"Dear mother, dear father, you clipped my wings before I learned to fly

Unspoiled, unspoken, I've outgrown that fucking lullaby

Same thing I've always heard from you; do as I say, not as I do

Innocence torn from me without your shelter, barred reality, I'm living blindly."

- Dyers' Eve, Metallica

~0~

Days like this are the worst.

The rain pours down so hard and fast that Emerald can't see anything outside the wide front window of the bakery. Though the place is small and warmed by the heat of the ovens, she still shivers to look and be reminded that she'll soon have to run back out into that.

Of course, it's out of nervousness as much as chill. This is a first-time mark for her, and nothing about it puts her at ease. It's late afternoon, near closing time, so there's only two or three other people inside, but that just gives her less to blend in with. And the man behind the back counter - who looks as if he should be breaking bones in the prizefighting ring instead of here baking pastries - had snorted derisively when she'd hurried through the door, and in the few minutes since, had barely taken his eyes off her, contempt and judgment clear in them.

She knows how she looks; a stick-thin preteen in a filthy, overlarge shirt and tattered shorts, soaked to the skin and looking over his precious loaves of bread with broken, dirty fingernails is not something any shopkeeper who gives a shit wants to see on his property. She guesses that the only reason he hasn't chased her out yet is because of her new trick: reach into her empty pocket and ruffle around in it, while slipping the sound of clicking plastic and glimpses of Lien cards into the man's mind, making him think that she is a paying customer, if a distasteful one.

Emerald swallows, trying very, very hard not to look at him, only at the paper-wrapped bread arranged on the table before her as if hung up about which one to buy. She doesn't want to be here. She'd have a much easier time with the convenience stores further downtown, where the tall shelves hid her better, the workers usually didn't give her a second glance, and she could grab bottles of water and one of those huge boxes of crackers that would keep much longer than bread. But lately there were more and more obstacles popping up between her and a bite to eat there: her Semblance didn't work on security cameras, her face was becoming too familiar, as someone who came in often but never could seem to buy a thing, and eventually even the laziest, most apathetic workers are bound to notice something at some point.

So here she is, so scared her stomach is doing backflips and struggling not to give herself away by trembling too much. But if she can pull this off right, she's only seconds away from her first meal in days. Taking a deep, steadying, hopefully inconspicuous breath, and picks up the biggest loaf of bread within her reach. She pretends she didn't just feel the shopkeeper's glare intensify like a hot dagger to her neck, pretends to simply be examining her choice, while in reality she's trying to concentrate. It's more difficult than she'd thought; she hadn't expected her head to start hurting so bad so fast. Even without the voice in the back of her mind -

("You won't ever do that to me again!")

Don't think about it! Don't look...Don't look...just focus, right over there, behind him, picture it...

Damn it, this is so hard, too hard, she should have practiced more but it hurt too much, she can't use her Semblance on someone she can't see, she should just forget it and go but the bread is fresh and warm in her hands and it's so big and she's so hungry -

Now!

"Wha - ?!" the shopkeeper squawks. He spins around, eyes bulging, to the nonexistent crash of metal behind him. The other two customers look up, startled at the random outburst. And Emerald is off like a shot, tucking the bread under her arm and bursting out the door, cringing at the chirpy ring of the mounted bell announcing her flight. The torrential rain is coming down even harder than before, like a thousand sharp, freezing needles assailing her. Its rushing, splattering sounds are loud in her ears, playing counterpoint to her pounding pulse, but not so loud that she can't hear the shopkeeper's wordless roar of rage behind her. She turns her head, chances a look through the front window, and her heart leaps into her throat.

Did he just vault over the counter?! Seriously?!

The man - the absolutely gigantic man - throws open the front door and starts barreling down the street after her, fists clenched and eyes wide and bloodshot, and a strangled gasp escapes her. She sprints even faster, shoving and elbowing past the staring passers-by flooding the narrow sidewalk (all of a sudden there's too many of them, a wall of flesh moving to trap her), as she hears the all-too-familiar hunting cry booming behind her.

"Thief! Thief! Stop her!"

Desperate to escape, she wheels around and bolts down the closest alleyway. There's no way she can fight this guy off, she thinks frantically, but even up here, Mitsubachi's backstreets have a way of becoming downright labyrinthine to those who don't know them, so she might be able to lose him. If there's one thing she's gotten very, very good at, it's running. She can hear thundering footsteps splashing through the puddles behind her, but she knows that big, heavy opponents can run hard, but not fast. And certainly not for too long, either; when they chase her like this they lose steam within a minute, before they can get near her -

"I'm going to catch you, brat!"

Emerald startles and very nearly slips on the wet stone. Shit! That's too close!

She had thought that she was running as fast as she could, but sheer terror spurs her on even faster. Everything starts to pass her in a dark grey and black blur, and she moves by reflex alone, the instincts of a rat fleeing a wild dog. Walls fly by, rain blurs her vision and rushes in her ears, she turns one corner, then turns another, runs down an empty street, turns, turns, runs straight, turns, glances back, runs straight -

"Ow!"

- into something hard and splintery. Dazed, rubbing her scraped forehead, Emerald looks up, and her heart drops when she sees the wooden fence set up before her, right in the middle of the narrow alleyway: a few wide, thick boards looming above her head, with towering apartment buildings on either side of her. Surprise only holds her still for a second, before panic sets her off again. Clutching the bread tighter under her arm, she jumps up and grabs the pointed top of a board, hooking her other arm over it.

