is now he simply accepts, allows her free without protistation and, when the clock strikes the hour, goes to meet his papa as they'd arranged the day previous.
Papa sees swiftly, grows serious in a way that pulls the ghost of a memory…heat and sickness and the scent of papa so very strong in his nose.
Asking gentle questions he makes him sit down on the old bed in the back of the shop and, once he has satisfied his curiosity, he steps back into the shop to make a hushed phone call.
Emma appears not long after, her face as empty as he feels, her voice so very hard as she accuses him of so many things, leaches eleven years of poision from her soul and then she takes his hand into hers, runs soft, soft, fingers over the burns as she tells him over and over that she loves him.
That always she has loved him no matter how foolish or painful the burden of that emmotion has felt and then she kisses him.
It is a desperate, empty, gesture for Tamara's enchanment has long since corrupted his heart and yet he understands that she needs to try.
Understands that this beautiful, irreplaceable, woman has made the choice to fight for him no matter how little deserves it or how little he wishes her to sacrifice further for his sake.
A cry and as she tenses he finds it in him to smile, to give her the goodbye long since owed, before he walks again from her life.
She screams a promise after him and though he little believes such happiness his fate the sentiment of the words boys him enough to envoke entirely misplaced, hysterical, laughter.
The wraith is there before him but a moment later and, as he feels the first edges of his soul pulling away from him, he hears papa screaming his name and, mouth twisted still in the ghost of laughter, he tells him, "look out for Henry," before, at last, the numbness lifts and his world reduces to simply pain.