"What is it today?" asked Emma, eagerly reaching for the foil-wrapped sandwich in Killian's hand.

"Not spam," drawled Killian, handing the sandwich to Emma.

"Cut the mocking," warned Emma as she tore off the wrap and took a bite. It was chicken salad sandwich, and with none of the revolting celery that Emma hated. She closed her eyes, savoring the taste. "Mmmm…"

Killian smiled in amusement, and took a bite of his own sandwich.

After noticing Emma snacking on pop-tarts one too many times during a particularly intense week of experiments, Killian had brought an extra sandwich for lunch one day, and plopped it down in front her. After her initial defensive rejection of his "pity food", they had worked out a compromise whereby she bought him lunch the next day. This somehow turned into a regular thing where he would occasionally pack an extra lunch for her, and Emma would return the favor on another day. Emma's offerings were typically either grilled cheese sandwiches or some kind of pasta or fried rice, but Killian never complained, even appearing to enjoy her comparatively simpler culinary creations. Emma was now eating home-cooked food much more frequently than she could ever remember doing since she had started college. If anyone else in the lab noticed their little routine, they did not comment on it.

Elsa or Tiana would join them sometimes, and they would go off-campus for lunch or to a bar in the evening. Going to Waikiki with Elsa to watch Tiana and/or Killian perform had also turned into a regular weekend activity. For the first time in her life, Emma felt as though she was developing a small but authentic friends circle. However, her uneven experiences in foster care, and constantly having to look out for herself—not to mention the disastrous break-up with Neal—had her constantly questioning the permanency of any of this. Emma was never able to live in the now. She was always half-cynically anticipating someone to pull the rug from under her feet.

Emma bumped into Neal from time to time, but their interactions did not proceed beyond a curt nod or a stiff smile these days. Tamara, on the other hand, was often in the lab, but as she and Emma completely ignored each other, the sight of her did not hurt Emma as Neal's did. He had been the first person to get past the walls she'd put up at a very early age, and despite knowing intellectually that she was better off without him, her heart still ached at his betrayal and missed the image of the man she had once believed him to be.

Growing up, Emma had never dreamt of going to college, let alone to grad school. After she had aged out of the foster system, Emma initially drifted around doing part-time jobs. Getting tired of long hours and unreliable pay, she eventually got her GED and enrolled at Kapiʻolani Community College, hoping to get some certification that would land her a steady job in the medical industry. Her microbiology instructor, Dr. Cleo Fox, noting Emma's natural aptitude for the subject, had taken a special interest in her. Soon, Emma found herself working on a research project with Cleo, which won her a partial scholarship to UH Manoa. Four years later, at the age of 25, Emma graduated with a BS in Biology. With Cleo's guidance and encouragement, Emma had applied to grad school, and was accepted at UH into the Master's program in Marine Biology.

Emma did rotations in three different labs before settling on Meg No'olan as her thesis advisor. When Meg had asked her 4th year PhD student, Neal Cassidy, to mentor Emma, it was intended as a short-term assignment to train Emma in the advance molecular biology techniques routinely used in the MEMAS group. Neal had charmed Emma right from the start, and they quickly fell into a relationship. He was smart but his indolence had kept him from making faster progress on his dissertation. Meg had hoped that having someone to mentor would help him focus and give him the push he needed to complete his project. Her strategy had worked, but perhaps not entirely in the way she had intended. Emma had been eager to learn, and within a year, she had been the driving force in helping Neal to get his first paper out.

Emma finally started working on her thesis when Meg asked her and Neal to write a review article. While a review was not a research publication, it still counted for something. In another six months, Meg's group had churned out a review authored by Cassidy, Swan, and No'olan. Emma had done most of the writing, while Neal focused on his dissertation. Between that and her responsibilities as a teaching assistant, Emma's thesis project stayed on the back burner.

Finally, during a routine thesis committee meeting, Cleo (whom Emma had retained as external committee member) had raised concerns on Emma's lack of progress. While co-authoring papers was no insubstantial achievement, they did not count toward her thesis. Neal was first author in both the paper and the review, and they would go into his dissertation. Meg had been contrite. The allure of publication had perhaps kept her from pushing Emma to focus on her thesis. After all, Cassidy had not published a single article until Emma had started working with him. Fortuitously for Emma, the committee meeting had coincided with the return of Killian and Elsa from Palmer. Within three months of transitioning from Neal to Elsa's mentorship, Emma had made substantial progress on her thesis, more than in the year and half she had worked with Neal.