The wood is wet and rotten, and she can only hope it won't break under her weight, slight as she is. It shouldn't be that hard, she reassures herself, she's hopped plenty of damn fences. The rain beats down on her upturned face, and the worn, tractionless soles of her shoes scrabble against the slick surface. The wood makes an ominous creaking sound as she pulls herself up, and she can hear her pursuer still close by, but she can't look back, she's almost home free!

But just as she's about to throw herself over the fence, those footsteps reel around the corner into the alley, and a wide, meaty hand grabs the back of her shirt and flings her out into the building by their side. She cries out in pain as her thin body slams against the concrete wall, and the loaf of bread flies from her hand and drops to the filthy wet cement along with her. Unthinking - the only thing in her head is a desperate siren of terror - she makes to grab for it, but is kicked back against the wall the instant she tries.

Before she can do anything - beg, flee, bargain - the man is bearing down on her, fists bigger than her head pummeling every inch of her he can reach. She screams, cries like a beaten dog, and tries to scramble away, but he won't let her under the storm of blows. Her ears ring and her vision flashes red with every hit, her nose is crushed with a sickening crack, and she can feel skin and bone bruising fiercely. And in between it all is what little she can understand of the man's bellowing and cursing her:

"...teach you to - fucking little - should have just - piece of shit thief!"

She only barely hears it, she doesn't care. All she can think to do is try weakly to shield herself, curl up like a ball like an insect, with her knees tucked up into her chest, arms crossed in front of her face, and eyes shut tight.

Stop it, please stop, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please, please, please just stop!

It might have been seconds, it might have been a few more agonizing minutes, but eventually it does stop. She doesn't relax, doesn't even dare to breathe, but the fists stop coming and she hears the man straighten up, huffing with exhaustion. The next noise he makes sounds more like a bear's growl than human speech, to her ears.

"You..." The slam of a boot on the ground; she flinches as foul-smelling water is splashed into her face. "That better have taught you a lesson, you little rat. You're lucky I don't drag you to the cops right now."

Don't move, don't look, don't move, don't look, oh, gods, please, don't...

There's no more. Another moment of tense silence, and then the sound of the man's footsteps retreating, growing fainter and farther away until she can't hear them any more. Even then, it takes a few minutes before she can relax the painful tension of her muscles and uncurl herself again. In that time, no one comes, not to help and not to hurt. She supposes that that, if nothing else, is fortunate.

Her head is spinning, and she's going to have so many bruises later. But it doesn't feel like she's got a concussion, or like anything's broken, or permanently damaged. Still, it's slow going, pulling herself back up to her feet. As if her legs are made of rubber, she wobbles, staggers, braces one hand against the wet brick wall before she's able to stand without nearly keeling over. Her legs still shake, but she tries to walk anyway.

Come on. Keep walking. Walk. One step at a time. No sense in lying here all day. Walk. It's going to be okay.

Emerald makes it up to a relatively steady standing position. Her ribs are already aching with every breath, even before she tries to move. She takes one small step, that sends pain shooting up her legs. Then another, then...Half of another. She nearly trips on that third step, and by chance her eyes land on the loaf of bread on the ground, that she'd almost forgotten.

It's barely recognizable as the same thing she'd laid her hands on not five minutes ago. The bread had flown out of the paper wrapping, and been quickly reduced to mush by the rain relentlessly pounding on top of it and the muddy water puddling below. It hardly even looks like food anymore. But...It's still there.

Hot tightness grips her throat, and she immediately swallows hard and digs her nails into her palms to stave off the tears before they can come. Don't be such a baby, Emerald scolds herself, and stumbles toward it.

She bends down and scoops the soggy mess into her hands, trying her best to hold it together. The one blessing she has ever been given in this life, she thinks as she shoves the first bite in her mouth, is that she was born without a gag reflex.

It's a long way through the backstreets, and the pain in her legs and ribs only gets worse with every step. She manages to eat the ruined bread at a steady pace, and she makes it near the end of the last alley. There's a dumpster there, and the back doors she'd passed had been for food places, she thinks, maybe it's worth a try...Barely anyone's passing by, no one should see if she just waits a second...

Against her better judgment, she shifts her grip on the bread so she can stealthily push the dumpster's lid up so she can at least peek in. It clunks faintly, but doesn't budge one bit. Locked. Of course. Hardly any of them are open these days. And if they are, all the food's covered in fucking bleach or something. Just to spit in her face. She can't even get the satisfaction of slamming the stupid thing shut before she stumbles the last few feet to the end of the alley.

Fuck it. Her lungs are killing her and her head is still floaty and spinning...She has to stop. Drop, more like: her knees give out and she winces as her backside hits the rough concrete harder than she'd meant to. Well...At least she hadn't landed in another puddle, she tries to reassure herself.

That does not, however, make her any less cold or less wet. She sits on the edge of the alley and the sidewalk, at the side of the dumpster, and forces the next bites into her mouth. There's a shop on her other side, but the awning over its front is too short by far to provide her with any protection from the rain. She looks around for a stray sheet of cardboard, or something else that she could maybe prop up over herself, but no good. She'd managed to get her hands on a coat a few weeks ago, and a nice big one too (winter is coming on fast and pneumonia with it, as always, and even if she wasn't going to be sick northern Mistrali cold is torture enough), but it had been stolen off her while she slept just the other day.

Emerald shivers, and not entirely from the cold. She's lucky that's all that had happened, before she had woken up and run away. Thank gods her Semblance is perfect camouflage.

