Her fingers drew gracefully, boarderlining on lazy over the ivory and black keys of the piano. She was playing her heartache in a song. She had always taken to music. An expression of emotion that lacked seriously in her life. Today was a day to be happy. Today was a day of forgiving, and yet could she really? Tamara had opted to marry Neal after all. After chasing through hell to find Henry, and then going to find him, almost killing herself, he still chose the other woman.
She didn't say anything out loud. Her mind said everything. Her mind went through a haphazard collection of memories with him. Her first love, her first major steal, her first trust, her first child, her first mistake. But he hadn't said anything to her. He was getting married here, in Storybrooke, so his father could see his son get married. She supposed he had at least thought of that. Considerate.
Emma's fingers stilled against the ivory keys. She walked to the table where the bridesmaids dress sat, unopened, unworn, unlooked at yet. She was debating wether or not to go. She debated and fought for her worn heart, but settled. She had broken things where her heart should be.
She unzipped the garment bag to find a tragically beautiful dress. It was beautiful, she would even admit that. An a-line, thigh high split midnight blue floor length dress with an off the shoulder neckline. It was beautiful. She ran her fingers daintilly over the delicate Spanish fabric. She saw the note to wear light gold makeup from Tamara. She sighed and went to take a shower. She walked up the stairs slowly.
She turned on the faucet of the shower in her bathroom and sat on the toilet and began to cry. It wasn't the kind of cry you gave when you were breaking up with someone, it was the kind of cry you gave when you lost your best friend. It was the kind of cry you cried when someone died. Her mind wandered to what she did wrong-why was she not good enough? She had done everything right. She had saved her son, she had saved Neal. She just hadn't saved herself.
The rain starts to bead and pound its sorrowful rythum against the window in her bathroom. She stands to briefly look at the couples running from the rain- and they were happy. She had given them happiness. In fact, she had given happiness to everyone in this damned town, except for herself. And she was a wreck because of it.
On her nights she cried, cried so hard wishing for this pain to end. But it wouldn't. The pain would never end, and no one would ever love her the way she loved him and that was the facts about it. She wasn't her parents. She wasn't Snow white and fucking Prince Charming. She was Emma Swan, the broken doll whose cracks on her porcelain face showed more and more each passing day.
She was drowning in this liquid death called life and no one was trying to save her. Her parents hadn't noticed, and you would think, no hope, that they would know their daughter. But they didn't. No one did and it killed her on the inside. It killed her that people she would die for, wouldn't do the same for her.
She took her clothes off and saw the marks she had made on her body. Cuts. Small but telling. No one had noticed. She didn't hide them well because she wanted to be found. She wanted someone to come and save her. She needed someone to come and save her and she prayed-no hoped again- that someone would.
But she knew no one would. She would continue this drowning game for a very long time, until life finally decided to help her and kill her. This was just the prolouge before her death. She stepped under the shower, and the water, although scadling hot didn't penetrate through her numb, cold and practically dead skin. You can't hurt an empty shell.
Her mind rang with promises, now made empty.
"We'll protect you," They said. They lied.
"We'll always be here for you," They said. They lied.
"We're never going to leave you," They said. A lie that was still stinging it's way through.
"We love you." They said. Perhaps the most believeable, and most lovely and evil to think of, to promise . But a lie, and the biggest, deepest one yet that no amount of time could heal.
And the people who made those promises? They walked away unharmed. They were singing in fields of blissful oblivousness to her pain. She was drowning. People had always told her drowning, what a beautiful and pleasureable way to go, but it was pure agony. You think of all the ways to ask for help when drowning, you beg for people to see you, to help you because you can't hold on any longer, but you never can exactly voice this.
You can't ask for help, not because you can't, but you can't burden them more with your pitiful cries, and thought seep into your brain that they will be happy when you're gone, because you won't burden them any longer. You won't hurt them, you won't cause them grief and pain and misery, you'll just be a droplet of water falling in a hailstorm of your own creation and fall into the ocean floor never to be heard from again. Forgotten.
And she knew this. She knew it was for the better. So she faked a smile, lying to herself and everyone else around her because they had to deal with her, so couldn't she at least make the job easier? Couldn't she at least be the better person? She had tried to drown her demons, but hell they knew how to swim, they also knew how to sink others. Clawing their way to the top of her mind, the top of her soul and thriving on the cuts marking her body.
She remembered the night, where she had gotten drunk with Hook (She called him Killian frequently, but she never said it to anyone but herself). He asked her if she was always sad. Always is such an awfully long time, a long, long, long time. And she couldn't because she tried to assure herself that she had known happiness and love once, but had She? She, in defense, asked him the same question and he laughed.
"I'm always angry, the most tragic kind of angry too. The one where you'll never feel better, nothing can fill this empty canvas inside of me." He said. And she understood in a way. She understood the emptiness. She thought Henry had filled it, no prayed, but he had left, gone back to Regina, because he actually believed in Regina. Emma was a means to an end, and she understood. You can't fix what's always been broken.
So Emma faked her smile, and got ready for the wedding, acting like she was happy, while secretly dying on the inside, painfully so. She remembered another conversation with Killian. "What is it like, you know? Being depressed?" He asked as if he was asking to borrow a pen. He was asking her a question she asked herself everyday. "It is drowning, and everyone else around you, they're breathing."