As a kid frequently shuttled around in the foster system, the first rule Emma learned was to keep her head down; the second was to do more than her allotted share of chores just to avoid the ire of the more unreasonable foster parents and group home matrons. When neither rule worked, she ran. Those deep-seated behavioral patterns were not easy to get out of, even years after she had aged out of the system. Emma now began to see that she had perhaps done more than her fair share of work on Neal's project in an instinctive attempt to keep him wanting her. Emma did not know how much of Neal's behavior had been intentional, and how much was unconscious entitlement, but he certainly had taken advantage of her insecurities. And that bastard had proved her subconscious fears right by cheating on her the minute she'd stopped being of use to him.

Emma's plan was to complete her master's by the upcoming Spring semester and get into a PhD program. One of the schools she had applied to was SUNY Stony Brooke. Neal had a postdoctoral position lined up with Dr. Pangloss Malcolm who was a professor there, and at that time, it had seemed like a good idea for Emma to try to get into the same research group. Emma had considered withdrawing her application after she had broken up with Neal. Pride and a desire to punch back kept her going. She would not change her plans and throw away years of hard work just because yet another person had let her down. And so, she refocused her attention on her goals and doubled down on her efforts.

Emma walked into the lab one afternoon to find Elsa sitting at a lab computer, so focused on her task that she did not hear Emma. When Elsa finally noticed her, she gave a start and hurriedly closed out of the browser windows she'd been perusing.

"They track porn usage on system computers, you know," teased Emma.

"I wasn't looking at porn!" was Elsa's outraged reply.

"Then what were you looking at?" asked Emma suspiciously.

Elsa had the look of a deer caught in the headlights.

"Hey—I was just teasing. You don't have to tell me." She added with a smile, "But they really do track porn."

"I'll keep that in mind," replied Elsa, smirking. A few minutes later, she unexpectedly blurted out, "I'm searching for my sister."

Surprised, Emma turned to look at her friend. "What do you mean?"

"I…have a sister, Anna. I haven't seen her in nearly twenty years. I've no idea where she is, or even if she's alive…"

"How…?" asked Emma.

"Our parents died when we were kids—I was 15 and Anna was 12. Our two aunts Ingrid and Helga took us in. It went okay for a about a year, then they had a huge falling out."

Elsa paused to take a breath and steady herself. She continued, "One day, Aunt Helga took Anna and just disappeared. Ingrid contacted the police, and we found that they'd left Norway. I've never seen her since…"

Elsa's voice broke and she started crying.

"Oh, Elsa! I'm so sorry…" said Emma, and reaching out, hugged her, patting her on the back comfortingly.

After a while, Elsa, quieted down and wiped her eyes with Kim-wipes Emma brought her. "Sorry, I couldn't find any tissues."

"This is fine," said Elsa. "Thank you. And I'm sorry for getting all emotional."

"Don't apologize! You've been there for me when I needed support. The least I can do is listen to you in turn."

Elsa thanked her again. But before she could continue, the lab door opened, and come students walked in, chatting loudly.

Emma glanced at them, and back at Elsa. She murmured, "Why don't we skip out of lab and grab dinner early? Do you have any experiments running right now that you can't absolutely abandon?"

Elsa shook her head, giving her a small smile.

Over dinner, she continued her story. "We spent a lot of money over the next few years hiring detectives, contacting Interpol, everything—Helga and Anna were traced entering what used to be the USSR. After that, nothing."

"Couldn't you guys get any information from the authorities there?"

"It was the tail end of the cold war era. It was very hard to get any useful information from them in those days."

"That's so odd. Why do you think your aunt went there?"

"No idea. We could only imagine that Helga had wanted to get as far away as possible from Norway so we wouldn't be able to find them."

"I mean, I understand wanting to get away from people before, but I've never thought of actually skipping the country!" exclaimed Emma.

Elsa huffed out a laugh. "My family tended to be a little dramatic."

"Every couple of years, I still engage detectives to look for my sister. But, it's been a long time now, and the trail's gone cold. They could be anywhere in the world!"

"Have you tried online databases or forums? There's bound to be something on missed connections or missing relatives." (Emma did not reveal that she might have done some scouring of her own looking for her birth parents).

"I've spend hours and hours trawling message boards, but nothing yet."

"Is that what you were doing on the computer?"

Elsa nodded.

"And is your aunt Ingrid still in Norway?"

"She passed away a few years ago."

Emma shook her head in commiseration. "I've never had any family. But it must be harder to have family and then lose it."

"They're both hard in different ways. My pain doesn't invalidate yours, Emma," said Elsa.

"I guess…" After a moment, Emma said, "Have you thought of placing an ad in the major newspapers in Norway?"

"We did that when Helga and Anna first went missing. But we stopped once we found out they'd left the country."

"I can't help but think your sister may be looking for you as well. And the last she knew you were living in Norway."

"That does sound like a good idea. Thank you for the suggestion, Emma."

"You're welcome. At any rate, it can't hurt to try something new."

As she headed home after dinner, Emma couldn't help thinking that she would do better to apply that motto herself in some areas of her own life.