Mechanically, she keeps biting at the bread, hoping it didn't pick up anything on the ground that will make her sick later. She can't afford to throw this up...She should be figuring out what to do next, but she's tired and she hurts and she's cold and wet and — !

Calm down. Just...Just try and take a second to rest?

Gingerly, she leans back against the brick wall, looking at the street beside her. There's no cars on the street, but plenty of pedestrians walking up and down the sidewalk on both sides. Scanning her surroundings, she can spot a few people like her around, too. One boy about her age, hurrying by with a downturned face and shoes held together by duct tape, with a tarp held over his head to protect him from the rain. A woman with long, matted hair, sitting on the stoop of an apartment building down the street, hunched over under multiple mismatched layers of clothes, a piece of cardboard with a black marker message on it propped against her knees. An old man sitting on the corner across the street, twitching, wild-eyed and wild-haired, with a single Lien card dropped into the overturned hat in front of him. None of them make eye contact with her, and she doesn't mind that.

She doesn't need anybody, she tells herself. It doesn't matter that she's overlooked, when she's not causing trouble. Nobody else cares, why should she?

She's lost count of how many times she's tried to remind herself of things like this. And yet, it's never cooled the hot needle of shame and anger that stabs at her heart, when they look at her like that. The people who pass right by her with nice warm clothes and wide umbrellas to protect them from the sleet, who have money and homes and families and lives to go back to, who glance down at her for a split second and then hurriedly look away again, the way you look and not-look at a particularly disgusting piece of roadkill splattered across the street. Again and again and again, every single one of them.

Emerald's body is still frozen to the bones but her belly turns hot with anger. She knows what they're thinking: they wish she didn't exist, they wish they didn't have to see or think about her, they wish she would disappear, or at least go away. But where do they think she's going to go?! Not home, certainly. They'd be happy if she just laid down and died, she thinks, gritting her teeth around another mouthful of bread mush. But not here, oh no. Somewhere away from decent people, where nobody has to see something like her.

She huffs, and bites her lip to try to cut off that train of thought. Going off on a mental tangent makes her feel righteously furious, but it won't fill her belly any. And it won't distract her from the other, even worse part of it all that just won't get out of her head, no matter how long it's been or how hard she tries to put it behind her.

Home.

Even after five years of roaming around Mitsubachi on her own, Emerald still knows exactly how far she is from that basement apartment at the east end of the city. She still hasn't gotten up the guts to go anywhere near back there, either, even if she isn't sure Mom even lives there anymore. She knows also that she's not a little kid anymore, and what's Mom going to do to her, anyway, if she does run into her again? She could use her Semblance to get out if -

("GET OUT!")

She gives her head a small shake; it's still ringing in her skull. And those hard green eyes and sharp nails...She feels more nauseous than before. Yeah, no. Best to keep her distance. The panicked, childish whine of I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home had taken a long time to stop. But eventually it had, and she's glad of it now.

Mom doesn't want her. Fine. Emerald doesn't need her, not one bit. She doesn't need her and she doesn't need a —

"Nice family!" Her eyes flick to the old man across the street, who has half risen from his corner with arms flung wide, at a middle-aged couple and their sons, not too much younger than Emerald. He isn't going to hurt them, even she can see that; she isn't sure he's able to move his legs, from what she can see of how he moves. "Excuse me! You're such a nice family - Please, could you just give me a little - ?"

The boys stare determinedly up and ahead, as if nothing is happening. The man wrinkles his nose and walks faster, while the woman looks distressed, surreptitiously taking her Scroll out, dialing three numbers, and putting it to her ear.

All right then, time to go, Emerald decides, scarfing down the last of the bread and swallowing hard. She's been tased and smashed with nightsticks before, and she has absolutely zero desire to repeat the experience. The hooded lady and her sign have already made themselves scarce, she sees as she gets up and walks as fast as she can down the street.

Against her better judgment, she turns to take one last look at the scene behind her. The father is glaring back over his shoulder as the mother talks rapidly into her Scroll, no doubt trying to sound as frightened and appalled as she can. The old man looks confused at them more than anything.

Emerald grimaces before turning back and quickening her pace, just a little. She hopes the cops won't hurt him too badly. Like the rest of them, he doesn't have anyone around to protect him. Sturns her eyes forward again, determined to pay the idea no more mind. She's seen such things before and she won't stop seeing them anytime soon, so she might as well just stop letting it all get to her. And just as well...

There's people walking in front of her, at varying distances. She inspects each one of them, gauging the risk versus reward of picking any of them as potential marks. She hadn't been careful enough, before, she should have practiced more. It's no excuse that every time she uses her Semblance -

("You little freak, stay out of my head!")

Emerald bites her lip. It's not wrong to have it, she tells herself for the millionth time, it's not. It's her Semblance, there can't be anything wrong or bad or disgusting about it. Her mom is the one that's wrong, and yet...She still feels the ache in her gut and sharp sting on her scalp whenever she musters up the nerve to use it. It's what landed her out here on the gods-damned street, after all.

Whining's not going to put food in your mouth, she chides herself. Just suck it up. Stupid brat.

Okay...There's a small hole-in-the-wall cafe on the corner of the street. Outdoor seating. No fence or railing to block off the round picnic tables with umbrellas over them. A girl in a bright green raincoat, only a few years older than her underneath the big hood, is the only one still there and her eyes are glued to her Scroll. Her pocketbook, more of a backpack looking thing, is hanging on the back of her chair, by only one strap. Where in the hell does she think she lives, Emerald wonders, that she can be so careless?

