(Day Two)
Emma wakes with a great reluctance, held captive in her bed by visions of pirate ships and castles and a kingdom by the sea. The faint echoes of her dream gradually increase in their volume and shrillness to reveal themselves as the blaring of her alarm, set at 8:15 AM on the dot.
She throws her arm up over her head, slamming her palm against the surface of her iPad where she estimates the stop button to be. She lingers in bed for a few minutes, as she always does, never quite ready to begin her day. "Come on," she admonishes herself. "Get up."
Emma brushes her teeth in a trance-like manner, more focused on her reflection in the bathroom mirror than on actually getting her teeth clean. The bags under her eyes appear darker today and her hair looks exceptionally flat. Ponytail it is then. She places a few drops of foundation to the back of her hand, takes her brush and lightly dabs it along her chin, working her away up and across her face. She forces a smile when applying the blush to her cheeks—and she tries to make it sincere, but perhaps she'll really feel it tomorrow—then glides her liquid eyeliner along her lids, flicking the line just beyond the rim.
One of the perks of having a limited wardrobe, Emma finds, is that it makes selecting an outfit significantly easier. The limitations of her existence have a tendency of making things simpler. In a life mostly absent of choice (bouncing from one foster home to another, often dependent on the charity and kindness of those around her until she reached adulthood), Emma prefers to reduce the amount of potential complications by refraining from sentimentality.
Her only luxury—or rather, her primary way of displaying some personality with her attire—is her jacket collection. Today she opts out of her typical red leather and elects to wear her grey one, which hangs lower at the front and accentuates the angles of her torso.
She ends up carrying it on her way back home though, the weather too hot for her to withstand the thick material. The heat is compounded underground the deeper she walks into the station. While Emma waits for the train, she glares at the coffee ad from yesterday, still untouched and irritatingly pristine. She wants to tear into it; fantasizes about one day seeing tags or lewd drawings of body parts scribbled along the white space. This gives her an idea.
Emma digs into her purse and pulls out a black marker. The subway platform harbors only a sprinkling of people at this hour (the only trade-off to getting out of work so late) and the lack of prying eyes makes her bold. Tucking her jacket through the straps of her bag, she uncaps the thick sharpie and begins to draw, sweeping motions and broad strokes over the top of the model's head. Her chuckle is victorious with a hint of maleficence when she finishes.
The train arrives, and she looks back at the poster as she enters the car, swiveling into a empty seat and marveling at her work.
Killian Jones awakes with a start. He shifts his head towards his nightstand where his analog clock sits and vibrates from the buzzing of the alarm. It's 8:45 AM, and Killian receives the outset of the week with a heavy sigh and deep resignation.
The sunlight peaks through his drawn curtains and closed blinds. It's going to be a warm day, he judges, and thinks of which one of his pressed shirts would look best with his most breathable pair of pants. He scrubs at his eyes and nose as he gets up and trudges towards the restroom, smacking himself lightly a few times to shake off the last remnants of sleep.
Killian splashes his face with cool water and pauses for a moment to stare at his left hand. He'd dreamt of losing it, memories of an impish creature cleaving it off in one swift movement of his sword. Killian flexes his muscles and makes a fist, recalling the sharp pain he had felt. "It was just a dream," he reassures himself, flicking off the light as he exits the bathroom.
Once dressed, Killian takes his usual position by his kitchen window, his elbow—clad in the rolled up sleeve of her light blue shirt—pressed against the stone windowsill while he drinks his coffee and finishes off the last bits of his breakfast. Looking out of his third-floor apartment, gazing at the passersby below and taking in the city skyline (or whatever he can see of it) above is a treasured part of his day. The view, while nothing spectacular, calms him; grounds him. It is his only indulgence, these few minutes he sets aside before leaving his home and embarking on his journey to work.
As he makes to head out, dusting crumbs off his mouth, Killian watches as a blonde-haired woman walks down the alleyway that leads onto the main street (the same route he will take on his way to the train). He's seen her a multitude of times before. The vision of her in her signature crimson jacket—although today she's feeling less adventurous and dawns a more subdued color—is often the thing that signals to him it's time to take his leave.
Later, on his way back to home, Killian is caught off-guard. He's walked along the platform of this particular station almost every day—strolled past the minimalist coffee advertisement of a woman sitting alone on a park bench with drink in hand—and feels confident he would notice something like this before: looming above the woman's head in a plainly drawn rain cloud. The black outlines, while illustrated in a child-like and abstract style, seem so... aggressive. While the drawing is clever in its own way, there is an element of meanness to it that he can't ignore.
Bad form.
Killian rummages through his briefcase and grabs hold of the broadest-tipped writing utensil he can find: a red permanent marker he had borrowed from a conference room that morning after a mind-numbing conference call. He takes care not to disrupt the existing artwork but rather tries to draw around it, grinning when he's thought of an appropriate solution. "There we are, lass," he whispers to the stoic model. "All better."
.