Everyone else is either looking determinedly ahead on their courses or down at the sidewalk, as it and the street are both still running with water. No security or cops or unfairly beefy shop owners around to stop her. She can do it. She can do it. She just has to be brave. Reach for her Aura...

("You stay away from me!")

She has to fight not to let her face contort in rage. Why won't Mom just go away? Not like that's an abnormal thing for a parent to do, anyways...

Focus, you dumbass.

It's a simple enough thing. Even if she were just a dime-a-dozen purse snatcher, it would be simple. But she is a cut above other thieves by her inborn ability alone...even if her lack of experience shoves her roughly back down to their level again. As she approaches the girl, she works up her nerve and concentrates on her visible temple. For an instant, the girl sees a mysterious flash of bright red in the cafe window in front of her, and her head jerks up in shock. And while she squints at the window trying to figure out what in the hell she just saw, Emerald takes the strap of the pocketbook in her hand without looking or breaking stride, slipping it onto her own shoulder as if it belonged to her all along.

She doesn't remember where she learned it, but she was taught that if you run when there's no one chasing you, you only make yourself look more suspicious. And she has no intention of being the one to trigger another chase. She turns the corner, out of sight, and heads back towards her usual haunts back downtown. Head up, eyes alert, and if anyone gives her a second glance, she changes the bag on her shoulder into a dripping-wet black garbage bag. She isn't sure that it's a very convincing illusion - she's not good with details yet - but she only has to do it a few times and it seems to work.

It's almost an hour's walk before Emerald finally makes it to somewhere that's usually safe. She'd been sleeping in an underpass for the past few weeks, but too many people complained about the increasing amount of sheet tents and mattresses on the side of their road, and she'd had to bolt from a police raid in the middle of the night. Parking lots and garages are tempting to sneak into to sleep, but she always ends up chased out within hours by security. When she was younger, she'd slept on benches and outside closed stores, but now it seems like every place she looks, there's stainless steel dividers in the benches and black iron spikes in the sidewalk, that tell her very clearly where they'd all like her to go instead. She's heard that there's a burgeoning tent city of some sort a distance outside the city proper, in the forest, but...It's not like she's ever actually seen a Grimm before, but she knows she'd never like to risk meeting one. It's safer to stay here.

So, for the past couple days, Emerald been hiding out in a few different places far, far downtown, where there's not quite as much police presence. There's a school that was shut down a few months back and still not turned into anyplace else; the blacktop is partially out of sight, and so far, she hasn't seen anything in the way of cops or security guards. It's getting dark now, and the pawn shop will be closed by now. So she'll hang onto the bag for the night, and stop in first thing in the morning.

When she walks onto it, she finds that she's not quite alone. In the opposite corner of the chain link fence and dark brick, there's a much different kind of family than before: a man trying to keep two toddlers and a girl too small and thin for Emerald to reasonably determine her age in his arms, as they keep trying to run away to play in the rain and puddles. They look at her like a pack of raccoons in the dark, eyes dark and glinting in the streetlights, the kids curiously and the father glaring as if preparing to have to claw her away. She glares back, hand moving to her hip; with a flash of her Semblance, the man sees the glint of a knife under her shirt. There's a sliver of dry-ish space from the slant of the roof on each side, and she lays herself down on it. Satisfied that she won't be bothered so long as she doesn't move from here, she turns on her side to hide the pocketbook from sight and starts to paw through it.

Tissues, perfume, mints, eyeglasses case, pen, a...roll of duck-patterned duct tape for some reason? Those were all right, she guesses, but nearer to the bottom, and in the side pockets...Some green Lien cards and a layer of change, sanitary pads, full water bottle and bag of fruit snacks, a wallet with more cash and change, ID, and — !

Emerald's brows furrow as she digs out a small fabric-lined box at the very bottom of the bag. It has an easily opened clasp, and she keeps it well inside the bag as she snaps it open. And when she does, she has to fight to keep the shock from showing on her face at the sight of a thin, gleaming chain, with a big jewel cut in a heart and set in silver in the center. The gemstone is beautiful, glittering green. Especially after a day like today, she can hardly believe her luck: all she has to do is keep it safe for the night and soon she'll get...

Well, she has no actual idea of its value, she's not smart like that, but she can still take it to the pawn shop first thing in the morning. Grisa will know what it's worth, or if she doesn't, one of her rotating employees/grandchildren will. It's tempting to think about all the things she could buy, but it's bad luck to get her hopes up before the new item is actually in her hands. And even then it could just as easily be snatched away from her.

Don't you ever take anything for granted, baby doll, comes that soft, sinuous voice again at the back of her mind. The voice that comes within a hairsbreadth of caring about her. She can practically feel the sharp thumbnail running over her lip. Don't you ever think that anything is yours to keep forever.

Emerald grits her teeth. Mom had absolutely lost her shit about Emerald's newfound ability to get in her head, and now she won't get out of Emerald's head. It might be funny if it weren't so annoying. And it wouldn't be so annoying if Mom weren't actually right about so many things. She replaces the necklace and slips the box into her pants pocket, hoping the outline doesn't show too obviously.

She rolls over again, closing the pocketbook and clutching it to her chest with both arms like a teddy bear. She would use it as a pillow - it'd be better than the thick black asphalt - but this is safer. She's not going to lose this like she lost her coat. The man across the blacktop is gathering the children to him the same way, eyes still alternating between glaring warningly at her and making sure that they are all accounted for. His age is uncertain, from the dinginess of his wrinkled skin and shaggy state of his hair and beard, as is what his relationship to the children might be. Might be a grandpa, or an older uncle of some kind. Might not be any blood of theirs at all.

But Emerald's instincts say dad. And it's another thought that makes her grind her teeth so hard she's probably going to hurt herself one day.

She doesn't know why she sometimes tries so hard to remember her father. Maybe it's the idea, that Mom so spitefully hammered into her head, that she looks just like Dad and if she looks into her reflection, she'll be looking at his face too. But even that doesn't jog her memory. To her, after so long, Jade Sustrai is two blurry flashes of memory.

One, a retreating back that she had looked up at, as it passed through a pale-lit doorway, and then the slam of the door in her face. Had she watched obliviously, happily awaiting his return? Fearfully, begging him not to go? She doesn't remember that part. She'll never know.

Two, the sharp clap of his hand flashing out to grab Mom's wrist, before her open palm slammed into his face. It was dark, but she thinks she remembers the angry curl of lips, a hiss of restrained fury - from which one? Had it worked, or had it only made Mom angrier, hurt him worse? Had that hand ever moved to protect her, like that? She wonders...But she doubts it.

It had taken a longer time for her to accept her Semblance, freakish anomaly that it was, than it had taken her to accept the hot, nauseating weight in the pit of her stomach: the realization that her father had walked out of her life, right before her eyes, with barely a goodbye. For a dumb little kid like she had been, the concept of permanence was...not yet a permanent thing. It had taken an embarrassingly long time to get it through her head that Dad was gone for good.

(Her and Mama sitting on the stairs in front of the apartment, in the cold morning air.

She squirms; the stone is hard and steep. "Is Daddy coming back soon?"

Mama snorts, pulling a cigarette out of the carton lying against her leg. She doesn't smoke very much, only when she's angrier than usual. "He's not coming back, Emerald. How many times have I told you?"

Plenty, but the repetition doesn't make it make sense. Daddy just went to work, like he does every day. He always comes back. "His note said he would be back soon. That we just had to wait for him."

Mama isn't looking at her. The green plastic lighter in her other hand snaps twice and then flickers to life. "Don't make me regret teaching you to read," she says, too flatly for Emerald to tell whether she's joking or not.

She doesn't understand what Mama is so upset about. Maybe she forgot how it works. "It's okay, Mama. Daddy leaves for a long time, sometimes. But he always comes back, and he brings stuff a lot of the time."

She considers telling Mama about the magic trick Daddy did before he left, that made her heart glow. But Mama hates it when he does his disappearing trick, and when Uncle Akashi makes people dizzy with his hands. So maybe best to keep that a secret.

The ember at the end of the lit cigarette glows bright, an orange pinprick in her mother's dark eyes. She takes a long drag and lifts her head up to breathe out a cloud of smoke, before she talks again. "Not this time, baby doll. It's been two weeks and not a trace of either Jade or Akashi. No explanation except that stupid note. I can tell what happened. We're on our own now."

Emerald resists the urge to pout. That's not true. "Daddy said he was coming back."

Mama looks her in the eyes. The corner of her mouth tugs up into a smirk, but Emerald doesn't see what's funny.

"Emerald, if you go through your life just believing everything that everyone tells you, you're going to have a bad time. I should never have trusted that rat bastard, let alone married him, but...Well." She gestures with the cigarette at Emerald, who still isn't quite sure what she means at times like this. "You'd better learn from this, baby girl. Don't you ever trust anyone who can get inside your head that easily. Who can fuck with your head and your heart, and you can't do anything about it."

Something weird twists in her belly, and she doesn't like it at all. It's hard to look at Mama's eyes, would be even through the smoke. "But he said. He promised."

Mama sighs heavily, her smirk dropping. She doesn't look mean anymore, she just looks...blank. Emerald still isn't sure which expression she's more afraid of. Her mother takes another long drag off the cigarette and blows upward again. "Your daddy said a lot of things he didn't really mean."

All of a sudden, her throat feels tight and it's hard to talk. Her voice comes out in a tiny squeak instead. "Daddy said he loves us."

Mama doesn't answer at first. She looks at Emerald, not blinking, with a strange look on her face. Not loving, but not glaring either. Something softens the slightest bit in the lines of that face, and she reaches out towards her daughter with her free hand.

"Oh, baby doll," she whispers, in that voice that's almost gentle. Almost sad. She runs her fingertip lightly down Emerald's cheeks and under her chin, back and forth; her one and only fully affectionate gesture. "What's going to happen to you?"

Emerald is never sure whether she's really looking for an answer, when she asks that question, but she figures she should give one anyway. "I don't know, Mama."

Mama makes a huffy kind of noise, that might be the beginning of a laugh. "Well. Maybe I'll be around to find out, maybe I won't." She pauses, tilts her head. "You know, you've got Jade's eyes exactly...With any luck, I won't notice anything else of him in you."

Emerald doesn't know what's lucky about that. "He's coming back soon," she tries again.

The fingers on her chin pause, too, grip a little tighter. Not enough to hurt, though. Mama sighs again, and there's still a trace of sadness in her eyes. "I almost wish he had died instead. That would have been easier to get through your head, wouldn't it? Might hurt less, too. At least he wouldn't have wanted to leave."

She still doesn't understand: why would Daddy want to leave? Where would he go? Why wouldn't he let her come along?

Mama is taking her hand off her, leaning back again. She's checking her messages on her Scroll's cracked screen, and taking one last long drag on her cigarette before putting it out on the sidewalk next to her.

"Come on, now. I've got customers coming," she says as she stands up, wiping her hand on her tattered jeans and reaching up to tighten her thick ponytail. "Looks like you'll be coming to work with me for a while."

Emerald crosses her arms and scoots back on the step. She doesn't like going to work with Mama instead of Daddy; she never gets to do anything to help and some of her customers act all weird. She's even seen Mama have to pull that gun she keeps under her shirt on them a couple times, so they'll stay away from her when they're like that. She still gives them the stuff in her bag, anyway, so long as they're able to give her the Lien in return.

But Mama is tugging her up by the arm, zipping up the thin jacket she's wearing over her dress. "I said come on, Emerald. You can't stay here. You want someone to break in and snatch you up, so you'll never see me again?"

Emerald's breath catches, and she grabs her mother's leg with both arms. "No!"

"Yeah, that's what I thought." Mama, not roughly, pulls her leg from Emerald's grip. She hitches up the straps of her backpack and starts down the street. Emerald hastily trots after her, and Mama reaches down for her. "Hold my hand, now. I don't want you running off on me too."

Emerald doesn't like not being able to run around, but she does like the feeling of her mother's hand clasped around hers. Mama holds her more tightly, when she cares to, but Daddy holds her soft and warm, enveloping her whole body in his arms. She hasn't thought before about which embrace she likes better, but she knows she misses Daddy's.

Mama is wrong, Emerald thinks, though she probably shouldn't tell her so again. Daddy will come back. He promised her he would, and her daddy would never lie. All she needs to do is wait, and she'll see him again soon. She knows it.)

She should have known better.

A wave of deep shame and embarrassment hits her when she feels that same tightness in her throat and stinging in her eyes. Five years since she'd last seen Mom, eight since she'd seen Dad, and still there are times when she can't stop herself from bawling like a baby about it. She's still so stupid, she still...

She can't look at the father and his kids across the blacktop again. She can't handle the longing, that grips her weak heart and squeezes tight, for the arms around her that she can barely remember. Even relative safety is a distant memory for her, now. She'd thought that unlocking her Semblance was a good thing; even at eight years old, she had known that being able to make someone see anything she wanted was a powerful thing. A useful thing. Cool, at least, as far as her young mind could see. She had thought her mom would be happy, if she were to show it to her...

Gods, I was just trying to make her happy...!

Mom throwing her out...She doesn't want to remember it, how terrified she'd been, how furious Mom had been. She's done her best to block it out, even if it does still stubbornly bleed through.

("I don't care where you go, just get away from me!"

She's never seen Mama so scared, so angry, in her life. As for her, she's frozen, tears slipping down her face, and all of a sudden she can't speak.

"M-Mama...? I-I'm sorry...I, I was just — "

"I said I don't care! I'm not letting something like you in my head! You really are just like your fucking father!"

"Mama!"

"Shut up! GET OUT!")

Her mother's hatred and resentment, mixed with her own until she can't tell the two apart, still burns in her blood. She'd been right, that one time: grieving somebody who was lost but not dead was a far more complicated pain. But even so, she thinks she could have handled it, if she hadn't been all alone...If she was like those little girls, piled up together in their dad's embrace, it wouldn't matter if her mom didn't want her, if she didn't have anywhere to live. She would have had a home.

But the father she had didn't seem to think she deserved that. She wasn't worth sticking around to protect. And she still has no idea what she had done wrong.

Emerald curls up tighter around the pocketbook, the rough and cracked asphalt digging into her soaked skin, and shuts her eyes tight against the hot tears. They're slipping out again, mingling with the cold rainwater still running down her cheeks. She hates herself for crying again, over two people who couldn't care less about her. Fuck him. Fuck her. Fuck them both for leaving her alone like this!

It hurts...!

Stop it. Shut up. Stupid brat. No one cares!

Forget about Mom and Dad. She has to keep herself under control, now. Every part of her hurts, she needs to sleep; no time to stay awake just to whine to herself all night.

Calm down...Calm down...Go to sleep, just go to sleep. Shh. Shhh...

Every muscle is tensed to run at a moment's notice, should someone give her another rude awakening, and her eyes are shut painfully tight. The rain is still pelting her and pooling under her, and she feels like a drowned rat. Or a trod-upon one, soaked and sore to the bones.

It doesn't matter. She's fallen asleep feeling worse. All she has left to do is pray that no one will touch her tonight, and that her sleep will be dreamless.

~0~

Emerald wakes up in the morning getting the sense that only one of those prayers came true, but it doesn't matter; whatever awful thing she'd dreamed that had woken her up still in tears, it fades from her head within a few minutes. Her body doesn't seem to have been moved or touched, and everything is the same as it was yesterday in the pocketbook. Blinking the sleep out of her eyes, she slings it over her shoulder and walks as fast as she can the next ten blocks down to the pawn shop, scarfing down the bag of fruit snacks on the way there.

"Mm...Hmm." Grisa holds the heart necklace up in front of her face and squints at it through her cataracts, then takes the jeweler's telescope out of the little drawer by the register and squints through that too. "I'll spare you the boring details: it's pretty, but cheap. I can give you seventy Lien for them."

"What?!" Emerald's hand twitches with the urge to slam it against the counter in frustration. "No way it's worth that little!"

Sarale, eldest of Grisa's many grandchildren, sitting on the side stairs leading up to her apartment, pauses in cleaning her handgun to glance up at her through long golden bangs. She doesn't move, though; she's seen Emerald here enough to know that she isn't one of the violent customers, and Emerald has seen enough of the older girl to know that starting a commotion in her family's pawn shop would be a decidedly bad idea.

"You're still not great at haggling, are you, Em?" she says mildly instead, and Grisa chortles.

Emerald looks down at the floor, all the fight quite suddenly blown out of her, and feels her face getting hot. "I..."

"No need to be sorry, dear," Grisa assures her, setting the necklace down on the counter. "You've had a bit of a rough day, haven't you?"

Emerald tries not to fidget, very conscious of the bruises on her arm, poking out from the sleeve of her shirt. They've darkened into obvious bluish-purple by now, and she dreads having to eventually look at the way the rest of them are mottling the skin of her torso.

"I'm fine. It wasn't that bad," she says, trying to sound sure about it. "Are...It's a real gemstone, right? Not some fake plastic thing?"

"Oh, the jade is real. But it's not worth much. It's small and poorly cut, and the rest is silver-plated, not real silver. Start stealing from jewelers instead of from pocketbooks and you might get something valuable."

Emerald can't hold back an annoyed huff. How is she supposed to do that? "Figures that the jade is worthless," she grumbles. It really is just her luck.

Grisa smiles. "You've got that talent of yours, you'll be fine. Sniff out your brethren, why don't you? Emeralds are worth more than jadeites and beryls put together."

Emerald can't resist a small smile. "Y-Yeah, I guess so."

"Your dad's old joke," Sarale snickers. "Repeated it every damn time he came in here, I swear. Laughed every time, too."

Smile gone. That hadn't taken long at all. "Yeah, good for him," she snaps, hoping she doesn't sound too petulant. The next words slip out without her really thinking about it: "You really never heard anything from him?"

"Nope, not a thing. He didn't tell anyone what he was doing or where he was going, except for his friend with the tail. I've got no clue what became of him."

"He never...?" Emerald shakes herself. It doesn't matter, she reminds herself. Dad doesn't care and neither should she. "Never mind. Are...Are you sure that that's all you can give me for the necklace?"

"As it is, yes. Tough break, hon."

Story of her life. "I..." She starts to dig in the pocketbook again. There's nothing else valuable in here, she knows, but still. "Is there...Is the bag itself worth anything?"

"Give it here." Emerald sets the bag on the counter, and Grisa looks it over for several minutes, checking the brand and hardware. "Not the best and not new, but it looks like legitimate designer. Lucky you. Empty it out and throw it in with the necklace and I'll bump you up to a hundred and fifty Lien, let's say."

Emerald nods, knowing it's likely the best deal she's going to get; she really isn't good at negotiating terms for herself. "Great. Thanks, I mean."

"Just business, dearie, don't thank me. Here, I'll throw this in, too, to make this less of a hassle — Rala, go up and get a bag out of the bag bag!"

Sarale holsters her gun and obediently trots up the stairs, where there is a large plastic bag on the landing just inside the apartment. Moments later, Emerald is handed a smaller plastic shopping bag to empty the contents of the pocketbook into, and the promised Lien for both items.

"Out of curiosity," Sarale says as Emerald packs up. "What do you think you'll spend your payday on?"

"Uh...Food, probably?"

"Fair enough." Sarale goes back to polishing the gun, but Emerald suspects it's only for show now; the older girl's tawny eyes are fixed on her and not blinking. "Where have you been roaming around lately? Haven't seen you in a while."

"Oh, uh...Around." Emerald can feel her face getting hot again and curses her quickness to embarrassment. "City's big, lot of...ground to cover..."

"Hm. When are you going to go back to your mother? Do you think you could get me an acquaintance discount? I have some friends coming in from mid-Mistral next weekend, I want to show them a good time."

She barely hears the rest of Sarale's questions; the first one was too strong an electric shock, straight to her gut. "Wh...What?" she hears herself ask, more of a whimper than anything.

"Ignore Rala, dear; if I ever see her strung out on anything your mother sells, she's out of my will." Grisa is looking at her more gravely; Emerald will think of it in those terms because if she sees that roadkill look one more damn time she's going to scream. "That woman doesn't have much to do with us. But I hear that she's been telling everybody who asks that you ran away from her, just like your dad. Has been for a long time now, after being so close-lipped about it."

Emerald can feel herself trembling from head to toe. Mom's been talking about her? Still thinking of her? Mom's been...

"I..."

"So what's up, Em?" Sarale smirks. "You trying to follow your daddy after all? I could swear I heard him say he was going to come back. Ought to be careful, you might just miss each other."

Bile rises in Emerald's throat, and she forces her next words out past it. "My mom's a fucking liar," she snarls, "and she and my shitheel dad deserved each other!"

Sarale blinks, raising her hands up defensively. "Hey, kid, easy now — "

"Shove it, Rala!" she and Grisa shout at the same time.

Her hands shake, and she clenches them hard into fists. She wants to...She just wants to...

Her eyes rove frantically around the wooden shelves of items behind Grisa, all up for sale. Jewelry and tools, of course, but then there's old videos and electronics, a couple beat-up guitars, a dull katana that reaches almost to the top shelf, and...

She narrows her eyes at a pair of twin handguns, brownish, scratched up, and chipped. "Grisa, do those two guns work?"

"I don't stock broken things, dear."

"How much?"

"...Sixty Lien each."

"Don't suppose I could convince you to bump it down?"

"Sixty-five each, ammo and holsters included. Ammo by itself is fifteen per magazine."

She figures that's as good as she'll get. She takes a deep breath, and it still feels like a good idea. She has more than that in cash, after the necklace and the bag and the money in there with it, so she'll still have money left over for food. "I'll take them."

Grisa nods, and the exchange takes less than a minute. Emerald takes longer than that to figure out how to both load and clip the things to her belt, and gets more annoyed every second.

"...See, Gramma, I told you Beryl was bullshitting you." Sarale smirks. "You owe me that katana now."

"I do not and you should have gotten it in writing. Emerald, dear, do you need help with that?"

"I'm fine."

Emerald turns on her heel and stalks for the front door. She hears the clatter of Sarale perking up again, and grits her teeth.

"Hey, Em, try not to get beat up too bad next time! I, at least, would miss having you around - Ow, Gramma!"

Emerald allows herself a fleeting smirk of her own at the sound of something being thrown at the older girl as she leaves the shop, trying very hard not to slam the door behind her. She stalks down the cracked and dirty sidewalk, and by the grace of the gods no one spares her an even slightly menacing glance. Well...Not yet, anyways. But she'll take what she can get.

She's in more familiar territory now. Crumbling brownish-red brick buildings, barred and boarded-up windows and doors, the heavy and lingering odor of sewage and unwashed bodies in the air: the closest thing to home she knows. She doesn't know where she's going, but she figures it doesn't matter yet; she has nothing but time on her hands.

The weight of the twin pistols at the small of her back feels strange, but she'll get used to them; they're not wholly unfamiliar to her. She remembers being little, in the sewer-smelling alley next to their building, with empty soda cans and beer bottles set up as targets on the closed end, and her mother standing at the open end, dark green eyes burning into her back, just waiting for her to screw up so she can yell at her for it. She remembers her small soft hands trying to fit properly around Mom's gun, how big and cold and heavy the metal had felt as she clumsily lifted and aimed.

She cannot believe her mother's nerve: lying about her, covering up what she did! She...She has to know what she did was horrible and wrong, but still she won't admit to it or try to fix it. She can't tell what makes her sicker, that or her father waltzing on out of her life like she doesn't even exist. If she ever sees either of them again...

Hesitantly, she reaches back and runs a finger over the butt of one of her new guns. It's longer than a standard handgun, but when she wraps her hand around it...It feels just right in her grip.

The coolness of the metal jars her back out of her own thoughts somewhat. She lifts her head up a little higher to look around at where she finds herself now, and it takes more effort than usual to make her brain do that instead of once again calculating the distance between here and her mother's place (much closer now than it had been this morning). She catches the scent of frying fat and burnt vegetables on the air, not unfamiliar. Ah. She's wound up right by Okela's shop.

Of all the back-alley shops and eateries around her old neighborhood, this is probably the one that's the least transparent about how...untrustworthy the food is. Passing by the alley that their back door leads into, she can see a scruffy young man with a bloodied switchblade in one hand and a dead possum in the other, presenting the animal to the baggy-eyed cook leaning in the doorway. Okela looks it over, deems it fit for consumption, and beckons the man inside. Emerald feels a reflexive churn in her stomach, but doesn't sound so bad, money and a free bowl of her mystery meat soup. She's eaten it before, when she can afford it, but never been able to catch any animals quick enough to earn it.

Rats and mice are too fast and not big enough to be worth the effort. Most of the bigger vermin — skunks, possums, raccoons, the like — only come out at night, but she has distinct broad-daylight memories of starting to dig into a trash can for food and coming face to snout with a large raccoon who had decided that this trash was his, so maybe she'd get...Well, it would be lucky this time around.

And as it happens, after passing by two separate conspiracy theorists screaming on street corners about how the Mistral Council is plotting to kill them all, a minor street brawl between a human gang and a Faunus gang, and one pigeon being hit by a speeding police car, she spies it: a shady side street, a pair of ripped-open garbage bags, and one fat raccoon happily digging into the spoils. Jackpot.

Emerald creeps into the alley and slips one of the guns out of its holster. She'll find a place to practice dual wielding another time; now she just needs to get the hang of firing one gun again. Slowly, she raises the gun, pointing it at the head of the unsuspecting raccoon. It's smaller than a soda can, but the closer distance...probably makes up for it? Much as she tries to forget, she still feels those eyes boring into her back.

("This is easy, anyone can do it." Sharp fingers yanking on her hair, nails digging into her arm. "Don't fuck it up, now.")

Emerald swallows a growl. Get the fuck out of my head, Mom.

She can do this, now. She's more comfortable with a gun in her hand than a blade. Dad had never bothered to teach her the intimacies of his preferred weapon...small among all the things her father had never bothered to do for her, but it burned just as badly as any of the others. Both of them are nothing more than a raw open wound in her chest, that over the years she's only learned how to patch over, not close up.

But even so, when she clicks the safety off and steadies her hold on the gun, it's that dark, thin blur of a back, with a short green ponytail hanging down onto it, that she sees as her target. That's where all of her problems had really begun, hadn't they? With that retreating back and slam of the door, she had been alone. Alone, for good, even if she hadn't realized it yet.

She can't fix it. She'll never fix it, not with a bullet or anything else. But still, the image doesn't go away.

Emerald pulls the trigger, and blood flies.